Authors: Giles MacDonogh
Schuschnigg and his men threw all the energy of the Corporate State into the poll. They printed and distributed huge numbers of flyers, scattering some by aircraft in Austria’s most remote and snowbound corners, where many voters would have been Nazis. Trucks trundled about, transmitting the message of Austrian independence by loudspeaker. Planes trailing banners carried the word
Ja
over the cities. A flyer showed Schuschnigg and the Austrian
Kruckenkreuz
, the Corporate State’s own version of the swastika. A second displayed a group of three men flashing Austrian folk costumes and was again emblazoned with the
Kruckenkreuz
. Everywhere the German theme was pushed home: To be a good Austrian was to be a good German; to be German was to be free. Austrians were better Germans than the Nazis.
The Austrian government took steps to ensure that the vote would swing in their direction. They raised the age qualification to twenty-four, making it impossible for young Nazi thugs to register their views. The electoral roll was not up-to-date anyhow, and there was no possibility of revising it in so short a time. Voters simply had to produce identification to register. Moreover, the ballot slip was printed with the word
Ja
. Anyone who did not want to keep an independent Christian Austria had to cut out a piece of paper himself and inscribe the word
Nein
. “Devious and shabby” was how one contemporary described it. Göring later gleefully pointed out that there were plenty of opportunities to rig the ballot—it was not in any way fair.
ON THE 10TH of March, German Heroes’ Remembrance Day, Goebbels arrived at the Chancellery in Berlin to find Hitler bent over maps of Austria. The leader of the Austrian Legion, Hermann Reschny, was worried that the Austrian army would fight if Schuschnigg told them to. Lothar went to Linz and noted that Schuschnigg’s popularity was running high: A boy who shouted, “
Heil Hitler!
” was all but lynched. Schuschnigg returned to Vienna that day, and Hitler ordered his military chiefs to prepare for an invasion on the 12th.
The humiliated Ribbentrop was stuck in London with instructions from Hitler not to move. He was to represent the German government in the course of the crisis. Like many of his contemporaries, Chamberlain had a low opinion of Ribbentrop’s intelligence. It was not just with Britain that Ribbentrop was prone to gaffes. In his passion for signing a German-Japanese alliance, he had already destroyed a profitable Sino-German trading relationship. The RAM learned of the Anschluss from Chamberlain, Halifax, and Cadogan in the course of lunch at Downing Street, and followed its progress on the BBC. To add insult to injury, his predecessor Neurath was temporarily brought back to the Wilhelmstrasse to deal with the flak from abroad. Many other important members of the gang were missing too: Brauchitsch was on leave and Reichenau in Cairo. Keitel was asked to produce the Operation Otto file and Beck to move two army corps to the frontier. Hitler still wanted a pretext for invading; Göring, delighted to control foreign policy during Ribbentrop’s absence, thought they should go in anyway.
Schuschnigg revealed his decision to hold a plebiscite to his government and ministers as late as he could. The headquarters of the government party, the Fatherland Front, also had a visit from Dr. Desider Friedmann of the Jewish congregation or IKG (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde); he brought a check for 500,000 schillings to help fund the plebiscite. The following day he brought the Front another for 300,000. It was a reflection of the degree of anxiety that was going through the community. As the writer Gina Kaus put it, they hoped to win, “but we were worried for all that.” The Jews were conscious that if Austria fell, they would suffer a terrible fate.
ON MARCH 11, two days before the plebiscite was to be held, Hitler performed the first invasion by telephone in history. The lines opened at 5:30 AM, when the Austrian chief of police, Michael Skubl, rang Schuschnigg to tell him that the border had been closed at Salzburg. The pious Austrian chancellor’s first reaction was to take himself off to Mass at the cathedral. When he returned to the Chancellery he discovered that German forces had been mobilized in Bavaria and that Seyss-Inquart had disappeared. As it transpired, the German mobilization had been chaotic: The General Staff possessed no proper plans. Later, many German units actually broke down on the road between Linz and Vienna. It was a godsend that the Austrians offered no resistance.
