DR. STEINBAUER: The Prosecution assert that you yourself exerted pressure on Federal President Miklas to appoint you Chancellor.
SEYSS-INQUART: I did not see Federal President Miklas at all until 9 or 10 o’clock in the evening, after Schuschnigg’s speech “We yield to force.”
DR. STEINBAUER: I should like to submit to the Court this speech of Chancellor Dr. Schuschnigg of 11 March under Document Number Seyss-Inquart-53, Page 122; in it he says:
“The Federal President has commissioned me to inform the Austrian people that we are yielding to force. Since we are at all costs determined not to spill German blood, even in this grave hour, we have given orders to our Armed Forces to withdraw without resistance, if the invasion of Austria is carried out, and to await the decision within the next hours.”
The Prosecution, Witness, sees evidence of this pressure also in the fact that SS units were called to the Federal Chancellor’s office at that time. What can you say to that?
SEYSS-INQUART: I believe it was after Schuschnigg’s farewell speech, when I saw in the anterooms 10 or 15 young men in black trousers and white shirts, that was the SS. I had the impression that they were doing messenger and orderly duty for State Secretary Keppler and the others. As they approached the rooms in which Federal Chancellor Schuschnigg and President Miklas were, I ordered guards of the Austrian Guard Battalion to be placed at their doors. I may mention that these were selected men of the Austrian Army who according to Austrian standards were very well armed, while these SS men—40 at most—possibly carried pistols. Moreover, 50 steps from the Federal Chancellor’s office were the barracks of the Guard Battalion, with a few hundred picked and well-armed men. If Federal President Miklas and Federal Chancellor Schuschnigg had not been concerned with things other than those which happened in the Federal Chancellor’s office and on the street outside it, they could easily have put an end to this situation by calling out the Guard Battalion.
DR. STEINBAUER: The Prosecution has submitted an affidavit of the Gauleiter of Upper Austria, Eigruber, which states that even before you became a Federal Chancellor, you ordered the seizure of power in the various Austrian Federal provinces.
SEYSS-INQUART: That is completely incorrect, and the Gauleiter of Upper Austria also does not claim to have talked to me. I believe he says that he had received a telegram signed by me. I did not send a telegram, and I did not give oral instructions to any Gauleiter or to anyone else for the seizure of power.
Later I heard from Globocznik that he had carried out the seizure of power. He told me of that in these words: “You know, I seized power for you and acted as the government; but I did not tell you anything about it, because you would have been against it.”
DR. STEINBAUER: You say you would have been against it. Was the population against it, too, against the marching in, which had meanwhile taken place, that is, the invasion as described by the Defendant Göring?