In 1925 Dankl would assume the chancellorship of the Maria Theresa Order. This time he would be replacing a position held by Conrad, who left the vacancy upon his death that year. For the next six years he would be in charge of decorating Austro-Hungarian soldiers from World War I. He undertook this task with much enthusiasm, becoming an outspoken apologist of not only his fellow veterans but of Austria-Hungary in general. He even went so far as to advocate the return of the monarchy, putting himself at odds with the growing support of Austrian Nazi groups for Hitler and Germany. He was a firm opponent of the Anschluss, favoring an Imperial Austria under Habsburg to a Nazi German Reich under Hitler until the end. He refused totalitarianism, fascism, antisemitism and the Second World War. By the time of his death he was seen as a stark anachronism, out of step with the new era of the Greater German Reich.