JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

240 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:225
striking example, coupled with calls for the expulsion of Jews, German
antisemitism had escalated to a new and dangerous level. This prompted the
anti-antisemitists to take a more principled stand, while those Jews who did
not manage to convince themselves that this new and virulent antisemitism
was directed solely against the Ostjuden, that it was purely political, or that
the work of cranks and psychopaths had begun to fear what the future had
in store. But at that time no one could possibly have imagined the full scale
of the horrors that lay ahead.
Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1925, but it attracted little attention.
He was seen as a somewhat ridiculous figure ranting and raving about
Jews, socialists, and democrats, dismissed as a “vegetarian Genghis Khan”
or a “Charlie Chaplin without the talent.” 39 Viscount D’Abernon, British
ambassador to the Weimar Republic, in his three volumes of memoirs mentioned
Hitler in a footnote as a man who “rose to notoriety” by “exploiting
the Semitic and Bolshevik bogies,” who was sentenced to five years’
prison? but “was finally released after six months and bound over for the
rest of his sentence, thereafter fading into oblivion.” 40
The threat of right-wing extremism in Austria had diminished considerably
when the Geneva Protocols helped to stabilize the economy. But the
potential was very real, as many shrewd commentators remarked. There
was a steady escalation of violence between Nazis and Social Democrats.
One such clash was over the Nazis’ allegation that the social democratic
paramilitary organization, the Schutzbund, was used to protect the delegates
to the Zionist congress in Vienna in 1925. This prompted the Social Democrats
to make a swift rejoinder that they did not support “bourgeois-nationalist
elements.” Antisemitism was constantly on the political agenda and,
once enflamed by the demagogic genius of Adolf Hitler, resulted in an even
greater degree of brutality against Jews than in Germany in the immediate
aftermath of the Anschluss. As early as 1926, when Seipel once again
became chancellor, it became increasingly clear that Austria was heading
toward a civil war, as is reflected in the Social Democrats’ Linz Program of
that year. At the same time the vaguely reformist, staunchly nationalist, and
internally democratic native National Socialism was replaced by the “Hitler
Movement,” which placed the Austrian Nazis under the direct control of the
German party, thereby subordinating its needs and aims totally to those of
the Germans. For the Nazis, Austria was now simply an administrative dis-
39. Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany 1743-1933,
New York 2002, 380.
40. Lord D’Abernon, An Ambassador of Peace. Lord D’Abernon’s Diary, Vol.
II: The Years of Crisis June 1922-December 1923, London 1929, 51-52. I am grateful
to Gaynor Johnson for this reference.