Hitler

ferocious attack, lasting till lunchtime, on Austria’s long history of ‘treason’ against the German people. ‘And this I tell you, Herr Schuschnigg,’ he reportedly threatened. ‘I am firmly determined to make an end of all this … I have a historic mission, and this I will fulfil because Providence has destined me to do so … You don’t believe you can hold me up for half an hour, do you? Who knows? Perhaps I’ll appear sometime overnight in Vienna; like a spring storm. Then you’ll see something.’
    Meanwhile, Ribbentrop had presented Guido Schmidt with Hitler’s ultimatum: an end to all restrictions on National Socialist activity in Austria, an amnesty for those Nazis arrested, the appointment of Seyß Inquart to the Ministry of the Interior with control over the security forces, another Nazi sympathizer, Edmund Glaise-Horstenau (a former military archivist and historian), to be made War Minister, and steps to begin the integration of the Austrian economic system with that of Germany. The demands were to be implemented by 15 February – timing determined by Hitler’s major speech on foreign policy, set for 20 February.
    Hitler threatened to march into Austria if his demands were not met in full. Schuschnigg refused to buckle to the threats. Only the Austrian President, he declared, could make cabinet appointments and grant an amnesty. He could not guarantee that such action would be taken. As Schuschnigg was retreating for further discussions with Schmidt, Hitler’s bellow for Keitel to come immediately could be heard throughout the house. When the general, arriving at the double in Hitler’s study, asked what was required of him, he was told: ‘Nothing. Sit down.’ After ten minutes of inconsequential chat, he was told to go.
    But the impact of the charade was not lost on Schuschnigg. The threat of military invasion seemed very real. Eventually, Papen brokered a number of alterations in the German demands and, under pressure,the Austrians finally accepted the chief difficulty, the appointment of Seyß-Inquart. Hitler told Schuschnigg: ‘For the first time in my life I have made up my mind to reconsider a final decision.’ With a heavy heart, Schuschnigg signed.
    Two weeks later, when laying down directives for the restless Austrian NSDAP, which had threatened to upset developments through its own wild schemes for disturbances, Hitler emphasized that he wanted to proceed along ‘the evolutionary way whether or not the possibility of success could be envisaged at present. The protocol signed by Schuschnigg,’ he went on, ‘was so far-reaching that if implemented in full the Austrian Question would automatically be solved. A solution through force was something he did not now want if it could in any way be avoided, since for us the foreign-policy danger is diminishing from year to year and the military strength becoming year by year greater.’ Hitler’s approach was at this time still in line with Göring’s evolutionary policy. He plainly reckoned that the tightening of the thumb-screws on Schuschnigg at the February meeting had done the trick. Austria was no more than a German satellite. Extinction of the last remnants of independence would follow as a matter of course. Force was not necessary.
    In line with the ‘Trojan horse’ policy of eroding Austrian independence from the inside, following the Berchtesgaden meeting Hitler had complied with demands from Seyß-Inquart – matching earlier representations by Schuschnigg himself – to depose Captain Josef Leopold, the leader of the unruly Austrian National Socialists, and his associates. Even so, the meeting at the Berghof and Hitler’s speech on 20 February, his first broadcast in full on Austrian radio – stating that ‘in the long run’ it was ‘unbearable’ for Germans to look on the separation of 10 million fellow Germans by borders imposed through peace treaties – had given the Austrian Nazis a new wind. Disturbances mounted, especially in the province of Styria, in the south-east of the country, where resentment at the loss of territory to the new state of Yugoslavia after the First World War had helped fuel the radicalism that had turned the region into a hotbed of Austrian Nazism. The situation was by now highly volatile, the Nazis barely controllable by Austrian state forces. Schuschnigg’s own emotional appeals to Austrian patriotism and independence had merely exacerbated the tension within the country and