Kollerschlager document
The so-called Kollerschlager Document (correct name: Order No. 10 of SA-Obergruppe XI ) is a document that contains precise instructions on how the National Socialists should proceed in the event of an overthrow in Austria, as actually implemented in 1934 with the July coup should be. The long-standing opinion about the meaning of the document and its classification in the events of the July coup has recently been generally questioned by new research results and clearly falsified in some areas .
history
Previous assumptions
On July 26, 1934, at 3 a.m., a member of the Protection Corps, Leopold Reisebauer and the customs inspector Johann Fischer, arrested a man from the German Reich on the outskirts of Kollerschlag , who later turned out to be a National Socialist courier. A pistol and ammunition were taken from him and he was taken to the Kollerschlag gendarmerie post. The man had no ID with him and refused to give any evidence. He was therefore taken to Linz for further interrogations , where he was first interrogated again without any results and searched more closely. The so-called Kollerschlager document, a typewritten insurrection plan of the SA for a planned overthrow of the National Socialists and a handwritten cipher key were found sewn into his tie (according to other representations “in the shoes”). The cipher key carried under the shirt was intended for telegraphic messages, the ciphers relating to Engelbert Dollfuss being : “Old cutlery samples arrived = Dollfuss is dead; Old cutlery samples did not arrive = Dollfuss is free; Old cutlery patterns on the way = Dollfuss is caught ”
The courier had received the papers from Hans Kirchbach, the chief of staff of the Austrian SA leadership in Munich, and was to send them to the industrialist Fritz Hamburger, who in turn was a close confidante of the leader of the SA brigade in Vienna and Lower Austria, Oskar Türk, hand off. However, he had been informed about the contents of the coup plan for more than a week. For a long time it was also assumed that the contents of the document must have been known to the entire Austrian SA leadership for a long time, since the uprisings in the Austrian federal states followed the pattern described therein. According to the long-standing research opinion, it was nonsensical to send a courier during this time of intensive border controls. Kirchbach had also arbitrarily ordered the attack by the Austrian Legion on the customs offices in Hanging , Haselbach and Kriegwald and on Kollerschlag . In addition, it was not possible to conclusively explain why the courier was dispatched at a time when the coup in Vienna had already been crushed. Furthermore, Hiebl's mission was viewed as a failure due to his arrest and the fact that the Kollerschlager document did not reach its addressee.
content
In the Kollerschlager document it is said that unarmed propaganda marches of the SA should be organized under the heading “Summer Festival”, but weapons should be hidden or at least provided. Then public buildings should be occupied and equipped with swastika flags . In the event of resistance from the executive, the “summer party” should be converted into a “price shooting” or an “ Italian night ”, with the greatest determination to proceed against the executive; in the form of a small war, if there was greater resistance from the executive - the armed forces in particular were feared - should be evaded. Every local SA leader was instructed to proceed in this way when the news of the fall of the government was reported. The following note in the document is also interesting: “ What matters is that the movement apparently comes from the people, it has to be brought up purely internally and must in no way appear to be guided in any way from outside. “This instruction was seen by some historians as evidence that Hitler had demonstrably influenced the putschist plan and that it should be veiled.
New interpretation
In connection with the above-mentioned incidents, however, the fact that Kirchbach had set off a second courier, namely Hiebl's brother, with a duplicate of the Kollerschlager document, was also on the march to Vienna for a long time. As Hans Schafranek found out, he reached the addressee, SA-Obersturmbannführer Fritz Hamburger, early in the morning of July 26th, and handed him the document. Schafranek not only refuted the previously valid opinion that there was only one courier, but was also able to conclusively classify the document in the previously known contexts around the July coup. In his opinion, the two couriers were not sent to support the now hopeless cause of the SS putschists of Standard 89 - the SA leadership in Munich had already known since 4:00 p.m. on July 25, 1934 that RAVAG - The announcement of the resignation of the Dollfuss government did not correspond to the truth - but rather to support the SA uprising that had broken out in Styria through further SA uprisings in the other federal states and in this way to gain power in Austria. After the failure of his opponents from the ranks of the SS, according to Hermann Reschny , the leader of the Austrian SA, he would stand alone as the one who made the "takeover of power" by the National Socialists in Austria possible.
