Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis

A History of Austrian National Socialism

Bruce F. Pauley

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780807841822, 9780807814567
• eBook ISBN: 9781469639505
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Pauley shows that the Austrian Nazis were not compliant servants to the German Nazi party and that they controlled a fascinating movement troubled by contradictions between perverted idealism and violence. Pauley analyzes the Austrian Nazi party’s social composition, leadership problems, slow growth in the 1920s, response to the Great depression, propaganda, structure, SS and SA activities, resistance to the German party, and contribution to the Anschluss of 1938.

Originally published in 1987.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Chapter I Crippled from Birth: The First Austrian Republic

In the history of European fascism between the two world wars one fact stands out: nowhere did fascists enjoy the majority support of their countrymen before coming to power. Therefore, whatever success the fascists had cannot be understood apart from the weaknesses and divisions of their opponents and the internal problems of the states in which they arose. This fundamental truth is just as valid for the Nazis of Austria as it is for the German Nazis in the Weimar Republic and the Fascists of pre-1922 Italy.

Nazism, and European fascism in general, did not arise in a vacuum. If the new Republic of Austria, which was founded in 1918, had had a long democratic tradition, a prosperous economy, and, perhaps above all, a citizenry with a burning desire for independence, the Nazis, or any other fascist group, would hardly have attracted more than a handful of supporters. But such conditions did not exist in Austria. Although having some democratic elements, the fallen Austrian Empire had been essentially authoritarian. Worse yet, the political parties of postwar Austria regarded each other as enemies rather than as fellow citizens having honest if differing viewpoints.

The division of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy into a patchwork of Successor States also left the Austrian economy so shattered that it would not recover until after the Second World War. So, far from greeting their new state and constitution with joy and optimism, most Austrians were convinced that their country could survive economically and politically only if joined to its great German neighbor in a so-called Anschluss. It should surprise no one, therefore, that parties arose in Austria demanding the abolition of democracy and the independence of the state.

Austria at the Paris Peace Conference

The German-speaking people of the Austrian Empire were undoubtedly the monarchy’s most loyal subjects. Only with considerable misgivings was a republic proclaimed by the German remnant of the Imperial Austrian Parliament on 12 November 1918. Although the new state bore a faint resemblance to the medieval crownlands that belonged to the Habsburgs before 1526, it was in reality a new and, to most of its citizens, an unwelcome creation. For the German-Austrians their state represented not liberation but punishment for losing the war. That the German-Austrians were regarded by the victorious Western powers as a vanquished fragment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was only too apparent from their treatment at the Paris Peace Conference.

The Austrian delegation was housed—or perhaps more accurately, “imprisoned”—in the Château of Saint-Germain in the suburbs of Paris. Like other enemy delegations, they were literally locked up, and their correspondence with the outside world was censored.¹ By the time the Austrians reached the French capital there was little left to decide. Disputed border areas had already been militarily occupied by Austria’s neighbors; and those countries’ territorial claims, for the most part, had already been recognized by the “Big Four” (the United States, Britain, France, and Italy). Lacking the military power of its neighbors, and cut off by them from vitally needed food supplies, Austria prudently asked only for the German-speaking areas of the old monarchy. But even this request was denied.

The final terms of the Treaty of Saint Germain, signed on 12 September 1919, awarded to other states not only the more remote German-speaking areas, such as northern Bohemia, Austrian Silesia, and northern Moravia, (ceded to Czechoslovakia), but also contiguous regions with solid German majorities. Thus, southern Bohemia and southern Moravia, with 357,000 Germans and 18,500 Czechs were given to Czechoslovakia for “historical” reasons.² The Drau (Drava) River valley of southern Styria, which afforded Austria its best rail link between its eastern and western provinces, was assigned to Yugoslavia without a plebiscite, even though it had a German-speaking majority. And most brutally of all, the beloved South Tyrol, with 225,000 German-Austrians and next to no Italians, was turned over to Italy so that the 38 million Italians could have a strategic frontier against 6.5 million Austrians. Only in German West Hungary (later called the Burgenland), with 285,000 people, and in southern Carinthia, were boundary decisions made which benefited Austria.

Assets and Liabilities of the New Republic

With little more than 32,000 square miles the Austrian Republic had only 23 percent of the territory and 26 percent of the population of just the Austrian half of the fallen Dual Monarchy.³ No less than a third of Imperial Austria’s German-speaking subjects had been placed under alien rule. Nevertheless, the country was not entirely without assets. About 96 percent of its population now spoke German, making the country by far the most linguistically homogeneous of the Successor States. Only 10 percent of its land was totally unproductive; 38 percent was covered with forests, and 22 percent was arable.⁴ Austria also possessed considerable quantities of iron ore, great water-power potential, and many skilled workers. The country’s majestic mountains and baroque cities had long attracted tourists. Moreover, being astride several Alpine passes and the middle Danube, it was at the junction of several important trade routes.

