The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (69 page)

By 6:15 Schuschnigg was on his way to his office at the Ballhausplatz,
but he decided to stop first at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. There in the first dim light of dawn while early mass was being read he sat restlessly in his pew thinking of the ominous message from the chief of police. “I was not quite sure what it meant,” he later recalled. “I only knew that it would bring some change.” He gazed at the candles burning in front of the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, looked furtively around and then made the sign of the cross, as countless Viennese had done before this figure in past times of stress.

At the Chancellery all was quiet; not even any disturbing dispatches had arrived during the night from Austria’s diplomats abroad. He called police headquarters and asked that as a precautionary measure a police cordon be thrown around the Inner City and the government buildings. He also convoked his cabinet colleagues. Only Seyss-Inquart failed to show up. Schuschnigg could not locate him anywhere. Actually the Nazi Minister was out at the Vienna airport. Papen, summarily summoned to Berlin the night before, had departed by special plane at 6
A.M
. and Seyss had seen him off. Now the Number One quisling was waiting for the Number Two—Glaise-Horstenau, like Seyss a minister in Schuschnigg’s cabinet, like him already deep in treason, who was due to arrive from Berlin with Hitler’s orders on what they were to do about the plebiscite.

The orders were to call it off, and these were duly presented to Schuschnigg by the two gentlemen at 10
A.M
. along with the information that Hitler was furious. After several hours of consultations with President Miklas, his cabinet colleagues and Dr. Skubl, Schuschnigg agreed to cancel the plebiscite. The police chief had reluctantly told him that the police, liberally sprinkled with Nazis who had been restored to their posts in accordance with the Berchtesgaden ultimatum, could no longer be counted on by the government. On the other hand, Schuschnigg felt sure that the Army and the militia of the
Patriotic Front
—the official authoritarian party in Austria—would fight. But at this crucial moment Schuschnigg decided—he says, in fact, that his mind had long been made up on the matter—that he would not offer resistance to Hitler if it meant spilling German blood. Hitler was quite willing to do this, but Schuschnigg shrank back from the very prospect.

At 2
P.M
. he called in Seyss-Inquart and told him that he was calling off the plebiscite. The gentle Judas immediately made for the telephone to inform Goering in Berlin. But in the Nazi scheme of things one concession from a yielding opponent must lead quickly to another. Goering and Hitler then and there began raising the ante. The minute-by-minute account of how this was done, of the threats and the swindles employed, was recorded—ironically enough—by Goering’s own Forschungsamt, the “Institute for Research,” which took down and transcribed twenty-seven telephone conversations from the Field Marshal’s office beginning at 2:45
P.M
. on March 11. The documents were found in the German Air Ministry after the war and constitute an illuminating record of how Austria’s fate was settled by telephone from Berlin during the next few critical hours.
²⁴

During Seyss’s first call to Goering at 2:45
P.M
. the Field Marshal told him that Schuschnigg’s cancellation of the plebiscite was not enough and that after talking with Hitler he would call him back. This he did at 3:05. Schuschnigg, he ordered, must resign, and Seyss-Inquart must be named Chancellor within two hours. Goering also told Seyss then to “send the telegram to the Fuehrer, as agreed upon.” This is the first mention of a telegram that was to pop up throughout the frantic events of the next few hours and which would be used to perpetrate the swindle by which Hitler justified his aggression to the German people and to the foreign offices of the world.

Wilhelm Keppler, Hitler’s special agent in Austria, arriving in the afternoon from Berlin to take charge in Papen’s absence, had shown Seyss-Inquart the text of a telegram he was to send the Fuehrer. It requested the dispatch of German troops to Austria to put down disorder. In his Nuremberg affidavit, Seyss declared that he refused to send such a wire since there were no disorders. Keppler, insisting that it would have to be done, hurried to the Austrian Chancellery, where he was brazen enough to set up an emergency office along with Seyss and Glaise-Horstenau. Why Schuschnigg allowed such interlopers and traitors to establish themselves physically in the seat of the Austrian government at this critical hour is incomprehensible, but he did. Later he remembered the Chancellery as looking “like a disturbed beehive,” with Seyss-Inquart and Glaise-Horstenau holding “court” in one corner “and around them a busy coming and going of strange-looking men”; but apparently it never occurred to the courteous but dazed Chancellor to throw them out.

