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The idea of an {{lang|de|Anschluss}} (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "[[German Question|Greater Germany]]"){{efn|After the [[Prussia]]n-dominated German nation-state was created in 1871 without Austria, the German question was still very active in most parts of the ethnic German lands of the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and German empires; the Austrian pan-Germans were in favour of a Pan-German vision of Austria joining Germany in order to create a "Greater Germany" and the Germans inside the German Empire were in favour of all Germans being unified into a single state.{{sfn|Low|1974|p=3}}}} arose after the [[unification of Germany|1871 unification of Germany]] excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated [[German Empire]]. It gained support after the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian Empire]] fell in 1918. The new [[Republic of German-Austria]] attempted to form a union with Germany, but the 1919 [[Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)|Treaty of Saint Germain]] and [[Treaty of Versailles]] forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" ({{lang|de|Deutschösterreich}}); they also stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the [[Sudetenland]]. This left Austria without most of the territories it had ruled for centuries and amid economic crisis.
By the 1920s, the {{lang|de|Anschluss}} proposal had strong support in both Austria and Germany,{{sfn|Bukey|2002|p=11}} particularly to many Austrian citizens of the political left and center. One vehement supporter was [[Otto Bauer]], the prominent Social Democrat leader who served as Austria's Foreign Minister after the war. Support for unification with Germany came mainly from the belief that Austria, stripped of its imperial land, was not viable economically.<ref name="shepherd1">{{cite book|last=Brook-Shepherd |first=Gordon |title=Anschluss: The Rape of Austria |date=1963 |pages=15 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-81667-5 |doi-broken-date=12 April 2024 |isbn=978-1-349-81669-9 }}</ref>
In early 1938, under increasing pressure from pro-unification activists, Austrian chancellor [[Kurt Schuschnigg]] announced that there would be a referendum on a possible union with Germany versus maintaining Austria's sovereignty to be held on 13 March. Portraying this as defying the popular will in Austria and Germany, Hitler threatened an invasion and secretly pressured Schuschnigg to resign. A day before the planned referendum
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Hitler's forces suppressed all opposition. Before the first German soldier crossed the border, [[Heinrich Himmler]] and a few [[Schutzstaffel]] (SS) officers landed in Vienna to arrest prominent representatives of the First Republic, such as [[Richard Schmitz]], [[Leopold Figl]], [[Friedrich Hillegeist]], and [[Franz Olah]]. During the few weeks between the ''Anschluss'' and the plebiscite, authorities rounded up Social Democrats, Communists, other potential political dissenters, and [[History of the Jews in Austria|Austrian Jews]], and imprisoned them or sent them to [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]]. Within a few days of 12 March, 70,000 people had been arrested. The disused northwest railway station in Vienna was converted into a makeshift concentration camp.<ref>Staff (28 March 1938) "Austria: 'Spring Cleaning'" ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''</ref> American historian Evan Burr Bukey warned that the plebiscite result needs to be taken with "great caution".{{sfn|Bukey|2002|p=38}} The plebiscite was subject to large-scale Nazi propaganda and to the abrogation of the voting rights of around 360,000 people (8% of the eligible voting population), mainly political enemies such as former members of left-wing parties and Austrian citizens of Jewish or Romani origin.<ref>{{cite web|author=Staff|date=ndg|url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005447|title=Austria|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Staff|date=ndg|url=https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/anschluss|title=Anschluss|publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]}}</ref><ref name="Austrian Resistance"/>{{sfn|Bukey|2002|p=38}}
