troops to come in and “restore order.” Göring did not at first
see the point of such a stunt “We don’t need it,” he told Hit-
ler. “We’re going in anyway, come hell or high water!”
At the back of his mind were the five Italian divisions that
Mussolini had mobilized once before on the Brenner frontier, in
, after the Nazis murdered his friend Dollfuss. “I wanted,”
Göring later explained, “to make things quite plain [to Musso-
lini] and discourage any intentions he might have.” German
troops pouring into Austria would not only deter the Italians
from laying greedy hands on the eastern Tyrol, but they would
prevent the Hungarians and Czechs from seizing other border
provinces of Austria. By nine .. Göring had drafted a letter to
Dr. Schuschnigg, calling on him to resign in favor of Seyss-
Inquart, since he had violated the Berghof Agreement, and a
suitable telegram for Berlin to receive from Seyss-Inquart.
Göring sent the documents down to Seyss-Inquart in Vienna by
courier that same night.
Friday, March , D-Day minus one found Göring,
“the busiest man in Berlin,” as he unashamedly boasted during
his trial. At : .. he called a further military conference
with Brauchitsch, Beck, and Milch. He wedged his bulk into a
phone booth in the Reich Chancellery and began dictating or-
ders down the line to his agents seven hundred miles away in
Vienna. He sent Keppler down with a list of Austrians he had
selected to form Seyss-Inquart’s first Cabinet. Among them were
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a soft-spoken thirty-four-year-old lawyer
defaced by dueling scars, to control the secret police; Major Al-
exander Löhr, an Austrian Air-Force officer, for defense; the
lawyer Hans Fischböck for trade and industry, and Paula
Göring’s husband Franz Hueber to take over justice and foreign
affairs.