The Rest Is History - 407. The Nazis in Power: The Conquest of Austria

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

By 1937, Hitler’s ever-growing ambitions were driving Europe to the brink of war. Ever restless, he knew that Germany must conquer the world, or be destroyed. His first target was Austria, his homeland, whose annexation to Germany would unite German blood under one indomitable Reich. However, in an effort to avoid Nazi rule, the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, called a referendum on annexation, to show the Austrian people’s will against it. Hitler’s reaction was one of rage, and on the morning of Friday, the 11th of March, 1938, he sent an ultimatum to Vienna. At 5.30am the next day, the German army crossed into Austria. It was met by great cheering crowds, and Hitler’s arrival in Vienna was one of true apotheosis… Yet the darkness at the heart of Hitler’s European dream was also emerging, as the Nazis began to detain and repress Austrian minorities, particularly the Jewish population, on an unprecedented scale. Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the annexation of Austria, and the post-war myth of Austria’s victimisation at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. They also look at the Nazis’ first acts of violence, discrimination and deportation against Vienna’s Jewish population, prefiguring the horrors to follow. Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at LandRover.ca. Adelweiss, Adelweiss Every morning you greet me Small and white, clean and bright You look happy to meet me Blossom of snow snow may you bloom and grow bloom and grow forever edelweiss edelweiss bless my homeland forever. Edelweiss. Edel... That, Dominic, was Christopher Plummer as Captain Von Trapp.

And he is standing on the stage of the Salzburg Festival. He has his children and his new wife, Julie Andrews. Waiting in the wings, Maria, and they are engaged in a complicated plot to escape Nazi-dominated Austria because Captain von Tra Music, the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which was turned into a film in 1965, the von Trapp family will be escaping because von Trapp has been summoned to serve in the new German Navy. And he doesn't want to do it because he's a principled anti-Nazi. And so the von Trapps go heading off into the mountains and they cross into Switzerland. And as you have often pointed out yourself, Dominic, more people listened to The Sound of Music in the 60s than they did to Sgt.

Pepper. So I guess that as a result of that, The Sound of Music is probably the most celebrated portrayal of the Anschluss, certainly in the anglophone world. And when Christopher Plummer is singing that, he's doing it before an audience that joins in in patriotic unison. And it's kind of framed as being a reaction to the recent German annexation of Austria. And the idea that the Austrians are the first victims of the Nazi expansion has been a very important part of post-war Austrian historiography, hasn't it? Yes, it has.

And I guess that today we're looking at the Anschluss, the German takeover of Austria in 1938, and perhaps we could explore the degree to which The Sound of Music is mythologising that Austrian sense of themselves as victims, or whether it's true to history. Yes, absolutely. You're dead right, Tom. The idea that Austria is the first victim of Hitler is a sort of foundational myth of post-war, you know, the Austrian Republic.

And it's true that some Austrians are Hitler's victims, no doubt about that. Actually, in the second half, we will be telling some terrible stories about what happened to particularly Jewish Austrians after the Nazi takeover. But there were, of course, Austrian Nazis. And there were many people in Austria who turned out to greet Hitler and were delighted to see him. So it's a very complicated story. Do you know what? Having spent the last 20 years basically trading on the sound of music's popularity in the 1960s it's my fact that i kind of bring out to annoy people it's the ultimate sandbrook fact that i bring out to annoy people it hadn't occurred to me to weave the sound of music into this episode

well that's that's what teamwork is all about dominic stroke of genius well you know i love teamwork on the rest is history tom i know you do so so that's what the rest of history is all about. Okay. We ended the last episode, which was about Hitler's kind of road to war. The fashioning of the Nazi war machine. Might be another way of putting it. Very good. Mr. Churchill, very good. Yes.

We ended with a sort of semi-cliffhanger. He summoned his generals in November 1937. He's going to tell them what his next plan is. But just before we get into telling you what happened at the meeting, we should remind listeners that Hitler is animated throughout by this extraordinary sense of mission, this belief that either Germany becomes the world's preeminent power, conquers the world, or it will be annihilated. There is no middle ground. So with almost any other dictator in history, actually, Mussolini, Franco, even Stalin, there is a kind of halfway house where they will just happily accept stability. Hitler will not. Hitler is restless and he must

keep moving. He cannot stand still. So he summons his generals to the Reich Chancellery. And as this is want, he talks for two hours. And he says to them, OK, here is the plan. We need living space. We're going to suffer from national sterility if we don't expand. We're actually running out of food, which is true because his economic model is so terrible. We must act, he says, between 1943 and 1945. That is the window. Because after that point, we'll be too old, the birth rate will be in decline, the wheels will have fallen off the economy, and our neighbors will have caught up and rearmed. So that is the moment, 1943 or so. And he says the priority will be to take two

countries first, which are Austria and Czechoslovakia. That will secure our eastern borders. Because we've secured our eastern borders, we'll be able to see off the French on the west. And that will be the point from which we can strike further east, Poland, and then the Soviet Union to get the colossal territorial empire that we need. And he says, once we've taken Czechoslovakia and Austria, so 1943 or so, we'll kick out a few million of their people. That will give us a huge food surplus. That means we can feed our population. And who are they proposing to kick out and where? Probably kick them out to the east, force them out. I mean, we will come to this idea about removal and expulsion. Yeah. And how do the generals feel about this? Do they blanch at all at this idea or not? They do. They do blanch at it, Tom. Previously, everything that Hitler

had said to his generals whenever he was giving them these rants, they kind of said, yeah, sounds reasonable. He's going a bit faster and more recklessly than we envisaged. But this kind of accords with our aims. Now, this is the first time that they are really alarmed. They are not alarmed at the idea of fighting the Austrians or the Czechs. But are they alarmed at the idea of expelling millions of people? Morally, is there an expression of concern about that? I mean, that's forcing you to face up to what Lebensraum means, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely it is. I just wondered whether there are any moral scruples at all.

