‘I am utterly determined that Czechoslovakia should disappear from the map.’
Hitler, addressing his generals on 28 May 1938
‘If you recognize the principle of self-determination for the treatment of the Sudeten question, then we can discuss how to put the principle into practice.’
Hitler to Neville Chamberlain,
the British Prime Minister, 15 September 1938
‘I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.’
Chamberlain, in a private letter of 19 September 1938,
on return from his first meeting with Hitler
Hitler’s ‘mission’ since he entered politics had been to undo the stain of defeat and humiliation in 1918 by destroying Germany’s enemies – internal and external – and restoring national greatness. This ‘mission’, he had plainly stated on many occasions during the 1920s, could only be accomplished through ‘the sword’.1 It meant war for supremacy. The risk could not be avoided. ‘Germany will either be a world power, or there will be no Germany,’ he had written in Mein Kampf.2 Nothing had changed over the years in his fanatical belief in this ‘mission’. He had made necessary dove-like noises for international consumption. And his early speeches and writings had often been dismissed as no more than wild rantings which had little to do with the practical realities of international diplomacy and were not to be taken over-seriously as true expressions of intent.3 But, whatever the public rhetoric, the first five years since he became Chancellor had in fact over and again confirmed the belief of a Leader becoming ever more convinced of his own messianism, certain that his ‘mission’ was on course to fulfilment. His own actions – decisions such as those in 1936 to remilitarize the Rhineland and to introduce the Four-Year Plan – had been instrumental in making the ‘mission’ seem more realizable.
Powerful forces beyond ‘triumph of the will’ had made those actions possible. The final decision had invariably been Hitler’s. He had determined the timing of the critical moves in foreign policy. But the significant steps taken since 1933 had in every case been consonant with the interests of the key agencies of power in the regime, above all with those of the Wehrmacht.4 Hitler’s own obsessively held convictions had served as a spur to, and blended in with, the ambitious armaments plans of the armed forces, varying notions of restoration of hegemony in Europe entertained by the Foreign Office (along with the ‘amateur’ agencies involved in international affairs), and autarkic aims of big industrial firms. His vision of Germany’s greatness through racial purity, strength of arms, and national rebirth had proved an inspiration for hundreds of thousands of fervent activist followers, anxious to put his maxims into practice and forcing along the pace of radicalization by ‘working towards the Führer’. Not least, the ideological fanaticism which Hitler embodied had been institutionalized in the massive Party and its affiliate organizations, above all in the growing power of the SS. Controlling the German police and entertaining unconcealed military ambitions, the SS had become the key organization behind the regime’s ideological dynamism.
By the end of 1937, as his remarks at the ‘Hoßbach meeting’ showed, Hitler acutely sensed that time was not on Germany’s side. The Reich, he had concluded, could not simply wait passively on international developments; by 1943–5 at the latest it had to be prepared to take military action, sooner if circumstances presented themselves. His keenness to accelerate the momentum of expansionism was partly sharpened by his growing feeling that he might not have long to live in order to accomplish his aims.5 But beyond that it reflected an awareness that the pressures accumulating could not be contained without the expansion which he in any case strove after, and a recognition that Germany’s current advantage in armaments build-up would be lost as other countries undertook their own armaments programmes. At precisely this juncture, with Hitler already in such a frame of mind, the Blomberg–Fritsch affair served to underline his absolute supremacy, to highlight the compliance of the army, and further to weaken the lingering influence of the diminishing number of voices advising caution.
Before the reverberations of the crisis had subsided, a fatal miscalculation by the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg over a plebiscite to back Austrian independence gave Hitler a welcome opportunity to turn the spotlight away from his domestic troubles – as Jodl had hinted he would like to do – through the drama of the Anschluß.6 It amounted to a defining moment in the Third Reich. Even more than following the Rhineland triumph two years earlier, Hitler felt after the Anschluß that he could take on the world – and win. And both internally and externally, the impetus to radicalization provided by the Anschluß formed a crucial link in the chain of events that eventually plunged Europe into a new war in September 1939.
