Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (36 page)

The terms included the following: an amnesty for prisoners convicted of !ip : “base crimes” if they had been committed “for clearly political motives” tv and a “recognition of the principle that National Socialist conviction and |i] activity [had] no character hostile to the state or government”; all restrictions regarding the import of books and periodicals from Germany were to be dropped; a “solemn declaration in favor of common racial stock as the pur-i pose of the political life of the state” was to be made as well as a “prohibition [declared] against the Jewish press”; new cabinet ministers were to be appointed “having the confidence of both sides”; a defensive alliance with the Reich “was to be concluded and a plebiscite [held] to determine the form of state and the Anschluss”; finally, in order to effect a permanent and real solution,” the Deutschsozialer Volksbund had to be established with full freedom of action
.
³⁸
To facilitate the discussions leading to its creation within the Fatherland Front, a so-called Committee of Seven headed by Leopold was formed.

Schuschnigg met with Leopold himself for the first time on 1
1
February

1936 and worked out a compromise. Nothing was said about Leopold’s extreme demands. The Landesleiter agreed to abandon, at least temporarily, the formation of the Volksbund and to take cognizance of the independence of Austria “for reasons of Realpolitik.” Schuschnigg in turn promised to release another 145 imprisoned Nazis and to give a “sympathetic examination” of all officials and students dismissed for Nazi activities. And finally, he would protect from police action a permanent office in Vienna established by the Committee of Seven for the purpose of further pacification
.
³⁷
The latter would be, in effect, a grievance committee allowing Nazis to complain about

alleged excesses committed by the police and the Fatherland Front. The Committee’s offices on the Teinfaltstrasse in Vienna’s central district became the illegal party’s unofficial headquarters with orderlies even wearing party uniforms. The government tolerated this arrangement because the existence of the headquarters made it easier to monitor Nazi activities. Leopold, for his part, gained a de facto if not a de jure recognition for his Nazi activities
.
³⁸

Leopold hoped to win still more favors from the Schuschnigg government through both internal and external pressure. Thus, the German foreign minister’s visit to Vienna on 22-23 February 1937 was accompanied by gigantic demonstrations by perhaps as many as one hundred thousand Nazis. At the same time, Neurath took advantage of his visit to try (unsuccessfully) to coal Schuschnigg into conceding the Nazis’ earlier demands
.
³⁹
Even the Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, was asked by Leopold to intervene on behalf of the Austrian Nazis. But Ciano’s efforts were rebuffed by the Austrian foreign minister, Guido Schmidt. Far from capitulating, Schuschnigg dismissed his pro-Nazi minister of security, Dr. Odo Neustadter-Sturmer, on 20 March
.
⁴⁰

In fact, none of Leopold’s moves in Austria in the early part of 1937 brought him any appreciable success. His willingness to negotiate with the Schuschnigg government and particularly his tactical recognition of Austrian independence appeared to confirm Nazi rumors that he had sold out the party’s platform and committed treason. These sentiments led to mutinies in Styria and Vienna in February and April which, even though suppressed by Leopold, only undermined his prestige
.
⁴¹

Leopold’s Committee of Seven was also less than a resounding success. A police raid in May 1937 uncovered memoranda of conversations between Austrian and Reich party leaders, including Hitler. There was also evidence of anti-Austrian propaganda from Austrian exiles, proof that antigovemment demonstrations had been ordered by the illegal party, and information about a courier service between the German and Austrian Nazis
.
⁴²
The whole affair could only have reduced still further Schuschnigg’s meager confidence in Leopold’s good faith and raised questions, even among Leopold’s followers, about his intelligence in not destroying such incriminating material.

