Terror in the Balkans (77 page)

ning and organization. In the days of the old Imperial Army, it was the

General Staff that had best afforded such an opportunity. Now, it was

the new Reichswehr Ministry.8 This agenda would, of course, eventually

dovetail perfectly with National Socialism’s aims for the armed forces.

The Reichswehr’s senior offi cers also hoped they would eventually

be able to assure Germany’s national strength and greatness by wedding

their mastery of technological warfare to the mobilized hearts and minds

of German society, both civilian and military. This was a mobilization

whose absence, they believed, had caused too many Germans to fall vic-

tim to the infl uence of defeatists, pacifi sts, and Bolsheviks during the

Great War. Weimar, they believed—perhaps not unreasonably, given the

republic’s fractious party system and its at best uneven popular appeal—

was incapable either of providing this popular rallying point or of safe-

guarding Germany’s national interests more generally.9

Not all military fi gures were so averse; indeed in 1928 the Defense

Minister, General Groener, sought to reconcile the Reichswehr with the

republic.10 But just one year later, the global economic crisis that followed

the collapse of the New York stock exchange fatally entrenched most

offi cers’ contempt for Weimar. Barely any country was hit harder by the

crisis than Germany. This was a consequence of its massive reliance on

US loans to pay off the war reparations that the Treaty of Versailles, a

treaty with the Weimar Republic’s signature on it, had imposed upon the

country. Now more than ever before, the majority of Reichswehr offi cers

believed that the best route to achieving their goals lay not in the republic

but in an authoritarian, national conservative government.

But in 1933, following the failure of two short-lived national conserva-

tive administrations to govern the country stably in the face of mounting

political chaos, the Reichswehr leadership hit upon a more radical solu-

tion: alliance with the Nazis.11 The Reichswehr gave its tacit approval as

a cabal of arch-conservative politicians prevailed upon the increasingly

doddery State President Hindenburg to award Hitler the chancellorship

in January of that year. Behind the conservatives’ maneuvering was the

tragically misconceived notion of “taming” Hitler once he was in offi ce.

This was the culmination of the economic and political corrosion of the

Weimar Republic that had been set in train when the global economic

60
terror in the balk ans

crisis had broken over Germany. Already the corrosion had resulted in

six million unemployed, the lurch of German politics to extremes of left

and right, and frightening levels of social and political unrest. What fol-

lowed its culmination was, of course, incomparably worse.

The Austrian Bundesheer’s goals during the 1920s and early 1930s were

much more prosaic than the Reichswehr’s. Partly this was because the

old Royal-Imperial Army had not bequeathed a similarly formidable

technocratic tradition to live up to. The more pressing reason was that

the Bundesheer had no practical choice. Any grand ambitions it might

have harbored were scotched by the sobering economic and political

realities of postwar Austria—realities even more sobering than they were

north of the border. Many offi cers, facing a squeeze on their pay and

pensions, also resented the new dwarf republic for material reasons.12

Then, during the 1920s, War Minister Vaugoin of the governing center-

right Christian Social Party weeded out the—not inconsiderable—left-

wing elements within the army. By 1927 at the latest, the Bundesheer was

solidly loyal to the Christian Socials and their coalition partners, but

deeply ambivalent towards the democratic republic as an institution.13

This would of course impact enormously on how it would conduct itself

amid the violent political turmoil that ripped Austria apart during the

early 1930s.

For Austrians, the most catastrophic phase of the global economic cri-

sis, and with it the unfolding political crisis, followed the collapse of the

Vienna Credit Institute in 1931.14 The elections that followed in April 1932

saw a surge in support for the Austrian Nazis similar to that which their

comrades in Germany were then enjoying.15 The Christian Social chan-

cellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, was profoundly alarmed at this development.

He saw it as a threat both to Austria’s internal stability and, following the

Nazis’ ascent to power in Germany, to Austria’s national independence.

Dollfuss might have countered the threat by forming an alliance with

the trade unions and the Social Democrats. But the distrust between

socialist left and conservative right, which had been poisoning Austrian

politics since the republic’s founding, prompted Dollfuss to dismiss that

option. Instead, he declared the formation of an Austro-fascist Catholic

Bridging Two Hells
61

“corporate state,” backed by Mussolini’s Italy and led by a new, post-

democratic political organization, the Patriotic Front.

