Vienna 1934
Betrayal at the Ballplatz
Paul A. Myers
Smashwords Edition
Published by Paul A. Myers Books
All rights reserved. Copyright © Paul A. Myers 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-9825960-9-8
More information at myersbooks.com
Smashwords information at Smashwords author page
Send comments to mailto:myersbooks@gmail.com
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the copyright of this author.
A short overview to Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz
Vienna 1934…Chancellor Dollfuss consolidates one-party government under the banner of Austro-Fascism. Backed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Dollfuss struggles to keep Austria from being swallowed up by Nazi Germany under Adolph Hitler. While Hitler listens to the thunder of Wagnerian opera outside of Munich, Nazi thugs launch a lightning-like putsch in Vienna, a day that changes the destiny of nations and people in this exciting book of accurate historical event and dashing fictional romance.
Beautiful Anna Marie Linden, a young art historian working in Vienna, weaves her way between an intrepid young suitor and the enveloping tentacles of an evil Nazi treachery.
Geoffrey Ashbrook, English foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, with a secret assignment from powerful officials in London to watch the tumultuous politics of Vienna.
Karl Linden, a war-weary colonel with hard service on the eastern front during the Great War, lives in bucolic retirement at his Schloss Linden estate while nodding approval to his daughter’s choice of husband.
Erich Linden, Anna Marie’s stepbrother, a Pan-German idealist drawn into a sinister web of Nazi intrigue.
Ernst Rüdiger Prince Starhemberg, the “playboy-prince” and vice chancellor in Chancellor Dollfuss’s government, who leads the Austrian fascist home guard, the Heimwehr.
Shelley Moncton, a famous English author living on his luxurious gardened estate at Cap Ferrat in the south of France, watches the rise of Nazi power, a story he has seen before.
Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg, eldest son of Emperor Karl and Empress Zita of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, plots a return to the Austrian throne from exile in Belgium.
Zita, empress of Austria and queen of Hungary, a Bourbon-Parma princess (“the best men in the Bourbon dynasty are the Bourbon women”), schemes to restore her son Otto to the throne of Austria and save it from engulfment by Hitler’s Germany.
Ballhausplatz or Ballplatz
The Ballhausplatz is a square in central Vienna. It is also the address of the office of the federal chancellor of Austria. Accordingly, Ballhausplatz is shorthand for the chancellery. The building is situated on the edge of the grounds of the Hofburg Imperial Palace located in the Inner City district of Vienna; it is a few minutes walk from the Parliament building. The name derives from a tennis house originally on the site, the Ballhaus (ball house). The word Ballhausplatz is often shortened to Ballplatz and as such describes the seat of executive power in a manner similar to the White House in Washington or Downing Street in London.
The Inner City is surrounded by a series of broad boulevards collectively known as the Ringstrasse. The boulevards were created in the nineteenth century when the old walls of Vienna were torn down.
NOTE: This is a work of fiction interwoven with actual historical events. At the back of the book is a Cast of Characters indicating fictional characters and actual historical characters. All interactions between fictional characters and actual historical characters are of course fictional as are scenes between fictional characters.
Chapter 1: Paris
May 1934, Paris. Ashbrook quickly walked down the sidewalk in the late afternoon sunlight of a brisk day, hands in his trench coat, a light scarf around his neck, a trilby hat on his head. The old Parisian neighborhood, a little more than a half-dozen blocks away from the British embassy, was decades back in time, blocks of tired buildings standing in nondescript anonymity, dirty reminders of the economic depression closing around Europe.
He turned into the door of a small bistro, took off his hat, removed the scarf, and slid out of his trench coat. Then he hung the items from a single wooden peg from a line of many wooden pegs marching along one wall in the small anteroom. He made a discreet inquiry to the waiter. The waiter pointed down an aisle and made a turning motion with his hand to the left and whispered, “a gauche.” To the left.
Ashbrook walked through the dim smoky light of the almost deserted bistro, here and there the last of the lunch crowd lingering over coffee. He came up to a booth tucked away in the rear corner well away from the kitchen door over to the far right. A man in waistcoat and gray suite rose and stuck out his hand with the greeting, “Nice you could make it, Ashbrook.”
Taking his seat, the man said, “I have been on to London. They are immensely pleased with the series of articles you have written for the Telegraph on the rise of fascism in Austria. Read them myself. First rate. Your political coverage of Chancellor Dollfuss’s creation of a nationalist fascist movement molded on Mussolini’s Italian fascist party has set important minds to thinking on new tracks. Not easily done in London, I might add. Mussolini’s Italian fascism is not English tea, of course, but we can live with it. The trains run on time and that tommyrot. Austrian fascism that keeps Austria independent would be a warm cup of tea right now. Any port in a storm.”
Speaking earnestly to Ashbrook, “It goes without saying that the additional reports you sent were read with avid interest all around town. The detail and insights were simply striking.”
The gray-suited man summed up, “Hitler’s consolidation of power in Germany is going faster than anyone imagined. In little over a year he has consolidated more power than thought possible.”
Ashbrook remembered. He was on assignment in Berlin in January 1933 when Hitler put together a coalition with another right-wing party and came to power as chancellor. Then, under suspicious circumstances, the Reichstag was burned down in a great fire at the end of February, just a week before scheduled elections. The Nazis blamed the Communists. Only days later came the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties and rights of habeas corpus. The Nazis swiftly used the decree to lock up Communist representatives. Before March was out, the Enabling Act was passed in a parliamentary coup d’etat. The Nazis then started shipping the Social Democratic representatives, members of the biggest and most powerful social democratic party in Europe, off to concentration camps. Ashbrook quoted Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in his next dispatch to London, “The authority of the Führer has now been wholly established. Votes are no longer taken. The Führer decides.” Then the sickening rumors started to come back from the camps; the former representatives of the parties of the left were dying in the concentration camps. Parliamentary democracy in Germany died with them.
