When did the Nazis occupy Austria?
Anschluss
Anschluss ( "joining") refers to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The word's German spelling, until the German orthography reform of 1996, was Anschluß and it was also known as the Anschluss Österreichs (, ).
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
In 1955 Austrians managed to solicit the Allies to exclude the provisions of Austrian responsibility for Hitlerite crimes from the Austrian State Treaty. Earlier Israel has renounced its claims to Austria. After the sovereignty had been recovered and the occupational troops been pulled out, the Austrian conservative rhetoric reached its climax. At last Austrians could openly express their attitude to the results of WWII: according to the "victim theory" of that period (1955-1962) the invasion of the victory states in 1945 was not a liberation, but a hostile occupation that superseded Hitlerite one. From this point of view Austria had been a "victim" not only of Hitler, but also of the victorious occupiers. The first of federal politicians to express this opinion in public was Figl during the celebrations of signing the Austrian State Treaty.
1950 Austrian general strikes
After the conclusion of World War II the territory of Austria, annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, was once again separated from Germany and placed under administration of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 1949 they agreed on two-thirds of the draft of the Austrian State Treaty but its very future was vague, as had been shown by the partition of Germany. By summer of 1950 lack of progress with the Treaty and the communist scare of the Korean War had a grave impact on the Austrians' morale.
Anschluss
They regard the annexation imposed on Austria by Germany on 15 March 1938, as null and void. They consider themselves as in no way bound by any changes effected in Austria since that date. They declare that they wish to see re-established a free and independent Austria and thereby to open the way for the Austrian people themselves, as well as those neighbouring States which will be faced with similar problems, to find that political and economic security which is the only basis for lasting peace.
Antisemitism in contemporary Austria
Evidence for the presence of Jewish communities in the geographical area today covered by Austria can be traced back to the 12th century. In 1848 Jews were granted civil rights and the right to establish an autonomous religious community, but full citizenship rights were given only in 1867. In an atmosphere of economic, religious and social freedom, the Jewish population grew from 6,000 in 1860 to almost 185,000 in 1938. In March 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and thousands of Austrians and Austrian Jews who opposed Nazi rule were sent to concentration camps. Of the 65,000 Viennese Jews deported to concentration camps, only about 2,000 survived, while around 800 survived World War II in hiding.
Antisemitism did not cease to exist in the aftermath of World War II and continued to be part of Austrian political life and culture with its strongest hold in the political parties and the media. Bernd Marin, an Austrian sociologist, has characterized antisemitism in Austria after 1945 as an ‘antisemitism without Jews’, since Jews constituted only .1 percent of the Austrian population. Antisemitism was stronger in those areas where Jews no longer lived and where previously practically no Jews had lived, and among people who neither have had nor have any personal contact with Jews. Since post-war prejudice against Jews has been publicly forbidden and tabooed, antisemitism was actually 'antisemitism without antisemites', but different expressions to it were to be found in the Austrian polities. During the 80', the taboo against open expressions of explicitly antisemitic beliefs has remained, but the means of circumventing it linguistically have extended its boundaries in such a way that the taboo itself appears to have lost some of its significance. Anti-Jewish prejudices which had remained hidden began to surface and were increasingly found in public settings. Thus, verbal antisemitism was rarely expressed directly, but rather used coded expressions, which reflected one of the country's major characteristics - ambivalence and ambiguity toward its past.
Vice-Chancellor of Austria
Austria annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 (see Austria under National Socialism for details). Independence restored in 1945.
Austrians
On October 21, the German members of the Austrian parliament, elected in 1911, met in Vienna to found the Provisional National Assembly of German Austria ("Provisorische Nationalversammlung für Deutschösterreich"). On October 30, 1918 they installed the first German Austrian government, leaving the question "monarchy or republic" open. (German nationalists and social democrats favoured the republic, the Christian Socialists wanted to keep the monarchy.) This government in the first days of November took over the duties of the last imperial-royal government in a peaceful way. Initially the new state adopted the name "German Austria", reflecting the republic being the German part of the old Austria and showing the popular desire to unite with the new German republic. On November 12, 1918, the provisional national assembly voted for the republic and for unification with Germany with a large majority.
Hedda Bolgar
When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Bolgar fled Vienna.
Austria under National Socialism
In February 1938 Franz von Papen, the German ambassador in Vienna arranged a meeting between Hitler and Schuschnigg at Obersalzberg in Gaden in Bavaria. Hitler threatened repeatedly to invade Austria and forced Schuschnigg to implement a range of measures favourable to Austrian Nazism. The Agreement of Gaden guaranteed the Austrian Nazi Party political freedom and assisted Arthur Seyß-Inquart in becoming Home Secretary (Innenminister). Schuschnigg endeavoured to maintain Austrian national integrity despite steadily increasing German influence. On 9 March 1938 he announced that he wanted to hold a consultative referendum on the independence of Austria on the following Sunday. Hitler responded by mobilizing the 8th Army for the planned invasion. Edmund Glaise-Horstenau who was at the time in Berlin brought Hitler's ultimatum from there and Göring reinforced it with a telephone message to Schuschnigg. The German government demanded the postponement or abandonment of the referendum. Schuschnigg conceded on the afternoon of 11 March. Then Hitler demanded his resignation which happened on the same evening.
Anschluss
When the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, rose to power in the Weimar Republic, the Austrian government withdrew from economic ties. Austria shared the economic turbulence 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.
11th SS-Standarte
By 1936, the SS had been declared illegal in Austria, and the 11th SS-Standarte went completely underground, although still participated in several covert actions against the government of Austria. When Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in 1938, the Standarte "came out in the open" and became the largest regiment command of the SS in Austria, under the authority of the SS-Oberabschnitt Donau.
Klosterneuburg
After the Austrian defeat in the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz, the town was occupied by Napoleonic troops until 1809. A winemaker's town during the 19th century, Klosterneuburg developed to a recreational and residential area of Austrian officials working in the nearby capital. During the "Anschluss" of Austria to Nazi Germany from 1938, Klosterneuburg was incorporated as the 26th district of "Greater Vienna", which was reversed with the establishment of Wien-Umgebung District in 1954.
