by James Longo
Following the Anschluss, Hitler was in a rare good mood. He took a victory lap across Austria to visit Graz, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, and Salzburg before returning to Linz. In Klagenfurt he visited his retired schoolteacher; the Habsburg-hating Dr. Leopold Pötsch. His admiration for “this old gentleman” had not diminished. He wrote of Pötsch, “Who could have studied German history under such a teacher without becoming an enemy of the state which, through its ruling house, exerted so disastrous an influence on the destinies of the nation?”
August Kubizek, Hitler’s former Vienna roommate, was now a minor civil servant living with a wife and three sons in Upper Austria. He wrote Hitler in 1933 after learning of his appointment as German Chancellor. Kubizek received a quick response from his Linz childhood friend:
I would very much like—when the time of my hardest struggles is over—to revive personally the memory of those wonderful years of my life. Perhaps it would be possible for you to visit me? Wishing yourself and your mother all the best, I remain in the memory of our old friendship.
It was not until 1938, shortly after the Anschluss, that the two old friends finally met again in Linz. Hitler warmly greeted Kubizek and spontaneously volunteered to “sponsor the education of your three sons,” telling him:
I don’t like it when young, gifted people are forced to go along the same track we did. You know how it was for us in Vienna. After that, for me, came the worst time of all, after our paths separated. That young talent goes under because of need, must not be allowed to happen.
Dr. Eduard Bloch, the Jewish doctor who had cared for his dying mother, also wrote Hitler in 1938. He asked for help in immigrating to the United States. Hitler ordered the Gestapo to help the man he referred to as a “Noble Jew” resettle in New York City. Bloch died there in 1945 at the age of seventy-three.
Two Jewish officers who had served with Hitler on the western front, Hugo Guttmann and Ernst Hess, were also offered his protection. With the Gestapo’s help, Guttmann immigrated to America and settled in St. Louis, Missouri, a city with a large German population. Heinrich Himmler personally wrote a letter to Nazi authorities in Dusseldorf, the German city where Hess lived. They were ordered to afford him “relief and protection as per the Führer’s wishes.” Like his hero Karl Lueger, Hitler’s anti-Semitism could be selective.
No such exception was made for Maximilian and Ernst Hohenberg. Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, discussed the sons of Franz Ferdinand as they returned to Berlin by train. The Gestapo had not silenced Otto Habsburg, who remained in Belgian exile, but they had successfully arrested the public leaders of the Habsburg restoration movement in Austria. As far as Hitler was concerned, a Hohenberg was a Habsburg. The only thing that made the Hohenbergs worse was that their mother was a Slav. As they enjoyed breakfast in the comfort of their rosewood-paneled dining car, Hitler gleefully denounced Max and Ernst, telling Goebbels, “They are worthless and must never be allowed back. … Get rid of the rubbish.”
Nazi propaganda photos of Maximilian and Ernst Hohenberg, the defiant sons of Franz Ferdinand, taken at Dachau. The date was June 28, 1938, the 24th anniversary of the assassination of their parents. BArch, Bild 152-21-30 / Friedrich Franz Bauer…and BArch, Bild 152-21-35 / Friedrich Franz Bauer
A postcard of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, leaving Belvedere, their Viennese palace, in 1903. Adolf Hitler later selected Belvedere as his favorite palace for celebrating the Nazi “new intercontinental order.” Author’s Collection
Franz Ferdinand’s ten-year-old son, Prince Ernst Hohenberg, was affectionately teased as “the beauty of the family.” Library of Congress
Prince Maximilian Hohenberg was eleven at the time of his parents’ assassination. Library of Congress
Princess Sophie Hohenberg was twelve in 1914 when she and her brothers became the world’s most famous royal orphans. Library of Congress
An informal portrait of the archduke with his family. He hated wearing military uniforms and strongly opposed any efforts to involve Austria in a war. Author’s Collection
A formal portrait of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, with their three children. Author’s Collection
Minutes before they were assassinated, the archduke and his duchess greeted dignitaries at the City Hall in Sarajevo. They had already survived one assassination attempt earlier in the day. Shortly before leaving for Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand had confided to his nephew, “I know I will soon be murdered.” Author’s Collection
