Source: Year
of Reckoning - by G. Ward Price, Chapter IX
Mr. Ward Price
Most of the
month following upon the Anschluss was taken up in Germany and Austria with
intensive propaganda for the plebiscite fixed for April 10.
It
may seem strange that a Government with such avowed contempt for democratic
methods should trouble to hold a referendum on a step which, even if it were
unpopular, could scarcely be cancelled.
But
though the Nazis rate leadership far above the ballot-box as the governing
element in the State, they know that mammoth demonstrations of any kind
automatically impress the human mind. Fifty Storm Troopers marching along the
street are so common a sight in Germany that no one turns his head to look at
them, but 500,000 Storm Troopers, parading through the streets of Nuremberg,
provide the climax of the great Annual Party Congress. A gigantic vote for the
Government has its effect not only on the German people but on the outside
world as well. It also frees the administration from the charge of denying
opportunities for the expression of political convictions.
Though
the result of the plebiscite was a foregone conclusion, it did not necessarily
give a false picture of the sentiments of the Germans and Austrians. It is
difficult for the British, who have never had to experience a long period of
national humiliation, to realise how the Anschluss stirred the hearts of the
Germans. To the people of the Reich, it came as the first clear assertion
outside their own frontiers of their new international standing. After twenty
years, during most of which they had been sufferers and suppliants, they took
pride in seeing their Government impose its will in defiance of Germany's
former conquerors, brushing aside their protests in contemptuous terms.
The
Austrians, for their part, had so long been depressed and discouraged that in
their view any change must be for the better. Some doubtless regretted that the
heavy hand of Nazi repression would now control a country of such long
easy-going and liberal traditions and that the Austrian Jews were doomed to
become either victims or fugitives. But they were careful to conceal such
sentiments, and the majority of both nations felt strong satisfaction in the
amalgamation of the two Germanic stocks, combined with full confidence that it
would prove to the benefit of both.
When
Herr Hitler arrived in Vienna on April 9 to wind up a tour of oratory that had
taken him all over Germany, he delivered the most eloquent and interesting speech
of the many I have heard him make. It was an analysis of his own career,
tracing the steps by which he rose from obscurity to the leadership of the
Reich, then achieved its restoration as a Great Power, and finally fulfilled
his boyhood ambition to unite the land of his birth with the country of his
adoption.
He
stood on a high pulpit, raised at one end of the long and lofty hall of the
North-West Railway Station, which had been transformed by a white and gold
awning overhead stretching its whole length, and by draperies along its walls.
As
a young man, said Hitler, he had had no concern with politics. His sole
ambition then was to be an architect. For four years he had remained a nameless
soldier. He had never tried to become a politician or a journalist. He had
never made a speech. Those were the days when Germany was being steadily
ruined. The men then in power bore the responsibility for her downfall. And it
had been the sight of the havoc which they wrought that had decided him to take
up politics.
“As
I lay half-blinded in hospital, I realised that those who had wrecked Germany
could never restore her. Seeing my country ruined and its people divided, I
made for the first time the resolve to speak.
“It
was clear to me that, if the cleft between bourgeoisie and proletariat were not
healed, Germany would be wrecked. Each of these factions hoped for foreign
help. The bourgeoisie looked towards Geneva; the proletariat towards Moscow.
“And
even these divisions were endlessly sub-divided. There were forty-seven
political parties in Germany.
“I
saw that no party could unite Germany; that her salvation could not come from
Monarchy or Republic, from any Church or group, from bourgeoisie or
proletariat. I studied all their programmes and records.
“Germany
did not fall into my lap like ripe fruit. I worked bitterly hard for fifteen
years. You cannot deny that I worked harder than all your earlier leaders,”
proclaimed Hitler fiercely. “For years I had no single day's rest. I used to
speak every day that I was not prevented by hoarseness. My foreign critics
sometimes say my success is based on terror. I could impose no terror then. It
was my antagonists who had all the power.
“I
never found a loyal adversary,” he interjected bitterly. “They never said 'Give
him a chance,' but only 'Lock him up!' or 'Kill him!'
“I
hated to use force against my fellow-Germans, and I only did so when force was
used against me. Then, however, I employed it with vigour, for I had been a
soldier.
“I
know that I have critics and detractors, but we can neglect them. Our critics
are growing old, and we have won their children to our cause.
