1938 (18 page)

Despite the formal closure of the Swiss borders with Austria on March 12, 1938, 3,000 Austrian Jews had managed to make it across the border.
Der Stürmer
ran a particularly pungent caricature showing a “Kosher snack”: Jews crammed into a Swiss sardine tin. Others crossed the border into Italy and obtained visas for Switzerland there until this loophole too was closed in August. Jews were still managing to cross the frontiers into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium, even if the only
legal
form of emigration was Eichmann’s Zionist solution.

For Eichmann, Jews remaining in Europe formed
Greuelzentralen
, or centers of atrocity. He wanted an end to assimilation; Germany had no foreign political interests in Palestine, and he thought that the Jews should move there without delay. The quickest method was to obtain a tourist visa to Palestine and then sit it out. Zionist organizations could effect this in Palestine itself. The British government was under fire: Despite the rigidity of official policy, there was an elasticity provided by the consular officials, who took pity on individual cases. This meant that something under 80,000 central European Jews did find a refuge in the Mandate.

On the 10th of April a plebiscite was held throughout the Reich so that Germans on both sides of the river Inn would be able to voice their approbation for the Anschluss. Hitler concentrated his campaign on Austria in the days immediately before the poll. At the same time Cardinal Innitzer traveled to Rome for a private interview with the pope. The Supreme Pontiff was displeased with the head of the Austrian church. The secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli—the future Pius XII—reprimanded Innitzer for the “unfavourable impression” he had made by signing the bishops’ letter condoning the Anschluss. On April 6,
Osservatore Romano
published an explanation: The pope did not approve of anything that went against the laws of God, or the freedom and rights of the Catholic Church. A particular sticking point was the Nazi’s assault on youth organizations. The Roman declaration had naturally angered Hitler. For the time being, however, he forbore from punishing the Austrian church until the results of the plebiscite had come in.

Hitler’s campaign ended in Vienna on the 9th. He addressed hundreds of thousands of his faithful from the Rathaus. His language was steeped in piety, presumably as a sop to the Catholic Viennese. When he spoke to them a second time that day in the Northwest Station, Goebbels said it was “like Mass . . . at the end, it resembled a prayer.” Even Goebbels enjoyed cult status. When Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Imperial, they called for him too: “
Lieber Führer, ach ich bitt’, bring doch unseren Doktor mit
” (“Please our Führer, oh we pray / Let the doctor have his say!”). Hitler and his propaganda minister traveled back to Berlin on the train on the 10th. Over breakfast they discussed plans. “The Führer wants to drive the Jews completely out of Germany, to Madagascar or whatever . . . a people smitten by God. Prague has also written them off.” From the Jews they progressed to the princes: “They are worthless and must never be allowed back.” They were satisfied that the Hohenbergs were out of the way, but the Habsburgs were the worst. “Get rid of this rubbish.” Hitler and Goebbels had also placed the dispossession of the Austrian nobility high up on their agenda.

The result of the poll on the 10th was a 99.08 percent
Ja
for the Führer. In Austria there were just 11,929 nos. Goebbels feigned joyful surprise: “Germany has conquered a whole country with the ballot-slip.” The plebiscite did, however, reflect the Führer’s popularity. It showed that Hitler was exceedingly successful in Germany at the time, and it marked the high watermark of his stature in the land of his birth. The vote had obviously been manipulated and the electorate cowed into saying
Ja
, as proven by the near unanimous assent from Dachau concentration camp. But Hitler’s aims had struck a chord with national German aspirations, and for the time being it was bloodless. The plebiscite had been marginally fairer than that proposed by Schuschnigg: All Germans and Austrians over the age of twenty were eligible to vote, with the exception of Jews, criminals, and the many thousands of suspects in Hitler’s jails and camps. In Vienna some 300,000 voters had been deducted from the roll in this way. Nevertheless, Hitler’s appeal for the Austrians was not to last. The appropriation of so much of Austria’s wealth by the Reich and by Reich Germans, escalating prices, the failure to appoint Austrian Nazis to high office, the brutal treatment of the Church and its priests, the dastardly suppression of the old elite, and a supercilious attitude the Austrians liked to associate with the dreaded “Piefke” or Prussian all contrived to make the honeymoon a short one.

The ballot was not exactly secret. A big circle contained the word
Ja
, a smaller one
Nein
, and the voter’s name and address were printed on the back. Despite the pressure to conform, there were dissenters, like Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen: “I can now prove that the plebiscite to legitimise Hitler’s takeover of Austria was falsified in the crudest possible way. Together with the other four adults of my house, I naturally voted ‘No.’ In addition, I know of at least twenty other reliable people in the town who did the same. Nevertheless, according to the official results, the town unanimously and without a single dissenting voice ‘approved the actions of the Führer.’”

