Bolivia was considered ‘the Rolls Royce of emigrations’. Entry cost £36 or £50 if travelling from Brazil. On the other hand the fee was waived if the immigrant had a job to go to. There were further complications from the point of view of transit to the landlocked state: Brazil was closed to non-baptized Jews and in theory even Christian Jews had to have been baptized as infants (Grimes’s backdated certificates might have helped here). Argentina admitted Jews only if invited by a relative.49 It had nonetheless been clear before the conference that South America was a rather more promising destination than the north, but at the meeting they created difficulties, and the conference closed more doors than it opened.50 To some extent the Americans were to blame for this: they were worried that a large influx of German immigrants would upset their trading arrangements in Latin America, especially if something like the Ha’avara scheme were introduced.51
Some Austrian Jews had also been allowed to attend the conference: Arthur Kuffler was there from the Gildemeester Aktion, together with the ear specialist Heinrich von Neumann, who had a brief to sell the Jews to anyone who would buy them. There was also Berthold Storfer, who was negotiating with the American Jewish charities HICEM and JOINT. They were offering similar ideas to Gildemeester: a waiver on property rights and a lump sum payment into Nazi coffers.52
THE AUSTRIAN CHURCH
As Austrians began to grumble about Nazi rule, Berlin chose its moment to move against the Church. Innitzer had failed to continue his cooperation with the authorities and it was decided that the Nazis had no need to observe the Austrian Concordat by which the Church’s role had been guaranteed under the Corporate State. The doubtful morality of a few monks in the past was used for propaganda purposes in justification.53
On 2 June Schuschnigg had been equally astonished and delighted to learn that he got married – by proxy. His brother had stood in for him. A package arrived containing a wedding ring. His pleasure was interrupted by the shouts of his tormenter informing him that he should have hanged Innitzer rather than Planetta, the man who killed his predecessor, Dollfuss. The Cardinal had failed to placate the Nazis. Schuschnigg cried out rather lamely, ‘But Innitzer never killed anybody.’54
The temptation must have been strong: in the diocese of St Pölten alone, the bishop and eleven abbeys owned 35,439 hectares of land (some of it in Romania), and there were over a hundred well-endowed abbeys and convents. The first move was to secularize education on 19 July and move state schools into the vacant spaces. On 24 July Hitler’s secretary Lammers informed Bürckel that there was no Concordat operating in Austria, and he could do what he liked.55 On the 27th, the Nazi authorities began to take over the Cistercian abbey of Lilienfeld and majestic Melk on the Danube. With time these buildings would fill up with squaddies, POWs and injured soldiers. A Napola was established in the great Benedictine abbey of Göttweig.56
GÖRING BACK AT WORK
The Nazis boycotted Evian, but vainly hoped the conference would come up with the sort of offer they could not refuse, whether in cash or territory. Goebbels had been told that the ‘hole’ in Germany’s western defences had been plugged and that there was foreign currency in the bank (which was doubtful) but that exports were down – bad news, as it meant no foreign currency was coming in.57 The man who should have been looking after all this was away. Göring was wallowing in fatherhood on his yacht Carin II. He went up to the island of Sylt, where Emmy was nursing little Edda, and then to Denmark, to buy pastries from the famous Christian Bach bakery. He travelled down Germany’s waterways playing skat in remote villages and turning up the volume on his phonograph. In the morning he would regale the rustics with whole Wagner operas from the boat’s loudspeakers.58
He went back to work on the 8th, when there was a conference at Carinhall at which the chief aircraft manufacturers were present. Göring informed them of the latest intelligence concerning the Western powers. Britain was opposed to war, and he did not think the French would fight on their own. Chamberlain was still making noises in the House about finding a solution to the Sudeten Question. America was unpredictable. The Jews were dismissed as troublemakers. Claude Dornier, Ernst Heinkel and Willi Messerschmidt were told that the war with Czechoslovakia would begin with a provocation, but it would be no more than eyewash, and the world would see all too clearly that the Germans were to blame. The compensation was in the form of markets: Germany would control them, and the industrialists would be richer than ever.59
The next day he entertained the Italian Chief of Staff, Alberto Pariani, and repeated his claim that no one would go to the aid of the Czechs. General Pariani disagreed, and warned Göring that he needed to slay the enemy with one blow. On 11 July Göring held a conference on securing manpower for the air industry. The problem was acute in Germany, and in the end the country would draft in millions of slave labourers to leave the Germans free to fight. That day he conferred with a building contractor to find out if the new autobahns might be used as emergency runways. He discussed air-raid shelters and underground factories. He was back at the grindstone.60
As early as 16 June, Hitler had reiterated his intention of grasping Prague, but was isolated within his own entourage.61 He had support from Goebbels, who worshipped his master, the bellicose Ribbentrop and, to a more limited degree, Himmler; but Göring was reluctant to commit Germany to war. He was behind the despatch of Hitler’s former commanding officer and present adjutant, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, to London on 18 July. Wiedemann had played a number of roles, including prizefighter and roué.62 Göring wanted to avail himself of the services of his lover, the remarkable Princess Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst, a forty-seven-year-old Viennese Jewess who had charmed her way into Hitler’s intimate circle and lived in London’s Dorchester Hotel.