I don't think there are. There's no sense for them that there's moral scruples at this stage. That's not their reservation? No, it's not their reservation. Their reservation is, reservation Their reservation is This is going to be Very very Reckless Okay This sounds Like it will mean war With Britain and France

With Britain and France And we don't think We're ready You know We might have Sometimes chatted Late at night Over our schnapps

About fighting the French In a spa town Yeah We don't really Fancy doing it And He looks around the room And people like the

defense minister, Wernher von Blomberg, his number two, who's the kind of general in charge of the army, who is Wernher von Fritsch. They are nationalistic, conservative, but they are kind of white with horror at the thought of all this fighting so soon. We're not ready. It's so reckless. And they say, we can't get into a situation where we're fighting Britain and France. We will lose. Now, there is a really interesting argument to be had about whether they could have blocked his ambitions, about whether actually he had gone too far. I mean, maybe he hadn't, but we will never know because extraordinarily at about this point, so just a few weeks later both those two

men that i mentioned field marshal von blomberg and colonel general fritsch they are forced out in these bizarre scandals that rip out the top echelon of the army leadership and it's very convenient timing for hitler isn't it it's incredibly convenient but the weird thing is he doesn't orchestrate it. Let's say what they are, because they are excellent sex scandals. They're so weird. So first of all, Field Marshal von Bromberg, he's widowed and he has five adult children. One day he's walking in the park in Berlin and he meets this young woman.

She's 35 years younger than him and he falls passionately in love with her. She's from a much sort of lower social echelon. And he goes to Hitler because Hitler's the supreme commander of the Wehrmacht. So Field Marshal goes to him and he says, I want to marry this girl. She's much younger than me. The girl of the people.

And people will sneer at us and be snobbish. She's a typist, he says, doesn't he? And Hitler says, this is brilliant. Yeah. You know, a girl of the people. Yeah. This is exactly what a man like you should be doing. Absolutely splendid. Dominic, that speech he gave to the Hitler youth at Nuremberg in 1934,

dissolve all social divisions. So this is Nazism in practice. Exactly. And Hitler says, I'll be the witness. I'll be the witness at the wedding. Do you know what? Bring along Goering. I'll bring Goering as my plus one and he'll be the second witness. So they have the wedding. The bride's mother is there. Blomberg's children, Hitler and Goering. What a terrible wedding that is. They get married at the war ministry.

Unfortunately, within days of the marriage, it comes to the attention of the police that this woman, A, had once posed for pornographic pictures taken by a Jewish photographer and B, had by a Jewish photographer. And B had been a prostitute. A licensed prostitute, right?

So there's kind of legal trace elements of it. An officially registered prostitute. Yeah. And Goering has to go and see Hitler and say, we've made a terrible mistake. This is very embarrassing. And Hitler is absolutely horrified. Ashen faced. It's typical of Hitler. What Hitler objects to is that he will be embarrassed and everybody will laugh at him.

Say he went to a prostitute's wedding and was the chief witness. He's kind of weirdly prissy, isn't he, about things like that? He's very prissy and puritanical. So he basically says, Blomberg has to go. And indeed Blomberg does go. He resigns. They have a sort of big row, but then they end actually in quite sort of amicable terms. They shake hands and he's given a big payoff and off he goes to Italy.

On a kind of extended honeymoon to Capri. Yes. But this weird thing that Admiral Radar. Yeah. He sends an aide to follow them round and suggests that he commits suicide. And he doesn't, does he? He keeps leaving guns on the marital pillow. That's not very romantic. Yeah. And do you know where he ends up in the war?

He dies after the war, doesn't he? He dies after the war, but during the war, he ends up in Bad Vesey, which is where all the action happened in The Night of the Long Knives. What is it with Nazis and spa towns? Spa town hotels town hotels i don't know so that's the end of the field marshal and hitler was sitting alone brooding and he's very miserable about this they got on all right and he's embarrassed by the whole thing well it's mortifying isn't it for him and then suddenly he thinks oh my god colonel general von fritsch has been in a scandal as well and it's hitler himself who thinks. He remembers a year or so earlier, there had been accusations against Colonel General von Fritsch.

And it turned out that he was being blackmailed by a Berlin rent boy called Otto Schmidt. And actually, when Fritsch hears that Hitler is all heads up about this, he sort of comes clean and says, listen, I used to have lunch with this bloke who was 18 years ago, and I did it out of charity because there was a big campaign by the Winter Aid campaign to give free meals to the needy. And because I'm a good Nazi and a pillar of the establishment, I had this bloke and I would take him for meals in public, give him lunch. And there was absolutely no scandal, no impropriety, nothing like this. I was genuinely being charitable. And actually, Tom, he was.

There was no scandal whatsoever. But Hitler basically, because he's so puritanical, says, oh, well, in the context of the Blomberg business, I mean, you've got to go as well. But is he also utilizing this? Is he clearing the decks, do you think? Possibly. Possibly. I think there's got to be an element of this, that he's terribly het up about these scandals and he's very depressed about them. And he says it's the worst crisis since he became Fuhrer. But there is an opportunity here, there is a great opportunist. So both of these guys get booted out. He takes the chance to clean house, to get rid of 12 other generals, get rid of a load of guys from the Luftwaffe, and to bring in yes men. People like Wilhelm Keitel, who was at his side throughout the Second World War,

Walter von Brauschitz. So these are people who will basically just do his bidding. They are his creatures. And so Hitler now, I mean, he's already got all the reins of state, but now he's leader of the army as well. Exactly. And there's no one to oppose him at all. Exactly. And Tom, the reason we spent so long on it is that that is a crucial precondition for what follows. There is basically nobody to stand in his way. So let's get into the issue of Austria. So we're into 1938 and Hitler is eyeing up Austria, his southern neighbor. Now, of course, Hitler was born in Austria, brought up in austria hitler is to all intents and purposes austrian and before the first world war when he'd been growing up he had been a passionate

pan-german so he'd been one of these people who thought i hate the habsburgs i hate the czechs the slovenes all these other people i don't like the multiculturalism of Vienna that we, looking back at it from 2023, think is so brilliant. I hate all that. I wish we could turn our back on all these Slavs and Hungarians and Jews who I don't like. This is Adolf Hitler speaking, obviously.

