FINIS AUSTRIAE
On Saturday, 12 March 1938, the Third Reich annexed Austria. The Anschluss, as it was termed, marked the beginning of seven years of incorporation into Germany and the destruction of Viennese culture and Jewish life. Austrians woke to the visible effects of the Nazi occupation: everywhere were military vehicles and there was a heavy presence of SS men and stormtroopers. Large swastika flags hung from the windows of apartments and buildings, reaching almost to the pavement below. Anti-Jewish slogans were daubed in black paint on the doors and windows of Jewish businesses. The sound was deafening as hundreds of German bombers flew low over the city, dropping propaganda leaflets onto the streets below. Brownshirts waved swastika flags and chanted, ‘Ju-da-verr-rrecke!’ (Perish Judah!). The fate of Austria’s 200,000 Jews changed overnight as they became the immediate victims of Nazi racist policies. The anti-Jewish laws that had been gradually introduced in Germany over a period of years came into force immediately in Austria. Now Austria’s Jews were in mortal danger and Kendrick was acutely aware of this as he left his apartment that morning for the British passport office on Metternichgasse. He arrived at the office to find it besieged by hundreds of Jews queuing along the west wall.
Kendrick faced the beginning of a human catastrophe of immeasurable proportions. Many of his Jewish friends were now at risk. The massive volume of applications from Jews seeking to emigrate was something for which the passport office was ill-prepared. In the coming weeks and months, he and his staff would be pushed to breaking point. Kendrick embarked on the path of a rescuer, becoming the ‘Oskar Schindler’ of Vienna.
Anti-Semitism was deeply ingrained in Vienna – partly because the working classes gave their support to the Nazi regime for economic reasons. However, the picture is rather more complex than that. Austrian anti-Semitism in this period was not initially directed against Vienna’s highly educated, upper-middle-class Jewish intellectuals and successful businessmen who had become integrated into life in the country. But over 100,000 Eastern European Jews had left Poland in 1918–19, fleeing extreme Polish anti-Semitism and nationalism. Many of them had settled in Germany, but from 1933 they were forced to leave again because of Nazi persecution. These poverty-stricken Jews tended to move into Austria and Vienna’s own Jewish population feared that these people would fuel wider anti-Semitism and jeopardize their own position. Their concerns were not totally unjustified. The situation changed rapidly after the Nazi invasion and all Jews, whether religious or assimilated, became the object of racial hatred and anti-Semitism. British businessman Arengo-Jones, who was married to an Austrian Jew, had engaged an Austrian lawyer named Arthur Seyss-Inquart to conduct their legal matters. But after the Anschluss, Seyss-Inquart turned Nazi and told them that he could no longer represent them.1 Seyss-Inquart entered the cabinet as the new Nazi chancellor of Austria for just two days, before becoming a leading member of Hitler’s government. He was joined by another Austrian lawyer, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was appointed leader of the SS in Austria. As secretary of state for security, Kaltenbrunner was head of the security police and commandant of the SS. In 1944, he was also head of the Gestapo in Vienna. These appointments gave him tight control over all aspects of state security. He was considered the right man because of his ruthless, fanatical adherence to Nazi ideology, and could often be seen entering his office at 7 Herrengasse in SS uniform.2 Immediately after the Anschluss, he arrested all officials who were not supportive of the Nazi regime and struck their names off the lists of civic posts and establishments. They were replaced by his SS men, thereby tightening the Third Reich’s authority and control over Austria.3
Two days after the Anschluss, on 14 March 1938, Adolf Hitler arrived in Vienna to a rapturous, almost messianic, reception. Thousands of Austrians lined the route for a glimpse of the Führer in his open-top Mercedes, cheering as the entourage made its way towards the Hofburg (the imperial palace), where, it was rumoured, Archbishop Cardinal Innitzer was to give Hitler a blessing, thus ensuring the allegiance of Austrian Catholics. The city’s Jews remained behind closed doors. On the balcony of the Hofburg, in front of a crowd of thousands, the blessing took place. Adolf Hitler – the Austrian who, as an impoverished youth, had once swept the steps of Vienna’s Imperial Hotel – was ruler of all that he surveyed that day. He finished his rallying speech with a final proclamation: ‘Long live national-socialist German–Austria!’
The military build-up continued in the days immediately after the annexation. By 15 March, the British embassy estimated that the total German military strength in the country was 100,000 men, 1,000 air personnel and 200 aircraft. Generals Milch and von Brauchitsch and Admiral Canaris arrived in the city. At 6 p.m. that evening, German troops were still entering the capital, including 7,000 from artillery, anti-aircraft artillery and other units. Surely there could be no justification for such a display of force in Austria? It caused concern in the British embassies in Austria and Germany, where intelligence staff based in those offices identified which German battalions were on the move and reported the results back to London.
The following day, 16 March, the Cabinet met in London to discuss the anticipated Jewish refugee crisis. The home secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, said that he felt a great reluctance to put any further obstacles in the way of ‘these unfortunate people’ and reported that a curious story had reached him from MI5, to the effect that the Germans were anxious to swamp the United Kingdom with Jews so as to create a Jewish problem in the country.4 A Home Office memorandum issued after the meeting noted:
The incorporation of Austria in the German Reich has made it essential to reconsider the arrangements for the control of aliens holding German or Austrian passports who may seek admission to this country . . . the future status of people holding an Austrian passport was now uncertain.
Jews who had fled Germany in the early 1930s and found asylum in Austria were among those now trying to flee Austria.5 Decisions in London on visas and the status of refugees would directly impact on what Kendrick and other British passport officers across Europe could do.
The Jewish community in Britain had previously provided the Home Office with a written undertaking that no refugee arriving in the country would be a burden on the public purse.6 The community would take care of their welfare. But matters changed after the Anschluss. The German Jewish Aid Committee could no longer guarantee financial assistance for newly arrived refugees. The Home Office instigated a new visa system for émigrés coming into Britain, something that had been abolished for the countries of Germany and Austria in 1928. Now all refugees needed a British visa, as well as other documentation required by the German authorities for emigration. It was recognized that the consequence of this decision would be extra work for British passport officers. That afternoon, a cypher was sent by the Foreign Office to the British embassy in Vienna, stating that if the German occupying forces reopened the Austrian borders, large numbers of refugees could seek entry into Britain.7 The Foreign Office wished to be informed immediately by telegram if this was the case.
