Anschluss
The Anschluss, also known as the Anschluß Österreichs, was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938.
The idea of an Anschluss arose after the 1871 unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire. It gained support after the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1918. The new Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain and Treaty of Versailles forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" ; they also stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the Sudetenland. This left Austria without most of the territories it had ruled for centuries and amid economic crisis.
By the 1920s, the Anschluss proposal had strong support in both Austria and Germany, particularly to many Austrian citizens of the political left and center. One vehement supporter was prominent Social Democrat leader Otto Bauer, who served as Austria's Foreign Minister 21 November 1918 – 26 July 1919.
Support for unification with Germany came mainly from the belief that Austria, stripped of its imperial land, was not viable economically. Popular support for the unification faded with time, although it remained as a concept in the contemporary Austrian political discourse.
On 30 January 1933, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. From then on, desire for unification could be identified with the Nazi regime, for whom it was an integral part of the Nazi "Heim ins Reich" concept, which sought to incorporate as many Volksdeutsche as possible into a "Greater Germany".
Nazi Germany's agents cultivated pro-unification tendencies in Austria, and sought to undermine the Austrian government, which was controlled by the Fatherland Front, which opposed unification. During an attempted coup in July 1934, Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis. The defeat of the coup prompted many leading Austrian Nazis to go into exile in Germany, where they continued their efforts to unify the two countries.
On 5 November 1937, Hitler informed his military aides that he would annex Austria and Czechoslovakia to the German Reich. When Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg met Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938, he was presented an ultimatum and forced to appoint Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of the interior and security. On the eve of 9 March 1938, Schuschnigg announced that there would be a referendum to be held on 13 March to decide between a possible union with Germany or the maintenance of Austria's sovereignty. Schuschnigg expected to win a clear majority to face the Nazi challenge, but the Nazis refused and demanded the appointment of a new cabinet under Seyss-Inquart. Under the threat of military occupation, Schuschnigg resigned and Hitler had the German Army cross the border into Austria on 12 March, unopposed by the Austrian military. A plebiscite was held on 10 April, resulting in 99.7% approval.
Historical background
Before 1918
The idea of grouping all Germans into one nation-state had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 until the break-up of the German Confederation in 1866. Austria had wanted a Großdeutsche Lösung, whereby the German states would unite under the leadership of the Austrian House of Habsburg. This solution would have included all the German states, but Prussia would have had to accept a secondary role. This controversy, called dualism, dominated Prusso-Austrian diplomacy and the politics of the German states in the mid-nineteenth century.In 1866 the feud finally came to an end during the Austro-Prussian War in which the Prussians defeated the Austrians and thereby excluded the Austrian Empire and German Austrians from Germany. The Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck formed the North German Confederation, which included most of the remaining German states, aside from a few in the southwestern region of the German-inhabited lands, and further expanded the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. Bismarck used the Franco-Prussian War as a way to convince southwestern German states, including the Kingdom of Bavaria, to side with Prussia against the Second French Empire. Due to Prussia's quick victory, the debate was settled and in 1871 the "Kleindeutsch" German Empire based on the leadership of Bismarck and Prussia formed—this excluded Austria. Besides ensuring Prussian domination of a united Germany, the exclusion of Austria also ensured that Germany would have a substantial Protestant majority.
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Ausgleich, provided for a dual sovereignty, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, under Franz Joseph I. This diverse empire included various different ethnic groups including Hungarians, Slavic ethnic groups such as Bosniaks, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Rusyns, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, as well as Italians and Romanians ruled by a German minority. The empire caused tensions between the various ethnic groups. Many Austrian pan-Germans showed loyalty to Otto von Bismarck and only to Germany, wore symbols that were temporarily banned in Austrian schools and advocated the dissolution of the empire to allow Austria to rejoin Germany, as it had been during the German Confederation of 1815–1866. Although many Austrians supported pan-Germanism, many others still showed allegiance to the Habsburg monarchy and wished for Austria to remain an independent country.
Aftermath of World War I
wrote to the Federal Foreign Office on 14 October 1918 about the possibility of conducting an Anschluss with the German areas of Austria-Hungary as its dissolution removed the problem of the country's numerous ethnic groups. Secretary Wilhelm Solf opposed the proposal, stating that it "would provide the Entente with justification for demanding territorial compensations". During the Paris Peace Conference the French sought to forbid a union between Austria and Germany, with French Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephen Pichon stating that they "must see that Germany is not given an opportunity to rebuild her strength by utilizing the Austrian populations which remain outside of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Jugoslavia". A compromise was reached and Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles stated that "Germany acknowledges and will respect strictly the independence of Austria, within the frontiers which may be fixed in a Treaty between that State and the Principal Allied and Associated Powers; she agrees that this independence shall be inalienable, except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations."Elite and popular opinion in the rump Republic of German-Austria after 1918 largely favored some sort of union with Germany. An Austrian provisional national assembly drafted a provisional constitution that stated that "German Austria is a democratic republic" and "German Austria is a component of the German Republic". Later plebiscites in the Austrian border provinces of Tyrol and Salzburg yielded majorities of 98% and 99% in favor of a unification with the Weimar Republic. Further plebiscites were then forbidden. However, Erich Bielka noted that the plebiscites were marred by electoral fraud and voter manipulation, and therefore did not reflect what the general Austrian opinion was at that time:
In the aftermath of a prohibition of an Anschluss, Germans in both Austria and Germany pointed to a contradiction in the national self-determination principle because the treaties failed to grant self-determination to the ethnic Germans outside of the German Reich. Hugo Preuss, the drafter of the German Weimar Constitution, criticized efforts to prevent an Anschluss; he saw the prohibition as a contradiction of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination of peoples.