“Nineteen
years ago I was a completely unknown man. Now I stand here with a great nation
behind me, ready for anything. After achieving all this, do you suppose that
such opposition as still exists can count for anything? I never gave in when I
was weak, when I was in prison, or when I was forbidden to speak in public. And
to-day the power is in my hands! “
The
Führer's strident voice rose to a shout. His face was flushed and his eyes
blazed. In one of his triumphant gestures, he swept the microphone in front of
him off its stand, and sent it crashing to the floor.
Listening
to such an harangue, one appreciates how completely the German nation is
dominated by the personality of this man, who, in turn, reacts to the impulses
of his own temperament with the assurance of a prophet believing himself
inspired. Of the 75,000,000 Germans under Hitler's rule as he delivered his
speech in Vienna, more than half were hearing his words as they resounded from
the wireless receivers fixed in the streets of every town, or rang out in
restaurants, theatres and cinemas; in all factories and workshops; in German
mines below the ground; in German ships on the high seas and in millions of
private homes, besides being printed in every newspaper next day. To Germans,
every syllable uttered by the Führer on such an occasion is sacrosanct and
constitutes an unchallengeable pronouncement upon the subject with which it
deals.
“In
the last five years, out of the once wretched and disorganised German people
has grown a nation stronger and prouder than ever before,” he declared
dramatically. “Have I not the right to stand here? This is my home! I do not
know if Schuschnigg's name will be remembered a hundred years from now, but I
know that mine will as the greatest son of Austria!”
The
sense of personal destiny that explains much in Herr Hitler's character found
expression in his words.
“I
believe it to have been the will of God” he said, “that a boy from this country
should have become the Head of the German nation, and then united his homeland
to the Reich. Otherwise, one would have to doubt Divine Providence. There is a
Supreme Power, and we are but instruments in its hands. When, on March 9,
Schuschnigg broke his pledge to me, I made up my mind that the time had come,
and in three days he was broken. On the very day for which he had planned that
treasonable plebiscite, I brought my homeland into the Reich. I render thanks
to God, Who showed me the way.”
In
a climax of high-power publicity, the preparations for the plebiscite came to
an end. On the Kahlenberg, Leopoldsberg, Cobenzl and other heights around
Vienna, red swastikas glowed through the night. Giant bombers cruised in the
dark over every Austrian town, flashing, in red electric lights from the
underside of their wings, that slogan which had brought about the Anschluss, “Ein
Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer.”
I
spent the actual plebiscite day, Sunday, April 10, in visiting polling-booths.
To some I went alone and unannounced. Into others I was taken with a party of
journalists under the charge of Government officials. There was nothing to
suggest that pressure was being brought to bear on the voters. Herr Buerckel,
the organiser, had ordered polling-papers to be marked in the privacy of the
curtained booths. I saw one or two men demonstratively make their cross in the
“Yes” circle before the eyes of the polling-officers, accompanying the act with
a loud “Heil Hitler!”, but so many other voters took their green envelopes and
ballot-papers out of sight that they obviously did not fear being noted as
hostile to the regime through doing so.
The
former Austrian President, Dr. Miklas, who had lost his office a month before,
sent a message to Dr. Seyss-Inquart to say that he intended to vote for the
Anschluss. Cardinal Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna, walked over to a
polling-booth at 8.0 a.m., and gave the Hitler salute as he came out. The day
before I had myself seen two swastika emblems, surrounded by wreaths of gilt
laurel, on the walls of the Cardinal's palace, while above its door hung a
large Nazi flag. In St. Stephen's Cathedral that morning, which was Palm Sunday,
many men bearing palms were also wearing swastika arm-bands.
The
70,000 Czechs and 15,000 Slovaks living in Vienna were allowed to vote at
special polling booths, a privilege which they had always enjoyed. In Germany
soldiers are excluded from elections, but the members of the Austrian Army were
authorised to take part in the plebiscite.
Around
midnight that evening the results of the voting were announced by Dr.
Seyss-Inquart to a dense crowd filling the largest concert-hall in Vienna. They
showed that out of 4,284,795 who had gone to the polls in Austria, 4,273,884,
or 99.75 per cent., had said “Yes” to the Anschluss. We heard Herr Buerckel
communicate this result on the wireless to Herr Hitler sitting in Berlin, and
receive the Führer's congratulation in return.
There
was loud cheering, but, looking down from the gallery, I could not help
thinking that this final interment of the old Austria deserved a more dignified
setting.
Here
was the last fraction of the 52 millions of people who had once lived under the
House of Habsburg passing out of independent existence. Soon “Austria,” a name
so great in history, would be used no more except to identify one of the
smaller German provinces.
