1938 annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany
The ' (, or ', lit. 'joining' or 'connection'), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 12 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany") 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 proposal had strong support in both Austria and Germany, particularly to many Austrian citizens of the political left and center. One vehement supporter was Otto Bauer, the prominent Social Democrat leader who served as Austria's Foreign Minister after the war. 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.
After 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, desire for unification could be identified with the Nazis, for whom it was an integral part of the Nazi "" ("back home to the realm") concept, which sought to incorporate as many (ethnic Germans outside Germany) 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 Austrofascist Fatherland Front, which opposed unification. During an attempted coup in 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.
In early 1938, under increasing pressure from pro-unification activists, Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg announced that there would be a referendum on a possible union with Germany versus maintaining Austria's sovereignty to be held on 13 March. Portraying this as defying the popular will in Austria and Germany, Hitler threatened an invasion and secretly pressured Schuschnigg to resign. A day before the planned referendum, the German Army crossed the border into Austria on 12 March, unopposed by the Austrian military. A plebiscite was held on 10 April, in which the ballot was not secret, and threats and coercion were employed to manipulate the vote, resulting in 99.7% approval for the Anschluss. While the population's true opinions are unknown, it has been estimated that about 70% of Austrians would have voted to preserve Austrian independence.
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" (greater Germany solution), whereby the German states would unite under the leadership of the Austrian House of Habsburg. This solution would have included all the German states (including the non-German regions of Austria), 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 (1870–1871) 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 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 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.
Erich Ludendorff 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" (Article 1) and "German Austria is a component of the German Republic" (Article 2). 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 notes that the plebiscites were marred by electoral fraud and voter manipulation, and therefore do not reflect what the general Austrian opinion was at that time:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;In addition to the massive propaganda campaign and not insignificant Reich German influence, 'Ja' ballot papers were pre-printed and provided at the polling stations and ballots were to be handed to an election official, undermining voter confidentiality. In addition, voter eligibility rules were liberally conceived and, therefore, open to abuse. Not only were those registered for the Nationalrat elections of October 1920 permitted to vote, but also those who registered themselves as living in Tyrol before April 1921, that is, less than a fortnight before going to the polls, as were all those Tyroleans who lived outside of the state; a train was even chartered from Bavaria to mitigate the financial burden of travelling 'home'.
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 (such as German Austrians and Sudeten 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:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Despite the initially compelling statistics, overall, it appears doubtful that a qualified majority of Austrians would have supported Anschluss with Germany. From the sparse evidence available, it appears that the pro-Anschluss movement could only hope for a slim majority in the event of a plebiscite, and not the 75 per cent necessary, and that the number of Anschluss supporters in 1919 was not more than 50 per cent of the population. Even Otto Bauer, leader of the Social Democratic party had to admit that both the bourgeoisie and the peasantry wanted 'an independent Austria fully capable of a national life of its own'. More telling is Bauer's admission that, because of the strength of the conservative opposition to Anschluss and the real possibility that the majority would have voted against the Anschluss, the Socialists did not dare to hold a referendum in 1919.
The French 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. However, Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, an Anschluss opponent, rejected the offer. Seipel was replaced in 1929 by Johannes Schober, who pursued a pro-Germany policy and attempted to form a customs union. However, a political 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 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 (DAP), 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 (NSDAP).
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