He had made up his mind to yield to Hitler’s pressure and resign. While still closeted with Seyss he had put through a telephone call to Mussolini, but the Duce was not immediately available and a few minutes later Schuschnigg canceled the call. To ask for Mussolini’s help, he decided, “would be a waste of time.” Even Austria’s pompous protector was deserting her in the hour of need. A few minutes later, when Schuschnigg was trying to talk President Miklas into accepting his resignation, a message came from the Foreign Office: “The Italian government declares that it could give no advice under the circumstances, in case such advice should be asked for.”
²⁵

President Wilhelm Miklas was not a great man, but he was a stubborn, upright one. He reluctantly accepted Schuschnigg’s resignation but he refused to make Seyss-Inquart his successor. “That is quite impossible,” he said. “We will not be coerced.” He instructed Schuschnigg to inform the Germans that their ultimatum was refused.
²⁶

This was promptly reported by Seyss-Inquart to Goering at 5:30
P.M
.

   S
EYSS
-I
NQUART
: The President has accepted the resignation [of Schuschnigg] … I suggested he entrust the Chancellorship to me … but he would like to entrust a man like Ender …

G
OERING
: Well, that won’t do! Under no circumstances! The President
has to be informed immediately that he has to turn the powers of the Federal Chancellor over to you and to accept the cabinet as it was arranged.

   There was an interruption at this point. Seyss-Inquart put a Dr. Muehlmann, a shadowy Austrian Nazi whom Schuschnigg had noticed lurking in the background at Berchtesgaden and who was a personal friend of Goering, on the line.

   M
UEHLMANN
: The President still refuses persistently to give his consent. We three National Socialists went to speak to him personally … He would not even let us see him. So far, it looks as if he were not willing to give in.

G
OERING
: Give me Seyss. [To Seyss] Now, remember the following: You go immediately together with Lieutenant General Muff [the German military attaché] and tell the President that if the conditions are not accepted immediately, the troops which are already advancing to the frontier will march in tonight along the whole line, and Austria will cease to exist … Tell him there is no time now for any joke. The situation now is that tonight the invasion will begin from all the corners of Austria. The invasion will be stopped and the troops held on the border only if we are informed by seven-thirty that Miklas has entrusted you with the Federal Chancellorship … Then call out the National Socialists all over the country. They should now be in the streets. So remember, a report must be given by seven-thirty. If Miklas could not understand it in four hours, we shall make him understand it now in four minutes.

   But still the resolute President held out.

At 6:30 Goering was back on the phone to Keppler and Seyss-Inquart. Both reported that President Miklas refused to go along with them.

   G
OERING
: Well, then, Seyss-Inquart has to dismiss him! Just go upstairs again and tell him plainly that Seyss will call on the National Socialist guards and in five minutes the troops will march in on my order.

   After this order General Muff and Keppler presented to the President a second military ultimatum threatening that if he did not yield within an hour, by 7:30, German troops would march into Austria. “I informed the two gentlemen,” Miklas testified later, “that I refused the ultimatum … and that Austria alone determines who is to be the head of government.”

By this time the Austrian Nazis had gained control of the streets as well as of the Chancellery. About six that evening, returning from the hospital where my wife was fighting for her life after a difficult childbirth which had ended with a Caesarean operation, I had emerged from the subway at the Karlsplatz to find myself engulfed in a shouting, hysterical Nazi mob which was sweeping toward the Inner City. These contorted faces I had seen before, at the
Nuremberg
party rallies. They were yelling, “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Hang Schuschnigg! Hang Schuschnigg!”
The police, whom only a few hours before I had seen disperse a small Nazi group without any trouble, were standing by, grinning.

Schuschnigg heard the tramp and the shouts of the mob, and the sounds impressed him. He hurried to the President’s office to make a final plea. But, he says:

   President Miklas was adamant. He would not appoint a Nazi as Austrian Chancellor. On my insistence that he appoint Seyss-Inquart he said again: “You all desert me now, all of you.” But I saw no other possibility than Seyss-Inquart. With the little hope I had left I clung to all the promises he had made me, I clung to his personal reputation as a practicing Catholic and an honest man.
²⁷

   Schuschnigg clung to his illusions to the last.

