1938 (21 page)

Lauterbach arrived in Vienna with the Christian Zionist Brigadier-General Sir Wyndham Deedes on April 18. Deedes was representing the Council for German Jewry and came with promises of financial support for those wishing to travel to Palestine. The two left again on the 21st and proceeded to Berlin, where they stayed from April 22 to 24. Sir Wyndham was equipped with letters of introduction to the appropriate bodies—the Auswärtiges Amt or Foreign Office in Berlin and its Viennese branch. The message Deedes transmitted to German official bodies was that it was important to reopen the offices of the Jewish congregation as quickly as possible so that organized emigration could proceed. They wanted the Jewish leaders to be released from Dachau to this end. The financial costs could not be entirely borne by foreign institutions, and it was therefore necessary that the IKG raise money to fund emigration. The wild seizure of Jewish property would not help in the long run.

Deedes and Lauterbach met Gainer, Taylor, and Passport Control Officer Kendrick, as well as the American chargé d’affaires, John Wiley. Deedes paid similar calls in Berlin, as well as visiting officers of the German army, Quakers, and “non-Jewish non-Aryans.” In Vienna they were fobbed off with minor officials from the foreign office and the emigration office. Attempts to see the governor, Seyss-Inquart, or members of the Gestapo came to nothing. They were able to visit the mayor, Hermann Neubacher, who expressed the desire to see emigration proceed in an orderly and humane manner. In Berlin they had a sympathetic meeting with Freiherr von Marschall at the Auswärtiges Amt, but he admitted to being powerless. He directed them to Himmler, who was not available. They saw some Gestapo officials, including Dr. Leo Lange, who was on his way to see Eichmann. He informed them that the problem of the Austrian Jews was being dealt with in Vienna. They did not receive the impression that the policy had been fully decided. Their meetings hardly inspired them with hope.

ACCORDING TO the system in force at that time, visas were only issued on a temporary basis. There was also the problem of finding transit visas. Switzerland and France were generally willing to grant these. Italy needed proof of baptism, which led at least one Jewish family to visit Hugh Grimes at the Anglican chaplaincy. Lorli Rudov née Perger, then age ten, remembered him “totally unruffled . . . surrounded by a crowd of Jewish people. . . . He was taking an enormous risk in offering help.” Like many other Jewish families, theory was stymied by practice: The Pergers needed to sell their house and pay the
Reichsfluchtsteuer
. By the time they had done so, the Italian window had closed.

For many, business connections proved useful. That way money could be transferred without taxation by Nazi authorities. Connections could also yield employment once the refugee entered Britain. Women could generally enter the country by agreeing to go into domestic service. A note in the files at Friends’ House asks whether the dentist Dr. Edith Mahler is “capable of doing housework.” “We are trying to get her a permit, but have failed once.” The equivalent for men was to enter full-time education. A remarkable number of Central European Jews, for example, applied to enter the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester—one can only imagine because its entrance requirements were relatively undemanding. Zionist organizations also set much store by farming, and there was even a small cooperation with the Gestapo in Austria, which ran a farm where non-Aryans trained Jews. Many went because it was seen as a means of leaving the country early. The baptismal certificate
might
work, but it was no guarantee; an Anglican conversion was of more interest for someone hoping to go to Britain or the Dominions.

The facts don’t always bear this out, however. The British Empire let in a smattering of Jews: Southern Rhodesia was taking 50 a month by May 1939; Kenya admitted about 650 but demanded a valid reentry visa to Germany as a precondition of acceptance, something the Germans were not prepared to consider; Mauritius took 1,250, Cyprus 744, Jamaica 500, British Guiana 130, Hong Kong 42, Malta 18, British Honduras 12, Ceylon 6, and Aden, North Borneo, and Grenada 5 apiece; Fiji, Tanganyika, Barbados, Leeward Islands, and Uganda 2 each; and Sierra Leone 1. St. Helena allowed a solitary dentist. The Dominions were all different: Australia admitted 10,000 “in spite of the government’s best efforts”; South Africa took virtually none after passing the Aliens’ Act of 1937; New Zealand took 1,100, including Karl Popper, who mentions a helpful man at the New Zealand High Commission in London.

