The Man Who Fooled Hitler

by JOSEPH WECHSBERG

1

BLIND respect for a uniform, any kind of uniform, is a typical German national trait. But during the Nazi regime there was at least one man who turned the tables on the Nazis and used a uniform to make fun of the Gestapo, the Nazi Party, and the Wehrmacht. His name is Elfried Schmidt, and he is a 31-year-old streetcar conductor in Vienna, Austria. When I was in Vienna recently I heard of Schmidt’s incredible experience and called at the modest, cold-water flat where he lives with his wife and three children.

A thin, sad-looking man with a boyish face and gentle eyes, Schmidt speaks in a cautious voice, as if he were forever afraid of people, lie has an ineradicable air of what he is — a streetcar conductor — and he knows it. Yet twelve years ago this mild and humble Austrian perpetrated a truly fantastic hoax. Using Hitler’s own technique — the bigger the lie, the better its chance of being believed — he succeeded in making his victims so ridiculous that when he was finally caught, the authorities’ only concern was to hush the story up.

The story begins in 1938 in a village some twenty miles from Vienna that shall be called Rampersdorf. His uncle, Professor Hinner, a noted botanist, was the parish priest of Rampersdorf. Elfried Schmidt and his mother lived at the church house. It was a few months after the Anschluss and the local Nazis were in an exuberant mood. Denunciation and persecution flourished. If you didn’t like a man’s looks or wanted his shop, all you had to do was denounce him to the Gestapo as an “enemy of the people.”The Gestapo took care of the rest. The Nazis hated the village priest, and they didn I like Schmidt’s mother, either, who was rumored to have helped refugees across the near-by Hungarian border.

Schmidt, himself an outspoken anti-Nazi, was nineteen years old, working on and off as a locksmith’s apprentice. There had been no money to send him to the Technical University in Vienna so that he could become an engineer, but he knew a lot more than the average locksmith apprentice. For years he had haunted the streetcar terminals in Vienna, studying cars, machines, tracks, switches. A skilled draftsman, he liked to invent things, and in the hall of his uncle’s house hung a large technical blueprint of an electric Diesel rail-car he had drawn. Elsa, the girl whom Schmidt hoped to marry some day, often stared at the blueprint and exclaimed, “What a pity, Elfried, that you didn’t become an engineer!”

“I guess it was Elsa’s remarks that started me off,” Schmidt said to me, looking thoughtfully out the window. “Her remarks and my uncle’s precarious position. There were rumors that the Nazis were going to send him to a concentration camp. He wouldn’t be the first priest to go. I used to sit up nights wondering how I could help him. All kinds of wild ideas occurred to me. It had to be something to make the Gestapo afraid of me. But what? I couldn’t very well tell them that I had been received by Hitler. Or could I? The more I thought of the crazy scheme, the better I liked it. Suppose I had made an important invention which had come to the ears of important Nazis? Why, I might even be made an engineer — not an ordinary engineer, but a sort of National Socialist engineer who had been decorated by Hitler in person.

The next day Schmidt went to Vienna, carrying with him the blueprint of the Diesel rail-car. He returned a few days later with a brief case containing several rubber stamps and a number of rather astonishing letters. In the first letter, of which there was only the carbon, Schmidt asked the German State Railroad “to consider the enclosed technical drawing.”The second letter, from the German State Railroad, informed Schmidt that the drawing had been forwarded with a recommendation to the Transport Ministry in Berlin. The third letter, again from the State Railroad, announced that the blueprint had met with assent in Berlin. “Such gifted young people as you can be sponsored only by our National Socialist regime,” the letter said. A final letter from the German State Railroad informed Schmidt that a large factory had been ordered to produce his new Diesel rail-car, and offered Schmidt a job that would “correspond to your exceptional talents.”

“I wrote those letters in Vienna,” Schmidt told me. “In our Catholic Youth Organization we’d had correspondence with the Traffic Ministry and used a rubber stamp for the address, An das Reichsverkehrsministerium, Ahwickungstelle Osterreich. 1 cut off the words ’An das— to the’ and used the rest as letterhead. With this letterhead it wasn’t difficult to order rubber stamps of the State Railroad and of the Technical University. The Nazis were great believers in the ‘round stamp,’ containing the swastika and eagle, so I ordered one of these from a stamp maker who didn’t know me. Everything had to have an air of unchallengeable authenticity.”

