Chapter 11: Anschluss: The Rape of Austria
And…we’re now up to week seven of our reading group of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich!
This recap is a bit late. My apologies! It was a topic I wanted to really delve into. So it took a little longer to write up.
On Sunday, I wrote a bit about William Shirer’s life as a foreign corespondent in the late to mid-1930s covering Nazi Germany. It really is remarkable what he got to see up close.
It occurred to me later in the day that I maybe should have written a little bit more about his politics and his personal reactions to Nazi Germany. Unlike a good number of Anglo-American journalists in those days, Shirer was horrified by the rise of Nazism and, as much as was possible in his ostensibly objective/neutral reporting, sought to clearly convey just what was happening in all its horror.
There’s maybe a post in me about Shirer and the question of objectivity in journalism about the Nazis. Please let me know if you’d find that interesting.
Today, I have a couple recap posts to share with you, but first the reading this week:
Week 7 Reading (Mar 2-8, 2025)
Chapter 13: Czechoslovakia Ceases to Exist
Chapter 14: The Turn of Poland
A reminder that the full reading list as well as reading options (online, audio, and dead tree) can all be found in this post. If you have missed any chapter recaps or other topical posts, the full list can be found at the bottom of the post.
And, if you’re struggling to keep up, don’t leave us! We’d still love for you to check in when you can as time permits.
Turning to the reading now, with this chapter we are entering the period of Nazi history where World War II comes into view.
We’ve moved from Adolf Hitler’s rise and seizure of power to the Nazification of German culture and the first steps in Nazi foreign policy. And now we are beginning to read about Hitler’s major moves that precipitate world war.
This chapter discusses the events in 1938, where Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in the Anschluss (‘joining’ or ‘connection’). Later that same year, which we’ll read about in the next few chapters, Germany split up Czechoslovakia and absorbed the Sudetenland with tacit French and British acquiescence.
Then a year later, in 1939, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a pact to keep the peace with each other and divide Poland, which then led to the actual outbreak of World War II. Unlike a year earlier with Czechoslovakia, in September 1939, France and Britain decided that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was one step too far and so they declared war.
We know the outlines of these events so well that they end up seeming practically inevitable. Of course, each event was anything but. What a great narrative history like Shirer’s book does is help us to see that the Anschluss of Austria or the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia were not foreordained. There were offramps that were not taken. And confusions or manipulations that furthered Hitler’s plans, which did not need to happen exactly as they did.
Shirer witnessed the Anschluss first hand. He had relocated from Berlin to Vienna in the 1937, because he had been hired by CBS after leaving UNS, as I explained yesterday.
In one of those occasional personal notes he sprinkles throughout the text written over two decades later, he admits just how much he missed as a journalist at the time:
Though we observed these happenings at first hand, it is amazing how little we really knew of how they came about. The plottings and maneuvers, the treachery, the fateful decisions and moments of indecision, and the dramatic encounters of the principal participants which shaped the course of events took place in secret beneath the surface, hidden from the prying eyes of foreign diplomats, journalists and spies, and thus for years remained largely unknown to all but a few who took part in them.
He goes on to explain why the documents and also the witness testimonies at the Nuremberg trials were needed to flesh out the full story. It is clear, though, that Shirer was driven by a deep need to piece together just what happened. He felt a deep urge to explain things to himself (and then to us), because of how surreal those events actually were, how strange and baffling they were to live through.
And he did live through them. He lets you know.
But it was perhaps helpful for a narrator of such a history as this to have been personally present at its main crises and turning points. Thus, it happened that I was in Vienna on the memorable night of March 11-12, 1938, when Austria ceased to exist.
Before we discuss the chapter, it’s worth writing a bit about German nationalism.
If you have to go back to the interwar period, you will find that national self-determination in Europe, spurred by Wilsonian idealism, was given a huge boost by the Treaty of Versailles. National self-determination seemed to apply for most ethnic groups in Europe, such that the Czechs and Slovaks (who are very, very closely related) got their own country, and the Poles got their own country. But the Germans, of course, ended up with two.
Two countries and a lot of enclaves scattered across Europe.
In the context of imperial breakup and resurgent nationalism, it was inevitable that German nationalism would become a major issue in European politics. Of course, it didn’t have to turn into Nazism. But before we get to how Hitler harnessed German nationalism to achieve his aims, we should grapple with a very simple question: If other national groups are allowed to be united in a single country, why shouldn’t the Germans?
To better understand the driving thrust of Hitler’s nationalist foreign policy which resulted in the Anschluss, we must understand this map.
The black shows all the population centers of ethnic Germans living outside the borders of Germany in 1937. You can see that the little splotches of black spread from the Rhine river valley in France all the way out to the Volga river valley in the Soviet Union. Ethnic Germans could be found just about everywhere—living in the former German territories of Alsace and Lorraine, in large parts of Switzerland, all of Austria, and then smatterings in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Poland (especially Danzig), Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the USSR.
