back to the grand reception that he had organized for the visit-
ing huntsmen of Europe at the Aviators’ Building (the Haus der
Flieger, which had previously been the Prussian Parliament).
Here he playfully buttonholed Stefan Tauschitz, the Austrian
minister in Berlin. “The Führer still owes us one breakfast treat,”
he boomed. “Austria!”
The next evening Guido Schmidt came to the “lion’s den”
again. Göring invited him out to Carinhall on the seventh and
nonchalantly walked him past the map fresco, which Göring
had left in place since Mussolini’s visit. “It’s such a fine map,” he
apologized to the Austrian, “and I didn’t want to have to keep
changing it. So I have had it drawn in keeping with the way that
things are shaping anyway.”
Hermann Göring’s hunting exhibition acted as a honeypot to all
the big bears of European field sports. On November , his
brother-in-law Franz Hueber tipped him off that the head of
Austrian security, Paul Revertera, was privately visiting the halls.
He sent a chauffeur to fetch the visitor from the Hotel Eden at
: .., and the well-tailored, gray-haired Austrian was pi-
loted by an SS man through the marble labyrinth into Göring’s
villa soon after. Their two-hour conversation started in the safe
preserves of the new hunting laws, but then Göring guided his
guest out into more rugged terrain. He criticized the fortifica-
tions that Austria was now building on her frontier with Ger-
many, and accused Vienna of violating the agreement. He
said that “people” were pressing for a solution. “Our Seventh
Army, they say, would go through Austria like butter.” He ad-
vised the Austrian not to bank on Paris or London; France was
exhausted, he claimed, and the British dominions would dis-
courage any intervention by London. This left only Prague, he
suggested, adding with a grin, “And we’d take her on too!”