Free 1938 by Giles MacDonogh

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.
    When around midnight, Göring heard that Miklas had given in, he collected Goebbels from his table, and together they drove to Hitler at the Chancellery to listen to the first broadcast of the “Horst Wessel-Lied” from Vienna. Only one thing marred Göring’s enjoyment of the evening: the news that Himmler was already on his way to Vienna. Göring called Seyss to tell him that he did not want the wire-tapping services to fall into the hands of his rival. He alone held the bugging monopoly for the Reich.
     
    EXPATRIATES AND German Jews were also tuning into Austrian wireless to learn of the country’s fate. Schuschnigg’s broadcast had ended with the Austrian national anthem followed by some Austrian classical music. When listeners heard the “Horst Wessel-Lied,” they realized Austrian freedom was dead. Naturally Goebbels thought otherwise: “The bells of freedom have struck for this land too.” In Nuremberg, Julius Streicher’s Stürmer exulted in the emergence of “Greater Germany” and the end of “Jewish rule.”
    In the luxurious Zu den drei Husaren, that evening’s atmosphere was jubilant. A Mr. and Mrs. Friedrich Frankau of Montreal, Canada, signed the restaurant’s golden book: “We are both very happy to have been in Vienna the very day Austria became a part of the greatest country in the world. God be forever with the Austrians.” Over the next few weeks others would make their way to Vienna’s best (and still Jewish-owned) restaurant. On the 15th Edmund Veesenmayer, who achieved fame later for his role in deporting Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz, praised the day when “our Führer’s homeland returned to our great, ethnic-German Reich. After a hard struggle the finest day of my life and at the same time the day of commitment towards our Sudeten-German brothers.” A table full of German railway officials decorated the restaurant’s book with a swastika.

    The next day, March 12, an excited Göring called his friend Prince Philip of Hesse in Rome. He wanted to make sure that Mussolini was happy. Prince Philip told him that a swastika was already flying from the Austrian consulate—an indication that pro-Nazi elements had overpowered anyone loyal to the Austrian republic. The king of Italy (Philip’s father-in-law) had informed him that Colonel Beck—the Polish foreign minister—had relayed the news that 25,000 Viennese Jews had asked for passports. “The view is here that it’s best to open the frontiers for a while so that the whole scum gets out.”
    Göring made no secret of what he wanted in his reply: “All right, but not with any foreign currency. The Jews can go, but they will kindly leave behind their money, which they have only stolen.”
    The Anschluss not only scattered the political elite of the Corporate State; it struck terror into the hearts of the Jews. Up until 1938, Austria’s Jews could be broadly divided into Zionists and assimilators. Once Hitler arrived, assimilation was to prove a dead letter, while, for Zionists, the dream of a Palestinian homeland was still a possibility. The