Thunder at Twilight

by Frederic Morton

  The spectacle also shook up at least one man who was not a member of the upper classes, twenty-four-year-old Adolf Hitler.

  In Mein Kampf he reports his awe

  at the endless rows of Viennese workers marching four abreast in this demonstration. I stood almost two hours with bated breath observing this immense human snake as it rolled by. In fearful depression I finally left the place and wandered homeward.

  But why so fearfully depressed? Because these workers

  rejected everything: the nation as an invention of the “capitalists”; the Fatherland as an instrument of the bourgeoisie to exploit the working class; the authority of the law as a means to repress the proletariat; school as an institution for breeding slave material, but also for the training of slavedrivers; religion as a means to stupefy the people intended for exploitation; morality as a sign of stupid, sheeplike patience . . . There was absolutely nothing that was not dragged through the mire of horrible depths.

  Spring is the visceral season, felt deep down. The man appalled by these “horrible depths” was puritan, celibate, and volcanic at once. Eventually he would forge an empire out of the ambivalence. Meanwhile he abhorred the elemental mire. Yet he also watched it “for almost two hours with bated breath” The money he’d inherited could have bought him shelter more elevated than the Männerheim. Yet he lingered for years amidst its primitivities. He rejected the new elemental artists—Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka—who had begun to excite Vienna with their expressionist eruptions; they were so different from the dainty banality of Hitler’s own paintings; their “fleshly” work, he would sneer later in Mein Kampf, might as well have been “the smears of a tribe of Negroes.” Yet his contempt for “fleshliness” was also engrossment: He accompanied a friend to the Spittelberggasse where prostitutes drew on black stockings in lit windows. Hitler never touched them—just lashed out at “the iniquity”—and came back to look and lash out again.

  A similar revulsion-obsession made him shiver, at length, at the proletariat thrusting up from below. Since he could not deal with the primal physically or esthetically, he went at it politically—sniffed it, imagined it, fantasized it, developed a mania to tap it, manipulate it, tame it, control it. “At this time,” he says in Mein Kampf of his Vienna years, “I formed a view of life which became the granite foundation of my actions.”

  His horror of May Day on the Ringstrasse became a permanent inspiration. The elemental obedience of so many thousands to their Socialist chiefs leads him to conclusions prophetically detailed in Mein Kampf:

  The masses love a commander more than a petitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctrine tolerating none other besides itself . . . They are unaware of their shameless spiritual terrorization or the hideous abuse of human freedom, for they absolutely fail to suspect the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruthless force and brutality of its calculated manifestation, to which they always submit in the end . . . If Social Democracy is opposed by a doctrine of greater truth but equal brutality of methods, the latter will conquer.

  The italics are Hitler’s. An unitalicized sentence two pages later begins and ends with the word summarizing the central lesson he drew from May Day: “Terror in the workshop, in the factory, in the assembly hall, and on occasion in mass demonstrations, will always be accompanied by success as long as it is not met by an equally great force of terror”

  But terror did not enforce the workers’ May Day. It was a voluntary procession and, in the radiant weather, joyous. To Hitler, the sight was apocalyptic.

  The apocalypse is the cataclysm through which death convulses into birth. Some day Hitler would summon apocalyptic emotions before a global audience. Meanwhile May of 1913 marked for him, on a modest scale, an end that introduced a beginning. This was the month in which he left Vienna for Germany, “. . . that country for which my heart had been secretly yearning since the days of my youth” And though he still lived in the Männerheim during those final weeks, he spent most of his time at the other end of the city, in the streets and cafes close to the West Terminal: his original port of arrival whose precinct had been the haunts of his early years in Vienna from 1907 to 1909. He seemed to be revisiting the ambitions that had driven him to the city in the first place. They had been dashed; yet they were still fermenting, as fierce as ever. Now he would fulfill them in a worthier land. On Saturday, May 24, 1913, he rose for the last time from his seat in the Writing Room of the Männerheim. He went to pack the few belongings that cluttered his cubicle. Then he took the streetcar to the West Terminal to board a Third Class compartment on the train to Munich.

