Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis by Bruce F. Pauley Page A

quadrupling their vote of 1927. 65 Thereafter the Schulz Nazis became a politically insignificant splinter group, although they still refused to disband.
    Nonetheless, the Schulz faction in its final years has a certain interest for historians of fascism if only because of its impotence. Although it possessed much of the ideology of Nazism and fascism in general, it lacked the ruthless fanaticism, imperialistic program, hierarchical structure, and especially the charismatic leadership of successful fascist movements. The Schulz Nazis preferred ideological purity to political success. Typical of its attitude was an editorial of 1931 in the DAP, which stated that “to fight for the purity of an idea is certainly a more difficult task than to grow in a movement in which national socialist ideas are watered down and interspersed with the most different borrowings.” 66 In general, the last years of the Schulz group were devoted to dissociating itself from embarrassingly similar movements. Mussolini’s Italy was condemned for being anti worker, for censoring the press, for dissolving political
    parties, and for establishing a permanent, rather than simply a temporary, dictatorship. Likewise, the Fascist state was criticized for not recognizing racial distinctions; it was no better than bolshevism with reversed value signs (Vorzeichen). 67    /
    The Nazi Civil War, 1923-1930    51
     
    SO - Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis
     
    The DAP's greatest ire, however, was reserved for the Hitlerian Nazis. Their election tactics in September 1930 were comparable to those of the Communist party. The Nazis and Communists were trying to outbid each other in their radicalism. Both parties hoped to build a new Germany on the ruins of the old one. The German Nazis, in fact, were not really true national socialists at all, but reactionary fascists using national Bolshevik methods. 68 In 1931 the swastika, which had been part of the DAP’s masthead since 1922, quietly disappeared. And when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved the Hitler Bewegung in June 1933 following a wave of Nazi terror, the DAP applauded, hoping in vain to pick up some new members. 69
    The Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse did not even object to the dissolution of all Austrian political parties in 1934, including the DAP, because it had always regarded the movement “as an association of like-minded people and especially after the appearance of Hitlerism in Austria ... as the founders and protectors of true national socialism.” 70 The newspaper itself disappeared without a whimper in July 1935 after twenty-seven years of publication.
    That the Schulz group survived as long as it did was in part a tribute to the strength of Austrian patriotism. When the north German left-wing Nazi Otto Strasser (brother of Gregor) broke away (or was expelled) from the Nazi party in 1930, he carried almost no one with him. But Schulz, who believed in many of the same ideas as Strasser, could count on Austrian separatism to maintain his political independence for nine years. However strong the yearning was for an Anschluss with Germany, Austrian Nazis, and not just the followers of Schulz, were still primarily Austrians. In effect, Hitler forced Schulz and his followers to choose between Hitler's brand of Nazism and their Austrian loyalties. They chose Austria. Ironically, even the Hitlerian Nazis would one day be faced with that same painful choice.
    To some extent the survival was also a matter of institutional loyalty. Walter Gattermayer expressed this sentiment very well several years later when attempting to explain why he had not joined the Hitler movement until 1932. “It is difficult,” he wrote, “to give up an enterprise which one has helped to create.” 71
    The decade of the 1920s, which had begun so promisingly for the Austrian Nazis, thus ended on a decidedly sour note. The progress achieved between 1920 and 1925 could not be sustained into the more prosperous second half of