The
reading of the figures by which, as everyone had expected, the annexation of
Austria to Germany was confirmed to within a fraction of unanimity, completed a
process which had begun when the Vienna Government took the first step towards
the Great War by issuing its ultimatum to Serbia.
It
had not been the cement of common welfare that held the mosaic of the old
Austro-Hungarian Empire together, but only the tie of dynastic union.
Of
its 52,000,000 inhabitants, nearly one-half were Slavs, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles,
Ruthenians, Croats and Slovenes. These had enjoyed the special favour of the
Imperial House. The inferiority to which the Germans of Austria believed that
they were relegated under Habsburg rule was the influence which caused Hitler
as a youth to make pan-Germanism his life's ideal.
The
German element in Austria numbered twelve millions. The Hungarians were ten
millions, and there was a Latin fringe, consisting of Rumanians in
Transylvania, and Italians at Trieste and in the Trentino, which amounted to
four millions. Austria-Hungary also contained 1,500,000 Jews, mainly
concentrated in Galicia and in the capital itself.
The
lack of solidarity in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire was so obvious and
long-standing that it was accepted as normal. The Hungarians held jealously to
the constitutional privileges secured to them under the “Compromise” by which
the Dual Monarchy took its final form. The Czechs refused to talk German, and
formed a nationalist physical-training movement called the Sokols, which were
really political clubs.
In
most countries, the effect of war is to compose internal differences and
consolidate national unity. In Austria-Hungary it had the reverse effect.
Sections of the non-German races set themselves to gain their independence in
the upheaval. The Czechs deserted to the Russians or the French; Croats went
over to the Serbs; Italians of Trieste or Trentino joined up with their kinsmen
fighting against the Government whose subjects they were.
With
the defeat of the Central Empires, nationalistic claims became more clamorous.
In some cases, they were supported by a record of services rendered to the
Allies.
The
statesmen who drafted the terms of peace in Paris tried to prevent the
reconstitution of the formidable block of Powers known in the war as the
Central Empires by splitting up Austria-Hungary into its constituent parts. M.
Tardieu, who was one of them, has argued that they had no choice, as the Dual
Monarchy had already been dissolved in anticipation by the war-treaties of
alliance made with Italy, Serbia, Rumania, and with representatives of the
Nationalist elements in Poland and Bohemia. They failed to realise that this
measure, by creating a series of small, weak States in Central Europe, would
make it easier for Germany to establish her authority over them when she regained
her national strength.
Not
only did the Allied Powers overlook the disastrous consequences of disrupting a
State which had given rise to the international axiom that “If Austria did not
exist, it would be necessary to invent her,” but they followed conflicting
policies in the Central European area which they had thus dissected.
The
French subsidised the Little Entente, of which one State, Czecho-Slovakia, was
wholly, and the other two, Rumania and Jugoslavia, were partly built up out of
the wreckage of Austria-Hungary. Italy, on the other hand, supported the
revisionist claims of Hungary, which the Little Entente had been formed to
oppose. Great Britain disinterested herself entirely from Central European
affairs.
In
the years immediately following the Peace Treaties, British and French
Socialists protested strongly against the denial to Austria of the right to
join up with Germany. They were just as vigorous in demanding the Anschluss in
the early 1920's as they were in denouncing it when it came about in the late
1930's.
With
the passage of time, it became increasingly apparent that the mutilated
fraction of territory which still bore the name of Austria was incapable of
economic survival.
There
had been no Customs barrier inside the great expanse of 240,000 square miles of
Central Europe making up the old Austrian Empire. From 1919 onwards a network
of them crossed it in all directions, dividing mutually complementary areas
into small autarchic States, each engaged in costly and ineffective efforts to
achieve self- sufficiency.
The
small country left by the Allied peace-makers to bear the name of “Austria” was
no more than the isolated control-station of a great economic mechanism that
had been broken up. Like a limbless trunk, the Austrian Republic could do
nothing for itself.
Austria
thus became Europe's perpetual “deserving case.” After the abandonment of the
fantastic scheme to collect Reparations from this ruined country by means of a
local Allied Commission which cost more to maintain than the Government itself,
repeated attempts were made to “put Austria on her feet.” Loans were made to
her, backed by the League of Nations and by the British Government; advances
were granted by the Bank of England; there were plans for exchange of products
with the Little Entente; an agreement with Italy and Hungary, known as the Rome
Protocols; and a scheme, launched at the ill-fated Stresa Conference, for the
creation of a Danubian Confederation, of which nothing was ever afterwards
heard.
