by James Longo
183. to announce the entrance of the Emperor.: Bossy, Raoul V. Recollections of a Romanian Diplomat: Diaries and Memories Vol II, 401, Ed. by G.H. Bossy & M.A. Bossy, Hoover Institute Press, Stanford, 2003.
183. “It was truly a funereal meal.”: Ibid.
184. or the Gestapo would do it for him.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
184. but no tea was ever served.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
184. to surrender her sense of humor to the Nazis.: Ibid.
184. and sense of humor remained intact.: Radziwill, 172.
185. nothing else was more important.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
185. but persistently, inquire about restitution.: Ibid.
185. their sixth child, a boy they named Gerhard.: Ibid.
185. She refused to wear it.: Ibid.
185. Few people had such courage.: Ibid.
185. “had every reason to be lasting and firm.”: Delaforce, 165.
186. a Habsburg princess, was born in Vienna.: Longo, James McMurtry. Isabel Orleans-Braganza: The Brazilian Princess Who Freed the Slaves, 1, McFarland, Jefferson, 2008. The Austrian architectural influence in Petropolis is unique for Brazil and surprising to visitors who do not know its history.
186. what was believed to be long forgotten barbarism.: Zweig, xiv.
186. never granted the Nazis this triumph.”: Muhlstein, Anka. New York Review of Books, 1, May 8, 2014.
187. the invasion made her worst nightmare a reality.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
187. sacrificed as cannon fodder to the Nazi war machine.: Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
APOCALYPSE
188. the country Franz warned Austria to never fight.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
188. Russia to turn south toward the city of Stalingrad.: Ibid.
189. remembered they were Austrians, not Germans.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
189. eight hundred thousand of their fellow soldiers did not.: Ibid.
189. and raped their way to Berlin.: Ibid.
189. but she refused to leave without Ernst.: Ibid.
189. unwittingly endangered his own covert activities.: Ibid.
189. in the care of distant Hohenberg cousins.: Ibid.
190. read lips because of her increasing deafness.: Ibid.
190. compound twenty-four hours a day inside and out.: Ibid.
190. and many others, died within its walls.: Millard, 13, 104.
190. redoubled her efforts to free him.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
190. “the highest possible German authorities.”: Hauner, 199.
191. but she was never seen again.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
191. became a non-person within his own family.: Ibid.
191. “Would you like to share lunch with us?”: Ibid.
192. urged Maisie to write one more letter.: Ibid.
192. to Heinrich Himmler, he would pass it on to him.: Ibid.
192. “I embrace you and send you a thousand kisses.”: Millard, 155.
192. convinced Heinrich Himmler to sign the release order.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
192. and his family scattered.: Ibid.
192. “A thousand hugs, Ernst.”: Ibid.
193. sense of humor revealed his former self.: Ibid.
193. and stress of the city stole his remaining strength.: Ibid.
193. None of them knew who was alive or dead.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
193. began bombing Vienna day and night.: Ambrose, Stephen E. The Wild Blue Yonder: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany, 102–220, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2002.
193. the Academy of Fine Arts were all damaged.: Ibid.
194. but she was not there to see it.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
194. twelve Habsburg emperors, including Franz Joseph.: Ibid.
194. capital of Poland was razed to the ground.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
194. village where he died was named Sophienberg.: Ibid. Olson, 369–370.
194. “died for the Führer and the Fatherland.”: Nostitz-Rieneck.
195. didn’t know whether he, too, was dead.: Ibid.
195. “mass of immigrants from many nations and races.”: Speer, 121.
195. keep non-Germans from entering the country.: Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Last Days of Hitler, 26–31, Pan Books, London, 1995.
195. dismissing the advancing Russians as “Redskins.”: Jones, 326.
195. They were too busy fighting for their lives to read.: Hamann, 384.
195. “one way or the other.”: Hauner, 188.
195. “unless I drive a bullet through my head.”: Ibid.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE WHOLE COUNTRY WAS AS IF UNDER A SPELL
196. seize power, and end the war.: Hansen, Randall. Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance After Valkyrie, 25, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.
