Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (37 page)

The limit for Leopold was Seyss-Inquart’s appointment to the Schuschnigg cabinet as councilor of state on 16 June 1937. In a meeting between the two men on 23 June, Leopold made his cooperation with Seyss conditional on the latter’s subordination
.
⁵⁹
But Seyss was simply unwilling to assume this secondary role. The Viennese lawyer secretly tried to establish connections with the Austrian
Gauleiter
and SA leaders. How successful he was in these endeavors is impossible to determine. More useful were ties he forged with Papen, the elite Herren Club in Berlin, and the German Club in Vienna. Most beneficial of all were his relations with Reinthaller. Through the good offices of the latter he initiated a merger of the Nazi peasantry with the Catholic Peasant League, a step violently opposed by Leopold, who complained to Hitler that these moves violated a promise by Seyss not to form any separatist groups
.
⁶⁰

But Hitler ignored this appeal, apparently preferring to give limited support to two rival leaders. By so doing he could play his old game of preventing the emergence of a single powerful leader outside his control. Moreover, he could throw his weight behind either the “respectable,” “legal” Seyss-Inquart or the volatile and forceful Leopold, depending upon the needs of the moment.

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The Ties that Bind:

Wilhelm Keppler and the Austrian Nazi Party

Seyss-Inquart’s fortunes rose still higher, but those of Leopold plummeted correspondingly lower on 12 July 1937. On that day Hitler gave State Secretary Wilhelm Keppler the authority to handle relations between the | German and Austrian Nazis as well as responsibility for supervising the jf Fluchtlingshilfswerk and the Austrian Legion
.
⁸¹

ill A member of the party since 1927, Keppler had become Hitler’s personal economic adviser in 1932, As one of the architects of the German Four-Year Plan he had established contact with Hermann Goring and kept the latter well informed about his activities in Austria. The state secretary also enjoyed the confidence of Martin Bormann. Likewise he was on good terms with the SS Reichsfuhrer, Heinrich Himmler, who, like Goring, hoped to expand his personal power by using Keppler to gain control of Germany’s Austrian policy.

Keppler first met Austrian Nazi leaders in his capacity as head of the Agricultural Department of the German Economic Ministry. By the end of

1936 he had already decided to support the “moderate” policy of the Carin-thian Nazis in opposition to Leopold
.
⁶²
During the next summer, Keppler, on the recommendation of Odilo Globocnik, was named by Hitler to be chief of a mixed Austro-German commission to supervise the execution of the economic aspects of the July Agreement. At the same time he was supposed to carry out a survey of Austrian industries to facilitate their exploitation after an Anschluss. Finally, the Fuhrer made Keppler his deputy to look after the party in Austria
.
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Leopold did not help his own cause in a meeting with Keppler on 7 August. The state secretary informed the Landesleiter that Hitler had given him (Keppler) the right to lead party affairs in Austria. He added that the Fiihrer would not attempt to solve the Austrian question before 1942. Leopold retorted by charging that Keppler’s new position gave him no right to interfere in purely Austrian party matters. To do so would lead to the same kind of disaster that had occurred under Habicht
.
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A few days later the Landesleiter broke with the state secretary by forbidding party members to associate with either Keppler or Seyss-Inquart
.
⁶⁵

Because Keppler and Seyss-Inquart, along with their fellow travelers, Rainer, Globocnik, Jury, and Reinthaller, were all members of the SS, the struggle in Austria now more than ever shaped up as one between the SS and the pro-Leopold SA. Persche regarded Keppler as a “gray eminence,” and “a second Holstein
.”
⁸⁶
He held the state secretary responsible for intriguing against Leopold and for eventually bringing about the “external” solution to the Anschluss question through the use of German force
.
⁸⁷

