Göring’s vague plan now was that President Miklas should
step down, to allow Hitler to be voted in as president of Austria.
At midday that Saturday it was now March he sent Milch
down by plane with a special mission, to reassure the president
that Germany would respect his pension rights if he retired.
“With fourteen children to support,” he had guffawed the day
before, “you can’t just do as you please!”
That Saturday evening he settled back at Carinhall and
tuned in to the radio commentaries coming from all the world.
He was unquestionably proud of what he had done for his
Führer. Hitler was being given the Austrian equivalent of a
ticker-tape parade as his automobile plowed slowly through
cheering crowds into the first big town, Linz. Hysterical Austri-
ans mobbed the car, strewing flowers in his path. “People are
weeping and sobbing with joy,” Göring related to one caller. “It’s
so unnerving that even our men can’t hold back their tears....
Just one great outburst of joy from everybody, give or take a few
panicky Jews and other guilt-stricken gentlemen.”
Soon the airwaves carried the voice of Hitler himself,
broadcasting from a balcony in Linz, while half a million Austri-
ans packed into the square below. Göring heard Hitler, an ora-
tor like few others, tongue-tied with emotion.
Some hours later the phone rang, and it was Hitler calling,
still choked with pent-up feelings. “Göring,” he said, “you just
cannot imagine. I had completely forgotten how beautiful my
country is.”
“Yes,” reported the field marshal, glowing, to Ribbentrop
the next morning. “The Führer was just about all in when he
spoke to me last night.”
There were many Austrians, of course, who did not wel-
come the coming new order with garlands or exultation. An
exodus of Austrian Communists began. As twenty thousand na-