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The six-wheeled car of the Dictator, having covered the 100 miles from Linz in about six hours, halted on the outskirts of Vienna at 4:25 p.m. and Herr Hitler shook hands for several minutes with everyone who approached. In Germany he uses the greeting "Heil Hitler!" like everyone else, but, tactful to sensitive Viennese, Herr Hitler greeted them again and again with "Grüss Gott!"
About 500,000 Viennese pack-jammed the streets, Imperial Schönbrunn Palace was a mass of swastika flags, and Hitler rode along standing at salute in his car, which never stopped, to the Imperial Hotel, from which all guests had been ejected. "Comrades, Der Führer is with us!" cried the official broadcaster and burst into loud sobs: "Comrades! I—am —un—able—to—continue—speaking— because—of—my—emotion."
All the stops of German emotion had now been pulled out as far as they would go. Sobbing, blubbering, thousands of Viennese alternately laughed, cried, cheered and were all broken up outside the Imperial Hotel as they clamored for Adolf Hitler. Said a Prussian officer of the Guard, surveying the Viennese through his icy monocle: "Such transports! Berlin itself has never gone as wild as this. Munich perhaps, ja Munich!"
Orator Hitler came out on a balcony, could not make himself heard, retired, emerged and again could not outroar his welcome. At the third trial the Modern Caesar was heard to cry: "German compatriots! Seventy-five million people in one nation [huzzahs, shrieks] are stirred to the depths of feeling which you are now demonstrating! [pandemonium]. You will all fulfill your oath! (Ja! Ja! Heil! Sieg Heil!) You will ALL fulfill your oath—all of you, from Königsberg to Hamburg and down to Vienna! You do so in deepest emotion. German compatriots— NO FORCE ON EARTH CAN SHAKE US!!"