Out of the factories and the prisons, from which many of them recently had been released along with the Nazis, the Social Democrats came in a body on March 4 to respond to the Chancellor’s call. Despite all that had happened they said they were ready to help the government defend the nation’s independence. All they asked was what the Chancellor had already conceded to the Nazis: the right to have their own political party and preach their own principles. Schuschnigg agreed, but it was too late.
On March 3 the always well-informed General Jodl noted in his diary: “The Austrian question is becoming critical. 100 officers shall be dispatched here. The Fuehrer wants to see them personally. They should not see to it that the Austrian armed forces will fight better against us, but rather that they do not fight at all.”
At this crucial moment, Schuschnigg decided to make one more final, desperate move which he had been mulling over in his mind since the last days of February when the Nazis began to take over in the provinces. He would hold a plebiscite. He would ask the Austrian people whether they were for a “free, independent, social, Christian and united Austria—Ja oder Nein?”*
I felt that the moment for a clear decision had come [he wrote later]. It seemed irresponsible to wait with fettered hands until, in the course of some weeks, we should be gagged as well. The gamble now was for stakes which demanded the ultimate and supreme effort.19
Shortly after his return from Berchtesgaden, Schuschnigg had apprised Mussolini, Austria’s protector, of Hitler’s threats and had received an immediate reply from the Duce that Italy’s position on Austria remained unchanged. Now on March 7 he sent his military attaché in Rome to Mussolini to inform him that in view of events he “was probably going to have to resort to a plebiscite.” The Italian dictator answered that it was a mistake—“C’è un errore!” He advised Schuschnigg to hold to his previous course. Things were improving; an impending relaxation of relations between Rome and London would do much to ease the pressure. It was the last Schuschnigg ever heard from Mussolini.
On the evening of March 9, Schuschnigg announced in a speech at Innsbruck that a plebiscite would be held in four days—on Sunday, March 13. The unexpected news sent Adolf Hitler into a fit of fury. Jodl’s diary entry of March 10 described the initial reaction in Berlin:
By surprise and without consulting his Ministers, Schuschnigg ordered a plebiscite for Sunday, March 13 …
Fuehrer is determined not to tolerate it. The same night, March 9 to 10, he calls for Goering. General v. Reichenau is called back from Cairo Olympic Committee. General v. Schobert [commander of the Munich Military District on the Austrian border] is ordered to come, as well as [Austrian] Minister Glaise-Horstenau, who is … in the Palatinate … Ribbentrop is being detained in London. Neurath takes over the Foreign Office.20
The next day, Thursday, March 10, there was a great bustle in Berlin. Hitler had decided on a military occupation of Austria and there is no doubt that his generals were taken by surprise. If Schuschnigg’s plebiscite on Sunday were to be prevented by force the Army would have to move into Austria by Saturday, and there were no plans for such a hasty move. Hitler summoned Keitel for 10 A.M., but before hurrying to the Fuehrer the General conferred with Jodl and General Max von Viebahn, chief of the Fuehrungsstab (Operations Staff) of OKW. The resourceful Jodl remembered Special Case Otto which had been drawn up to counter an attempt to place Otto of Hapsburg on the Austrian throne. Since it was the only plan that existed for military action against Austria, Hitler decided it would have to do. “Prepare Case Otto,” he ordered.
Keitel raced back to OKW headquarters in the Bendlerstrasse to confer with General Beck, Chief of the General Staff. When he asked for details of the Otto plan, Beck replied, “We have prepared nothing, nothing has been done, nothing at all.” Beck in turn was summoned to the Reich Chancellery. Seizing General von Manstein, who was about to leave Berlin to take up a divisional post, he drove with him over to see Hitler, who told them the Army must be ready to march into Austria by Saturday. Neither of the generals offered any objection to this proposal for armed aggression. They were merely concerned with the difficulty of improvising military action on such short notice. Manstein, returning to the Bendlerstrasse, set to work to draft the necessary orders, finishing his task within five hours, at 6 P.M. At 6:30 P.M., according to Jodl’s diary, mobilization orders went out to three Army corps and the Air Force. At 2 A.M. the next morning, March 11, Hitler issued Directive Number One for Operation Otto. Such was his haste that he neglected to sign it, and his signature was not obtained until 1 P.M.