Princess Stephanie was well known to Halifax and was able to make the introduction. She was summoned to Carinhall to prepare the way for a visit by Göring or a possible state visit by Hitler. Hitler smiled on the plan, but Ribbentrop was naturally not to hear of it. Göring told Princess Stephanie that it was no bluff: Hitler was going to declare war soon. Halifax was worried about receiving Göring, who was rather too large to bring over discreetly. He met Wiedemann at his residence in Eaton Square on 18 July, with a nod and a wink from the Prime Minister. Wiedemann told him that Hitler would ‘solve’ the Sudeten problem by violence if Britain failed to mediate.
As he flew home, Wiedemann saw an article in the Daily Herald that alluded to his secret mission. The author was another Viennese Jew, Willi Frischauer, whose brother Eddie would eventually marry Stephanie’s half-sister Gina Kaus. The article hit the Wilhelmstrasse like a sixteen-inch shell, making Ribbentrop predictably furious. It excited almost as much fury in Prague, and the minister in London, Jan Masaryk, penned an angry letter to Halifax claiming there was no decency in the world and that he was being manipulated by a Jewess. Wiedemann went to the Berghof to face the music. Hitler was walking with Unity Mitford when he arrived. Göring’s London visit had already been ruled out. Ribbentrop forced Wiedemann to write an undertaking never to meddle in foreign affairs again. He was eventually banished to San Francisco, where he was appointed Consul-General. Princess Stephanie survived the storm for the time being.63 She was awarded the theatre director Max Reinhardt’s country seat, Schloss Leopoldskron, near Salzburg, where she entertained lavishly.
AFTER EVIAN
Italy’s racial policy was falling into line with Germany’s. On 13 July a manifesto was published against the Jews, provoking the Pope to speak out against fascist ideas on race. ‘That is wonderful!’ noted Goebbels, ‘but how cheeky these priests are.’ The Pope did not desist, and condemned racialism once again at the end of the month.64
With Italy closing its doors, the easiest path to safety for an Austrian Jew was still a quick dash across the green border at Bratislava. Sometimes the Gestapo simply pushed the Jews across, as in the case of some 800 reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to be in Brno on 10 August.65 From
Brno there was a chance of getting on a Danube steamer. The first refugees to arrive in Greece were recorded in July. Here they waited until they could find someone to bribe to take them across the Mediterranean. It could be a long wait and risky too. In April 1939 the British fired on the Aghios Nicolaos, killing one Jew and wounding others. The ship sailed back to Athens. There were eighty-three former Austrians on board.66
The Dutch and Belgians were showing their teeth, evicting Jews without transit papers, even when they had visas for another country.67 As the Jews had generally used up their money getting as far as they had, they had to reimburse the authorities for their repatriation. Sometimes the Gestapo or customs officers connived at pushing them back over the border in these circumstances, but only if they could prove they had paid all their taxes. Some even helped by changing their papers for them. In Aachen there was a Gestapo-man called Nägele who charged 100–200 RM to take Jews over the border. This sort of behaviour further incensed the Swiss police chief, Rothmund, and he insisted that Germany print the visas in the passports. The Italians now affirmed that they would take no more Jews with Portuguese visas, as the Portuguese had told them they were worthless without permission from the Portuguese Minister of the Interior. The Italians made it clear that these hopefuls could not stay in Italy either.