196. and religious leaders were shot, hanged, or beheaded.: Ibid., 60–72.
197. escape on the twentieth of July was a miracle.: Trevor-Roper, 33, 166.
197. He turned to morphine.: Ibid., 139.
197. “annihilation and hatred will meet him.”: Hansen, 1–2.
197. “without regard to rank and prestige.”: Speer, 423.
197. “but we shall take the world with us.”: Toland, 872.
197. “It is enough to make one lose faith in God.”: Hauner, 199.
197. from his Chancellery office to the bunker.: Hamann, 3.
198. “into which we would gain entrance.”: Ibid.
198. and it angered me immensely.: Toland, 877. This recollection recalls one of the several brief visits Hitler made to Vienna prior to his triumphal return in 1938.
199. tried very hard not to be too frightened.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
199. Uncle Fritz had been given at its beginning.: Ibid.
199. die together, as a family.: Ibid.
199. Elisabeth refusing to leave his office.: Ibid.
200. and treachery were everywhere.: Ibid.
200. between one individual and another.: Ileana, Princess, 216–217. Princess Ileana eventually moved to the United States, became a nun, and founded an Orthodox convent and monastery in Elwood, Pennsylvania, where she is buried. She inherited the Bran Castle in Rumania traditionally associated with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. The castle became the property of her son in 2006.
200. character of the man, not his political beliefs.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
201. the communists regarded with respect.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
201. no electricity, and almost no food.: Ibid.
201. in the chaos of the Russian advance.: Ibid.
201. troops and were again forced to run.: Ibid.
201. kept them safe also trapped them.: Ibid.
202. if they would be killed.: Ibid.
202. the medical attention he needed.: The mother of Prince Franz Joseph II of Liechtenstein was Franz Ferdinand’s youngest sister, Archduchess Elisabeth Amalie Habsburg. Prince Franz Joseph II was the only leader of a country to refuse to return German soldiers to the Soviet Union after the war. His refusal saved thousands from imprisonment and death.
202. a common grave two miles from Konopiste.: Hutchinson, James Lee. The Boys in B7 8th Air Force.
202. but then his dark mood lifted.: Bernadotte, Count Folke. Last Days of the Reich: The Diary of Count Folke Bernadotte, October 1944–May 1945, 115, Frontline Books, London, 2009. One German whose belief in Hitler and Heinrich Himmler never wavered was Gudrun Burwitz, Himmler’s daughter, who remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death at the age of 88 in June 2018. She was called by friends and foes alike, a Nazi princess, and had “marvelous” memories of visited Dachau with her when she was twelve.
202. as the greatest German of them all.: Hauner, 206.
203. “proved itself unworthy of me!”: Ibid.
203. “He was the victim of his generals.”: Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle: T
he Classic History of the Battle for Berlin, 362–363, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1966.
203. and Europe will never be Russian.: Ibid.
203. mistress had been captured and assassinated.: Toland, 888. The death of Mussolini seemed to signal to Hitler the end.
204. “National Socialist movement in a truly united nation.”: Ibid., 879, 888. In the last months of the war, Albert Speer found himself on the German front near the Rhine River caught in a night attack among ordinary German citizens. In the darkness he listened to their conversation. Their faith in Hitler was unshakable even as the Reich collapsed around them. They believed only he understood them and would be able “to work the miracle of their salvation from this forlorn predicament,” Hugh Trevor-Roper, p. 72.
204. all nations, international Jewry.: Ibid.
204. exorcising demons from those possessed by the devil.: https://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Nacht. Witches Night is featured in Act II of Goethe’s Faust, in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Thirty-one years to the minute of Adolf Hitler’s suicide, Bishop Lanyi also had his dream of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.
205. HITLER IS DEAD NAZI RADIO REPORTS FüHRER KILLED FIGHTING RUSSIANS.: Philadelphia Inquirer, “Hitler Is Dead, Nazi Radio Reports Fuehrer Killed Fighting Russians,” 1.
