Hitler told Goebbels in the late summer of 1937 that eventually Austria would have to be taken "by force". On 5 November 1937, Hitler called a meeting with the Foreign Minister
Konstantin von Neurath, the War Minister Field Marshal
Werner von Blomberg, the Army commander General
Werner von Fritsch, the
Kriegsmarine commander Admiral
Erich Raeder and the
Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring recorded in the
Hossbach Memorandum. At the conference, Hitler stated that economic problems were causing Germany to fall behind in the arms race with Britain and France, and that the only solution was to launch in the near-future a series of wars to seize Austria and
Czechoslovakia, whose economies would be plundered to give Germany the lead in the arms race. In early 1938, Hitler was seriously considering replacing Papen as ambassador to Austria with either Colonel
Hermann Kriebel, the German consul in
Shanghai, or
Albert Forster, the
Gauleiter of Danzig. Significantly, neither Kriebel nor Forster was a professional diplomat, with Kriebel being one of the leaders of the
1923 Munich Beerhall putsch who had been appointed consul in Shanghai to facilitate his work as an arms dealer in China, while Forster was a
Gauleiter who had proven he could get along with the Poles in his position in the
Free City of Danzig; both men were Nazis who had shown some diplomatic skill. On 25 January 1938, the Austrian police raided the Vienna headquarters of the Austrian Nazi Party, arresting
Gauleiter Leopold Tavs, the deputy to Captain
Josef Leopold, discovered a cache of arms and plans for a
putsch. Following increasing violence and demands from Hitler that Austria agree to a union, Schuschnigg met Hitler at
Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938, in an attempt to avoid the takeover of Austria. Hitler presented Schuschnigg with a set of demands including appointing Nazi sympathizers to positions of power in the government. The key appointment was that of
Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Minister of Public Security, with full, unlimited control of the police. In return Hitler would publicly reaffirm the treaty of 11 July 1936 and reaffirm his support for Austria's national sovereignty. Browbeaten and threatened by Hitler, Schuschnigg agreed to these demands and put them into effect. Seyss-Inquart was a long-time supporter of the Nazis who sought the union of all Germans in one state. Leopold argues he was a moderate who favoured an evolutionary approach to union. He opposed the violent tactics of the Austrian Nazis, cooperated with Catholic groups, and wanted to preserve a measure of Austrian identity within Nazi Germany. On 20 February, Hitler made a speech before the Reichstag which was broadcast live and which for the first time was relayed also by the
Austrian radio network. A key phrase in the speech which was aimed at the Germans living in Austria and Czechoslovakia was: "The German Reich is no longer willing to tolerate the suppression of ten million Germans across its borders."
Schuschnigg announces a referendum On 3 March 1938, Austrian Socialists offered to back Schuschnigg's government in exchange for political concessions, such as legalising socialist press, returning confiscated funds and "the lifting of the ban on the wearing of Social Democrat badges, show Social Democrat flags and standards and singing Social Democrat songs." Schuschnigg agreed to these demands and was supported by the united front of socialists and communists, as well as the Heimwehr, monarchist groups and the majority of the Austrian police. The Social Democrats also declared their readiness to support Schuschnigg in the event of a plebiscite under the conditions that immediately after such a plebiscite a definite negotiation be begun to include them in the Government. This support led Schuschnigg to announce the referendum. According to Peter R. Knaur, Germany believed that a defeat in a referendum was likely, and thus dispatched men to Vienna to prevent or modify the plebiscite. Knaur wrote: "The Nazis supposedly admitted that they only had the following of twenty percent, of the potential votes of the country." On 9 March 1938, in the face of rioting by the small, but virulent, Austrian Nazi Party and ever-expanding German demands on Austria, Chancellor
Kurt Schuschnigg called a
referendum (plebiscite) on the issue, to be held on 13 March. Infuriated, on 11 March, Adolf Hitler threatened invasion of Austria, and demanded Chancellor von Schuschnigg's resignation and the appointment of the Nazi
Arthur Seyss-Inquart as his replacement. Hitler's plan was for Seyss-Inquart to call immediately for German troops to rush to Austria's aid, restoring order and giving the invasion an air of legitimacy. In the face of this threat, Schuschnigg informed Seyss-Inquart that the plebiscite would be cancelled. To secure a large majority in the referendum, Schuschnigg dismantled the one-party state. He agreed to legalize the
Social Democrats and their trade unions in return for their support in the referendum. He also set the minimum voting age at 24 to exclude younger voters because the Nazi movement was most popular among the young. In contrast, Hitler had lowered the voting age for German elections held under Nazi rule, largely to compensate for the removal of
