Berlin Diary (19 page)

L
JUBLJANA
, Y
UGOSLAVIA
,
March
10

Here is a town to shame the whole world. It is full of statues and not one of them of a soldier. Only poets and thinkers have been so honoured. Put on a chorus of coal-miners’ kids for a Columbia School of the Air program. They sang magnificently, like Welsh coal-miners. Afterwards at the station, waiting for the Vienna train, much good Slovene wine with the local priests, Slovenia being a strong Catholic province. Without news of the world for two days while here.

V
IENNA
,
March
11–12 (4
a.m
.)

The worst has happened! Schuschnigg
is out. The Nazis are in. The Reichswehr is invading Austria. Hitler has broken a dozen solemn promises, pledges, treaties. And Austria is finished. Beautiful, tragic, civilized Austria! Gone. Done to death in the brief moment of an afternoon. This afternoon. Impossible to sleep, so will write. Must write something. The Nazis will not let me broadcast. Here I sit on one of the biggest stories of my life. I am the only broadcaster in town. Max Jordan of NBC, my only competitor, has not yet arrived. Yet I cannot talk. The Nazis have blocked me all night. I have argued,
pleaded, fought. An hour ago they ushered me out with bayonets.

To begin at the beginning of this day of nightmare, if I can:

The sun was out and spring was in the air when my train got into the Südbahnhof at eight this morning. I felt good. Driving to Ploesslgasse I noticed the streets littered with paper. Overhead two planes were dropping leaflets.

“What is it?” I asked the taxi-driver.

“Plebiscite.”

“What plebiscite?”

“The one Schuschnigg ordered.” He did not trust me and would say no more.

I climbed the stairs to our apartment puzzled. I asked the maid. She handed me a stack of newspapers for the last three days. Over breakfast I caught up on the news. On Wednesday night (March 9) Schuschnigg, speaking at Innsbruck, had suddenly ordered a plebiscite. For this Sunday. The question: “Are you for an independent, social, Christian, German, united Austria?
Ja oder Nein
.”

Breakfast over, I hurried to the hospital. Tess was not so good. Fever, and the doctor afraid of phlebitis in the left leg. A blood clot. A hell of a thing, after the other. I stayed with her for two hours until she dozed off. About eleven a.m. I took a taxi into town and went to the Schwarzenberg Café on the Schwarzenbergplatz to see what was up. Fodor and Taylor and some Austrian newspapermen were there. They were a little tense, but hopeful. The plebiscite would go off peacefully, they thought. And Schuschnigg, assured of the support of the workers, would win, hands down. That would hold Hitler for a while. I felt better. Someone turned on the radio. The announcer was reading a
proclamation calling up the class of 1915 to active service. That’s merely to police the election, we agreed. One of the Austrians was called to the phone. When he came back he said something about the Nazis having just smashed the windows of the Monarchist offices near the Stefansplatz. For some reason, I remember now, everyone laughed. I had in mind to phone Colonel Wolf, the Legitimist leader, with whom I’ve been negotiating for a broadcast by Otto von Habsburg. But I didn’t.

Shortly before four p.m. I set out for the hospital to see if Tess was any better. Crossing the Karlsplatz to catch a subway train I was stopped by a crowd of about a thousand people. They were Nazis and it was a bit comical. One lone policeman was yelling and gesticulating at them. And they were giving ground! “If that’s all the guts the Nazis have, Schuschnigg
will
win, hands down,” I mused. “And he’s arming the workers. That’ll take care of the Nazi toughs.” I hurried along to my train.

About six o’clock, returning from the hospital, I emerged from the subway to the Karlsplatz. What had happened? Something! Before I knew it I was being swept along in a shouting, hysterical Nazi mob, past the Ring, past the Opera, up the Kärntnerstrasse to the offices of the German “Tourist” Bureau, which, with its immense flower-draped portrait of Hitler, has been a Nazi shrine for months. The faces! I had seen these before at Nuremberg—the fanatical eyes, the gaping mouths, the hysteria. And now they were shouting like Holy Rollers: “
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Hang Schuschnigg! Hang Schuschnigg! Hang Schuschnigg! Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!
“And the police! They were looking on, grinning. What had happened? I was still in the dark. I shouted my question
into the ears of three or four jammed against me. No response. Couldn’t hear. Finally a middle-aged woman seemed to get me. “The plebiscite!” she yelled. “Called off!”