*

Leopold and His Enemies: Papen and Seyss-Inquart

Although Leopold managed to hang on to the leadership of the Austrian Nazi party until February 1938, his star began falling rapidly soon

after
his inconclusive negotiations with Schuschnigg in early 1937. The Nazis, as always, needed unqualified successes to maintain their morale and ‘'dynamism.” But Leopold lacked sufficient strength to compel the government to make the kind of concessions he needed. The Landesleiter’s failures only
encouraged
his party rivals to accelerate their own efforts to reach an accord with the Austrian government outside the framework of the Nazi organization.
In
this connection, Franz von Papen and Arthur Seyss-Inquart began to play larger roles after the spring of 1937.

The immense differences in social status and religious and political outlooks between the plebeian Austrian, Leopold, and the aristocratic, Catholic diplomat from western Germany, Papen, were almost bound to cause conflicts eventually. To the German ambassador, Leopold was limited in his education, “stubborn and dogmatic in character—a typical, unintelligent noncommissioned officer
.”
⁴³

On the other hand, Papen described Seyss-Inquart as well known as a “conscientious, tolerant, and intelligent man whom no one believed capable of precipitating any wild adventure.” The German ambassador saw it as his duty “to prevent radical elements in the Nazi party both in Germany and Austria from pursuing any policy which would be likely to lead to international complications.” Leopold’s only task was to win over the Austrian population to a pro-German policy. Therefore it was natural that Papen eventually threw his weight behind Seyss-Inquart and other middle-class moderates like Rainer and Reinthaller, in their struggle for supremacy within the party
.
⁴⁴

Leopold had not begun his relations with Papen very auspiciously when he tried to block the then vice-chancellor’s appointment as special envoy in 1934. To Leopold, Papen was “more a Catholic than a real Nazi
,”
⁴⁵
a description he also applied to Seyss-Inquart.

Seyss came from the same middle- to upper-class background as Papen, Klausner, Rainer, Globocnik, and Jury. Like so many of the Austrian Nazi leaders, he was a Sudeten German, bom in Iglau (Jihlava) in 1892 and raised in Olmutz (Olomuec). As a Moravian he grew up in an atmosphere of only moderate German nationalism and relatively strong Catholicism, in stark contrast to the more passionately nationalistic and free-thinking Germans of neighboring Bohemia
.
⁴⁶

Neither his restrained nationalism nor his Catholicism endeared him to a hard-line Nazi like Leopold. Nor could Leopold be pleased with Seyss-Inquart’s toleration of Jews, his successful academic career, and his flourishing postwar legal practice in Vienna. Both Seyss-Inquart and Leopold fought in the World War, though even here was a major difference, because Seyss had been a distinguished officer
.
⁴⁷

As a matter of fact, in social background, religion, and education, Seyss-Inquart was far closer to Schuschnigg, the anti-Nazi, than he was to Leopold. Both Seyss and Schuschnigg came from well-to-do families, both were practicing Catholics, both had been officers in the World War, both were lawyers, and both were moderate pan-Germans who hated violence. Seyss was also a personal friend of several members of the Schuschnigg government, including the secretary of the Fatherland Front, Guido Zematto, as well as numerous former leaders of the Christian Social party
.
⁴⁸

Seyss and Schuschnigg agreed that representatives of the National Opposition ought to enter the government on an individual basis. Most important of all, Seyss-Inquart was able to convince Schuschnigg, if Persche’s account
ctfn
be trusted, that he (Seyss) was both completely opposed to Leopold yet fully acceptable to the Reich party leadership
.
⁴⁹
It is no wonder then that the two men had confidence in each other and could collaborate whereas they both detested the uncouth Leopold.

The social differences between Seyss-Inquart and Leopold are of more than just passing interest; it was those very distinctions rather than political ideas and objectives that divided the two men. Both Seyss and Leopold wanted an Anschluss in which Austria would be assured a privileged autonomy. And concomitantly both wanted an independent Austrian Nazi movement which would be dependent on Hitler only for ideological guidance. But for political leadership within Austria the bourgeois Seyss preferred the same middle-class moderates as Papen, namely Rainer, Jury, and Neubacher, along with Reinthaller
.
⁵⁰

Leopold was also infuriated by Seyss-Inquart’s unwillingness to become a bona fide member of the party and his refusal to subordinate himself to Leopold’s leadership. The Viennese lawyer did indeed hold himself aloof from the party apparatus. By so doing he could continue his profession untroubled by the police while maintaining good relations with the federal government. But it was this very freedom of movement that so embittered Leopold and Persche and other members of the SA who, especially before

1936, constantly ran the risk of imprisonment.