After
Stresa, the break-up of the Western Powers into hostile camps finally opened
wide the door to German intervention in the affairs of an adjoining country of
the same blood and language.
In
this way was the forecast fulfilled which the German Ambassador, Prince Bulow,
made on leaving Rome when Italy declared war on Germany in 1916:
“Even
if we lose the war, we shall still be winners, because we shall annex Austria.”
In
the roundabout way which human affairs so often take, the Allies, by the use
they made of their victory, laid the basis for Germany's future expansion into
Austria, and thence over Eastern Europe.
So
ended the division of the German race into North and South which began in 1756,
when Frederick the Great started Prussia's career of conquest by his sudden
attack upon Maria Theresa in time of peace.
During
the Anschluss, I met a French colleague who had been with me in Vienna after
the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. He reminded
me that at their funeral, as we watched the parade of Austrian generals in
their white tunics and green-plumed cocked hats, I had said to him:
“Let
us take a good look at this Austrian pomp and circumstance. It may be the last
time we shall ever see it.” A month later, the war put an end to all the old
splendour of Austrian life, so rich in romance, charm, tradition and ceremonial
dignity.
It
was now the turn of Austria herself to disappear. The Führer had boldly carried
out a policy from which even his hero the Iron Chancellor himself had recoiled.
After the German victory in the war of 1866, Bismarck replied to those who
urged the extension of German authority to the Danube that Vienna could never
be governed from Berlin. The speed of modern communications, however, makes
that task much simpler.
There
is a marked difference of temperament between these 7,000,000 Catholic South
Germans and the highly nationalist and aggressive Prussian stock in whose hands
the administration of the Nazi regime principally lies. But the Führer himself
is Austrian-born, and the example of Italy has shown how effective the methods
of education and organisation employed by a totalitarian regime can be in
modifying the habits and outlook of a nation.
The
continuance of this ruined fragment of the once great Austro-Hungarian Empire
had been, since the war, no more than an historical anachronism. Like the
overthrow of the Byzantine Empire or the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire,
the annexation of Austria was the suppression of an institution which had long
lost its vitality.
The
imposing buildings and broad streets of Vienna were but the memorials, and no
longer the appurtenances, of a robust nation. When Hitler drafted on a single
sheet of paper in that small hotel on the Danube bank at Linz the brief decree
which removed Austria from the map of Europe, he was writing only the final
paragraph of a chapter of history whose first pages were the Treaty of St.
Germain.
The
tangible benefits of the Anschluss to Germany were considerable; the
strategical and moral advantages it brought were greater still.
The
annexation of Austria added to the German frontiers 32,000 square miles, which
were 25,000 square miles more than Germany had lost under the Peace Treaties.
Her population was increased by 6,786,000, 94 per cent. of these being
Catholics and 200,000 Jews, who were practically all concentrated in Vienna, and
of whom, by the end of 1938, one quarter had been forced to emigrate. The
extension of Germany's political influence in Central Europe may be measured by
the fact that this expansion brought her into direct frontier contact with four
fresh Central European States -Hungary, Jugoslavia, Italy and the Principality
of Liechtenstein. She now has more neighbours than any other country in Europe,
her borders touching:
Denmark,
in the North;
Holland, Belgium,
Luxembourg and France in the West;
Switzerland, Liechtenstein
and Italy in the South;
Jugoslavia and
Hungary in the South-East; and
Slovakia, Lithuania
and Poland in the East.
Marshal
Goering's strong hand soon made itself felt at the economic levers of Austria.
As Minister responsible for the Four Year Plan, the organisation of the
resources of this new Province of the Ostmark came under his authority. A swarm
of his expert advisers descended upon it, and within a week he had announced
certain measures which were to be immediately put in hand. They were:
1.
The amalgamation of the Austrian and German
currencies,
2.
Abolition of Customs duties between the two
countries.
3.
A scheme for the exploitation of Austrian
water-power.
4.
Large developments in the armament, mining,
chemical and agricultural industries.
5.
The building of a new aeroplane factory and
Air Force barracks.
6.
Improvement of the Austrian railway-system.
7.
