Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (15 page)

leitung was subordinate to the Reichsleitung and carried out its directives. The Austrian
Gauleiter,
who were now appointed by the pmdesleiter and confirmed by the Reichsleitung, carried out the policies of the Landesleitung
.
⁷

Aside from appointing Habicht, Hitler, like Gregor Strasser, continued to show surprisingly little interest in Austria. The Fuhrer was simply too preoccupied with the task of attaining power in Germany and of maintaining party unity and his own leadership to devote much attention to Austrian affairs. Thus a political vacuum was created that served to increase the effective authority of middle-range functionaries like Habicht. Hitler told a prominent Heimwehr leader in early 1931 that once he was Reich chancellor he would send his best speakers and a good deal of money to Austria
.
⁸
But that day was still far off.

In a party manual (
Dienstbuch
) published in March 1932 Habicht revealed the party’s goals to be the overthrow of the Austrian government and the union of Austria and Germany. “Whoever controls Austria, controls Central Europe,” he maintained. “Victory is not a question of numbers, but of determination
.”
⁹
His more immediate tasks, however, were the enlargement of the party and concomitantly the “capture” of other right-wing forces, especially the Heimwehr.

Thanks to the worsening Depression and the disillusionment within the Heimwehr over that group’s poor showing in the 1930 elections, Habicht made substantial progress on both fronts during 1931. In local elections held in Upper Austria in April 1931 the Nazi vote rose to 15,770, an increase of 36 percent since the previous November, while the Heimwehr’s vote dropped precipitously from 40,000 to under 19,000. In Carinthia, always a pan-German stronghold, Nazi membership increased by 150 percent between November 1930 and August 1931,
^lfl
while in Klagenfurt, the provincial capital, the party became the city’s second largest. In neighboring (and equally pan-German) Styria, the party’s membership tripled during 1931 when some

4,000 public meetings were held
.
¹¹
Aiding the struggle in both states was the establishment of the two Nazi newspapers,
Der Vormarsch
in Klagenfurt and
Der Kampf
in Graz.

For the country as a whole the police estimated that there were about fifteen thousand members in September 1931. One-third of these men belonged to the SA and another three thousand were members of the Hitler Youth
.
¹²
Although in absolute numbers the party was still one of the smallest in the country, it now had the precious “momentum” that all political parties need for real success.

Fascist Competitors: The Austrian Heimwehr

While the Austrian NSDAP was thus making impressive if not
spectacular
progress, the Heimwehr was in danger of falling apart. Because the Heimwehr was the Nazis’ biggest rival, especially between 1930 and

1933, it is important to review here briefly its early development.

The Heimwehr was actually much younger than the Austrian Nazi party, being purely a postwar phenomenon. Like the Austrian Nazis and many other fascist movements, it originated in an area having extreme ethnic conflicts
.
¹³
The Heimwehr’s early strength had been in Carinthia and Styria, where it fought Yugoslav territorial ambitions in 1919. Almost from the beginning, however, and increasingly as the external danger waned, the Heimwehr and other right-wing paramilitary formations in Austria concentrated their energies against the internal “Marxist threat.”

The modest size of the country’s army, which Saint-Germain limited to only thirty thousand men (but which was really far smaller than that) and its early control by the Socialist war minister, Julius Deutsch, also induced many veterans to continue their military pursuits outside the regular army. They were joined by peasants, lower-middle-class shopkeepers, teachers, and other professional people, in addition to certain aristocrats who were still angry over being declassed by the Republic
.
¹⁴

The Socialist participation in the Austrian government ended in October 1920, and the Austrian economy began to improve after the reestablishment of the currency in 1922. Thereafter a certain stability returned to Austrian politics. No longer having major unifying issues or an effective leader, in early 1923 the Heimwehr broke into a clerical faction and a radical pan-German wing concentrated in Styria, Vienna, and Lower Austria
.
¹⁵

While the two wings barely survived the calm and relatively prosperous years between 1923 and 1926, another anti-Marxist paramilitary formation, the Front Fighters’ Association with some fifty thousand members, was flourishing in eastern Austria
.
¹⁶
It was the Heimwehr, however, that profited most from the apparent revival of the Marxist “threat” in 1926-27.

As we have seen, the Austrian middle class was alarmed by the Socialists’ Linz Program of 1926 when the party announced the possibility (under certain highly unlikely circumstances) of a “proletarian dictatorship” to defend democracy
.
¹⁷
Alarm changed to panic the next year after an uprising in July in Vienna when workers rioted and burned down the Palace of Justice following the acquittal of a group of Front Fighters accused of murder. The nationwide

general strike, called by the Social Democrats in the aftermath of the riot, was quickly squelched by the mobilization of several provincial,Heimwehr units, above all, the one in Styria. The Heimwehr could now claim to have saved Austria from “bolshevism,” all the more so because the Nazi party was too divided to exploit the situation
.
¹⁸
The grateful bourgeoisie soon rushed to join the ranks of the Heimwehr.