There was no need to learn more. That was the end of Austria. I extricated myself from the swirling dervishes and made my way down the Ring to the Hotel Bristol. Taylor was there. He introduced me to his wife, Vreni, pretty, brunette, intelligent-looking, who had just arrived. He confirmed the news. It had been announced an hour before on the radio, he said. We took a taxi to the American Legation. John Wiley was standing before his desk, clutching his invariable long cigarette-holder, a queer smile on his face—the smile of someone who has just been defeated and knows it.

“It’s all over,” he said quietly. There had been an ultimatum from Berlin. No plebiscite, or the German army marches. Schuschnigg had capitulated.

“You’ll hear more on the radio shortly,” John said. “Stick around.”

I left to put in a call for Murrow, who’s in Warsaw. Going out of the Legation I stumbled into Gedye, very excited. Home, I put in a call for Ed, my radio playing softly a Viennese waltz. Hateful, it sounded. It stopped abruptly. “Attention! Attention!” a voice said. “In a few minutes you will hear an important announcement.” Then the ticking of a metronome, the Ravag’s identification signal. Maddening, it sounded. Tick… tick… tick… tick. I turned it down. Then a voice—Schuschnigg’s, I recognized—without introduction.

“This day has placed us in a tragic and decisive situation. I have to give my Austrian fellow countrymen the details of the events of today.

“The German Government today handed to President
Miklas an ultimatum, with a time limit, ordering him to nominate as chancellor a person designated by the German Government and to appoint members of a cabinet on the orders of the German Government; otherwise German troops would invade Austria.

“I declare before the world that the reports launched in Germany concerning disorders by the workers, the shedding of streams of blood, and the creation of a situation beyond the control of the Austrian Government are lies from A to Z. President Miklas has asked me to tell the people of Austria that we have yielded to force since we are not prepared even in this terrible situation to shed blood. We have decided to order the troops to offer no resistance.

“So I take leave of the Austrian people with a German word of farewell uttered from the depth of my heart: God protect Austria.”

Towards the end you feel his voice will break; that there will be sobbing. But he controls it to the last. There is a second silence. And then the national anthem played from an old record. It is the tune of
Deutschland über Alles
, only in the original and slightly different version as Haydn first composed it. That is all. That is the end.

The rest of this evening? A little later the rasping voice of Judas. Dr. Seyss-Inquart is saying something, saying he considers himself responsible for order, saying the Austrian army is not to offer resistance. This is the first we hear of the German invasion. The ultimatum, Schuschnigg says, said capitulate
or
invasion. Now Hitler has broken even the terms of his own ultimatum.

I cannot get Ed in Warsaw. His hotel keeps saying he’s out. It is still early. I call the Austrian Broadcasting System to see about my broadcast. No answer.
I start downtown. In the Karlsplatz there’s a tremendous crowd. Someone is shouting a speech from the steps of the Karlskirche. “Hess and Buerckel,” a storm trooper near me whispers. His uniform gave off a stench of moth balls. “Hess and Buerckel! They’re here.” But I could not get near enough to see.

I fought my way out of the crowd towards the Kärntnerstrasse. Crowds moving about all the way. Singing now. Singing Nazi songs. A few policemen standing around good-naturedly. What’s that on their arm? A red-black-white Swastika arm-band! So they’ve gone over too! I worked my way up Kärntnerstrasse towards the Graben. Young toughs were heaving paving blocks into the windows of the Jewish shops. The crowd roared with delight.