While the Cabinet and Home Office debated the Austrian crisis and new visa regulations, Kendrick faced the day-to-day practicalities of emigration for the hundreds of Jews cramming every available space at the embassy.
City of terror
Within days of the Anschluss, the Jews of Vienna were to experience the full brutality of the Nazi regime. Jewish males were rounded up by Brownshirts and SS and never seen again. Eric Gedye reported: ‘From my window I could watch for many days how they would arrest Jewish passers-by – generally doctors, lawyers and merchants, for they preferred their victims to belong to the better educated classes.’ Signs appeared on shop windows: ‘No Jews or dogs here.’ Gedye provided many examples of the degradation and brutality against Vienna’s Jews:
every morning in the Habsburgergasse the SS squads were told how many Jews to round up that day for menial tasks . . . The favourite task was that of cleaning the [toilet] bowls of the WCs in the SS barracks, which Jews were forced to do simply with their naked hands.8
Kendrick came out of the passport building to humiliating scenes of Jews scrubbing the pavement in front of his office, with acid solutions that burned their hands. Unintimidated by the jeering onlookers of stormtroopers and Brownshirts, he kicked over the buckets of acid solution and shouted at them: ‘Not on my patch!’ The Argus newspaper reported:
The queue [around the British passport control office] sometimes extended into the street where the larrikin youth of the Nazi stormtroopers amused themselves by making the Jews who were waiting wash the pavement. Kendrick stopped that.9
Gedye also tried to reconcile the brutality and humiliation with the Vienna he knew:
[It is] the fluffy Viennese blondes, fighting one another to get closer to the elevating spectacle of an ashen-faced Jewish surgeon on hands and knees before half a dozen young hooligans with Swastika armlets and dog-whips that sticks in my mind. His delicate fingers, which must have made the swift and confident incisions that had saved the lives of many Viennese, held a scrubbing-brush. A Stormtrooper was pouring some acid solution over the brush – taking care to drench the surgeon’s striped trousers as he did so. And the Viennese – not uniformed Nazis or a raging mob, but the Viennese little man and his wife – just grinned approval at the glorious fun.10
The greater part of the Jewish population had lost its livelihood. The despair could be measured by the number of suicides. In the first four days after the Anschluss, there were 140 Jewish suicides – an average of 35 a day. Within the month, 500 Jews had taken their own lives – mainly intellectuals from the upper middle class. Franz Rothenberg, chairman of Austria’s largest bank, Creditanstalt-Bankverein, was arrested and thrown out of a moving car by stormtroopers. Isidor Pollak, the Jewish director of the chemical company Pulverfabrik, was killed during an SA raid on his home. In a two-hour speech, Dr Goebbels, Hitler’s minister for propaganda, attacked world democracy and the international press, and said that Jewish persecution and suicides in Austria were inventions, and that ‘the Jewish problem would have to be solved’.11
Less than 12 hours after Hitler’s triumphal procession through Vienna, the Gestapo arrived at the apartment of Sigmund Freud at 19 Berggasse and raided it.12 A week later, Freud was subjected to a second raid, during which his daughter Anna was taken away for hours of questioning. His eldest son Martin was placed under house arrest. A flurry of US and British diplomatic efforts ensued in the coming weeks to get the Freud family out of Austria. Concern mounted for the fate of Austrian scientists, particularly Otto Loewi, recipient of the Nobel Prize for medicine.13
Vice Consul-General Gainer reported back to London on the extreme anti-Semitism gripping the Austrian capital. He told London that the local German authorities believed they could solve ‘the Jewish problem’ by arresting hundreds of Jews on a daily basis, confining them for a short period and then releasing them on condition that they sign an undertaking to hand over all their possessions to the Nazi Party and leave the country within three to four weeks. It was but a temporary freedom, as they were often rearrested before they could organize all the paperwork to leave.
Intelligence work under strain
Hitler’s annexation of Austria was the most serious crisis in Kendrick’s career with SIS. For 13 years, he had been engaged exclusively in Vienna on intelligence work. The human catastrophe and urgency of visa work meant that he struggled to get any intelligence reports back to Sinclair in London. He wrote to Sinclair apologizing that his reports were ‘somewhat scrappy and badly collated because of the pressure of passport work’.14 The Foreign Office convened a meeting to discuss his future and whether he should leave Vienna, but it was decided to keep him in post. The passport work put enormous strain on Kendrick’s SIS secretaries, who were employed on visa work while still trying to gather intelligence on Germany. Marjorie Weller, who transferred from the passport control office in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, to Vienna, recalled:
We had these queues outside and I used to say, I had this pile of passports here and a pile of secret ink letters there and I was doing both. It was terribly sad. Pregnant women would lay about in the consulate in the hope they would have babies on British territory. I remember one occasion when a couple went away and committed suicide. There was just nothing I could do for them.15
Amid the agitation in the corridors outside his office, Kendrick ordered his secretaries to destroy sensitive papers in the event of a raid on the offices by the Gestapo. A series of ‘burnings’ took place in the basement of the British embassy. Any documentation from this period which survives today consists of copies of correspondence, transcripts and telegrams that had already been sent to the Foreign Office.