And I wish German Austria, the Austrian heartland, could be united with Germany. And in those days, he would have thought under the Hohenzollerns, not under the Habsburgs. And that dream of a kind of pan-German unity has never left him at all. And obviously, there's a lot of other people in Austria who think that too. So when the Habsburg Empire fell apart in 1918, all the other bits fell away. There'd be 54 million people in the Habsburg Empire fell apart in 1918, all the other bits fell away. There'd be 54 million people in the Habsburg Empire, and now there's only 7 million of them left. And they're

German speakers. And they think, well, we don't want to live in a country called Austria. We actually want to live in Germany. And obviously the big thing at the end of the first war is about national self-determination. And it is a tiny bit unjust that the Allies said, absolutely everybody else, the Czechs, the Serbs, whatever, they can all have national self-determination, but you can't. So you cannot join Germany. For very obvious reasons. Yeah, because they don't want Germany to become bigger. Right. Absolutely. Which is precisely why Hitler wants to absorb Austria, presumably. Exactly. The Austrians actually originally wanted to call their country German Austria. absolutely which is precisely why hitler wants to absorb austria presumably exactly the austrians

actually originally wanted to call their country german austria and the allies in the treaty of saint germain they actually banned them from choosing the name for their own country they had to call it austria rather than german austria it's just this sort of appendix i mean we now think of austria as part of the european map but at the time people just thought it was this weird leftover it's massively divided so the socialists. But at the time, people just thought of it as this weird leftover. It's massively divided. So the socialists are very popular in Vienna. People talk about Red Vienna.

The rest of the country, very Catholic, very, very conservative. All those nuns, singing nuns. Singing nuns, exactly. There's loads of monasteries. I've been to some monasteries in Austria, Tom. Very nice. And all the time, Hitler, who's been observing this from Germany in the 1920s, he had said German Austria should become part of Germany. And there was no doubt in his mind at all. He had said it must return to the great German mother country. One blood

demands one Reich. Now, the Austrians themselves, as time goes on, they become a little bit divided about this. So particularly Catholics in Austria are a bit anxious about allying with Nazi Germany. Well, yeah, for understandable reasons. There's been a lot of tension between the Catholic Church and the Nazi regime. They don't want to be necessarily dragged into Hitler's orbit. And Austria is scarred by all kinds of economic problems, by faction fighting between the socialists and the Catholic conservatives and so on. There is a small Austrian Nazi party. But by about 1933, Austria has basically slid into a corporatist, Catholic, authoritarian

dictatorship under this guy called Engelbert Dollfuss, who is a very passionate kind of Catholic from rural Austria. Crazy name, crazy guy. And Dollfuss, he is absolutely tiny. I think it's literally five feet tall, Tom. He's a very short man. He puts lots of people in prison, socialists in prison. He wears a three-piece suit. He sort of walks around with his mustache and his three-piece suit talking about cardinals and stuff. So he's a bit of a Salazarist, I suppose. He's certainly not a Nazi. The Austrian Nazi Party, of course, are not happy with this at all.

There's about 70,000 of them. They don't want to live in a Catholic dictatorship. They want to live in a modern, exciting Nazi dictatorship. And in 1934, the summer, encouraged by Hitler, they tried to launch a coup. We alluded to this last time. 150 of them dressed up in army uniforms. They burst into the chancellery in Vienna. They found Dolfus trying to escape, and they shot him and tried to have a coup. And Mussolini, who was obviously quite keen on Dolfus, he said to Hitler, effectively, don't intervene.

Back off. He moved his army to the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. Yeah, back off. Hitler had to back down. So the Nazis didn't take over Austria. So weirdly, the one leader who does stand up to Hitler is Mussolini. Yeah. And demonstrates what could be done. It's true. That's weird, isn't it?

I hadn't thought of that. That is weird. It's an irony of history. That's great. We love an irony of history and the rest is history. We certainly do. So the Nazis didn't take over Austria. The guy who took over Austria after Dolfus, three foot two, had been shot was a man called Schuschnigg. The Austrians have terrible names.

Another crazy name, crazy guy. Yeah. Terrible names. When I remember doing this at GCSE and I just thought could they not have simpler names well we should apologise to all Austrian listeners for Dominic's

very rude comments on the names of your leaders in the 1930s yeah anyway his name is Kurt von Schnuschnig

he had been the Minister of Justice he is a sort of beaky man with glasses again another Catholic conservative but Hitler who has backed off

still fancies another crack at Austria. Basically, it's his dream. Of course. Yeah, of course. That his homeland, his native land, will be reunited with the country that he currently rules. There are also really important strategic and economic reasons for the Nazis to be looking at Austria. Because the Austrians have some of the raw materials that they need for their armaments

program and for their economic agenda. So we said last time that they've adopted what they call the four-year plan under Hermann Goering. This is this massive drive to rearm and to get the economy ready for a world war. So they need iron ore, don't they? And Austria has iron ore. They need iron ore. Austria has iron ore in Styria. And Goering is desperate to get his hands on this iron ore. And in fact, by the time they've become pals with Mussolini in late 1937, Goering is always doing things like, he's always showing Mussolini maps, showing Austria as part of the German Reich and sort of saying,

what do you think about this? Do you like the look of this map? Is this a good map? And why has Mussolini, what do you think about this? Do you like the look of this map? Do you think this is a good map? And why has Mussolini kind of shifted his opinion on this? Because previously he had been very firm about not wanting Germany to take over Austria. Because it must affect Italy's ability to defend itself. Of course. And because Austria is Italy's kind of ancestral enemy, and Italy wants to make sure that the Germans in Austria are kind of under enemy. And Italy wants to make sure that the Germans in Austria

are kind of under their thumb, I think. I think it's because Mussolini, he's lost British and French support because of his imperialist war in Abyssinia. He has imperial ambitions in Africa and indeed in the Balkans. And if he can get Hitler's support for them, for his own new Roman empire.