Back home Schmidt marked his blueprint with several official stamps saying INCOMING, CONSIDERED, and APPROVED, added some illegible signatures, and put it back on the wall. That same afternoon he learned from a friend that two Gestapo men had arrived in the village and that his uncle might be arrested at any moment. Something had to be done right away. The blueprint and the few letters were not sufficient to impress the Gestapo.

Schmidt promptly sat down at his typewriter and wrote a letter in which the University of Berlin informed Elfried Schmidt that he had been awarded by the Führer the title Ingenieur Honoris Causa. Herr Engineer Schmidt was ordered to present himself on August 25 at 11 A.M. at the Reich Chancellory in Berlin to be received by the Führer.

“I showed the letter to my mother,” Schmidt said to me, “telling her I’d received it in Vienna. I didn’t dare look her in the eye, but she was too worried about my uncle to notice anything. Only my uncle, calm as ever, read the letter carefully and gave me a funny look. An hour later the whole village knew of the great honor that had been bestowed upon me. And the two Gestapo men never showed up.”

On August 24, Schmidt left for Berlin, where he spent a few days sight-seeing and writing postcards home about his visit with the Führer. He took a good look at the Chancellery, from the outside, and also bought a folder with a sketchy description of Hitler’s office. Back in Vienna, it occurred to him that he should have a diploma. So he bought a piece of cardboard decorated with a Virgin holding a laurel wreath, surrounded by naked little angels; beneath was printed, in large letters, HONORARY DIPLOMA. Schmidt wrote his name and new title on the diploma, added the round stamp with swastika and eagle, and scribbled several signatures.

Rampersdorf was in an uproar. People who had hardly known Schmidt went out of their way to greet him. Leading Nazis wanted to shake the hand that had touched the Führer’s. At a big party given by the Town Council, Schmidt was asked to describe his visit.

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

Schmidt shook his head as if even now it seemed hard to believe. “ I said, ‘The door was opened and I found myself face to face with our dearly beloved Führer,’I described how Hitler had come toward me, ‘smiling benevolently, like a father’; how he had listened to me, his arms folded across his chest, as I had seen in many photographs. I told how he had conferred on me the title of honorary engineer. When they asked me what Hitler looked like, face to face, I looked sort of bewitched and said, ‘I suppose he looks just the way you imagine. Just like Hitler.’ A few women started to cry and the men blew their noses. They looked at me with such stupid, wide-eyed admiration that I couldn’t help adding that the Führer had said to me, ‘My dear Schmidt, if you ever need anything, just get in touch with me.’ I also implied that Hitler had given me his secret telephone number.”

Schmidt shook his head again. “It sounds idiotic, but they swallowed every word of it.”

Two days later Schmidt met a classmate, Peter, who asked him how he had addressed the Fiihrer.

Schmidt shrugged. “I said, TIeil, Herr Reichskanzler.’ ”

“That’s funny,” said Peter. “My father once went to a big official reception, and all guests were instructed to say, ‘Heil, mein Führer.’ ”

“Maybe they didn’t instruct me because they knew I hadn’t been a Nazi before,” Schmidt said, trying to look unconcerned.

“Maybe,” said Peter, “but it’s strange. I must tell my father.”

2

SCHMIDT went home with wobbly knees. He had to do something quickly. One thing could help: a uniform. A resplendent, fantastic uniform that would convince everybody of his rank and position. The Nazis loved uniforms; they believed in uniforms. Schmidt went to Vienna and bought two shoulder straps corresponding to the rank of major in the German Army. While he was in the shop, a magnificent. silver fourragère for staff officers took his fancy. The clerk asked whether he had a military purchase permit. Schmidt replied, quite truthfully, that he needed the insignia “for a show.” He got the fourragère, and also a swastika arm band with silver edge, worn only by very high Party dignitaries. In another shop he purchased a cap with rich silver trimming.

Back home, he took out his dinner jacket, sewed the fourragère on the wrong (left) side, and put one of the major’s shoulder straps on his left shoulder.

“Why only one?" I asked.