Jews and other ethnic minorities from the German electorate following enactment of the
Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The plan went awry when it became apparent that Hitler would not stand by while Austria declared its independence by public vote. Hitler declared that the referendum would be subject to major fraud and that Germany would never accept it. In addition, the German ministry of propaganda issued press reports that riots had broken out in Austria and that large parts of the Austrian population were calling for German troops to restore order. Schuschnigg immediately responded that reports of riots were false. and Hitler with Himmler and Heydrich to the right in Vienna, March 1938|alt= Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg on 11 March, demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian Nazis or face an invasion. The ultimatum was set to expire at noon, but was extended by two hours. Without waiting for an answer, Hitler had already signed the order to send troops into Austria at one o'clock. Nevertheless, the German Führer underestimated his opposition. As journalist
Edgar Ansel Mowrer, reporting from Paris for
CBS News, observed: "There is no one in all France who does not believe that Hitler invaded Austria not to hold a genuine plebiscite, but to prevent the plebiscite planned by Schuschnigg from demonstrating to the entire world just how little hold National Socialism really had on that tiny country." Schuschnigg desperately sought support for Austrian independence in the hours following the ultimatum. Realizing that neither France nor Britain was willing to offer assistance, Schuschnigg resigned on the evening of 11 March, but President
Wilhelm Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. At 8:45 pm, Hitler, tired of waiting, ordered the invasion to commence at dawn on 12 March regardless. Around 10 pm, a forged telegram was sent in Seyss-Inquart's name asking for German troops, since he was not yet Chancellor and was unable to do so himself. Seyss-Inquart was not installed as Chancellor until after midnight, when Miklas resigned himself to the inevitable. Seyss-Inquart was appointed chancellor after midnight on 12 March. It is said that after listening to
Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, Hitler cried: "How can anyone say that Austria is not German! Is there anything more German than our old pure Austrianness?"
German troops march into Austria , Vienna, 15 March 1938. On the morning of 12 March 1938, the
8th Army of the German
Wehrmacht crossed the border into Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags, and flowers. The "invasion" without shots fired was therefore dubbed the Blumenkrieg ("Flower War"). Some contemporary observers doubted the authenticity of this ecstatic welcome:
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, an anti-Nazi German conservative, recorded in his journal that For the
Wehrmacht, the invasion was the first big test of its machinery. Although the invading forces were badly organized and coordination among the units was poor, it mattered little because the Austrian government had ordered the Austrian
Bundesheer not to resist. That afternoon, Hitler, riding in a car, crossed the border at his birthplace,
Braunau am Inn, with a 4,000 man bodyguard. The enthusiasm displayed toward Hitler and the Germans surprised both Nazis and non-Nazis, as most people had believed that a majority of Austrians opposed
Anschluss. Many Germans from both Austria and Germany welcomed the
Anschluss as they saw it as completing the complex and long overdue unification of all Germans into one state. On 13 March Seyss-Inquart announced the abrogation of
Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which prohibited the unification of Austria and Germany, and approved the replacement of the
Austrian states with
Reichsgaue. The seizure of Austria demonstrated once again Hitler's aggressive territorial ambitions, and, once again, the failure of the British and the French to take action against him for violating the Versailles Treaty. Their lack of will emboldened him toward further aggression. Hitler's journey through Austria became a triumphal tour that climaxed in
Vienna on 15 March 1938, when around 200,000 cheering German Austrians gathered around the
Heldenplatz (Square of Heroes) to hear Hitler say that "The oldest eastern province of the German people shall be, from this point on, the newest bastion of the German Reich" followed by his "greatest accomplishment" (completing the annexing of Austria to form a Greater German Reich) by saying "As leader and chancellor of the German nation and Reich I announce to German history now the entry of my homeland into the German Reich." Hitler later commented: "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say: even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier (into Austria) there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators." Hitler said as a personal note to the
Anschluss: "I, myself, as Führer and Chancellor, will be happy to walk on the soil of the country that is my home as a free German citizen." Hitler's popularity reached an unprecedented peak after he fulfilled the
Anschluss because he had completed the long-awaited idea of a Greater Germany.