So it's quid pro quo, basically. Yeah, the prize, he can give up Austria. Yeah. You know, they're German speakers anyway. Yeah. Give that up and he'll get Hitler's backing. Maybe he can have a crack at the Greeks or the Albanians or something. Yeah.

So Mussolini actually doesn't say anything. And Goering thinks, well, obviously he loves it. He loves the look of this map. So early 1938 comes. Austria is still a bit of a basket case, very divided. It's never recovered from the Great Depression.

Hitler is kind of greedily eyeing it up. And his ambassador in Vienna is a fellow who we've talked about a few times, but has slightly disappeared in the last couple of episodes. Of course.

It's our old friend Franz von Papen. Yes. A Daily Telegraph columnist. Yes. The effete Machiavel yes exactly trapped actually in a greyhound's body yeah i think he looks like a greyhound anyway franz von parpen who had been hitler's vice chancellor you know had almost kind of come to a sticky end in

the night of the long knives hitler had sent him off to be ambassador in vienna kind of exile right exactly parpen is a mad catholic. People with really long memories will remember that when he was in charge, a couple of chancellors before Hitler, his dream for Germany to get Germany out of its mess was to bring back the beheading people with an axe. The Prussian axe. The guillotine was too modern. Yeah, exactly. That's von Papen's contribution. Sensible policies for a happier Germany. Yeah, exactly. He's in Vienna and he says, listen, there's been a lot of tension between Austria and Germany since the beginning of 1938. I'm going to organize a meeting,

Schuschnigg and Hitler, and we'll do it at Hitler's kind of alpine lair, this kind of Bonn villain lair, the Berghof, the Ober Salzburg, kind of in the mountains. It's kind of Bonneville and L'air, the Berghof, the Ober Salzburg, kind of in the mountains. It's kind of eerie. So Schuschnick pitches up on the 12th of February, 1938, thinking this is going to be jolly handshakes. Yeah, kind of summit.

Yeah, a nice summit between fellow German speakers. Lovely. There's a few tensions, but we're all on the same side. Robust exchange of views, but then handshakes for the cameras. Exactly. Exactly. And sort of a lot of consuming of strudels. Actually, Hitler's poor dietary issues.

Yes. Beaming girls in dirndls. Exactly. Yeah. If you're expecting that from Hitler, you're not going to get it because Hitler will just talk to you for eight hours and drink some gun cleaning fluid. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Nibble on some celery. It'd be a terrible occasion in every conceivable way. The views are good. Shushnik arrives and it's actually worse than when we're selling it

because Hitler's invited some of his generals purely to intimidate Shushnik. So, Wouter von Reichenau, who's a fanatical Nazi, and a guy called Hugo Schperler, who had been the commanderical Nazi, and a guy called Hugo Speller,

who had been the commander of the Condor Legion, bombing Guernica. Oh, in Spain, yeah. In Spain. So, when Schuschnick sees these, he thinks, oh, no, what's going on here? They admire the view for about five minutes. Schuschnick says, what a beautiful view you have.

And Hitler says, we haven't come here to talk about the weather and the view. And then he takes him inside his office and says, the whole history of Austria is an uninterrupted act of high treason this historical paradox must now reach its long overdue end i am determined to make an end of this herr schussnig i have a historic mission and i will fulfill this because providence has destined me to do so you don't believe you can hold me up for half an hour, do you? Maybe one night I'll appear overnight in Vienna like a spring storm. So not good at the small talk, it would be fair to say. When someone says that to you and you've gone for a weekend break. That's not what you want

at all, is it? It's absolutely not what you want. Now, meanwhile, Ribbentrop, who is the former champagne salesman. Who wears the wrong clothes to gentlemen's clubs in St. James. In London, exactly. Who is Hitler's foreign minister. Ribbentrop is basically handing out copies of Hitler's ultimatum. Hitler says, the Nazis who have been heavily restricted in Austria, there can be no more restrictions. Our guy, who's a guy called Arthur Seyss-Inkwart.

Again, brilliant name. The Austrians and their names. What did I tell you? He is a guy, you should put him in charge of the Ministry of the Interior and give him control

of the police. Of course, the Nazis love control of the police. That's how they always get power. You should integrate the Austrian economic system with Germany's, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And Schussnig is appalled by all this. Now, first, he actually says, not going to. No, absolutely not. And Hitler keeps bringing in more generals. General Keitel, for example, he says to. No, absolutely not. And Hitler keeps bringing in more generals. General Keitel, for example, he says, come in General Keitel. He just makes them sit down and they say nothing, just stare at Shushnik. Wearing intimidating uniforms,

presumably. Exactly. Wearing very intimidating uniforms. And clicking their heels periodically. And eventually, at the end of the day, Shushnik, it's been a terrible day for him. And he says, fine, yes, I'd agree to most of these demands. We'll appoint this guy, Seyss Ingvarts. But what if he hadn't? Then Hitler says, I'll invade. I'll invade, my troops are ready, we'll strike. And he just browbeats and browbeats and browbeats him. And so Schussnig says, fine, I'll do it. And he goes back home. He agrees.

