The banners were still up.
Crimson and black, hanging over the morning mist across Vienna's government buildings.
The speech at Heldenplatz had ended not with an explosion but with absorption of sentiment, of territory and of expectations.
But it was not a climax.
It was a gateway.
And in Berlin, the machine had already begun to move.
There were no generals in the first meetings only clerks.
No tanks in the first trains only ledgers and suitcases filled with stamps, forms, and blank papers with Reich headers.
Occupation was not to be declared.
It was to be filed.
At the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin, a map of Austria had been pinned up beside that of Bavaria.
A second overlay had already been drawn logistics, not borders.
Roads connecting Salzburg to Munich,
Innsbruck to Garmisch, Graz to Passau.
No dotted lines, no walls.
Just one flowing body.
Wilhelm Frick oversaw the task.
He spoke little in public, but behind his desk he operated with merciless order.
