which the agitated Austrian envoy, Stefan Tauschitz, had re-
ported in jealous detail to Vienna. On January , Göring had
mentioned to the timid Austrian that Germany’s perennial
problem of how to pay for the iron ore and timber imported
from Austria would be “solved” during the spring by impli-
cation, permanently.
That was the day when Herman Göring was confronted
with the dossier on the Blomberg bride. From then on the two
crises Austria and the Wehrmacht scandal marched in step.
Four days later (the day of the infamous confrontation between
Otto Schmidt, the blackmailer, and General von Fritsch in Hit-
ler’s library) Hitler ordered a cable sent to Vienna, telling Papen
that he was willing to meet Dr. Schuschnigg, the Austrian chan-
cellor, in mid-February. It was no coincidence. The Führer,
Keitel told his demoralized staff a few days later, intended to
distract attention from the Wehrmacht scandal by something
that would “make Europe catch its breath.”
Göring disapproved of what Hitler was planning with
Schuschnigg. It was going to be another time-wasting compro-
mise, he knew it. When Dr. Schuschnigg met Hitler on the
Obersalzberg on February , the newly created field marshal
therefore deliberately stayed away and sent only Dr. Kajetan
Mühlmann, his Austrian “art expert,” to the Bavarian villa to
keep him informed on what developed. Hitler tried the usual
Nazi methods. He himself bragged to Göring afterward that he
had fetched his two most “brutal-looking” generals, Hugo Sper-
rle and Walther von Reichenau, and talked loudly with them
during the luncheon with Schuschnigg about the Luftwaffe and
its latest bombs. Then he had told his Austrian guest to get rid
of “those silly little barricades you have put up on our frontier,”
failing which he would have to send in German engineer battal-
ions to do the job. During one intermission Schuschnigg heard