Schuschnigg stalled for time. At :, Seyss-Inquart
phoned Göring from Vienna saying that the chancellor had
agreed to postpone his plebiscite. It was not enough. After con-
sulting Hitler, Göring phoned Seyss-Inquart back an hour later.
“You must send off that prearranged telegram to the Führer,”
Göring demanded, and at : .. he phoned Seyss-Inquart
again, this time to dictate an ultimatum to Schuschnigg to resign
by :.
Göring kept his patience only poorly. Several times during
phone calls, Vienna cut him off. (In retrospect, it is a mystery
why the Austrians did not sever the line completely.) The clock
was ticking on toward the deadline he had appointed. “God
knows who half the people rattling around in that embassy
were,” he said later. Once he believed he was speaking with a
Dombrowski, when in fact it was the Trieste-born Austrian Nazi
Odilo Globocnig, later an SS mass-murderer, whom Seyss-
Inquart had sent to the embassy to report that he was making
only slow headway with the Austrian president Miklas, the con-
stitutional obstacle to any Nazi takeover.
Göring extended the deadline by two hours. The formerly
banned Austrian SA and SS units were now blatantly patrolling
Vienna’s streets in uniform. Göring told Globocnig to get rid of
the country’s newspaper chiefs: They were to be replaced, he
said, by “our men.” He spelled out who the new ministers were
to be “Justice, that’s straightforward. You know who gets
that.”
: Ja, ja!
: Well, say the name.
: Ja, your brother-in-law, right?
: Right.