Nazi Germany 1933 to 1939

Hitler Reveals War Plans

From the very beginning of his career until his dying day, Adolf Hitler had just two major goals. His primary goal was the forcible acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. Secondly, he desired some kind of final reckoning with the Jews.

The first steps toward Lebensraum occurred in 1935 when Hitler openly violated the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing military conscription and began rapidly rebuilding the German Army. Hitler then managed to negotiate a naval pact with Britain allowing Germany to have a Navy totaling 35 percent of Britain's fleet, along with a submarine fleet equal in size.

Hitler realized that world leaders were becoming increasingly nervous as Germany rearmed, given the country's role in the catastrophic World War some twenty years earlier. He continually reassured diplomats, and anyone else who would listen, that Germany's military buildup was solely a defensive measure designed to put the country on an equal footing with surrounding nations. After all, he would ask, didn't Germany have a right to defend itself like every other nation?

Hitler would answer his own question in the affirmative while in the same breath promising that Germany would never break the peace. To emphasize the point, Hitler uttered some remarkable statements concerning the horrors of war, which he had witnessed first-hand as a front line soldier. On May 21, 1935, he declared during a major speech: "The blood shed on the European continent in the course of the last three hundred years bears no proportion to the national result of the events. In the end, France had remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland, and Italy Italy. What dynastic egotism, political passion and patriotic blindness have attained in the way of apparently far-reaching political changes by shedding rivers of blood has, as regards national feeling, done no more than touched the skin of nations. It has not substantially altered their fundamental characters. If these states had applied merely a fraction of their sacrifices to wiser purposes the success would certainly have been greater and more permanent."

The leaders of France and England, and Hitler's smaller next-door neighbors, were naturally quite impressed by such sentiments. Years later, they would find out that on the very day Hitler spoke those words he had also approved a secret Reich Defense Law which put Germany on a war economy and revived the Army's General Staff organization, which had been banned after World War I.

Most diplomats mistakenly took Hitler at his word and thought he was a man they could reason with, perhaps even trust. This, of course, was precisely what Hitler wanted them to think. He had them all at a distinct disadvantage, since they could never actually know what was in his mind. They didn't know they were dealing with a man who routinely used lies as a tool to achieve his long-range goals.

Hitler could look anyone in the eye and lie with the utmost sincerity. He would also lie to the whole world via radio broadcasts, endlessly proclaiming his desire for peace, even his love of peace, all the while secretly preparing for another catastrophic war.

The people of Germany and many of the Reich's top leaders had no idea of the depth of their Führer's cynicism, but they would all find out sooner or later. For Germany's top Army leaders that revelation came on November 5, 1937, when Hitler called a secret conference and bluntly outlined his plans to acquire Lebensraum at the expense of other nations.

The meeting was convened inside the Reich Chancellery in Berlin at 4:15 p.m. Incredibly, earlier on that same day, Hitler had met with Poland's ambassador and signed a treaty assuring that Germany would respect Poland's territorial rights.

Present at the secret afternoon conference were Germany's two Army commanders; Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the Commander in Chief of the German Armed Forces, and General Werner von Fritsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army. Also in attendance was Navy Chief Erich Raeder, along with Hermann Göring who headed Germany's new Air Force (among his many other duties). Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath was there, along with Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, Hitler's military adjutant, who took the complete minutes of the meeting which has come to be known as the Hossbach Conference or Hossbach Memorandum.

Hitler began the four hour-long meeting by asking each of the men to swear an oath of secrecy. He then informed them that in the event of his untimely death the following exposition should be regarded as his last will and testament.

He started the exposition by explaining his theory of Lebensraum, stating that Germany had "a tightly packed racial core" and that the Germans were entitled to "greater living space than in the case of other peoples."

"The history of all ages - the Roman Empire and the British Empire - had proved that expansion could only be carried out by breaking down resistance and taking risks...there had never been spaces without a master...the attacker always comes up against a possessor," Hitler declared. "The question for Germany ran: where could she achieve the greatest gain at the lowest cost?"

He pointed out two major obstacles; "...two hate inspired antagonists, Britain and France, to whom a German colossus in the center of Europe was a thorn in the flesh..."