Austria
Parliamentary elections were held in Germany (including recently annexed Austria) on 10 April 1938. They were the final elections to the Reichstag during Nazi rule, and took the form of a single-question referendum asking whether voters approved of a single Nazi-party list for the 813-member Reichstag, as well as the recent annexation of Austria (the Anschluss). Jews and Gypsies were not allowed to vote. Turnout in the election was officially 99.5%, with 98.9% voting "yes". In the case of Austria, Adolf Hitler's native soil, 99.71% of an electorate of 4,484,475 officially went to the ballots, with a positive tally of 99.73%. Although most Austrians favoured the "Anschluss", in certain parts of Austria the German soldiers were not always welcomed with flowers and joy, especially in Vienna which had Austria's largest Jewish population. Nevertheless, despite the propaganda and the manipulation and rigging which surrounded the ballot box result, there was massive genuine support for Hitler for fulfilling the "Anschluss", since many Germans from both Austria and Germany saw it as completing the long overdue German unification of all Germans united into one-state.
Communist Party of Austria
The KPÖ also took an independent stance from the mainstream in its views about nationhood and an Austrian identity separate from Germany, with leading communist intellectual Alfred Klahr writing that the view that the Austrian people were a part of Germany was theoretically unfounded. In contrast, many Austrian Social Democrats regarded the affiliation to the German nation as natural and even desirable. Echoing the thoughts of Klahr, the KPÖ expressed its firm belief in an independent Austria when the country was annexed to Nazi Germany in March 1938. In their historic call "An das österreichische Volk" (), the party denounced Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship and called on all people to fight together for an independent Austria.
Anschluss
Austria remained part of Germany until the end of World War II. A provisional Austrian government declared the "Anschluss" "null und nichtig" (null and void) on 27 April 1945. Henceforth, Austria was recognized as a separate country, although it remained divided into occupation zones and controlled by the Allied Commission until 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty restored its sovereignty.
German nationalism in Austria
The idea of an "Anschluss" (union between Austria and Germany to form a Greater Germany), was one of the principle ideas of the Austrian branch of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party. Nazism can be seen as descended from the radical branches of the pan-Germanist movement. In 1933, the Nazis and the Greater German People's Party formed a joint working-group, and eventually merged. During the period while the Nazi Party and its symbols were banned in Austria, from 1933 to 1938, Austrian Nazis resumed the earlier pan-Germanist tradition of wearing a blue cornflower in their buttonhole.
Austria
Karl Renner and Adolf Schärf (Socialist Party of Austria [Social Democrats and Revolutionary Socialists]), Leopold Kunschak (Austria's People's Party [former Christian Social People's Party]), and Johann Koplenig (Communist Party of Austria) declared Austria's secession from the Third Reich by the Declaration of Independence on 27 April 1945 and set up a provisional government in Vienna under state Chancellor Renner the same day, with the approval of the victorious Red Army and backed by Joseph Stalin. (The date is officially named the birthday of the second republic.) At the end of April, most of western and southern Austria were still under Nazi rule. On 1 May 1945, the federal constitution of 1929, which had been terminated by dictator Dollfuss on 1 May 1934, was declared valid again.
Axis occupation of Greece
The occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers (, "I Katochi", meaning "The Occupation") began in April 1941 after Nazi Germany invaded Greece to assist its ally, Fascist Italy, which had been at war with Allied Greece since October 1940. Following the conquest of Crete, all of Greece was occupied by June 1941. The occupation in the mainland lasted until Germany and its ally Bulgaria were forced to withdraw under Allied pressure in early October 1944. However, German garrisons remained in control of Crete and some other Aegean islands until after the end of World War II in Europe, surrendering these islands in May and June 1945.
Treaty of Versailles
On 7 March 1936, German troops entered and remilitarized the Rhineland. On 12 March 1938, following German pressure to the collapse the Austrian Government, German troops crossed into Austria and the following day Hitler announced the Anschluss: the annexation of Austria by Germany. The following year, on 23 March 1939, Germany annexed Memel from Lithuania.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
Fifteen-year age of conservative governments of Leopold Figl and Julius Raab passed under the sign of a full and uncompromising denial of guilt of Austria and the Austrians in Hitlerite crimes. In 1961 the power passed to the socialist government under Bruno Kreisky. Over the next several years (not later than 1962-1965), as the first post-war generation entered the social life, the state ideology softened. A process to return the Resistance heroes to the public conscience began. It was followed by a rival campaign of ultra-rightists with an opposite spirit. A political dialogue inside the firmly consolidated, inflexible ruling elite still was not possible: protesting sentiments manifested in cultural and scientific spheres. In 1963 historians and anti-fascists founded the national archive of the Resistance, in 1964 the federal government approved the construction of the first memorial for the victims of concentration camps in Mauthausen. The society interpreted these cautious steps as a challenge for the dominating ultra-right views and resisted "the attempts to blacken the past". During the shooting of a musical film The Sound of Music, the plot of which unfolds just in times of the Anschluss and after, the authorities of Salzburg forbade the producers to decorate the streets of the town with Nazi symbols insisting that "there had never been Nazis in Salzburg". They retreated only after the producers threatened to use the true newsreels of the Nazi processions in Salzburg. The film had a worldwide success, but failed in Austria.
Jakov Lind
After the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Jews were immediately targeted by the new Nazi regime with anti-Semitic decrees designed to make their lives untenable and force them to leave Austria. The decrees included prohibition of using public transportation, of being employed, and of operating businesses. Jews were expelled from schools and universities, had their businesses "Aryanized", a euphemism for their theft and confiscation by the Nazi regime, and were harassed with washing street signs of the previous regime in front of cheering and violent mobs. Eventually they were forced out of their apartments and prevented from leaving the country by themselves.
Anschluss
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 ("Volksabstimmung") 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. Austrian citizens of Jewish or Gypsy origin were not allowed to vote.
List of Presidents of Austria
Austria annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 (see Austria under National Socialism for details). Independence restored in 1945.
History of Austria
As a result, Austria ceased to exist as an independent country. This annexation was enforced by military invasion but large parts of the Austrian population were in favour of the Nazi regime, and many Austrians participated in its crimes. The Jews, Communists, Socialist and hostile politicians were sent to concentration camps, murdered or forced into exile.
Austria under National Socialism
From the start of 1934 there was a new wave of Nazi terrorist attacks in Austria. This time government institutions were targeted far more than individuals. In the first half of 1934, 17 people were killed and 171 injured. On 25 July the Nazis attempted a coup under the leadership of the Austrian SS. About 150 SS personnel forced their way into the Chancellor's office in Vienna. Dollfuß was shot and died a few hours later from his wounds. Another group occupied the building of the Austrian National Radio and forced a statement that the Government of Dollfuß had fallen and Anton Rintelen was the new head of government. Anton Rintelen belonged to the Christian Social Party but is suspected of Nazi sympathy. This false report was intended to start a Nazi uprising throughout the country but it was only partially successful.
