Read Online Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis by Bruce F. Pauley - Free Book Online

DAP had informally used the name since about 1910 and it was proposed at a party meeting in Vienna in 1913. The Sudeten Nazis continued to use the title DNSAP until they dissolved their party in 1933.
    The German Nazi party was founded in January 1919, only a few months after the name change in Austria. A controversy exists over the extent to which the Austrian Nazis may have influenced the birth and development of the German Nazis. No direct evidence has been discovered that would link Hitler with the prewar Austrian Nazis. 42 Indeed, Hitler himself, while readily acknowledging his intellectual indebtedness to Georg von Schdnerer in Mein Kampf , made absolutely no mention of Walter Riehl, Rudolf Jung, or any of the other early leaders of the Austrian DAP. Andrew G. Whiteside has stated flatly that “the German Nazis were [not] the direct descendants of the prewar Austrian National Socialists.” 43 Despite remarkable parallels between the two movements, the German Nazis, according to Whiteside, had independent origins of their own, uninfluenced by Austria.
    On the other hand, as the American historian Max H. Kele has pointed out, “We know that the young Hitler was an avid newspaper reader and a student of vdlkish politics. During these very years, the DAP had its headquarters in the same Viennese district where Hitler lived. He would have had to be both deaf and blind to have escaped the pamphlets, newspapers, and rallies of the Austrian Nazis.” 44
    In any event, there were certainly striking similarities between the prewar Austrian Nazis and the postwar German Nazis that may be more than simply coincidental. Both were antiliberal, anticapitalist, anti-Marxist, and of course, both were anti-Semitic, though the Austrians were much less so before the war than the Germans were after it. Even the terminology and the militancy of the two parties were much the same. 45 As Hitler himself confessed in a speech in Salzburg in August 1920, “I am ashamed to say that not until today, after so many years, the same movement which began in German-Austria in 1904 has just begun to gain a footing in Germany.” 46
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    New Beginnings: Walter Riehl and the DNSAP, 1918-1923
    When the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed in the fall of 1918, the German Workers’ party, like the other parties of Austria, demanded the inclusion of both the Sudeten and Alpine Germans in the new German Republic. When the Anschluss was prohibited by the Allies, it proved to be particularly disastrous for the DNSAP. The creation of an independent Austrian Republic and the Allies’ recognition of the historic unity of the “Bohemian crownlands” (Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia) within Czechoslovakia split the DNSAP in two, with by far the larger part being isolated in the new Czech-dominated state.
    Dr. Riehl, who had been elected chairman of the DNSAP in May, moved his residence to Vienna and continued as leader of the Austrian Nazis until 1923. Although he and Hitler differed, and in 1923 split over tactics, the ideologies of the two men were similar, though certainly not identical. Both advocated a strong central government (though Riehl wanted only a temporary dictatorship), and both regarded parliaments as obstacles to vigorous decision making. Proportional representation made personal responsibility impossible. Both men favored an Anschluss, and violently opposed Austria’s joining a Danubian federation. Riehl also shared Hitler’s anti-Semitism and, like Hitler, blamed the Jews for almost all his country’s problems, both foreign and domestic. His goal was to reduce the Jews’ influence to their" proportion of Austria’s total population. But this objective did not prevent Riehl from mixing with Jews socially, something Hitler would never have dreamed of doing in his adult years. 47
    Despite the many similarities, there were profound differences between the two men that reflected Hitler’s radical brand of Nazism and the relative