(On a personal note, I will observe that my family came from the splotch furthest to the right in the Volga river valley, where they had lived since the time of Catherine the Great. Fortunately, they left in 1910 before World War I caused some—shall we say—Russo-German tensions. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t exist…)
Anyway, since the heyday of romantic nationalism in the 19th century, German nationalists had put forward the idea of a Grossdeutschland (Greater Germany), in which all Germans would be united. The Kleindeutschland idea, in which Austria was separated from Germany, triumphed in the 19th century, and later at the Versailles conference after World War I and yet again in the wake of World War II.
Which is why today—in addition to the German part of Switzerland—there are two German-speaking countries in Europe. This is generally thought to be a good thing, for balance of power in Europe. (François Mauriac once famously remarked, “I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.”)
Now, if you look at the map, you can see that the German population centers that stand out most on this map, though, are in Austria (7 million Germans) and the part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland (3 million Germans), both formerly parts of the Hapsburg empire. And it was those areas that Hitler chose to pursue in his mission to unite the Germans of Europe in one nation-state.
In February 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg was invited to Hitler’s Bavarian home at Berchtesgaden. He was entirely unprepared for what would happen.
Schuschnigg was an Austrian of old world manners, a product of imperial high culture. Shirer does an excellent job describing the clash of personalities between Hitler, a representative of the anti-aristocratic new Right, and Schuschnigg, the Jesuit-educated son of a prestigious Austrian officer.
At their meeting in Hitler’s home, Hitler pulled out all the stops. He recounted a very particular view of German history, where Austria always played spoiler, to demean and denigrate Schuschnigg’s country. He threatened the Austrian chancellor. He dwelt in depth on the unfavorable geopolitical landscape for Austria, especially since Catholic Italy was allied to Germany.
What did Hitler want?
The ban on the Austrian Nazi party to be lifted, all Nazis in jail to be amnestied, the pro-Nazi Viennese lawyer Dr. Seyss-Inquart made Minister of the Interior, and the pro-Nazi Glaise-Horstenau appointed Minister of War. In addition the armies of the two countries would work together more closely and the economic systems would be assimilated.
If Schuschnigg signed the agreeement, it would mean the end of independent Austria. Naturally, he was resistent. He wavered. But Papen and Ribbentrop worked on him. Hitler pulled out some psychological tricks, including totally unnecessarily yelling for a general in the next room.
Ultimately, the Austrian chancellor signed the death warrant of his country.
Upon returning home to Austria, there were four weeks of hemming and hawing. Schuschnigg decided to call a plebicite so Austrians could decide whether they wanted to be a “free, independent, social, Christian and united Austria” or not.
The plebiscite met with strong reactions both in Austria and also from Hitler across the border. Hitler pressured the President of Austria to remove Schuschnigg. Then in what Shirer calls “the most moving broadcast I have ever heard,” Schuschnigg took to the airwaves to decry Nazi lies and give his side of the story.
It wasn’t enough. President Miklas conceded to Hitler’s demand and Schuschnigg was forced to resign. The pro-Nazi Seyss-Inquart was appointed Chancellor and German troops flooded into Austria. Hitler set off for his native land on March 12 and received a tumultuous welcome. His hometown of Linz was delirious, and the Nazi chancellor laid a wreath at the graves of his parents.
The speech he gave was laced with religious language in the service of nationalism. Hitler noted that he had sacrificed for his “profession of faith” (of German national unity). “Providence” had called him forth with a great mission.
That mission resulted in the arrests of almost 100,000 Austrians. Jews fled the city in droves, including many medical professionals in the hospital where Shirer’s wife found herself. Those Jews who remained were forced to clean public latrines or jailed. All their worldly possessions confiscated or stolen. Including the Rothschild family next door to where Shirer was living. It was an “orgy of sadism,” Shirer noted.
Hitler himself was “in a state of ecstasy.” He had achieved one of his life ambitions since his warped notions of German history had taken root as a child in Linz, Austria.
Shirer was torn between family matters and the world historical events around him.
About six that evening, returning from the hospital where my wife was fighting for her life after a difficult childbirth which had ended with a Caesarean operation, I had emerged from the subway at Karlsplatz to find myself engulfed in a shouting, hysterical Nazi mob which was sweeping toward the Inner city.
Of course, Great Britain and France did nothing, even though at that point they could have stopped Hitler. Shirer makes it clear throughout the narrative that he faults the two democracies for not doing more sooner.
After Austria, Hitler then turned to Czechoslovakia, which we also will turn in the next chapter summary.
Thanks for your patience! And, as always, please let me know your thoughts.
Chapter Recaps
Topical Posts
Podcast ep. 1: The Man, The Myth: Hitler in American Culture
The Problems with the German Character Explanation of the Nazis
Podcast ep. 2: Why are Dictators (and Techno-monarchs) Appealing?
Podcast ep. 3: Interview with a 20th Century War Correspondent: Jon Randal
If You’ve Fallen Behind on the Reading, This Post is For You
Who was William L. Shirer? — part 2 (The Nightmare Years 1934-1940)
Was there any particular reason for those little Germanic patches so far from the fatherland? I don’t mean the Sudetenland, or along the Rhine – those are more obvious. But the Volga? Or Gdansk? Less apparent.
Re the Mauriac observation, as I recall at the time of reunification Mitterrand made the same remark but I do not remember the attribution.