"Germany's [Lebensraum] problem could only be solved by means of force," Hitler said, but "there remain still to be answered the questions 'when' and 'how'..."

Hitler wanted to resolve the Lebensraum issue by 1943 to 1945 at the very latest to guard against military obsolescence, the aging of the Nazi leadership, and, "it was while the rest of the world was still preparing its defenses that we were obliged to take the offensive."

Although Hitler's ultimate goal was to acquire Lebensraum in the East, namely Russia, he focused the entire conference on his first objectives, the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia to protect Germany's eastern and southern flanks. Hitler outlined three strategies to achieve this, each one designed to capitalize on the military and political weaknesses of France and Britain.

In the first scenario, Hitler would wait until 1943 when rearmament was complete and France and Britain would be heavily outgunned. In the second, he would act sooner by keeping a close eye on France's internal political problems, waiting for a chance to strike at Czechoslovakia in the event that France was weakened by a major crisis such as a civil war. In the third, he would strike as early as 1938 at both Austria and Czechoslovakia if France got bogged down in a military conflict with some other country, such as Germany's new ally, Fascist Italy.

Hitler's casual acceptance of the immense risks of starting a large-scale war in Europe shocked those in attendance, especially Blomberg and Fritsch who, according to Hossbach's notes, "repeatedly emphasized the necessity that Britain and France must not appear in the roles of our enemies."

They were not objecting on any moral grounds to Hitler's war plans but merely out of practical consideration. Germany, in their opinion, was far from being ready for war, and even by 1943 would not be adequately armed.

Following the conference, an overwhelmed Neurath went home and suffered a series of heart attacks. Blomberg and Fritsch, meanwhile, maintained their steadfast opposition to Hitler's plans. Their reaction was completely unacceptable to the Führer and he decided they would both have to go. To dump the two generals, he would rely on the expert services of his masters of treachery, Himmler and Heydrich.

Hitler Becomes Army Commander

A few days before Christmas in 1937, Adolf Hitler attended the funeral of General Erich Ludendorff, the famed World War I military leader and one time Nazi supporter. At the memorial service Hitler chose not to speak, not wanting to utter any words of praise for a man who had come to despise him.

Ludendorff had participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch fourteen years earlier and never forgave Hitler for scooting away amid the gunfire that erupted. When President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ludendorff sent Hindenburg a telegram saying he had just "handed over our sacred German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I prophesy to you this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation..."

Ludendorff, along with Germany's other senior generals were men of the old school, born into aristocratic Prussian families with long military traditions, knowing even in childhood they would one day command battalions of soldiers just as their fathers and grandfathers had.

Among this closed society, Adolf Hitler would always be an outsider, the man referred to by Hindenburg as the "Austrian corporal." Although the Führer might be admired by millions, he would never be fully accepted by the upper echelons of his own General Staff. Hitler, of course, knew where he stood with them and he tolerated their quiet disdain as long as they remained useful to him.

However, by the beginning of 1938, it seemed the old-school generals lacked the nerve to go along with the Führer's ambitious plans to grab more living space for the German people. During the risky march into the Rhineland a few years earlier they had repeatedly urged Hitler to withdraw his troops out of fear the French might attack. Both during and after the Hossbach conference, in which Hitler first revealed his war plans, they expressed great fear that the quest for Lebensraum would plunge Germany into a new European war with catastrophic consequences.

But Hitler didn't care about consequences. He was only interested in results. And any attempts to get him to change his mind were a complete waste of time. The generals didn't realize they were dealing with a man who never changed his mind once he made a firm decision and would do anything to achieve a desired goal.

For Hitler, the moment had arrived to clean house, to replace the crusty old generals with younger men eager to serve their Führer and follow orders, regardless of the consequences. The two highest ranking officers in Germany at this time were hold-overs from the days of President Hindenburg; Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the Commander in Chief of the German Armed Forces, and General Werner von Fritsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army. These stiff-lipped men with their rigid codes of honor were about to be toppled by that most vile of all things from their point of view, personal scandals involving sex.

