1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

Stolz, Robert ref1

  Storfer, Berthold ref1

  Stosstrupp Hitler ref1

  Strang, Sir William (later Baron) ref1

  Strauss, Emil Georg von ref1

  Strauss, Richard ref1, ref2

  Der Friedenstag (opera) ref1

  Streicher, Julius

  appropriates Jewish property in Franconia ref1

  destroys Nuremberg synagogue ref1

  edits Der Stürmer ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  speech protesting against sympathy for Jews ref1

  Streitmann, Eduard ref1

  Stricker, Robert ref1, ref2, ref3

  Strobel, Otto ref1

  Stübel, Major (of Dresden) ref1

  Stülpnagel, Joachim von ref1, ref2

  Stürmer, Der (newspaper) ref1, ref2_note, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17

  Styria ref1, ref2, ref3

  Sudetenland

  Canaris encourages ethnic Germans ref1

  Chamberlain seeks solution for ref1

  December elections ref1

  German-speaking minority in ref1, ref2

  Germans move to Germany ref1

  Germany appropriates ref1, ref2

  Hitler’s claims to ref1, ref2

  hopes of incorporation in Greater Germany ref1, ref2

  Jews in ref1, ref2

  proposed cession to Germany ref1, ref2

  relief at German occupation ref1

  residents forcibly removed ref1

  Sweden: Jewish child immigrants ref1

  Swedish Church ref1, ref2

  Swedish Mission to Israel ref1

  Switzerland

  closes borders against Jews ref1

  grants transit visas to Jews ref1

  Jewish immigrants identified ref1, ref2

  Jewish refugees in ref1

  Taglich, Israel ref1

  Tanganyika ref1, ref2

  Tarrel, Pastor (Swedish) ref1

  Tauber, Richard ref1

  Tavs, Leopold ref1, ref2

  Taylor, J.W. (British Consul in Vienna) ref1, ref2

  Taylor, Myron C. ref1

  Temple, William, Archbishop of York (later of Canterbury) ref1

  Teschen ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

  Thorak, Josef ref1

  Tietjen, Hans ref1

  Times, The

  advocates ceding Sudetenland to Germany ref1

  on Ewige Jude exhibition ref1

  on illegal Jewish immigrants in Belgium ref1

  prints letter on persecution of Jews ref1

  reports release of Jews from Dachau ref1

  Tirpitz (German battleship) ref1

  Todt, Fritz ref1

  Toscanini, Arturo ref1, ref2

  Trencker, Othmar ref1

  Troost, Gerdy ref1, ref2

  Troost, Paul Ludwig ref1, ref2

  Trott zu Solz, Adam von ref1, ref2, ref3

  Trott zu Solz, Eleanor von, ref1

  Tucek, Karl ref1, ref2

  Udet, Ernst ref1

  Uganda ref1

  Ukraine ref1

  Ulex, General Wilhelm ref1

  United States

  condemns Reichskristallnacht ref1

  enters war ref1

  and German annexation of Austria ref1

  Hitler identifies with world Jewry ref1

  Jewish immigration ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  and persecution of European Jews ref1

  Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees ref1

  Urbana, Illinois ref1

  Vansittart, Sir Robert (later Baron) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Vaugoin, General Carl ref1_note

  Veesenmayer, Edmund ref1

  Versailles, Treaty of (1919) ref1, ref2_note, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy ref1, ref2

  Vienna

  Anglican Church baptizes Jews ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  arrests in ref1

  British Passport Office ref1

  corruption over Jewish property appropriation ref1

  Czech population evicted ref1

  Department II–112, SS–Oberabschnitt Donau ref1, ref2, ref3

  and enforcement of Nuremberg Laws ref1

  Gestapo in ref1, ref2

  Himmler visits ref1, ref2

  Hitler visits ref1, ref2

  informers in ref1

  Jewish bullion and jewels confiscated ref1

  Jewish businesses and assets taken over ref1, ref2, ref3

  Jewish children leave ref1

  Jewish emigration from ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Jewish-owned newspapers shut down ref1

  Jews in ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  MI6 station evacuated ref1

