Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Göring was not simply operating as Hitler’s agent in matters relating to the ‘Austrian Question’. His approach differed in emphasis in significant respects.¹⁷ As with Hitler, anti-Bolshevism was central to his thinking. But Göring’s broad notions of foreign policy, which he pushed to a great extent on his own initiative in the mid-1930s, drew more on traditional pan-German concepts of nationalist power-politics to attain hegemony in Europe than on the racial dogmatism central to Hitler’s ideology. Return of colonies (never a crucial issue for Hitler), the alliance with Britain (which he continued to strive for long after Hitler’s ardour had cooled), and an emphasis on domination in south-eastern Europe to ensure German raw material supplies from a huge economic sphere of exploitation (Großraumwirtschaft, a notion that differed from Hitler’s racially determined emphasis on Lebensraum), were the basic props of his programme to ensure Germany’s hegemony.¹⁸ Within this framework, Austria’s geography and raw materials gave it both strategically and economically a pivotal position.¹⁹

Göring was increasingly determined, now as supremo of the Four-Year Plan, in the face of Germany’s mounting problems of securing raw material supplies, to press for what he called the ‘union’ or ‘merger’ (Zusammenschluß) of Austria and Germany — even, if necessary, at the expense of the alliance with Italy on which Hitler placed such store.²⁰ Göring had come close to offending Mussolini on his visit to Rome in January 1937 with his brusque demands for Italy’s need to come to terms with the fact that Austria would eventually have to fall to Germany. But by the time he had next broached the topic to the Duce four months later, Mussolini had appeared tacitly to recognize that the Anschluß was purely a matter of time. A month before his second (nominally private) visit to Italy that year, in April, amid severe blockages in Germany’s raw material supplies, Göring had told leaders of the iron industry in confidence that the rich iron ores of Austria must come to Germany.²¹ No time-scale was envisaged. But in view of the pressing economic difficulties, it was plain that Göring did not have the distant future in mind.

As diplomatic feelers, also put out by Neurath and Papen, appeared to be fruitless, Göring’s impatience for a more radical solution to the ‘Austrian Question’ grew. Before Mussolini’s visit to Germany in September, Hitler gave Göring instructions to tread delicately with his important guest on matters relating to Austria. He wanted Mussolini to understand that Germany had no intention in the foreseeable future of bringing the Austrian problem to a head, but that German intervention would be possible should a crisis be otherwise provoked in Austria. By whom or in what circumstances was left to the imagination. How much notice Göring took of Hitler’s instructions was plain when, on the Duce’s visit to Carinhall, he showed him a map of Europe which had Austria already incorporated within Germany. The lack of any negative reaction from Mussolini was taken by his host as a sign that Italy would not object to an Anschluß.²² Göring showed the same map in November to Guido Schmidt, state secretary in the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and his guest at an international hunting exhibition. Good huntsmen knew no boundaries, a grinning Göring told him.²³ It was an attempt to bully Schmidt into accepting the inevitability of a currency union between Germany and Austria which, it was plain, was meant to evolve over time into a full merger of the two countries.²⁴ Göring assured Lord Halifax (whose visit to Germany he had instigated) later the same month that German intentions towards Austria were not aggressive, and that relations between the two countries could be settled by diplomatic means.²⁵ At the same time, he took additional steps to isolate Austria still further in south-east Europe.²⁶

By the beginning of 1938, the noose had tightened around Austria’s neck. Göring was pushing hard for currency union. But with Austria stalling for time, and Italy’s reactions uncertain, immediate results through diplomatic channels seemed unlikely. An Anschluß resulting from German intervention through force in the imminent future appeared improbable.