Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer

VIENNA, April 10 (Palm Sunday) The “plebiscite” passed off today in a weird sort of holiday atmosphere. The Austrians, according to Goebbels’s count, have voted ninety-nine per cent Ja. Maybe so. It took a brave Austrian to vote No, as everyone felt the Nazis had some way of checking up on how they voted. This afternoon I visited a polling station in the Hofburg. The room, I imagine, had once been occupied by the Emperor’s guard. I went inside one of the booths. Pasted on the wall in front of you was a sample ballot showing you how to mark yours with a Yes. There was also a wide slit in the corner of the booth which gave the election committee sitting a few feet away a pretty good view of how you voted! Broadcast for fifteen minutes at seven thirty p.m., and though the polls had just closed, I said the Austrians were voting ninety-nine per cent Yes. A Nazi official told me so just as I went on the air and I assumed he knew. Probably he knew yesterday. And so Austria today “votes” away its centuries-old independence and joins the Greater Reich. Finis Austria!