Gedye was the first of Kendrick’s agents to be harassed by the Gestapo. As a vocal anti-Nazi journalist, he was a priority on the Gestapo’s wanted list. In the first few days after annexation, several unsuccessful attempts were made to expel him from Vienna. On 19 March, Gedye was called to the office of the police chief, Dr Zoffal, who had been instructed by Gestapo headquarters in Berlin to politely ask him to leave Austria.16 No reason was given, but it was clear that his journalism did not meet with the approval of the Third Reich. Three days later, Ambassador Henderson in Berlin received a phone call from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform him that Gedye was being expelled from Austria because one of his articles was ‘considered insolent and untrue particularly with regard to the number of persons imprisoned by the Nazis in Austria’.17 In response the British government ordered the expulsion from the UK of Dr Karl Abshagen, a prominent German journalist for the Hamburger Nachrichten. This was followed by the expulsion of other German journalists whom the British suspected of conducting espionage in the UK.18
There was a more pressing concern for Gedye than his own personal safety. He had employed an Austrian, Litzi Mehler, as his personal secretary. She was also his mistress, and – as a Jew – her life was now in danger. How long before the Gestapo would come after her? Their son, Robin Gedye, recalled:
My father was called to the British embassy and told that he had to get out of Austria because his life was in danger. The Nazis hated the fact that he reported what he saw – all the brutality of a regime that was trying to hide it from the world. John Lepper [?] at the British consulate forged a marriage certificate to enable my mother to get a passport and thus hide her Jewishness. These forged papers enabled her to safely get out of Austria.19
Gedye left Vienna for Prague with his new ‘wife’.20 From the temporary safety of Czechoslovakia, he continued to write articles against the Nazi regime and the serious events in Austria. He and Litzi remained in Czechoslovakia until German forces invaded the country in March 1939, when they were forced to flee again. Gedye and Litzi went on to serve British intelligence abroad during the Second World War.21
One of Kendrick’s friends who was at risk was opera singer, Marjorie Wright, who had married Stephen Eisinger, an Austrian Jew, in 1932.22 She and Eisinger had met when they both attended a performance of Carmen at the Vienna State Opera. During the 1930s, they were invited to supper with the Kendricks – until Eisinger breached etiquette and correctness by his informal attire. Marjorie wrote: ‘he [Stephen] has been a communist and he would never dress up when we were invited out. He refused to wear a dinner jacket on a visit to my friends the Kendricks and was never invited there again.’23 Despite his disapproval, Kendrick helped them out of Austria in March 1938. On marrying Eisinger, Marjorie had lost her British nationality, because dual nationality was not permitted (one reason why Kendrick had objected so strongly to his own daughter, Gladys, being first engaged to an Austrian, before she married Geoffrey Walsh).
The Eisingers and their children were at risk and needed to get out of the country. Of the scenes during the first day of the annexation, Marjorie Eisinger wrote: ‘Already Vienna was full of anguish with sights such as Jews scrubbing the pavements.’ That same day (or shortly afterwards), Stephen Eisinger fled for Prague, because his life was at immediate risk from the Nazis. From Prague he took a flight to safety in London. It took longer to secure an exit for his wife and their two children from Austria. Marjorie had already met the British diplomat Michael Palairet, minister to Austria, through their expatriate circles, just prior to the Anschluss. He advised her that matters were becoming so serious that she should acquire a false British passport from Kendrick. Palairet was himself recalled to London at the time of the Anschluss and honoured with a knighthood shortly afterwards.
Marjorie Eisinger duly visited the British passport control office and was told to return at 4 o’clock. She then telephoned Kendrick for help, because she had to make the journey twice. He gave her the money for the taxi fare. He ensured that his staff issued a false passport in her maiden name as Marjorie Wright. He also coached her in a cover story in the event that she was detained and questioned by the authorities: she was to pretend to be the wife of a British Indian Army officer, Major Wright, and she was on holiday in Vienna with their two sons. Marjorie obtained the false passport and noted in her diary: ‘At 9pm I arrived at Westbahnhof [railway station] with the children. I went to telephone Tommy Kendrick to ask him to come and help but I never got through.’ By this time, Kendrick was inundated by the events surrounding him. Nevertheless, he was always ready to help any British citizen living or passing through Vienna who needed his assistance.24
Gedye and the Eisingers were not the only ones in Kendrick’s inner circle who were at risk. His subordinate, Fred Richter, had a Jewish father who could be subjected to the anti-Jewish racial policies of the regime. Although Richter had dual nationality, it was unclear whether his British nationality still held, because he had served in the Imperial Austrian Army in the First World War. As a measure of protection, the British ambassador in Vienna issued him with a new British passport in March 1938. In the end, it would afford Richter no protection against the Gestapo. In the background to these events, Richter was still in contact with agent Tucek, whom Kendrick had met just prior to the Anschluss. On 22 March 1938, Tucek met Richter for a debriefing in the Mondl pub in Favoritenstrasse. Tucek seemed nervous and less sure of his position. Richter wondered if the annexation had affected him. Tucek informed him that his appointment with the shipyard had not materialized; however, he had been able to obtain some material for the ‘Englishman’ from his own observations and friendly conversations with friends who completely trusted him. ‘I couldn’t stay in Germany any longer because I ran out of money,’ he told Richter.
Tucek indicated that he would be willing to undertake espionage work again, depending on the rate the ‘Englishman’ was willing to pay, but matters had changed. Tucek felt he could no longer spy in Germany, because as an Austrian (and now a German citizen), if he was caught he would be executed for treason. He considered it too dangerous to hand over drawings and to answer any questions in Austria, but he was prepared to meet a British representative in neutral territory. Switzerland was suggested. Tucek insisted that the representative must be a member of British intelligence.
Kendrick contacted London for advice. While Kendrick waited for a reply, Richter met Tucek again – this time in the Anglican church where Richter was a verger. Tucek had important news for him. He had received an offer of employment at the port of Wilhelmshaven and had details of construction work for the German navy that was under way at Danzig, Elbing and Königsberg. Richter could not have hoped for a better result. Kendrick received a telegram from London with instructions that Tucek was to travel to the Berner Hof in Interlaken, where a British agent would be waiting for him. Tucek was given 600 Schillings in expenses to hand over information to an Englishman called Albert Acton Brandon and a return train ticket to Zurich. Brandon was, in fact, Albert Ernest Acton Burnell, SIS’s man in Switzerland and a close colleague of Kendrick’s.25
Tucek met Burnell on 28 May and told him how he had masqueraded as a technician and had successfully gained access to Wilhelmshaven, where he had observed work on U-boats and torpedo boats. Of particular value to SIS were his verbal reports on the construction of the German battleships Scharnhorst and Tirpitz, their fuel consumption and capabilities. Over the ensuing months, Tucek met Richter in Vienna and continued to feed information to the British from his Abwehr handlers, most of it accurate. At no point did Kendrick suspect that anything was amiss. He was swamped by a humanitarian crisis unparalleled in Austrian history.