Reschny, according to Schafranek, had no qualms about standing aside during the action of the SS putschists in the Chancellery, but it was something completely different that, he assumed, spontaneously abandoned the Styrian SA formation as the strongest Austrian SA formation. Since the radio communication between Munich and Vienna was not working, it was decided to contact the Vienna SA by courier. What Reschny did not know, however, was that the Styrian SA brigade leaders, who came from the ranks of the former Styrian Homeland Security , no longer followed his command, but had secretly allied themselves with the SS and thus Reschny's internal party opponents. The SA uprising in Styria was not a spontaneous action, but a direct aid for them agreed with the SS putschists in Vienna.
As soon as Reschny became aware of the SA uprising in Styria, he tried to influence it. He not only sent the two couriers to Vienna, but also some to Salzburg, and for example gave the SA in Carinthia on July 25, 1934, at 10:00 p.m., by radio the order to revolt. The fact that these orders were only complied with at the very least at the same time in the individual federal states was partly due to the countermeasures that the Austrian security authorities had now initiated, and partly due to the fact that there was no longer any incentive on the Nazi side, a pointless one seeming fight to begin. Reschny himself had carried out a systematic arming of the SA in 1934, but this would not have been completed until autumn 1934, which is why a forcibly enforced takeover of power in Austria was out of the question for him before this time. The fact that his opponents in the Nazi movement were pursuing putsch plans was not hidden from him, but he did not intend to seriously support them. Almost certainly he had completely missed the fact that a secret alliance had formed between the SS in Vienna and parts of "his" SA, above all the Styrian SA formations, that the "seizure of power" was almost completely bypassed. wanted to realize in Austria.
Effect and actual name
For the Austrian government, the document was evidence of the thesis that the July coup was planned on German soil and managed from there. The document was also important to the Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943, in which the governments of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States identified Austria as the first free country to fall victim to Hitler's policies of aggression. After the end of the war in Austria, this formulation served as a support for the “ victim myth ”. The found Kollerschlager document is also mentioned by Winston Churchill in his war memoirs.
As Schafranek found out on the basis of sources found in Berlin, the Kollerschlager document was originally called Command No. 10 of SA Upper Group XI . He therefore advocated dropping the term Kollerschlager Document.
The courier Franz Hiebl
During the arrest, the courier identified himself as the Reich German hotel secretary Franz Heel. At first, the police authorities had not seen through that another person was hiding behind the name Heel, namely the Tyrolean native Franz Hiebl (* 1911 in Innsbruck ). That is why he was tried for the first time under the name of Franz Heel. On the part of the Rohrbach district administration, Heel was sentenced to five months' arrest and a fine of 300 schillings as part of administrative criminal proceedings. Heel was then taken to the prison of the Linz Regional Court .
In 1935 Hiebl was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he was probably given amnesty. In 1948, he was still wanted according to the Austrian state police investigation sheet.
As a courier, Hiebl is a paradigmatic example for many other National Socialists or their helpers who - coming from the German Reich - smuggled propaganda material, explosives and bombs to Austria in order to terrorize and destabilize the country and its inhabitants. Ultimately, the pretext was created for Hitler that it was necessary to invade Austria to protect the Germans.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Saxinger, Franz (editors). Kollerschlag 1934. Self-published: Published by the municipality of Kollerschlag.
- ^ Jagschitz, G. (1976). The coup. The National Socialists in Austria in 1934. Graz: Styria, p. 141.
- ^ Kurt Bauer: Socio-historical aspects of the Nazi July coup 1934. Dissertation University of Vienna, Vienna 2001.
- ↑ a b Jagschitz, G. (1976). The coup. The National Socialists in Austria in 1934. Graz: Styria, p. 143.
- ↑ Gottfried-Karl Kindermann (2003). Austria against Hitler. Europe's first defensive front 1933-1938. Munich: Langen Müller, p. 212 ff.
- ↑ See Hans Schafranek: Summer festival with prize shooting. The unknown history of the Nazi putsch in July 1934. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7076-0081-5 , pp. 162–167 and 207f.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Schafranek (2006), p. 225.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Churchill, Winston (1954). The second World War. Bern: Scherz Verlag.
- ↑ Letter of July 27, 1934 from the Security Director of Upper Austria, Hans Hammerstein, to the Federal Chancellery (General Directorate for Public Security).
- ↑ Harry Slapnicka (1975). Upper Austria - Between the Civil War and the Anschluss (1927-1938). Linz: Oberösterreichischer Landesverlag, p. 196.