Well, doesn't Hitler invite him for dinner? Yeah, they have to have dinner. And he says, no. He kind of says, oh, I've got a bit of a headache. I think I'll turn in early. Exactly. Exactly. Hitler kind of sometimes, he will switch. So actually in the middle of all this browbeating, Hitler had said to him, oh, we should go and have lunch. And they went and had lunch. It must've been quite an icy atmosphere. Absolutely. Yeah. They were kind of having their soup or whatever. Celery. So poor old Schuschnigg, he goes back to Vienna. He agrees to all these demands. He lets a Nazi, Seysingfa, become the Minister of the Interior.

Hitler gives a speech on the radio and he says, you know, it's intolerable that Austria is still not part of the Reich, all this stuff. Loads of Nazis in Austria because it does appeal particularly to younger Austrian men who are maybe anti-clerical so you could be a socialist in austria but you would be suppressed and in fact there'd be a little civil war you could be a kind of catholic conservative in which case you'd be on schuschnigg's side or you'd be a nazi because it's the future yeah it's exciting exactly it doesn't involve monks yeah brilliant exactly exactly if you're

anti-monk that's what you do you've got the socialist or the Nazis so it looks like they're on this sort of path that will inevitably lead at some point to some kind of economic union you know some association something like this and then Shnig does something that nobody has anticipated. On the morning of the 9th of March, Schussnig thinks, sod it, I'm not going to drift into union with the Germans. I've come up with an idea that will get us out of this mess. A top wheeze. A wheeze. We'll have a referendum. The Nazis have been pestering and pestering for ages, saying, have a referendum on union with Germany. Schuster's like, great, we'll do it, but I'll write the question.

So do you want to be locked in the bloodthirsty embrace of the monstrous, overbearing tyrant? Or would you prefer to stay true to our fresh, clean, alpine republic? That's exactly it. Do you support a free true to our fresh, clean, alpine republic? That's exactly it. Do you support a free and German, independent, social Christian and united Austria? Peace and work and the equal rights for those who declare themselves a people and fatherland. And what is more, because Schuschnigg knows that the Nazis appear as to younger people, he says, you can only vote if you're over the age of 24.

So the under 24s can't vote. So kind of gerrymandering the vote. What is more. He says, you can only vote if you're over the age of 24. So the under 24s can't vote. So kind of gerrymandering the vote. What is more, he says, we'll obviously supervise this vote ourselves. And he runs a repressive regime. And I suppose the brilliant thing about this is that it is playing the Nazi game, isn't it? I mean, this is what the Nazis are doing all the time. It's absolutely doing that. And so I assume Hitler isn't pleased about it at all.

Hitler is absolutely furious. I think what I would compare this to though tom is as a referendum idea it's a little bit like david cameron thinking i was yes yeah i haven't entirely thought this through yeah so schustnik calls this referendum and hitler for a few hours he hears the news he doesn't know what to do. But by the evening, he has gone utterly ballistic and he meets Goebbels and he says, right, no. We'll give an ultimatum. Schuschnigg must rewrite the text of the referendum.

So the referendum must be inviting people now to approve a union with Germany. He will turn that down undoubtedly. When he turns that down, we will instruct the local Nazis in Austria to rise up in rebellion. And on the day of the referendum, Sunday the 13th of March, the We writes a diary. And Goebbels loves a bit of a cliche, Tom. He writes, The die is cast.

On Saturday, march in. Push straight to Vienna. Big aeroplane action. The Fuhrer is going himself to Austria. Goering and I are to stay in Berlin. In eight days, Austria will be ours. And will it be? Well, I think we should take a break at this point.

And when we come back, we'll find out if Austria does indeed end up in the embrace of the Führer. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History.

And Dominic, we are on the brink. Hitler has ordered his armies to prepare to invade Austria and forcibly embrace it in union with Germany. So what happens? So 10 a.m. on Friday the 11th of March 1938, Hitler sends the ultimatum to vienna and he says not only must you change your referendum so it must be now approving union with the right i mean it's so interesting showing how important it is to get the right question in a referendum yeah absolutely absolutely it is but he says also we've lost total confidence in Schussnig as an

honest broker. As chancellor, he must resign and be replaced by this guy, Seyss Ingvart, who is a Nazi. The interior minister. Yeah, who's the interior minister, who is our man. And if you don't do that, we will invade. Meanwhile, he sends a message to Mussolini. His go-between, bizarrely, is Prince Philip of Hesse. And Prince Philip carries this message to the Duce from Hitler that says, please stand back. Don't intervene this time. This is personal for me. This is my homeland. It will mean everything to me if you will let me do this. It's like a plaintive message. In the afternoon, Schussnig says, listen, fine, I'll postpone the referendum, but I'm not going to resign. Goering then rings this guy, Seyssenquart.

Seyssenquart, by the way, is a weed of a man and a puppet in all this. He's the kind of Nazi bigwig in Vienna. But he's just basically doing whatever the Nazis tell him to do. And they say to him, tell him that's not good enough. Seyssenquart is always saying, oh, but is it maybe good enough? You know, do I have to? And they force him. So he goes and says, look, you absolutely got to give the Nazis whatever they want or they will invade.

Doesn't he complain that he's being treated as no more than a girl telephone switchboard operator? He does indeed. He does indeed. Very sexist, Tom. Very sexist. Poor. But he still does it.

