Austria in The Time of National Socialism - Integration Into The Third Reich

Integration Into The Third Reich

On March 15 Hitler, who had spent the previous two days in his birthtown of Braunau am Inn, made a triumphal entry into Vienna and gave a speech on Heldenplatz in front of tens of thousands of cheering people, in which he boasted his "greatest accomplishment": "Als Führer und Kanzler der deutschen Nation und des Reiches melde ich vor der deutschen Geschichte nunmehr den Eintritt meiner Heimat in das Deutsche Reich." Translation: "As leader and chancellor of the German nation and Reich I announce to German history now the entry of my homeland into the German Reich." Ernst Kaltenbrunner from Upper Austria, sentenced to death in 1946 at the Nuremberg trials, was promoted SS-Brigadeführer and the leader of the SS-upper section Austria. Beginning on March 12 and during the subsequent weeks 72,000 people were arrested, primarily in Vienna, among them politicians of the First Republic, intellectuals and above all Jews. Jewish institutions were shuttered.

For April 10 a referendum was set for the already accomplished annexation. In those weeks leading to the referendum a kind of propaganda took place all over Austria in a way that had been never seen before. Hitler himself, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and many other leading figures of the Nazi regime had very squeamishly scheduled appearances in public to hold speeches. The controlled press and radio had no other topic than YES to the "Reunion of German and Austria". Prominent Austrians like Cardinal Theodor Innitzer who signed a declaration of the bishops with Heil Hitler, and the Social Democrat Karl Renner promoted the approval. According to official records 99.73% voted YES in Austria and in Germany 99.08 voted for the annexation.

Excluded from the referendum were about 8% of the Austrian voters: about 200,000 Jews and roughly 177,000 Mischlinge (people with both Jewish and "Aryan" parents) and all those who had already been arrested for "racial" or political reasons.

In many places assaults took place against Austrian Jews during those weeks. Many were dispossessed of their shops and apartments, into which moved those who had robbed them, assisted by the SA and fanatics. Jews were forced to put on their best clothes and, on their hands and knees with brushes, to clean the sidewalks of anti-Anschluss slogans.

Being 8% of the population in the German Empire, 14% of the SS members were of Austrian origin. 40% of the staff in the Extermination camps and 70% of Adolf Eichmann's staff came from Austria.

Josef Bürckel, previously Reichskommissar for the reunion of the Saar (protectorate), was appointed "Reichskommissar for the reunification of Austria with the German Empire".