GLAISE-HORSTENAU: At that time, without knowing about the plebiscite, I left, on the 6th of the month, on 2 weeks’ leave. Therefore, I cannot give you a reliable answer to this question.
DR. STEINBAUER: But do you know whether this plebiscite had been decided upon in the Ministerial Council with the consent of Seyss-Inquart or not? Did he tell you about that subsequently?
GLAISE-HORSTENAU: To my knowledge, the plebiscite was not handled by any Ministerial Council.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did the National Socialists agree to the plebiscite?
GLAISE-HORSTENAU: So far as I could judge on my return from my leave, certainly not.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now, it became known that Schuschnigg wanted to have a plebiscite. Where were you and what did you experience at that time?
GLAISE-HORSTENAU: On 6 March, as I have already said, I went on leave, and in Stuttgart I gave a lecture, something I had planned for a long time. And the subject of my speech was “Central Europe in the Year 1000 A. D.”
DR. STEINBAUER: We are not interested in details, only in the facts.
GLAISE-HORSTENAU: Then I undertook a private visit to Landau in the Pfalz to visit my French relatives, and there Bürckel, whom I had told nothing about my arrival, came to see me, and in his home I heard over the radio the speech made by Schuschnigg at Innsbruck. Immediately it was obvious to me that the scheduled plebiscite would, in view of Hitler’s nature, certainly bring about some form of grave countermeasure, and I decided to fly to Vienna at once. Bürckel was to have arranged this. However, he telephoned to the Reich Chancellery and Hitler expressed the wish that I should come to Berlin. I gave the reasons for complying with his request to the American interrogator, and subsequently, only here, I found out why Hitler had called me to Berlin. I heard from the mouth of an absolutely authentic witness that he did not want me to return to Austria. He knew that I was an enemy of all solutions by force. During the night between 9 and 10 March I reached Hitler and entered upon a discussion which lasted for 2½ hours, a conference which assumed no concrete proportions and led to no concrete decision. Instead he told me that during the course of the day, at 11 o’clock in the morning, he would have me called in. In fact, he did not call me until 8 o’clock in the evening in order to give me the drafts for Seyss-Inquart: a) of an offer of resignation for Schuschnigg, and b) of a radio speech.
I declared that I could not bring these notes to Austria myself, and I asked that it be taken care of in the regular way by courier.