Many are now skeptical of the use of such conversions. One of these was the writer George Clare, who escaped from Vienna via Berlin and ended up in Ireland before joining the British Army. The problem he, like so many others, encountered was how to get to his chosen destination while lacking the necessary transit visas. For some, the English Channel was an insurmountable obstacle: “You would have got on the back of a crocodile if it was crossing the Channel.”

As April blossomed into May, Salzburg enjoyed a copycat performance of the 1933 book burning in Berlin. Special attention was given to the writings of Austrian Jews: Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, Emil Ludwig, and Franz Werfel. In the first week of May, Jews were banished from the cattle and meat markets, which had been a prominent area of activity in the past. Later that month Jews were excluded from the press and the arts. The First of May was the National Labor Day. Even though it was grey and wet, the flag-waving, marching columns and Arcadians on the village green went ahead as planned, combining tradition and the Party. The highlight was a gathering of 150,000 girls and boys at the Olympia Stadium in Berlin. At the Staatsoper on Unter den Linden, Goebbels awarded the cultural prizes for the year. Leni Riefenstahl was honored for her
Olympia
film. Later there were speeches in the Lustgarten nearby: Hitler, Ley, and Goebbels. For those who had toadied to the Germans, an “Austria Medal” was to be struck for services to the Anschluss.

HITLER MADE his first visit to Rome on May 2. He was treated to a state visit in return for the favor granted to Mussolini in Berlin the year before. The Duce declared a public holiday. It was a huge jamboree with three special trains filled with five hundred officials worthy to accompany the Führer, together with their wives. The wags called it “The Invasion of Italy.”

The diplomats were all got up in their “admiral’s uniform,” a costume dreamed up by Frau von Ribbentrop and the Nazi theatre designer Benno von Arendt, replacing the morning dress used in the past. Spitzy had to model the new outfit, which came in various prototypes ranging from one of Lützow’s riflemen from the Wars of Liberation to a Prussian musketeer or a hotel porter. The final version caused Göring to needle Ribbentrop, saying, “You look just like the porter in the Rio-Rita-Bar.” When the diplomats finally emerged from their offices into the Wilhelmstrasse, a Berlin ragamuffin exclaimed, “Oy! Look at that! A lot of admirals!” As it was, the party traveled with a bewildering array of costumes ordained by the head of protocol and were forever being instructed to change their clothes. Germany’s leading clotheshorse, Göring, remained behind in Berlin as acting head of state.

The Italians accorded the uncouth brownshirts an operatic reception. A special station had been constructed in Rome, where the Nazis were greeted by the governor, Prince Colonna. Carriages drawn by four horses conveyed the party to their lodgings. Hitler traveled with the king, as he was a guest at the Quirinal. Goebbels observed that the Italian sovereign was “stiff.”

There were baskets of fruit and bottles of grappa in every room at the Grand. Goebbels reveled in the glory that was Rome, and regretted that Germany had nothing to match it. It would be up to the Nazis to provide durable monuments of this sort. And there were pretty women wherever he looked—although Ciano thought they only had eyes for Hitler. The only thing that marred their pleasure at being in the city was eternal rain.

Hitler was also in raptures over all he saw, although he thought the monarch and his wife were looking down on him. The king was indeed perturbed by his houseguest, who allegedly called for a woman at 1 AM because he needed to have his bed turned down (and this had to done by a woman). The king also gained the impression Hitler was injecting himself with stimulants and narcotics, which was possibly true. Even Mussolini told Ciano he was convinced the Führer had been wearing rouge to hide his pallor.