The gray-suited man broke through Ashbrook’s thoughts, “Only old Field Marshal Hindenburg stands in the way of the Austrian corporal’s grasp for total power. The army owes total allegiance to Hindenburg. If he dismisses Chancellor Hitler, then Hitler is gone. But when Hindenburg is gone, and that will be soon, then the jackboot comes down on a different cobblestone. The military’s oath will be to the head of government, and Hitler will have decisive power as Reich chancellor.”
The gray-suited man took a sip from his glass, “The first goal in Hitler’s Mein Kampf is Anschluss with Austria. Chancellor Dollfuss’s efforts not to be swept away before the Nazi wave is of urgent interest to the cabinet in London.”
“They,” and the gray suited man let the word with its implication of cabinet-level interest hang in the air, “want you to go back. Your articles give you access to the highest levels in Vienna. Your paper has agreed.”
After Berlin, Ashbrook had gone on to Vienna and followed the rise of Austrian fascism in a series of news stories. Ashbrook had always thought that the series would be just a beginning; the destruction of parliamentary democracy in Austria would be a long story of compelling interest. Starting in the summer of 1933, just last summer he remembered, his articles had chronicled how the extremes of right and left were destroying the broad center of Austrian politics because leaders of the Social Democrats would not cut a deal with Chancellor Dollfuss and his Christian Democrats, called the Clericals, and vice versa. Then the Pan-Germanist party gained a measure of prominence in the public mind. It promised a path to an all-German future away from the deadlocked decadence of the squabbling parliament of the First Austrian Republic. Pan-Germanism was an opening for the underground Nazi party.
For Ashbrook, his whole life had pointed towards the Austrian assignment; Austria was part of his destiny. He had built the articles on insights first developed while studying at the University of Vienna a half dozen years before. He had been seconded from his regiment to build his fluency in Austrian German on the not unwise presumption that such knowledge would be useful to the British army as continental politics unraveled yet again. The articles had brought him into the front rank of foreign correspondents.
But going back to Vienna? Now? Would he see Anna Marie again? Or was she really gone from his life? Her letter said she could not see him again. But there was something a little unconvincing around the edges of her explanation. How had something that had seemed to start so convincingly now be so suddenly and finally over? Why had a lovely romance in the winter wonderland of Vienna been washed away like leaves in a spring rain? Spring was when love was supposed to bloom. His frantic letters to her in Vienna went unanswered. Was she still there?
The man in the gray suit looked at Ashbrook and continued, “A staggering possibility is starting to unfold. Austria will be swallowed up into Greater Germany as soon as Hitler consolidates absolute power in his hands, possibly later in 1934, and then Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Rumania – all with strong fascist parties and armed paramilitaries – will follow into the German orbit. The entire Danube basin, the granary of Europe, will be part of a new German empire. Mussolini, who styles himself protector of Central Europe, will be left sputtering in Rome. Hitler will have won the opening campaign of the second struggle for Europe without firing a shot. France will see a German lance a thousand miles long aimed at Paris.”
The man in the gray suit then turned to Ashbrook’s immediate assignment. “But before you dash off to Vienna, we think a trip to Belgium for a visit with the last of the Habsburgs is in order. They can provide you with entrée to Legitimist circles in the Austrian aristocracy.” Then the gray-suited man rattled off a series of questions, “What is the strength of monarchist sentiment in Austria? Could the Habsburgs live with Austrian fascism like King Umberto and the House of Savoy live with Mussolini in Italy? Would a Habsburg restoration keep Austria independent? Can British foreign policy influence a restoration in Central Europe? Is a restoration even possible?”
Back to the Habsburgs, “We have secured you an invitation to meet Empress Zita and Crown Prince Otto, the late King Karl’s oldest son. They are at Ham Castle just outside the little village of Steenokkerzeel in Flemish Belgium. Empress Zita is a force of royal nature, completely focused on restoring her son to either the Austrian or Hungarian thrones. She lives to see the flag of the Habsburg double eagle again soar above the palace of a reigning monarch. And of course she is a princess of Bourbon-Parma, related by blood to all the great Catholic royal houses of Europe. I might add that it has long been said that the strongest men in the Bourbon dynasty are the Bourbon women. So it is with Zita. You will find her a remarkable personality, possibly a journalist’s delight. A slender woman not quite more than a dozen years older than yourself.”
Turning to discuss the younger Habsburg, “Her son, Crown Prince Otto, is taking a law degree at the University of Louvain, one of the finest Catholic universities on the continent. From his earliest years his mother has seen to superb tutoring for him. She has wisely understood that a Habsburg restoration rests on a talent for statesmanship. No military academies here. The lad wouldn’t make much of a Hohenzollern,” an allusion to the exiled kaiser’s five sons strutting around Nazi Germany in storm trooper uniforms for newsreel cameras.
“Otto is the most well prepared of princes, excepting our own Prince of Wales of course,” and the man in the gray suite gave a wan smile.
“Of course,” replied Ashbrook with perfect contrapuntal timing.
“Next. If you need to make a diplomatically secure communication to London, you can contact the Passport Control Office in Vienna, Budapest or Rome. They know your assignment, as does the British consul in Venice. They can help. But regular cables to your paper are best.”
A word of caution, “The Austrian desk in London wants me to pass on that all correspondents are being watched by the political police. We assume they can read all coded transmissions used by journalists. So what gets sent to London will also be read in Vienna if not Berlin. The Vienna police are more deeply penetrated by the Nazis than most people think. All kinds of Nazis. There are at least three webs of intrigue inside the police: a large and clumsy Heimwehr network, a significant Austrian Nazis infiltration, and a much smaller but more dangerous sleeper group of German Nazis, I daresay mostly watching the other two factions. For you, no derring-do, please. Just report.”
Speaking from timeworn experience, the man said, “All passport offices including Vienna have the same problem we have in Paris. We work late into the night processing visa applications for Jews desperate to emigrate to Palestine, or anywhere else that might take them. Not gentlemanly to say so, but they are like rats leaving a sinking ship. They seem to understand some desperate truth about the future of Europe. Scary. I see it face-to-desperate-face everyday. And the doors of Europe are closing to them. And the American door is never open more than a wee crack and then only for the prominent. I don’t know what will happen to them.”
