Taken from The New Statesman 26 March 1938
Early in March 1938, Adolf Hitler incorporated the independent state of Austria into his Greater German Reich by force. As this terrifying eyewitness account demonstrates, the Austrians were divided in their feelings about whether the Nazi takeover was a liberation or a step towards war. But nobody reading this vivid, anonymous despatch, sent from the safety of Zurich, could have doubted any longer Nazi Germany's barbarism.
Selected by Robert Taylor
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT NOW IN ZURICH]
I HAVE been privileged to witness one of the most frightful acts of violence perpetrated under the pretence of “peaceful liberation” that modern history can show. Vienna on Saturday, the day after the collapse of Schuschnigg’s Government, was a completely transformed city. It was as if the old Vienna, which, even in the days of darkness that fell upon it after 1933, one had not been able to cease to love because it remained itself in spite of everything, had been wiped out overnight with one sweep of history’s sponge. German bombing planes roared incessantly overhead, pouring in from the north-west in ever increasing numbers, and circling low and repeatedly over all districts of the city; they were greeted with frenzied delight by the Nazi supporters who thronged the streets, but one can imagine that in many factories and apartment houses of the outer districts they provoked a different thought, precisely the thought they were there to provoke—that even the slightest resistance was useless. I have heard people say, that they couldn’t sleep all the first few nights they were there. They acted, in fact, as a form of third degree peculiarly crushing to the impressionable and pacifist-minded Viennese. Their ominous droning was reinforced by the rumble of the German troops, the lorries, the gun-carriages, the tanks, that very soon after began to roll through all the main streets.
All Sunday this movement went on, was increased; no wonder, the dykes were down and the sea was pouring in. The troops had arrived to liberate the oppressed Austrians— so the press, gleichgeschaltet with almost unbelievable rapidity, deliriously proclaimed. But as still more troops appeared, and still more aeroplanes, and busload after busload of German schupos and German frontier police and German gendarmes and German S.S., this liberation began to look a little strange even to some of those who had celebrated most boisterously on Friday night. By Sunday night all the biggest hotels had been cleared of their normal guests and were filled with German officers and their staffs, except the Imperial for which a higher honour was reserved, that of receiving (after a total fumigation of guests and personnel) Adolf Hitler himself. It was almost impossible to find a place in the restaurants of the Inner Town, so crowded out were they with German uniforms, while in the proletarian districts house-maids and shop-girls were already swooning on the arms of their blond deliverers from the North. By Thursday those who had told one that all this was just to make a suitable parade for Hitler’s triumphal entry, were reduced to silence. Walking down the Ring one saw every evidence that the Germans considered themselves the masters of a conquered country. The Reichswehr flag waved over the sentry-guarded Grand Hotel where the German General staff was quartered, and still troops were thundering by in their camouflaged lorries and vans. Placed there suddenly without any knowledge of what had happened, one could only have imagined that the front was a few dozen miles away, and that war was already raging. And if one did know, there was only one thought possible—when will it begin?
Austria had ceased to exist. But not only that, Austrians had ceased to have any say in their own affairs. It was— within the space of less than a week—the German army, the German police, the German S.S., the German politicians who were running the place. The famous incident on the Ballhausplatz, when foreign journalists and Austrian staff— officers were held prisoners during Hitler’s speech, crystallised the position. Shouts of Sieg Hell! were still re-echoing through the streets from the marching processions of Austrian Nazis, but there were already signs that in more than one section of the population doubts were beginning to insinuate themselves, “ It can’t last “—“ This is the beginning of a war”—” It’s all over with us Austrians now, and for good”— these remarks were to be heard, and not from Jews, nor Marxists, nor Monarchists, but ordinary business and working- people. Admittedly not from the very young, who were still racing about, at twice the normal Viennese speed, in their new uniforms and newly commandeered cars, on “official” business. Yet even there, all was not well; some had begun to scratch their heads, and wonder why the Germans were getting all the plums. Worse still, the German troops, asked in fervent tones whether they didn’t find Vienna lifeless and empty after the joys of Berlin and Munich, drily replied that there wasn’t any life at all in Berlin, and that food seemed to be a good deal more abundant in the beleaguered city they had just saved, not to mention the difference in prices. They even—horror of horrors—pointed to the smart and bewilderingly varied uniforms of the German Party officials as they whirled past, and called the owners parasites. I can vouch myself for at least two cases where it was a German soldier who gave the first cold douche to the Austrian enthusiast.