Austria–Germany relations
In late April 1945, the Allied Powers entered Austria and removed the country from the Third German Reich. A provisional Austrian government, led by Karl Renner, declared the country's regained independence. Austria's democratic constitution was reinstated and elections in late 1945 paved the way for a new federal government. Leopold Figl became the first Chancellor of Austria. Germany, however, was occupied by the Allied Powers and divided into four governing zones: British, French, American and the Soviet. Military occupation of Germany ended in 1949 when such zones were organised into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Ministry of Defense (Austria)
Previous to 1918, there was a Ministry of War for the whole of Austria-Hungary and a Ministry of Defense solely for the Austrian half of the empire. The defence ministry took on various names during the First Austrian Republic of 1918 to 1938, and was abolished during Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria from 1938 to 1945. During the Allied occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1956, the defence agenda was in the remit of the "Office for National Defense", a section in the Federal Chancellery.
Anschluss
As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, reporting from Paris for CBS, 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 Schusschnigg from demonstrating to the entire world just how little hold National Socialism really had on that tiny country." Clearly it was Hitler, and not Schuschnigg, who was terrified by the potential results of the scheduled plebiscite, and that was the best indication of where Austrians' loyalty lay.
Kirchenkampf
After initially offering support to the Anschluss, Austria's Innitzer became a critic of the Nazis and was subject to violent intimidation from them. With power secured in Austria, the Nazis repeated their persecution of the church and in October, a Nazi mob ransacked Innitzer's residence, after he had denounced Nazi persecution of the church. "L'Osservatore Romano" reported on 15 October that Hitler Youth and the SA had gathered at Innitzer's cathedral during a service Catholic Youth and started "counter-shouts and whistlings: 'Down with Innitzer! Our faith is Germany'". The mob later gathered at the cardinal's residence and the following day stoned the building, broke in and ransacked it – bashing a secretary unconscious, and storming another house of the cathedral curia and throwing its curate out the window. The Nazis The American National Catholic Welfare Conference wrote that Pope Pius, "again protested against the violence of the Nazis, in language recalling Nero and Judas the Betrayer, comparing Hitler with Julian the Apostate."
Nazi rule over the Danube River
Nazi rule over the Danube River was brought about by force of arms, through annexation of Austria, invasion of Yugoslavia and of the Soviet Union and treaties with the Kingdom of Romania and Hungary, but a legal cover was provided through moves that resulted in a new international order on the river beginning in 1940 and ending in 1945.
Austrian State Treaty
The Austrian State Treaty (German: ) or Austrian Independence Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on 15 May 1955 in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union) and the Austrian government. It officially came into force on 27 July 1955.
Reichsgau Oberdonau
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the "Gaue" increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany. In 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria, with the latter being sub-divided into Reichsgaue.
Arthur Lieberasch
The Nazis took power in January 1933 and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Non-Nazis with any sort of record of political activism, especially if it involved the Communist Party or the trades union movement, were at particular risk from the authorities. During the first half of 1933 many were arrested or fled abroad. Following an instruction from the party leadership, Arthur Liberasch crossed the frontier into Switzerland and settled in Schaffhausen, then as now on the edge of a small Swiss enclave surrounded on three sides, for reasons of topography, by German territory. He lived in Schaffhausen under conditions of serious impoverishment. For as long as possible he nevertheless supported illegal antifascist work across the frontier in Germany, working on the "Schaffhausener Arbeiterzeitung" (newspaper) and organising the transfer of printed material into Germany.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
Textbooks presented the Anschluss as an act of German aggression against innocent "victim" and methodically shifted blame to other countries, who gave Austria up during the hard times. The first textbooks blamed the western countries for appeasement of Hitler, in 1960s the USSR temporarily became the main villain whom "Austrians" fought against in a "just" war. Until 1970s the existence of Austrian movement for the Anschluss as well as Austrian Nazism was denied: according to the textbooks the society and its powers were a solid mass, every member of which equally was a "victim" of foreign forces. Authors of 1955 reading book held the Anschluss back: Austria was literally presented as a victim of German "military" aggression, just like Poland or France. Books of 1950s and 1960s mentioned the Holocaust rarely and in a reduced form of a minor episode. The topics of a traditional Austrian anti-Semitism and its role in the events of 1938-1945 were never discussed; from the authors' point of view the prosecution of Jews had been an exclusive consequence of Hitler's personal animosity. In 1960s a typical cliché of Austrian school programmes was an indispensable comparison of the Holocaust and Hiroshima or sometimes Katyn massacre. But the description of the catastrophes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki took more place than the description of the events inside Austria itself. School impressed the idea that the Allies have not been any better than Axis powers, and Nazi crimes have not been something extreme.
Reichsgau Niederdonau
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the "Gaue" increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany. In 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria, with the latter being sub-divided into Reichsgaue.
Odilo Globočnik
The "Anschluss" saw the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in early 1938. Globočnik was rewarded for his diligence, being appointed Gauleiter of Vienna on 24 May 1938 by Adolf Hitler.
German nationalism in Austria
After this, tensions between the Nazis and Austrofascists worsened, culminating in the July Putsch of 1934, when Nazis attempted to overthrow the government. Whilst they managed to assassinate chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the putsch was quickly crushed by the police, army, and Heimwehren. In the aftermath of the putsch, conflict between the Social Democrats and the ruling Austrofascists led to the Austrian Civil War later in the year. After their defeat, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed entirely. This, in tandem with a continued a campaign of violence and propaganda by the Nazis, destabilised the Austrofascist regime, and rallied many to support the idea of "Anschluss".
Allied-occupied Austria
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. Vienna was similarly subdivided but the central district was collectively administered by the Allied Control Council.
Germany
In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states (most notably excluding Switzerland and Austria) unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American, British, and French occupation zones, and East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone. Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990.