HITLER IN BAYREUTH
The Munich-based Festival of German Art opened on 8 July. This year there was a reception for the artists favoured by the regime, and a chance to see the Third Reich’s latest monument, the Führerbau, which would come into its own at the Conference in September. Karl Krauss conducted a performance of Lohengrin at the Opera House the next day, when the Führer in person graced the Reichs Conference on the Arts, where the painter Adolf Ziegler presented his report on the artistic health of the nation. The solemn opening of the Great Art Exhibition occurred on the 10th, providing Hitler with the chance to make another speech. Despite early rain outside, a procession of floats, historical costumes and animals thronged the streets for the Day of German Art. Goebbels found the costumes very effective, and admired the pretty women.
The year before, Hitler had issued guidelines to German artists: they were not to use any colour other than those perceived by the human eye – a reference to the wilful pigmentation of Expressionists and Fauves. Goebbels must have winced. Not so long ago he had had to take down his Noldes, because the Führer had voiced his displeasure at seeing them on his walls.68 In 1938 Hitler took aim at Jews, Dadaists and Cubists. The exhibition was revolutionary that year for containing a brace of industrial scenes among the Germanic landscapes, Nordic nudes and scenes of brave SA-men toiling for national glory. There were the usual works by Ziegler, displaying the full-frontal German womanhood which had led to his being dubbed the ‘Master of German Pubic Hair’, and sculptures by Josef Thorak, known as ‘Professor Thorax’ because of his obsession with the bodybuilder physique.69
Hitler also lent huge support to the exhibition, buying no fewer than 202 works for his own use or for various Party buildings at a cost of over half a million RM.70 It transpired that the modern works went mostly into storage as Hitler favoured old German masters for his homes. Goebbels prudently followed suit, but there was no danger of him buying any Noldes any more: they were exhibited at the Degenerate Art show. In the evening there was a special performance at the opera and a number of concerts given by ‘outstanding soloists’.71
Munich was the capital of ‘German’ art. The House of German Art played host every winter to an exhibition of architecture, arts and crafts. It had been designed by Hitler’s quondam favourite architect, Troost, and officially opened the year before. The Munichois were quick to dub the building ‘Athens Railway Shed’ or the ‘White Pudding Station’.72 Troost had committed suicide in 1934, but his widow, Gerdy, remained a member of Hitler’s circle. Despite the rigid limits imposed on the German artist’s imagination, there were rich pickings for painters and other artists in the Third Reich. In 1938 alone there were 170 competitions with prizes totalling 150 million RM. The sculptor Arno Breker earned nearly 100,000 RM that year.73
After art, it was time for music. Following the success of the Degenerate Art exhibition the previous year, there was a Degenerate Music show in Düsseldorf. Jewish composers were pilloried along with those who founded their rhythms on jazz or adhered to the twelve-tone scale. The exhibition was mounted by Severus Ziegler, the manager of the Weimar Theatre and brother of Adolf, who had put on the Degenerate Art show. The Ziegler brothers had the full support of Goebbels. In May 1938 the Nazis tried to make a little money out of their salon des refusés and created a Commission for the Evaluation of Confiscated Works of Degenerate Art to sell them to foreign buyers or exchange them ‘for good masters’: ‘We are hoping in this way to make a little money from this manure.’74 What failed to sell was burned in March 1939.75
Richard Strauss was not considered degenerate, but Hitler did not care for his work. On 24 July his new opera Der Friedenstag was premiered as part of the Festival. It was possibly the last international cultural gathering in Germany before Allied soldiers arrived in 1945. Der Friedenstag was one of two one-act operas Strauss staged that year. Set during the Thirty Years War, it ended with a paean to peace, which was not exactly what Hitler had in mind. Even worse, the original idea had come from Stefan Zweig, who was not only a Jew but a pacifist.iv Hitler did not attend.76,77
On the 17th Goebbels proceeded to his alma mater, Heidelberg, for the theatre festival. A performance of Faust was staged in the castle courtyard with Werner Krauss as Mephisto, Werner Hinz as Faust and Maria Wimmer as Gretchen. Goebbels was at the height of his popularity. In Innsbruck he was showered with flowers. He went on to Linz where he religiously took the trip to Leonding to see round his master’s childhood home and the cemetery where his mother and father were buried: ‘Eerie feeling that the parents of such a great historical genius rest here. I stayed standing by their graves for a long time.’ In the village he met people who had been at school with Hitler: he had always been the leader.78
The Salzburg Festival had gone ahead, but without Max Reinhardt, Bruno Walter or Toscanini. Furtwängler, however, had come to the rescue and agreed to conduct four performances of Die Meistersinger – surely the most frequently aired opera of the Third Reich. Goebbels thought the Festival Theatre ‘dreadful . . . proper Viennese kitsch . . . it should be pulled down’. The conductor merited praise, but the rest of the performance was awful. Hitler’s favourite composer, Lehár, was still having a hard time. He had lost his favourite librettist to Buchenwald and was having problems keeping the police off his Jewish wife. Goebbels intervened.79 The Führer may have preferred operetta but, as far as his public persona was concerned, Wagner captured the German soul. On the 23rd Hitler and Goebbels met up at the Bayreuth Festival. The Führer was accompanied by a squad of his Leibstandarte as he felt that his proximity to the Czech frontier merited particular attention to his security. In fact 1,500 Sudeten Germans had crossed the border to cheer on their real Führer – Henlein was merely his stooge.