Then the gray-suited man sighed, “Where do these people go when the last door closes?” The question hung in the smoke-filled air.
The man’s shoulders sagged with middle age weariness as he concluded, “And so passport control officers are swamped by the official job, and the other work, shall we say, goes underdone. So your work as a journalist is not supplemental, but central.”
“Good luck. When can you leave?”
“Tomorrow night,” replied Ashbrook.
Ashbrook rose, shook hands, and walked out of the bistro into the now darkened evening street. He was returning to Vienna—finally. He decided to walk back towards the river in the pleasant coolness of the spring evening. He wanted to spend some time with his recollections. In particular, he wanted to think back to the evening the previous autumn when he had first met Anna Marie Linden. He had been sitting at a table drinking hot coffee topped with rich whipped cream at the Café Landtmann just across from the Burgtheater, the most renowned theater in the German-speaking cultural world. He had been discussing, in English, the evening’s performance with another correspondent who supplemented his hard-news dispatches with cultural reviews. His friend got up and said, “I better get over to the Agency and file my dispatch,” and left.
At the table next to him, an attractive woman in her early forties said to him, “Excuse me, we couldn’t help overhearing your conversation in English. Are you an English newspaperman?”
Ashbrook had responded, “Why yes. I work for the London Daily Telegraph. I’m a special assignment correspondent. What the Americans call ‘a stringer.’ I normally work out of Paris.”
The woman replied with mannered dignity, “Would you like to join us. We would so much like to hear more.”
Ashbrook stood up and took the two steps over to the table and seated himself. The older woman said, “This is my niece, Anna Marie. She works as an art historian at one of the museums here in Vienna.”
Ashbrook looked over at the bright brown eyes, full of inquisitiveness, set under soft brown hair framing a beautiful face. A pleasant fullness of bosom under a charcoal-gray sweater suggested a young woman of some wonder. Enchanted, he said, “Pleased to meet you.”
The three of them spoke in amiable conversation for over an hour, and then Ashbrook said, “Can I accompany you home?”
The aunt said, “Why yes. We live in my townhouse over on Shreyvogelgasse. It’s just a block away.” The two women stood up and each put on a beautiful fur Astrakhan hat. Then dark kid gloves slid smoothly over long fingers and narrow wrists. Finally, they pulled from their chairs dark fur stoles and wrapped them around their shoulders and clasped them in front. The stoles came down well below their waists and could withstand the iciest of winter winds blowing through Vienna streets. The two women smiled and nodded to Ashbrook.
The three walked through the winter evening to the front door of the aunt’s flat. Ashbrook turned to the aunt, “And what should I call you?”
“Oh, I am Martha Baroness Stilke. My niece is Anna Marie Linden, my late sister’s daughter.”
“My I call on you again?”
“We would be most delighted. Here, let me write down our phone number for you,” and the baroness got out a small pad from her purse and wrote out the number and gave it to Ashbrook and smiled.
Anna Marie said quite pleasantly, “Mr. Ashbrook, I very much liked making your acquaintance,” and then she smiled and made a playful curtsy to him.
Ashbrook smiled and took a step back, “Good night, ladies,” and turned and walked down the street, floating in a warm glow of expectation about this charming young woman.
And so it had begun.
Several days later Ashbrook called by telephone to Baroness Stilke, “Good afternoon, baroness. My newspaper has been given some tickets to the opera Rienzi at the Staatsoper. Franz Volker is supposed to be one of the best Wagnerian tenors in Europe today. I was wondering if you and Miss Linden would like to accompany me to a performance.”
“Anna Marie would love to accompany you to the opera. On what date and at what time will you come by and pick her up.”
“Madam, I was surely hoping that you would accompany us.”
“Mr. Ashbrook, you are most gallant. Your mother should be proud of you. However, I think it would be best for you two young people to go along by yourselves and get acquainted.”
“Undoubtedly your mother conferred great gifts of charm and tact on you, baroness.”
She laughed, “Please give me the date and time of the opera, Mr. Ashbrook.”
“Friday evening. Say six o’clock in the evening.”
“And I presume Mr.
Ashbrook you will take my niece out to dinner after the opera?”
”Why
a capital idea, baroness. I should count on it.”
They exchanged some more pleasantries and then hung up.
Friday evening Franz Volker did in fact turn in a magnificent performance in Rienzi with ringing high tones that brought the audience to its feet time and again as Ashbrook now recalled. So began the most wonderful winter of Ashbrook’s life. Of course, in contrast to the warm cultural life of the evenings was the bitter political strife of the days. Ashbrook sharpened his skill as a tough-minded reporter chronicling the daily political battles of Austria’s conflict-ridden political society.
Every once and a while Ashbrook broke away from the daily political grind and he and Anna Marie shared a late afternoon visiting various museums; she was an art historian and always had a fascinating commentary to go along with their walks through the high-ceilinged galleries. Even more delightful to Ashbrook were the many pleasurable evenings taking in the world of Viennese music in the cathedral-like buildings that lined the majestic avenues of the Ringstrasse, which so wonderfully circled the Inner City.
At the Konzerthaus they listened raptly to a particularly intense, fiery and uplifting performance by Fritz Busch of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. At the Musikverein Saal they listened in lofty enchantment to two recitals of Beethoven sonatas by Artur Schnabel. On another occasion they heard the first Viennese recital of the young Polish pianist Boleslav Kon.
Sunday afternoons were given over to chamber music, first and foremost by the venerable Rose Quartet. Other afternoons were spent listening to performances by the incomparable Kolisch foursome.
But the meanness of the daily politics even followed Ashbrook into the cultural world of his Viennese evenings. The venomous propaganda of Hitler’s Germany, the colossus just to the north of Austria, tried to poison the enriching world of Viennese music. Over coffee late one Sunday afternoon, Ashbrook read to Anna Marie from Hitler’s leading propaganda newspaper that the American-born contralto Sarah Cahier was the “American Jewess” because she was “associated at the State Opera with the Jew Gustav Mahler.” As proof the newspaper offered the old argument of guilt by association; she had “sung his music. That is enough for us.” Anna Marie nodded her head in sorrowful disagreement.