I
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 Schönerer, 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 Anschluß) 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 Anschluß 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 Dollfuß 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 Anschluß 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 Pape
n – 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 Dollfuß’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 ‘Hoßbach 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 Göring 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 Göring, 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’.
Göring 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 Göring’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 (Großraumwirtschaft, 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
Göring 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’ (Zusammenschluß) of Austria and Germany – even, if necessary, at the expense of the alliance with Italy on which Hitler placed such store.20 Göring 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 Anschluß 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, Göring 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 Göring did not have the distant future in mind.
As diplomatic feelers, also put out by Neurath and Papen, appeared to be fruitless, Göring’s impatience for a more radical solution to the ‘Austrian Question’ grew. Before Mussolini’s visit to Germany in September, Hitler gave Göring 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 what circumstances was left to the imagination. How much notice Göring took of Hitler’s instructions was plain when, on the Duce’s visit to Carinhall, he showed him a map of Europe which had Austria already incorporated within Germany. The lack of any negative reaction from Mussolini was taken by his host as a sign that Italy would not object to an Anschluß.22 Göring showed the same map in November to Guido Schmidt, state secretary in the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and his guest at an international hunting exhibition. Good huntsmen knew no boundaries, a grinning Göring told him.23 It was an attempt to bully Schmidt into accepting the inevitability of a currency union between Germany and Austria which, it was plain, was meant to evolve over time into a full merger of the two countries.24 Göring assured Lord Halifax (whose visit to Germany he had instigated) later the same month that German intentions towards Austria were not aggressive, and that relations between the two countries could be settled by diplomatic means.25 At the same time, he took additional steps to isolate Austria still further in south-east Europe.26
By the beginning of 1938, the noose had tightened around Austria’s neck. Göring was pushing hard for currency union. But with Austria stalling for time, and Italy’s reactions uncertain, immediate results through diplomatic channels seemed unlikely. An Anschluß resulting from German intervention through force in the imminent future appeared improbable.
At this unpromising juncture, the idea emerged of a meeting between Hitler and the Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg. Such a meeting may well have formed part of Papen’s scheme for bringing down the Austrian Chancellor, noted by Goebbels in mid-December 1937.27 According to Papen’s own later account, he had suggested such a meeting to the Austrian Chancellor in December – in accordance with Schuschnigg’s own expressed wish that month for personal discussions with Hitler (which the Austrian Chancellor naively saw as the only hope of stabilizing his country’s deteriora
ting situation by reaffirming its independence and the terms of the agreement of July 1936). He had then put the same suggestion to Neurath and Hitler.28 He repeated the suggestion to Guido Schmidt on 7 January, indicating Hitler’s readiness to have a meeting towards the end of the month. Schuschnigg agreed the date.29 Hitler had then had the meeting postponed because of the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis. It was eventually rearranged for 12 February.30 For Hitler, looking, as Jodl had intimated, for a foreign-policy deflection from the internal problems which had dominated the previous weeks, the meeting with the Austrian Chancellor offered the prospect of winning Austrian concessions, giving him something tangible to include in his speech to the Reichstag, rescheduled from 30 January to 20 February.
The Austrians had meanwhile uncovered documents embarrassing to the German government, revealing the plans of the Austrian NSDAP for serious disturbances (including, as a provocation, the murder of Papen by Austrian Nazis disguised as members of the Fatherland Front) aimed at bringing down Schuschnigg.31 At the same time, Schuschnigg was trying to win over Arthur Seyß-Inquart – an Austrian lawyer and Nazi sympathizer who had kept his distance from the rowdier elements within the NSDAP – to incorporate the Nazis in a united patriotic Right in Austria which would appease Berlin but preserve Austrian independence.32 Seyß was, however, in Hitler’s pocket, betraying to Berlin exactly what Schuschnigg was prepared to concede.33 The terms forced upon Schuschnigg by Hitler at the meeting on 12 February were in essence an expanded version of those which the Austrian Chancellor himself had put to Seyß – and were already fully known in Berlin prior to the meeting.34 The main difference was nevertheless a significant one: that Seyß be made Minister of the Interior, and that his powers should be extended to include control of the police.35