booked a phone call on Saturday evening but it kept
getting delayed by official flash connections [Blitz-
gesprächen], and then on Sunday at eleven .. I got
your dear phone call, which made me so happy and
for which I thank Emmy a thousand times I was
just sad not to hear your own dear voice so I could tell
you all that was in my overflowing heart.
So now I have to throw my arms around your
neck like this, in writing, and express our ardent and
genuine thanks to our wonderful Führer and to you,
my dearest brother, for this miracle that has saved us
in the nick of time.
Dearest H’m, none of us can grasp even now that
we Austrians belong at last to you, and that no fron-
tier divides us anymore. The fantastic pace at which
these things all happen we can scarcely keep u p
with these wonderful times. What a pity you can’t
join the Führer’s triumphal entry parade, because
you’ve got to stand in for him [in Berlin]. But when
you do come, there will be even more scenes of exul-
tation....
I must tell you that I have never found the death
of Friedrich* so painful to bear as now. I just keep
thinking, over and over, if only he could have lived to
see this miracle....This nationwide exhilaration was shared by millions, many of
whom would afterwards remember differently. Baron von
Weizsäcker, later one of the more trenchant critics of Hitler’s
policies, found fit to comment in his diary on the Führer’s “re-
markable knack of catching opportunity on the wing.”
Those words would apply equally well to the manner in which
Göring now moved to consolidate his position in the wake of
General von Fritsch’s resignation.
- Friedrich Rigele had died recently, leaving Göring’s sister Olga a widow.