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_PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT IN CENTRAL EUROPE by M. W. Fodor_

The close connection between Austrian and German 
National Socialism continued until 1923. Hitler frequently 
visited Austrian National Socialist meetings, as well as 
Inter-State assemblies. His last appearance at an Inter-State 
party meeting was in Salzburg in August. 1923. At this 
meeting came his breach with Riehl. The question under 
discussion was the attitude which the Austrian National 
Socialist should adopt in the coming Austrian elections. 
Riehl believed that the National Socialists should participate 
at the elections and win their way to power though legal 
means. Adolf Hitler was for abstention and an armed _Putsch_. 
Hitler's ideology was accepted, and Riehl resigned on 
September 15 both as Chairman of the Inter-State Office 
of the National Socialists and as President of the Austrian D.N.S.A.P. 

(Plot & Counterplot-Fodor-p. 165)

          .....Riehl, the spiritual father of National Socialism, 
is a practicing lawyer in Vienna. He lives in comparative 
poverty because he still defends Nazis before the courts 
more for idealistic
than for financial reasons. His political influence at 
the moment is almost nil. He is disliked by Hitler, 
who rarely forgives those who contradict him.

(Plot & Counterplot-Fodor-p. 166)

If Hitler had been a more flexible and adaptable 
politician, he certainly would have agreed to the 
Italian terms. . . . . Nothing would have been easier 
than to command the illegal _Sturm Abteilung_  and 
_Schutzstaffl_ formations to join the _Heinwehr_ 
and Nazify it from within. But Hitler was a man of 
fanatically fixed principles. This would have been, 
in his eyes, a betrayal of the 'greatly-suffering and 
well-tried old warriors,' who, since the days after 
the war, had been rallying to his standards. It would 
have meant sacrificing Theo Nebicht. This he could 
not do. Hitler's mind is unfathomable. Sometimes he 
is grateful to old comrades to the point of harming 
himself; at other times, as on June 30, he shoots 
them down in cold blood. This time he committed a 
grave mistake. The refusal of the Italian offer was 
flinging the gauntlet into the face of Italy; and 
Mussolini accepted the challenge.

(Plot & Counterplot-Fodor-p. 204)

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...If the Nazis smeared on the walls, _Heil Hitler_, the 
Socialists always corrected it to_Heilt Hitler_ (cure Hitler). 
Some of the jokes were made at the expense of the fact 
that Hitler in the former Austrian parts was often the 
name of Jews, too. An Austrian afternoon paper tried to 
make it appear that Hitler was of Jewish extraction, but 
the evidence was not only unconvincing, but based simply 
on hearsay.

(Plot & Counterplot - Fodor-p. 206)

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