Anna Marie then told Ashbrook that one leading critic had just arrived from Germany and said he had “suddenly been translated from the present jail and cemetery atmosphere of Berlin to the comparative serenity of Vienna.”
She looked up at the ceiling and said searchingly, “Why does the most cosmopolitan culture in all of Europe have to go hand-in-hand with this narrow and hate-filled nationalism? Was the war that bad? Does it have to be the end of everything good? Is the peace so awful?”
Then she took a sip from her steaming coffee mug and softly said, “If the Nazis take over here, it will be the end of Vienna.”
Ashbrook clasped Anna Marie’s hand in his own and looked her directly in the eye, “I know. And I am truly sorry.”
Ashbrook’s mind quickly returned to Paris as he came up to a familiar street corner; he turned down the avenue and returned to his flat. Tomorrow he would see an old friend.
The following day, Ashbrook approached polished glass doors, nodded at the doorman of the Ritz Hotel, and walked through the opened door and across a lobby brightly lit by luminous chandeliers. The lobby was filled with an elegantly dressed noonday crowd milling about in small groups chatting with one another. He entered the dining room and spoke to the maitre d’, who escorted him across the room to a small table along the far wall. As he approached a woman in her mid-forties with well-coifed blond hair stood up and watched him with a warm smile on her face. Old friends were meeting.
Breaking into a grin, Ashbrook walked towards Barbara Smith. Barbara invariably set the elegant pose of a well-bred clotheshorse with her long legs reaching in a sweep up to her slender hips and her upper body set off with a small bosom of ample fullness. Today, this was all appropriately displayed in a beige wool suit set off with a white blouse. For men who had reached a certain age and a certain position of eminence, it was rare for one of them upon meeting Barbara Smith the first time not to entertain the most wistful of thoughts. Rising Conservative members of the government seemed to be especially charmed by the prospect of sharing friendship with Barbara. Accordingly, of all of his uncle’s various intimates, she was Ashbrook’s favorite. To Ashbrook, in his late twenties, she was like a favorite aunt and every once in a while like an older woman tantalizingly just out of reach.
Barbara had a gift for the warm and sympathetic insight into the foibles of the upper crust crowd that she and his uncle, the famous writer Shelley Moncton, moved in. Shelley of course loved to hear from Barbara the gossip of the London dinner party scene and who was doing what with whom in the English great houses on the country weekends.
Moncton lived in splendid exile in the south of France at beautiful Villa Montalvo on Cap Ferrat with his companion Gregory Haxton, an arrangement of course not always suitable for every social occasion. In situations demanding a certain sensitivity to middle brow convention, Barbara pleasantly stepped in and served as lady of the house and hostess with tact and understanding.
Reaching the table, Ashbrook reached out and took Barbara’s outstretched hand in his own and gave it a friendly shake saying, “So nice to see you again Barbara.” The maitre d’ stepped around and seated Barbara while Ashbrook took his seat.
Ashbrook opened the conversation, “And what brings lovely Barbara to Paris? And with good-natured humor he added, “And I trust he will meet with my approval.”
Barbara airily replied, “Oh he is staying at the Hotel Crillon. A conference.”
And then lowered her head and said conspiratorially, “So of course I am staying here at the Ritz. And of course in London all will know that I am here, and that he is there.”
With eyes sparkling, she added, “The lesson for you, young man, is that a woman of my place and station should be whispered about, it builds the allure, a lady’s stock in trade with men in my circle. But all hints of scandal should be left to the delicious imaginations of others. It is like the law of weekends at the great houses: always at least a dozen guests, all evenly matched and appropriately spoken for. Assignations discreetly made in secret; speculations left to those outside the gates.”
“And I might add that in your uncle’s novels it is the reader that always makes those connections and therefore comes to the tantalizing conclusion. Never explicitly stated. Sort of the opposite of those modernist novels by Joyce and Lawrence. It is great fun of course to read about the lady’s affair with her chauffeur, but it would not do to leave the book on an end table in the sitting room, now would it?”
And now Ashbrook lowered his head and asked conspiratorially of Barbara, “And just who is this secret sharer in your hidden delights? Not the chauffeur I trust.”
Barbara tossed her head with a small laugh and took on her best off-hand manner, “Oh, he is Sir James Melville, a prominent barrister in London. A master of the bench at the Middle Temple, Inns of the Court and that sort of thing. He has decided to come out of his legal cloister by moving in the legal circles of the Conservative Party. Something of a follower of your eldest uncle Freddy I might add. That’s how I met him. Keeping it in the family so to speak.”
Continuing the conspiratorial whisper Ashbrook asked, “Where did you meet this knight of the tablets?”
Barbara smiled, “At the pool at Villa Montalvo one beautiful star-filled night.”
Ashbrook responded, “And the rules at my uncle’s pool are still the same. No clothes on in the pool?”
Barbara widened her smile, “Bien sûr.” Of course.
“So Sir James was deeply impressed with your wit and charm.”
“Oh yes, Geoffrey, later he was so very pleased to find those qualities were present in abundance – also.”
Ashbrook smiled.
Barbara then changed the conversation, “The other thing that quickens Sir James’ pulse is politics. Baldwin is really running the National Government in London from behind the scenes. For Ramsay, it is a race between coming to the end of his political rope and coming to the end of his health. So new men, men hearing the hoof beats of history, are seeking opportunity by angling for position in what all believe will soon be a new Conservative government under Baldwin.”
Ashbrook sighed at the thought of the government leaders in London; wily old Stanley Baldwin, a consummate parliamentary player skilled at political maneuver, and Ramsay MacDonald, the aging and now outcast Labor leader, steadfast in his ideals, irresolute in facing the realities of the deteriorating international situation.