British subjects arrested
Nazi harassment quickly extended to British subjects of Jewish origin who were living and well settled in Vienna. A hotelier, Captain Edmund Pollak MC, who had served in the Royal Air Force in the First World War, was arrested on 13 March – the day after the Anschluss.26 Four stormtroopers with revolvers and rifles entered his house at 22 Gloriettegasse. He protested that he was a British subject and demanded to be allowed to contact the British consul-general, John Taylor. His demand was refused and he was bundled into a taxi. Pollak’s wife immediately telephoned Taylor, who alerted the Foreign Office. Pollak was driven to the police prison on the Rossauer Lände. He later recounted:
On the way there, my foot inadvertently touched one of the Stormtrooper’s feet, whereupon he turned to me saying, ‘I’ll show you how to keep your feet in order’, and stamped on my feet with his heavy field boot . . . They also regaled me with stories of how they had seen prisoners beaten up that morning.27
Pollak was ushered into a small room with a Nazi in uniform and a number of police officers. The stormtrooper explained to him that, as a Jew, he was guilty of displaying a swastika flag outside his hotel and restaurant, Münchner Hof. After two and a half hours, Pollak was released without charge, following the intervention of Consul-General Taylor with the German authorities.28
Arriving home, his wife told him how the British flag had been torn off his Daimler car, confiscated and replaced by a swastika flag.29 Questioning the servants, Pollak learned that they had taken a telephone call from an anonymous caller the previous evening while he and his wife were out, enquiring about Pollak’s Jewishness. Sensing something was amiss, Pollak telephoned the Münchner Hof to be told that it had been confiscated. Fearing for his other business, a fish and poultry restaurant at 12 Fleischmarkt, he telephoned the manager and learned that it, too, had been raided by stormtroopers and seized.
Pollak headed straight to see Taylor at the embassy. The consul-general advised Pollak that he should leave the country immediately. Taylor and Kendrick organized the necessary papers and visas for Pollak, his wife and their child to escape Vienna that same evening. Pollak recalled:
I thereupon called up Dr Paul Kaltenegger, the lawyer to the British Legation, who is also a personal friend of mine of long standing, and explained the whole position to him and gave him full Power of Attorney.30
This meant that Kaltenegger could act on Pollak’s behalf in any matters relating to the confiscated businesses and assets.
While packing a suitcase that evening, Pollak received a telephone call from the Nazi authorities stating that he was not to enter his hotel under any circumstances, that it had been ransacked and cash amounting to £100 taken. That evening, Pollak and his family successfully escaped from Austria, but in so doing he left everything he had built up. He lost not only the hotel business, but approximately 400,000 Schillings in investments (equivalent to £15,000 in those days), his import business as sole agent for the whisky company James Buchanan Ltd, Gordon & Co. (gin) and others.31 He also lost around 40,000 Schillings owed to him, all his stocks, the villa that he had leased on Gloriettegasse and had furnished at a cost of 60,000 Schillings, his silver and glass collections and his personal belongings. The Foreign Office was advised to make strong representations to the German government for compensation for Pollak, restitution to the value of the property confiscated and punishment of the offenders.32 Pollak was advised not to contact the press for fear of a media frenzy or to have questions asked in parliament, as that could jeopardize representations made on his behalf by His Majesty’s government.
Pollak and his family were successfully smuggled out of Austria. They arrived back in London and stayed temporarily at the Royal Air Force Club in Piccadilly. It seems likely that Pollak may have been working for Kendrick while in Vienna: they were close friends and Pollak went on to work for him in the Second World War, in charge of the air intelligence section at Kendrick’s top-secret unit.
The Foreign Office in London began to receive calls for help in locating Jewish friends and relatives whose whereabouts in Austria were unknown after the Anschluss. Sir Philip Sassoon, owner of a 400-acre country estate at Trent Park in north London (which ironically would be requisitioned by Kendrick for secret purposes in the Second World War), enquired about the safety of the wife of the world-renowned Austrian glider pilot Robert Kronfeld, a close friend of his.33 She had been living in Vienna with her mother, Isabella Jolesch. The latter owned several properties in the city and was rumoured to have been arrested by the Nazis. A cypher was sent to Vienna asking about their safety and that of Captain Hans Bauer, mayor of Lambach in Upper Austria, who was an anti-Nazi with an English wife and four children.34
Enquiries were made on behalf of a Mrs Wright, an Austrian by birth but British by marriage. Her mother, Ida Kohn, and aunt, Jenny Stern, were still living in Vienna.35 The Wrights agreed to vouch for them if they were permitted to leave Austria. Arrangements were also made for Mrs Adele Fraenkel, sister of Sir Henry Strakosch, to leave Vienna as quickly as possible. She was described by the Foreign Office as ‘of advanced years and extremely delicate’, and a friend travelled from England to Vienna to help her on the journey. English friends of Dr and Mrs Hecht of 6 Stubenring were also anxious for news, because the couple were known to be Catholics with monarchist leanings. The British embassy was asked to establish whether the Hechts were still in the city.
One British subject at risk of arrest was violinist and amateur radio ham Katherine Olive Milne Myler. She was working undercover for Kendrick in Vienna and is one of the very few female SIS operatives known to have been working in the region. Known to everyone as Olive, she had been educated in Bath and was fluent in German and other languages. Like so many in SIS, she left no footprint of her clandestine work. She had arrived in Vienna in the 1930s (or possibly earlier) and as an accomplished violinist is thought to have played in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. This was a place frequented by Kendrick and his wife, who loved opera. There has been some suggestion that Myler played for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but no trace has been found in records.
Myler had to flee Vienna immediately after the Anschluss, because she was at risk. It is not clear whether she was Jewish or had to flee because of her work for SIS. When she returned to her bungalow in the village of Knowle, near Braunton in North Devon, she took up amateur radio again with the call sign G3GH. During the Second World War she became one of only three female voluntary interceptors (VIs) known to have worked for MI8, linked to Bletchley Park. She intercepted signals from German U-boats and marked their location; and she also identified the inland submarine pens near Brest on the French coast. For her contribution, she was awarded the British Empire Medal. The snippets of information that are known about her have only emerged because of interviews with people who knew her.36 She revealed nothing as such of her personal life, and remained a figure of mystery right up to her death in August 1948.
