HOW VIENNA WENT NAZI
By JOHN LOW
SOME time before the German coup a large group of Nazis, including Seyss-Inquart and others who later became Ministers, met regularly at a restaurant in Vienna where for the past year I have been a waiter. As assembly was forbidden by the Schuschnigg government, conspiratorial conversations went on at separate tables, with whispering emissaries passing from group to group to report progress, while plain-clothes police stood around to see the letter of the law was obeyed.
For the same reason, when dances were held, the doors had all to be left wide open, and even a curtain before on.• of the doors was taken down. The Nazi salute was already common even before the coup, but it was just a timid apologetic raising of the hand to the shoulder with a barely audible " Heil Hitler," and the responses—especially in public places—were even snore shamefaced. This was a mere shadow of its later clockwork bravado, as was the whispered plotting compared with the gradually increasing rowdiness in the restaurant. Really audible protests, ,however, were raised when the plebiscite was announced. This was greeted as rank treason on the part of Schuschnigg, and when on Friday news of his resignation was broadcast, their excitement knew no bounds. They cheered and clapped and jumped about like a football crowd whose team had scored at last. Seyss-Inquart himself had been trying previously to restrain them. A quiet, untidily dressed lawyer of about 40, he seemed comparatively harmless. For this reason perhaps he was the more acceptable to Schuschnigg. Even since before the Hitler regime he had been in favour of Anschluss.
To me the affair had its funny side. The day Deutschland fiber alles was first broadcast, I almost exploded with laughter. The whole crowd in the restaurant sprang up to attention with a clatter of heels, raised arms in the Nazi salute and, with rapt faces turned towards the loud-speaker, like a pious congregation going through the stations of the cross, stood rigid until the hymn was over. Equally ridiculous were the two Nazis I saw on the frontier station at Felkirch. They met, nose to nose, clicked heels, shot up their arms to a rigid salute, and in this position carried on a conversation lasting quite a few minutes. Again I could hardly restrain myself, listening to the broadcast of Hitler's speech from Linz when, thanking Seyss-.Inquart for his welcome, he broke into falsetto sobs. " Ich—ich—ich," he began, " danke (cheers) danke ihnen (louder cheers) danke ihnen, herr Bundeskanzler fur ihre schoenen Griissen (gulps drowned in a crash of cheers). And speaking of cheering, there was an epidemic of sore throats, which for some days prevented many of my clients speaking above a whisper. I thought it was due to shouting until I caught it myself. The improvised uniforms of the Nazi troopers were ridiculous enough—plus-fours, sam browns. outsize tin hats, and rifles.
I saw enough brutality in the streets to convince me that far worse went on behind the scenes. I watched Jews being surrounded by bands of youths and girls, pushed, punched and jeered at. I passed a café (the Continental) that had been raided : boss of 16 or 17 were posted at the doors with rifles at the ready, while the crowd stood sheepishly silent inside. I saw two girls in their twenties laughing hysterically and pushing and clouting a bearded little Jew, so old he could barely shuffle along. I watched middle-aged clerks from Government offices bundled into a lorry and carried off amidst the jeers of a screeching crowd. One German officer asked me why I wasn't wearing a Swastika badge and whether I was a Jew. My boss intervened before I could give the answer which was on the tip of my tongue and might have led to trouble. Pickets kept customers away from the Jewish stores, and the Miinchnerhof Hotel in the Mariahilver- strasse bore a notice announcing that the former proprietor, an American Jew, had fled the country with his head-waiter, that the staff was now entirely Aryan and customers might enter undefiled.
I was disgusted and astonished by the shabby conduct of some of my clients, educated men whom I had been accus- tomed to address as " Herr Doctor " or " Herr Professor." They brought down to the restaurant lists of telephone numbers of Jews who were to be rung up in the course of the evening and abused.
Rather surprisingly La Grande Illusion was being shown in one of the cinemas shortly before I left and on Monday, the 14th, the Daily Herald was being sold, with inch-deep headlines announcing the German invasion. Speaking of newspapers, I saw in one paper in Vienna a strip of three cartoons showing John Bull being punched on the jaw, then in the stomach and finally trampled on. The caption under the first is " I protest," under the second " I protest strongly," and under the third " I protest with all my might." This is in keeping with some of the songs I heard in the street corners —Deutschland fiber alles and one with the refrain Heute wir gehoren zum Deutschland : morgen die ganz Welt.
It is difficult to say what proportion of the population was genuinely Nazi. As I have said, the salutes before the coup were comically timid, as if no one wished to commit himself entirely. My own boss was Nazi and so were most of the staff. One of the waiters, a Storm-Trooper, had not been speaking to me for some days before I left, and had been subjecting to the meanest bullying and indignities the dish- washer, who was an avowed Communist. The quick change over of the police was really remarkable. On Friday, the it th, lorry-loads of them had assembled, at the orders of the Schuschnigg government, in the Opera Square, ready to be sent to any part of the town in case of trouble. When the news of Schuschnigg's resignation reached them, huge Swastika flags were produced for the lorries, and armlets for the men, who swarmed down and joined the mob. Both armlets and flags were evidently ready in the lorries.
Another description of the invasion itself and what followed is not necessary here. I shall speak only of its effect on myself, and readers may realise the feelings of the unfortunate Jews and others. The constant din of planes zooming over- head all day, the tramp of marching feet, the thud of drums, the roar of the tanks and cars, the shouting and singing, the strange litanies recited in chorus by the crowds (Heil Adolf ! Heil Adolf Hitler ! Heil Sieg ! Ein Volk. Ein Reich, &c. —the order of words was known by heart) reduced me to a state of nervous tension and exhaustion that made me long to get away. And I am only 22 and consider myself fairly tough. The marching of cheering crowds round the Ring went on all night. For days no trams could run, so that I had to walk home from work, often at three in the morning. I went to sleep and woke to the roar of war-planes. I spent the day in a chaos of noises, not the least of which was the continuous broadcast of speeches. It was a great relief when I got a cable from my father ordering me home.
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