THE GERMANS IN VIENNA

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR] [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]

SIR,—Perhaps the following account of conversations I had with various German soldiers after their entry into Vienna may interest your readers. I think they throw a new light on the political and economic conditions existing in Germany today : When, on March t3th, the first German troops had entered Vienna, a young officer, belonging to a North German regi- ment, rushed off to meet some friends whom he was anxious to see. Among the first things he said was the angry exclama- tion : " I really don't understand these Austrians, just shouting ' Heil ' and imagining Hitler will lead them to paradise. What do they think the Third Reich is ! If they had put up the slightest resistance, we wouldn't have shot. The SA. and SS. would have been forced to do all the fighting, and the Austrian army would have made short work of them."

Later on, I was informed confidentially that there had been very strong opposition from the army against the invasion of Austria, and that leading military authorities had only agreed to it after they had obtained Hitler's consent that the army was only to demonstrate but not to engage in any fighting.

Soon after the Germans came to Vienna, one of the biggest wine-gardens (Heurigen) near Vienna was invaded by a crowd of German privates and N.C.O.'s. When the orchestra tried to play a popular German military march, they protested, shouting that this was old stuff, that they had not come to Vienna to hear what they could hear day after day at home in barracks. The orchestra then tried to please them with the Donauwellen-waltz, but they would not have that either.

And when protests had died down they began to sing a song, the burden of which went : " Hitler hat keine Frau, Der Bauer hat keine Sau, Der Backer hat kein' Teig, Das ist das Dritte Reich."

They liked this song so much that they went on singing it again and again, night after night, while the Viennese people who happened to be present sat listening and wondering.

Some days after the excitement about Czechoslovakia began, and after the Czech army had been massed along the German—formerly Austrian—frontier, Czech soldiers crossed the Taya bridge and, on what was now German territory, they fixed mines beneath its pillars. There cannot have been any German troops near that highly important strategic point, for it was Austrian customs officials who had to be called to persuade the Czechs to go away and take the mines out.

During the last week of May some Berlin friends of mine came to Vienna by train along the Czechoslovakian frontier. They told me that they had not seen any signs of the German mobilisation, so much spoken of in the international Press.

They had only seen, well hidden in each of the railway stations at Hof, Marktredwitz, Weiden and Regensburg, just one short military train, containing no more than one company of infantry. A waiter in the dining-car had told them that these carriages had been standing there for at least ten days. There were no machine-guns nor any of the new small trench-mortars to be seen. But camp-kitchens and beer had been abundant. Privates and N.C.O.'s had been walking about, smoking

-cigarettes, chatting and laughing with girls, so that it seemed that the outbreak of hostilities between Germany-and Czecho- slovakia had been prevented not only by the attitude of the British Government, but, perhaps still more effectively, because the German army had declined to march and fight for the Sudeten Germans' " freedom."

. Among these Berlin people was an old friend of mine, a retired staff officer of a former Prussian Guards regiment. He had come to visit his son who was on duty in Vienna. One evening, when we were sitting over a glass of wine, father, son and I, I asked the old•man : " Well, do you think it will come to a war ? " His reply was short, rough and convincing "•Ja, wenn die mit der Schnauze schiessen (Hider has no frau, The peasant has no sow, The baker has no dough, That is the Third Reich.) kOnnten ! " (Sure, if them fellows could shoot with their snouts !). But when I asked him about the army's attitude towards the Nazi Government, he said that the situation was rather complicated. Among the young officers of the stupid, uneducated sort, there was a steadily growing number who were being influenced by the everlasting propaganda, and, in another five years' time, some of these young men might be in rather important positions, battalion commanders, A.D.C.'s to brigadier-generals, and so on. And, little by little, the chances of an effective army opposition would grow smaller.

But then his son interrupted : " You mustn't listen to father. He is completely out of things. In the ranks, about half the men are what the Nazis choose to call Communists, and even the rest of us won't go a single step to fight for old man Hitler's ambitions and fairy-tales. Do you think we couldn't deal with those few idiots who have turned Nazi ? Of course we can ! " —" He is perfectly right," said his father, " there is no doubt that if there was a declaration of war or any warlike action involving the army, where Germany was the aggressor, that would be the end of Hitler and his gang ; but short of this an army revolt seems to me rather difficult and unlikely. There is no leader, no revolutionary organisation, as far as I know, and I would know if there was any." His son interrupted again : " May be all that is not as unimaginable and unreal as father thinks."

" Don't let's talk about such far away and rather obscure possibilities," I said, " but tell me, what is your actual job in the army ? "—" I am in the machir.e-gun corps, at present."- " You must have rather wonderful new guns by now."—" Oh Lord, no, they are still the same that father went out to Flanders with in 1914."—" That old. pre-War model? Don't pull my leg ! "—" But it's true, Sir ; the same rotten old pokers, to burn your fingers with ! We have got 3, t-h-r-e-e, bright new guns in our battalion, I admit, but they have to be kept new and shining for parade, and besides, none of us feels really safe with them. They are 'Ersatz' like every blessed new thing we have. They may go to pieces any moment."—" Are they really as bad as that ? Aren't you exaggerating ? It seems utterly incredible that all those thousands of millions should have been wasted on —well, just bluff parade material. Don't try to make me believe that Germany isn't prepared even to start a new war. We all of us know that she won't be able to win against a strong coalition, even if the Duce doesn't forsake her."—" Which he is sure to do, Sir ! But I'm telling you no more than the naked, ugly truth ! Didn't you see the lorries the SS. came to Vienna in ? Didn't you hear the terrible noise they make ? "- "Well, yes, I do remember now, one early morning, some weeks ago, I was walking by a SS.-parking-yard, just when they were trying to start their engines, after a rather chilly night. I saw them fussing about and working hard to crank them up. There was a terrific noise of backfiring, and some of them wouldn't start at all, so they had to call for mechanics."—" There you see, they are all Ersatz. And do you know what my friends in the Air Force tell me ? For several months now, Goering's men have been paying thousands of marks to any volunteers who will agree to go for trial flights in new planes, fresh from the factories. For these planes are really nothing but flying coffins ; and they get worse every month. Their design isn't really so bad ; they are far better than the clumsy machines that came out in 1934 and 1935; some of them are even supposed to be brilliant. But they are forced to put more and more Ersatz even into the most delicate parts of them. During these last few months, every third or fourth machine seems to have gone to pieces during its trials. Casualties at Staaken and elsewhere are terrible, so they can't find any reasonable fellow now who will go in for these test flights. That's why they are bound to pay such enormous premiums to the reckless sort who don't care, or to newcomers who don't know how bad it all is."

After learning all this about the attitude of officers and men and about the quality of their new war material, I doubt, more than ever before, where German preparedness ends, and where the bluff begins.

A REFUGEE PROM VIENNA,.