The Heimwehr's unity was restored in October 1927 when Richard Steidle and another lawyer, the Styrian Walter Pfrimer, began serving as co-leaders. The movement grew rapidly during the next two years, thereby contributing to the Nazis’ lackluster growth rate. However, the swift progress of the Heimwehr served to mask serious internal problems. Neither Steidle "nor Pfrimer were particularly effective leaders. Steidle, the leader of the more moderate, clerical wing of the Heimwehr, was popular with his own Tyrolean followers and was a talented speaker. But he had a reputation for extreme laziness and indifference. Pfrimer, who led the radical, pan-German wing of the movement, a movement that glorified youth and military virtues, was overweight, balding, nearly deaf, and a poor public speaker
.
¹⁹

The dual leadership, although giving equal recognition to both wings of the Heimwehr, probably created more problems than it solved. Before long the two leaders were so jealous of each other that they did not even communicate. Their main handicap however, was that real power in the Heimwehr rested with the provincial, not the federal, leaders. Ironically, members of the Heimwehr, which like the Nazis placed so much emphasis on the leadership principle, could not even unite their own movement behind a single leader, let alone the whole of Austria.

As the fear of Marxism again began to dissipate in the late twenties, the Heimwehr movement seemed to require a more “positive” program than mere anti-Marxism to maintain its raison d’etre. At least as early as 1926 Heimwehr leaders began to formulate fascist and corporative objectives
.
²⁰
In June 1929 the German consul in Klagenfurt noted that the Heimwehr believed that “all the social, economic, and political ills of Austria could be cured through a dictatorship
.”
²¹
But not until May 1930 did the Heimwehr make an almost official avowal of typically fascist principles in the notorious “Komeuburg Oath.” Denouncing “Western” democracy, liberal capitalism, and political parties, the declaration demanded the establishment of economic corporations, a “new German national outlook,” and the creation of a Heimwehr dictatorship
.
²²

The Oath marked both the peak of the Heimwehr’s power and the beginning of its decline; it was far too radical for the clerical wing of the movement. The Oath, the controversial election of Prince Starhemberg as federal leader in

*

Capturing the Pan-German “Right”: Phase One

Thus Theo Habicht’s appointment, just two months before the Pfrimer Putsch, came at an opportune time for the Nazis. Habicht was eager to exploit Heimwehr disillusionment by winning over, if possible, the entire movement to the Nazi side, or failing that, to capture at least the Heimwehr’s pan-German wing. If either goal could be attained, it was likely that other pan-German and anti-Marxist groups, such as the Front Fighters’ Association, the Greater German People’s party, the Agricultural League, and even part of the ruling Christian Social party, would follow the Heimwehr’s lead.

Back in 1926 Hitler himself had tried to subordinate the many German paramilitary formations to his political leadership, although momentarily without success. Hitler’s efforts were productive, however, as far as the Styrian section of the Heimwehr (which preferred to call itself the “Heimatschutz”) was concerned. Discussions between Styrian representatives and Hitler took place in Passau and Freilassing (both just across the Austro-German border in Bavaria) in 1926 and 1927. The diplomatic vulnerability of Germany and Austria, however, militated against a formal alliance between the two organizations, at least for the time being. Hitler instead preferred to use the Styrian Heimatschutz as a kind of Nazi agent, spreading National Socialist ideas throughout Austria at a time when the Austrian Nazi party was still extremely

weak
.*
⁵
   /

Alfred Proksch had tried to reach some sort of understanding with the Heimwehr in
early
1930 but was blocked
by
the Austrian SA and
Hitler
Youth. We
have
also observed the breakdown of negotiations between
Gregor
Strasser and Prince Starhemberg for an electoral coalition in the fall of 1930.

The key to absorbing the whole pan-German Right in Austria rested in the fate of the Styrian Heimatschutz. It was by far the largest and best organized
of
all the Austrian
Heimwehren
and comprised perhaps one-third of the Heimwehr’s total membership. It also happened to be the most radically pan-German, anti-Semitic, and especially after the Rfriraer Putsch, the mfcst restless segment
of
the Heimwehr. In its broad social composition, which included students, industrial workers, and civil servants, it more nearly resembled the Nazis than did any other provincial unit of the Heimwehr
.
²⁸

Habicht wasted no time in establishing contact with Walter Pfrimer (who was still both the federal leader of the Heimwehr and the head of the Styrian Heimatschutz) in July 1931. Their exploratory talks soon led to a Burgfriede or civil truce. In plain language, this agreement amounted to a promise to refrain from the exchange of insults between members of the two organizations. Further negotiations were interrupted by the Pfrimer Putsch before anything more substantial could be accomplished
.
²⁷
The aftermath of the Pfrimer Putsch had left the Styrians completely isolated, even from other sections of the Heimwehr. An alliance with Nazis would prove that it was still politically alive and vigorous.