“I didn’t want to look like a major,”Schmidt said. “I wanted to have a uniform such as no one else in Germany wore. Then no one could accuse me of impersonating an ollicer or an ofiicial. I liked myself so much when I looked in the mirror that I had to show off to Mother. I told her the uniform went with the diploma. Mother was overwhelmed and asked about the silver cord. Then I had an idea that could have been Hitler’s. I said, ‘Mother, this is the silver honor cord ol the Third Reich. My mother gave me a long, sad look and said nothing.”

Schmidt walked around just long enough to impress people, and departed for Vienna. At the railroad station a soldier st anding with his arm around a girl saw Schmidt, let go of the girl, snapped to attention, and gave Schmidt a smart salute. In Vienna he was respectfully saluted by three colonels and various stuff oflicers. He began to enjoy himself and became bolder.

Two days later he crossed Schwarzenbergplutz to speak to Dr. David Silber, a Jewish lawyer and friend of his uncle’s, just as two Gestapo men stopped the lawyer and asked for his papers. While Dr. Silber fumbled in his pockets, Schmidt approached and said arrogantly, “I am Engineer Schmidt, hearer of the silver lvonorary cord of the Third Reich awarded to me personally by the Fiihrer. This gentleman is my old friend Welfing. I vouch for him.”And before the Gestapo men had recovered from their surprise, Schmidt turned to Dr. Silber and said, “Let’s go, Joachim. The next time, don’t leave your papers at home.” Later, Schmidt arranged for the lawyer and his wife to go to Rampersdorf, where Schmidt’s mother got them across the Austro-Hungarian border.

A great many of Schmidt’s friends seemed to be in trouble and came to see him, having heard ot his exalted position. Schmidt did his best for them. He designed a special identity card according to which Engineer Honoris Causa E. Schmidt had been “awarded the silver honor cord by the Führer and Relchskanzler.” All subordinate organs of the Party were ordered by the Fiihrer to give Schmidt “all needed aid and assistance.” The card never failed him. When he heard that Herr Huber, a friend of his mother’s, had been sent to Dachau, he walked straight into the office ol the Nazi Kreisleiter of Vienna’s Tenth District, threw his card on the table, and glared at him.

“I assumed a harsh, superior air,” Schmidt continued his story, “and said I wanted to know about Huber—why had lie been sent to Dachau? The Kreisleiter replied meekly that Huber had been arrested for ‘antisocial’ behavior. I got very angry. ‘I happen to know that Huber was denounced by a personal enemy who wanted to get hold of his firm,’ I said. ‘The Fiihrer told me only last week that he doesn’t, approve of such action. Incidentally, I expect to see the Fiihrer in Berlin on Thursday or Friday. Euless this matter is straightened out within forty-eight hours, I will have to report you directly to the Fiihrer.’

“The Kreisleiter s face took on the color of rancid butter. He said he was v ery sorry, he hadn’t know n all the facts. I said, ‘I want lluber to report to my apartment within forty-eight hours. And I walked out.

“Well, it’s hard to believe, but it worked. A few days later Huber and his wife safely crossed into Hungary. In all, I sent some forty people to my mother.”

3

ON November 23 1938, Schmidt was drafted for the Luftwaffe. He didn’t mind. The comedy was beginning to get on his nerves. In the army he would become an anonymous soldier; people would forget while he was away. As a recruit, Kimonier Schmidt got the rough treatment given privates all over the world and spent long hours shoveling snow.

A few days before Christmas, Schmidt was called into the guardroom, where His classmate Peter was waiting. Peter’s father bad become a Nazi ofiicial and Peter had come to warn Elfried. “Father thinks the whole business about the engineer’s title and the silver cord is a swindle, lie wants to check up on y ou in Berlin.

Gripped by cold fear, Schmidt somehow managed to seem unperturbed. “Thank you,” he said with sarcasm. “If that’s why you came all the way from Rampersdorf, you can go hack straight away. Heil Hitler!” He turned on bis heel and walked out.

He didn’t sleep that night, though. He had to do something or his whole family would be in trouble. Something was needed to conv ince the people back home, once and for all. If, for instance, a newspaper would publish bis story . . .

The next day. before going home on Christmas leave, Schmidt called up Das Kleine Volksblatt, a widely circulated newspaper, and said he could giv e them an interesting story . A reporter appeared forthwith and on December 22, 1938, the Volksblutt published a sensational article, UNUSUAL CAREER or A VIENNESE LOCKSMITH APPRENTICE. The story eontained details that were new even to Schmidt. The silver honor cord has been bestowed by the Führer “only upon three other persons from the East Mark”; Schmidt’s new Diesel rail-car was “twice or three times as hast as older models and was already being used in Hungary.