Arrest of public figures
Some of Austria’s key public figures were arrested, among them former Chancellor Schuschnigg, Baron Louis Rothschild and the princes Hohenberg.37 In the coming weeks, Kendrick and Taylor tried to establish the whereabouts of a number of public figures known to be missing. It was not only a matter of securing the safety of these figures: it also provided the Foreign Office and SIS with intelligence from the ground on what was happening. Reports that Kendrick and Taylor sent back to London included information that Schuschnigg was being held under house arrest in the Belvedere, where he was being forced to listen to Nazi political speeches.38 This had annoyed Schuschnigg so much that he had smashed two wireless sets; a third had been installed by the Nazis in an inaccessible position.
Dr Schmitz, the former mayor of Vienna, was in prison in the city; Austrian President Miklas was confined to his house, but was permitted to attend daily mass under escort. By the end of March, there was still no news of Captain Hans Bauer, the mayor of Lambach. He had been arrested by the regime for being a member of an illegal anti-Nazi group, the Fatherland Front. Count Engleberg Arco-Valley was another member of the Austrian aristocracy to be arrested. He was a cousin of the brothers Count Nando and Tony Arco-Valley, who in 1919 had murdered Kurt Eisner, a Bavarian Bolshevik. The brothers were described by the Foreign Office as ‘rather mad and apt to trail their coats before the Nazis’.39
Within hours of the Anschluss, a number of public figures and Austrian aristocrats were transported to Dachau concentration camp. Among them were the duke of Hohenberg and his brother Prince Max Hohenberg; a 72-year-old former imperial ambassador, Prince Karl Emil Furstenberg; Colonel Adam of the federal chancellery; and around 50 police officials.40 Furstenberg was eventually released on 8 April, with a stark warning that not recognizing the Nazi regime was treason, the sentence for which (he was informed) was decapitation. A direct appeal was issued to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop for the release of these figures, but to no avail. Jewish banker and philanthropist Baron Louis Rothschild was arrested at Vienna airport as he tried to board a plane to Venice.41 He faced a possible trial on trumped-up charges of misappropriating money for political purposes. While he was being held at Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel Metropole, he befriended his jailers: ‘His valet arrived at the prison in a van, which contained not only large amounts of luggage, but a bed and bed linen, lamps, carpets and tapestries as well as orchids from the Rothschild greenhouses, peaches, grapes and wine from the Rothschild cellars.’42 The guards let the valet in. But Rothschild soon became so popular with the guards that they were replaced by brutal German Nazis and he was deprived of these luxuries. To annoy the Nazi guards, he quoted sections of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, much of which he had learned by heart. For Rothschild, it was an attitude of defiance in the face of brutality and oppression. However, the situation could have turned out differently for him had the guards decided to beat him up for his provocations.
Arrested around the same time as Rothschild was Karl Seemann, director of a coal distribution company that had international connections within the coal industry. Given his connections abroad, it is possible that Seemann might have been working as an agent or contact for Kendrick. He supplied fuel to some of the biggest hotels in Vienna: the Metropole, Bristol and Regina, as well as to the company Sascha-Film.43 This last had been started by Count Alexander ‘Sascha’ von Kolowrat-Krakowsky, a pioneer in films, friend of Alexander Korda and founder of the first studios in Vienna, located in the Sievering suburb.44 One day after the Anschluss, Seemann disappeared, taken by the Gestapo while in one of the hotels. He returned a few days later (the details are sketchy), but the episode hastened the family’s departure from Vienna. It is not known whether Kendrick was involved in his release from custody, but, as Jews, Seemann and his family were at risk. It was Kendrick in the British embassy who suggested that Seemann leave urgently: ‘The place I would send you is East Africa.’45
As Seemann’s granddaughter, Susan Gompels, recalls:
There has been a suggestion of a parallel between my grandparents’ story and that of the Rothschilds. The Gestapo apparently allowed Jews to pack only one case. All other possessions were surrendered – and some might be packed by the Gestapo for ‘shipping’ out of Vienna. There was a suggestion that some goods could be chosen to accompany the refugees, but the Gestapo had the final decision; and there were trade-offs. My grandparents could list which items they would like, but these might not be sent on to them in East Africa. How any was sent remains a mystery – some members of the family today have items from the Vienna days that include a very large painting of Vienna Woods and a complete delicate set of Lobmeyr crystal.
Seemann and his wife Fredericke (Fritzi) fled Vienna with their sons, Robert and William, in July 1938, sailing for Mombasa, East Africa. With no money or possessions, they made a new life labouring on farms, in small manufacturing units and eventually setting up their own businesses. Circumstances eventually brought the family to Britain.46
Gompels discovered quite accidentally from her father, William, about Kendrick’s role in saving her family from extermination in the Nazi death camps:
One day my father made a casual comment: ‘Isn’t it strange that Captain Kendrick ended up living just down the road from us here in Surrey?’
‘So, who is Captain Kendrick?’ I asked.
My father replied: ‘He was the amazing passport officer who saved our lives.’
Growing up in Nairobi in the 1950s, almost all our friends had similar stories and were refugees from Vienna and Czechoslovakia. They included Dr Eric Horowitz, the doctor who delivered me as a baby, and Hungarian/Czech architect George Farkas, and musician Charles Petera.47
Many others who made their escape to East Africa and South Africa may well have been saved by Kendrick, but their stories have yet to come to light.
By 19 March, some 2,500 Austrian political prisoners had been taken from Vienna by road to Dachau concentration camp. Michael Creswell, head of the passport control in London, scribbled on the report that it was ‘a far higher number than we had previously had any indication of’.48 It was also noted that the accommodation at Dachau had been considerably increased over the previous six months to allow for more inmates. This caused some concern at the Foreign Office.