  Nazi behaviour in ref1, ref2

  persecution and humiliation of Jews in ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  and plebiscite on Anschluss, ref1

  property appropriated ref1

  in Reichskristallnacht ref1, ref2

  rich Jews arrested after Kristallnacht ref1

  ruling on Sachertorte ref1

  suicides ref1, ref2

  Theatre Festival ref1

  and transports to Dachau ref1

  unauthorized Jews evicted ref1

  unemployment ref1

  see also Austria Völkische Beobachter ref1, ref2

  Volkswagen Kraft-durch-Freude car ref1

  Vuillemin, General Joseph ref1

  Wachtel, Henry L. ref1

  Waffen-SS ref1, ref2, ref3

  Wagner, Adolf ref1, ref2

  Wagner, Richard ref1

  Wagner, Wieland ref1

  Wagner, Winifred ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Wagner, Wolf Siegfried (‘Wummi’) ref1

  Waitz, Cardinal Sigismond, Archbishop of Salzburg ref1, ref2

  Walbrook, Anton (earlier Wohlbrück) ref1

  Waldman, Monty ref1, ref2

  Walker, Alexander ref1_note

  Walker, Frank (British Vice Consul in Vienna) ref1

  Walter, Bruno ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Wannsee Conference ref1

  Warburg Plan ref1

  Ward Price, George ref1, ref2

  Weber, Christian ref1

  Wedel, Graf von ref1

  Wedgwood, Josiah ref1

  Wehrmacht see army

  Weill, Kurt ref1

  Weinbauer, Joseph ref1

  Weingärtner, Sepp (‘der Bayernseppl’) ref1

  Weinheber, Josef ref1

  Weinmann family ref1

  Weis, Ahron Ernst ref1

  Weisbach, Hans ref1

  Weissmandl, Rabbi Michael Dov ref1

  Weizmann, Chaim ref1

  Weizsäcker, Ernst von

  on Beck’s resignation ref1

  Canaris meets ref1

  drafts Munich Agreement ref1

  friendship with Attolico ref1

  and Goerdeler’s mission ref1

  opposes Hitler-Chamberlain meeting ref1

  in opposition to Nazi regime ref1, ref2, ref3

  promoted Permanent Under-Secretary of State ref1

  and proposed attack on Czechoslovakia ref1, ref2

  protests against Dachau conditions ref1

  Welczek, Graf Johannes ref1

  Wellesz, Egon ref1

  Wenninger, Ralph ref1

  Werfel, Franz ref1, ref2

  Die wahre Geschichte vom wiederhergestellten Kreuz ref1

  Werkmann, General Baron Karl ref1

  Wessely, Paula ref1

  West Wall ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Wiechert, Ernst ref1, ref2

  Wiedemann, Captain Fritz ref1, ref2, ref3

  Wiener Journal ref1

  Wiener Zeitung ref1

  Wiesl, Wolfgang von ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6_note, ref7, ref8

  Wiley, John ref1, ref2

  Wilhelm II, Kaiser ref1, ref2, ref3

  Wilkinson, Ellen ref1

  Wilmowsky, Thilo von ref1


  Wilson, Sir Horace ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  Wimmer, Maria ref1

  Windsor, Edward, Duke of ref1, ref2

  Winterstein, Robert Georg ref1, ref2

  Winterton, Edward Turnour, 6th Earl ref1, ref2, ref3

  Wisliceny, Dieter ref1

  Witzleben, General Erwin von ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  Wlach, Oskar ref1

  Wohltat, Helmut ref1, ref2

  Wolf, Friedrich: Das Schiff auf der Donau ref1

  Wolff, Karl ref1, ref2

  Wöllersdorf concentration camp ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Wührer, Friedrich ref1

  Yarnall, Robert ref1, ref2

  Yugoslavia see Jugoslavia

  Zehner, General Wilhelm ref1

  Zeisl, Erich ref1, ref2

  Zelburg, Colonel Franz ref1

  Zernatto, Guido ref1, ref2

  Zerner, Ernst ref1

  Zettl, Gustav ref1

  Ziegler, Adolf ref1, ref2, ref3

  Ziegler, Severus ref1

  Zionism ref1, ref2

  Zionist National Union (Austria) ref1, ref2

  Zionistische Rundschau ref1, ref2

  Zirner family ref1, ref2

  Zirner, Alexander ref1

  Zirner, August ref1

  Zirner, Ella ref1, ref2

  Zirner, Felix ref1

  Zirner, Gisela ref1, ref2

  Zirner, Katharina (Kathi; Marton’s daughter) ref1

  Zirner, Katharine (née Bacon; Felix’s wife) ref1

  Zirner, Laura (Ludwig’s wife) ref1

  Zirner, Ludwig ref1

  Zirner, Marton ref1

  Zirner, Walther ref1

  Zuckmayer, Carl ref1, ref2, ref3

  Der Hauptmann von Köpenick ref1 & note

  Zwieback family ref1, ref2

  Zwieback, Ludwig ref1

  FOOTNOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  i ‘Exterminate’ and ‘wipe out’.