Turning thoughtful, Barbara continued, “For James, though, he is an admirer of Lord Sankey, the Labour lord chancellor. Admiration for a Labour leader is something a bit rare in Conservative circles these days I might say. Nice that he gets on well with him. Baldwin notices a shrewd conciliator; they are so rare among the party warhorses.”
Barbara was displaying a deeper interest in public policy than Ashbrook had ever seen before in this effortlessly charming woman whom he admired as a gifted social butterfly. She continued, “James feels that Sankey has a view of widening the horizons of the law in a way that modern society desperately needs. The law has to go beyond today’s status quo that is obviously not working well.”
Barbara took a sip of wine and collected her thoughts, “He feels that the long-range view is to believe that the tendency of civilization is to extend the rights of the individual and not to restrict them. At the end of the day, the best way to deal with a nation’s problems is by testing the proposed solutions in a free exchange of views by free citizens.”
Barbara’s eyes brightened, “Before meeting Sir James, I had never understood why England and our parliament were the keys to our success.”
Ashbrook took the opportunity to say, “I agree. I see the opposite side of the coin on the continent. Everywhere democratic choice is giving way to the brutal simplicities of fascism. Dictatorships have some success in days of stress and strain when quick decision and radical action are required, but they can’t sustain success. That is gift that belongs solely to democratic government.”
Barbara responded, “James has educated me to some of this. Why I can now quote from Sankey’s great opinion giving women the right to sit as senators in Canada.”
She looked up at the ceiling and then recalled from memory, “Rather to give a large and liberal interpretation so that the Dominion may be mistress in her own house, as the provinces to a great extent, but within certain fixed limits, are mistresses in theirs.”
Barbara then smugly finished with a smile, “And of course his famous statement to those who would ask why the word ‘person’ should include females, the obvious answer he replied is, ‘Why should it not?’”
Barbara looked at Ashbrook, “I love that last line – why should it not? Women as part of humanity. Striking.”
Ashbrook answered directly, “Why Barbara, this is a most agreeable change in your interests. Undoubtedly, you will swim in political waters even better than you swam in the waters of fashionable West End.”
Barbara took a serious turn, “Sadly, how the country should respond to the rise of fascism in Europe is the big issue of the day, not the theater’s next big opening.”
Then looking into Ashbrook’s eyes, she said, “I have wanted to share with you my deep impression. The top men, as worldly as they seem, have a gnawing unease, a deep-seated fear of the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. He scares them. There is something far worse about this new group of Germans than the kaiser’s lot, dreadful as they were. I have seen the fear in the men’s faces.”
Then turning her head and nodding towards the waiters, she mentioned, “I took the liberty of ordering lunch for both of us and a bottle of wine. I am sure you will find them to your liking.”
Ashbrook quickly agreed, “Bien sûr.” Of course.
Barbara then moved the conversation to Ashbrook’s side of the table, “And you, my dear young sir, what are you angling for?”
Ashbrook took on a thoughtful air. “Journalism calls. I am off to Belgium tonight. Interviews with the last of the Habsburgs, Empress Zita and Crown Prince Otto.”
Then he added in a voice filled with determination. “Back to Vienna.”
Barbara nodded agreeably and said, “Oh, your dispatches from Austria are the talk of London.”
And added with a wink, “Even the ones published in the paper,” guessing that the unpublished accounts were circulating as a result of Ashbrook’s connection with the British Secret Service.
“Seriously, I was fascinated by your account of the plight of the workers and their women and children during the February uprising. When the government crushed the Socialists, the London cocktail crowd of course chattered about the Bolshies in Red Vienna getting theirs. But James was greatly saddened. He felt that the violence has snuffed out any chance of building a credible center in Austria to hold off the Nazis. He feels governments need to look after people, not hatreds.”
Ashbrook looked slightly startled at the wisdom coming to him across the tops of the wine glasses standing on the white tablecloth, “Of course your Sir James is quite right. In Austria, hatreds are dividing the good and thus guaranteeing evil will win.”
Barbara responded, again looking up at the ceiling, “I can also quote from your story ‘Now Fritz is Dead’ about the widow of one of the Socialist workers: ‘she was allowed to see him for a few moments before he was hanged. Fritz cried, but she did not cry. She did not understand very much about it all. She still does not understand why her Fritz had to die. He was a good husband and he was kind to every one… Fritz is dead. She has no money…she has already received notice that she must move out of her apartment.’ This story moved me greatly, Geoffrey.”
Ashbrook nodded with weary resignation and observed, “Only the Socialists offered Prime Minister Dollfuss the heft to create a political center with the Christian Socials, what are called the Clericals in Austria, that might have a chance against the gathering Nazi storm. But the right wing fascists of the Heimwehr dream that they can set up a corporate fascist state independent of German Nazism in some sort of soft alliance with Mussolini of Italy. And each Heimwehr leader sees himself as the new king. The rank and file are true Austrian patriots and they want to keep Austria for Austrians, but they chant, ‘Death to parliamentary democracy’ without realizing that the end of democracy almost certainly guarantees the end of Austria. Soft, effete democracy is not muscular enough for them. They are doing the Nazis’ work for them. It is hard as an Englishman to understand this intense hatred for democracy by not just the radical right but by most of the society. The Austrians are like children.”
Speaking with clarity, Ashbrook continued, “Dollfuss and the government did not call for parliamentary elections last year because they were afraid the Nazis would win the parliament and take over Austria like they did Germany. But I think the government miscalculated. Someday history will look back and say elections were a gamble that had to be taken.”
Ashbrook sipped his wine and said, “My colleague George Gedye, the New York Times reporter, came to Vienna in 1925. He says the municipal socialism practiced by the Social Democrats in so-called Red Vienna was a worldwide model for the social development of urban working areas. The large housing projects, schools, and healthcare opened up vistas of what was possible. It was their success that attracted the political hatred of the chancellor, Monsignor Ignaz Seipel. After he put down the Socialists with force on the streets of Vienna in 1927, the Socialists took to calling him der keine milde Kardinal, or the cardinal without mercy. He was Austria’s Cardinal Richelieu. In the Vienna coffee houses he was nicknamed ‘Autrichelieu.’ Gedye said that his single-minded devotion to advancing the political interest of the Church seemed to belong to the era of the great political cardinals in despotic empires. Political Catholicism set the stage for the rise of the new fascism. The Clericals crushed the ‘Red Antichrist’ and in so doing destroyed the chance of democracy in Austria.”