There was so much uncertainty and no one was safe, even among the Austrian aristocracy. And Kendrick’s rescue efforts extended to them. He enabled Baroness Daisy Weigelsperg, who was Jewish, to get out of Austria.49 She had attended Gladys Kendrick’s wedding in Vienna in 1931. After fleeing to Paris, she changed her name to Daisy Carol. It was not only Austria’s Jews who needed Kendrick’s help. Members of the Habsburg family – the dynasty that had once ruled the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire – were in difficulties, with their wealth targeted and confiscated by the Nazi regime. A British officer and non-Jew, Captain Charles Piercy, whose wife was the daughter of Princess Beatrix Bourbon Massimo, was lunching with Princess Ileana of Romania (a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria) and Archduchess Blanca of Austria at the Palais Toskana in Vienna, when the secret police burst in to confiscate their jewels and papers.50 Piercy himself fell under suspicion, too, for allegedly trying to hide the Habsburg wealth from the Nazi regime. The British consulate in Vienna advised him to leave the country immediately. Although further details have not come to light on this, the story highlights the closeness between some British circles in Vienna and Austrian royalty. As has been seen already for the 1920s and 1930s, Kendrick himself tried to penetrate and build up social contacts in these circles – all part of his role as a spymaster to gain information and keep abreast of events for SIS.
However, not all remained loyal to Kendrick. One of his long-standing friends, Baron Lichtenberg, whose daughter had been a bridesmaid at Gladys Kendrick’s wedding, turned Nazi immediately after the Anschluss. Kendrick’s granddaughter, Barbara Lloyd, recalls:
My mother refused to visit Countess Lichtenberg if she knew that her husband was going to be at home. My mother was disgusted with the baron for changing with the wind. I think my grandfather may have had nothing to do with him either.51
These were dangerous times for Kendrick: any of his once close circle could turn and become genuine supporters of the Nazi regime. In such cases, he had to exercise caution and dissociate himself from them. Until the regime occupied Austria, it was difficult for anyone to judge who might become disloyal. His network had to be protected at all costs.
A crisis beyond proportions
By early April 1938, over 7,000 Austrian Jewish males had been arrested and sent to concentration camps. As Consul-General Gainer wrote:
The arrests are entirely haphazard. Jews walking in the streets are approached by SA or SS men, asked if they are Jews and then taken off to prison. The whole process is senseless and inhumane and the problem remains unsolved. For those who believe that the Germans are amongst the most cultured and highly civilised of the European peoples, I would recommend a short sojourn in Vienna.52
The Nazi regime forbade Jews to enter parks on the banks of the Danube or bathe in the river. Within a fortnight, this exclusion applied to any park in the city. In Salzburg, they were forbidden to wear Austrian national costume. Jewish lawyers were given three weeks to close their businesses. The offices of the Zionist Federation, the Palestine Office and other Jewish community organizations were closed and sealed by the German authorities, and their leaders and officials arrested.53
Months of chaos at the British passport office followed the Anschluss. The building was mobbed daily by Jews and intelligentsia seeking ways to leave Austria. With only sporadic directives from the British government, Kendrick and his staff muddled along as best they could. According to the News Chronicle, Kendrick was ‘a tremendous worker, doing 15 hours a day for weeks when the Jewish rush to escape first began’.54 He and his staff worked flat-out, but still it was not enough. As he confided to Gainer: ‘My staff are so overwrought, they will burst into tears at the slightest provocation.’55 One typist was at breaking point and had to take compassionate leave.
Gainer reported back to London: ‘To conduct the work of the passport office as applicants desire . . . we should need a staff of 40 people and a building like the Albert Hall.’56 Extra help came from staff transferred from the British passport offices in Sofia and Copenhagen, which doubled the number of visa staff at Vienna to 16.57 Even this was insufficient to handle more than 175 applications a day. Each day, at least 700 applicants would be queuing in the hallway and outside the building.58 Many left at the end of the day without being seen. For the sake of fairness, Kendrick introduced a ticket system, so that they would not lose their place in the queue the following day. Gainer admitted that ‘some people have to be firmly dealt with . . . the ushers are pushed about and occasionally even struck and often insulted’.59
Throughout this, Kendrick had to contend with a number of bureaucratic changes. In April, the British embassy at 8 Wallnerstrasse was downgraded to the status of a legation, which meant that all directives now came from the British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson. There were discussions about merging the legation with the passport office. Although no formal merger occurred, Kendrick had to move his staff from 6 Metternichgasse to the second floor of 8 Wallnerstrasse. The legation and passport office functioned in the same building, but remained separate.60 Sir Philip Sassoon, in his role as first commissioner of works and responsible for requisitioning properties for the government, later faced questions in the British parliament about why 6 Metternichgasse was sold for less than its value.61 Part of the answer given at the time was the slump in property prices, but another factor involved the restrictions imposed by the German government on how much money the British government could take out of German territories.
Structural alterations were made so that the passport control office had its own separate entrance and waiting room, in order to prevent serious congestion at the legation.62 The issue of space for Kendrick was still being discussed several months later. As Gainer wrote to the secretary of state for foreign affairs: ‘Owing to the abnormal conditions obtaining in Vienna, Captain Kendrick needs a minimum of twelve rooms in which to house his staff, but I found myself unable to offer him this accommodation.’63 Kendrick became vice-consul at his own suggestion. From time to time he acted as consul-general in Gainer’s absence.64 Kendrick and Gainer were important eyewitnesses to events on the ground in Austria and the region. They sent regular reports back to the Foreign Office and oversaw cypher and decoding work, but their official duties meant that they often struggled to keep up. Gainer’s own intelligence work was also suffering, and he wrote to Sir Robert Vansittart (permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office) that he had had no time to maintain contacts or draft intelligence reports. Vansittart advised him that he should travel about his consular district periodically to keep abreast of the political situation.
May 1938: Czechoslovakia
After the Anschluss, it was widely anticipated that Germany would invade Czechoslovakia.65 It did not in fact happen for another year, and yet the concern remained. Czechoslovakia was a target for Hitler because a quarter of the country’s 12 million citizens were ethnic Germans. The vast majority of those 3 million people were German speakers and lived in an area known as the Sudetenland – the former regions of Moravia, Bohemia and Czech Silesia that had once been part of the Austrian Empire. These people looked to Vienna, not Berlin, as their cultural capital. It was not unusual for the cultured intellectuals and aristocracy of Czech society to travel to Vienna for concerts, theatre and opera. In these circles, Kendrick recruited ‘contacts’ who could observe events on the ground in Czechoslovakia. Because of the secrecy surrounding his work, their names have not been released.