A propaganda postcard issued after the assassination. Contrary to the romanticized sketched image, the coffin of the archduke’s morganatic wife was placed several inches below his in the Imperial Chapel. Despite the fact that the duchess died trying to save her husband’s life, the lower position of her coffin left no doubt of her outside status in the class-conscious Habsburg court. Author’s Collection
A memorial postcard of the assassinated heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife. His death was the only assassination to trigger a world war. Author’s Collection
A photo purported to show a youthful Adolf Hitler in Munich celebrating Germany’s declaration of war on August 3, 1914. He rejoiced at the news of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, certain it would bring war, destroy the Habsburgs’ multicultural Empire, and make a victorious Germany the most powerful nation on Earth. Glasshouse Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Franz Ferdinand’s sons, Maximilian and Ernst Hohenberg, with their wives, Elisabeth and Maisie, in 1937. For many Austrians, including Adolf Hitler, the Hohenbergs had become the leading opponents of the Nazi takeover of Austria. Scherl / Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo
On March 12, 1938, a triumphant Adolf Hitler returns to conquer the city that once conquered him. The first two Austrians ordered arrested by the Gestapo, deported from the country, and imprisoned at Dachau were the anti-Nazi sons of Franz Ferdinand. Hitler told Joseph Goebbels, “They are worthless and must never be allowed back…away with the rubbish.” BArch, Bild 146-1985-03083-10 / o.Ang
Hitler speaks to three-quarters of a million cheering Viennese from the balcony of the Habsburg palace. In the distance is Vienna’s city hall where his anti-Semitic role model, Mayor Karl Lueger, once mesmerized the city with his hate-filled rhetoric. BArch, Bild 183-1987-0922-500 / o.Ang
Countess Marie Theresa Wood (known in the family as Maisie) with her husband, Prince Ernst Hohenberg. Her ability to read lips allowed her to navigate through and around the Gestapo during her long fight to free her husband from Nazi imprisonment. Imagno / Austrian Archives / Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo
Franz Ferdinand’s stepmother, Archduchess Maria-Theresa Braganza, known as the “melancholy beauty of the Habsburg court.” She was a fearless champion of Franz Ferdinand and his royal orphans from the days of Emperor Franz Joseph to the dark nights of Adolf Hitler. The archduchess told her grandson Maximilian Hohenberg, “Trust God, but never try to understand God.” Author’s Collection
Franz Ferdinand’s daughter, nineteen-year-old Princess Sophie of Hohenberg, with her brothers—seventeen-year-old Maximilian and sixteen-year-old Ernst—and their guardian Count Thun on Sophie’s wedding day, September 8, 1920. Only Count Thun seemed happy. Photo courtesy of Friedrich Count Nostitz
Adolf Hitler on his fifty-second birthday accepting the stolen plaque from Sarajevo commemorating Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. Hitler’s rise to power was made possible by the assassination. Winston Churchill wrote, “This war would have never come unless, under American and modernizing pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and Hungary…by making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer onto vacant thrones.” Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München / Bildarchiv
The Anschluss monument in Klagenfurt, Austria, depicting the crushing of the Austrian people under the heel of the Nazis in 1938. Author’s Collection
Maximilian, Duke of Hohenberg,
with granddaughter Princess Sophie and nurse, at her 1960 christening. “With the next generation, there is always hope.” Photo courtesy of Princess Sophie de Potesta of Hohenberg
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DUEL
“Would it be better to draw it out, leave these men in jail for years where they belong, and then kill them, or send them to the gallows immediately?”
—HERMAN GOERING
Eighty-three-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria-Theresa was born a Braganza, a direct descendant of an ancient Portuguese family that provided England and Spain queens, Brazil two emperors, and Portugal fifteen generations of royalty. She had never been intimidated by the house of Habsburg, and she refused to be intimidated by Hitler. Her family motto—“Braganza blood does not tremble”—safely navigated her through family feuds, assassinations, revolutions, and wars.