The construction of 775 miles of motor-roads
in Austria on the model of the German Autobahnen, and the building of
four new bridges over the Danube. Within a month of the Anschluss, Herr Hitler
in person had turned the first sod of the new motor-road to be built from
Salzburg to Vienna, which will form part of the transcontinental auto- mobile
route from the English Channel to the Bosphorus.
Marshal
Goering himself had not been able to come to Austria with the Führer at the
time of the Anschluss. “You have seen something that I have not seen. I envy
you,” he said, when I called on him at Karinhall a week or two later.
“It
was impossible for me to go while the Führer was there. He will never allow me
even to travel on the same train or in the same car as himself; it is too
risky.”
The
Marshal accordingly paid the newly annexed territory a visit about a fortnight
after the annexation, and made a State tour of the country, which included a
journey down the Danube by steamer and took him to Mauterndorf, an old castle
in Tyrol belonging to his mother's family, where as a boy he had sometimes
spent the summer-holidays.
The
industrial equipment of Austria proved to be of poor quality. An expert
examination of every factory was ordered, and even some of the best-known works
in the country were found to be largely furnished with out- of-date plant,
which was replaced without delay.
The
greatest undertaking established there since the Anschluss is the Hermann
Goering Iron Works, near Linz, for whose 50,000 employees an entirely new town
was built close by.
One
of the most serious of German forfeits under the Treaty of Versailles had been
that of the iron ore of Lorraine, for since then the country had produced only
about 20 per cent. of its national requirements in this material. Austria has
largely made up the loss by bringing into the German stock additional deposits
estimated at 220,000,000 tons with an iron-content of about 40 per cent. There
is a mountain so rich in ore as to bear the name of Eisenberg.
Of
timber Austria had plenty. Her annexation increased the forest-area of the
Reich by 25 per cent. She possessed also mines of magnesite, graphite, copper,
lead and salt.
In agricultural produce, the new
territory was barely self-supporting, and the Anschluss did not diminish
Germany's own dependence upon imports for about one fourth of her food-supply.
The annexation was, however, a paying proposition in the sense that Austria had
a favourable trade balance of close on £2,000,000 a year. This was largely due
to her flourishing tourist-industry and the income derived from transit
goods-traffic.
The
gold reserves of Vienna were estimated at £10,000,000, and were added to the scanty
Reichsbank store of that metal which, according to published figures, was, at
the time, down to £6,000,000. Austrian water-power was a national resource
whose capacities had never been developed to more than about 10 per cent. They
were calculated at 25,000 million kilowatt-hours annually.
But
the advantages of the Anschluss were not to be measured in material gains
alone. The Austrians benefited by the opening up to them of the vast German
field of opportunity; by the stimulus of German energy and example, and by the
increase of prestige which citizenship of a Great Power brings. The Reich,
through the extension of its frontiers into the heart of Central Europe, won a
dominating economic position in that part of the Continent. The principal road,
river and rail communications of the Balkans with the West of Europe lay
henceforth across German territory.
Some
disturbance was caused in the summer of 1938 by a declaration from Dr. Funk,
the German Minister of Economics, that his Government would not recognize the
Austrian foreign debts, of which £17,000,000 had at various times been issued
in the form of sterling bonds, bearing interest at 7 per cent., 4 ½ per cent.
and 3 per cent., and guaranteed by the British Government. Of these,
£11,000,000 were held by British investors. The United States also held
$50,000,000 of Austrian liabilities, of which half consisted of the unpaid bill
for food-supplies sent to relieve starvation in Austria after the war.
German
repudiation of these debts was based upon the pretext that the loans had not
been granted for economic reasons, but only for the political purpose of
preventing union with the Reich.
It
soon transpired, however, that this attitude had been taken up to secure a
bargaining counter for obtaining a reduction in the rate of interest payable
upon the Dawes and Young Reparation Loans, and within a fortnight from Dr.
Funk's speech of June 17, a German delegation in London had negotiated a
settlement satisfactory enough for the prices of all Austrian and German
securities on the Stock Exchange to advance considerably.
One
benefit of the Anschluss to Austria became immediately effective. It was the
disappearance of unemployment. Herr Buerckel, the newly-appointed
Administrator, had told me on March 13 that the workless in that country
numbered 600,000. Within a month, a very large proportion of these had been
absorbed. In September I was informed by Dr. Seyss-Inquart that unemployment
was down to 5 per cent.
For
years the Austrian workless had been living on the scantiest of relief in
collections of leaky wooden huts on the outskirts of Vienna and other towns,
surrounded in winter by morasses of mud. Some of these squalid hovels had
served, twenty years before, as prisoner-of-war camps or base hospitals, and
had since been allowed to decay without repair.