205. in victory an undiminished crisis.: Thompson, Joseph. “The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, 5B.
205. “Nobody believes Hitler is dead.”: Lochner, Louis. “The End of Hitler’s Mountain Hideout,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1B.
205. suicide, his military blunders, or the Holocaust.: Rissell, Herbert J. Interview, November 7, 2016. Herbert Rissell and his brother were members of the Hitler Youth. His memories of the final days of the war and the shock of Hitler’s suicide provide insights into both the isolation and denial of Germany’s population during and after the war. Rissell moved to the United States and retired to Pennsylvania, 30, 2017. “A German Life,” New York Times, December 22, 2017.
206. Well, very little anyway.: “Joseph Goebbels’ Secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, Dies Aged 106,” Guardian, January 2017.
CHAPTER TWENTY
PHANTOMS AND PATRIOTS
207. The date was May 8, 1945.: Fuller, Samuel. Faukenau Vision de I’Lmpossible. “The Big Red One—The Last Battle” film, Michkan World Productions, 2009. This film provides an eyewitness account of the final battle of World War II in Europe.
207. death rather than a world without Hitler.: Ibid.
208. for the millions killed by the Nazis.: Ibid.
208. to a Russian slave labor camp.: Ibid.
208. their family, Erwein’s safe return.: Ibid.
209. “in our republic once and for all.”: Sebestyen, Victor. 1946: The Making of the Modern World, 129–130, Vintage Books, New York, 2014.
209. provided that they become good Czech citizens.: Nicolson, Harold. Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson, Vol. II, 392, Atheneum, New York, 1967.
209. “a foreign ulcer in our body.”: Ibid.
209. “‘Love Thy Neighbor’ does not apply.”: Ibid., 131.
209. turned against his “master race.”: Ibid., 131.
209. to be banished from Czechoslovakia.: Douglass, R.M. Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War, 1, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2012.
209. ordered them out of the country.: Sebestyen, 131.
210. N for “Nemec” sewn into their clothes.: Douglass, 1.
210. were expelled from their homeland.: Ibid., 101.
210. and Fritz Nostitz-Rieneck with their children.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
210. Beneš refused to return it.: Ibid.
210. full custody of their underage children.: Deneken, Ludwig von. Prague Post, September 21, 2009.
210. his wife of thirty-five years as the “Habsburg princess.”: Ibid.
210. between a Habsburg and a Hohenberg.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count. Members of the Czech government insisted Sophie Hohenberg was a Habsburg.
210. family would leave Czechoslovakia together.: Ibid.
211. safe conduct pass during their deportation.: Ibid.
211. as Czech police looked the other way.: Douglass.
211. leaving without Erwein and Franz.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
211. or committed suicide there.: Sebestyen, 131–133.
211. outside of Karlsbad—today Karlovy Vary.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
211. had become a city of ghosts.: Ibid.
211. died during the “evacuation.”: Douglass, 3, 5.
212. as a prisoner of war to Russia.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
212. They never returned.: Douglass.
212. “Iron Curtain” descending across Europe.: Churchill, Winston. “The Sinews of Peace,” Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946. A church designed by Christopher Wren destroyed in the London Blitz was later reconstructed on the campus of Westminster College in Missouri as a memorial to the famous speech Churchill delivered there.
212. about the castle’s surviving paintings.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
212. Nicholas presented the portrait to him.: Ibid. This portrait of Empress Alexandra of Russia now hangs in the private home of Princess Anita Hohenberg at Artstetten.
213. length of the Soviet occupation of Austria.: Ibid.
213. homesick for their own children.: Ibid.
213. it was another of Hitler’s parting gifts.: Ibid.
213. “do not eat” list of postwar hardship cuisine.: Ibid.
213. they had eaten since before the war.: Hohenberg, Princess Sophie de Potesta.
214. civil authorities remained in firm control.: Ibid.
214. but they refused to give up hope.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
214. but the family relished being together.: Nostitz-Rieneck.
215. at themselves or their fellow Austrians.: Hohenberg, Princes Gerhard.