Nikola Nedev
In November 1936, Germany, Italy and Japan signed a treaty agreeing to a common foreign policy. On 11 March 1938 Germany occupied Austria. On 30 September 1939 Germany occupied Sudeteland,and six months later she invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1939 Italy occupied Albania. On 23 August the Ribentrop-Molotov Treaty was signed. Poland was divided between Germany and the USSR, and on the 1st of September WWII began. Bulgarian society was divided in two parts; those supporting Great Britain, France and USA, and those supporting Germany, Italy and Japan. The cabinet of Georgi Kyoseivanov remained neutral until 15 September. On 31 July 1938 Bulgaria signed the Balkan pact – its neighbors gave up the military restrictions of the Neuilly Treaty. Tsar Boris III disbanded Parliament.
German nationalism in Austria
The Nazi campaign was ultimately successful, and Hitler would go on to annex Austria in 1938 with the "Anschluss". Hitler's journey through his home country Austria became a triumphal tour that reached its climax 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." After the "Anschluss", Hitler remarked as a personal note: "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."
Religion in Nazi Germany
In 1933, 5 years prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was approximately 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic, while the Jewish population was less than 1%. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as "gottgläubig" (lit. "believing in God", often described as predominately creationist and deistic), and 1.5% as "atheist".
Austria–Germany relations
On 1 September 1920, the Weimar Republic and Austria concluded an economic agreement. Both countries, however, faced severe economic hardships, hyperinflation, mass unemployment and constant riots after the war. After Austrian-born Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he demanded the right to "Anschluss" (union) between Austria and Germany. This was initially blocked by the Italian Fascist government under Benito Mussolini, who cooperated with his Austrian counterparts Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, fearing retrospective territorial demands from Hitler on Südtirol (South Tyrol) (lost to Italy in 1919). Mussolini successfully forced Hitler to renounce all claims to Austria on 11 July 1936.
Austrofascism
Austrofascism () was the authoritarian system installed in Austria with the May Constitution of 1934, which ceased with the annexation of the newly founded Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938. It was based on a ruling party, the Fatherland Front ("Vaterländische Front") and the Heimwehr (Home Guard) paramilitary militia. Leaders were Engelbert Dollfuss and, after Dollfuss's assassination, Kurt Schuschnigg, who were previously politicians of the Christian Social Party, which was quickly integrated into the new movement.
Allied-occupied Austria
On 9 July 1945 the Allies agreed on the borders of their occupation zones. Vorarlberg and North Tyrol were assigned to the French Zone; Salzburg and Upper Austria south of the Danube to the American Zone; East Tyrol, Carinthia and Styria to the British Zone; and Burgenland, Lower Austria, and the Mühlviertel area of Upper Austria, north of the Danube, to the Soviet Zone. The French and American zones bordered those countries' zones in Germany, and the Soviet zone bordered future Warsaw Pact states. Vienna was divided among all four Allies. The historical center of Vienna was declared an international zone, in which occupation forces changed every month. Movement of occupation troops ("zone swap") continued until the end of July.
Austrians
Historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and viewed themselves as such. Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which resulted in Prussia expelling Austria from the Confederation. Thus, when Germany was founded as a nation-state in 1871, Austria was not a part of it. In 1867, Austria was reformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria was reduced to a rump state and adopted and briefly used the name the Republic of German-Austria ("Republik Deutschösterreich") in an attempt for union with the Republic of Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was founded in 1919. The Third Reich annexed Austria with the "Anschluss" in 1938.
Austrian National Socialism
Austrian National Socialism was a Pan-German movement that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement took a concrete form on November 15, 1903 when the German Worker's Party (DAP) was established in Austria with its secretariat stationed in the town of Aussig (now Usti nad Labem in the Czech Republic). It was suppressed under the rule of Engelbert Dollfuss (1932–34), with its political organization, the DNSAP ("German National Socialist Workers' Party") banned in early 1933, but revived and made part of the German Nazi Party after the German annexation of Austria in 1938.
Minister of Foreign Affairs (Austria)
Austria annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 (see Austria under National Socialism for details). Independence restored in 1945.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
In 1986, the election of a former Wehrmacht intelligence officer, Kurt Waldheim, as a federal president put Austria on the verge of international isolation. Powerful outside pressure and an internal political discussion forced Austrians to reconsider their attitude to the past. Starting with the political administration of the 1990s and followed by most of the Austrian people by the mid-2000s, the nation admitted its collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi occupation and officially abandoned the "victim theory".
Constitution of Austria
In 1934, following years of increasingly violent political strife and gradual erosion of the rule of law, the ruling Christian Social Party, which by then had turned to full-scale Austrofascism, formally replaced the constitution by a new basic law defining Austria as an authoritarian corporate state. The Austrofascist constitution was in force until Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, ceasing to exist as a sovereign state. The Constitution of Austria was eventually reinstated on May 1, 1945, Austria having reestablished itself as an independent republic shortly before Nazi Germany's definitive collapse. The modifications enacted in 1929 were not then rescinded, and essentially remain in effect until this day, although the constitution has been heavily modified and amended since then.
Reichsgau Wien
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the "Gaue" increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany. In March 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria, with the latter being sub-divided into Reichsgaue.
Communist Party of Austria
The Communist Party of Austria (, KPÖ) is a communist party in Austria. Established in 1918 as the Communist Party of German-Austria (KPDÖ), it is one of the world's oldest Communist parties. The KPÖ was banned between 1933 and 1945 under both the Austrofascist regime and the Nazi German control of Austria after the 1938 "Anschluss". It played an important role in the Austrian resistance against the Nazis.
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex
The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich in 8 August 1938, to 5 May 1945, at the end of the Second World War. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time and by the summer of 1940 Mauthausen and its subcamps had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex.
Nazi Germany
In February 1938, Hitler emphasised to Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg the need for Germany to secure its frontiers. Schuschnigg scheduled a plebiscite regarding Austrian independence for 13 March, but Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg on 11 March demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian NSDAP or face an invasion. German troops entered Austria the next day, to be greeted with enthusiasm by the populace.
Secession
After being liberated by the Red Army and the U.S. Army, Austria seceded from Nazi Germany on April 27, 1945. This took place after seven years of Austria's being part of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich due to the Anschluss annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938, and could not have taken place without the Third Reich being defeated by the Allies.
