Edda Ciano’s Part In Fall Of Austria

Northern Advocate, 9 May 1941, Page 2

Edda Ciano’s Part In Fall Of Austria

LONDON, January 19. Look closely at almost any picture of Hitler with his personal bodyguard and there, behind the leader, like a grey shadow, is a thick-set, flint-faced man. He is Cdilo Globocnic, murderer, Austrian traitor and Hitler’s friend. I learned Globocnic’s stoi’y last week from the one man who knows it fully, writes a “Sunday Express” representative.

For many years a high official in the Austrian Chancellery, close confidant of little Dr. Dollfuss, my informant is still working against the Nazis under cover.

Back stage in the drama of Austria, he saw the rise of Globocnic and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, now Nazi overlord in Holland. Here is his story, fast moving as a “thriller,” yet a documented slice of history, as it came to me: When I was connected with the Austrian Chancellery I found that Edda Mussolini, waspish, quickbrained daughter of the Duce, was the most powerful woman in Europe. She was the motive power behind the Berlin-Rome Axis. As far back as 1935 we were warned that she was hobnobbing with Nazi society. A year later she went to Berlin, and our agents reported that she was negotiating with Hitler through Goebbels. Later, on her urgent demand, Schuschnigg was.invited to Rome and told bluntly by Mussolini that he was expected to give the Austrian Nazis a share in the Government.

Schuschnigg flatly refused. Soon after, Edda and Ciano, her husband, were sent to Vienna to press the demand again. Still the Chancellor turned it down. Wife Furious It was the duty of the Austrian secret police to protect the two distinguished guests in the swagger Hotel Imperial. About 14 men were on duty, but they were powerless to do anything in the one serious attack on Ciano.

Reason? It was Edda who beat poor Ciano. When Schuschnigg refused Ciano’s demands to Nazify the Government, the count returned to his suite and reported to his wife. She was furious. There was an argument. It grew heated. Finally, Edda snatched a costly vase and threw it in the direction of Ciano’s head, missing him by an inch. Schuschnigg was told. However, it was then too late to pacify the countess. She left immediately. For her, Austria’s fate was sealed finally.

The murder of Dollfuss was the first stone in the avalanche that sent Europe hurtling towards war. Yet, long before the murder of the pint-sized Chancellor, Hitler had tried desperately to find a pretext to grab Austria. When the Dollfuss murder did not bring the desired success he kept on scheming against the legal Government of Austria.

I foiled one of these plots. Here is the way of it: Hitler was ready to sacrifice von Papen, then German Minister in Vienna, for the sake of keeping to the timetable set by the Wilhelmstrasse.

Von Papen was to be shot by Nazis wearing the uniforms of the “Ring of Austrian Soldiers.” I warned the Government in time. The guard on von Papen was strengthened, the ringleaders rounded up. Two men schemed to bring in the Nazis. One was Globocnic, violent, anti-Semitic and cold-blooded killer; the other Seyss-Inquart, the blond, spectacled Viennese lawyer. Globocnic organised the bomb terror in Austria. He was ruthlessly efficient, even working out a sliding scale of payment for bomb outrages. Dangerous Man As it was, Globocnic rose to become Nazi regional leader for the provinces of Vienna in 1938. He openly glorified in the murder of Dollfuss, declaring that the killers in the 1934 putsch were Nazi martyrs. What about Arthur Seyss-Inquart? A dangerous man. I knew him in the days when he was a humble, insignificant lawyer. Son of a Bohemian schoolmaster, he looked the typical provincial. He also looked the typical German with his ash-blond hair, grey eyes, thicklensed spectacles and set lips. He came to the Chancellery at the Baddhaus Platz and pleaded for the position of legal adviser to the Kredit Anstalt, one of the large private banks. Dollfuss pulled strings and got him the job. He rose rapidly. As his power increased, so did his associations with the Nazis. Austria’s Quisling, Seyss-Inquart, is now in Holland as Reich Commissioner. Does he favour this move? No one knows.