I t was still dark when Chancellor von Schuschnigg’s phone dragged him from the depths of an exhausted sleep. The Austrian Chancellor groped for the bedside-lamp switch and looked at his watch: 5.30 a.m.
‘Schuschnigg.’
‘Es tut mir leid Sie zu wecken, Herr Bundeskanzler,’ the Austrian Chief of Police apologised, ‘but the Germans have closed the border at Salzburg. All rail traffic has been halted and I have reports German troops are massing on the other side.’
Von Schuschnigg thanked him and hung up. Wearily he swung his feet out of bed and headed for the bathroom. An hour later his black Mercedes turned into the Ballhausplatz. A light dusting of snow glistened in the headlights.
Herr Seyss-Inquart, a young pro-Nazi lawyer, was waiting for him in the otherwise eerily quiet Chancellery.
‘It was a grave mistake to take a plebiscite to the people, Herr Bundeskanzler.’
‘The people were asked whether or not they wanted a free, independent Austria, Ja oder Nein,’ von Schuschnigg responded angrily.
‘Hitler is furious. He sees it as an act of betrayal, a broken promise.’
‘You seem to have a direct line to Berlin,’ von Schuschnigg observed icily.
‘These are difficult times. I’m merely trying to achieve what is best for the Austrian people.’
‘We’re all trying to achieve that. And as far as promises go, I seem to remember we had an agreement with Herr Hitler that he would respect Austrian independence.’
‘He will still hold to that, Herr Bundeskanzler, but on one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘You are to resign and I am to take your place,’ Seyss-Inquart replied bluntly, his face inscrutable.
‘Anything else?’ von Schuschnigg growled.
‘I can assure you such a move will save a lot of bloodshed. It is for the good of the Austrian people and for them alone.’
‘That is your view. I will give you my answer directly.’
The young women in the basement of the main telephone exchange in Vienna were keenly aware that something was afoot. For three hours, in a flurry of activity, they’d connected the President and the Bundeskanzler to some of the most important people in Austria and Europe. By early afternoon, von Schuschnigg and President Miklas had both given way to the inevitable.
Von Schuschnigg stared pensively out his office window at the snowy courtyard. Perhaps the agreement to restore some prominent Nazi officers to their posts in the police force had been a mistake, he thought grimly. The Chief of Police had warned him the government could no longer rely on its own police force. The army would fight, but von Schuschnigg knew they would eventually be overwhelmed. The cost in young Austrian lives would be horrific. It would be better, he’d assured the President, to accede to the German Fuhrer’s wishes.
Her boutique devoid of customers, and she herself fearful for the safety of both Levi and her children, Ramona listened to the radio with growing disbelief.
‘The roads are lined with huge crowds anticipating the arrival of the Fuhrer,’ the announcer crowed. ‘In every town the swastika of the Third Reich flies regally from the Rathaus and other community buildings.’
Hitler’s massive six-wheel Mercedes crossed the Inn River at Braunau at 3.50 p.m. on the twelfth of March, flanked by a large motorcycle escort and a motorised armed guard. The convoy sped beneath the towering snow-capped Alps, slowing at the towns.
‘People are cheering and waving to the German Chancellor as he heads towards Linz, and then on to Vienna,’ the radio announcer continued, ‘where over a half a million people are expected to gather in the Heldenplatz, the Heroes’ Square.’
How could the Austrian people be so stupid, Ramona wondered incredulously.
Hitler’s driver eased the Mercedes into the Heldenplatz behind a German infantry band playing ‘In Treu Feste’. Hitler stood in the open back and raised his hand. The crowd went wild.
‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’
The beat was primeval, echoing ominously off the historic walls of the Hapsburg Palace. Huge red-and-black swastika banners flew from the palace, the Rathaus, the balcony of the Imperial Hotel and the Burgtheater. The crowd was still chanting as Hitler walked onto the palace balcony, placed both hands on the edge and looked down onto the sea of people below. Hitler was home. He moved in front of the microphone and held up his hand. The vast crowd fell silent.
‘Years ago I went forth from this country, and I bore within me precisely the same profession of faith which today fills my heart! Judge the depth of my emotion when after so many years I have been able to bring that profession of faith to its fulfilment.’ His stirring words echoed around the Heldenplatz. Young women wept as they chanted and a rising hysteria gripped the crowd.
‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’
The beat never lessened and Hitler stood motionless, triumphant over the city where, a quarter of a century before, he’d wandered the streets unshaven, his hair matted, a filthy black overcoat his only protection against the biting snows of winter, selling his postcard paintings on the street for a few paltry pfennigs, begging at the soup kitchen on the banks of the Danube while the patrons of the Burgtheater sipped champagne and delighted in the works of Mozart and Haydn and the waltzes of Johann Strauss. Vienna. It was the jewel in the crown of Austria. It was here Hitler had studied the Jews, and the more he’d studied, the more he’d come to detest the vile race. They were like maggots in a rotting body. There wasn’t any form of filth, prostitution or white-slave traffic they weren’t involved in. Innocent Christian girls were seduced by repulsive, crooked-legged Jew bastards. The Jews were the evil spirits leading his people astray. They must be destroyed, he mused. And they would be. Soon Adolf Eichmann would arrive in Vienna to implement his instructions.
Trembling, Ramona Weizman wiped away a tear and turned off the radio. She closed her boutique and went upstairs to the apartment to retrieve her prayer shawl.