History of the Jews in Austria
In 1939 the Nazis initiated the annihilation process of the Jewish population. The most notable persons of the community, about 6,000, were sent to the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. The main concentration camp in Austria was the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, which was located next to the city Linz. Many other Jews were sent to the concentration camps in Theresienstadt and Łódź and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the summer of 1939 hundreds of factories and Jewish stores were shut down by the government. In October 1941 Jews were forbidden to exit the boundaries of Austria. The total number of Jews who managed to exit Austria is about 28,000. Part of the Vienna Jews was sent to the transit camp Nisko in Nazi occupied Poland. In the end of the winter of 1941, an additional 4,500 Jews were sent from Vienna to different concentration and extermination camps on the territories of Nazi occupied Poland (mainly to Izbica Kujawska and to other ghettos in the Lublin area). In June 1942, a direct delivery exited the city to the Sobibor extermination camp, which had around one thousand Jews. In the fall of 1942, the Nazis sent more Jews to the ghettos to the towns of the cities they occupied in the Soviet Union: Riga, Kaunas, Vilnius and Minsk. Those Jews were murdered by Nazi soldiers mainly by gunshots.
Territorial evolution of Germany
The events of 12 March 1938, marked the culmination of historical cross-national pressures to unify the German populations of Austria and Germany under one nation. However, the 1938 Anschluss, regardless of its popularity, was enacted by Germany. Earlier, Hitler's Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party (Austrian Nazi Party) in its bid to seize power from Austria's Austrofascist leadership. Fully devoted to remaining independent but amidst growing pressures, the chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg, tried to hold a plebiscite.
History of Italy
Mussolini and Adolf Hitler first met in June 1934, as the issue of Austrian independence was in crisis. Mussolini sought to ensure that Nazi Germany would not become hegemonic in Europe. To do this, he opposed German plans to annex Austria after the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, and promised the Austrians military support if Germany were to interfere. Public appearances and propaganda constantly portrayed the closeness of Mussolini and Hitler and the similarities between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. While both ideologies had significant similarities, the two factions were suspicious of each other, and both leaders were in competition for world influence. In 1935 Mussolini decided to invade Ethiopia. The Second Italo-Abyssinian War resulted in the international isolation of Italy, as France and Britain quickly abandoned their trust of Mussolini. The only nation to back Italy's aggression was Nazi Germany. After being condemned by the League of Nations, Italy decided to leave the League on 11 December 1937 and Mussolini denounced the League as a mere "tottering temple". At this point, Mussolini had little choice but to join Hitler in international politics, thus he reluctantly abandoned its support of Austrian independence. Hitler proceeded with the "Anschluss", the annexation of Austria, in 1938. Mussolini later supported German claims on Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by Germans, at the Munich Conference. In 1938, under influence of Hitler, Mussolini supported the adoption of anti-semitic racial laws in Italy. After Germany annexed Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Mussolini decided to occupy Albania to avoid becoming second-rate member of the Axis. On 7 April 1939, Italy invaded Albania.
Allied-occupied Austria
The first Americans arrived in Vienna in the end of July 1945, when the Soviets were pressing Renner to surrender Austrian oil fields. Americans objected and blocked the deal but ultimately the Soviets assumed control over Austrian oil in their zone. The British arrived in September. The Allied Council of four military governors convened for its first meeting in Vienna on 12 September 1945. It refused to recognize Renner's claim of a national government but did not prevent him from extending influence into the Western zones. Renner appointed vocal anti-communist Karl Gruber as Foreign Minister and tried to reduce Communist influence. On 20 October 1945, Renner's reformed cabinet was recognized by the Western allies and received a go-ahead for the first legislative election.
The election held on 25 November 1945 was a blow for the Communist Party of Austria which received a bit more than 5% of the vote. The coalition of Christian Democrats (ÖVP) and Social Democrats (SPÖ), backed by 90% of the votes, assumed control over the cabinet and offered the position of Federal Chancellor to Christian Democrat Julius Raab. The Soviets vetoed Raab, due to his political role in the 1930s. Instead President Karl Renner, with the consent of parliament, appointed Leopold Figl, who was just barely acceptable to the Soviets. They responded with massive and coordinated expropriation of Austrian economic potential.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
On April 13, 1945 the Soviet troops captured Vienna. Two weeks later, on April 27, the Provisional Government, formed by the Soviet forces under Karl Renner, promulgated the "Proclamation of the Second Republic of Austria", which literally reprinted the text of the Moscow Declaration. Renner, who had previously been an active supporter of Anschluss, still considered it a historical necessity, and expressed his regret over the forced separation of Austria and Germany under the pressure of the Allies in his address to the nation. The majority of Austrians agreed with him. But the proclamation of April 27, which was addressed not so much to the nationals as to victory states, stated the opposite: events of 1938 were not the result of agreement between equal parties or expression of the popular will, but the result of "an uncovered external pressure, a terrorist plot by own national socialist minority, deception and blackmail during talks, and then – an open military occupation … The Adolf Hitler's Third Reich deprived people of Austria of their power and freedom to express their will, led them to a senseless and pointless massacre, which no one Austrian has not wanted to take part in."
Operation Otto
Operation Otto (also known as Plan Otto) was the code name for two independent plans by Nazi Germany. The 1938 plan was to occupy Austria; the second envisaged an attack on the Soviet Union and was developed from late July 1940.
The original Operation Otto was the plan to occupy Austria during the Anschluss in 1938. It was named after the crown prince of Austria-Hungary at the time, Otto von Habsburg.
Anschluss
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."
Austria
On 12 March 1938, Austria was annexed to the Third Reich and ceased to exist as an independent country. The Aryanisation of the wealth of Jewish Austrians started immediately in mid-March, with a so-called "wild" (i.e. extra-legal) phase, but was soon structured legally and bureaucratically to strip Jewish citizens of any assets they possessed. The Nazis renamed Austria in 1938 as "Ostmark" until 1942, when it was again renamed and called "Alpine and Danubian Gaue" (Alpen-und Donau-Reichsgaue).
Austria–Germany relations
Modern-day Austria and Germany were united until 1866: their predecessors were part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the unification of German states under Prussia in 1871, which excluded Austria. In 1918 after the end of World War I, Austria renamed itself the Republic of German-Austria in an attempt for union with Germany but this was forbidden by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). In 1938, the Third Reich, led by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, annexed Austria in the "Anschluss".
Robert Henry Best
Best gradually fell under Nazi influence following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, the Anschluss, on March 12, 1938.
History of Austria
His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the ban on pro-Hitlerite activities in Austria, but was forced to resign on 11 March 1938 following a demand by Adolf Hitler for power-sharing with pro-German circles. Following Schuschnigg's resignation, German troops occupied Austria with no resistance.
