person dictating foreign policy in Germany, and that is Hitler
himself.”
At first there had seemed no urgency about Austria. The
Wehrmacht had made no preparations apart from Blomberg’s
directive (Case Otto), issued in June , to cover the unlikely
contingency that Vienna restored the Hapsburg monarchy in
Austria: in which case Germany would invade immediately. In
July Hitler and Göring had appointed economist Wilhelm Kep-
pler as their agent in Vienna, bypassing both Neurath and Pa-
pen. By the end of Keppler was complaining frequently
about the Austrian Nazis. “Those chronic hotheads down there,”
Göring would recall eight years later, “were always stirring
things up.” On Göring’s instructions Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart,
a leading Austrian Nazi, had begun talks with the Schuschnigg
government about concessions for the still-banned Austrian
Nazi organizations. On January , , Keppler had reported
that these talks had bogged down and that both Seyss-Inquart
and the pro-German minister of national affairs, General Ed-
mund von Glaide-Horstenau, were contemplating resignation.
Göring directed a secretary at Carinhall to phone Keppler that
the resignations were to be prevented at all costs and that
Göring had sent for Joseph Leopold, leader of the Austrian Na-
zis, to give him a piece of his mind.
Göring’s methods of putting pressure on the Schuschnigg
government to come closer toward the Reich were more subtle.
In mid-January he had invited the prime minister of Austria’s
neighbor, Yugoslavia, to Berlin and accorded him a reception
more calculated to worry Vienna than to impress Belgrade:
Göring had greeted Milan Stojadinovic with the “Hermann
Göring” Regiment at the station; staged two gala opera perform-
ances (with audiences in full ceremonial dress); provided tours
of Krupps and the synthetic oil plants at Scholven-Buer all of