Many correspondents have commented on the sinister change that seemed to have come over the Austrian character in twenty-four hours. I experienced this myself in many cafés and restaurants, and most of all out in the country; and the stories of the contemptuousness and ruthlessness of the new officials towards foreigners at the frontiers have not been exaggerated. It is far from true of all Austrians even so, but there is no doubt that at the moment the middle-classes as a whole and their hangers-on are suffering from a sort of megalomania; perhaps it is only to be expected since they have been citizens of a small and defenceless country for so long. The rumours and the chatter that one hears in the trams and shops are fantastic. The return of South Tirol was being openly celebrated at one moment; I overheard one man explaining to another—after a jubilant description how two Jewish stands in the big Market Hall had been sacked—that Slovenia would be the next addition to Greater Germany (“ They’re all Germans there ! “) and that the Jugoslavs anyway had only got hold of the country because the priests had supplied them with rifles to shoot from the church-towers. I heard an excited baker’s wife telling a tobacconist that the swine Schuschnigg had actually intended to make the school— children vote openly in their classrooms (it is well known that no one under 24 was to have had a vote); there was no limit to credulity or hatred in those days.
While the “Aryan” middle-classes and the Lumpenproletariat were celebrating their triumph, the terror was getting to work with merciless speed. If they had not decided to make a last stand for Schuschnigg, Socialists and Jews could have escaped. As it was, they were caught like rats in a trap by the lightning invasion, and were all the more marked because they had come out in the open as opponents of the Nazis only twenty- four hours before. The news that a Government spokesman in the House of Commons had talked about assurances from the German Government that they would be mild in their treatment of Austrian Jews, Catholics, and Marxists, sounded like news from Bedlam after one had seen with one’s own eyes and heard with one’s own ears what was happening to them. All ideas that they would be treated in an “Austrian” fashion proved completely miscalculated. The Germans were in charge and proceeded in German style. The desperate dash for the frontier was unavailing except in a tiny minority of cases, not only because the Nazis were leaving no loopholes but also because nearly all surrounding countries pusillanimously refused admittance to the émigrés. The scenes of agonised farewell at the Vienna stations were only exceeded by the scenes of arrest, indignity, and plunder at the frontiers. Night after night in all districts the visitations went on, the S.S. dealing with the “political enemies,” and frequently taking the ambulance with them, the S.A. with the Jews. Hundreds were hauled off to prison and have not been heard of since, thousands had their money taken from them, including nearly all the famous psycho-analysts and intellectuals; shops were rifled, windows smashed, cars simply stolen from their owners and taken off for a drunken party with the proceeds of the raid. It is true that a large riff-raff of the population concealed itself under brown shirts in the first few days to plunder for plunder’s sake, but since the Nazis officially forbade it, it has, to my knowledge, gone on unchecked. I can vouch for at least three cases, in the 2nd, 3rd, and 10th districts where Jews were made to wash out “Vote Yes for Schuschnigg!” from the pavements while Nazis stood round jeering and cursing. The plight of Vienna’s enormous Jewish population is indescribable. One Jew ran into a café near the Central Telegraph Office, screaming Hell Hitler, and brandishing a knife with which he slashed at several people before cutting his own throat. Hundreds and hundreds of others have made a less spectacular end to a life grown intolerable and insane. An equally horrible fate awaits the known leaders of the workers; thousands are moving from sleeping-place to sleeping-place every night, hunted and haunted by the thought that they will most likely be sent to Dachau if caught—and if alive after their first treatment.
And was there no resistance at all, will be asked? It may seem, from England, almost incredible after the display of support for Schuschnigg as late as Friday afternoon among the organised workers, not to mention the Catholics, Jews, Monarchists and liberal-minded non-political people of every sort. But in England the pitch which the organisation of terror has reached on the Continent is unknown. I have already mentioned the effect of the aeroplanes and troops; armed guards on Saturday morning already in the factories were another measure which decided the workers to hang out their Nazi flags and the unemployed to do the same in the hope of work after years of misery. Remember that on Thursday the Internationale was being openly sung in hundreds of workers’ meetings, and the greeting of Freiheit was heard even on the Kaerntnerstrasse: it will help you to assess the value of the Nazi flags that hang even from the proletarian windows of the Goethe-Hof to-day. And what Government could be sure of its police force after witnessing the lightning change-over of the Viennese police, that “finest police-force in the world?” Perhaps even Hitler’s henchmen will begin to have their doubts soon. But whatever happens now to the unhappy Austrians, it is clear that their freedom can only be gained in the future as part of the freedom of the whole of Greater Germany. Vienna is now not only a conquered, but a provincial town.
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