"Our Hermann!"

No daredevil is the mystic No. 1 Nazi, but the virile No. 2 Nazi who swooped down upon German Austria last week is definitely the Fatherland's Daredevil No. 1.*

Arriving in Vienna to enjoy his personal triumph, twelve days after Hitler's, Feldmarschall Goering keynoted: "Other nations probably don't like us. but they respect us -- BECAUSE WE ARE STRONG!"

Inviting his own assassination, Daredevil No. 1 deliberately chose to enter Vienna standing upright in an open car which first traversed the Jewish and radical labor quarters. Any resident in one of these dingy blocks of flats could with certainty have shot the burly Feldmarschall who rode along beaming, waving his gold-starred baton at Viennese who, whatever their private opinions, screamed at the tops of their voices: "Hermann! Hermann! Our Hermann!"

Three thousand benches were lugged into the disused Northwest Railway Station, and soon 25,000 people jammed this impromptu auditorium, bellowing guttural cheers as Orator Goering in ruthless fashion rammed all the most provocative Nazi doctrines home. Austrian Monarchists he first taunted, by referring to the head of the House of Habsburg as "This comic boy, Archduke Otto!" (guffaws) Grimly Goering warned: "If Legitimism/-continues, it will be treated as high treason, regardless of whether the charge strikes at an archduke or a worker!" Meanwhile last week, put under Nazi lock & key near Salzburg was the first former royal and imperial highness to be arrested, 65-year-old Archduke Josef Ferdinand, husband of the young and comely former Gertrude Tomanek-Beyerfels and father of two handsome infants.

Orator Goering, who was wearing for this popular occasion scarcely any of his medals, and these few on the brown shirt of a simple Storm Trooper, roared that "the courts" will deal with former Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg because he "criminally" ordered a "fake plebiscite," later canceled on the demand of Hitler (TIME, March 21). "None of Schuschnigg's supporters died for their convictions!" jeered Daredevil Goering. "But some of them fled with the cash box! . . . The tyrant was swept away and our troops marched in as brothers of a liberated people." Since there were undoubtedly hundreds, probably thousands of former supporters of Kurt von Schuschnigg in the throng of 25,000, their cheers were not entirely without significance.

The Teutonic throng burst into a wild ovation at the portion of the speech devoted to Jews. In very coarse language a pledge was given by the Feldmarschall that within three years Vienna will be a city composed exclusively of Aryans.

Since some 95% of the Austrian people are Catholics, and since Orator Goering's serious purpose in Vienna was to persuade all Austrians to vote "Ja" on April 10,* the most conciliatory part of the speech was addressed to the Church. "We have no desire to destroy religion," said Hermann Wilhelm Goering. "In Germany we have not destroyed the Church but only the clerical politicians."

Same day Dr. Jacob Weinbach, secretary to Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, announced that all Catholic parishes in Austria will shortly receive a pastoral letter urging Catholics to vote "Ja." Jews have been excluded from voting.

Orator Goering, addressing himself to the whole people of Austria in his economic role as Chief of the German Four-Year Plan (TIME, Nov. 2, 1936), announced a 16-point program of Austrian economic rehabilitation. "Austria's economic reconstruction is the task of the Germans in Austria!" he cried. "Germany will furnish the necessary capital and strength. ... A year hence ask me whether I have kept my promises or whether you want to return to the Schuschnigg system!"

Under the Schuschnigg system the gold reserve was such that for every Austrian there was .194 oz. of gold in the Federal Treasury, whereas under the Hitler system there was for every German .013 oz. of gold in the German Treasury. The management of Austrian finance under the League of Nations for years after the War, the economic crumbs which the Allies gave to Austria because they wished to avert her collapse, and in the last few years the economic favors Italy showered upon Austria--before Mussolini finally threw Schuschnigg overboard and teamed up with Hitler--all these factors have made Austria not only economically far better off than Germany but in reasonably "sound" condition from an orthodox economic viewpoint.

Into Vienna last week, three days ahead of the Feldmarschall, charged German Reichsbank Governor Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Europe's most unorthodox and potent economic prestidigitator. He has kept on for so many years pulling steel and cannon out of the hat of virtually busted Germany, that what he can do with a Greater Germany, now not quite so busted by reason of the addition of Austria, simply remains to be seen. Dr. Schacht took Austria's gold last week as a matter of course and no Austrian protest was recorded.

There is now for each citizen of Greater Germany .029 ounces of gold in the Reich Treasury--that is to say, Hitler has more than doubled his gold reserve. It is still very small, totals only $75,000,000, whereas the U. S. has $12,756,000,000, the United Kingdom $2,689,000,000, France $2,564,000,000, even Italy $208,000,000.

*During the War, Baron Manfred von Richthofen was German Daredevil No. 1, and No. 2 was Airman Hermann Wilhelm Goering who, after the death of No. i, took over command of the famed Richthofen Squadron, daredevils all.

/-Efforts to restore Otto.

*The official wording on the nationwide plebiscite ballots was released last week: "Do you approve of the reunification of Austria with Germany as accomplished on March 13, and do you vote for the list of our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler?"

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