TOP SECRET
If other measures prove unsuccessful, I intend to invade Austria with armed forces to establish constitutional conditions and to prevent further outrages against the pro-German population.
The whole operation will be directed by myself….
The forces of the Army and Air Force detailed for this operation must be ready for invasion on March 12, 1938, at the latest by 12:00 hours …
The behavior of the troops must give the impression that we do not want to wage war against our Austrian brothers…. Therefore any provocation is to be avoided. If, however, resistance is offered it must be broken ruthlessly by force of arms…. 21
A few hours later Jodl issued supplemental “top-secret” orders on behalf of the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces:
If Czechoslovakian troops or militia units are encountered in Austria, they are to be regarded as hostile.
The Italians are everywhere to be treated as friends, especially as Mussolini has declared himself disinterested in the solution of the Austrian question.22
Hitler had been worried about Mussolini. On the afternoon of March 10, as soon as he had decided on military invasion, he had sent off by special plane Prince Philip of Hesse, with a letter to the Duce (dated March 11) informing him of the action he contemplated and asking for the Italian dictator’s understanding. The letter, a tissue of lies concerning his treatment of Schuschnigg and conditions in Austria, which he assured the Duce were “approaching a state of anarchy,” began with such a fraudulent argument that Hitler had it omitted when the letter was later published in Germany.* He stated that Austria and Czechoslovakia were plotting to restore the Hapsburgs and preparing “to throw the weight of a mass of at least twenty million men against Germany.” He then outlined his demands to Schuschnigg, which, he assured Mussolini, “were more than moderate,” told of Schuschnigg’s failure to carry them out and spoke of the “mockery” of “a so-called plebiscite.”
In my responsibility as Fuehrer and Chancellor of the German Reich and likewise as a son of this soil, I can no longer remain passive in the face of these developments.
I am now determined to restore law and order in my homeland and enable the people to decide their own fate according to their judgment in an unmistakable, clear and open manner….
Whatever the manner may be in which this plebiscite is to be carried out, I now wish solemnly to assure Your Excellency, as the Duce of Fascist Italy:
Consider this step only as one of national self-defense and therefore as an act that any man of character would do in the same way, were he in my position. You too, Excellency, could not act differently if the fate of Italians were at stake….
In a critical hour for Italy I proved to you the steadfastness of my sympathy. Do not doubt that in the future there will be no change in this respect.
Whatever the consequences of the coming events may be, I have drawn a definite boundary between Germany and France and now draw one just as definite between Italy and us. It is the Brenner … *
Always in friendship, Yours, ADOLF HITLER23
THE COLLAPSE OF SCHUSCHNIGG
Unmindful of the feverish goings on over the border in the Third Reich, Dr. Schuschnigg went to bed on the evening of March 10 firmly convinced, as he later testified, that the plebiscite would be a success for Austria and that the Nazis “would present no formidable obstacle.”† Indeed, that evening Dr.
Seyss-Inquart had assured him that he would support the plebiscite and even broadcast a speech in its favor.
At half past five on the morning of Friday, March 11, the Austrian Chancellor was wakened by the ringing of the telephone at his bedside. Dr. Skubl, the Austrian chief of police, was speaking. The Germans had closed the border at Salzburg, he said. Rail traffic between the two countries had been halted. German troops were reported concentrating on the Austrian frontier.
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.
SEYSS-INQUART: 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 …
GOERING: 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.
MUEHLMANN: 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.
GOERING: 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.
GOERING: Well, then, Seyss-Inquart has to dismiss him! Just go upstairs again and te
ll 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.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 54