Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Since his boyhood days in Linz, Hitler had seen the future of Austria’s German-speaking population lying in its incorporation in the German Reich. Like many in his part of Austria, he had favoured the ideas of Georg Schonerer, the Pan-Germanist leader, rejecting the Habsburg monarchy and looking to union with the Wilhelmine Reich in Germany. Defeat in the First World War had then brought the dismembering of the sprawling, multi-ethnic empire of the Habsburgs. The new Austria, the creation of the victorious powers at the Treaty of St Germain in September 1919, was no more than a mere remnant of the former empire. The small alpine republic now had only 7 million citizens (compared with 54 million in the empire), 2 million of them in Vienna itself. It was wracked by daunting social and economic problems, and deep political fissures, accompanied by smouldering resentment about its loss of territory and revised borders. The new Austria was, however, almost entirely German-speaking. The idea of union (or Anschlu?) with Germany now became far more appealing and was overwhelmingly supported in plebiscites in the early 1920s. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany changed this. It accentuated the already acute divisions between socialists, pan-Germans, and Catholic-conservatives (with their own Austrian-nationalist brand of fascism). Only for the pan-Germans, by now entirely sucked into the Austrian Nazi Movement, was an Anschlu? with Hitler’s Germany an attractive proposition.⁷ But, despite the ban on the Nazi Party in Austria following the German- inspired assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfu? in July 1934, the increasing might of the Third Reich and the growing exposure of Austria to German dominance as Italy’s protection waned in the wake of the Abyssinian conflict kept the Anschlu? hopes alive among one sizeable part of the Austrian population.

For Hitler’s regime in Germany, meanwhile, the prospects of attaining the union with Austria implicit in the first point of the Nazi Party Programme of 1920, demanding ‘the merger of all Germans… in a Greater Germany’,⁸ had become much rosier in the changed diplomatic circumstances following Italy’s embroilment in Abyssinia and then the triumphant remilitarization of the Rhineland. Hitler had written on the very first page of Mein Kampf: ‘German-Austria must return to the great German mother- country, and not because of any economic considerations. No, and again no: even if such a union were unimportant from an economic point of view; yes, even if it were harmful, it must nevertheless take place. One blood demands one Reich.’⁹ Ideological impulses were, however, far from alone in driving on the quest to bring Austria under German sway. Whatever his emphasis in Mein Kampf, by the late 1930s Austria’s geographical position, straddling strategically vital stretches of central Europe, and the significant material resources that would accrue to Germany’s economy, hard-pressed in the push to rearm as swiftly as possible under the Four-Year Plan, were the key determinants in forcing the pace of policy towards the Reich’s eastern neighbour.

On a number of occasions during the second half of 1937, as we have noted, Hitler had spoken in imprecise but menacing terms about moving against Austria. During the summer he had bound the Austrian Nazi Party closer to Berlin through the appointment of his economic adviser Wilhelm Keppler to run party affairs in Vienna.¹⁰ Alongside the direct reporting to Hitler of Franz von Papen — the former Vice-Chancellor in the Reich Cabinet who had been sent as a special envoy to Vienna to pour oil on troubled waters following Dollfu?’s assassination, and had been appointed Ambassador after the signing of the Agreement of July 1936 — this provided a further channel of information on developments inside Austria. The effect was to lessen even more the influence of the German Foreign Ministry.¹¹ In September Hitler had sounded out Mussolini about a likely Italian reaction, but received inconsequential, if not discouraging, replies. At the beginning of November, at the ‘Ho?bach meeting’, he had strongly intimated early action to destroy Austria. The visit to Germany in mid-November by Lord Halifax, Lord Privy Seal and President of the Council in the British Government, close to the recently appointed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and soon to become his Foreign Secretary, had confirmed in Hitler’s mind that Britain would do nothing in the event of German action against Austria.¹²

The questions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Danzig, Lord Halifax had told Hitler, ‘fell into the category of possible alterations in the European order which might be destined to come about with the passage of time’. (In his diary entry on the discussion, Halifax had noted telling Hitler that ‘On all these matters we were not necessarily concerned to stand for the status quo as today, but we were concerned to avoid such treatment of them as would be likely to cause trouble’.) Hitler had responded by stating that ‘the Agreement of July 11th [1936] had been made with Austria and it was to be hoped that it would lead to the removal of all difficulties’. Halifax’s subsequent confidential memorandum on the meeting noted Hitler as saying: ‘Germany did not want to annex Austria or to reduce her to political dependence — her desire was to bring about by peaceful means full economic, cultural, commercial, and possibly monetary and currency union with Austria and to see in Austria a Government really friendly to Germany and ready to work hand in hand for the common welfare of both branches of the Teutonic race.’¹³