215. accompanied by genuine laughter.: Ibid. The Hohenberg sense of humor remains one of their defining characteristics, but the point of their story holds true. On the fifth anniversary of the Anschluss, Baldur von Schirach and Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 100,000 cheering Viennese from the Hofburg Palace balcony. Goebbels wrote in his diary, “One need have no fears about Vienna. The passages of my speech that drew the loudest applause were the ones in which I spoke of the insoluble union of the city with the Reich. Vienna has indeed become a Reich city,” p. 124, The Goebbels Diaries.
215. Max had joined his brother in jail.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard. Leni Riefenstahl wrote in her Memoirs of being in Innsbruck when Hitler entered the city: “The Innsbruckers were delirious. They stretched out arms and hands toward Hitler in almost religious ecstasy. Elderly men and women were crying. The universal jubilation was simply beyond belief,” p. 221, Memoirs.
216. and we were not that judge.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
216. Both men were hanged.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
216. were each sentenced to twenty years in prison.: Smart, Victor. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, 2008, www.HolocaustResearchProject.org.
216. “will remain a blot on our history for centuries.”: Ibid. Baldur von Schirach’s father was a German aristocrat and his mother an American aristocrat descended from two signers of the Declaration of Independence. He traced his anti-Semitism to Henry Ford’s hate-filled book, The International Jew. For many years, Schirach was the leader of the Hitler Youth. He died in 1994.
217. he also took his own life.: Ibid.
217. and unceremoniously dumped there.: Ibid.
217. to pay his debts after Sarajevo.: https://www.geni.com/people/Gustav-Krupp-von-Bohlen-und-Halbach. Gustav Krupp died at Schloss Blühnbach in 1950. His son Arndt, the last of the Krupps, died there in 1968. Gustav bought the estate in 1917. Arndt offered it as a sanctuary to the exiled dying Shah of Iran in 1979. In 1988, the castle was boug
ht by Frederick Koch, the oldest of the Koch brothers best known in America for their wealth, and conservative political activism.
217. diverse than at any time in centuries.: Sebestyen, 140.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ANSWERED AND UNANSWERED PRAYERS
218. Italian dictator’s fate had all come to pass.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
219. and estates returned to him.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
219. that her firstborn son still lived.: Ibid.
219. and died in quiet retirement.: Ibid.
219. a healing experience for them.: Ibid.
220. of his death gave no details.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
220. until his final breath.: Ibid.
220. the gift Erwein’s friend had given her.: Ibid.
221. meet again in a better place.: Ibid.
221. for Franz Assisi Friedrich Ernst Nostitz-Rieneck.: Ibid.
221. Third Reich continued claiming victims.: Hohenberg, Princess Sophie de Potesta.
221. pain and suffering were never broken.: Time Magazine, March 22, 1954, Vol. LXIII, 23.
222. “He was a loyal, honest Austrian.”: Pauli, 308.
222. twenty-five expecting her first child.: Nostitz-Rieneck, Count.
222. and the Hohenbergs a fresh beginning.: Hohenberg, Princess Sophie de Potesta.
223. as a second Christmas.: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
223. treasure could have made her happier.: Ibid. Princess Anita Hohenberg has a glass case containing the collection of ceramic lambs in her home at Artstetten.
224. to the palace where he was born.: Hohenberg, Georg Duke of.
224. “facing the land of my birth.”: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
224. to end his cousin’s Austrian exile.: Ibid.
225. French occupation authorities deported him.: Millard, 146.
225. “loyal citizens of the Republic.”: Hohenberg, Prince Gerhard.
225. his quest to end his cousin’s exile.: Ibid.
225. recent coronation had done in England.: Ibid. Max found neo-Nazi groups reorganizing in parts of Austria. Klagenfurt, Carinthia, the city where Hitler’s favorite teacher retired, earned the reputation as the “El Dorado for former Nazis.” In Robert Kaplan’s book Balkan Ghosts, he writes, “In proportion to its size, Carinthia produced more death-camp guards than any other region of Germany or Austria,” p. xxv.