Hitler found compensations. He was able to admire the beauties of Florence and Naples. At a banquet at the Palazzo Venezia, he put the Italians’ minds at rest by stressing that he had no desire to reclaim the quarter of a million Germans stranded in South Tyrol, whom the Italians had persecuted at least as aggressively as the Czech majority had ridden roughshod over the aspirations of the German minority in the Sudetenland. He understood the strength of the Duce’s opposition to any border changes. Only recently Mussolini had decided to send the German Tyroleans off to fight in the front line in Abyssinia, presumably in the hope they would not return. Hitler’s abandonment of the German minority south of the Brenner was the price he was willing to pay for freedom of movement in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Intelligent Germans in his party did not fail to notice this development. The poor Tyroleans appeared like Banquo’s ghost to watch Hitler’s cortege pass. Goebbels looked out of the train window and felt pain in his heart. Hess agreed. According to Paul Schmidt, they showed no enthusiasm: Scarcely a single handkerchief was waved, and there were no Fascist salutes. There was no sympathy for them among Mussolini’s blackshirts. Some Nazis who had been agitating for South Tyrol were arrested before the cortege set off.

Taking advantage of the mutual good feelings, Ribbentrop was anxious to foist a treaty on Mussolini that would assure mutual assistance in the event of attack on either state. In his vision, the pact would bring Germany, Italy, and Japan together against Britain. The treaty was sprung on Ciano as they watched the fireworks over the Bay of Naples from the battleship
Cavour
. In their new uniforms the diplomats looked very much the part at the naval display. The Italian Fascists wanted to hang on to the Anglo Italian Agreement they had signed the previous month, and Ciano knew how to face Ribbentrop’s crassness with diplomatic persiflage: He suggested that the solidarity between the two countries was so great that they hardly need put it in writing.

Ribbentrop refused to be fobbed off, and a heated argument broke out between the two men. Ciano thought such a pact would endanger his chances of having Chamberlain recognize Italy’s new Mediterranean empire. Mussolini was not opposed to a treaty, but he was distinctly unimpressed by Germany’s new foreign minister. He told his son-in-law Ciano, who didn’t like Ribbentrop either, that this man who talked nonstop about making war was to be given a wide berth: “He belongs to a category of Germans who are a disaster to their country.” Even leading Nazis were pulling their hair out over Ribbentrop’s idiocy. On May 4 Goebbels, Hess, and Himmler had a discussion about the foreign minister’s “megalomania.” Hess agreed with Goebbels that Ribbentrop needed to be reigned in soon.

After the naval display there was a performance of
Aida
at the Teatro San Carlo. The German Head of Protocol, Vicco von Bülow-Schwante, had badly slipped up and sent the Führer along bare-headed and dressed in tails to review the guard of honor, while the king was in full dress uniform. Hitler had felt like some “despicable democratic leader.” Goebbels felt they were treated like shoeshine boys. Bülow-Schwante was summarily dismissed.

Hitler expressed his anger at the court ceremonial in a letter to Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of the composer Richard. His gaffes caused chortling among his own men as well as the Italians. The humiliations suffered by Hitler in Italy had the effect of hardening his resolve to resist any attempt to restore the monarchy and move against the nobility. Ciano was sympathetic and relayed Ribbentrop’s line that the one good thing the Social Democrats had done in Germany was to “liquidate the monarchy for ever.” As the nobility was still prominent in the army and the diplomatic service, Hitler planned to purge both. Naturally Goebbels egged him on: “The nobility is international; it sees the nations only in terms of its own possessions. It should be banished.”

One point of agreement struck between the two dictators was a greater coordination in internal affairs. In particular, Italy would finally adopt racial antisemitism. Over the next month Italian newspapers published articles by well-known professors showing that the Italians were racially “Nordic” and that the Jews were a peril. Many academics had to quit their posts, and senior army and naval officers were dismissed; Jews were banned from the professions. Mussolini had to find a new dentist.

One important Roman refused to attend the festivities, however. In Paris Wolfgang von Weisl voiced his admiration for the Supreme Pontiff, Pius XI, to the British Board of Deputies, citing “[the]
Osservatore Romano
, the mouthpiece of the Holy See, who [
sic
] ignored the presence of Kaiser Adolf in the eternal Rome. This policy of the Pope is not only dignified but also clever.” But nevertheless, the pope had no power to apply the brakes to Hitler’s forward momentum.