Within hours of Ernst and Max Hohenberg’s arrest, their wives made their way to the home of the family matriarch.
Like most women of her time, Maria-Theresa lived her life in the shadows of powerful fathers, brothers, and husbands. Her ancestry condemned her to the royal wedding bed; but it also required that she use her intelligence, strength, charm, and gender to survive in a male dominated world. She mentored generations of Braganza and Habsburg women to do the same. In 1938, it was Elisabeth and Maisie Hohenberg’s turn. In the coming duel with Adolf Hitler and his Gestapo, they would need the wisdom, experience, and expertise of Maria-Theresa.
She offered three pieces of advice. “Never give up. Never show fear. Use personal diplomacy with the highest possible authorities.” The Archduchess had followed her own advice when she supported Franz Ferdinand’s decision to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, enlisting Pope Leo XIII as an ally against her brother-in-law, Emperor Franz Joseph. As the women met at Maria-Theresa’s imposing palace on Favoritenstrasse, Max and Ernst reunited in a Viennese prison cell. They were soon joined by the mayor of Vienna and the country’s secretary of state for public safety. Like Maximilian, weeks earlier they had each been offered the position of Austrian Chancellor. Now they were prisoners of Adolf Hitler. Just days before the Anschluss, public opinion polls indicated Austrians planned to vote overwhelmingly against annexation. German General Alfred Jodl wrote in his diary the Nazis feared the plebiscite would deliver “a strong majority for the monarchists.”
Early the next morning, Elisabeth and Maisie appeared at Vienna’s Gestapo headquarters. Each had a role to play. Elisabeth, the Duchess of Hohenberg, was their spokesperson. Maisie used her ability to read lips to learn the location of the office of Dr. Ernst Kalterbrunner, the Austrian-born Gestapo Chief. Kalterbrunner looked like a Nazi villain from a Hollywood movie. He was a tall, dark-skinned hulk of a man with a pockmarked, deeply scarred face and deep-set, small eyes he used to great advantage to intimidate opponents. Prior to the Anschluss, he had been arrested by Austrian law enforcement three times for conspiracy and treason. Now the thirty-four-year-old Nazi henchman some referred to as a gorilla was in charge of Austria’s state security.
At some point during the tension-filled morning, the conservatively but impeccably dressed women slipped their way past layers of security to suddenly appear in Kalterbrunner’s private office. In the surprise confrontation that followed, they demanded to know why their husbands had been arrested. What charges had been filed? When could they see them? Most importantly, what was the day and time of their release? The flustered Nazi was so startled that he ordered the women escorted out of the building. They may have been the only two Austrians thrown out of Vienna’s dreaded Gestapo Headquarters.
A story from the New York Times on March 23, 1938, reported on the arrests taking place across Austria. “It is a heterogeneous list, including as it does leading monarchists, Catholics, Socialists, Communists and peasant leaders.” An accompanying article was headlined, HABSBURG PRINCES ARRESTED BY AUSTRIAN NAZIS. Large photographs of “Prince Ernst of Hohenberg” and “Prince Max of Hohenberg” were prominently featured. A second article provided further details. “The Hitler Elite Guard organ, the Schwarze Korps, announces their imprisonment and expresses contempt for their families and personal character.”
The next day a New York Times headline read, UNIVERSITY PURGE PUSHED—RESTRICTIONS ON JEWS ARE RAPIDLY INCREASED. Jews as “non-Aryans” lost their jobs, but they were not alone. Catholics, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, and a Nobel laureate in Physics were also immediately “retired” from their university posts. Past and present government ministers continued to be arrested.
That same morning, Elisabeth and Maisie Hohenberg again appeared at the Gestapo Headquarters. Despite Kalterbrunner’s refusal to see them, they continued to return on a daily basis. Hundreds of stunned, protesting, beaten, sobbing, terrified prisoners were brought past them to be interrogated. Among them was Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud’s daughter. She was eventually released, but her arrest by the Gestapo convinced her legendary eighty-two-year-old father, then under house arrest in Vienna, to leave Austria. For others it was too late. Many of the arrested were never seen again.