Hitler was in the best of moods. It was decided that Wagner was wrong for Salzburg, and that it should focus on Mozart. The talks between the two men were by no means restricted to musical matters. Wiedemann was in London buying time. The generals in Berlin were ‘shitting themselves’ because Hitler was going to lead them to war. He approved Goebbels’ campaign against the Jews. In ten years he would have got rid of them. The princes were also giving him trouble, particularly Weimar and Dessau. On 30 July there was a wave of arrests as the Gestapo mopped up well-known monarchists.80
The Bayreuth programme that year contained guidelines on how Wagner’s music was to be interpreted by National Socialists. Lohengrin taught Germans to be hard, while Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger made it clear that they were to honour all things German. The Ring was naturally about the seriousness of the racial problem, while Parsifal was not about Christianity at all, rather ‘the struggle towards a life made divine’
.81 Emil Preetorius had designed some radical sets for the production of Tristan und Isolde, which both Goebbels and the Führer disliked. Max Lorenz was a ‘fat and ursine’ Tristan, even if he sang magnificently. Goebbels thought the sets for Parsifal awful, and the sacred spear toppled over during the performance.82
Hitler, on the other hand, was always happy in Bayreuth; indeed, he was one of the few Nazi bigwigs to enjoy the music. Goebbels thought it useful propaganda; the others endured it, as did the proletarian rank and file.83 Hitler was lodged in the splendour of Siegfried Wagner’s home and for the performances he sat in King Ludwig’s royal box. On Wagner’s birthday that year he initiated the Richard Wagner Research Centre under Otto Strobel with the intention of purging any unwelcome Jews from the story of Wagner’s life, and to banish the suggestion that Wagner’s father Ludwig Geyer might have been a Jew.v
Furtwängler was being difficult about Nuremberg, as he thought it might harm his image abroad. Goebbels had no patience with his circumspection and vowed to put pressure on him.84 Hitler would have been able to hear the more pedestrian Franz von Hoesslin conducting Parsifal again in 1938. Not only was Hoesslin a quarter Jewish, he was married to the singer Erna Liebenthal, who was completely so. Bormann was trying to have Hoesslin removed from the list of artists allowed to perform at Bayreuth, but Winifred was able to invoke Hitler’s protecting aegis.85 It was Hitler who insisted that the festival go ahead every year, rather than every second year.
At a small gathering in the new Führerbau the Czech situation was discussed with suitable outrage. According to one source Hitler merely laughed, and admitted quite shamelessly that it was he and not the Czechs who was ‘the instigator of the violence’. He also boasted of the impregnability of the West Wall, which he was building so that Germans could sleep soundly.86 Hitler had to miss Siegfried, as he and Goebbels travelled to Breslau to see the Gymnastics Festival on the 30th, taking Unity Mitford with them. She had suffered for her love of Hitler. In June she was allegedly insulted and stripped by the Czechs.87 She had earned herself the name of Unity Mitfahrt (‘Hitch-hiker’) by her travels with the Führer.
1938: Hitler's Gamble Page 20
