Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (22 page)

was no longer even in Austria when the party was dissolved. Despite Hitler’s attempt to give him diplomatic immunity by making him a press attache in the German embassy (an action the Austrian government refused to recognize), Habicht was deported on 13 June along with 1,142 other Austrians and some Germans
.
¹⁵

Undaunted, Habicht, Proksch, and most of the Austrian
Gauleiter,
together with the leaders of the Austrian SA and SS, proceeded to establish a new Landesleitung in Munich with Habicht himself as chief. On the other hand, Walter Riehl, Alfred Frauenfeld, and Captain Josef Leopold, the Lower Austrian Gauleiter, refused to obey Hitler’s order to flee to Germany. Of course, Karl Schulz and his long-forgotten followers also stayed in Austria and their activities remained legal. The Gauleitung of Salzburg moved just across the border to Freilassing, Bavaria, whereas the Carinthian Gauleitung was relocated for a time in Tarvisio, in northeastern Italy, until Mussolini forced it to move to Germany
.
¹⁶

For those who fled or were expelled, the consequences were serious: their property was confiscated and they could lose their citizenship. Not only did these measures punish those who fled, but they also served as a strong deterrent to those who otherwise might have joined the movement, especially members of the propertied middle class. For the Nazis, accustomed to the gentl
^e
approach of the Weimar governments in Germany, the determination .gbown by the Dollfuss regime must have come as a very unpleasant shock.

¹
The Nazis were not the only losers in this struggle, however. Nazi terror in the spring and early summer of
1933
restricted the political freedom of pollfuss and drove him more firmly than ever into the arms of the Heimwehr as his only dependable security prop. The Austrian army alone was simply too small to handle all emergencies. And there may have been some doubts in the chancellor’s mind about its loyalty, although such doubts proved to be
exaggerated
in July
1934.

Dismissals and Detention Camps

Starhemberg says in his memoirs that sometime during the middle of
1933
he told a discouraged Dollfuss to abandon the defensive and go over to the offensive.

“We must show the Austrian people that there is an Austrian power. They must have the feeling that there is a force which will protect them from the Nazis. And the faint-hearted, above all the state officials, officers, gendarmes, and police, must not doubt from whom they have the most to fear: us or the Nazis. . . . ” I argued that we must answer the Nazi terror with an even stronger Austrian terror. Dollfuss agreed.

“I know Hitler. ... It is complete nonsense to believe that one can fight National Socialism with intellectual arguments
.”
¹⁷

That there was an Austrian “terror” comparable to Hitler’s in Germany may be doubted, though it was risky business indeed to be a professed Nazi in Austria, particularly from the middle of
1933
to the middle of
1936.
Between late July and early August
1933
Nazi deputies in state parliaments were removed from office. Martial law was instituted in November with drumhead courts being used for political cases involving murder, arson, and explosives. Some political crimes were punishable by a
20,000-
Schilling (or
$2,256)
fine and a two-year imprisonment
.
¹⁸
By April
1934
some
50,000
Nazis had been convicted of various political and civil offenses
.
¹⁹
In June
1934
the death penalty was restored for the mere possession of explosives.

The Austrian government was determined to purge itself and Austrian society of Nazi party members and sympathizers. By February
1934
Nazi or pro-Nazi civil servants, including teachers and university professors, were

sometimes dismissed or forced into early retirement without benefit of a trial; they were replaced by loyalists
.
²⁰
All private clubs tainted with Nazi sympathies, especially sporting clubs that were traditionally pan-German and volkisch, were outlawed by the government. Provincial governments in Upper Austria and Salzburg also required the huge Kreditanstalt banking firm to fire pro-Nazi officers and employees. Beginning in January 1934 hostages were placed under “preventive arrest.” Mere suspects could be imprisoned after September. Likewise, the principle of “collective” or mass arrest of known Nazis was used when the real perpetrators could not be apprehended
.
²¹
August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Upper Austria after 1936, was arrested nineteen times by the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime, sometimes as a preventive measure, sometimes to make him a hostage, and only occasionally because of actual illegal activity. The first time he was arrested in 1933 he spent nearly five months in the Wollersdorf detention camp
.
²²

Indeed, detention camps became important weapons of the government against all its political opponents. Of the four camps scattered throughout the

fir' country,
the largest and most famous (or infamous) was the one at Wollersdorf
near
Wiener Neustadt (just south of Vienna). After it was established in
October
1933, the number of its inmates varied substantially from time to time, reaching a peak of 5,302 in October 1934, of whom 4,747 were Nazis and 555 were Socialists. But by 1 January 1935 Wollersdorf held only 825 inmates, 654 being Nazis
.
²³

Nazis, therefore, obviously outnumbered Socialists in Wollersdorf (and elsewhere), but only because they were more active in resisting the regime. However, Socialists who participated in the civil war of February 1934 may have received harsher sentences than the Nazi Putschists of July
.
²⁴
‘?|;i For the dedicated Nazi time served in a detention camp was a badge of honor, a testimony to his faith in the cause. Although treatment of prisoners differed according to who happened to be the commandant, Nazis privately referred to the camps as “nationalist convalescent homes.” Individual differences between prisoners were suppressed, but there was no attempt to “reeducate” them as in Nazi Germany. The prisoners were given opportunist    ties to participate in various sports and pursue hobbies at will. They were

IP    entertained by movies, singing, and lectures and were free to attend or not a

i    religious service of their choice. Inmates could entertain their girlfriends, and

businessmen could meet partners during emergencies. These visits also made possible the exchange of news and party orders. Better food could also be brought to prisoners from their homes
.
²⁵