By May 1938, the situation escalated further after the movement of German troops towards the Czechoslovak border in an action largely believed to be an imminent invasion. Kendrick’s work with regard to Czechoslovakia assumed a pressing urgency, with concerns over possible German intentions towards Hungary, too. His agents, contacts and informers were embedded across both countries: reliable intelligence was vital.66
At this time, there was an interesting case of suspected espionage involving German military activity. On 22 May 1938, a Canadian couple, Mr and Mrs Bennett, were arrested by the authorities in Salzburg on suspicion of spying.67 Stewart Gordon Bennett had been caught photographing the construction work of new military barracks at Hitler’s Bavarian mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, near the border with Austria. Details of the allegations were sent by the secret police to the British consulate in Vienna, where they were dealt with by Kendrick and Gainer. The Bennetts were, in fact, engaged not in tourism (as they claimed to the Gestapo), but in securing intelligence for Kendrick. The photographs were intended for Kendrick and then SIS in London.
Gainer issued an official response on behalf of the Foreign Office, in effect demanding an explanation for the arrest. The Gestapo replied that they had their suspicions that ‘Mr and Mrs Bennett had a special interest in military buildings and camps, and that they had already prior to this case photographed objects to which it was not desired to give publicity, either in Germany or elsewhere.’68 The camera was confiscated and, when opened, was found to have rare colour film inside that could only be developed in Berlin. The Bennetts remained in custody while the Gestapo waited for the film to be processed. It provided no incriminating evidence against them and they were released without charge. The photographs were returned to the Bennetts via the British legation in July 1938 – a month that would see a re-emergence of fears over a German invasion of Czechoslovakia.69
Kendrick’s own staff now came under the suspicion of the German authorities, possibly as a result of this incident. Clara Holmes became aware of a Nazi couple being unexpectedly billeted in the basement of her apartment block. Her daughter Prudence commented:
We were conscious that this couple were watching us. I was told not to fraternize with them because anything Nazi was bad. We had to be very careful who visited us and our activities. They might have given information away to the Gestapo.70
These fears were not unfounded, as subsequent events would soon show.
The political situation within Austria was changing. After the appointment of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel, a Nazi politician, as the new governor of the region in July 1938, Nazi political propaganda flooded into Austria. Gainer noted that in Vienna the propaganda was received rather apathetically. In late July 1938, his report to London stated:
A fresh wave of anti-Semite hooliganism has disturbed Vienna during the past week. It coincided with the absence of Gauleiter Bürckel [now governor] and immediately subsided on his return. The rank and file of the SA and Hitler Jugend [Hitler Youth] have a healthy respect for Herr Bürckel when he is on the spot but are uncontrolled during his absence which leads again to the conclusion that the Gestapo are not giving Herr Bürckel the support they should.
While Austrians outside Vienna continued to embrace the Nazi regime, the situation in the capital was becoming very different. The persecution of Jews began to affect perceptions of the Nazi regime, and the Viennese began to realize the wider impact of the persecution:
In the provinces, the population is being speedily trained in a true National Socialist spirit. There is also some genuine enthusiasm for the cause in these places. This cannot truly be said of Vienna . . . That this city is at the moment not considered a particularly salubrious place for a prominent Nazi is proved by the fact that while leaders such as Goebbels and Herr Hess [the deputy Führer] are quite willing to visit Western Austria they take great care to avoid the chief city of the Ostmark.71
This report challenges long-held historical views that all Austria remained loyal to the Nazi regime because her anti-Semitism was more virulent than that in Germany. In fact, this report shows that, by July 1938, Vienna had become a city where the top Nazi leaders, such as Goebbels and Hess, were not welcome. It begins to shed a new light on the nuances regarding Austria and Nazism.
Conditions for emigration
At midday on 25 July 1938, the legation was stormed by hundreds of Jews, described as ‘terrified hysterical’, begging for a visa to go anywhere.72 With great reluctance, Gainer intervened and telephoned the police to restore some order. The chaos outside the British passport control office now necessitated the permanent presence of a police officer. Every effort was made in the coming weeks to see people with minimum delay; but that did not prevent periodic outbursts of emotion from those waiting in the queue. Kendrick, on his own initiative, sent off numerous letters to as many officials as possible who could potentially help Austria’s Jews. Jewish organizations added their own pressure on the British government. The World Jewish Congress implored the British government to use certificates for Palestine, available in Vienna for the period ending 31 March.73 British policy on emigration to Palestine would soon become a trickier situation for Kendrick. In an attempt to avert a refugee crisis on British soil, the Home Office, in consultation with MI5 and SIS, announced that passport officers could no longer issue temporary visitor visas to refugees.74 All visas had to be for full emigration and accompanied by the name of a guarantor, who would vouch that the refugee would not be a financial drain on the state. British consuls-general in several European cities were informed that valid Austrian passports would be temporarily acceptable for entry to the United Kingdom, so long as the passport holders could satisfy immigration officers on arrival that they met the requirements. The government soon tightened this legislation.