Austria under National Socialism
The Anti-Romanyism sentiment of Nazi Germany was implemented initially most harshly in newly annexed Austria when between 1938-1939 the Nazis arrested around 2,000 Gypsy men whom were sent to Dachau and 1,000 Gypsy women whom were sent to Ravensbrück. In late October 1939, all Austrian Gypsies were required to register themselves. Between 1938-39 the Nazis carried out racial examinations against the Gypsy population. Until 1941 the Nazis made a distinction between "pure Gypsies" and "Gypsy "Mischlinge"". However, Nazi racial research concluded that 90% of Gypsies were of mixed ancestry. Thus, after 1942, the Nazis discriminated against the Gypsies on the same level as the Jews with a variety of discrimination laws.
Julia Culp
In the meantime, the Nazis had come to power in Germany. After the German annexation (Anschluss) of Austria in 1938, Culp fled to the Netherlands, moving in with her sister Betsy in Amsterdam. When the Nazis invaded and occupied The Netherlands in 1940, Culp once again found herself in grave danger. Both she and her sister went into hiding and managed to survive the war. They returned to their flat on the Daniël Willinkplein (Victorieplein) in Amsterdam, where she remained until her death at age 90.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
Americans were those who conducted denazification firmly and consistently: the bigger part of 18 thousand prosecuted Nazis was convicted in their sector. During the whole period of the occupation Soviet powers arrested and prosecuted approximately 2000 Austrians, 1000 of them was taken off for trials and penal consequences to the USSR, about 200 were executed (for "espionage", as a rule). Much more Nazis were detained by the Soviet powers and then handed to Austrian authorities. In the beginning the Soviet powers stood for whitewashing of the "less tainted" Nazis with hope that they would have helped to reinforce the Austrian communist party resources. But after having been defeated at the November elections in 1945 the Soviet powers abandoned the idea to "export the revolution" to Austria and no more relied on the Austrian communist party. The British sector of occupation, Carinthia, was the one with the biggest part of Nazis within the population. During the elections of 1949 rehabilitated Nazis made 18,8 % of Carinthia electorate; 9.9% in Vienna and just 8.7% in Lower Austria and Burgenland. Tensions between special services, that prosecuted Hitlerites, and economic powers, that actively recruited Nazi managers, were never ending in the British sector. Mass lustration and after-war restoration appeared to be incompatible: there was not enough spotless people to fill all the urgent vacancies. One third of judges in "people's courts" were former Nazis; 80%, according to the Soviet information, formed the gendarmerie of the British sector. Austrian powers have regularly reported about "full denazification" of one or another department, but in reality the "cleaned out" Nazis just were transferred from one position to another. Parties, including Communists, have actively accepted Nazis under the patronage and protected them from the occupational powers and rival parties using the principle "do not touch ours or we will attack yours".
History of Austria
Following the First Republic, Austrofascism tried to keep Austria independent from the German Reich. Engelbert Dollfuss accepted that most Austrians were German and Austrian, but wanted Austria to remain independent from Germany. In 1938, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to the German Reich with the Anschluss, which was supported by a large majority of the Austrian people. Ten years after the Second World War Austria again became an independent republic as the Second Republic in 1955.
Decolonization
In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria and part of Czechoslovakia, and in 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR concluded a pact to occupy the countries that lie between them; the USSR occupied Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and Germany and the USSR split Poland in two. The occupation of Poland started World War II. Germany attacked the USSR in 1941. The USSR allied with the UK and USA, and emerged as one of the victors of the war, occupying most of central and eastern Europe.
Austria
His successor Kurt Schuschnigg acknowledged Austria as a "German state" and that Austrians were "better Germans" but wished for Austria to remain independent. He announced a referendum on 9 March 1938, to be held on 13 March, concerning Austria's independence from Germany. On 12 March 1938, Austrian Nazis took over government, while German troops occupied the country, which prevented Schuschnigg's referendum from taking place. On 13 March 1938, the "Anschluss" of Austria was officially declared. Two days later, Austrian-born Hitler announced what he called the "reunification" of his home country with the "rest of the German Reich" on Vienna's Heldenplatz. He established a plebiscite confirming the union with Germany in April 1938.
Austria
Historically Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and viewed themselves as such, although this national identity was challenged by Austrian nationalism in the decades after the end of World War I and even more so after World War II. Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until its ending in 1806 and had been part of the German Confederation, a loose association of 39 separate German-speaking countries, until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866, which resulted in the exclusion of Austria from the German Confederation and the creation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. In 1871, Germany was founded as a nation-state, Austria was not a part of it. After World War I and the breakup of the Austrian monarchy, politicians of the new republic declared its name to be "Deutschösterreich" (Republic of German-Austria) and that it was part of the German Republic. A unification of the two countries was forbidden by the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye as one of the conditions imposed by the victorious Allies of World War I upon the vanquished nation, to prevent the creation of a territorially extensive German state. After the events of World War II and Nazism, Austria as a country has made efforts to develop an Austrian national identity among its populace, and nowadays most do not consider themselves Germans. However, a minority of Austrians still consider themselves to be Germans and advocate for a "Greater Germany", arguing that the historic boundaries of the German people goes beyond the boundaries of modern-day countries, especially Austria and Germany.
1938 German parliamentary election and referendum
Parliamentary elections were held in Germany (including recently annexed Austria) on 10 April 1938. They were the final elections to the Reichstag during Nazi rule and took the form of a single-question referendum asking whether voters approved of a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi "guest" candidates for the 813-member Reichstag as well as the recent annexation of Austria (the Anschluss). Turnout in the election was officially 99.5% with 98.9% voting "yes". In Austria official figures claimed 99.73% voted in favour with a turnout of 99.71%.
Vienna
In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. Viennese Jews were looted, deported and murdered. Between 1938 (after the Anschluss) and the end of the Second World War, Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin as Austria ceased to exist and became a part of Nazi Germany. It was not until 1955 that Austria regained full sovereignty.
Carinthia
Originally an agrarian country, Carinthia made efforts to establish a touristic infrastructure such as the Grossglockner High Alpine Road and Klagenfurt Airport as well as the opening up of the Alps through the Austrian Alpine Club in the 1920s. It was, however, hard hit by the Great Depression around 1930, which pushed the political system in Austria more and more towards extremism. This phenomenon culminated at first in the years of Austrofascism and then in 1938 in the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany ("Anschluss"). At the same time the Nazi Party took power everywhere in Carinthia, which became, together with East Tyrol, a "Reichsgau", and Nazi leaders such as Franz Kutschera, Hubert Klausner, and Friedrich Rainer held the office of Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter.