Yeah, he still does it. At that, Shusnig thinks, well, I'll go to the British. And Lord Halifax, who is the foreign secretary, he sends him a really encouraging telegram. The telegram reads, his majesty's government are unable to guarantee protection. In other words, you're on your own. So do you. You're on your own. We don't care. So Schussnig resigns. There's then a bit of a standoff while the Austrian president, whose guy called Wilhelm Mikicklash is deciding whether or not to appoint the nazi guy or not meanwhile in the streets in vienna loads of people have turned it into the streets a kind of nazi mob they're all shouting they're smashing up jewish shops they are turning exactly already they are throwing bricks through jewish shop windows

okay occupying provincial government buildings the atmosphere is completely sort of hysterical and chaotic. And that evening, the Austrian president gives in. He says, I'll appoint the Nazi guy as federal chancellor. But by this point, there's nothing the Austrians can do to stop the inevitable. Because the whole thing is just crumbling away. Exactly, because the whole thing is crumbling. Hitler already has said to the army, we're not even going to wait to find out what happens in Vienna.

Get ready to cross the border. You're crossing tonight. Meanwhile, Mussolini is considering Hitler's request. And at 10.30 that evening, Prince Philip of Hesse tells Hitler, he says, Mussolini says, go for it. He won't intervene. And Hitler, we always think of Hitler as sort of utterly cold-blooded and calculating, but he can be very emotional because he says to Prince Philip, please tell Mussolini I will never forget him for this. Never, never, never, never, come what may. If he should ever need any help, he can be sure that do or die,

I will stick by him, come what may, even if the whole world rises against him. You know, he's gushing. Mussolini is kind of embarrassed, isn't he, about this? He is. Mussolini is very embarrassed. He gives quite a stiff and formal reply. Thank you very much for your note.

Exactly. Because I think if we see Hitler as just this utterly cruel, evil automaton, you miss the kind of... Well, the hysterical quality. Yeah, the hysterical, histrionic quality of his nature. He's a man who enjoys projecting spittle. He is. He is.

And there's a kind of... He can be sentimental about things. I mean, about dogs. Well, he's sentimental about animals. Yes, animals and little children. Exactly. And Austria. Well, and the destruction of Austria he's sentimental about rather than Austria per

se, because that is what his dream is, to destroy Austria because he sees it as a historical act of treachery so at 5 30 on the morning of saturday the 12th of march the german army crosses the border and the austrians have issued instructions there is to be no resistance at all and they are met by massive crowds people are throwing flowers at them people are excited now historians have debated is this just because there are a lot of nazis there is it because people are frightened or people just apolitical swept up in enthusiasm yeah is it exciting it's you know it's a change i mean it's incredibly exciting as a spectacle right yeah and they think wrongly we are going to join as equal partners in this fantastic new empire. I think they don't realize the extent to which Hitler sees them as

utterly subordinate. So a kind of England-Scotland kind of union. Exactly. But in fact, it's a complete absorption. Because at that point, Hitler is not actually thinking about an Anschluss. Even at that point, a complete absorption of Austria. He's actually thinking there'll be some kind of union between the two countries. So not necessarily absorbing Austria into the Reich straight away. Anyway, the troops continue into Austria. And that afternoon, just before four o'clock, Hitler himself crosses the Austrian border and he crosses at his own birthplace, which was on the border. His father, Alois, was a customs official. So it's a place called Braunau Amin.

And they're ringing the church bells. There are tens of thousands of people. So the little town's population has been swelled by fans who've come to see him. His car goes really, really slowly. So he doesn't spend much time in Braunau Amin because he's only really born there. He spends most of his time when he's only really born there. He spends most of his time when he's a child in Linz, the suburb of Linz. And is there a lot of kind of

Beatlemania-type behavior? Total Beatlemania behavior. Sobbing, weeping, cheering. So we talked about this in the episode that you did about Nuremberg rallies. Yeah. It's very Beatlemania. It takes him about four hours to drive

the relatively short distance to Linz. He gets there in the evening. The crowd is so thick in Linz, they can't really get through. The bells are ringing. You can't hear a word anybody is saying because people are screaming so loud. When Hitler goes out on the balcony of Linz Town Hall, he is crying. There are tears running down his cheeks. And he says this whole thing that he's saying a lot these days, Providence has chosen me to bring Austria into the Reich. I have fulfilled my mission. And his sense of emotion, his sense that Austria is welcoming what he is doing for it as he sees it, this changes his mind, doesn't it? Totally. It makes him think, actually, this is what the Austrians want. I'm going to absorb Austria completely into the body politic of

Germany. Exactly. Exactly. When we were researching this, I was thinking a lot about Hitler's psychology. He had been an idealistic boy, a dreamer who goes to all these Wagner operas, and the classic case of somebody who life doesn't match up to his dreams because he's so useless and he has this burning sense of resentment and this is the moment that probably deep down so many people dream of it's like going back to your old school yeah and all your former enemies bowing down before you yeah yeah it's a very common human fantasy that most people ultimately grow out of a little bit they maybe nurse it in a sort of silly way but for hitler i think this is a transcendent moment why he's crying there on the balcony he had been scorned

he hadn't got into the flipping art school in vienna, failed the exam. He'd been on the streets. He'd been nothing. And now he is, in his own mind, the greatest man in Austrian history. And people are crying in front of him with joy at his very presence. And so what does this mean in practical terms for the future of Austria? Well, the pure practicalities, Tom, there's more hotel-based action. Tremendous. Which I know you always enjoy.

They go to the Hotel Weizsinger. There aren't enough bedrooms. It's all a bit of a shambles. The restaurant can't cope, can't produce enough food for them. It's all very unexpected. All those elderly waiters.

Yeah, very faulty towers. Yeah. Bringing out dumplings and goulash and schnitzels and stuff. Yeah, the schnitzels off. There's only one telephone in the hotel.

