Anschluß

Literally "annexation", by convention,the Anschluss was the March 1938 Nazi takeover of Austria by measures short of full-scale war. Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, was always a goal of Nazi Pan-German nationalism The process accelerated with the Austro-German Agreement of July 1936, with a secret annex that gave additional power to the Austrian Nazis. They steadily increased subversion and terrorism throughout 1937, and Austrian police captured documents indicating they planned to stage a revolt in the spring of 1938, which could provide a pretext for German intervention.

Former German Chancellor Fritz von Papen had been a special representative to Austrian Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg. Von Papen revealed that one of the captured documents had called for his own killing by German agents, again as a pretext for intervention. Ironically, von Papen had escaped death in the Night of the Long Knives purge in 1934. Hans Lammers informed him, on 4 February, that he was fired, along with Constantin von Neurath and who did not give total support to Hitler, such as War Minister Werner von Blomberg and Army Chief of Staff Werner von Fritsch. Von Papen began keeping, in Switzerland, secret copies of his correspondence with Hitler.

Early occupation

Shirer, reporting from Vienna, reported the antisemitism of the Austrian Nazis as worse than anything he had seen in Germany, characterized by looting and sadism. Reinhard Heydrich, assisted by Adolf Eichmann, set up an Office of Jewish Emigration, by which would-be emigrants could buy permission to leave. They also creaed Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria proper, to avoid the difficulty of transporting Jews to Germany. ==References==\