History of Austria
Just before the end of the war, on 28 March 1945, American troops set foot on Austrian soil and the Soviet Union's Red Army crossed the eastern border two days later, taking Vienna on 13 April. American and British forces occupied the western and southern regions, preventing Soviet forces from completely overrunning and controlling the country.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
The idea of grouping all Germans into a nation-state country had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the ending of the Holy Roman Empire until the ending of the German Confederation. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire favored the "Großdeutsche Lösung" ("Greater German solution") idea of uniting all German-speaking peoples into one-state. On the other hand, the "Kleindeutsche Lösung" ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern German states and not include Austria; this proposal was largely advocated by the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Prussia. The Prussians defeated the Austrians in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 which ultimately excluded Austria and the Austrian Germans from Germany. Otto von Bismarck established the North German Confederation which sought to prevent the Austrian and Bavarian Catholics from forming any sort of force against the predominantly Protestant Prussian Germany. He used the Franco-Prussian War to convince other German states, including the Kingdom of Bavaria to fight against the Second French Empire. After Prussia's victory in the war, he swiftly unified Germany into a nation-state in 1871 and proclaimed the German Empire, without Austria.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
"Austria – the Nazis' first victim" was a political slogan first used at the Moscow Conference in 1943 which went on to become the ideological basis for Austria and the national self-consciousness of Austrians during the periods of the allied occupation of 1945-1955 and the sovereign state of the Second Austrian Republic (1955–1980s). According to the interpretation of this slogan by the founders of the Second Austrian Republic, the "Anschluss" in 1938 was an act of military aggression by the Third Reich. Austrian statehood had been interrupted and therefore the newly revived Austria of 1945 could not and should not be responsible in any way for the Nazis' crimes. The "victim theory" formed by 1949 () insisted that all the Austrians, including those who strongly supported Hitler, had been unwilling victims of a Nazi regime and therefore were not responsible for its crimes.
Austria–Poland relations
However, relationship between two nations disappeared at 1938, following the Anschluss which Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Until 1945, relationship between Austria and Poland mostly varied throughout the relationship between Germany and Poland, which would later go tense due to German invasion of Poland, thus sparked the World War II. Austria, a majority German-speaking country that share cultural commons with Germany, participated in the occupation of Poland and had committed many crimes against Polish people under the banner of Nazi Germany.
List of Chancellors of Austria
Austria annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 (see Austria under National Socialism for details). Independence restored in 1945.
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria
When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, Joseph Ferdinand was arrested along with more than 70,000 other Viennese. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned for three months. The conditions in the camp ruined his health permanently. Joseph Ferdinand was released and lived an isolated existence thereafter, under continual observation by the Gestapo. After the war, he settled in Vienna as a commoner. He died on 28 August 1942 in Vienna.
Anschluss
When Germany permitted residents of Austria to vote on March 5, 1933, three special trains, boats and trucks brought such masses to Passau that the SS staged a ceremonial welcome. Gunther wrote that by the end of 1933 Austrian public opinion about German annexation was at least 60% against. On 25 July 1934, Dollfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis in a failed coup. Afterwards, leading Austrian Nazis fled to Germany but they continued to push for unification from there. The remaining Austrian Nazis continued terrorist attacks against Austrian governmental institutions, causing a death toll of more than 800 between 1934 and 1938.
Reichsgau Kärnten
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the "Gaue" increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany. In 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria, with the latter being sub-divided into Reichsgaue.
Jaro Fürth
Fürth left Germany after the German National-Socialists seized power in 1933 and he moved to Vienna. After the 1938 "Anschluss", in which Germany occupied and annexed Austria, Fürth took leave of his acting and was deported by the Nazis to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. He lived to see the end of the war, but died several months later in Vienna at the age of 74.
Austria under National Socialism
Austria under National Socialism describes the period of Austrian history from 12 March 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany (the event is commonly known as "Anschluss") until the end of World War II in 1945.
Events preceding World War II in Europe
The first non-violent German conquest was Austria. After Italy had joined Germany in the Anti-Comintern Pact, quickly removing the main obstacle of an "Anschluss" of Austria, Germany announced the annexation on March 12, 1938, making it the province ""Gau Ostmark"" of what was now Greater Germany.
Germans
During the 1920s, the constitutions of both the First Austrian Republic and the Weimar Republic included the goal of union between the two countries which was supported by all different political parties. In the early 1930s, before the Nazis seized power, popularity for union between Austria and Germany remained strong and the Austrian government looked at the possibility of a customs union with Germany in 1931 but this was stopped by French opposition. In 1933, after Austrian-born Hitler came to power, support for an "Anschluss" grew. The Austrofascism era of Dollfuss/Schuschnigg between 1934-1938 accepted that Austrians were Germans and that Austria was a "German state" but was strongly opposed to Hitler's desire to annex Austria to the Third Reich and wished for Austria to remain independent.
Käthe Odwody
In March 1938 Fascist Austria was formally incorporated into an enlarged Nazi Germany following a largely unresisted military invasion from the north-west. That year Käthe Odwody returned to her job at the . It was also that year that the factory owners, the Mendl family, whom the authorities had identified as Jewish, escaped to Switzerland. The factory was expropriated by the authorities and "aryanised" but it remained a focus of trades union activism. At the start of 1939 a strike took place at the factory against the equalisation of payroll taxes (which before 1938 had been much higher in Germany than in Austria). There had been no compensating wage increase at the bakery to compensate. The Gestapo crushed the strike and intensified their surveillance and supervision activities at the plant.
Anschluss
On the morning of 12 March, 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. 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.
Ried im Innkreis
On 12 March 1938 - the day of the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany - units of the German Wehrmacht marched into Ried; Hitler passed through the city on his way to Linz. At the end of World War II on 3 May 1945, American troops marched in and the city became part of the American occupation area in occupied Austria. The American military administration built a camp for members of the German military taken as prisoners of war. Besides the prisoner of war camp, a Displaced persons camp was also built. This camp was led by a member of the UNRRA and had the number "701A".