The Austrian Nazis, banned as an organization in May 1933, murdered

Dollfuss in July 1934. But already Dollfuss had inadvertently hastened

the day when the German Nazis would achieve a smooth takeover of the

Austrian state. For, by provoking confrontation with the Social Dem-

ocrats and the trade unions and then crushing them in bloody urban

battles—a civil war–type situation for which, arguably, neither side was

entirely blameless—he removed what might have been a major bulwark

against a Nazi takeover.16

During the civil war the Bundesheer stood by the government unwav-

eringly, suppressing both the Austrian left and the Austrian Nazis with

merciless force. Many offi cers, reeling from the swinging defense budget

cuts previous governments had enacted in the wake of the economic cri-

sis, hoped the new regime would expand and improve the army.17 The

majority of senior offi cers, old-school conservative in outlook and deeply

ambivalent towards National Socialism, were concerned above all with

safeguarding Austria’s national integrity. Even so, there were limits to

their patriotism; many senior offi cers were prepared to contemplate

eventual union (
Anschluß
) with National Socialist Germany if it meant

keeping “Italy and the Jews” out.18 Meanwhile sympathy with National

Socialism gathered strength, not only among rank-and-fi le troops but

also, in time, among junior offi cers.19

North of the border, meanwhile, the Reichswehr offi cer corps’ sympathy

for the Nazi regime already in place was gathering strength also. Many

younger offi cers, in particular, were highly supportive. Some had been

hardened and radicalized by their experience of the Great War. Others,

too young for wartime service, were anxious to prove their technocratic

profi ciency in the business of mass destruction.20 All were aware of the

many war veterans—Hitler himself being the most high-profi le exam-

ple—among the Nazis’ leadership and rank and fi le, the enthusiasm the

Nazis exuded for all things military, and their clear intention of tearing

up the treaty that had so diminished Germany’s military capability.21

Many younger offi cers, war veterans and otherwise, thus perceived the

62
terror in the balk ans

greatly expanded, technologically enhanced army now in prospect as a

means of fulfi lling the aspirations not just of the offi cer corps as a whole,

but of their own careers also.22 They also believed that the Nazi concept

of a “national community,” embracing all Germans—or at least all Ger-

mans of the desired racial and social material—would be a sure means of

rallying and unifying the German people, in both civilian and military

spheres, for the waging of future wars.23

Older, more conservative offi cers were reassured by Hitler’s show of

moderation when, in the words of the historian Joachim Fest, he invoked

“nationalism, tradition, the Prussian spirit, Western values, or the spirit

of the front-line soldier . . . and (stressed) decency, morality, order,

Christianity, and all those concepts which went with a conservative idea

of the state.”24 They were reassured even more when he eliminated the

leaders of the Reichswehr’s bitter rival, the Nazis’ paramilitary wing, the

SA. This murderous act, albeit one committed against a coterie of thugs,

became known as the Night of the Long Knives. The Reichswehr leader-

ship not only supported it, but readily facilitated it, by providing weap-

ons to the SS killing squads who did the deed.25

Moreover, that majority of offi cers who as yet remained less enthusi-

astic than some of their fellows did not yet pay serious heed to Hitler’s

wilder pronunciations, such as his call for “living space” in the East.26

When eventually they did take notice, most would do so approvingly.

Finally, if most offi cers did not share the Nazis’ anti-Semitism to the

same rabid extent, few allowed it to trouble them actively. Indeed the

broad thrust of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic campaign—with its stress, at this

stage, on discrimination and disenfranchisement rather than extermi-

nation—found widespread approval among many offi cers. Army chief

General von Fritsch, who regarded himself as a conservative nationalist

rather than a Nazi, wrote:

Soon after (the Great War), I came to the conclusion that three bat-

tles would have to be fought and won if Germany was to become

powerful again. 1. The fi ght against the working class, in which Hit-

ler has been victorious; 2. Against the Catholic Church, or to put it

better, against ultramontanism; and 3. Against the Jews. We are still

in the midst of the last two battles. And the struggle against the Jews

Bridging Two Hells
63

is the hardest. I hope it is clear to people everywhere what a battle

it will be.27

By now, moreover, the already widespread anti-Semitism within the

German offi cer corps was being hardened by the connections offi cers

drew between Jews and Bolshevism.28

The murder of the SA leaders, which took place in June 1934, was

followed on Hindenburg’s death two months later by Hitler’s merging

of the offi ces of president and chancellor in his new position as leader—

Führer—and by the army’s swearing of a new oath, dedicated not to the

state, but to Hitler personally. Most senior offi cers did not yet antici-

pate the catastrophic consequences the taking of the oath would even-

tually have.29 The oath’s introduction was followed in 1935 by Hitler’s

announcement that Germany would no longer adhere to the disarma-

ment terms of the Versailles Treaty, but would instead embark upon

a massive expansion of its armed forces. The years from 1935 onward

brought both an enormous, socially diverse intake of new offi cers, and

the reentry into the army of many former offi cers who had left the service

on the inception of the Reichswehr.

The expansion of the offi cer corps brought large numbers of men from

those predominantly middle-class circles—such as small businessmen,

small farmers and landowners, and white-collar workers and profes-

sionals—who had provided the Nazis with particularly strong electoral

support.30 From that point on the leadership of the new German armed

forces, the Wehrmacht, implemented an extensive program of National

Socialist indoctrination among conscripts. It also implemented Nazi-

style regulations to purge the new force of all “undesirable” social, racial,

and political elements.

Over the next three years, Hitler also set about abolishing more of the

hated provisions of Versailles—the territorial clauses that had emascu-

lated Germany’s borders. But he aimed to go further—by unifying the

German-speaking peoples beyond the Reich’s borders. These were to be

the fi rst stages in a foreign policy plan Hitler had detailed in his writings

of the 1920s, aimed ultimately at the total domination of Europe, perhaps

64
terror in the balk ans

even at global power.31 As a fi rst step, in defi ance of Versailles but with no

practical opposition from France or Britain when it was taken, German

troops reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936. That

same year, the Pact of Steel was signed with fascist Italy. This particular

development brought Austria’s eventual absorption into the Reich sig-

nifi cantly closer.

Before the Pact of Steel, the Italian dictator Mussolini had strongly

opposed what he saw as an unacceptable extension of German infl u-

ence into his own backyard. But he was reassured by the new stance on

the
Anschluß
question Hitler now adopted; out went misconceived sup-

port for botched and bloody coup attempts, in came an “evolutionary”

approach intended to integrate Austria gradually and peacefully into the

Reich. Dollfuss’s successor as Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg,

reluctantly played along to an extent. He recognized that the absence