Barbara said, “I thought the Church was the partner of the Habsburgs?”
Ashbrook replied, “They were. But with the Habsburgs in exile, they partnered with the forces of reaction. So now one question is if the Habsburgs came back from exile, could the old social coalition of Monarchy and Church rule?”
Ashbrook lightly said, “So now I am off to Ham Castle to see if some sort of restoration of a Habsburg monarchy in Austria can stave off the Anschluss of Austria into Germany. Are the Austrians going to listen to Hitler’s cries of ‘One blood demands one Reich,’ or are they going to look back at six centuries of Habsburg rule that made Vienna the cultural capital of Europe?”
Ashbrook summed up, “Events, my dear, are in the saddle.”
Barbara turned to another subject, “In Switzerland during the last war, your uncle Shelley intrigued with baronesses in charming restaurants for the Secret Service. Work for which he was wonderfully well suited. But then he was sent to Russia, with vast funds, to prop up the Kerensky government in the face of the Bolshevik Revolution. He came back to England to plead with the prime minister for more support. That saved him. He wasn’t there for the collapse.”
“The lesson for you, my daring young foreign correspondent, is—do not stay too long. Leave earlier rather than later. Later will be too late.”
Barbara aimed a pointed finger at her wine glass and said politely, “Would you?”
Ashbrook grasped the wine bottle at its base and slowly filled Barbara’s glass with the velvety dark glow of red wine.
Barbara took a small sip and asked, “And speaking of intrigues with European baronesses, your uncle Shelley tells me you wrote to him of the winter music season in Vienna and the company of charming young woman of what he described as ‘a pleasantly modest aristocratic background.’ Does she pull you back to Vienna?”
Ashbrook gallantly replied, “The music in Vienna was, as one critic wrote, of lofty enchantment. We listened to two recitals of Beethoven sonatas given in the Musikverein Saal by Artur Schnabel. Then there were two delightful late afternoons spent listening in gilded resplendence to chamber music by the Rosé Quartet and the Kolisch foursome. All the troubled politics outside gets left at the concert room door. The splendor of centuries melds with the romantic love of the moment. Simply a wonderful respite.”
“And the young lady?”
“She is a charming young woman from a country estate in Lower Austria down near the Hungarian border on the eastern bank of the River Mur. I spent a long and pleasant weekend there in March. We had dinner in a large, long dining hall under the antlers of numerous noble stags. The schloss is a large, rustic stone house of some magnificence that has been in her family for generations.
Ashbrook continued, “Her father is a student of modern agriculture, almost obsessively preoccupied with the subject. At dinner, he spoke to me at length about the great achievements in agriculture of Chancellor Dollfuss when he was minister of agriculture. Dollfuss was the creator of the rural agricultural cooperative that brought a measure of prosperity to the small farmers in the countryside, which are Dollfuss’s family roots. Anna Marie’s father admires Dollfuss. In the last war, her father rose to colonel of an Austrian regiment and saw hard duty on the various eastern fronts of the Habsburg Empire. He understands well why the people in the east want nothing more to do with the Habsburgs. I got on well with him.”
Ashbrook turned thoughtful, “But there was tension caused by my presence. Anna Marie has an older stepbrother who is hard-right Heimwehr and probably Nazi. When she looks at him, behind those soft brown lustrous eyes that I love so much, there lies contempt and disdain. I had never seen this aspect of her.”
“I told her I would only be back in Paris for a couple of weeks, a month at most, before returning to Vienna. But when I got back to Paris, I received a letter from her saying that she could not see me anymore and that she did not want to disappoint me with false hopes. That it was not to be.”
“She has not answered any of my letters sent back to Vienna. I am very troubled by this. I am sure she is the right woman.”
Barbara, fascinated and concerned, looked thoughtfully at Ashbrook and said, “Knowing you, I am sure she is. I might venture to guess that she is trying to protect you in some way. When you get back to Vienna, try to find her quietly.”
Ashbrook looked off into the distance, “Something like that is what I have in mind.”
The lunch continued in a pleasant drift of banter and gossip, and then after coffee the two arose, shook hands, and took their good byes.
Ashbrook walked outside into a nice spring afternoon, sunlight flooding the square. He decided to walk along the river, his mind again grappling with the contradictions of Anna Marie Linden. His mind reached back to that chill Saturday afternoon in March at the Linden estate, the first afternoon of his stay.
Herr Linden came up to him after breakfast and in a friendly way said he would like to show him around the estate. They went into the large drawing room with its open beams and darkly wooded panels from which family portraits and the heads of long ago prize stags stared down. Standing under one stag, Herr Linden pointed up and said that Anna Marie had killed this one when she was in her late teens. With a small touch of pride, the father said she had been one of the best huntresses in Lower Austria. Then he briskly concluded, “She doesn’t hunt anymore.”
The two men went outside and walked through the nearby-forested lands, boots crunching on the soft snow covering the ground. Herr Linden inquired, “What originally brought you to Vienna. You speak our German so well.”
“My regiment, with an excess of young officers, sent me to Vienna for a year’s study. I had been good at languages at school. After army service, I got an assistant correspondent’s job in Paris for a London paper.”
Herr Linden asked, “And if you are called back to active service? Will you work in some sort of intelligence capacity or return to regimental duty? I only ask out of a sense for your future welfare.”
Ashbrook replied, “Most likely to some sort of intelligence billet. That has always gone unsaid, of course. The language skills will be used in some fashion.”
