1938 (11 page)

The fate of the ancient Jewish community rapidly became a cause célèbre. On May 3, 1938, a Czech rabbi, Michael Dov Weissmandl, visited Lambeth Palace to drum up support for the Burgenländer. He had a letter of introduction from Isaiah Porritt, the senior Orthodox rabbi in Vienna, and Samuel Epp, the senior rabbi in Burgenland. They were seeking a safe haven for 3,000 Jews. Lang’s secretary, Alan Don, wrote to Samuel Hoare at the Home Office to ask if a special favor might be granted in this instance.

The plight of the Burgenland Jews is the subject of Franz Werfel’s short story “Die wahre Geschichte vom wiederhergestellten Kreuz” (“The True Story of the Remaking of the Cross”) of 1942. Werfel conceived it as part of his unfinished novel
Cella
, which was set in northern Burgenland. The Catholic priest Ottokar Felix relates the martyrdom of the rabbi of Parndorf, Aladar Fürst, on the night of March 11 and his own role in seeking to protect the Jews in his village and accompany them into exile. Aladar Fürst did not exist, but the other events described in the story took place on April 20. The local SA, drunk with power—and wine—threw between twenty and thirty Jews out of their homes and took them to the Hungarian border at Mörbisch on the Neusiedlersee. There they spent four nights in no-man’s-land, as the Hungarians were not prepared to accept them. They were eventually allowed to go to Vienna. Another event that was later dramatized was the expulsion of the Jews from Kittsee, which formed the basis of Friedrich Wolf’s play
Das Schiff auf der Donau
(
The Boat on the Danube
). In Kittsee the Jews were forced across the border into Czechoslovakia, but as they had no papers, they were made to endure weeks on an island and later a boat before the Czechs would take them in.

In the state capital Eisenstadt, an exception was made for Alphons Barb, the director of the state museum. The commissioner for cultural issues in Austria asked for a stay of two or three months in his case, since the archaeologist had made an important contribution to knowledge of German pre-history in Burgenland through his excavation of gravesites, proving that the Germans got there before the Magyars. Barb had been making an unconscious contribution to
Ahnenerbe
, the research into Germanic roots that was replacing religion for Nazi extremists. He was allowed to continue to live in Vienna until 1939, when the British Museum organized his transfer to London.

Heinrich Himmler was the first Nazi VIP to arrive in Vienna. His two Ju-52 aircraft touched down in Aspern at 5 AM on March 12. On the way down from Berlin he slipped and almost fell out of the aircraft, and his intelligence chief claimed he saved his master’s life. He was accompanied by the lofty figures of Reinhard Heydrich, Karl Wolff, and Kurt Daluege and a large team of SD and Gestapo men dressed in grey uniforms: This was to be the unveiling of the new Waffen-SS kit. They were met on the tarmac by Austrian police chief Skubl and a police guard of honor. The Germans then went about their task with proverbial efficiency, ridding their new province of the enemies of the Reich. A willing civil servant was able to provide Himmler with all the state’s police records, including criminal records of the banned Left. Very few wriggled through the net.

Skubl’s attentiveness did him no good. He was replaced by Kaltenbrunner, one of the few Austrian Nazis ever to achieve high rank in Berlin. Himmler set up his base in the Hotel Regina. The Gestapo were the first to take up residence in the Hotel Metropole. With the mayor, Schmitz, gone from the town hall, the huge square in front of the building was renamed the Adolf-Hitler-Platz two days before the arrival of its new dedicatee.

Himmler and Heydrich immediately unleashed a week of the “wildest manhunt,” followed by wave upon wave of arrests. Between 50,000 and 76,000 people were arrested in March. These were classified as “damaging to the nation”: intellectuals, public figures, and businessmen. Most of them were released after the plebiscite was carried out under Nazi scrutiny on April 10. Communists were also at risk. Even though the Communist Party had been banned by the Corporate State, and its members were locked up in the concentration camp at Wöllersdorf, there were still active cells, and the Nazis took over the job of hunting them down with renewed vigor. When Himmler went to look at some of his catch in person, he was rather surprised to see Louis von Rothschild, who had been arrested at Aspern airport. He did not look sufficiently like a Jew, with his bright blue eyes and uncowed manner. When Himmler asked if he knew who he was, Rothschild replied, citing Himmler’s name and rank. The Reichsführer SS was so taken aback that he ordered that Rothschild’s cell be made more comfortable. He was to get fresh furniture and a new lavatory seat and basin.