A few days earlier, Hitler had told the Danzig Gauleiter Albert Forster that he wanted Danzig kept quiet from January onwards to allow for concentration on Austria.¹⁴ In December, he informed von Papen, who had talked of ways of toppling Schuschnigg, that he wanted to avoid force in the Austrian matter as long as this were desirable to prevent international repercussions.¹⁵ Goring and Keppler both had the impression that Hitler would act on Austria in spring or summer 1938.¹⁶

Plainly, Hitler had moved during the second half of 1937, despite his express disavowal to Lord Halifax, to a readiness to end Austria’s independence within the foreseeable future. He was, however, in this fully in line with other forces in the Third Reich. The Austro-German treaty of 11 July 1936 together with improved relations with Italy had inevitably brought greater German pressure on Austria. Only increasingly fragile reliance on Italy and recognizably unrealistic hopes placed in the western powers could hinder the relentless squeeze on Austria’s exposed position in central Europe. Papen and Foreign Minister Neurath exerted their own influence where possible, the former largely through direct links with Hitler, the latter through official Foreign Office channels; the growing numbers of Austrian Nazis unfolded a ceaseless clamour of agitation; the bosses of the Four-Year Plan and leaders of the ferrous industries cast envious eyes on Austria’s iron-ore deposits and other sources of scarce raw materials; above all, it was Hermann Goring, at this time close to the pinnacle of his power, who, far more than Hitler, throughout 1937 made the running and pushed hardest for an early and radical solution to the ‘Austrian Question’.

Goring was not simply operating as Hitler’s agent in matters relating to the ‘Austrian Question’. His approach differed in emphasis in significant respects.¹⁷ As with Hitler, anti-Bolshevism was central to his thinking. But Goring’s broad notions of foreign policy, which he pushed to a great extent on his own initiative in the mid-1930s, drew more on traditional pan-German concepts of nationalist power-politics to attain hegemony in Europe than on the racial dogmatism central to Hitler’s ideology. Return of colonies (never a crucial issue for Hitler), the alliance with Britain (which he continued to strive for long after Hitler’s ardour had cooled), and an emphasis on domination in south-eastern Europe to ensure German raw material supplies from a huge economic sphere of exploitation (Gro?raumwirtschaft, a notion that differed from Hitler’s racially determined emphasis on Lebensraum), were the basic props of his programme to ensure Germany’s hegemony.¹⁸ Within this framework, Austria’s geography and raw materials gave it both strategically and economically a pivotal position.¹⁹

Goring was increasingly determined, now as supremo of the Four-Year Plan, in the face of Germany’s mounting problems of securing raw material supplies, to press for what he called the ‘union’ or ‘merger’ (Zusammenschlu?) of Austria and Germany — even, if necessary, at the expense of the alliance with Italy on which Hitler placed such store.²⁰ Goring had come close to offending Mussolini on his visit to Rome in January 1937 with his brusque demands for Italy’s need to come to terms with the fact that Austria would eventually have to fall to Germany. But by the time he had next broached the topic to the Duce four months later, Mussolini had appeared tacitly to recognize that the Anschlu? was purely a matter of time. A month before his second (nominally private) visit to Italy that year, in April, amid severe blockages in Germany’s raw material supplies, Goring had told leaders of the iron industry in confidence that the rich iron ores of Austria must come to Germany.²¹ No time-scale was envisaged. But in view of the pressing economic difficulties, it was plain that Goring did not have the distant future in mind.

As diplomatic feelers, also put out by Neurath and Papen, appeared to be fruitless, Goring’s impatience for a more radical solution to the ‘Austrian Question’ grew. Before Mussolini’s visit to Germany in September, Hitler gave Goring instructions to tread delicately with his important guest on matters relating to Austria. He wanted Mussolini to understand that Germany had no intention in the foreseeable future of bringing the Austrian problem to a head, but that German intervention would be possible should a crisis be otherwise provoked in Austria. By whom or in