The article caused a terrific sensation in Rampersdorf. Even Peter’s father had no further doubts.

When Schmidt returned to his military unit at the end of the Christmas holiday, he was called into the battery office. There he found himself facing the battery commander and a dozen junior officers. The captain placed his hand on Schmidt’s shoulder.

“My dear Schmidt,” he said. “We are overwhelmed. Why didn’t you tell us before?”

Schmidt remained cautiously standing at attention. Maybe this was just a trap. The captain turned toward his officers. “Just as I told you, gentlemen—he’s too modest.”

Then Schmidt spied a copy of the Volksblatt on the captain’s desk. So that was it! “I — I wanted no favors, sir. I want to do my duty like any other soldier.”

The captain rubbed his hands in delight. “There you are, gentlemen. The true spirit of the good German soldier! Another proof of the fantastic foresight, of our Führer. who singled out this simple Kanonier from among millions.”

“Heil Hitler!" shouted Schmidt. Everybody clicked heels and saluted.

“At east!" said the captain. “Kanonier Schmidt, what were your duties up to now?”

“I’ve been shoveling snow,” Schmidt said.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then the captain cleared his throat. “Well, that’s oyer now. Kanonier Schmidt, you are freed of all military duties. You’ll have a room for your special work. You may come and go as you please. And you will wear the silver honor cord over your uniform.” Schmidt thanked them loftily and marched out.

“I didn’t bother even to sleep in the barracks,” he said to me. “I stayed at our apartment in Vienna and arrived at the barracks after S A.M., like, a colonel. When I approached the gate, wearing my silver cord, the sentry would calf out the guard of honor, which was done only for the garrison commander and all general officers.”

A few weeks later Schmidt was transferred to the Luftgaukommando XVII and assigned to the office of Colonel-General Eduard von Löhr. The general, greeting him like a dear old friend, said he had a special job for him. The German secret service had got hold of certain drawings of foreign aircraft engines. General Löhr wanted Schmidt to study the drawings and point out “parts of specific interest.”

“I was frightened to death,” Schmidt said to me. “I told the general I knew nothing of aircraft engines, being a rail specialist, but he genially patted my back and introduced me to the colonel in charge of Secret Projects. Then came another blow. The general said a man of my abilities couldn’t run around as a private; he was going to make me an officer. Now, promotions to officers were handled by Berlin, and if Gbring’s Air Ministry started to investigate, the bubble would blow up. I tried to play modest but the general said he had already written a memorandum to the authorities. It was this memorandum that later caused mv downfall.

“For a while I was a big man at Taiftgankommando headquarters,” Schmidt went on. “I had an elegant office with a sergeant as orderly. I set up a model railroad in this office, and the general, ihe colonel in charge of Secret Projects, and other high officers came to play with it. After a while I realized that I couldn’t go around much longer in my private’s uniform with the silver fourragère. If was asking for trouble. So I bought, some black cloth which was reserved exclusively for the SS and explained my wishes to the regimental tailor. The jacket should bo like a diplomat’s gala tunic. On the lapels I had embroidered a self-designed emblem with the initials of the Technical University. The silver fourragère would remain on the left side although the tailor said he’d never heard of anybody wearing it there. I ‘improved’ the swastika arm band, wore gala infantry trousers and an Air Force cap. No one except Göring could have designed a more beautiful uniform.

“I was quite frightened when I first faced the general in my operetta costume,” Schmidt continued, with a chuckle. “But the poor idiot was fascinated and said I could have his private eightcylinder Mercedes whenever I needed it. I took the car and drove straight out to Rampersdorf. You should have seen the faces of the people as they stared at the car with the general-staff license {date. When my mot her saw me, I could stand it no longer. I told her everything. She cried but I assured her that no one would ever dare harm her or my uncle.”

4

THE merry life of Kanonier Schmidt came to an end on the morning of February 16, 1939. He had arrived at his office earlier than usual, with somehow a strong foreboding of disaster. At 11 A.M., when he was about to leave, a sergeant asked him to wait. “The general wants to talk to you. You’re not supposed to leave.”