The constitutions of the Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic both included the political goal of unification, which parties widely supported. In the early 1930s, the Austrian government looked to a possible customs union with the German Republic in 1931. However, ultimately regional patriotism was stronger than pan-German sentiment. In the Austrian Empire, each Kronland had its own functional government and enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy from Vienna, with "each looking to their own capital" instead. According to Jody Manning, the idea of unification with Germany was not overwhelmingly popular among the Austrian population in 1919, which is one of the reasons why no nationwide referendum was held, even before it was forbidden by the Entente:
Poincarés third government attempted to prevent an Anschluss by incorporating Austria into a Danubian Confederation in 1927. German Minister of Foreign Affairs Gustav Stresemann opposed it, as he saw it as an attempt to re-form the Austro-Hungarian Empire and offered to form a customs union with Austria. Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, an Anschluss opponent, rejected the offer. In September 1929, Seipel was replaced by Johannes Schober, who pursued a pro-Germany policy and attempted to form a customs union. A political and economical crisis led to Schober losing power and Seipel returning to the government as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Negotiations were restarted after Otto Ender became chancellor and were finalized with German Foreign Affairs Minister Julius Curtius on 5 March 1931, before being approved by Germany on 18 March. France opposed the customs union, stating that it was in violation of Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Austria
When the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, rose to power in the Weimar Republic, the Austrian government withdrew from economic ties. Like Germany, Austria experienced the economic turbulence which was a result of the Great Depression, with a high unemployment rate, and unstable commerce and industry. During the 1920s it was a target for German investment capital. By 1937, rapid German rearmament increased Berlin's interest in annexing Austria, rich in raw materials and labour. It supplied Germany with magnesium and the products of the iron, textile and machine industries. It had gold and foreign currency reserves, many unemployed skilled workers, hundreds of idle factories, and large potential hydroelectric resources.Hitler, an Austrian German by birth, picked up his German nationalist ideas at a young age. Whilst infiltrating the German Workers' Party, Hitler became involved in a heated political argument with a visitor, a Professor Baumann, who proposed that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and found a new South German nation with Austria. In vehemently attacking the man's arguments he made an impression on the other party members with his oratorical skills and, according to Hitler, the "professor" left the hall acknowledging unequivocal defeat. Impressed with Hitler, Anton Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919, becoming the party's 55th member. After becoming leader of the DAP, Hitler addressed a crowd on 24 February 1920, and in an effort to appeal to wider parts of the German population, the DAP was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
As its first point, the 1920 National Socialist Program stated, "We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination. Hitler argued in a 1921 essay that the German Reich had a single task of, "incorporating the ten million German-Austrians in the Empire and dethroning the Habsburgs, the most miserable dynasty ever ruling." The Nazis aimed to re-unite all Germans who were either born in the Reich or living outside it in order to create an "all-German Reich". Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that he would create a union between his birth country Austria and Germany by any means possible.
The First Austrian Republic was dominated from the late 1920s by the Christian Social Party, whose economic policies were based on the papal encyclical Rerum novarum. The First Republic gradually disintegrated in 1933, when parliament was dissolved and power was centralized in the office of the chancellor, who was empowered to rule by decree. Rival parties, including the Austrian National Socialists, were banned, and government evolved into a corporatist, one-party government that combined the CS and the paramilitary Heimwehr. It controlled labor relations and the press.. The new regime emphasized the Catholic elements of Austria's national identity and staunchly opposed union with Nazi Germany.
Engelbert Dollfuss and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, turned to Benito Mussolini's Italy for inspiration and support. Mussolini supported the independence of Austria, largely due to his concern that Hitler would eventually press for the return of Italian territories which had once been ruled by Austria. The pro-Austrian policy of Italy was such that it was sometimes compared that while a century before Italy was Austria‘s puppet, now rump state Austria was Italy‘s, and Mussolini mobilised Italian troops sent to the Brenner Pass after the attempted coup that included the murder of Dollfuss in 1934. Afterwards Italy had formed a common front with Great Britain and France opposed to German rearmament in early 1935 in the context of German withdrawal from the International Disarmament Conference, the Stresa Front.
However, the Stresa Front collapsed after French foreign ministry signed a pact with the USSR in early 1935, and Britain reacted by signing a naval agreement with Germany. As such, when the Stresa Pact ministers’ attempt to appease Italy with part of Ethiopia after Mussolini‘s invasion in October 1935 was leaked to an indignant press and thereby retracted, Mussolini now needed support elsewhere in Ethiopia, and from Germany he had it readily. After receiving Hitler's personal assurance that Germany would not seek territorial concessions from Italy, Mussolini entered into a relationship with Berlin that began with the formation of the Berlin–Rome Axis in 1936 which was formalised into a military alliance in the Pact of Steel in 1939. By 1938 there was little Italian dismay at the annexation of Austria given her preoccupation in the Spanish Civil War and relative reconciliation with Germany, especially with pro-German foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano in office, whose appointment in 1936 is cited as the “death-knell for independent Austria”.