But the negative side of the ledger was more important, at least initially. In many instances the new boundaries had separated Austria’s factories from their natural resources and from allied industries. Styrian iron- and steelworks and the textile factories of Vorarlberg had been powered by coal from Austrian Silesia and Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia, whereas petroleum had come from Galicia, which was given to Poland. Nor were the Successor States, which eagerly sought to build up their infant industries, anxious to trade with Austria. Austrian industries, previously having sold their goods in a free-trade area of 54 million people, now had a domestic market only one-eighth the size of the monarchy and had few opportunities for export.⁵

The draconian reduction in Austria’s size naturally also created a serious shortage of food, all the more so because the country was now largely mountainous. As a result of the peace treaty, Austria was able to produce only two-thirds of its wheat demands in 1919, one-fifth of the necessary rye, one-third of the barley, and one-fifth of its oats. In meat and dairy products the country was considerably better off but still not self-sufficient.⁶ In succeeding years Austria’s food situation gradually improved. More intensified farming methods and tariffs raised production enough that by 1937 the country was approaching self-sufficiency in certain basic foodstuffs. But the agricultural gains were paid for in higher prices to consumers.⁷

Even though nearly every Austrian was adversely affected by the breakup of the Habsburg Monarchy, the middle class was by far the hardest-hit social group. The bourgeoisie was traditionally the most thrifty of all the segments of Central European society. As a consequence, it was the group most devastated by the inflation that affected Austria during and especially after the World War. A savings account which before the war would have been enough to buy a small house was worth only a postage stamp by 1922. As late as 1919, sixteen Austrian crowns could purchase a dollar. It took 177 crowns for the same transaction in January 1921, and a fantastic 83,000 in August 1922. During the same period the cost of living increased 2,645-fold.⁸ Rent control, which began during the war and has lasted to the present day in Vienna, also hurt middle-class landlords by making their rent receipts practically worthless.

Even more important, the passing of the old monarchy left unemployed many middle-class German Austrians, who had made up the largest proportion of civil servants in the empire. An administrative personnel, which had been too large even for the 30 million people living in just the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, now served a state with only a fraction of its previous population. There were no fewer than 233,000 civil servants in Austria in 1919-20 or 615,000 counting their dependents.⁹ Another 120,000 citizens were state pensioners.¹⁰

Thus, one of the major ingredients of a successful democracy—a strong, prosperous, and self-confident middle class—was missing in Austria between the world wars. The proletarianization of the middle class, or at least the fear of dropping down into the proletariat, made the Austrian bourgeoisie vulnerable to political extremism, including fascism.

Although Austria’s economy was slow to recover from the ravages of war and partition, some progress was made between early 1919 and 1921 with the help of food and medicine supplied by Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration.¹¹ More substantial assistance ultimately came in 1922 from the League of Nations. In the so-called Geneva Protocols the British, French, Italian, and Czechoslovakian governments guaranteed a twenty-year loan equal to $126 million. The loan did not come without strings. Austria had to agree to a program of financial austerity involving the dismissal of thousands of civil servants. It also had to balance its budget, accept a commissioner general appointed by the League and, most important of all, promise not to give up its independence for the duration of the loan.¹²

Economically the Geneva Protocols were a moderate success. The loan enabled the government to electrify the railways the next year and also contributed to the development of water power. Likewise, the authorities began a comprehensive highway building program. In 1924 a new currency, the Austrian schilling, was introduced, equal to ten thousand of the old paper crowns and about fourteen American cents. By 1928 and 1929 the government came close to balancing the budget for the first time. The recovery reached a peak in these same two years when the gross national product was 105 percent of the prewar level (for the same area) and private consumption was 117 percent of the 1913 level. Only industrial production still lagged slightly behind the prewar standard.

Despite the gradual improvement in the Austrian economy after 1924, serious doubts about the country’s Lebensfähigkeit (viability) remained widespread. Even in the most prosperous years there was a troublesome surplus of imports over exports. In an age of autarky only self-sufficient countries were considered viable. For Austrians, their self-doubt became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Foreigners, impressed by the Austrians’ pessimism about their future, were reluctant to invest in a dying state. Consequently, Austrian industries were constantly short of the capital they needed to expand. In turn, this shortage left unsolved the chronic unemployment rate, which rarely fell below 10 percent of the work force.¹³

The Anschluss Movement

Difficult as its economic problems were, an even worse dilemma for the young Austrian Republic was the repudiation of its very existence by the majority of its citizens. It was this rejection, more than any other single factor, that aided the Nazis’ cause. The heart and soul of the Austrian Nazis’ program was their desire for an Anschluss, or union, with Germany. Far from creating the issue, however, or even monopolizing it, the Nazis merely succeeded in exploiting it more effectively than any other Austrian party.