Keppler’s appointment revealed that German intervention, which according to Hitler’s order of August 1934 was supposed to be nonexistent, was in reality on the upswing again. Persche’s bitter allegation, that “99.9 percent” of the intrigues against Leopold originated in the Reich
,”*
⁸
was exaggerated,

but still substantially true. What the SA leader neglected to say, however, was that every quarreling Nazi faction in Austria, including Leopold’s, looked to the Reich for a benefactor
.
⁸⁹
The biggest prize of all, of course, was Adolf Hitler himself. Anyone enjoying the Fuhrer’s unconditional support had little to fear from his rivals. Leopold had journeyed to Berlin in March to obtain the Leader’s blessing; he had returned with promises of money to succor the families of arrested Nazis and for the families of unemployed SA men
.
⁷⁰

Next in the Nazi hierarchy after Hitler came his deputy, Rudolf Hess. Seyss-Inquart visited Hess, along with Goring, in early July, soliciting support for his extraparty strategy. Goring was noncommittal, but “Hess was most interested and cordial and said about as follows: ‘You certainly have good"" intentions and I shall follow your work with interest. I regret you are not one of the old fighters
.’”
⁷¹
According to Dietrich Orlow, the historian of the German Nazi party, Hess gave orders to Keppler in September to begin political preparations for the Anschluss
.
⁷²

Leopold had good relations with Goring for a time and was able to pump considerable sums of money out of him, as the Luftwaffe chief later complained. But the Landesleiter managed to dry up the well by refusing to make Goring’s Austrian brother-in-law, Franz Hueber, a leader in the SA. With that, Goring’s subsidies abruptly stopped flowing. Leopold’s relations with Hess, Goebbels, and Himmler were no better
.
⁷³

Leopold’s alienation of Himmler was perhaps his final downfall. Although Himmler had at least theoretically placed the Austrian SS under Leopold’s command in January, he never fully relinquished his control. When Leopold expelled Globocnik, an honorary SS leader, from the party in August, the Reichsfiihrer ordered the Carinthian retained.

*

The Ascendance of the Austrian SS

Himmler* s action was only part of a larger effort to enhance the status of the Austrian SS at the expense of the SA. Adolf Hitler had put the obstreperous German SA severely in its place during the “night of the long knives” on 30 June 1934. The heavy-handed tactics of the SA had been useful in intimidating opponents during the years of struggle leading to Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and even during the Gleichschaltung process in 1933. But once totalitarian power had been achieved and all internal enemies had been suppressed, the SA became more of a nuisance than a necessity. The

{■    SA’s call for a “second revolution” finally led to the Rohm Purge of 30 June

fjj
¹
   1934- The biggest victor to emerge from that massacre was Heinrich Himmler.

ijji.    His SS now became fully independent of the SA and replaced it as the most

|    important militant auxiliary of the NSDAP.

I
¹
   .
_;
The effects of the Purge, however, were confined largely, if not exclusively,

jrl    to Germany. Even Alfred Persche did not learn the true causes and effects of

the Purge until after the Anschluss. In Austria the SA continued to play the leading role in the fight against the government as it had since the outlawing of the party in June 1933.
⁷⁴

In leaving the Austrian SA undisturbed, Hitler was being more consistent than it might seem at first; the German SA had outlived its usefulness in 1934. j    But the
Kampfjahre
(fighting years) in Austria continued far beyond that year,

jl;!    and the SA still had an important role to play—important, but not exclusive.

|j|    The fatal mistake of the Austrian SA, and of Leopold, was to imagine that

I    they could or should seize power with little or no help from the Reich. Even

more naive was their expectation that they would be allowed to retain power after a Machtergreifung.