The Austrians' support for the ''Anschluss'' was ambivalent; but, since the [[Social Democratic Party of Austria]] leader [[Karl Renner]] and the highest representative of the Roman Catholic church in Austria Cardinal [[Theodor Innitzer]] both endorsed the ''Anschluss'', approximately two-thirds of Austrians could be counted on to vote for it.{{sfn|Bukey|2002|p=38}} What the result of the plebiscite meant for the Austrians will always be a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, historians generally agree that it cannot be explained exclusively by simply either opportunism or the desire of socioeconomics and represented the genuine German nationalist feeling in Austria during the interwar period.{{sfn|Bukey|2002|pp=38–39}} Also, the general anti-Semitic consensus in Austria meant that a substantial amount of Austrians were more than ready to "fulfill their duty" in the "Greater German Reich".{{sfn|Bukey|2002|p=39}} However, British historian [[Donny Gluckstein]] notes that Austrian socialists reacted with "disgust" to Renner's endorsement of Anschluss, provoking a split in the [[SPÖ]]. Austrian left circles vehemently opposed Anschluss, and Renner's declaration prompted many to defect to Revolutionary Socialists under [[Otto Bauer]] or the [[KPÖ]].<ref name="gluckstein_137">{{cite book |last=Gluckstein |first=Donny |author-link=Donny Gluckstein |date=2012 |title=A People's History of the Second World War: Resistance Versus Empire |location=New York |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |page=137 |isbn=9781849647199}}</ref> The relevance of Innitzer's endorsement is also
According to Hungarian historian [[Oszkár Jászi]], writing in 1938, the idea of ''Anschluss'' was opposed amongst most political circles in Austria. Jászi noted that "the annihilation of the German labor movement showed to Austrian socialism what it could expect from an Anschluss under Nazi rule", while "Austrian Catholicism realized what its fate would be under a system which crushed the great Catholic Party of Germany, [[Catholic Center Party|the Centrum]]".<ref name="jaszi">{{cite journal |last1=Jászi|first1=Oszkár |author-link=Oszkár Jászi |date=September 1938 |title=Why Austria Perished |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/40981630 |journal=Social Research |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=304–327 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |jstor=40981630 |access-date=June 27, 2023}}</ref> It was also opposed by other groups, such as the Austrian Jews as well as "old Hapsburgist officers and officials and by a considerable part of Austrian capitalism". Most contemporary writers estimated that about two-thirds of Austrians wanted Austria to remain independent.<ref name="jaszi"/>
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The Nazis dissolved Jewish organisations and institutions, hoping to force Jews to emigrate. Their plans succeeded—by the end of 1941, 130,000 Jews had left Vienna, 30,000 of whom went to the United States. They left behind all of their property, but were forced to pay the [[Reich Flight Tax]], a tax on all émigrés from Nazi Germany; some received financial support from international aid organisations so that they could pay this tax. The majority of the Jews who had stayed in Vienna eventually became victims of the [[Holocaust]]. Of the more than 65,000 Viennese Jews who were deported to concentration camps, fewer than 2,000 survived.{{sfn|Pauley|2000|pages=297–298}}{{clear left}}
==
{{Main|1938 Austrian Anschluss referendum}}[[File:Stimmzettel-Anschluss.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Voting ballot from 10 April 1938. The ballot text reads "Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted on 13 March 1938, and do you vote for the party of our leader Adolf Hitler?" The large circle is labelled "Yes", the smaller "No".]]The ''Anschluss'' was given immediate effect by legislative act on 13 March, subject to ratification by a [[
While historians concur that the votes were accurately counted, the process was neither free nor secret. Officials were present directly beside the voting booths and received the voting ballot by hand (in contrast to a [[Secret ballot|secret vote]] where the voting ballot is inserted into a closed box). In some remote areas of Austria, people voted to preserve the independence of Austria on 13 March (in Schuschnigg's planned but cancelled
Austria remained part of Germany until the end of World War II. A provisional government in [[Allied-occupied Austria]] declared the ''Anschluss'' "null und nichtig" ([[null and void]]) on 27 April 1945.{{citation needed|date=March 2019}} Henceforth, Austria was recognized as a separate country, although it remained divided into [[Allied-occupied Austria|occupation zones]] and controlled by the [[Allied Commission#Austria|Allied Commission]] until 1955, when the [[Austrian State Treaty]] restored its sovereignty.
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==See also==
{{div col}}
* [[Areas annexed by Nazi Germany]]
* [[Austria–Germany relations]]
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* [[Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation|Russian annexation of Crimea]]
* [[Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts]]
{{div col end}}
==References==
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