Although their country’s desperate economic circumstances in 1918-19 intensified the Austrians’ yearning for an Anschluss, the ambition long antedated the end of the First World War. From the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire until Austria’s expulsion from the German Confederation in 1866, the lands that later comprised the Austrian Republic had always been a part of Germany. Thereafter the Austrians continued to look enviously at the German Empire’s higher standard of living. Although for the most part loyal subjects of the Habsburgs, the German-Austrians felt emotionally, linguistically, culturally, and historically closer to the people of Germany than they did to the non-Germans of the Dual Monarchy.

Even though relations between the German and Austro-Hungarian empires were far from untroubled during the First World War,¹⁴ propaganda and a shared danger held the alliance together. The war greatly heightened nationalism in each of the belligerent countries. Whereas the ideology had a disruptive effect on the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, it tended to strengthen spiritual ties between German-speaking people on either side of the Inn River. When nationalism and the war threatened to destroy the Habsburg Monarchy, union with Germany appeared to be the only practical alternative for the ten million Germans of the Austrian Empire.

The defeat of Austria-Hungary and the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy did have one apparent advantage for the German Austrians: it seemed to settle the question that had been troubling them since 1848: whether they were really Austrians or Germans. Now all divisions of loyalty were temporarily swept away. The Austrian Republic was seen by most of its citizens as a mere remnant of the old Empire, a totally artificial creation. “Threatened by new neighbors which only yesterday had been her subject peoples, she was lamenting her present, questioning her past, and doubtful of her future. Union with Germany seemed thus to many Austrians the only solution to her staggering problems.”¹⁵ The Anschluss represented the possibility of regaining both Austria’s former prosperity and its lost prestige.

The Anschluss movement was led in the early postwar years by the Austrian Social Democratic party (SDP), supported by various traditionally pan-German groups. Until at least the beginning of 1918 the Socialists had supported the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, believing that the economic development of the industrial proletariat would be enhanced by a large free-trade area. When the November Revolution toppled the Hohenzollern dynasty in Germany and replaced it with a Socialist government, the Austrian SDP pushed for a union of the two countries.

But pro-Anschluss opinion was not unanimous in Austria. Even traditional pan-German groups, whose roots stretched back far beyond 1919, were repelled at the thought of joining a Socialist Germany. And the conservative Christian Social party (CSP) paid at best lip service to the Anschluss idea when not actively opposing it.¹⁶ This fear was especially strong among industrialists and financiers who feared German competition. As Catholics, the Christian Socials showed little enthusiasm for Protestant Germany. If they officially supported the Anschluss program it was mainly to appease their coalition partners in the Austrian government.

Most Austrians in late 1918 innocently if naively believed that their Anschluss aspirations would be realized. President Woodrow Wilson had favored national self-determination as one of his famous Fourteen Points. When he arrived at the Paris Peace Conference he had still not made up his mind whether to exclude German Austria from this principle.¹⁷

But Wilson gradually came to agree with Georges Clemenceau, the French premier, that Germany could not be rewarded for losing the war by being given more territory than it would lose. Thus, it was the American president who suggested the compromise formula, incorporated in the treaties of Saint-Germain and Versailles, that Austria could “not alienate its independence” without the unanimous approval of the Council of the League of Nations. But France alone, as a permanent member of the Council, could veto such a move. By leaving alive the hope of a possible future union, the Allies could avoid the odium of flagrantly violating their own principle of self-determination.¹⁸

Yet, this very hope helped to keep the Anschluss movement active in both Austria and Germany. A less ambiguous stand, along with territorial concessions to Austria in the South Tyrol, and perhaps along the Czechoslovak border, might well have thwarted the Anschluss drive from the beginning.

Charles Seymour, one of the American experts at Paris, noted in a private letter that “everything that has been done in Paris has tended to force Austria into the arms of Germany. A little more tact and diplomatic skill and Austria could have been kept absolutely free from German influence. ... A really wise policy would have been to place German Austria on the same plane as Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia—not regarding it as an enemy state.”¹⁹

The anti-Anschluss provisions of the Paris Peace Treaties had an unexpected consequenc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• A Note on Foreign Terms
• Chapter I Crippled from Birth: The First Austrian Republic
• Chapter II Nazis and Proto-Nazis: From Empire to Republic
• Chapter III The Nazi Civil War, 1923-1930
• Chapter IV Fascists without a Führer
• Chapter V The Nazi Renaissance, 1931-1933
• Chapter VI Portrait of a Party
• Chapter VII Terror, Counterterror, and Propaganda
• Chapter VIII The Premature Putsch
• Chapter IX Reorganization and Recrimination
• Chapter X “Positive Fascism” and Appeasement
• Chapter XI Tightening the Noose, 1936-1937
• Chapter XII The Execution: Berchtesgaden and the Anschluss
• Chapter XIII The Great Disillusionment: Austrian Nazis After the Anschluss
• Chapter XIV Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis
• Notes
• A Note on the Sources
• Bibliography
• Index