The fallen Chancellor then proposed that he make a farewell broadcast and explain why he had resigned. He says that Miklas agreed, though the President would later dispute it. It was the most moving broadcast I have ever heard. The microphone was set up some five paces from where Dollfuss had been shot to death by the Nazis.

   … The German government [Schuschnigg said] today handed to President Miklas an ultimatum, with a time limit, ordering him to nominate as Chancellor a person designated by the German government … otherwise German troops would invade Austria.

I declare before the world that the reports launched in Germany concerning disorders by the workers, the shedding of streams of blood and the creation of a situation beyond the control of the Austrian government are lies from A to Z. President Miklas has asked me to tell the people of Austria that we have yielded to force since we are not prepared even in this terrible hour to shed blood. We have decided to order the troops to offer no resistance.
^*

So I take leave of the Austrian people with a German word of farewell, uttered from the depth of my heart: God protect Austria!

The Chancellor might take leave but the stubborn President was not yet ready to. Goering learned this when he phoned General Muff shortly after Schuschnigg’s broadcast. “The best thing will be if Miklas resigns,” Goering told him.

“Yes, but he won’t,” Muff rejoined. “It was very dramatic. I spoke to him almost fifteen minutes. He declared that under no circumstances will he yield to force.”

“So? He will not give in to force?” Goering could not believe the words.

“He does not yield to force,” the General repeated.

“So he just wants to be kicked out?”

“Yes,” said Muff. “He is staying put.”

“Well, with fourteen children,” Goering laughed, “a man has to stay put. Anyway, tell Seyss to take over.”

There was still the matter of the telegram which Hitler wanted in order to justify his invasion. The Fuehrer, according to Papen, who had joined him at the Chancellery in Berlin, was now “in a state bordering on hysteria.” The stubborn Austrian President was fouling up his plans. So was Seyss-Inquart, because of his failure to send the telegram calling on Hitler to send troops into Austria to quell disorder. Exasperated beyond enduring, Hitler flashed the invasion order at 8:45
P.M
. on the evening of March 11.
^*
Three minutes later, at 8:48, Goering was on the phone to Keppler in
Vienna
.

   Listen carefully. The following telegram should be sent here by Seyss-Inquart. Take the notes.

“The provisional Austrian Government, which after the resignation of the Schuschnigg Government considers it its task to establish peace and order
in Austria
, sends to the German Government the urgent request to support it in the task and to help it to prevent bloodshed. For this purpose it asks the German Government to send German troops as soon as possible.”

   Keppler assured the Field Marshal he would show Seyss-Inquart the text of the “telegram” immediately.

“Well,” Goering said, “he does not even have to send the telegram. All he needs to do is say ‘Agreed.’”

One hour later Keppler called back Berlin. “Tell the Field Marshal,” he said, “that Seyss-Inquart agrees.”
^†

Thus it was that when I passed through Berlin the next day I found a screaming headline in the
Voelkischer Beobachter:
G
ERMAN
A
USTRIA
S
AVED FROM
C
HAOS
. There were incredible stories hatched up by Goebbels describing Red disorders—fighting, shooting, pillaging—in the main streets of
Vienna
. And there was the text of the telegram, issued by D.N.B., the official German news agency, which said that it had been dispatched by Seyss-Inquart to Hitler the night before. Actually two copies of the “telegram,” just as Goering had dictated it, were found in the German Foreign Office archives at the end of the war. Papen later explained how they got there. They were concocted, he says, sometime later by the German Minister of Posts and Telegraph and deposited in the government files.

Hitler had waited anxiously throughout the frenzied afternoon and evening not only for President Miklas to capitulate but for some word from Mussolini. The silence of Austria’s protector was becoming ominous. At 10:25
P.M
. Prince Philip of Hesse called the Chancellery from Rome. Hitler himself grabbed the telephone. Goering’s technicians recorded the conversation that followed: