Today I stood on Vienna’s Heroes Square where, in 1938, more than 200,000 tearfully happy Austrians gathered before Adolf Hitler. The Nazi dictator stood on the palace balcony and stated, “In front of German history, I declare my former homeland now a part of the Third Reich. One of the pearls of the Third Reich will be Vienna.” From that day on, Austrians were forbidden to say the word “Austria.”
Americans often wonder how Austria could so eagerly embrace Hitler and the Anschluss (the notion that Austria was meant to be unified with Germany anyway). Let me hazard an explanation: Imagine post-WWI Austria. One of the mightiest empires on earth started — and lost — a great war. In a few bloody years, it went from being a grand empire of 55 million people to a relatively insignificant landlocked state of six million that was required to be nonaligned. The capital, Vienna, was left with little to rule, and now its population comprised a third of the country’s. With the economic crisis we know as the Great Depression (which swept the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933), Austria also got a fascist government complete with a dictator named Engelbert Dollfuss. He was as right-wing and anti-Semitic as the tyrant ruling Germany, but he was pro-Roman Catholic Church, pro-Habsburg, and anti-Nazi. When an Austrian Nazi assassinated Dollfuss in 1934, it was easy for the German Nazis to take over four years later. By that point, the Austrian fascists had already put down the leftists. The German Nazis just took over their Austrian counterparts’ file cabinets. And, Hitler promised greatness again…and jobs — something that has driven voters to support crazy political notions to this day.
I’ve always wondered this. Thanks for taking a stab at answering it. May we never lash our in a similar vein in America.
i guess that hope and change the austrians were aiming for didn’t work out.
Rick…. which is it…… Habsburgs, or Hapsburgs? Seems to me I’ve seen you use both.
Sure are crazy political times here as well with a president who promised job growth, unemployment rate of less then 6% by now, and stimulus spending that would get us out of a recession.
It’s Habsburg but sometimes the English Hapsburg is used.
^the link there is supposed to say “this lubby dubby performance”
Guess I’m a bit rusty at HTML.
Austria had been part of the Holy Roman Empire which was a loose federation of German speaking states. It lasted for hundreds of years and there had always been a desire to unite all the German speaking people into a single unified state. After the Napoleanic Wars it was replaced by the German Confederation. The two biggest states, Austria and Prussia, had very different views on what a unified German state should be. Prussia drove Austria out of the confederation in the mid-1800s and the rest of the German states unified into Germany. After the end of the First World War Austria was reduced to a small landlocked moutainous country. On top of that the loss of access to the sea and the breakup of the empire shattered Austria’s economy. Austrians saw no future as an independent country and they wanted Austria to join Germany. The post war peace treaties forbade union between Austria and Germany and it also saw Austria lose parts of its core German speaking territories (South Tirol and Sudetenland in particular). Austrians were angry and upset at the peace treaties and in Hitler they saw someone who they believed would correct the unjust peace treaties and unite all German speaking people into one country.
Good description of the Austrian relationship to Germany. We went to the Monument Against War and Facism yesterday and found it very well done. Also, the directions to the Sigmund Freud Museum contains an error. The street is not downhill from the Schlickgasse tram D stop, it is entirely level. Coming from the other direction Bergasse is downhill toward this sight.
Evan, thanks for the sound, unbiased historical overview! Puts things in the proper context.
The photo of Hitler addressing the cheering crowd at the Heldenplatz clearly disputes the claim by some Austrians that the Anschluss (1938) was similiar to the subsequent Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 (i.e., that the Austrians were ‘conquered’). In fact, I recently read an article (in the New Yorker?) stating that the German Army was cheered all the way from the German-Austrian border to Vienna. Unfortunately, the Viennese cheers soon turned to jeers as WWII progressed and the economy, job situation, food shortages/rationing, etc. got worse.
Evan’s summary is spot on. But the Social Democrats did fight a brief civil war in Austria in 1934 and had run the city of Vienna for many years. The rise of right-wing authoritarian parties in Europe during the 1930s is overshadowed by the German Nazis. Fear and close proximity to Stalin’s USSR was only part of this in Poland, Hungary, Finland, and Austria. From democracy’s standpoint it was a rough time. But it’s not just happening in the east, there is Spain, Italy, and France as well. Readers can get a strong sense of this from broad-scope histories of Nazi Germany like Richard J. Evan’s trilogy and the classic William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But for concise information about the non-nazi fascists of the 1930s, wikipedia is invaluable.
I would like to say the Austrians were not thrilled to have Hitler take over their country. My family was from the Sudatenland (sp?) and Hitler annexed that. So what you think that the Austrians are getting chummy. My dad and his first cousin, from Vienna were on both sides of the war. If Vienna can be faulted for anything, they should have put up more of a fight against the Nazi’s.
Interesting topic. However, I think it’s important to note that Hitler was originally elected (albeit with dodgy political manoeuvres). It’s important to realise this, as it shows the slippery slope from democracy to dictatorship.
I agree with Rick 100% concerning the psyche of the German people, especially when he says, “And, Hitler promised greatness again…and jobs — something that has driven voters to support crazy political notions to this day”. It’s exactly what happened in 2008 in the United States.