The show had its desired effect as far as the Italian populace was concerned. The climax of the evening was a procession on the Grand Canal. They had taken from museums the most treasured old gondolas, and decorated them with lanterns. You may imagine what a spectacle they made under a June moon. My wife had a gondolier who spoke a few words of broken English. She asked him, “What do you think of Hitler?” “Oh,” said the gondolier, “Eetlaire, Eetlaire is only a piccolo Mussolini.” I wonder if the gondolier still thinks Hitler is a “little Mussolini”?
Q. What did the two dictators accomplish by their meeting? Did they lay the basis for the Axis there?
A. No, just the contrary. They laid the basis for nearly going to war with each other. The Axis was not formed until much later, after Mussolini had been compelled to recognize Hitler’s supremacy and take orders from him. At the time they first met, Mussolini still fancied himself Hitler’s superior. At Venice they were supposed to negotiate an agreement about Austria.
At that time Mussolini wanted very much to take Austria himself, or to keep it independent as a buffer state between Italy and the Germany which he felt was going some day to become strong enough to menace him as well as the rest of Europe. Hitler, on the other hand, was bent upon the Anschluss, upon annexing Austria as the first item on his program of expansion.
Mussolini had an army of unknown quality but big enough compared with Hitler’s to make the Duce feel superior and Hitler feel cautious. So they talked on this basis and Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and already Propaganda Minister, took me aside the afternoon of the second day and triumphantly whispered that a “gentleman’s agreement” had been reached that both parties would respect the integrity and independence of Austria. It was all I could do to restrain myself from putting in my cable some obvious crack about the agreement between those two notable “gentlemen,” but one does not do that under censorship.
What happened then? I must say that everything that has happened in Europe since the gangsters took over has the quality of a caricature. Sure enough, Hitler and Mussolini made their “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep hands off Austria on June 15, and just forty days later, on July 25, Hitler sent a band of Nazi revolutionaries to seize the Austrian government. They murdered Chancellor Dollfuss, but were overpowered by loyal troops, and before Hitler could move, Mussolini had mobilized on the Brenner mechanized forces strong enough to make Hitler back down and disavow the whole action. I reached Vienna and the Ballhaus Platz while the loyal troops were still besieging the Reichskanzlei. Dollfuss had not died yet. In the midst of it all I had to laugh at the thought of that “gentlemen’s agreement.”
Q. That must have made Mussolini cocky, to make Hitler back down?
A. Decidedly! I went from Vienna where I had covered the Dollfuss Putsch, back to Berlin for the death of Hindenburg—and incidentally for a sidelight on Hitler, let me remark this. You still hear repeated the wishful thought that the German Army will some day “do something” about Hitler. Nobody who knows anything about Germany believes that for a moment now, but I admit I thought it possible until the day Hindenburg died that the army might stop Hitler.
That was August 7, 1934, and at the moment Goebbels announced on the radio the death of the President he also announced that Hitler had assumed the presidency, which meant he was commander in chief of the armed forces as well as Reichs Chancellor, and thus had sole executive power. That morning I came early to the office in Berlin and as I entered the door Goebbels’ voice began to come over the radio. I worked on the cables until mid-afternoon and then Dosch-Fleurot and I went out to witness the swearing in of the Berlin garrison. That was where I learned that the army would from then on do nothing to stop Hitler.
The regiment was drawn up in hollow square and in the middle stood the commanding general on a platform. Every one of the 2,000 men and officers held his right hand above his head with the two fingers extended as in taking an oath in court. The general repeated the words two at a time and the troops repeated in sonorous chorus, “I swear—by God—eternal allegiance—to my Fuehrer—Adolf Hitler—to obey him,” and so on, with no word about the flag, the Constitution, or even the Fatherland. The oath was a personal oath to Hitler himself, as commander in chief. I believe it is unique; at any rate I have never heard of such an oath in any other army.