So communications with Berlin are very difficult. But basically, Hitler says, you know what? We won't bother with all the long business of union. So he sends instructions, send lawyers to the hotel. We'll draft the law in the hotel. And as mad as it sounds, the next day, which is a Sunday, civil servants and lawyers pitch up and they literally sit downstairs in the kind of restaurant in the lobby of the hotel drafting the laws that will incorporate austria into the right so austria

would just become a german province basically just become a german province just like anything else like bavaria had done exactly so it's nationhood its sense of distinctiveness which of course has deep historical roots because it's always been the hapsburg heartland and it's of course very catholic when so much of germany's protestant that will all just be swept away so meanwhile while they're drafting the laws and the sort of waiters are running around them increasingly agitated hitler goes off to his parents grave puts flowers on his parents grave he goes to look at his old childhood house. He meets some old neighbors. It's all, you know, so what have you been up to? Yeah. But it's very, for him, it's

very, very moving. Of course. He sends Mussolini another message. Mussolini, I will never forget you for this. Mussolini again, slightly stiff and embarrassed reply. My stance was determined by the friendship between our two countries sealed in the Axis. And that evening, the Austrians just accept the law. The army is sworn into Hitler. They basically give him, totally give him. Sure, we'll be just another part of Germany like any other part. Next day, Monday, he goes to Vienna.

Okay, so Vienna, Red Vienna. Yeah. Lots of socialists. Yeah. Lots of Jews. Yes. What's the reaction. Yeah. Lots of Jews. Yes. What's the reaction there? Total ecstasy.

We'll just come into the socialists and the Jews in a second, Tom, because it's really important that you mention that. But on the face of it, total Beatlemania ecstasy. A quarter of a million people in the streets. Now, this has slightly been rigged. A lot of workplaces and factories have closed, and employees have been told they will be paid anyway, but they have to go to join the crowd.

But all of that said, even Ian Kershaw, who really goes into all this, says the enthusiasm is not contrived. The enthusiasm is genuine. Hitler is on the balcony once again of the Hotel Imperial, and then he gives a speech in the Heldenplatz. There are vast, vast crowds of youngsters who are screaming and cheering and sobbing. Every Catholic church in the city is flying the swastika

on the orders of their local cardinal, Cardinal Initzer, who's the Archbishop of Vienna. They can't sleep, the Nazis, in the hotel. It's very Beatlemania. They can't sleep because people are outside cheering them and screaming and saying, we want to see the Fuhrer. Sending the chambermaids in to steal the sheets and snap them up and sell them as souvenirs and all that kind of thing.

Exactly. It's an extraordinary, extraordinary scene. And for Hitler, it's... Apotheosis, I suppose. Absolute apotheosis. Totally invigorating. So it won't be doing anything to stop his messiah complex? Not at all.

He eventually goes back to Berlin. They have a big plebiscite, both in Germany and in Austria. Both results, 99% plus. Oh, yes. You know, there's obviously the usual intimidation and whatnot. Yeah. But, as Kershaw says, for the mass of the German people, Hitler once more seemed a statesman of extraordinary virtuoso talents.

Yeah, he has pulled off an extraordinary coup. And for the Austrians, they've kind of voted with great enthusiasm for this. Yeah. Beatlemania scenes, all this kind of thing. But as we said earlier, the Nazi high command are basically set on plundering Austria, aren't they?

Yeah. Yeah. So how long does it take the Austrians to realize what they've actually signed up to? said earlier the nazi high command are basically set on plundering austria aren't they yeah yeah so how long does it take the austrians to realize what they've actually signed up to weeks months maybe they're not equal partners at all they're merely the eastern march ostmark is what they're called and eventually in 1942 the ostmark itself is divided into two reich regions the alps and the danube so austria vanishes completely from the map. Austria completely vanishes from the map. The local Austrian Nazis, for whom this had been a moment long dreamed of, they end up being supplanted by people sent from Berlin. So a measure of poetic justice there then.

Yes, exactly. All the Austrian institutions, the railways, the banks, the postal service, everything else, the army, all these things. They lose their meaning, of course, and postal service, everything else, the army, all these things. They lose their meaning. Of course. And they end up being bossed around and treated like kind of country bumpkins. And the iron ore. And of course the iron ore, which Goering wanted.

That's taken to Germany. He gets his fat hands on it. He gets his fat hands on the gold in Vienna, the Viennese bank's gold, their foreign currency reserves, even art is taken. So the classic example of this, we alluded to this in the Nuremberg Rallys episodes, banks, gold, their foreign currency reserves, even art is taken. So the classic example of this, we alluded to this in the Nuremberg Morales episodes, the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire are taken from Vienna to Nuremberg. So they'd been moved from Nuremberg, hadn't they, to Vienna?

Yes. And now they get them back. So they won't be bothering with replicas anymore. All this kind of, you know, the Nazis moving in, removing industrial capacity, removing the gold reserves from the bank, plundering the art. This is the prototype for what will happen in the Nazi occupation of Europe during the Second World War, isn't it? So to that extent, the way that Austria after the war presents itself as the first victim

of the Nazi wars of conquest, I mean, it's not inaccurate. To that degree, it's not inaccurate. So obviously the cheering crowds don't sit easily. Yes, that's an embarrassment. Yeah. And then massive enthusiasm. But it's like being kind of swept off your feet by a very seductive boyfriend. Yes. And then finding that he's nicking all your money and beating you up. Yeah. To some extent it is and the beating up tom so let's

get into this overnight when the nazis moved in they took control of the austrian police records and they detained in one evening 21 000 people this is a scale of repression that astounds and horrifies Europe. Some people are killed. Lots of people, sort of Nazi critics, flee. Schuschnigg didn't flee and actually ended up in prison, didn't he, Tom? He ends up in a concentration camp, I think. Yeah, he ends up in a concentration camp. And he almost dies at the end of the war. But along with other kind of very distinguished prisoners, he escapes. He ends up as a professor in St. Louis. He becomes a US citizen. Yeah, he does.

