Hitler at Bayreuth

Pat Buchanan's new book is a real wealth of information. He is extraordinarily well-read. The book puts the lie to the notion that Churchill was the Great Man of the Century, and to a lesser extent, the notion that Hitler had plotted out his course to WWII.

Again and again, Buchanan points out how Hitler bumbled into one fiasco after another, but had the political awareness to know when he was in grave danger. One of the biggest challenges he faced was when the Austrian Nazis assassinated Engelbert Dollfuss on July 25, 1934. Hitler was busy building on the precarious relationship he had with Mussolini, and he knew the preemptive coup could seriously screw the pooch for him in Italy, which saw Austria as a buffer state. Hitler had assured Mussolini that he would respect Austrian sovereignty, and an assassination of the Austrian dictator by his own political party was the last thing he needed.

One of the fascinating bits of information that emerges in the book is where Hitler learned of the coup:

"Whether Hitler knew it was coming remains in dispute. But when word reached him at the Bayreuth Festival in Munich that Dollfuss had died at 6 P.M, that the putsch had been quelled, and that the Nazi assassins were under arrest, Hitler was alarmed. Given the Austrian Nazi hand in the coup, Mussolini might well conclude that Hitler had lied to him.

Late that night, at the home of Wagner's widow, Cosima, who had died in 1930, Hitler appeared nervous. He phoned Berlin, only to be told that the German ambassador in Vienna was negotiating for safe passage for the Nazi assassins out of Austria. Hitler shouted with rage, he countermanded Berlin's orders, fired his ambassador in Vienna, and demanded that Franz von Papen, under house arrest since he had narrowly escaped Nazi death squads in the Roehm purge, be flown to Munich. Papen had befriended Dollfuss and warned Hitler about the Austrian Nazis.

Papen found Hitler in a 'state of hysterical agitation, denouncing feverishly the rashness and stupidity of the Austrian Nazi Party for having involved him in such an appalling situation.'

'We are faced with a new Sarajevo!' Hitler shouted.