Austria under National Socialism
On 15 March Hitler, who had spent the previous two days in his birth town of Braunau am Inn, made a triumphal entry into Vienna and gave a speech on Heldenplatz in front of tens of thousands of cheering people, in which he boasted of his "greatest accomplishment": ""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."" Ernst Kaltenbrunner from Upper Austria, sentenced to death in 1946 at the Nuremberg trials, was promoted SS-Brigadeführer and the leader of the SS-upper section Austria. Beginning on 12 March and during the subsequent weeks 72,000 people were arrested, primarily in Vienna, among them politicians of the First Republic, intellectuals and above all Jews. Jewish institutions were shuttered.
Sicherheitsdienst
During the autumn of 1937, Hitler secured Mussolini's support to annex Austria (Mussolini was originally apprehensive of the Nazi takeover of Austria) and informed his generals of his intentions to invade both Austria and Czechoslovakia. Getting Mussolini to approve political intrigue against Austria was a major accomplishment, as the Italian "Duce" had expressed great concern previously in the wake of an Austrian SS unit's attempt to stage a coup not more than three weeks after the Röhm affair, an episode that embarrassed the SS, enraged Hitler, and ended in the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on 25 July 1934. Nonetheless, to facilitate the incorporation of Austria into the greater Reich, the SD and Gestapo went to work arresting people immediately, using lists compiled by Heydrich. Heydrich's SD and Austrian SS members received financing from Berlin to harass Austrian Chancellor von Schuschnigg's government all throughout 1937. One section of the SD that was nothing more than a front for subversive activities against Austria ironically promoted "German-Austrian peace".
Throughout the events leading to the "Anschluß" and even after the Nazis marched into Austria on 12 March 1938, Heydrich – convinced that only his SD could pull off a peaceful union between the two German-speaking nations – organized demonstrations, conducted clandestine operations, ordered terror attacks, distributed propaganda materials, encouraged the intimidation of opponents, and had his SS and SD personnel round-up prominent anti-Nazis, most of whom ended up in Mauthausen concentration camp The coordinated efforts of the SiPo and Heydrich's SD during the first days of the "Anschluß" effectively eliminated all forms of possible political, military and economic resistance within Austria. Once the annexation became official, the Austrian police was immediately subordinated to Heydrich's SD, the SS and Gestapo. Machinations by the SD, the Gestapo, and the SS helped to bring Austria fully into Hitler's grasp and on 13 March 1938, he signed into law the union with Austria as tears streamed down his face.
Salzburg (state)
After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allies occupied the territory of Austria, being recognized as an independent territory under their rule. Salzburg was occupied by the United States.
History of Austria
Although the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain had explicitly forbidden the unification of Austria and Germany, the native Austrian Hitler was vastly striving to annex Austria during the late 1930s, which was fiercely resisted by the Austrian Schuschnigg dictatorship. When the conflict was escalating in early 1938, Chancellor Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite on the issue on 9 March, which was to take place on 13 March. On 12 March, "German troops entered Austria", who met celebrating crowds, in order to install Nazi puppet Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. With a Nazi administration already in place the country was now integrated into the Third Reich and renamed as "Ostmark" until 1942, when it was renamed again as "Alpen-und Donau-Reichsgaue" ("Alpine and Danubian Gaue"). A rigged referendum on 10 April was used to demonstrate the alleged approval of the annexation with a majority of 99.73% for the annexation.
Allied-occupied Austria
Subsequent to the "Anschluss", Austria had generally been recognized as constituent part of Nazi Germany. In 1943 however, the Allies agreed in the Declaration of Moscow that Austria would instead be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression, and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war.
Austria – the Nazis' first victim
The term "the first victim of Germany" as applied to Austria, first appeared in English-speaking journalism in 1938, before the beginning of the Anschluss. It appears in the Soviet literature in 1941, after German invasion to the USSR (Soviet authors called Spain "the first victim", implying combined aggression of Italy and Germany, while Austria was assigned a role of " first victim"). On February 18, 1942 Winston Churchill said in his speech to Austrian emigrants: "We can never forget here on this island that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression. The people of Britain will never desert the cause of the freedom of Austria from the Prussian yoke".
History of the Social Democratic Party of Austria
The crushing of the Social Democrats opposition by the conservatives however meant a further weakening of Austria, as infighting within the "Heimwehr" and the conservatives continued. Chancellor Dollfuß himself was assassinated 10 weeks after the end of the civil war by National socialists. Adolf Hitler was increasingly influencing political affairs in Austria. Nazi Germany was increasing the pressure by scheming and manipulating political events, as well as planning and carrying out terrorist attacks on infrastructure within Austria. The successor of Dollfuß, the conservative chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg tried a new round of talks with the outlawed social-democrats and even the monarchists, in order to stabilise the situation again. The Socialist favoured democracy, but were lukewarm to the concept of an independent Austria. The majority of conservatives wanted to keep an independent Austria, however in the form of an Austro-fascist regime. The extreme fighting and enmity between the two parties resulted in both the abolition of democracy and the end of Austria as an independent entity. On 12 March 1938, the weakened Austrian government under Chancellor Schuschnigg was forced to step down by Hitler under the threat of war, and Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany.
Upper Austria
In 1918, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the name "Oberösterreich" was used to describe the province of the new Austria. After Austria was annexed by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator who had been born in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn and raised in Upper Austria, Upper Austria became Reichsgau Oberdonau, although this also included the southern part of the Sudetenland, annexed from Czechoslovakia, and a small part of Styria. In 1945, Upper Austria was partitioned between the American zone to the south and the Soviet zone to the north.
Franz Olah
Olah found himself in trouble with the police during the 1930s. In 1938, Austria lost its independence and was annexed by Nazi Germany during the Anschluss, which brought the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Olah was arrested by the Nazis following the Anschluss and deported on the very first train of Austrian prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938. He was transferred as a prisoner to several German concentration camps throughout World War II. Olah was finally freed shortly before the end of World War II.
Austrians
The lands later called Cisleithania (except Galicia and Dalmatia) were members of the German Confederation since 1815 as they had been part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806. Until 1848, Austria and its chancellor Prince Metternich unanimously dominated the confederation. The developing sense of a German nationality had been accelerated massively as a consequence of the political turmoil and wars that engulfed Central Europe following the French Revolution and the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte. Although the years of peace after Napoleon's fall quickly saw German nationalism largely pushed out of the public political arena by reactionary absolutism, the Revolutions of 1848 established it as a significant political issue for a period of nearly hundred years.