As one reads the letters and memoirs left by Leopold and his enemies— Papen, Seyss-Inquart, and the Carinthians—one cannot help becoming aware of their intense feelings of class consciousness and excessive provincial loyalties. For ail the Nazi sloganeering about
Ein Reich
and
Ein Volk,
Leopold’s rivals, like Alfred Proksch and the early Sudeten leaders of the Austrian Nazi party, were as good as foreigners. To a native of eastern Austria even the Carinthians were outsiders. By the same token, to his rivals, Leopold, the son of a wine-grower, was a typical, crude, lower-class member of the

f Sturmabteilung. He was good perhaps for leading street demonstrations, but ^certainly not for holding high office, either inside or outside the party, iiijj Even making allowances for the traditional class-consciousness and region
alism
of Central Europe which Leopold, after all, did not invent, it still must
i
be admitted that at least some of his troubles were self-inflicted. No less an authority than his friend and biographer, Alfred Persche, volunteered that it was not easy to get along with the Landesleiter, who was “very self-willed and had a strongly stamped personality
.”
⁵¹
Under these circumstances, therefore, it is understandable that Leopold “showed a remarkable ability for making enemies
.”
⁵²
Of course, he would alienate those people like the Carinthians, Klausner, Rainer, and Globocnik, whom he expelled or tried to expel from the party. Eventually he managed to add to his list of enemies the entire Austrian SS, Papen, Seyss-Inquart, and finally all the leading Reich Nazis: Goring, Himmler, Hess, and even Hitler himself.

But for this isolation Leopold was not entirely to blame. Persche was partly correct when he wrote that Leopold’s predicament was caused by his refusal to submit to anyone except Hitler; he insisted on treating the Nazi hierarchy as equals
.
⁵³

❖

Leopold’s Growing Isolation

In the late summer and early fall of 1936 Papen was briefly won over to Leopold’s idea of the Austrian NSDAP entering the Fatherland Front as a block. Leopold even gained the approval of Rudolf Hess for the project
.
⁵⁴
But as early as 28 July 1936, the ambassador wrote to Hitler that the most important duty of the Austrian party leadership was to “keep still and wait
.”
⁵⁵
For Papen, a strong and active illegal party could only interfere with the operation of the recently concluded July Agreement, which he regarded as his personal achievement. This viewpoint was essentially the same as that held by the Carinthians; but the activist and ambitious Landesleiter as well as most other Austrian Nazis could never reconcile themselves to such a passive, second-class role.

By January 1937, at the latest, Papen had become a sharp critic of Leopold, denouncing him to Hitler for his alleged interference in German-Austrian relations and his “obstructionism” in internal Austrian affairs. The ambassador repeated these criticisms to Schuschnigg and various Catholic leaders, thus hardening their already deep suspicions of the Landesleiter
.
⁵⁶

Leopold lost all patience when Papen, at Schuschnigg’s urging, began to support Seyss-Inquart as the representative of the National Opposition in still another attempt to pacify the Nazis. Papen’s efforts in May 1937 to enlist Leopold’s aid in this new action met a hostile reception. Leopold objected because the new agent of reconciliation, called the Volkspolitische Referat (National Political Office, or VPR), would bypass the Leopold-dominated Committee of Seven and would be led by Seyss, who was formally not even a member of the party. Worse yet, the VPR idea was backed by Rainer and Globocnik
.
⁵⁷

Leopold’s response to Papen’s urgings was to terminate all social relations between the party and the German ambassador. Papen counterattacked a few'" days later by ordering members of the embassy to “break off all relations with Captain Leopold and his agents
.”
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