Adolf Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock

Author:Alan Bullock [Bullock, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

III

About nine o’clock on the evening of 4 February (the day of the Cabinet Meeting in Berlin) Franz von Papen, the Führer’s special representative in Vienna, was sitting in his study at the Legation when the telephone bell rang. It was the State Secretary, Lammers, speaking from the Reich Chancellery, with the brief announcement that Papen’s mission in Vienna was at an end and he had been recalled. Lammers regretted that he could give no explanation.

Papen’s surprise was considerable, for he had seen Hitler personally only the week before and nothing had then been said about his recall or transfer. The question everyone asked in Vienna was whether Papen’s recall would be followed by a change in German policy towards Austria.

For the past eighteen months, Austro-German relations had been governed by the Agreement of July 1936. The interpretation of that Agreement by the two parties, however, showed wide differences of opinion which are reflected in the diplomatic exchanges.2 The Austrian Government had originally, though not

1.The Von Hassell Diaries (London, 1948), p. 28.

2.cf. G.D.,D. I, chapter n: Germany and Austria, July 1936-July 1938.

very strongly, hoped that the Agreement might serve as a final settlement of the differences between Germany and themselves. The Germans, on the other hand, clearly regarded it as a lever with which to exercise pressure on the Austrians in such a way that, in the end, Austrian independence would be undermined and the Anschluss carried out peacefully, on the initiative of a Nazi-controlled government in Vienna. Schuschnigg’s1 room for manoeuvre in resisting such pressure was limited. For there was a strong underground Nazi party in Austria which bitterly resented the policy of peaceful penetration represented by Papen and itched to seize power by a putsch. Hitler had so far refused to give the Austrian Nazis a free hand, but this was an alternative which he could use to bring additional pressure on the Austrian Government if Schuschnigg proved too obstinate or evasive in meeting German demands.

On 25 January 1938 a police raid on the Austrian Nazis’ headquarters in Vienna brought to light plans for a rising in the spring of 1938 and for an appeal to Hitler to intervene. There was no proof that Hitler knew or approved of these plans, but Schuschnigg was uneasy and only too well aware of Austria’s increased isolation with the establishment of the Rome-Berlin Axis. At the time of Papen’s sudden recall, the Austrian Chancellor was already revolving in his mind the advantage of a personal meeting with Hitler to put German-Austrian relations on a clearer footing.

Papen now had very good reasons of his own for advocating such a meeting. Here might be a chance to reinstate himself and the day after his dismissal he hurried to Berchtesgaden to put the proposal to Hitler personally. He found him ‘exhausted and distrait’ but the suggestion that Schuschnigg might come to see him aroused Hitler’s interest. Ignoring the fact that he had just recalled Papen from his post, he ordered him to return at once to Vienna and make the necessary arrangements.

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