Bismarck had not chosen to include Austria in his 1871
unification of Germany, and there was genuine support from Germans in both Austria and Germany for an
Anschluss.
Popularity of the Anschluss Hitler's forces suppressed all opposition. Before the first German soldier crossed the border,
Heinrich Himmler and a few
Schutzstaffel (SS) officers landed in Vienna to arrest prominent representatives of the First Republic, such as
Richard Schmitz,
Leopold Figl,
Friedrich Hillegeist, and
Franz Olah. During the few weeks between the
Anschluss and the plebiscite, authorities rounded up Social Democrats, Communists, other potential political dissenters, and
Austrian Jews, and imprisoned them or sent them to
concentration camps. Within a few days of 12 March, 70,000 people had been arrested. The disused northwest railway station in Vienna was converted into a makeshift concentration camp. American historian Evan Burr Bukey warned that the plebiscite result needs to be taken with "great caution". The plebiscite was subject to large-scale Nazi propaganda and to the abrogation of the voting rights of around 360,000 people (8% of the eligible voting population), mainly political enemies such as former members of left-wing parties and Austrian citizens of Jewish or Romani origin. American historian Evan Bukey argues that there was a genuine German nationalist feeling in Austria amongst at least a part of the population, and those holding antisemitic sentiments were more than ready to "fulfill their duty" in the "Greater German Reich". Bukey also states that since the
Social Democratic Party of Austria leader
Karl Renner and the highest representative of the Roman Catholic church in Austria Cardinal
Theodor Innitzer both endorsed the
Anschluss, approximately two-thirds of Austrians might have voted for it. Similary, Austrian historian Gerhard Botz claimed that the Nazis did not falsify the results of the referendum and assumed that the "yes"-votes were in the range of 90 to 99 percent. In addition to the takeover of power that had already taken place and the intimidation of the population through terror, Botz contends that Cardinal Innitzer's and Karl Renner's endorsements opened the National Socialists inroads to the Catholic-conservative and socialist camps, which together comprised two-thirds of the population. Moreover, Botz argues that unemployed Austrians supported Anschluss because they benefited from the German unemployment insurance program, which offered them positions left vacant the expulsion of Austrian Jews; he also notes that the National Socialist propaganda emphasized that unemployment was all but eliminated in the Germany and appealed to nationalist sentiments while building up an internal enemy through anti-Semitism. On the contrary, Julie Thorpe notes that endorsements of people such as Renner "do not stand on their own as evidence for broad pan-German sympathies amongst Austria’s working population". British historian
Donny Gluckstein notes that Austrian socialists reacted with "disgust" to Renner's endorsement of Anschluss, provoking a split in the
SPÖ. Austrian left circles vehemently opposed Anschluss, and Renner's declaration prompted many to defect to Revolutionary Socialists under
Otto Bauer or the
KPÖ. The relevance of Innitzer's endorsement is also disputed – he was reportedly "despised" by Austrian workers, and the Anschluss sparked Catholic protests in Austria under the slogan "Our Führer is Christ" (rather than Hitler). Karina V. Korostelina also notes the oppression factor, writing that the Nazis "immediately began the execution of Jews as well as those Austrians who openly opposed the Anschluss." Political scientist
Eric Voegelin, who fled Austria shortly after Anschluss, wrote that "there was not much doubt that in 1938 a majority of Austrians did not favor a union with Germany." According to Hungarian historian
Oszkár Jászi, writing in 1938, the idea of