Presently Schmidt was called into the general’s conference room. Behind a long table sat the general, looking flustered, and several high-ranking officers wearing the red facings of military procurators of the Luftwaffe Court. “Tell us how you got that title of engineer,”the general said gruffly.

Schmidt was now convinced they didn’t know much. “I’m not used to such treatment,” he said arrogantly. “Maybe I’d better telephone the Fiihrer. As von know, he gave me his private phone number.”

“You talked with the Fiihrer?”

“Certainly!”

“That’s not true! The procurators have checked up on you. You are under arrest. We know you are a spy.”

“A spy?” Schmidt said, flabbergasted.

“You’d better confess! But we’ll find out soon enough.”

Schmidt was taken to the military prison in Floridsdorf, where he was welcomed enthusiastically— his jailers thought he had really pulled a fast one on the big brass. Schmidt didn t share their relish. His first reaction had been relief: after seven long months of playing comedy and confiding in no one, he could relax. But now he was frantic. The penalty for espionage was death. Poor Schmidt was in a fearful dilemma. He couldn’t tell them the truth — that he had staged his foolhardy masquerade to save his mother and uncle from the Gestapo. That would have been an admission of his family’s anti-Nazi leanings, which was just as bad as spying.

“I decided that the only way to save my neck was to convince the procurators that a silly love affair was behind the whole business. But how? They wouldn’t believe me if I made a confession. Then one night my jailer told me that the prisoner in the next cell was going to be released in the morning.I wrote a passionate letter to Elsa: ‘I did it all for you, my beloved. Remember when you said what a pity it was that I wasn’t an engineer? And now they say I am a spy. How can I make them believe that all I wanted was to impress you, dearly beloved?'”

The letter was smuggled to the prisoner in the next cell, who was to surrender it to the sentry at the gate, saying that he’d been asked to transmit it to Elsa, but didn’t want to become an accomplice to this crime.

Everything worked fine. The letter promptly landed on the desk of the chief procurator.

Schmidt is convinced now that the procurator believed it implicitly. One week later, on May 25, Schmidt appeared before the Luftwaffe Court. It was a strange trial. The judges frequently tittered. Even the chief procurator had trouble keeping a straight face as Schmidt told, with his most honest, dumbest face, how he had in vain tried to impress Elsa, whose father “thought she was too good for an ordinary locksmith apprentice.”So he had decided to become an engineer. The diploma was unrolled as exhibit A. The presiding judge burst into laughter.

The trial was over in two hours. The indictment of espionage had been dropped. Schmidt was found guilty of “forging an official diploma (four weeks of prison), of “unjustified use of an academic title" (four weeks), of “insolently exploiting the name of the Fiihrer and Iteichskanzler” (four months). In view of the defendant’s good conduct, three months of preliminary arrest would be deducted.

“I suppose they had orders from higher up to kill the affair quickly,”Schmidt said to me.

When he was released, he returned to the Luftwaffe and served throughout the war as an ordinary soldier. In 1945 he took a job as motorman with the Municipal Streetcar System in Vienna. His career as motorman was terminated on January 3, 1947, when the brakes of his car failed and it collided with another car, killing three people. Although Schmidt was cleared, he was busted to conductor, a job which bores him to tears.

Between jobs, Schmidt finds time to do some serious inventions. His Lenkdrehgestell (self-adjusting truck) for streetcars has received an Austrian patent and has been certified by a commission of Vienna’s Technical University as “having excellent running features.”Schmidt proudly showed me the certificate.

As Schmidt was finishing his story, his wife entered the room with the baby on her arm. “Elfried!” she said. “If we want to catch a little sunshine, we’d better go.”

Schmidt got up at once. “Yes, we’d better go,” he said, meekly. He pointed at a wedding picture on the wall which showed him wearing his fantasy uniform, with the silver fourragère. “We got married in 1940, a year after I got out of the Army prison,” he said. “I hated the very sight of this uniform but the Army forced me to wear it for my wedding so that the people in the village wouldn’t get suspicious. They didn’t know the truth then.”

“Anyway, Elsa did marry you, without an engineer’s title?” I said, half jokingly. Frau Schmidt gave me a vexed glance and walked out.

There was an uncomfortable pause. Schmidt cleared his throat. “My wife’s name is Helene,”he said. “I— I didn’t marry Elsa. Shall we go?”