Extraordinary. He does. I noticed that too. I thought, what a strange, very Kerensky kind of behavior. I wonder if they had academic conferences in America in the 1950s for all the people who previously run countries that have been taken over by dictators. Anyway, various other people are killed. And what about the Jews? The worst of the repression obviously falls on Austria's Jews. And

this is really where we start to get into the kind of the real darkness. So there are about 200,000 Jews in Austria and the vast, vast majority of them lived in Viennaienna now we talked right at the very beginning of our first nazi series about the intense anti-semitism that hitler had encountered as a young man in vienna in vienna before the first world war that it had a virulence and a venom that was well beyond anything in germany at the same time and the reaction to the Anschluss in Vienna is absolutely horrifying. So almost all Jewish-owned businesses in Vienna are taken over straight away. Jewish business leaders are killed. Companies like Deutsche Bank or IG Farben blithely,

you know, once they're dead, they take over their enterprises. And don't they get the Jewish heads of banks into cars and kind of chuck them out when they're going at 80 miles an hour yes absolutely right exactly the guy who runs the credit and stouts which is probably the biggest bank in central europe he was thrown as a car exactly right and the notorious scenes are that jews are made to scrub anti-nazi slogans from the streets while people watch and kind of throw cold water over them and flake acid at them and horrible scenes. Vienna was a very political city. So it was covered with political graffiti. A lot of it, you know, Schussnig's partisans, he had controlled the biggest party in Austria. So there's loads of pro-Schussushnik graffiti. Groups of Jews, men and women, young and old,

kids, the elderly, whatever, they're dragged out by so-called cleaning squads and they are forced to scrub these slogans. And groups of people, you can see photos, you can read the newspaper reports, they're horrific. Groups of people would stand around them, jeering at them, kicking them, punching them, spitting at them, throwing cold, punching them, spitting at them, throwing cold water over them, as you say. There was a guy called George Gedja, who was the correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. And he wrote these really, really harrowing kind of dispatches from Vienna about the mobs of Nazis standing around these people, as you said, throwing acid at them and laughing at them. And these Nazis are Austrian. Austrian Nazis. Austrian Nazis. And frankly, Tom,

ordinary Austrians. Well, because there's a story, isn't there, of a guy looking out of a window and seeing a policeman beating up a Jew. Yeah. And he realizes that this is a policeman he's known all his life. Exactly, yeah. Didn't they have it in him? A guy called, he ends up being called George Clare because he moved to England.

He was called Georg Clare. And he wrote a book called Last Waltz in Vienna, which I will recommend to the listeners if they want to read more about this. You can completely understand why you wouldn't. And he describes, as you say, looking out of his window, seeing the faces contorted with hatred and the people he knows, their neighbors and things. A lot of Jews try to flee to the Czech border.

It's terrible. Thousands, they get onto the last trains and stuff, but people ambush them at the stations and are taking their property beating them up when they get to the czech border the czechs are turning them back so they're trying to get through the woods and stuff they're in kind of no man's land loads of people kill themselves hundreds of people yeah suicide rate massively goes up because it's obvious to a lot of people at this point a lot of jewish people well i mean most famously sigmund freud has already left yes that you know we are plunged

into this unbelievable nightmare yeah so tom just to wrap up because i know we've been talking at great length there's one terrible omen of the future which is that in the face of all this the nazis think you know let's kick all these jews out because they've now got an extra 200 000 jews which is about the number that's already emigrated from germany yes roughly right so they're basically now back to square one as far as they see it yeah and they set up a central agency for jewish emigration that's going to work in collaboration with some hand-picked jewish leaders and the guy they get to run that is a man from the ss and he is a man called adolf eichmann who had lived in austria before the first world war eichmann is fanatical but he's also

incredibly methodical and he works you know he's a bureaucrat okay and in his compiling of lists and all of this you can see a pattern that will recur in an even more sinister form during the second world war yeah one other quick point before we pack up this obviously has a colossal impact on hitler himself he returns more popular than ever in germany greeted with an enormous overwhelming explosion of joy He has fulfilled almost all of the ambitions now of German nationalists, as Ian Kershaw says, down to and including the Anschluss. Hitler had proved a consummate nationalist politician. So all of the stuff he's done so far is what any militaristic, authoritarian, conservative, sort of irredentist german leader would have done

and he's done it without provoking war without provoking war an astounding achievement and yet yeah the whole thing about hitler is that it is not enough he has got more stuff lined up and even as this is ending within days he says to goebbels right czechoslovakia next right okay you talked about how jews are strong-armed into emigration or are trying to escape across the border and committing suicide there or being shot or whatever just to go back to another famous group of exiles from Germany, the von Trapps, who we began with. Yeah. Anyone who has seen the film will remember that they go by foot over the Alps into Switzerland. That is not actually what happened.

No. Because Georg von Trapp, you know, he was an army officer. He wasn't Jewish. There were no restrictions on his travel whatsoever. So even though the German high command were very keen that he go to Bremenhaven and join the Kriegmarine there, he doesn't. He takes his family. They get on a train and they go to Italy. And from there they go to London and from there to the United States. So it's easy for some people to get out of austria and less easy for others yeah because as you say had he been jewish it would have been a very different story i mean a totally different story

yeah so in the next episode we're going to try and see the world through nazi eyes we're going to try and understand how the nazis themselves viewed what they were doing as being the right thing to do you know they weren't sitting around saying are we the baddies? And then we are going to look at what is happening to Jews in Germany, the escalation of laws that are brought in against them, and look at the process of emigration and of persecution, which Dominic, your account of what happened in Vienna is a kind of horrific prefiguring of what we'll be talking about in the context of Germany. So a slightly grim ending, Tom, to this week's episode, but a grim subject. Yeah, but very important subject. Exactly. Important and fascinating. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early