  PROLOGUE

  i The meeting took place in the Chancellery from 4.15 to 8.30 p.m.

  1

  i Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel: aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, Stuttgart 1955, 542.

  ii ‘Bavarian Joe’.

  iii Reichsmarks.

  iv Goebbels recorded rumours of Funk’s homosexuality on 31 December 1937. Even Streicher’s Stürmer alluded to it. See Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 5, Dezember 1937–Juli 1938, Munich 2000, 77. Hitler was also aware of it: see R.J. Overy, Goering, London 1984, 71.

  v A Graf Edgard Wedel or ‘Hofwedel’ (‘Court’ Wedel) had been heavily implicated in the homosexual scandals at the Kaiser’s court.

  vi The idea was dismissed – he was too disloyal. He proved Hitler’s point on 20 July 1944.

  vii He came to regret it later. See Reinhard Spitzy, So Haben wir das Reich verspielt, new edn 1987, 222.

  2

  i Fritsch was exonerated by the court on 18 March, but he was not given another role. He volunteered to lead his regiment in the Polish Campaign and died before Warsaw on 22 September 1939. It has been suggested that he had intentionally sought death.

  ii In his mendacious memoirs, Ribbentrop claimed his appointment had come as a ‘complete surprise’ (The Ribbentrop Memoirs, London 1954, 78).

  iii Possibly a Johnny Walker. Ribbentrop was a close friend of Alexander Walker, the descendant of the original Johnny. See Giles MacDonogh, ‘Walking Tall: From Grocer to Whisky Powerhouse’, in Cigar Aficionado, Winter 1996.

  iv Ribbentrop was known as ‘Groraz’ behind his back – größte Reichsau-ßenminister aller Zeiten – ‘The Greatest Imperial Foreign Minister of All Time’. Hitler was ‘Grofaz’ – größte Führer aller Zeiten – ‘The Greatest Leader of All Time’.

  v I.e., the Night of the Long Knives.

  vi Seyss had been born Arthur Zaytich to a Bohemian schoolmaster and his German wife in Moravia. When the family moved to Vienna, the father changed his name to one with a more Germanic allure. Goebbels thought him ‘no Nazi in our sense of the word’ and a ‘great dud’: Tagebücher I, V 170, 181.

  vii ‘Red, white, red until we are dead’ – the colours of the Austrian republic.

  3

  i The Stormtroopers of the Ostmark, i.e. Austria. This was also the name awarded to Austria after Hitler reduced it to a province of the Greater German Reich.

  ii A Greek cross with long flat tops to the arms. It was not the only Nazi-style trapping of the Corporate State. Schuschnigg ended his speeches with a rousing ‘Front-Heil!’ The equivalent of Kraft-durch-Freude was Neue Leben.

  iii The Versailles Treaty had awarded the Saar region on Germany’s western border to the French for a period of fifteen years, after which its destiny would be decided by a plebiscite. In January 1935, over 90 per cent of the Saarländer voted to return to Germany.

  iv Like the ‘local’ pub to an Englishman.

  v Law for the protection of blood.

  vi A favourite phrase of the sports journalist Maximilian Reich. It was first used by an unnamed Scandinavian diplomat. Maximilan and Emilie Reich, Zweier Zeugen Mund. Verschollene Manuskripte aus 1938 – Wien – Dachau – Buchenwald, Vienna 2007, 74 n1.

  vii It was one of the messages in Göring’s speech in the North West Station on 26 March.

  viii Hitler Jugend, or Hitler Youth.

  ix His intermediary was the journalist Anton Kuh: ‘Jetzt weiss ich dass wir verloren sind. Ein Staat, der mit einem Kuh verhandelt, der ist am Ende!’ The pun is untranslatable: ‘Now I know that it has come to an end. A state that negotiates with a cow (i.e. Anton Kuh) has had it.’

  x See below, pp. 56–61.

  xi Eisernes Kreuz Erster Klasse – Iron Cross 1st Class.

  xii From auch dabei, the traditional Viennese gawper, but there is a malicious implication too.

  xiii It wasn’t the first time that a close association with Papen had proved fatal: both his speechwriter, Edgar Jung, and his press secretary, Herbert von Bose, were killed following the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

  xiv ‘German brothers’, in the local accent.