Just as Leopold resented and resisted any outside interference, so too did Persche try to keep the Austrian SA entirely independent of German control. When in June 1937 the Austrian SS leader and German citizen Alfred Rodenbiicher offered Persche a German subsidy, Persche curtly refused. Two months later Rodenbiicher informed Persche that the Fiihrer would soon subordinate the SA in Austria to the leader of the exiled Austrian SA, Hermann Reschny. Unlike Rodenbiicher, Reschny was a native Austrian and had led the entire SA until after the July Putsch. But Persche told Rodenbiicher that he would resign rather than subordinate himself to someone who was not at the scene of the day-to-day struggle. Shortly thereafter he expressed the same sentiments in a letter to Hitler
.
⁷⁵

But worse things were in store for the SA. In late November Wilhelm Keppler informed Persche that Hitler needed two more years to solve the Austrian question. In the meantime, the Austrian Nazis were to do nothing unless ordered by Berlin. Persche replied that to carry out such a scheme would cause an SA revolt. The Austrian SA recognized Hitler’s leadership in matters of Weltanschauung, but nothing else, as the Fiihrer himself had directed after the July Putsch
.
⁷⁶
If anyone should try to dissolve the SA as a preparation for a German occupation of Austria, it would lead to a mutiny and an attempt by the SA to seize power by force
.
⁷⁷
Only Ernst Rohm (or perhaps Josef Leopold) would have dared make a statement like that.

While Leopold and Persche were losing their German patrons and the

Austrian SA was in danger of losing its independence, the Austrian SS was surging toward supremacy. Persche thought the SS was poorly ^organized in Austria and not good for anything except special tasks
.
⁷⁸
But this opinion was not shared by the Austrian police, who regarded the SS as the best organized of all Nazi formations
.
⁷⁹
Although the SA was still far larger than the SS in

1937, numbers counted for little in the fierce competition for superiority, as even Persche admitted. What really mattered was that the Austrian SS enjoyed the support of Keppler and Himmler
.
⁸⁰

Its very smallness made the Austrian SS acceptable, curiously enough, to both the German and Austrian governments. For Hitler it was too weak to harbor ambitions of seizing power on its own—in sharp contrast to the Aus-‘ trian SA. And like the German SS it had a tradition of fanatical loyalty to both Himmler and Hitler. To the Austrian government it appeared to be both less dangerous and more socially respectable than the ruffian SA, so much so in fact that Ernst Kaltenbrunner and his colleagues were given relative freedom of movement. By contrast, Persche and other SA leaders were hunted down and arrested by the Austrian police as late as 1938.
⁸¹

❖

Hitler and Leopold

Even before Keppler threatened the integrity of the SA, Leopold, in desperation, decided to appeal directly to Hitler to salvage his position as leader of the Austrian Nazi party. Such a straightforward approach had succeeded in February and March; perhaps it would work again.

In two long letters to the Fuhrer written on 22 August and
8
September, Leopold outlined his version of the attempt by Keppler, Seyss-Inquart, Rainer, and others to undermine his authority as Landesleiter. The intrigue against him, he said, had caught the attention of the foreign press, further damaging his effectiveness. He complained that he was criticized from some quarters for being a wild radical and from others for going too slowly. Impossible rumors had been spread about him that had reached the “highest positions in the Reich.” Altogether his opposition did not even add up to 100 men. Their only strength lay in their influence with the Austrian government and security forces on the one hand, and their success in gaining financial support from the Reich on the other
.
⁸²

The Landesleiter promised not to depart “a hair’s breadth” from Hitler’s general Austrian policy, but insisted that he had to determine tactics for

ill' Austrian domestic affairs himself. Otherwise another catastrophe could result. !j!I;i He concluded by asking to be kept informed of all discussions and agreements I! i made between the German Foreign Office and the German Embassy in Vienna and the Austrian government. There is no evidence that Hitler even received I these letters. At any rate, Leopold certainly achieved no satisfaction of his grievances.

j; V Consequently, at the urging of the SA leaders, Leopold decided to go to Berlin to speak with Hitler personally. He might better have stayed at home. For one thing, Seyss-Inquart had written to Keppler on 18 August to complain about Leopold’s references to Seyss-Inquart’s colleagues, Rainer and Globocnik, as “traitors, scoundrels, and rogues
.”
⁸³
Seyss made his continued work in the VPR dependent on the “clarification” of his relationship with Leopold.