The Road to Anschluss

Nazi Germany’s first conquest

The Anschluss (literally “joining” or “connection”), the annexation of Austria, was Hitler’s first conquest. On March 12, 1938, German troops crossed the border and secured the Führer’s country of birth. The Austrian military was ordered not to resist, and the convoys entering the country were greeted by cheering locals. (In fact, drivers were told to wear goggles so their eyes won’t get poked out by the flowers thrown at them.) All this happened despite Austria’s own far-right government, the Fatherland Front, being solidly against the union. This article is about the twisting path of politics that led to the Anschluss.

Origins of the Anschluss idea
The idea of the Anschluss actually predated the rise of the Nazis (Becoming Führer) by far. Since the Early Middle Ages, the German-speaking polities of Europe had conglomerated in the Holy Roman Empire (and the German Confederation after the Napoleonic Wars). The Empire was a sprawling but inefficient alliance with an elected emperor at the top who had no centralized standing army, no centralized state treasury, and a group of prince-electors vying to become his successor. The unification and streamlining of the German part of Europe became a burning issue by the mid-19th century, with two member states being the clear contenders: Protestant Prussia in the north, and Catholic Austria in the south. The unification happened in 1871 after a war between Prussia and Austria which the Prussians won, and another war against France, the process orchestrated by Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, the man the famous World War II battleship was named after. (Hunting the Bismarck) The newly-formed German Empire was led by Prussia, with Austria staying out of it altogether. The notion of the Anschluss, the eventual integration of Austria with the rest of Germany, was born.

German and Austro-Hungarian defeat in World War I gave the Anschluss a new impetus. Austria-Hungary was dissolved by the victorious Entente powers, and Austria lost additional economically important territories such as the Sudetenland. Many Austrians, especially in the left and center of the political spectrum, believed that the diminished country could no longer sustain itself economically, and looked to a unification with Germany as the solution. The victorious powers were intent on keeping the defeated countries weak, and forbade such unification in the peace treaties after the war, quickly cracking down after a few probing plebiscites. Germany and Austria were quick to point out the hypocrisy in protest: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination was given to all the peoples of Europe except the Germans, who apparently did not have the right to determine a unified future for themselves.
 
German motivation for the Anschluss
The Anschluss became an important goal for the Nazis after Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933. One of his ideological tenets was the concept of Heims In Reich, “back home to the Reich,” the notion that ethnic Germans living outside Germany should be brought into the fold either through immigration or territorial conquest.
 
The new-found Nazi enthusiasm for unification also had a more practical side. In 1936, the Third Reich launched the Four-Year Plan under the oversight of Hermann Göring to make itself self-sustaining and prepare for the war. The plan, however, was rapidly falling behind schedule. Göring decided that annexing Austria was the solution. The country had significant iron and manganese reserves as well as other industrial resources, a large unemployed labor pool including numerous highly trained industrial workers (due to the Great Depression), and a financial reserve, including foreign currency, which was much larger than Germany’s own.

Austrian resistance
By the 1930s, however, most Austrians no longer wanted to unite with Germany. The exact numbers are unknown, but it’s been speculated that two-thirds of the population might have been against the idea. Between the late 1920s and 1933, the nation’s politics were dominated by the conservative Christian Social Party. On May 4, 1933, the Austrian parliamentary system ran into a crisis. During a hotly debated vote, all three presidents of the parliament resigned so they could cast their own votes. This left the parliament with no presidents, and the session could not be formally closed.

Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss declared that the parliament had “eliminated itself” and created a situation the constitution had no provisions for. He seized the chance to declare rule by decree at the head of his Fatherland Front, a right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist organization that followed an ideology often described as Austrofascism, based on Mussolini’s original, Italian fascist ideas. Dollfuss was also a personal friend of Mussolini, and the two countries had aligned goals for the time being. This was before Italy’s alliance with Germany, and Mussolini considered Austria to be an important buffer state between him and Hitler.
 
The Austrian Nazi Party, loyal to Hitler but disorganized and relatively small, embarked on a campaign of propaganda, violence and terrorist acts. Their goal was to make the Dollfuss’s new regime seem weak and incompetent, and to make the public more receptive to the idea of an Anschluss and the order it would bring.
 
