The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (70 page)

   P
RINCE:
I have just come back from the Palazzo Venezia. The Duce accepted the whole thing in a very friendly manner. He sends you his regards…. Schuschnigg gave him the news … Mussolini said that Austria would be immaterial to him.

And what stand were Great Britain and France and the
League of Nations
taking at this critical moment to halt Germany’s aggression against a peaceful neighboring country? None. For the moment France was again without a government. On Thursday, March 10, Premier Chautemps and his cabinet had resigned. All through the crucial day of Friday, March 11, when Goering was telephoning his ultimatums to Vienna, there was no one in Paris who could act. It was not until the
Anschluss
had been proclaimed on the thirteenth that a French government was formed under Léon Blum.

And Britain? On February 20, a week after Schuschnigg had capitulated at Berchtesgaden, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had resigned, principally because of his opposition to further appeasement of Mussolini by Prime Minister Chamberlain. He was replaced by
Lord Halifax
. This change was welcomed in Berlin. So was Chamberlain’s statement to the Commons after the Berchtesgaden ultimatum. The German Embassy in London reported fully on it in a dispatch to Berlin on March 4.
³¹
Chamberlain was quoted as saying that “what happened [at Berchtesgaden] was merely that two statesmen had agreed upon certain measures for the improvement of relations between their two countries … It appeared hardly possible to insist that just because two statesmen had agreed on certain domestic changes in one of two countries—changes desirable in the interest of relations between them—the one country had renounced its independence in favor of the other. On the contrary, the Federal Chancellor’s speech of February 24 contained nothing that might convey the impression that the Federal Chancellor [Schuschnigg] himself believed in the surrender of the independence of his country.”

In view of the fact that the British Legation in Vienna, as I myself learned at the time, had provided Chamberlain with the details of Hitler’s Berchtesgaden ultimatum to Schuschnigg, this speech, which was made to the Commons on March 2, is astounding.
^*
But it was pleasing to Hitler. He knew that he could march into Austria without getting into complications with Britain. On March 9, Ribbentrop, the new German Foreign Minister, had arrived in London to wind up his affairs at the embassy, where he had been ambassador. He had long talks with Chamberlain, Halifax, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury. His impressions of the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, he reported back to Berlin, were “very good.” After a long conference with Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop reported directly to Hitler on March 10 as to what Britain would do “if the Austrian question cannot be settled peacefully.” Basically he was convinced from his London talks “that England will do nothing in regard to Austria.”
³³

On Friday, March 11, Ribbentrop was lunching at Downing Street with
the Prime Minister and his associates when a Foreign Office messenger broke in with urgent dispatches for Chamberlain telling of the startling news from Vienna. Only a few minutes before, Chamberlain had asked Ribbentrop to inform the Fuehrer “of his sincere wish and firm determination to clear up German-British relations.” Now, at the receipt of the sour news from Austria, the statesmen adjourned to the Prime Minister’s study, where Chamberlain read to the uncomfortable German Foreign Minister two telegrams from the British Legation in Vienna telling of Hitler’s ultimatum. “The discussion,” Ribbentrop reported to Hitler, “took place in a tense atmosphere and the usually calm Lord Halifax was more excited than Chamberlain, who outwardly at least appeared calm and cool-headed.” Ribbentrop expressed doubts about “the truth of the reports” and this seems to have calmed down his British hosts, for “our leave-taking,” he reported, “was entirely amiable, and even Halifax was calm again.”
^34
*

Chamberlain’s reaction to the dispatches from Vienna was to instruct Ambassador
Henderson
in Berlin to pen a note to Acting Foreign Minister von Neurath stating that if the report of the German ultimatum to Austria was correct, “His Majesty’s Government feel bound to register a protest in the strongest terms.”
³⁵
But a formal diplomatic protest at this late hour was the least of Hitler’s worries. The next day, March 12, while German troops were streaming into Austria, Neurath returned a contemptuous reply,
³⁶
declaring that Austro–German relations were the exclusive concern of the German people and not of the British government, and repeating the lies that there had been no German ultimatum to Austria and that troops had been dispatched only in answer to “urgent” appeals from the newly formed Austrian government. He referred the British ambassador to the telegram, “already published in the German press.”
^†

Hitler’s only serious worry on the evening of March 11 had been over Mussolini’s reaction to his aggression,
^‡
but there was some concern in Berlin too as to what
Czechoslovakia
might do. However, the
indefatigable Goering quickly cleared this up. Busy though he was at the telephone directing the coup in Vienna, he managed to slip over during the evening to the Haus der Flieger, where he was official host to a thousand high-ranking officials and diplomats, who were being entertained at a glittering soiree by the orchestra, the singers and the ballet of the State Opera. When the Czech minister in Berlin, Dr. Mastny, arrived at the gala fete he was immediately taken aside by the bemedaled Field Marshal, who told him on his word of honor that Czechoslovakia had nothing to fear from Germany, that the entry of the Reich’s troops into Austria was “nothing more than a family affair” and that Hitler wanted to improve relations with Prague. In return he asked for assurances that the Czechs would not mobilize. Dr. Mastny left the reception, telephoned to his Foreign Minister in Prague, and returned to the hall to tell Goering that his country was not mobilizing and that Czechoslovakia had no intention of trying to interfere with events in Austria. Goering was relieved and repeated his assurances, adding that he was authorized to back them up by Hitler’s word too.