No one had had much sleep in Berlin. Goebbels had been scribbling propaganda for most of the night, preparing to drop 13 million leaflets on Austria. Papen arrived from Vienna to find Neurath, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Himmler, Brauchitsch, Keitel, and their retinue plotting. He was kept in the dark in an antechamber of the Chancellery while the others made decisions. Around midday Hitler sent word of the invasion to Mussolini through Prince Philip of Hesse, but Operation Otto would go ahead regardless of what the Duce said. He took the trouble to sugar the pill: His letter contained “a precise declaration about the recognition of the Brenner as the frontier of Italy.”
Hitler was a furious bundle of nerves, unable to issue coherent orders, so it was Göring who actually stage-managed the Anschluss from the Chancellery switchboard. At 9:30 AM, he directed Seyss-Inquart and his fellow Nazi minister Glaise-Horstenau to the Austrian Chancellery in the Ballhausplatz. Göring issued an ultimatum at around 10 AM: He wanted the plebiscite postponed within the hour and another one announced, to be carried out under the system established by the Germans in the Saar.
When Schuschnigg made inquiries in Graz, he learned that local Nazis had issued a statement that the postponement had already taken place and that he had apparently resigned. When the chancellor asked if he could rely on the police to defend Vienna, he was told that since the amnesty, the Nazi officers who had been sacked had been reinstated, and their loyalty to the Austrian Republic was doubtful. Schuschnigg was sure that the army was reliable, but he was convinced that Austria should not go to war with Germany—there was to be no repeat of 1866. He decided to formally postpone the plebiscite at 2:45 PM. The scene in Vienna must have been rendered all the more absurd by the ubiquity of loudspeakers blaring out the national hymn “O Du mein Österreich.” Within a few weeks most of his ministers and senior bureaucrats would be breaking stones in Dachau.
Seyss-Inquart called Göring to inform him of the decision. Communication was not helped by a faulty telephone connection between the two countries. As there was insufficient power to take the calls in Hitler’s private apartments, Hitler and Göring had to wait for news at the Berlin Chancellery switchboard. Göring’s prodigious girth meant there was scarcely room for anyone else in the small room. Hitler stood with one knee on a sofa nervously twisting the curtain cord with his hand until Seyss finally came on the line. In his excitement he managed to pull down the curtain. “Yes, he should act!” Hitler shouted.
At 5:30, Seyss returned to Schuschnigg with a notebook containing the Reichsmarschall’s prescription: “The situation can only be saved if the Austrian Chancellor resigns immediately and if Dr Seyss-Inquart is appointed Chancellor within two hours. If these conditions are not fulfilled, German armies will move on Austria.” In Berlin it was still not certain whether the army would go in. Other conditions in the ultimatum had to be carried out by 7:30, and Seyss grumbled he was being treated like a receptionist. German forces were already mustered at the border.
In Austria, public loudspeakers told men born in 1915 to report to the colors, amounting to a partial mobilization. Troops were positioned here and there, morale was good, but nothing more came of it. A unit moving up to the border from the Neusiedlersee was greeted with mild enthusiasm in places, and at others—like the small towns of Melk and Amstetten—by a population that had already gone over to Hitler. The general inspector of the Austrian army, Sigismund Schilhawsky, described military resistance as “pointless,” since Austria could not hope for any immediate support from outside. By 6 PM the troops were sent back to their barracks.
Lothar experienced this firsthand: In Amstetten there was a Nazi parade, and the firemen’s band played the Nazi “Horst Wessel-Lied” tune. At that moment the Austrian army arrived, making for the Austrian-German frontier. Lothar talked to the captain, who told him, “We left Vienna to avoid bloodshed. From tomorrow we will be no more than a unit in the German armed forces.”
By the evening of the 11 th Hitler had still not fully decided on his course. The idea was to make him federal president, and the rest could come gradually. Austrian State Secretary Theodor Hornborstl madly telephoned potential saviors. The Italians had already washed their hands of Austria. Halifax replied that he could offer nothing. No one was prepared to guarantee the state’s security. In the circumstances Schuschnigg meekly did what was required of him and tendered his resignation. In his memoirs Schuschnigg allowed himself a reflection: “That day meant not only the end of Austrian independence, it also meant the end of international morals.” It is a wonder it took him so long to realize the gravity of the situation.
