Interviewing Hitler

1

On the Balcony at Linz

Linz, Austria; 12 March 1938. Night has fallen and Adolf Hitler is standing in the cold on the balcony of the city hall, looking out at buildings festooned with swastikas and a crowd of thousands of people who are looking up at him and chanting in unison: 'One leader; one people; one state.'

To Hitler, it must have seemed the culmination of a series of triumphs that had first taken him from obscurity to become the all-powerful ruler of Germany, and then transformed Germany itself from a weak and unconfident country into one feared across Europe.

The Wehrmacht had crossed into Austria earlier that day, marking the first time Nazi Germany had invaded another country. It had gone better than Hitler could have dared hope, the Austrian army putting up no resistance at all, and thousands of ecstatic Austrians lining the streets to welcome their invaders. Hitler himself crossed the border a few hours later, visiting his birthplace of Braunau am Inn, and then driving on through streets filled with delirious crowds to Linz, where he had spent much of his childhood.

And now, the crowd in Linz was looking up at Hitler not as a conqueror but as a lost son returned home to deliver them to a greater future. The almost religious fervour of their chanting must have seemed to confirm everything he had long believed about himself as a man of destiny.

But it was not just Hitler who must have thought this moment represented the high point of a brilliant career. Standing alongside him was a tall Englishman with slicked-back hair and a long scar on his forehead, whose very presence on the balcony seemed the final proof of his position as the world's greatest journalist.

George Ward Price was 52 years old and worked for the Daily Mail. He had flown into Austria the previous afternoon, as its government's attempt to undermine Germany's aim of bringing Austria into its orbit by holding a referendum on Austrian independence seemed likely to bring tensions to boiling point. Ward Price had arrived to find Vienna in what he called 'a state of supreme excitement such as has rarely prevailed in Europe since the Great War'. Most shops were closed, Austrian troops were stationed around the capital to maintain order, and rumours swirled that the referendum had been cancelled and Germany was about to invade. Ward Price drove to the Chancellery to try to get official news, and he arrived there to find 'an odd air of suspended animation'. He walked past guards with machine guns and, inside the building, he met Ludwig Kleinwächter, the head of the government press bureau.

'I think there are good grounds to believe that the plebiscite will be postponed,' Kleinwächter told him, smiling grimly.

'What has happened?'

'Strong objections to it have been put forward by the German government,' said Kleinwächter, looking uneasy. 'I may be able to tell you more if you ring up in an hour or two. All I know is that the cabinet is now sitting, and that information has been received that three German Army Corps are concentrated on the Austrian frontier.'

Ward Price left the Chancellery and drove to the luxurious Hotel Bristol, where he had been a regular guest since before the First World War. It was now early evening, and large crowds had gathered in the streets. By the time he reached the hotel, the Austrian government had already announced the referendum had been cancelled, and Ward Price telephoned Kleinwächter to ask for an update.

'We have just heard that the German troops will cross our frontier within the next hour,' said Kleinwächter, his voice trembling. 'It is being given out in Germany that in Austria everyone is fighting everyone else, and that a regular bloodbath is going on here.'

Ward Price began firing questions at him, but Kleinwächter cut him off. 'I know nothing more, and I doubt I shall be able to tell you anything else. I may not be here for much longer.' Kleinwächter was right. He would be arrested a few hours later and eventually sent to Dachau concentration camp.1

As Ward Price put the telephone down, the hotel manager called him over to the radio, telling him that Austrian Prime Minister Kurt Schuschnigg was making an announcement. Ward Price listened to Schuschnigg announce he was stepping down as prime minister in the face of German demands, and that, to avoid bloodshed, he had ordered the Austrian army to fall back if the German army crossed the border. When Schuschnigg finished speaking, Ward Price went out into the streets, where people had been listening to the speech over loudspeakers. At first, there was a sense of hush as people absorbed the news. Then he heard a chant, quiet at first, but then louder and louder as more people took it up, of the Nazi 'Sieg Heil'. Ward Price started walking and, before long, it seemed to him that 'the whole city was chanting it now'. Suddenly, swastikas were being put on display all around him, and he saw lorries driving past filled with rifle-carrying men wearing swastika armbands. Large numbers of Nazis began marching through the streets, and Ward Price saw a symbolism in the way they trampled over the leaflets littering the pavements that urged people to vote for Schuschnigg in the now cancelled referendum.2

'Tonight Vienna is entirely in the hands of triumphant, cheering, flag-waving, torch-bearing Nazi demonstrators,' he wrote in his report for the next day's Daily Mail. 'Police lorries are already flying the Swastika pennant, while girls are pinning Swastika armbands on the sleeves of policemen. Another chapter of history is closing tonight. Once mighty Austria is becoming another province of Nazi Germany.'3

He now needed to send his article to London; he arrived at the telegraph office to find its large and dingy room filled with journalists. Some were German Jews who had moved to Vienna to seek refuge from the Nazis and now faced falling under their control again. As Ward Price waited to send his article, a group of rifle-carrying young Nazis entered the room. Their leader announced their arrival by hitting the butt of his rifle against the floor, while the others pointed their guns at the journalists.

'Nobody is allowed out!' shouted the leader.

Ward Price was surprised by the journalists' lack of reaction, as they ignored the armed men and calmly continued writing. Then a postal official approached the Nazi leader and politely told him that the journalists were busy writing articles, and that their presence was disturbing them.

'But they must not send any!' snapped the Nazi. 'I am here to prevent that!'

The official replied that he would not be able to close the telegraph office without a written order from the government, and the two men began negotiating a compromise whereby the journalists would be allowed to send their messages as long as they were first checked by the Nazis. While this was going on, Ward Price managed to slip out of the room unnoticed, going to the Marconi wireless office around the corner, from where he was able to send his article in peace.

Ward Price then stayed up till 4 o'clock, watching Nazi supporters march through the streets. He noted how many of them were Austrian police officers who just a few hours before had been responsible for upholding the ban on any display of support for the Nazis. By the time he returned to his hotel, a large Nazi banner was hanging from its top windows.

After a few hours' sleep, he was woken at 8 o'clock by the sound of aeroplanes. He looked out and saw the sky was filled with low-flying bombers dropping Nazi propaganda onto the streets below. Half an hour later, he drove through eerily quiet streets to the Chancellery, where he was surprised to find the sentry there greet him by removing his cap and bowing. He was directed into the building and up a curving staircase. At the top, two more sentries opened a gold door and ushered him into a room, where officials got to their feet and saluted him. As he introduced himself and asked for an audience with the new chancellor, the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart, he had the awkward realisation that the officials had assumed he was a member of the new government.

Seyss-Inquart agreed to talk to him for a few minutes, and Ward Price asked him what was happening. Seyss-Inquart said the previous government's decision to hold a referendum had breached an agreement between Austria and Germany, and so Austria's president, Wilhelm Miklas, had asked Seyss-Inquart to form a new government that would meet Austria's obligations. Seyss-Inquart said he had received reports that the German army had crossed the border earlier that morning, but that Austria would remain independent, though 'fully conscious of her unity with the German race'. Schuschnigg, he added, was now confined to his house for his own safety.

After the interview, Ward Price drove to Schuschnigg's house, where he found armed police guarding the entrance gate and a group of Nazi stormtroopers loitering nearby. Ward Price approached one of the police officers and confidently told him he was there to see Schuschnigg. But one of the stormtroopers overheard him.

'No one can visit Dr Schuschnigg,' the stormtrooper interrupted. 'He is a prisoner, and not allowed to have communication with anyone.'

Ward Price had previously interviewed Schuschnigg, and he explained that he knew him and wanted to see for himself that he had not been...