  May 1913 promised Hitler hope and change. It also brought him safety. His passport recorded his birth date: April 20, 1889. At twenty-four he had just passéd the age of conscription, having failed to register for service since 1909. The man who turned into the century’s most thunderous war lord no longer needed to fear that some border guard would hold him as a draft evader.

  The Honorable Joseph Redlich, diary-keeper, centrist member of Parliament, and Christian convert born into the Jewish haute bourgeoisie, did not watch the May Day march of 1913. However, two days earlier, on April 29, 1913, he observed another movement on the Ringstrasse, a sight that on the surface seemed unremarkable. A gentleman, all by himself, gray-haired, dapper under a bowler, was sauntering in the balm of noon. He had come out of Ballhausplatz 1, the Foreign Minister’s residence, and was heading for the Ministry of War. As Redlich’s diary attests, the buoyancy of this single stroller turned out to be more momentous—in the short run—than the resolute tramp of a hundred thousand proletarians forty-eight hours later.

  “Good morning, Excellency,” Redlich greeted Alexander Baron Krobatin. “How are you today?”

  “I am well” said the Minister of War of Austria-Hungary. “Very well. Very well—at last.”

  From one knowledgeable insider to another, no more needed to be said. It was a bad day for pacifists like Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. It was a fine day, at last, for hard-nosed patriots like General Conrad, the Chief of Staff, or like the two men now smiling at each other on the Ringstrasse: His Majesty had just authorized the drafting of an ultimatum. It was to be sent off today, Tuesday, and it gave the bandit government of the kingdom of Montenegro—ally of the bandit government of Serbia—until Thursday to pull its troops out of the Albanian town of Scutari. Failure to respond would prompt instant Austrian military moves to restore stability in the Balkans—regardless of Serbian or even Russian repercussions.

  The ultimatum delivered this message in more diplomatic but no less unequivocal language. The two gentlemen could bask in its forcefulness as they sauntered together along the sunny boulevard. At last the Emperor had made a stand that would re-establish Austria’s credibility as a major power.

  By the morning of May Day, Thursday, Montenegro had not budged. But that afternoon its King wired Franz Joseph that he “was reviewing the situation.” On Sunday, May 4, Montenegrin troops began to withdraw. Happy rumors began to animate coffeehouses like the Landtmann. Monday morning, May 5, hours before the news was officially announced, the Vienna stock market rose as it hadn’t risen in years. For the first time in a long time (thought Krobatin, Redlich, Conrad, et al.), the old monarchy had taken a firm young step. Neither Serbia nor Russia did more than a bit of diplomatic mumbling.

  Even Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, who had cautioned in vain against the ultimatum, could not deny its success. It had improved the international standing of the realm that was his inheritance. Yet at the same time he kept advising against any further bravura displays, and he assiduously documented his admonitions. From Austria’s most brilliant intelligence specialist, Colonel Alfred Redl, the Archduke had obtained an assessment of the Montenegrin army; it showed how potent that small force was and, therefore, how costly a potential showdown. Also from Redl came an analysis of a growing undercover movement in Bohemia directed against Habsburg. Franz Ferdinand used it all in his long-distance ex
clamations to the Imperial Palace. He was still staying in the Empire’s South, at Fiume on the Adriatic shore. From there he worked the Imperial Courier Service and burned the telephone wire to the Emperor’s chancellery. He still avoided audiences whenever possible. He was still afraid his temper might overpower his manners. But in messages he could drape the vehemence of his alarm in formulas of deference: those reckless, short-sighted circles that wanted to push the Empire into exterior adventures before the interior was pacified— would His Majesty graciously deign to bring them to reason?

  His uncle’s responses from the Palace were immovably noncommittal. They were also unfailingly courteous. Furthermore, “reason,” or an approximation thereof, appeared to be in vogue again, at least for a while. Montenegro’s retreat before Vienna’s ultimatum appeased war-happy circles; it removed some of the rationale for “exterior adventures.” As the world calmed and greened around the Crown Prince, he let the amenities of May enfold him.