Prior to the Anschluss, there was an agreement that German and Austrian citizens did not need a visa to enter Britain. On 2 May 1938, Britain had imposed visas requirements on all German and Austrian refugees entering the United Kingdom, including those wishing to go on to the British colonies that were not fully self-governing. The ruling also applied to territories under mandate, such as Palestine. Visas were not required for entry into the British dominions or self-governing colonies. Kendrick looked to those countries to take more Jewish refugees. The standard fee for a visa was stipulated at 10 gold francs for an ordinary visa and 1 gold franc for a transit visa, both valid for a year. Kendrick made an appeal to the dominions and received a reply via the Foreign Office. It outlined in regards to Southern Rhodesia that émigrés must have sufficient funds to support themselves:
The precise sum required is not stated as it is understood that the Southern Rhodesian Government is not anxious to encourage the immigration of aliens . . . The Secretary of State assumes that, as far as the Dominions are concerned, the Passport Control Officer at Vienna is in possession of full instructions as to how to deal with applications for admission into those countries.75
Kendrick became increasingly frustrated, and fired off letters to any country that might take in Jewish refugees. In theory, there was no restriction on entry into India and Burma, or any of the British colonies, so long as emigrants had the necessary passport, complied with the visa regulations of the country of immigration and had sufficient financial support.76 In practice, however, it worked out very differently. The Colonial Office told Kendrick:
Climatic and economic conditions and the existence of large native populations make it extremely difficult to suggest any area in which large scale settlement would be practicable. No such area has yet been found, although certain enquiries are still proceeding.77
The high commissioner of the League of Nations for German refugees supported Kendrick and petitioned a large number of colonial governors to consider openings for Austrian refugees holding professional, business or agricultural qualifications. It soon became clear that there were no opportunities for them either. At the end of May, the Passport Control Department in London instructed Kendrick actively to discourage refugees from going to the colonial dependencies, unless they had definite offers of employment.78 Austrian Jews discovered that it was becoming hard to enter other British colonies. In April, Kendrick wrote to the secretary of state for India, appealing for Jewish refugees to be admitted into India on humanitarian grounds.79 The reply, six weeks later, from the India Office in Whitehall was not favourable:
The government of India feels that, in view of the difficulties in the way of foreigners from Western European countries finding employment in India, only such Jewish refugees should be granted visas for India as are found after careful investigation to be not politically undesirable, and who have friends in India who will accept responsibility for finding them employment or further support.80
During parliamentary questions in the House of Commons on 23 June, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was asked about the number of applications that had been processed in Vienna since the beginning of April for those fleeing on grounds of political or religious persecution. Maurice Jeffes, head of the Passport Control Department, reported that approximately 1,250 visas had been issued during May: ‘I know that staff, both at Berlin and Vienna, are after office hours working on into the night to try to cope with the enormous rush of applications they are receiving.’81 Kendrick estimated that the visa figures for June would be much higher.
John Back of the Passport Control Department in London returned from a visit to Vienna, where he had been struck by the patience and good temper of all members of staff under exceptionally trying circumstances. Prime Minister Chamberlain reported to parliament that Kendrick’s staff had been increased from 4 members before the Anschluss to 15, including clerical assistants, examiners, secretaries, clerks and messengers.
By July, Kendrick was still struggling to deal with applications from refugees who sought emigration to Australia. He wrote to Jeffes outlining the impossibilities of his office taking applications for Australia and the Commonwealth. He put forward a solution to the grim situation by appointing a local Jewish committee to vet cases in the first instance
under the supervision of an Englishman from a Jewish organization in the UK . . . who would act as liaison between the said committee and the Passport Control Officer here, who would then make the final recommendations at his discretion to the Commonwealth Government.
When Jeffes received this recommendation from Kendrick, he scrawled across it: ‘We must take a firm line with the Australians in this connection – 15,000 application forms have been issued in Vienna alone and several thousand more in Berlin. To take on the job as proposed would drown Kendrick entirely.’82
Kendrick found himself in an impossible situation, with his options becoming severely limited.
Palestine and illegal transports
In the first few weeks after the Anschluss, the emigration of the country’s Jews was supported by Adolf Eichmann, who became one of the infamous architects of the ‘Final Solution’ for the systematic eradication of European Jewry. The policy led to the murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million others by 1945. Eichmann was dispatched to Vienna in March 1938 with orders from the Führer to ‘rid Austria of her Jews’. He set up an office in the Austrian capital called the Central Office for Jewish Emigration and was prepared to use his own funds to finance the exit of around 20,000 Austrian Jews to Palestine. Kendrick visited Eichmann’s office in Vienna for discussions on ways in which Eichmann could help him with the exit of Jews from the country. Eichmann was keen to work with him, because Kendrick was providing a solution to the problem of how to get Jews out of the Third Reich.
Of all the possible destinations for émigré Jews, Palestine became a thorn in the side of Kendrick’s rescue efforts. It seemed an obvious sanctuary for Europe’s Jews, but it was under British mandate, with strict quotas for emigration. Between 1936 and early 1938, immigration quotas into Palestine were limited by the British to 12,000, after the Arabs demanded that the British government cease any quota for Jews entering there. In 1937, Kendrick’s office issued 214 legal permits for Austrian Jews to enter Palestine.83 After the Anschluss, that number rose to 2,964; Kendrick and his staff worked indefatigably to enable them to enter Palestine legally. Then Eichmann struck a deal with Kendrick, under which a thousand Jews were given illegal visas to enter Palestine. The paperwork was executed by Kendrick’s secretary, Evelyn Stamper.
As Kenneth Benton recalled:
They [Jewish émigrés] used to fill up the courtyard by about nine o’clock in the morning and I used to stand on the steps and give them a lecture on what chance they had of getting away. ‘Your only chance of getting to Palestine now is either if you’ve got relatives or a capitalist visa. But you might be able to get to Grenada. You might be able to get to Jamaica’ . . . But the stories were so terrible. The regulations were very, very limited. There were very few chances of giving anybody a visa for Palestine in those days. It was all trying to keep the numbers down because they knew the Arabs were going to revolt at some time; and of course they did.84
Wherever possible, Kendrick worked within the law on emigration. When those efforts were frustrated by British bureaucracy, he turned a blind eye to illegal transports to Palestine. By July 1938, it was known that 381 illegal migrants had made it into Palestine. Visas were issued to enable a thousand young immigrants to enter Palestine to attend a sports camp. When he sanctioned these temporary visas, Kendrick knew that the youngsters would not return to Austria; and they did not. Kendrick faced daily dilemmas and difficult choices which sometimes determined whether a Jew would survive the Holocaust or not. Sometimes he turned a blind eye to illegal transports to Palestine; but his efforts were frustrated when he was called to account by the Foreign Office. Publicly, Kendrick was forced to disavow these transports on the orders of the British government: ‘he showed understanding in a difficult situation, but the law was the law’.85 Because the British government had issued such orders to him, he did not wish to jeopardize the ongoing legal emigrations; he therefore now had to place pressure on Yugoslavia to annul any illegal visas from other sources that granted permission to cross its territory.
By the end of July 1938, borders in Greece and Yugoslavia were effectively closed to Jews. It was probably the most controversial and painful issue that Kendrick had to deal with as the British passport control officer.