  xv In Der Hauptmann von Köpenick an unemployed cobbler and petty crook dresses up as a Prussian officer and manages to commandeer the petty cash in the town hall of Köpenick near Berlin. It was based on a true story, and particularly loathed by the Nazis.

  xvi The author’s godfather. In Britain he found work in a bicycle factory in Leeds.

  xvii Pulled down in the 1960s.

  xviii In the directorate of finance in Linz, for example, thirty of the sixty-five staff were from across the border. Gerhard Jagschitz, ‘Von der “Bewegung” zum Apparat’, in Talos et al, NS-Herrschaft, 101.

  xix ‘. . . he is close to the Führer’. Göring to Ribbentrop, 13 March 1938.

  xx He was not alone: the new rector of Vienna University, Fritz Knoll, did the same.

  xxi When Bismarck tried to break the Catholics after the creation of the Second Reich.

  xxii Later certain Nazis would ignore this, particularly Goebbels.

  xxiii A typically Aryan Austrian or South German name.

  xxiv It is interesting to note that even the most blinkered Wehrmacht officer of the Third Reich had come round to his point of view in the end. At his trial in Nuremberg Wilhelm Keitel regretted ‘that he had not seen that there were limits to a soldier’s sense of duty’. Keitel was hanged.

  xxv When the author spoke on the telephone to Emeritus Professor Hans Schneider in his Milwaukee home, he was informed that Schneider was surrounded by furniture from his parents’ Viennese flat. He had no idea how they had got it out.

  xxvi Allgemeine Treuhandstelle für die Jüdische Auswandering.

  xxvii Literally ‘certificate of fiscal harmlessness’.

  xxviii Sooner said than done.

  xxix ‘HNN’ – possibly Alice Nike.

  4

  i ‘A repellent fellow! It will be good when he comes adrift.’ Goebbels, Ta
gebücher I, V, 14 February 1938, p. 154.

  ii He had previously seen the inside of a Corporate State cell, having been sent there by General Vaugoin, Minister of War. They were reunited in Dachau. Eifler was to die there in January 1945.

  iii Ehrlich was kicked to death by a capo in Dachau. Stricker and Friedmann were killed in Auschwitz in 1944.

  iv ‘O Buchenwald, Ich kann Dich nicht vergessen,/weil Du mein Schicksal bist./Wer Dich verliess, der kann es erst ermessen,/wie wundervoll die Freiheit ist!’ (‘O Buchenwald, how can I forget you?/As you have been my lot./Whoever leaves you will know at once how true/That freedom hits the spot.’)

  v If that was not bad enough, after Löhner-Beda left for Dachau, his wife was pestered remorselessly for the details of his fortune. Tina Walzer and Stephan Templ, Unser Wien: ‘Arisierung’ auf Österreichisch, Berlin 2001, 29–30.

  vi ‘Gay’ is the translation of the German word fröhlich, but, as the writer is quick to point out, ‘merry’ was the sole meaning current at the time he adopted it.

  vii ‘Please our Führer, oh we pray,/Let the Doctor have his say!’

  viii In practice, the Piefke is rarely a Prussian, but generally just a German from north of the River Main. Even Catholic South Germans are occasionally branded with the name, although Bavarians are thought to be honorary Austrians.

  ix Not that it always counted for much: he told the blackmailer Otto Schmidt no harm would come to him, then authorized his execution. He could, on the other hand, be induced to save a well-heeled Jew, and even found a job for Schuschnigg’s brother Arthur.

  6

  i He was hanged after the failed plot of 20 July 1944.

  ii Emmy Göring claimed that she was named after a friend, and not Mussolini’s daughter and the wife of Count Ciano (Emmy Goering, M;y Life with Goering, London 1972, 76); Willi Frischauer (Goering, London n.d., 158–9) scoffs at this and says that she invented the story after Ciano’s ‘treachery’. She was originally named ‘Ebba’; it was Göring who changed it to ‘Edda’.

  iii Only the sprinters: Germany won the 1936 Olympiad with a third more medals than its nearest rival, the United States.

  7

  i National Political Educational Institutes – the Nazi answer to the British public school.

  ii Wiesl later gave this figure as 385, and the cost as £16. See Wolfgang von Wiesl, ‘Illegale Transporte’, in Josef Fraenkel, ed., The Jews of Austria, London 1967, 166, 172.