Herr Linden stopped, grew reflective, and said, “I was a thirty-five year old reserve lieutenant when I was called to regimental duty in 1914. Four years later I was the last lieutenant left standing. The last lieutenant standing is called ‘colonel.’ That’s real life in regimental duty. Death and more death.”
Ashbrook spoke softly, “I remember at school in the early 1920s, the walls were lined with the names and portraits of the graduates who had died on the Western Front, and other places around the world. It haunts English society.”
Herr Linden nodded and continued, “At the end we supported anti-insurgency operations in the eastern provinces. It is not war, but rather a continuous travel through a world of atrocity and sickening death. And we sent internees and detainees and innocents west to Austria to concentration camps. To send people to Hell,” and he shook his head.
Looking up, Herr Linden fixed Ashbrook in the eye and said, “At the end, I just worked to bring those few, those few men left, back home. We walked westwards day after day, the horses were long ago eaten, we were bedraggled but not quite beaten, until we got home to Austria. I brought the men home.”
“Now there is a New Germany and the young Austrians want to join the New Germany and march in parades. But the parades will soon enough march east and into nameless death. The Prussians want to go east to take back their homelands. Why the Austrians should want to go there is an ironic question. The people in the east hate Germans. There is no glory there. Just death. These new Germans will go east under the Prussian generals, but the east will come back. The Cossack sword will kill the men and the Russian boot will hold the women down.”
Looking off into the distance, “If in some fantasy, I had to lead a regiment east again. I would want just one officer. That would be Anna Marie. In the end, she too would bring the men home again.”
Herr Linden turned and looked at Ashbrook, “I wanted you to understand that.” Then he gave Ashbrook a friendly look, nodded his head in assent, and made a small smile. “We had better be getting back.”
The two men walked across the snowy fields and came up to the wide courtyard in front of the house. Three men were standing in front. Ashbrook recognized Erich Linden, Anna Marie’s older stepbrother from breakfast. He did not know the other two. One man was standing next to a motorcycle and had a helmet and goggles on his head. The other was a young gentleman comfortably dressed for a day at the country house.
As Herr Linden approached, the man with helmet and goggles came quickly to a military position of attention and crisply said, “Herr Linden.” Herr Linden politely nodded his head at him. From the nature of the man’s deference to Herr Linden, Ashbrook formed the opinion that he had recently been some sort of noncommissioned officer in military service. Too young for the Great War. May be the peacetime Austrian army. Too crisp for Heimwehr.
Upon Herr Linden’s approach, the other young man brought his feet together and gave a bow of his head, “Herr von Linden.”
Herr Linden easily replied, “Herr Linden will do.” All titles of nobility had been abolished in 1919 at the beginning of the Austrian republic.
Herr Linden said to the polite young man, “Let me introduce Anna Marie’s friend Geoffrey Ashbrook, an English journalist.” Turning to Ashbrook, Herr Linden swept his hand towards the young man and said, “Ulrich Rintelen, one of our neighbors.” Rintelen stepped forward and shook Ashbrook’s hand.
The man with the motorbike turned to Erich Linden and said, “I had better be going, Erich.” He kick started the machine and swung his leg over and took his position on the seat. Then he fitted his goggles.
Erich Linden said, “See you in Graz, Kurt.”
The motorcyclist took off down the road, the machine’s cold engine giving off a stuttering intermittent roar. The four men watched the motorcycle go into the distance and then went inside the house.
His mind returning to the present, Ashbrook looked up and he saw the sign of a Paris Metro station before him. He descended the stairs and went back to his flat to prepare for his trip to Belgium. He had come to a simple conclusion: someone had gotten to Anna Marie to cause her to turn away from him.
Early that evening, Ashbrook got out of the cab and walked through the wide entrance of the Gare de Nord. He searched the large signs above the open windows of the ticket booths. Seeing the sign for Brussels, he went up to the window and purchased a ticket to Steenokkerzeel, a small town just past Louvain, an old university town on the way to Brussels. Ashbrook recalled that the German army had burned the almost priceless library of this great Catholic university to a smoldering ruin in the opening weeks of the war in August 1914. Hundreds of townspeople had been brutally executed, others deported in cattle cars to Germany. A London illustrated newspaper quickly labeled the Germans as “Huns,” a nickname that stuck. Terror had become a tool of a modern army.
Pocketing the ticket inside his suit, Ashbrook walked away from the booth and out into the cavernous station looking for the night train to Brussels. Finding the appropriate platform, he started the long walk down the concrete platform looking for the first-class sleeping cars. Reaching a sleeping car, he stepped up into the car and went inside, showed his ticket to the porter, and was escorted to one of the sleeping compartments. Ashbrook requested that he be awakened the next morning in time so that he could get off the train at Steenokkerzeel.
Arriving the next morning at Steenokkerzeel, Ashbrook stepped off the train on to the station platform and looked at the Flemish village in the bright morning light. Seeing a cab at the end of the platform, he walked down and asked for a ride to Ham Castle. “Yes, I am expected,” he said to the cab driver in response to his question. The cab drove out several miles and then pulled along the side of the road in front of a small bridge across a placid body of water serving as moat. Ashbrook got out, paid the driver, picked up his bags, and walked across the little bridge and through two tall wrought iron gates dividing a long exterior wall heavily covered with ivy. Ahead were three tall turret towers capped with conical French roofs that comprised the front of Ham Castle. Behind the towers was a steeply pitched cooper roof with chimneys sticking up at each end.
Below the middle tower was a large wooden door at the top of an entranceway of seven steps. As Ashbrook approached the steps, the front door opened and a butler waved him in. He was announced to Count Degenfeld, the head of the household. The count motioned to the butler to take Ashbrook’s suitcase. Ashbrook kept his attaché case and followed the count into the sitting room where Crown Prince Otto and Empress Zita were waiting to receive him. The royal pair was standing in front of a pleasantly burning fire in a large stone fireplace. The crown prince held out his hand to Ashbrook, and Ashbrook shaked it while saying, “Your Highness.” He then turned to the empress, took her outstretched hand, shook it, and said, “Your Imperial Majesty.” Degenfeld waved Ashbrook over to a chair close to the fireplace, and then took a chair to the right. The crown prince and the empress took the two chairs just across from the fireplace facing Ashbrook.
