863.00/1469: Telegram
The Ambassador in Germany (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 14—2:30 p.m.]
124. Inquiry at the Foreign Office reveals that Ribbentrop and Weizsaecker are departing by plane this afternoon for Vienna in order to discuss with the Austrian authorities a number of questions involving an ambassador, the status of foreign missions in Vienna and that of Austrian missions abroad. There will also be numerous and difficult questions of treaty relationships of third nations to Austria.
No formal attitude has yet been worked out but Foreign Office officials are inclined to think that from today, with the promulgation of law both in Germany and Austria, Austria becomes an integral part of the German Reich. The plebiscite to be held on April 10 is regarded as a “confirmation” somewhat as was the practice when Hitler assumed the Presidency on the death of Hindenburg and that action was subsequently “confirmed” by a vote in Germany.
It is believed at the Foreign Office that there will be no more reason for foreign states to maintain diplomatic representatives in Vienna than there is for them to retain such representatives in any other city in Germany. It is true that there is precedent for foreign diplomatic representatives in Munich, Stuttgart and elsewhere following the inauguration of the German Empire but at that time the German states were in confederation and Germany had not been centralized and amalgamated to the present extent.
[Page 442]Prince Bismarck68 to whom I was talking made it very clear that the German Government has not yet assumed a definite attitude on any of these questions and that the foregoing represents merely the tentative conception of members of the Foreign Office.
- Prince Otto Christian von Bismarck, Deputy Head of the Political Department of the German Foreign Office.↩