  With Sophie and the children he returned to his beloved estate at Konopiste. This was the finest time to stalk woodcock, snipe, and capercaillie. Mornings were for hunting, afternoons for flowers, all hours for his family. He whispered with his children as they watched for game. He crowded them into the pony trap to range through the vasts of his rose garden; the Dark Archduke, who never smiled in public, laughed freely as they invented names for the flowers they didn’t know.

  A certain prospect enhanced his mood. On May 24, Kaiser Wilhelm’s daughter, Princess Marie Luise, was to marry Prince Ernst August von Braunschweig und Lueneburg. Attending would be two of the Kaiser’s cousins, Tsar Nicholas II and King George V of England—also called “the twins” because of their resemblance. Confident of an invitation, Austria’s Crown Prince looked forward to using on the Tsar the big-teddy-bear charm he could surprisingly produce when the occasion warranted it. And this was the moment—after the Montenegro set-to—to warm Russia into trusting Austria.

  The Berlin wedding held still another promise. Away from the Austrian capital, beyond the reach of the Hof burg camarilla, yet against a backdrop august and imperial, Franz Ferdinand’s Sophie would not be treated as some inflated concubine. In Berlin she would emerge as the Crown Prince’s full-fledged, fully honored consort. Side by side with All-Highest wives, Sophie would shine in photographs of the reviewing stand, would be featured in Court Gazette accounts of the state dinner table and in newspaper reports of the pew seating in church.

  With such trophies he would then come to Vienna with his family to enjoy the Derby the first week of June. It was, or should have been, a very pleasant spring.

  6

  MAY LOST SOME WARMTH TOWARD ITS END; THE TWENTY-FOURTH DAWNED as the coolest day of the month. It was a nippy Saturday, yet sunny and clear—and very exciting for at least three people in Vienna. In different ways it brought them the elation of a payoff long delayed.

  That morning Adolf Hitler left for Germany, having sweated out seven sour years in the Austrian capital. That afternoon the chance to pounce finally came to Detective Sergeant Ebinger and Detective Sergeant Steidl, both attached to the Intelligence Bureau of the Imperial and Royal Army.

  They had been on a stake-out for six long weeks. Their mission was the climax of a hunt that was secret and urgent and international. Under an agreement set up in 1911 by Colonel Alfred Redl, then in charge of Austrian Counter-intelligence and its most capable leader in decades, the counter-espionage agencies of Austria and Germany exchanged mutually relevant information. Early in April 1913 Berlin directed Vienna’s attention to a letter addressed to Herr Nikon Nizetas, c/o General Delivery, Vienna. Unclaimed, it had been returned to Berlin, the place of its postmark. There its bulk attracted the curiosity of the Secret Police who opened it. Inside were 6,000 kronen together with two addresses, one in Paris, one in Geneva, both known to be used by Russian spies.

  An exciting discovery. It might help solve a problem of considerable concern in recent years: the leak of vital Austrian military secrets to Russia. The German office handed the letter to its Viennese colleagues. They re-sealed it carefully, returned it to the General Post Office on Fleischmarkt Square. In a room of the building opposite, Detectives Ebinger and Steidl took up position. Here they waited through all hours during which the General Delivery window was open. They waited for a certain sound—the ringing of an electric bell whose wire ran from their hide-out to a button under the desk of the General Delivery clerk.

  Ebinger and Steidl waited for days and days. Nothing happened but the arrival of two more letters addressed to Herr Nizetas. Austrian intelligence opened them to find two more bland little notes together with cash sums totalling 14,000 crowns. These letters, too, were re-sealed and returned to General Delivery in the hope that their addressee would call.

  Many more days passéd. Herr Nizetas did not appear to claim his money. The detectives kept vigil by the bell that would not ring. Their chief, Colonel Redl, had by then been transferred to head the General Staff of the Eighth Army Corps in Prague. But he still retained wide intelligence responsibilities in view of his forthcoming appointment as Chief of Intelligence for all the Empire’s armed forces. Still present in the Vienna bureau were the skills and habits Redl had implanted, and principal among them was patience, patience. Patiently, detectives Ebinger and Steidl were waiting, day after day, week after week, waiting and waiting in their little room opposite the General Post Office, waiting for the ringing of the bell.