It may have been that even the astute Czech President, Eduard Beneš, did not have time to realize that evening that Austria’s end meant Czechoslovakia’s as well. There were some in Europe that weekend who thought the Czech government was shortsighted, who argued that in view of the disastrous strategic position in which Czechoslovakia would be left by the Nazi occupation of Austria—with German troops surrounding her on three sides—and considering too that her intervention to help save Austria might have brought Russia, France and Britain, as well as the
League of Nations
, into a conflict with the Third Reich which the Germans were in no condition to meet, the Czechs should have acted on the night of March 11. But subsequent events, which shortly will be chronicled here, surely demolish any such argument. A little later when the two big Western democracies and the League had a better opportunity of stopping Hitler they shrank from it. Anyway, at no time on the eventful day did Schuschnigg make a formal appeal to London, Paris, Prague or Geneva. Perhaps, as his memoirs indicate, he thought this would be a waste of time. President Miklas, on the other hand, was under the impression, as he later testified, that the Austrian government, which immediately had informed Paris and London of the German ultimatum, was continuing “conversations” with the French and British governments throughout the afternoon in order to ascertain their “frame of mind.”

When it became clear that their “frame of mind” was to do nothing more than utter empty protests President Miklas, a little before midnight, gave in. He appointed Seyss-Inquart Chancellor and accepted his list of cabinet ministers. “I was completely abandoned both at home and abroad,” he commented bitterly later.

   Having issued a grandiose proclamation to the German people in which he justified his aggression with his usual contempt for the truth and promised that the Austrian people would choose their future in “a real
plebiscite”—Goebbels read it over the German and
Austrian
radio stations at noon on March 12—Hitler set off for his native land. He received a tumultuous welcome. At every village, hastily decorated in his honor, there were cheering crowds. During the afternoon he reached his first goal,
Linz
, where he had spent his school days. The reception there was delirious and Hitler was deeply touched. The next day, after getting off a telegram to Mussolini—“I shall never forget you for this!”—he laid a wreath on the graves of his parents at
Leonding
and then returned to Linz to make a speech:

On the afternoon of the twelfth, Seyss-Inquart, accompanied by Himmler, had flown to Linz to meet Hitler and had proudly proclaimed that Article 88 of the Treaty of St. Germain, which proclaimed Austria’s independence as inalienable and made the
League of Nations
its guarantor, had been voided. To Hitler, carried away by the enthusiasm of the Austrian crowds, this was not enough. He ordered Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, an undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior who had been rushed by his Minister, Frick, to Vienna to draft a law making Hitler President of Austria, to come at once to Linz. Somewhat to the surprise of this legal expert, the Fuehrer instructed him, as he later deposed at Nuremberg, to “draft a law providing for a total
Anschluss
.”
³⁹

This draft Stuckart presented to the newly formed Austrian government in Vienna on Sunday, March 13, the day on which Schuschnigg’s plebiscite was to have been held. President Miklas, as we have seen, refused to sign it, but Seyss-Inquart, who had taken over the President’s powers, did and late that evening flew back to Linz to present it to the Fuehrer. It proclaimed the end of Austria. “Austria,” it began, “is a province of the German Reich.” Hitler shed tears of joy, Seyss-Inquart later recalled.
⁴⁰
The so-called Anschluss law was also promulgated the same day at Linz by the German government and signed by Hitler, Goering, Ribbentrop, Frick and Hess. It provided for “a free and secret plebiscite” on April 10 in which the Austrians could determine “the question of reunion with the German Reich.” The Reich Germans, Hitler announced on March 18, were also to have a plebiscite on the Anschluss, along with new elections to the Reichstag.

Hitler did not make his triumphal entry into Vienna, where he had lived so long as a tramp, until the afternoon of Monday, March 14. He
was delayed by two unforeseen developments. Despite the delirium of the
Austrian
s at the prospect of seeing the Fuehrer in the capital, Himmler asked for an extra day to perfect security arrangements. He was already carrying out the arrest of thousands of “unreliables”—within a few weeks the number would reach 79,000 in Vienna alone. Also the vaunted German panzer units had broken down long before they got within sight of Vienna’s hills. According to Jodl, some 70 per cent of the armored vehicles were stranded on the road from
Salzburg
and Passau to Vienna, though General Guderian, who commanded the panzer troops, later contended that only 30 per cent of his forces became stalled. At any rate, Hitler was furious at the delay. He remained in Vienna only overnight, putting up at the Hotel Imperial.

Still, this triumphant return to the former imperial capital which he felt had rejected him and condemned him in his youth to a starved and miserable gutter life and which was now acclaiming him with such tumultuous jubilation could not have failed to revive his spirits. The ubiquitous Papen, rushing by plane from Berlin to Vienna to get in on the festivities, found Hitler in the reviewing stand opposite the Hofburg, the ancient palace of
the Hapsburgs
. “I can only describe him,” Papen later wrote, “as being in a state of ecstasy.”
^*

He remained in this state during most of the next four weeks, when he traversed Germany and Austria from one end to the other whipping up public fervor for a big
Ja
vote in favor of the Anschluss. But in his exuberant speeches he missed no opportunity to vilify Schuschnigg or to peddle the by now shopworn lies about how the Anschluss was achieved. In his address to the Reichstag on March 18 he asserted that Schuschnigg
had “broken his word” by his “election forgery,” adding that “only a crazy, blinded man” could have behaved in such a manner. On March 25 at
Koenigsberg
the “election forgery” had become in Hitler’s mind “this ridiculous comedy.” Letters had been found, Hitler claimed, proving that Schuschnigg had deliberately double-crossed him by seeking delays in augmenting the Berchtesgaden agreement until “a more propitious hour to stir up foreign countries against Germany.”