SEYSS-INQUART’S DEFENCE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24899, 12 June 1946, Page 7

SEYSS-INQUART’S DEFENCE

NAZI CONQUEST OF AUSTRIA STORY OF APPEALS TO HITLER NUREMBERG, June 10. Beginning his defence before the War Crimes tribunal, Seyss-Inquart, Minister of the Interior in Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg’s Austrian Cabinet, and Chancellor after the German occupation of Austria, said that he had never played a double game. “I, only joined the Austrian Nazi Party in February, 1938, so that the accusation that I played a double game is completely untrue.” he added. He, like other Austrians, was convinced that Austria’s only chance of survival lay in the Anschluss with Germany, said Seyss-Inquart. He had a talk with Hitler at Berchtesgaden after he joined Dr. Schuschnigg’s Cabinet. He told Hitler that Austrian ideals must be maintained as a prerequisite of □ peaceful union with Germany. Hitler agreed and said that the fulfilment of the Nazi programme there should remain a secondary consideration, but after the Wehrmacht marched into Austria, Hitler changed his attitude. Seyss-Inquart said that on the eve of the Anschluss he telephoned Hitler and Goering appealing to them not to send German troops into Austria. In a final appeal for delay until a plebiscite was taken, he telephoned Hitler at Linz (the border city through which the Wehrmacht marched in). It was then too late. The march had begun. He did, however, obtain permission from Hitler for Austrian troops to march into Germany to maintain symbolic equality, and Austrian troops entered Munich and Berlin at the same

time as the German entry into Vienna. He appealed to Hitler to allow him to leave politics, but instead. Hitler made him Governor of Austria—a position he did not want. Dealing with his period as Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart said that the task Hitler gave him was impossible. He was assigned the task of changing the proBritish attitude*of the Dutch people to a pro-German attitude. Defending the legal system which he introduced in Holland, he said that during the four years it was operating about 800 death sentences were passed after a fair trial. However, Hitler, at the end of 1944, ordered Dutch people arrested for sabotage to be handed over to the security police. In spite of SeyssInquart’s objections, the order was carried out and about 600 persons were executed. Many more would have been executed but for his intervention. Seyss-Inquart said' that Himmler wanted 500 hostages shot for sabotage. “I tried to get the list reduced." he said, “but we had to keep down the resistance movement, which was organised and armed by the Dutch Government in London. It was a very serious threat to the German occupation forces,” he said.