In February 1934, Dollfuss tried to solidify his power by moving against his greatest political rival, the left-leaning Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (“SDAPÖ” in German). Like the Fatherland Front, the SDAPÖ had its own paramilitary force, which had been banned but was still operating. On February 12, members of the force opened fire on the police as the latter was trying to enter the Linz offices of the party to search for and seize weapons. The violence spiraled out of control and into other parts of the country. The 4-day Austrian Civil War saw 60,000 armed soldiers, policemen, gendarmes and right-wing militiamen fight 10-20,000 left-wing paramilitary troops and predictably ended with the banning of the SPADÖ.

The Austrian Nazi Party was banned after a fatal bomb attack. The next month, Hitler decided it was time to seize Austria. Acting on his secret orders, the remaining hiding Austrian Nazis and the ones who fled to Germany staged a coup attempt on July 25. 154 SS men disguised as Austrian police and soldiers entered the chancellery in Vienna and shot Dollfuss dead. Meanwhile, another group captured the national radio building and broadcast a message to call all Nazis into action.

The putsch was crushed in six days of fighting, and a German courier was captured carrying documents that proved a link to Germany. Mussolini, whose wife was entertaining Dollfuss’s family in Italy when the assassination occurred, stood by his Austrian allies and massed Italian troops along the Austrian border – this deterred Hitler from sending in the German army to take over the country amidst the chaos.

Dollfuss was succeeded by Kurt von Schuschnigg as the new chancellor. Schuschnigg followed his predecessor’s politics and used Austrofascist rhetorics to keep Austria, the “better German state,” independent of Germany while rounding up Nazis and Social Democrats and putting them in internment camps. He could, however, no longer count on Mussolini’s support after 1937, as Italy was pivoting towards an alliance with Hitler.

An Austrian gambit
In the late summer of 1937, Hitler decided to bring about a resolution and seize both Austria and Czechoslovakia to boost Germany’s armament efforts. After a period of intensifying violence caused by the Nazis, Hitler met Schuschnigg in Berchtesgaden, Germany, on February 12, 1938. Talking to the Austrian chancellor in the presence of several German generals invited for intimidation, the Führer made three demands: imprisoned Austrian Nazis had to be given amnesty, Austria’s foreign and military policies had to be coordinated with Germany’s, and, most importantly, Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart had to be put in charge of policing and security. A threatened and bow-beaten Schuschnigg agreed to the demands and put them in effect.

Schuschnigg, however, had one last, desperate move in mind to save Austria’s independence. On March 9, he announced a nation-wide referendum about Austria’s future to be held on March 13. After making concessions to his former political enemies, he received the support of the communists, the social democrats, the police and monarchist movements alongside his own nationalist Fatherland Front. He also set the voting age at 24, to include young adults, who were the most supportive of the Nazis.

Anschluss
This was no longer enough for Hitler, and he gave orders at 8:45 p.m. to launch the invasion the next day, on March 12. The invasion was poorly organized, but it didn’t matter, as the Austrian Army was ordered to stand down. The invading forces of the Blumenkrieg (“flower war”) encountered enthusiastic crowds performing Nazi salutes, waving Nazi flags and throwing flowers at the Germans. Hitler crossed the border near his birthplace of Braunau am Inn in the afternoon. The Germans were surprised by the friendly reception, as they expected the populace to be more opposed to the Anschluss. The warm welcome made Hitler change his mind: he originally planned to turn Austria into a satellite state, but he ended up incorporating it directly into the German Reich. France and Britain just stood by and watched the process, emboldening Hitler to future acts of territorial aggression.

The annexation was ratified by a sham referendum on April 10. There was no privacy while casting the votes, and all opposition was suppressed. Himmler and several SS officers flew to Vienna even before German troops crossed the border and arrested potential political figures who could oppose them. Nazi propaganda was everywhere, and around 360,000 people, 8% of Austria’s population, had their voting rights abrogated – mainly Jews, Roma and people on the political left. The voter turnout was 99.71%, and 99.73% of all votes were cast in favor of the Anschluss. Meanwhile, some Gestapo reports speculated that only one quarter to one third of the voters in Vienna were truly in support, and even fewer in the countryside. Nevertheless, Austria was finally firmly in the grasp of Nazi Germany, which would not relinquish it until the end of World War II.

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