Himmler accompanied the chief of his economic administration, Oswald Pohl, as he traveled to Upper Austria to look at suitable quarries where they might establish concentration camps. Their eyes lighted on Mauthausen and Gusen. Between April and August various plots of land were bought and the site in Mauthausen rented from its owners, the city of Vienna. (Mauthausen stone was used to make Vienna’s pavements.) On August 8 the first prisoners were transferred from Dachau. Mauthausen was to gain the reputation of being one of the grimmest camps of them all.

HITLER’S DESIRE to bind his old country to the land he had adopted had incurred fresh problems. With Austria, Germany had now acquired 200,000 or so more Jews, all of whom needed to be encouraged to get out. An example was to be made of certain Jews. One of these singled out in Linz was a Dr. Eduard Bloch, whose sign was smeared with the word
Jude
. In 1907 this same Bloch had treated the Führer’s mother, Clara, who was dying of cancer. Hitler had expressed his gratitude in a letter he wrote to the physician at the time. The desecration of the sign came to Kaltenbrunner’s attention, who sent two SS men to clean it up.

Department II-112, responsible to Himmler, was in charge of emigration. Eichmann was the department’s expert on Zionist organizations. Ironically, the Nazis and the Zionists had shared aims: They both wanted the Jews to go, and both were keenest on choosing Palestine for their promised land. Eichmann promoted Zionism “with all means.” The assimilated Jews, on the other hand, were the principal enemies of the National Socialists. As Eichmann’s colleague Dieter Wisliceny put it, they were there to “crush the assimilatory organisations.” Employing the Nazis’ favorite method of divide and rule, the assimilated Jews and the Zionists could be played off against one another; there was, after all, little love lost between them.

HITLER HAD been making a slow progress toward Vienna. Leaving Göring to manage the shop in Berlin, he flew to Munich with Keitel. Around noon Hitler reached the Austrian border, where he stopped to confer with General Fedor von Bock and receive a report from his press chief Otto Dietrich. He crossed into Austria at his birthplace, Braunau on the Inn, where he was received by the mayor, and then drove on to his adopted hometown of Linz. For the first time Hitler was revisiting the city he had once quit as a “penniless vagabond.” The reception accorded him by the Linzer was so ecstatic that he was moved to tears. Indeed, the Austrian response to the Anschluss surprised Nazis and non-Nazis alike. Most people had shared Schuschnigg’s optimistic view that a clear majority of Austrians were opposed to the merger. From Berlin, Klepper noted that the larger and most active part of the Austrian population must have been in favor: “Otherwise these scenes of brotherhood would not have been possible.”

Beds were hastily prepared at the Hotel Weinzinger. It was not ideal: There was just a small porter’s lodge and one telephone. Ribbentrop, who was angry and frustrated at being isolated in London, could not get through to Spitzy until 7 AM on the 13th. He was told to stay put. Seyss had traveled up from Vienna to await Hitler’s arrival, and on March 13 he gave a speech announcing the scrapping of Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint Germain, the one that forbad the unification of Germany and Austria. In Nuremberg, Fips of
Der Stürmer
celebrated the end of the “shameful” treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain, while in another cartoon a Jew was concerned to read that “Italy was not at all opposed.”

The enthusiasm that Hitler observed in Linz caused him to have a change of heart about maintaining Austria as a separate state. He chose to “manage” the revolution instead. He had originally planned to create a National Socialist Austria, closely linked to Germany, but now he decided that he was going to incorporate Austria as a self-governing province of the Greater German Reich. The federal states were to be replaced by Nazi territorial divisions or
Gaue
, under the control of a Party boss or gauleiter. Seyss legitimized the constitutional changes, and Austria duly became a province of the Reich on the 13th. Even the prime mover behind the Anschluss, Hermann Göring, was amazed at the speed at which the changes were made. A new plebiscite, to be conducted under Nazi rules, was now ordained for April 10.