On March 26, 1938, when the women arrived at the Gestapo Headquarters they were informed their husbands were no longer in the city. No further information was provided. They immediately made their way to the Favoritenstrasse residence of Archduchess Maria-Theresa. She counseled them to aim higher. Within hours, Maisie’s father, Captain George Jervis Wood, took her advice literally. He flew to London hoping the British Foreign Office might help locate the men.
Events taking place in Berlin that afternoon would soon impact the Hohenbergs, Czechoslovakia, and all of Europe. That day Hitler finalized plans to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The rest of the country, including Prague, would soon follow. On orders from Berlin, “spontaneous” riots broke out throughout the Sudetenland. A banner headline in the New York Times read, CZECHS SEE BLOW TO AUTONOMY; ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN ARE READY TO SUPPORT ANY SCHEME TO KEEP PEACE. In smaller print the article reported the country’s Sudetenland Party demanded immediate independence and unification with Germany.
In Vienna, the Hohenberg women filled their days and nights writing letters seeking information from Austrian and German officials about their missing husbands. On April 14, 1938, their efforts were rewarded. Maisie received a letter from the thirty-seven-year-old Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler. Among his many responsibilities was supervision of the Gestapo. He informed her that the arrests were the result of the “terrible behavior” both men had perpetrated against the Nazis since 1934. Himmler wrote, “Your husband, Prince Ernst Hohenberg, and his brother are in the Dachau concentration camp. Like any other protective custody prisoner, they will be treated fairly there, without any danger to their lives.” He had recently visited Dachau and told the Austrians, “You know from now on you are in protective custody; that means I shall accord you my most special protection.”
Heavily censored letters from Maximilian and Ernst, postmarked from Germany, confirmed their Dachau imprisonment. Thousands of Austrians had been arrested. Hundreds had been released, others had been killed. Few felt safe, but one who did offered help. Baron Wilhelm von Ketteler, the Austrian secretary to Franz von Papen, contacted Elisabeth and Maisie. He told them he could obtain an exit visa for them and their children to Switzerland. The women refused his offer. They feared that if they left Austria they would never see their husbands again. A short time later, Ketteler’s body was found floating in the Danube. Seven thousand suicides had been reported in Austria since the Anschluss, most of them Jews. The Catholic Ketteler was not one of them. His battered, bloated body still smelled strongly of the chloroform used to silence his screams. The message was clear. No one was to help the Hohenbergs.
Countess Rosa von Lonyay Wood, Maisie’s mother, spoke directly to Ambassador von Papen, a longtime friend. He assured her the arrest of her son-in-law was an “unfortunate mistake” he would rectify immediately. When he learned Hitler had
personally ordered the Hohenberg arrests, he never spoke to Mrs. Wood again.
From her ancestral castle in Württemberg, Elisabeth’s mother, Maria Lobkowicz, Princess of Waldburg, took matters into her own hands. She had her chauffeur prepare her large Maybach touring car for a road trip. The black and yellow car, the colors of the Waldburg and Habsburg dynasties, drove the 115 miles to the gates of Dachau. There she demanded the guards grant her permission to visit her son-in-law, Duke Maximilian von Hohenberg, and Prince Ernst his brother. She was politely refused. Only after Dachau’s Commandant, Hans Loritz, came to the car and respectfully informed her she was not permitted to enter the camp, and that Max and Ernst were not available to speak, did she reluctantly leave. Ironically the brothers were regularly marched out to the camp’s parade ground to be publicly mocked and humiliated by visiting Nazi dignitaries.
Word of their treatment filtered back to the capitals of Europe. A number of influential persons began working on their behalf including the Pope, the Vatican Secretary of State, the King and Queen of Sweden, and the Duke of Luxembourg. Even the wives of Neville Chamberlain and Edward Halifax, England’s Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, tried to help but were rebuffed.