Anschluss was opposed amongst most political circles in Austria. Jászi noted that "the annihilation of the German labor movement showed to Austrian socialism what it could expect from an Anschluss under Nazi rule", while "Austrian Catholicism realized what its fate would be under a system which crushed the great Catholic Party of Germany,
the Centrum". It was also opposed by other groups, such as the Austrian Jews as well as "old Hapsburgist officers and officials and by a considerable part of Austrian capitalism". Most contemporary writers estimated that about two-thirds of Austrians wanted Austria to remain independent. According to Evan Burr Bukey, no more than one-third of Austrians ever fully supported Nazism during the existence of Nazi Germany. According to the estimates of the Austrian government, with the
voting age of 24, about 70% of Austrians would have voted to preserve the Austrian independence. Czech-American historian
Radomír Luža estimated that between 65% and 75% of Austrians supported the continuation of Austrian independence. About a quarter of the Austrian population was estimated to be supportive of the
NSDAP. The newly installed Nazis, within two days, transferred power to Germany, and
Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the
Anschluss. The Nazis held a controlled plebiscite () in the whole Reich within the following month, asking the people to ratify the
fait accompli, and claimed that 99.7561% of the votes cast in Austria were in favor. Although the
Allies were committed to upholding the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles and those of
St. Germain, which specifically prohibited the union of Austria and Germany, their reaction was only verbal and moderate. No military confrontation took place, and even the strongest voices against the annexation, particularly,
France, and Great Britain remained at peace. The loudest verbal protest was voiced by the government of
Mexico. Germany, which had a shortage of steel and a weak
balance of payments, gained iron ore mines in the
Erzberg and 748 million
RM in the reserves of Austria's central bank
Oesterreichische Nationalbank, more than twice its own cash. In the years that followed, some bank accounts were transferred from Austria to Germany as "enemy property accounts".
Persecution of the Jews The campaign against the Jews began immediately after the
Anschluss. They were driven through the streets of Vienna, their homes and shops were plundered. Jewish men and women were forced to wash away pro-independence slogans painted on the streets of Vienna ahead of the failed 13 March plebiscite. Jewish actresses from the
Theater in der Josefstadt were forced to clean toilets by the
SA. The process of
Aryanisation began, and Jews were driven out of public life within months. These events reached a climax in the
Kristallnacht pogrom of 9–10 November 1938. All synagogues and prayer houses in Vienna were destroyed, as well as in other Austrian cities such as Salzburg. The
Stadttempel was the sole survivor due to its location in a residential district which prevented it from being burned down. Most Jewish shops were plundered and closed. Over 6,000 Jews were arrested overnight, the majority deported to
Dachau concentration camp in the following days. The
Nuremberg Laws applied in Austria from May 1938, later reinforced with innumerable antisemitic decrees. Jews were gradually robbed of their freedoms, blocked from almost all professions, shut out of schools and universities, and forced to wear the
yellow badge from September 1941. The Nazis dissolved Jewish organisations and institutions, hoping to force Jews to emigrate. Their plans succeeded—by the end of 1941, 130,000 Jews had left Vienna, 30,000 of whom went to the United States. They left behind all of their property, but were forced to pay the
Reich Flight Tax, a tax on all émigrés from Nazi Germany; some received financial support from international aid organisations so that they could pay this tax. The majority of the Jews who had stayed in Vienna eventually became victims of the
Holocaust. Of the more than 65,000 Viennese Jews who were deported to concentration camps, fewer than 2,000 survived. ==Referendum==