THE EAST Prussian writer Ernst Wiechert was arrested soon after the election and taken to a Gestapo prison to be interrogated. In the car leaving his home one of the secret policemen asked him if he had cast his vote. They knew that he had not. “Half an hour after the closing of the ballots they were careful to beat anyone who had written ‘No’ half dead.” One of the very few who made his decision not to vote public was Bishop Sproll of Württemberg. It was not that he disapproved the merger; it was that he disliked the regime and did not wish to congratulate the Nazis. This led to a campaign against him by Gauleiter Murr that ended up with Sproll being banished from his diocese, after Nazi thugs wrecked his residence. Goebbels approved these “spontaneous” demonstrations: “The Bishop of Rottenburg did not vote. Now the people have erupted and are rioting in front of his palace. He is looking for protection, so now the state is good for something at least. He can protect himself. I shall not lift a finger.” Sproll’s eviction established a precedent that would later be used in the cases of Cardinal Innitzer in Vienna and Cardinal Faulhaber in Munich.

THE RAPE of Austria set its people at odds with their new masters. The “Prussian” Reck-Malleczewen was in Salzburg soon after the Anschluss and was able to witness the sort of scene that would put the Austrians off their new friends from the north: “These Berlin potato-faces fill the streets, together with their full-bosomed females. Thanks to the rate of exchange they are able to make off with everything for a song, including goods that are no longer available in Germany and the . . . shelves are empty. They are behaving like a horde of servants whose masters are away, who have found the keys to the wine cellars and are now having an orgy with their women.” Some Germans mopped up the flood of Austrian Jewish property. One of these was Papen, who was destined for the embassy in Istanbul. He acquired the country place of the Eggers, industrialists in Styria. Ribbentrop absorbed Schloss Fuschl and added to his burgeoning collection. The former owner, von Remnitz, was murdered in Dachau.

On the same day as the poll, the new government in the “Ostmark” introduced the
Reichsfluchtsteuer
. It had actually been introduced in Germany on January 31, 1931, before Hitler came to power: Any person (not just Jews) leaving the country had to pay the tax if they had an income of 20,000 RM (30,000 Austrian schillings) in any year since 1931, or if they possessed a fortune of 50,000 RM (75,000 Austrian schillings) at the time of applying to leave. It is a measure of the success of the “Viennese model” that state income from the emigration tax more than quadrupled in 1938, from 81,354,000 RM to 342,621,000 RM. In 1939 it fell by a third to 216,189,000. Smuggling was rife, particularly of jewelry, which was small and potentially of great value.

On April 13, as Poland and Lithuania moved to the brink of war over Memel again, a law was passed requiring Austrian tradesmen to find Aryan owners for their businesses before October 10. The Nazis had coined a new verb to dignify this particular process of robbery:
arisieren
. Until their sale, Jewish businesses were to be placed in the hands of commissioners, who tended to be trusted Party members. These temporary owners often bled the businesses white before depositing a lifeless carcass on the market for sale. After the takeover of Jewish businesses, the only Jews left working were a very few doctors who could treat Jews only and a similar number of lawyers who were allowed to act as consultants to Jewish clients. About 1,500 Jews were retained in industry, where there was a shortage of labor. Between 3,000 and 4,000 were being retrained, subject to the payment of certain taxes. Many elected to learn agriculture with a view to getting to Palestine. Artists and writers saw their publishers refuse to pay out royalties, even when those came in from abroad. Such was the case of Felix Salten, the author of
Bambi
, whose publishers were now able to absorb a huge income from his foreign sales. Another ripe plum was the royalty income of the film score composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

At first some thought they would be able to ride out the storm. The dentist Hugo Schneider felt that now that Jews could no longer go to Aryan dentists, his business would expand. Within three months, however, his hopes were shattered by the appearance of a man in SA uniform at his door. He announced that he was also a dentist, and half the practice now belonged to him.

There were 26,236 Jewish businesses in Austria—one for every 270 Austrians. This was a far greater concentration than in the old Reich, where the figure was one to every 1,693 Germans. The Aryan Austrians rushed to take over the firms. There were four times as many applications as there were businesses to acquire. Some Austrians, however, were still not keen on the legal route; parents encouraged their children to pilfer from defenseless Jews. Apartments were stolen under the noses of their owners by maids with the assistance of their lovers. The victims could not go to the police. The only way to protect themselves was to offer the maids presents on their departure. Some companies were robbed over and over again, as fleets of trucks took away the goods.

There was a particularly high concentration of Jews in certain professions. One in seven of Austria’s pharmacies was Jewish owned, and in Vienna the figure was more than a third. The normal sale price for a business of this sort was two to two and a half times the yearly income. Now the official sales price was one tenth of the pre-1938 value. The 25 percent
Reichsfluchtsteuer
had to be subtracted from this. There was no recourse to the courts; if a Jew complained, he was put in prison.

Such measures did not benefit the Austrian economy. The dismissal of the Jewish textile workers, for example, caused a slump in the clothing industry, as there were no skilled workers to take their place. The interpretation of the law was draconian, especially in a city like Vienna, where many people had a dash of Jewish blood. The illegitimate children of Jews, even
Mischlinge
who had only one Jewish grandparent but who could produce no baptismal certificate, forfeited their rights. If one of these had 25 percent of the company, or even held a seat on the board, the company was defined as Jewish.

HAPPY FAMILIES

Hitler admires Edda Göring, a crown princess for the Third Reich.