  Suddenly, at 5:55 P.M. on Saturday, May 24, it rang. It rang in an empty room. Sergeant Steidl had gone to the privy down the corridor. Sergeant Ebinger was having a cup of coffee in the canteen on the ground floor. Both men were good, Redl-trained agents. At the same time they were also two Viennese in May, a season that tuned up the body’s needs. The bell was ringing when both men, returning along the corridor, heard it through the door. The sound swivelled them into an about-face. Together they raced down the one flight of stairs and across the square.

  Too late, almost.

  Behind the General Delivery window, the clerk could only shrug his shoulders. Yes, Herr Nizetas had come at last to claim his mail. Yes, just now, he’d signed for it in such a hurry, he might still be outside. Ebinger and Steidl rushed to the street—in time to see a cab pull away and vanish around the corner. Ebinger (who had better vision) had barely time to note its license number: A 3313.

  The cool May evening must have felt even colder on the perspiring forehead of those two. To identify a cab by number would be slow; the driver, cruising all over Vienna, might not be found for hours. And Herr Nizetas had just shown how fast he could manage a disappearance.

  The two sergeants ran back to General Delivery. What did Herr Nizetas look like? Again the clerk could only shrug: the face had been just about invisible since the hat had been pulled so far down. What kind of hat, what brim, what color? Oh, medium brim width, sort of gray. The man’s height? Oh, medium, perhaps a little on the small side. His voice? Well, a normal male voice with the usual Austrian accent. Anything distinctive at all? Not really—no, nothing.

  Nothing. Six weeks of waiting for nothing. Dazed by that “nothing” Ebinger and Steidl walked out of the General Post Office to the street once more. And there they saw, with unbelieving eyes, a cab rolling toward them with the license number A 3313. It was the very one that had escaped them ten minutes earlier. They screamed it to a halt. They thrust their badges at the driver’s face. Astounded by the hysteria, the driver said he’d just taken his fare to the Café Kaiserhof a few blocks down, a gentleman in such a fearful hurry he’d forgotten the sheath of the penknife he’d used to open some mail. There it still was, the sheath, on the back seat.

  At the Café Kaiserhof minutes later, the head waiter said that nobody with a pulled-down hat, in fact, nobody at all had entered the cafe in the last fifteen minutes.

  Stymied again. But at least Ebinger and Steidl had Herr Nizetas’s knife sheath. And, querying the cab drivers outside the cafe, they had another bit of l
uck. The cabbie next in line said, oh yes, the gentleman with the hat down over his face, he’d gotten out of the taxi fast to take another, now what was the name he’d heard him call out? . . . Oh yes, the Klomser, the Hotel Klomser, that was it.

  At the Hotel Klomser the concierge was sorry. He did not recognize the knife sheath. There was no Herr Nizetas registered at the hotel—he knew the names of all guests. No Herr Nizetas had come to visit either, he knew that because he always announced visitors by name. He was very sorry.

  Ebinger and Steidl kept hissing more questions. Who had come into the hotel recently? Name? Description? At exactly what time? Anybody and everybody during the last half hour!

  The concierge furrowed a flustered brow. Well, there had been a number of people, though he didn’t constantly look at his watch. But during the last half hour, well, there had been Mr. Felsen, and then the two ladies, that was Mrs. Kleine-mann, the wife of Bank President Kleinemann, with her friend Mrs. Luechow, the wife of Director Luechow, and who else, yes, the new guest, Dr. Widener, they’d all asked for their keys, and Colonel Redl and Professor Zank—

  “Colonel Redl!”

  The two detectives stared at each other. They couldn’t believe they’d heard that name.

  “Colonel Alfred Redl?”

  “Oh yes, he always stays with us when he arrives from Prague. Always Room Number One.”

  “My God!” Detective Steidl said. “What a coincidence! Let’s consult him—”

  “We’re not supposed to consult anybody,” Detective Ebinger said, “except Control.”

  Again the two stared at each other.

  “When the Colonel came in just now,” Ebinger asked the room clerk, “how was he dressed?”