COPY.

Report on the events in the NSDAP of Austria since the beginning of the last stage of battle until the seizure of power on the 11th March 1938.

In 1933 the Party fought a parliamentary battle. By the seizure of power in the Reich it gained considerably in numbers. It started to try to enforce new elections in order to gain admission into the government. By these means it should have taken over the government. The enemies recognized this fact, and the Government Dollfuss preceded, while tolerating the reds, to force the NSDAP from its legal plane in order to render it innocuous. In this the government used legal tricks, thereby practically doing away progressively with the democratic constitution. The first attempts of the government were answered by the Party with an increase of pressure; and the government's breaches of constitution were answered by arbitrary acts with the assumption that it might thus be able to overthrow the government. This assumption was wrong; at that time the government had the backing of all anti-German foreign countries, and it felt sufficiently strong to prohibit the NSDAP, and confession of adherence to the NSDAP, and subsequently to treat as high treason the confession in favor of the "Anschluss".

Thus the first stage of battle commenced which ended with the July rising of 1934. The decision for the July rising was right, and the execution of it was faulty. The result was a complete destruction of the organization; the loss of entire groups of fighters through imprisonment or flight into the "Alt-Reich"; and with regard to the political relationship of Germany to Austria, a formal acknowledgement of the existence of the Austrian State by the German Government. With the telegram to Papen, instructing him to reinstitute normal relationships between the two states, the Fuehrer had liquidated the first stage of the battle; and a new method of political penetration was to begin. By order of the Fuehrer the Landesleitung Munich was dissolved, and the party in Austria was left to its own resources.

There was no acknowledged leader for the entire party in Austria. New leaderships were forming in the mine Gaus. The process was again and again interrupted by the interference of the police; there was no liaison between the formations, and frequently there were two, three or more rival leaderships. The first evident, acknowledged speaker of almost all the Gaus in Autumn 1934 was engineer Reinthaller (already appointed Landesbauernfuehrer [leader of the country's farmers] by Hess). He endeavoured to bring about a political appeasement by negotiations with the government, with the purpose of giving the N.S.D.A.P. legal status again, thus permitting its political activities. Simultaneously Reinthaller started the reconstruction of the illegal political organization, at the head of which he had placed engineer Neubacher.

The first attempt to create a legal political organization which was to negotiate with the Government while a secret illegal organization existed, did not succeed; it brought about quarrels in almost all Gaus and ended with pressure of the illegal branch against the policy of appeasement of Reinthaller, and with the latter's retirement as Landesleiter [country leader]. The successor, Neubacher, head of the illegal organization, was not recognized by all the Gaus, because meanwhile the former Gauleader of Lower Austria, Captain Leopold, was released; and he claimed the country leadership because of his seniority in the party. In Carinthia at about that time, Klausner with his collaborators Globocnik, Rainer, Longhin and Pawlowski had reconstructed and readied the Gau Carinthia. The Gau Carinthia kept away from the quarrels of the leaders, and arbitrated the differences between Leopold and Neubacher, and finally effected a solution in such a way that Neubacher and his adherents recognized Leopold as the country leader; and Leopold appointed Neubacher to be his deputy. The points of friction between those two groups were not yet eliminated. Those differences did not remain concealed from the police; and the police got hold of a polemic by the group of Leopold against the group of Neubacher, on the strength of this material they arrested Leopold and Neubacher.

At that time the success of the calm attitude of the Gau Carinthia was crowned by the fact that after these arrests the representatives of all the Gaus came to Carinthia to offer Klausner the country leadership. By order of Klausner Dr. Rainer reported at these conferences the political referendum and developed the political conception as adopted by the Gau Carinthia on the basis of which, as a matter of fact, an agreement was reached. In July 1935 Klausner became the head of the movement without, however adopting the title of country leader because he considered it wrong as long as the country leader Leopold was imprisoned, but he looked upon himself as the speaker of the college of Gauleaders. With the consent of the representatives of all the Gaus, Klausner at that time appointed Globocnik as co-worker for the organizational part, and Rainer as co-worker for the political part of his task.

In August some further arrests took place, the victims of which were, apart from the Gauleaders, also Globocnik and Rainer. Schattenfroh then claimed, because of an instruction received from the imprisoned Leopold, to have been made deputy country leader. A group led by engineer Raffelsberger had at this time also established connections with departments of the Alt-Reich (Ministry of Propaganda, German Racial Agency, etc.) and made an attempt to formulate a political motto in the form of a program for the fighting movement of Austria. In Spring of 1936 Schattenfroh was arrested; he had named party member Hinterleitner of Linz as his successor as managerial country leader. In March Klausner was arrested in connection with the arrest of about 60 leading Nazis, whereas Dr. Rainer was released. Hinterleitner again followed those directives which were set down at the conferences at Carinthia in the Spring of 1935; and in May 1936 he appointed Rainer, Globocnik and engineer Hiedler to the country leadership in the following spheres of influence:

Rainer to be chief of the political staff; Hiedler as chief of the organization; and Globocnik as liaison officer with the Reich and as organizer of all the auxiliary bases outside of Austria.