WHILE THE Austrian chancellor slowly divested himself of his offices, Seyss-Inquart and Glaise-Horstenau sat in a corner of the Chancellery and received messengers with close cropped or shaven heads, “most of them with heavy sabre scars across their faces.” The Nazis had moved in. One was Gauleiter Joseph Bürckel from the Saar, who was meant to take over Papen’s job. Keppler had landed at Aspern in his private airplane. Hess came by train. The new brooms snatched telephones from the hands of loyal officials and slammed them down.
After tendering his resignation to the president, Schuschnigg returned to the Ballhausplatz to clear his desk. He felt the presence of the images on the wall: the death mask of Dollfuss, murdered in the office next door, and a portrait of the empress Maria Theresa. He rehearsed the golden moments of Austrian history, prompted by the same pictures of the great and good, and the hall that in 1814 and 1815 had witnessed the glory days of the Congress of Vienna. A retainer entered to tell him that the Germans were broadcasting spurious reports of a Communist uprising in Austria. The government was said to be helpless; there were hundreds of casualties. The announcement of his resignation was broadcast at around seven. President Miklas was still fierce in his reluctance to appoint Seyss-Inquart chancellor, but he gave in half an hour later. Schuschnigg’s departure was the signal to the Nazi thugs to take over: The violence began as local bosses were ousted from their offices and the barracks of the Fatherland Front were taken over.
At the cabaret Simplicissmus in Vienna, the German comedian Fritz Grünbaum made his last appearance before he and his partner, Karl Farkas, were banned. The lights had already been switched off: “I can’t see a thing, nothing at all. I must have stumbled onto the Nazi cultural stage.” In the Jewish-owned Café Herrenhof, the German exile Walter Mehring was sitting with his agent when Seyss-Inquart and Glaise-Horstenau came in to confer. It was Seyss-Inquart’s regular haunt or
Stammlokal
. The waiter told Mehring, “Seyss ordered only soup, now it’s getting serious.”
Schuschnigg made his last broadcast at a quarter past eight that evening. He had postponed the plebiscite because he had been determined to avoid bloodshed at all cost.
Writer Gina Kaus lived above the Jockey Club. She listened to the speech and went to the window and looked down onto the Lobkowitzplatz, where she saw a policeman put away his red-white-red armband and put on a swastika: evidence that the police played a crucial role in the death of Austria’s First Republic. Her lover, Eduard Frischauer, was a baptized Jew whose uncle owned a Sunday newspaper. He told her, “We leave tomorrow.”
HITLER WAS cheered by the news from Austria. Now that the army had been muzzled, he gave the order for his troops to march at 20:45. Austrian army units received orders to withdraw toward the east—they were not to open fire. At 10:30, Hitler received the information he had been waiting for: Mussolini gave him the go-ahead. Hitler was over the moon. He told Göring’s friend Prince Philip that he would never forget Mussolini’s gesture, and he never did.
Hitler’s Austrian agent, Keppler, had already moved into his office. The initial arrests were going ahead, and Viennese Mayor Schmitz was the first to be taken into custody. He had refused to fly a swastika from the town hall and had armed the municipal militia. The Nazis also captured and consumed 166 brace of sausages they found in the Rathauskeller. Miklas finally summoned Seyss shortly before midnight. The president was now in no position to object, having been confined to his villa by SS man Otto Skorzeny, who was the discovery and protégé of the Austrian SS chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner. It was Skorzeny’s first appearance as the Nazi Germany’s chief daredevil. His career would include liberating Mussolini from Il Grand Sasso in 1943 and leading the storming of the Bendlerstrasse after the plot of July 20, 1944.
Seyss appointed a cabinet of conservative Nazis. Göring insisted on the inclusion of Dr. Franz Ulrich Hüber as minister of justice. (He was the husband of Göring’s sister Paula.) As it was, Seyss’s reign as an independent Austrian chancellor was short-lived. When the German military attaché, General Wolfgang Muff, rang Berlin at Seyss’s request to inform Göring that everything had been carried out according to his wishes and he could now recall his forces, Göring told Muff that, on the contrary, he was to demand the assistance of German troops to reestablish law and order. Göring had been enjoying his sport. That evening he was the host at a winter ball at the Air Ministry in Berlin. He arrived fashionably late after his exertions on the telephone. He found an opportunity to talk to British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson, who delivered a predictable protest, and the Czech minister, Vojtech Mastny, who, despite Göring’s anxieties, gave him the assurance he wanted: Czechoslovakia would not mobilize to save Austria.