Anschluss (1938): Nazi Germany's Annexation of Austria

The Anschluss was Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938. After weeks of pressure on Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, German troops crossed the border on 12 March without meeting resistance, and the next day Austria was declared part of the German Reich. The annexation, endorsed by a rigged plebiscite in April, was Hitler’s first seizure of a neighbouring state and was followed at once by the persecution of Austria’s Jews and political opponents.

Background: a state that “nobody wanted”

When Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918, the small German-speaking republic that remained was widely seen as too weak to survive on its own. Many Austrians across the political spectrum favoured union with Germany. The victorious Allies forbade it: the Treaty of Saint-Germain of 1919, like the Treaty of Versailles for Germany, required Austria to remain independent unless the League of Nations agreed otherwise.

Austria’s politics in the interwar years were bitterly divided between the Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Social Party. In 1933–34 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss suspended parliament and set up an authoritarian one-party regime, often called Austrofascism, which suppressed both the left and the Austrian Nazis.

Hitler, himself born in Austria, made union a central aim. In July 1934 Austrian Nazis attempted a coup and murdered Dollfuss in Vienna. The putsch failed, partly because Mussolini, then Austria’s protector, moved troops to the Brenner Pass. Dollfuss’s successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, tried to preserve independence while avoiding provoking Germany.

The pressure on Schuschnigg

By 1936 Mussolini had drawn closer to Hitler, and Austria lost its main foreign protector. In the July Agreement of 1936 Schuschnigg promised that Austria would act as a “German state” and allowed Nazi sympathisers into public life.

On 12 February 1938 Hitler summoned Schuschnigg to his mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden. Surrounded by generals and threatened with invasion, Schuschnigg agreed to appoint the pro-Nazi lawyer Arthur Seyss-Inquart as interior minister, in charge of the police, and to grant an amnesty to imprisoned Nazis. Austrian Nazis, emboldened by the deal, staged rallies and took over public buildings in several provincial towns, especially in Styria. Schuschnigg’s government steadily lost control of the streets.

Seeking to regain the initiative, Schuschnigg announced on 9 March a referendum for 13 March, asking voters to support a “free and German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria”. The voting age was set high to favour his supporters. Hitler saw the vote as a challenge he could not allow.

What happened: 11–13 March 1938

On 11 March Germany demanded that the referendum be cancelled, and Hermann Göring directed events by telephone from Berlin. Schuschnigg called off the vote and then resigned. That evening he broadcast to the nation, ending with the words “God protect Austria”, and announced that the army would not resist.

President Wilhelm Miklas refused for several hours to appoint Seyss-Inquart as chancellor but gave way shortly before midnight. Göring had meanwhile arranged for a telegram, supposedly from the Austrian government, asking for German troops to restore order; it was drafted in Berlin. Before dawn on 12 March, units of the German 8th Army crossed the border.

Heinrich Himmler flew to Vienna in the early hours of 12 March, and the SS and Gestapo began arresting opponents from lists prepared in advance.

There was no fighting. In many towns crowds greeted the troops with flowers and swastika flags, although the advance was marred by breakdowns of German vehicles on the roads. Hitler crossed at his birthplace, Braunau am Inn, and was received enthusiastically in Linz. Seyss-Inquart’s government passed a law on 13 March declaring Austria a province of the German Reich. On 15 March Hitler addressed a vast crowd on the Heldenplatz in Vienna.

Key people

• Adolf Hitler – German dictator, who decided on full annexation only once he saw the welcome in Linz.
• Kurt Schuschnigg – Austrian chancellor, who was imprisoned until 1945.
• Arthur Seyss-Inquart – Austrian Nazi who became chancellor and then Reich governor; later executed after the Nuremberg trials.
• Hermann Göring – drove the crisis from Berlin with ultimatums by telephone.
• Wilhelm Miklas – Austrian president, who refused to sign the annexation law and resigned.

Persecution and the plebiscite

Persecution began on the first night. In Vienna, Jews were forced to scrub pro-Schuschnigg slogans off pavements while crowds jeered, and Jewish shops and homes were looted. Thousands of opponents were arrested, and on 1 April 1938 the first transport of about 150 prominent Austrians was sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

Anti-Jewish laws that had taken five years to introduce in Germany were applied in Austria within months. In August 1938 Adolf Eichmann set up the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, which forced Jews to leave while stripping them of their property. Austria’s Jews also suffered heavily in the Kristallnacht pogrom that November.

On 10 April 1938 a plebiscite was held across Germany and Austria to approve the union. Jews and many political opponents were excluded, and the ballot paper printed a large circle for “yes” and a small one for “no”. The official result in Austria was 99.73 per cent in favour.

International reaction

Britain and France protested but took no action. Mussolini accepted the annexation, for which Hitler expressed lasting gratitude. Few governments were prepared to fight over a union that many Austrians seemed to welcome. The League of Nations took no action, and Mexico was the only country to lodge a formal protest with it.

Inside the Reich, Austria lost its name. It was first called the Ostmark and later divided into districts known as Reichsgaue, run from Berlin. Austrian soldiers were absorbed into the Wehrmacht, and Austria’s gold and foreign currency reserves helped Germany’s strained rearmament effort. Within months, Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia, which was now surrounded on three sides, leading to the Munich Agreement in September.

Legacy: victim or accomplice?

In the Moscow Declaration of 1943 the Allies described Austria as the first free country to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression, while also noting its responsibility for taking part in the war. After 1945 Austria emphasised the first part, and for decades the “victim theory” allowed the country to downplay the role of the many Austrians who served in the Nazi state and the SS.

That view was challenged in the 1980s, especially during the controversy over the wartime record of President Kurt Waldheim. In 1991 Chancellor Franz Vranitzky acknowledged that Austrians shared responsibility for Nazi crimes. Since then Austria has expanded Holocaust education and set up funds to compensate surviving victims. Austria regained full independence with the Austrian State Treaty of 1955.

Timeline

• 1919, 10 September: Treaty of Saint-Germain forbids union of Austria with Germany.
• 1934, 25 July: Austrian Nazis murder Chancellor Dollfuss in a failed coup.
• 1938, 12 February: Hitler pressures Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden.
• 1938, 9 March: Schuschnigg announces a referendum on independence.
• 1938, 11 March: Schuschnigg cancels the vote and resigns; Seyss-Inquart is appointed chancellor near midnight.
• 1938, 12 March: German troops cross into Austria unopposed.
• 1938, 13 March: Law declares Austria part of the German Reich.
• 1938, 15 March: Hitler speaks on the Heldenplatz in Vienna.
• 1938, 10 April: Plebiscite records 99.73% approval in Austria.

Why it matters

The Anschluss showed that Hitler could redraw Europe’s borders by threat and that Britain and France would not stop him. It brought Nazi terror to a new population overnight and opened the way to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and, ultimately, to war.