In
those that I visited around Vienna and Linz, families were living under the
most abject conditions, as many as eight in a room, without bed-linen or change
of clothing; with no sanitary arrangements; no water laid on, and the minimum
of food and fuel. Stunted children splashed in the muddy lanes between the rows
of huts. Many of these squatter-families kept rabbits-in one case even pigs-in
the hovels where they lived.
With
impressive speed, these people were organised on higher standards of
citizenship. The men were drafted into the new jobs which sprang up in the
stagnant industries directly German authority had been established; the
children were gathered into creches and kindergartens, and the wives and
mothers were provided with the elementary essentials of decent existence.
Even
Colonel Sepp Dietrich, the commander of Hitler's bodyguard, one of the toughest
soldiers I know, was moved by the conditions in which he had found the poorest
children of Vienna existing.
“I
have 1700 men here,” he told me, “and out of their rations they are daily
feeding 1100 children.”
Before
the Anschluss was a month old, the German Government had made plans, at a cost
of £2,000,000, to replace the Vienna slum-camps by proper
housing-accommodation, and £400,000 was allotted to the supply of food and
clothing for the Austrian poor whose need was greatest.
The
“Bavarian Help Train” was sent to the working-class quarters of Vienna to bake
bread and provide medical attention.
This
“Help Train,” a gift from State technical employees to the Government, consists
of a dozen giant motor-coaches elaborately fitted up. Some are equipped as
surgeries; some as bakeries, or field-kitchens; some with pumps for dealing
with floods, or for maintaining a water- supply. The idea was to create a
mobile unit which could bring the conveniences of civilisation at high speed to
any area which had been devastated by catastrophe, or where refugees had
unexpectedly concentrated.
Seven
dental ambulance-waggons were dispatched to tour the country, treating the
children free. Holidays in Germany for the approaching summer were arranged for
10,000 Austrian workers and 10,000 children of war- veterans. Large camps were
prepared for boys and girls of the poorer classes. It is by such measures of
public welfare, and not only by tireless propaganda and mammoth parades, that
the Nazi regime maintains its popularity with the mass of the German people.
The
delight and relief displayed by the great majority of the population of Austria
when the Anschluss was suddenly thrust upon them had thus a basis in practical
benefit. The people were tired of being a poverty-stricken, divided little
nation, uncertain of its future, incapable of self-defence, lacking the material
resources necessary for prosperity, dependent upon the goodwill of stronger
powers, whose capital city, and administrative, banking, industrial and
commercial equipment, designed for a nation of 52,000,000, were now reduced to
serving a land populated only by 5,000,000, most of them poor peasants.
For
several years they had been looking on at the rapid development of their German
kinsmen across the border into a highly organised and relatively prosperous
nation, and though the regimentation which is the secret of Nazi success may
not have been attractive to the Austrian temperament, there was no denying its
efficiency and success. The energetic rulers of Germany knew what they wanted;
they went after it ruthlessly, and no one in their own country or outside it
seemed able to resist them.
At
the time of the Anschluss, Austria felt like a small and bankrupt shopkeeper
whose business has been taken over by a flourishing chain-store company. He may
have sentimental regrets for the loss of his identity and independence, but he
rejoices to be freed from anxieties and worries, and to gain the confidence
that comes from association with a powerful and prosperous organisation.
This
spirit, which brought about the ready Austrian acceptance of the Anschluss, was
not understood in England, where the series of ultimatums issued by Herr Hitler
on the evening of Friday, March 11, followed by the advance of German troops
across the frontier, had created a mental picture of Germany enforcing her will
upon a cowed and reluctant population.
Some
of the enthusiasm for the Anschluss in Austria may have evaporated during the
past year, since realisation seldom comes up to expectation.
The
Viennese regret the fall of their historic city from the status of a European
capital to that of a provincial town like Dresden or Stuttgart. Many former
enthusiastic Austrian workers for the Nazi cause are disappointed that they
have not got better jobs. The provinces declare that the falling-off in the
number of British and other foreign visitors for summer-tours and winter-sports
is not compensated by the large influx of North Germans who are far from being
such free spenders.
But
the utter poverty in which many Austrians lived has disappeared. As evidence of
the increase of popular purchasing power, a Brewers' Congress held at Vienna in
April, 1939, reported that the sale of beer in Austria had trebled since the
Anschluss.