Degenfeld opened the preliminaries by saying that as a journalist Ashbrook could write about his visit to Ham Castle and that he had had a meeting with the crown prince and empress. Further, he could provide his own summary of what was said but that there were to be no direct or indirect quotes of either the crown prince or the empress but quotes could be attributed to a “highly placed official.” Ashbrook nodded his head in agreement.
Otto opened the conversation, “We have read your articles in the Daily Telegraph this past year with admiration about the developing political situation in Austria. You have written perceptively about the chain of events that seems to be leading towards an authoritarian government in Vienna. Chancellor Dollfuss seems to be trying to anchor this new government partially on traditional Austrian Catholicism, an approach we support. An alliance of Austrian patriotism with the long Catholic tradition from the Empire seems the best bulwark against German Nazism to us. But the descent into violence this February—the four-day Socialist revolt—seems to have derailed this hope for the time being.”
Otto turned grave and sympathetic, “Your articles on the Socialist revolt deeply touched us. I was struck by the statement by the woman who huddled in the cellar for two days and nights and said that she and her husband suffered because a few fanatics sowed the seeds of the discontent in the breasts of men who were hungry and had no work…and that any government which can give back the good old days to us will be the right government. Well, Mr. Ashbrook, that is the government the Habsburgs would like to help create.”
Otto shifted his conversation, “With regard to the Socialists, the Habsburg monarchy would make its first task the healing of the present wounds. We would recall that it was Emperor Francis Joseph who gave Austria universal suffrage. In pre-war days the Socialists always enjoyed the protection of the court. During conversations last summer more than one Socialist said to me that only a Habsburg could hold back the brown flood from Germany.”
The young prince continued, “I want to say to you clearly that the Habsburgs put the highest priority on maintaining Austria independent of Hitler. A restoration of the monarchy is subordinate to the larger goal. If restoration would help forestall a German takeover, then we of course would be unstinting in our efforts. But Austria’s independence is paramount.”
Empress Zita leaned forward and interjected, “You must understand, Mr. Ashbrook, that there is going to be no Habsburg putsch. The crown prince can never crawl over the fence like a thief to ascend the throne of his ancestors.”
The empress continued by way of well-rehearsed explanation, “A Habsburg emperor in Vienna is the only legitimate human personality with the prestige and stature to provide an alternative authority figure to Hitler for ordinary people in the entire Germanic homeland. Hitler also knows this. He will spare no effort to destroy us. But history calls us forth. The double-headed eagle is the best defense against the swastika.”
Otto nodded in agreement with his mother and continued, “We regard the present situation thus: Central Europe is in the melting pot and some new order must emerge. We feel that a Habsburg restoration would consolidate Central Europe, would end the danger of Anschluss once and for all. These plans, we believe, meet with growing favor in influential French circles and, I can safely say, in England also.”
Then Otto got to the sticking point. “Italy’s position is not final. But we believe Premier Mussolini in the end will agree to solve the Danube question himself in accordance with our ideas.”
Ashbrook spoke up, “That would mean that the Habsburgs would be emperors by the grace of Italy.”
Otto replied, “It is the sad truth that the countries along the mighty Danube have not the strength to build an alliance strong enough to stand up to Germany.”
Returning to the subject of Austria, Otto went on, “Just last week, Chancellor Dollfuss unveiled publicly a new constitution. In the coming months, this constitution could be strengthened by the addition of a monarchy. Such a move would enhance the legitimacy of the new government. We greatly admire Chancellor Dollfuss’s ability to maneuver in the most difficult of governing circumstances. If he were to take the lead on such a restoration, the gambit would work. Restoration would be a means to cementing the legitimacy of his government. That is the weak point in his current scheme; lack of legitimacy due to no elections. A restoration could lead to a new government in Vienna able to hold back the Nazi tide.”
Ashbrook asked, “Do you have any word from inside the government that Dollfuss might be thinking this way.”
Otto replied, “Yes we do. A high official inside the government speaks often with the chancellor and believes he is moving in this direction. The chancellor is probably the only political leader skilled enough to call on Austria’s imperial past to rescue the republican present.”
Otto continued, “You can only gauge the mood of a country when you can breathe in its air yourself and go into its inns and have contact with everyday people right on the spot. Judging from a distance is incredibly hard. Which is why we are so interested in your reporting. You can give us some of this feel for the people.”
Ashbrook responded, “I provide detailed background reporting to my paper to support my news dispatches. I can ask them to forward you copies of such reports.”
Otto replied, “That would be excellent.”
Ashbrook expanded his inquiry, “Are there people in Vienna I could interview about the monarchist movement?”
Otto thought for a minute, possibly troubled about giving out names, and then said, “You could speak to Baron Wiesner, a senior official in the foreign ministry. He is a good Austrian.”
Ashbrook moved the discussion forward, “I am on my way to Rome to write a follow-up story on the Rome Protocols. The question is whether or not Mussolini is going to be a steadfast guarantor of Austria’s independence from Germany. Over time, Mussolini’s support will depend on the evolving relationship between the two fascist states. Eventually resurgent German power will dwarf the Duce’s power. Does he know this?”
Otto’s eyes lit up and he said, “Two years ago my mother,” and he smilingly nodded his head to the left, “sent emissaries to Rome to sound out Mussolini on support for a restoration. Today, if a restoration would strengthen his influence in Central Europe, we believe he would be for it.”
Otto continued, “I could go on with you for hours about how economically prosperous it would be for all the countries in the Danube basin to more closely integrate themselves economically. Such a plan has to also include northern Italy and Yugoslavia for access to seaports. But in today’s poisoned power politics, the Rome Protocols linking Italy and Hungary with Austria are simply trying to counter politically the Little Entente of the inheritor states: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania. The reality is that all six countries should be aligning with one another to forestall German domination. But they don’t see that.”