Over at the Café Louvre Bob Best of U.P. is sitting at the same table he has occupied every night for the last ten years. Around him a crowd of foreign correspondents, male and female, American, English, Hungarian, Serb. All but Best in a great state of excitement, running to the phone every five minutes to get some news or give it. The most fantastic rumours. Bob reads over to me his dispatches. He is called away to the phone. He comes back. Schuschnigg has been recalled as chancellor and the Nazis are out, he says. He is optimistic; things are not over yet. A few minutes later: it’s a false report. The Nazis have taken over at the Ballhausplatz. We sprint over to the Ballhausplatz, Metternich’s Ballhausplatz… Congress of Vienna…. Twenty storm troopers are standing on one another before the building, forming a human pyramid. A little fellow scampers to the top of the heap, clutching a huge Swastika flag. He pulls himself up to the balcony, the same balcony where four years ago Major
Fey, held prisoner by the Nazis after Dollfuss was shot, parleyed with the Schuschnigg people. He unfurls the flag from the balcony and the
Platz
rings with cheers.

Back to the Louvre. Martha Fodor is there, fighting to keep back the tears, every few minutes phoning the news to Fodor. Emil Maass, my former assistant, an Austro-American, who has long posed as an anti-Nazi, struts in, stops before the table. “Well,
meine Damen und Herren
,” he smirks, “it was about time.” And he turns over his coat lapel, unpins his hidden Swastika button, and repins it on the outside over the buttonhole. Two or three women shriek: “Shame!” at him. Major Goldschmidt, Legitimist, Catholic, but half Jewish, who has been sitting quietly at the table, rises. “I will go home and get my revolver,” he says. Someone rushes in. Seyss-Inquart is forming a Nazi government. It is a little after eleven p.m. Time to go over to Broadcasting House. Five p.m. in New York.

In the Johannesgasse, before the Ravag building, men in field-grey uniforms stand guard with fixed bayonets. I explain who I am. After a long wait they let me in. The vestibule and corridor are full of young men in army uniforms, in S.S. and S.A. uniforms, brandishing revolvers, playing with bayonets. Two or three stop me, but taking my courage in my hand I bark at them and make my way into the main hall, around which are the studios. Czeja, the
General-Direktor
of Ravag, and Erich Kunsti, program director, old friends, stand in the middle of the room, surrounded by excited, chattering Nazi boys. One glance. They are prisoners. I manage to get in a word with Kunsti.

“How soon can I go on the air?” I say.

He shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve ceased to exist around here,” he laughs. He beckons towards a scar-faced chap
who seems to be the boss, for the moment anyway. I explain my wants. No impression. I do it again. He doesn’t get me.

“Let me talk to your chiefs in Berlin,” I say. “I know them. They’ll want me to broadcast.”

“Can’t get through to Berlin,” he says.

“But you will, some time tonight,” I say.

“Well, maybe later. You can come back.”

“Not a chance,” Kunsti whispers. A couple of guards, fingering their revolvers, edge me out. I wait outside in the hall, barging in every so often to see if Scarface has Berlin on the phone. Around midnight a broadcast comes through from the Ballhausplatz. A new government is to be announced soon. I dash over there. Spotlights (from where?) play on the balcony. A dozen men are standing there. I make out Seyss-Inquart, Glaise-Horstenau…. Judas is reading his new Cabinet list. He himself is Chancellor.

Back to Ravag. Wait. Argument. Wait. Argument. They cannot get Berlin. There is no wire. No broadcast possible. Sorry. More arguments. Threats. In the end I’m escorted out. No argument with bayonets. Out in the Johannesgasse I look at my watch. Three a.m. I go up to the Kärntnerstrasse once more. Deserted now. Home then.

The phone rings. It is Ed in Warsaw. I tell him the news. And our bad news. Even if I remain here tomorrow and do get facilities, we’ll be under strict Nazi censorship, I say.

“Fly to London, why don’t you?” Ed suggests. “You can get there by tomorrow evening and give the first uncensored eyewitness account. And I’ll come down to Vienna.”

A phone call to the Aspern airport. All planes booked tomorrow. What time do the London and Berlin
planes leave? Seven a.m.; eight a.m. Thank you. I forget I have not spoken to Fodor on this night. The Nazis don’t like him. Maybe…. I phone. “I’m all right, Bill,” he says. He’s sobbing. A line to Tess explaining why she will not see me for a few days. Now to bed. An hour of sleep.