The British journalist G. E. R. Gedye, who was anything but a friend of the Austrian dictatorship, described life in the Wollersdorf camp he visited in April 1934 as “easy if boring, . . . There were no cells, no plank beds. All the inmates, mostly young men, had photos of their best girls upon the walls. There were no restrictions on smoking and no hard labor to be done, as in the German camps. . . . Except for a few simple chores the time was their own and seemed to be devoted chiefly to football, sunbathing, or reading under the trees
.”
²⁶
Disciplinary punishments might include some unpleasant work, a denial of visitation or reading privileges, deprivation of warm breakfasts, or solitary confinement for as long as a week
.
²⁷

Another view of Wollersdorf is provided by Eduard Frauenfeld, who was incarcerated at Wollersdorf from 10 December 1933 to 16 December 1935. He describes the sanitary conditions at the camp as bad, and because it was located on the site of a former munitions dump, nothing would grow there (even though Gedye mentions having seen trees). Eight hundred men were crowded into a single barracks and slept in bunk beds three tiers high. In

1934 mail service to the camp was irregular, though in 1935 letters could

be received every two weeks. The commandant of the camp, according to Frauenfeld, was a brutal homosexual named Stillfried
.
²⁸
,

It is impossible to reconcile these two diametrically opposed impressions of Wollersdorf. In all likelihood, Gedye was shown only /the best parts of the camp and Frauenfeld remembered only the worst aspects.

*

German Economic Pressure

Even before the Austrian Nazi party was outlawed, Hiller realized that the German policy of nonintervention had failed. Instead of a direct annexation of Austria by Germany, the Austrian NSDAP was to carry out the
Gleichschaltung
(political coordination) of the country with only a minimum of outside guidance. But if anything, the Dollfuss regime was growing stronger, not weaker. Therefore, Hitler told a conference of ministers on 26 May, over the objections of Foreign Minister Neurath and Vice-Chancellor Pa pen, that he intended to launch a new two-pronged Austrian policy. A virtual economic boycott, including the cessation of German tourist traffic to Austria, was to begin immediately. The economic squeeze was to be accompanied by a massive propaganda offensive involving the dissemination of hundreds of thousands of leaflets explaining the reasons behind the German policy. Such a double-barreled approach would “lead to the collapse of the Dollfuss Government and bring new elections . . . before the end of the summer.” The official explanation for the tourist boycott given to the press was the desire of the German government to avoid possible embarrassing incidents resulting from the prohibition of Nazi uniforms and insignia by the Austrian government
.
²⁹

So after 1 June 1933 German citizens could travel to Austria only upon payment of a 1,000-Mark (or $250) visa fee. Although the Austrian government countered with its own exit fee, the main purpose of which was to hinder communications between German and Austrian Nazis, Austria, of course, was hit much harder than Germany. Thirty percent of Austria’s tourist income was normally from Germany alone
.
³⁰
But in July 1933 only
8
Germans visited Austria compared to the 98,000 the year before. In all, the number of German tourists declined from nearly 750,000 in 1931-32 to 70,718 in 1933-34.
³¹
Although this diminution was partially compensated by an increase of tourists from other countries, the consequences were serious nevertheless, especially for the western provinces nearest Germany. In those

fjjji'j
most affected by the “blockade,” and by other economic conditions, ! rii | jjjgNazi party experienced a rapid growth in the summer of 1933.
³²
| ||i|
Eleven months later Hitler tightened the economic screws even more by “a

■ curtailment of the imports of all those Austrian articles of export which were |t:
_Q
f
particular importance to the Dollfuss Government in its domestic political Nk! struggle
-”
³³
These items were to include lumber, fruit, and cattle. In case the pi"
Austrian
government complained, the German Foreign Office was instructed to reply that “this was a spontaneous reaction of German consumers against !;!. the policy of the Austrian Government toward the NSDAP
.”
³⁴
ifi The German economic vise only intensified an already desperate situation for Austria. As one of the European countries most dependent on foreign I!'
^;
trade, Austria was especially devastated by the sharp decline in world trade i‘ii> during the Great Depression. In few if any other countries did the employment j- i
_ra
te drop so low and remain depressed so long as in Austria. Whereas in pj,! Germany the bottom of the Depression was reached in 1933 when 71.7

III
percent of those employed in 1929 were still working, in Austria the nadir ii!::! was not reached until 1936, when the rate was just 64.6 percent of the already high 1929 level of unemployment. In 1937 the unemployment rate in Austria was still only 67.4 percent of the 1929 norm compared to 104.3 percent in Germany
.
³⁴
In all, about 600,000 Austrians were unemployed at the beginning of 1936 or more than one-third of the country’s total labor force.

11 Meanwhile industrial production fell by 38 percent and foreign trade by 50 ■:§ percent between 1929 and 1933.
³⁶

|    These statistics are not just a matter of idle curiosity. The    strength of pro-

|    Anschluss sentiment since    1918 had always been related    to comparative

economic conditions in Austria and Germany. To a considerable extent this phenomenon continued during the Depression years. As long as the Austrian employment rate dropped more slowly than Germany’s, as it did from 1930 through 1932, the temptation to look with envy toward Austria’s northern neighbor was weakened. But when the German economy began improving rapidly following Hitler’s takeover in 1933, while the Austrian economy continued to sink even lower, many previously uncommitted people quite naturally drew the conclusion that only an Anschluss could reverse the trends. Probably nothing raised Germany’s prestige in Austrian eyes so much as its flourishing economy. And    nothing could so enhance the    effect of Nazi