Playing for Time

Dapper, dynamic, overarchingly ambitious, Guido Schmidt was Austria’ s youngest and most controversial Foreign Minister. Corresponding secretly with Gö ring while betraying Axis secrets to Sir Robert Vansittart at the British Foreign Office, Schmidt ducked and weaved across a European landscape of increasing menace and treachery. Accompanying the Austrian Chancellor to Berchtesgaden in February 1938, Schmidt alone kept his nerve and negotiated an agreement with Ribbentrop which neutralised many of Hitler’ s bullying demands. When Hitler invaded Schmidt was one of the very few Austrian ministers to escape the clutches of the SS. In a curious gesture of protection, Gö ring sent a plane to Vienna to rescue him from the wrath of the Austrian Nazis. This enigmatic move by Hitler’ s greatest of paladins came back to haunt Schmidt after the war when he was put on trial for high treason. Acquitted in 1947 for “ lack of evidence” , Schmidt’ s reputation never recovered. Accessing invaluable family papers hitherto unseen by any historian, Richard Bassett has produced a fascinating account of an important personality who played a pivotal role in the European crisis in the run-up to the Second World.