Seyss was to relinquish his post as chancellor of Austria under the new constitution and become
Reichstatthalter
or governor. Under him served a small group of ministers. Joseph Bürckel was brought in from the Saar-Palatinate as Reichs Commissioner for the Reunification to manage the new plebiscite, as he had done successfully before in the Saar.

Bürckel’s appointment from outside was significant: Austrian Nazis were to play a paltry role in the new territory. Bürckel imported his own men, who were surreptitiously mocked as members of the Pfalzer-Postenjäger-Regiment or Palatinate Job Hunters’ Regiment, while Austrians dubbed their drunken gauleiter Bierleiter Gaukel (Beerleader Mountebank). The man who would have been gauleiter, Josef Leopold, ended up as a lowly Party inspector in Munich before dying in the Russian campaign. Walter Riehl, who had founded the NSDAP in Austria after the First World War, was actually imprisoned on March 18 and only released on Hitler’s orders. He was given no work by the new administration. Theodor Habicht, who had been the strongman in Austria before the Anschluss, was compensated with the town hall of Wittenberg in Saxony. The only exceptions to the marginalization of Austrians were Carinthians such as Gauleiter Hubert Klausner and Odilo Globocnik.

Hitler did not trust Austrians and preferred to have Germans from the Altreich (as it was now called) occupy almost all the important positions. He may have doubted their loyalty, but as it was, he used a rather more German justification: laziness. As he had said in his first speech in Linz, the Austrians needed to lose their fondness for cozy
Gemütlichkeit
and put their shoulders to the wheel. The cold-shouldering of homegrown Nazis led to considerable resentment in Austria, where the Nazis from the Altreich quickly transmogrified into Prussians—the traditional enemies, even though most were no such thing. Bürckel very rapidly became a more powerful figure in the land than the governor, Seyss, who was shunted on to Poland when the war started, then Holland in 1940.

As Hitler had hoped, there were no great international repercussions. The Duce was satisfied that Hitler would not create problems for him in South Tyrol. Britain declined to act to secure Austrian independence. Chamberlain told the House of Commons on March 14 that Britain had no obligations toward Austria. The British confined themselves to a pious hope that the Germans would not take it out on their political and racial enemies. Two days later Lord Halifax told the Upper House that Austria’s status had been bound to change in the long run. The French could not respond for the simple reason that their government had resigned. They were in no position to act on their own anyway. The U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, forbore from comment until the 19th, when he more or less recognized the Anschluss by saying that the Germans were now responsible for Austria’s debts. On March 17, the spokesman for the Soviet regime, Maxim Litvinov, called for action against German aggression but had nothing specific to say about Austria. Only two countries protested: republican Spain, which was shortly to be eclipsed by Franco’s forces, and Mexico.

ON MARCH 14, Hitler finally drove from Linz to Vienna via Amstetten. Vienna was seething with excitement over the prospect of Hitler’s arrival. He was a day late, hindered by the unpreparedness of his army and his own desire to create a frenzy of anticipation. Even then, no one could explain the massive enthusiasm of the population. The city was filled with 40,000 Hitler Youth and Bund deutscher Mädel girls waiting to salute their leader. His cavalcade made for the Imperial Hotel on the Ring. Once upon a time he had earned a few Kreuzer digging snow in front of the hotel, and since that time he had always cherished a desire to stay there.

Hitler had left word that he was “too tired” to address the public, but after repeated requests from the crowd, he appeared on the balcony of the hotel to enormous acclaim. There was no denying the enthusiasm of the Viennese, although some maintained that they were less delighted to see the German army and turned away in silence. Others have pointed out that the crowds were swollen by hordes of provincial Nazis who had been bussed in to boost numbers. Quite a lot of those who came out to gawk were mere
Adabeis
, but that does not account for all of them by any means. Certainly appearances supported Göring’s view that “apart from the Jews in Vienna and part of the black ravens, the Catholics, there is nobody against us.”