Blomberg was the first to fall. He was a lonely widower in his sixties whose first wife had died in 1932. He fell in love with and subsequently proposed to his secretary, a Fräulein half his age named Erna Gruhn. However, since she was from a lowly working class background, Blomberg worried over how such a marriage would be received among his peers. He decided to ask Hermann Göring for his opinion and was duly relieved when Göring said there would be no problem. After all, Göring told him, he had married a divorced actress himself.

And so the wedding took place on January 12, 1938. It was a private ceremony held in the War Ministry building witnessed by both Göring and Hitler. The happy newlyweds then departed for a honeymoon in Italy. But while they were away, all kinds of nasty rumors began to surface about the bride's past. In Berlin, a police file was soon discovered bearing her name and was brought to the attention of Berlin's police chief, Graf von Helldorf.

Helldorf, a former Army officer himself, decided to bring it to General Wilhelm Keitel. However, Keitel promptly informed him that he had no desire to get involved in such matters and suggested that he bring the file to Göring instead, which Helldorf did.

Göring read the file and was absolutely delighted to learn that the new wife of the Commander in Chief of the German Armed Forces had a police record as a prostitute and had also posed for porno photos, which were included in the file. Göring knew this would mean the end of Blomberg's career, with the possibility that he might succeed him. Thus he brought the file to Hitler on January 25 and stood back as the Führer exploded with rage at having been a witness at the marriage of an ex-prostitute.

Now it was time to confront Blomberg, who had just returned to Berlin. Göring rushed off to see him at his office. Blomberg, up to this point, had absolutely no idea as to what was happening. Upon hearing the shocking news, Blomberg immediately offered to get a divorce to save his career. Göring told him a divorce would never do since he had shamed the entire officer class.

Later that day, Hitler summoned Blomberg to the Reich Chancellery and promptly sacked him, after promising that he would restore him to duty when the controversy faded. Blomberg went back to Italy and resumed an extended honeymoon with his now-scandalized bride, then retired to a village in Bavaria. He was never recalled to service by Hitler. And despite all that happened, he stayed loyal to his wife till the end.

The Blomberg scandal was mild compared to the next one, a frame-up by Himmler and Heydrich that toppled General Werner von Fritsch, Commander in Chief of the Army. Fritsch was known to have a contemptuous attitude toward Himmler and his black-coated SS. Himmler thus looked for any opportunity to humble this proud member of the officer corps. Himmler was aided in his treachery by Göring who hoped to benefit from Fritsch's downfall.

On the same day that Blomberg had been ruined, Göring had given Hitler a Gestapo file provided by Himmler and Heydrich. The file told a sordid tale of General Fritsch, a life-long bachelor, engaging in homosexual conduct in a back alley in 1935. Supposedly, an ex-convict, who specialized in spying on illicit sex acts and blackmailing the participants, had witnessed Fritsch during a tryst at a Berlin train station. According to the file, he blackmailed Fritsch for years afterward. When the file was shown to Hitler, his military adjutant, Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, happened to be present. Out of Army loyalty, he rushed off to tell General Fritsch, despite being warned by Hitler not to discuss the matter with anyone. Fritsch, upon being hearing the allegations, flatly denied everything.

The next morning, Hossbach courageously told Hitler about his discussion with Fritsch and repeated the general's strong denial. Hossbach also urged Hitler to give Fritsch a private hearing with a chance to clear his name. Surprisingly, Hitler agreed, and Fritsch was summoned to the Chancellery.

Fritsch arrived at the meeting that evening to find Himmler and Göring already there waiting for him. Hitler then recited the sex-blackmail allegations and gave Fritsch an opportunity to respond. Fritsch once again denied everything. But now, Himmler confronted Fritsch with a surprise witness, the blackmailer himself, a disreputable character named Hans Schmidt who proceeded to contradict Fritsch, claiming that he recognized Fritsch as the officer he had seen in the back alley at the train station. Schmidt also claimed he had successfully blackmailed Fritsch since that night.

General Fritsch was so overcome by this bizarre turn of events that he was unable to utter a single word, which Hitler took as a sign of guilt. Hitler then asked him to resign on the spot. But Fritsch, after regaining his composure and his pride, refused outright. Instead he demanded a trial by a military court of honor. Hitler responded to this by placing him on indefinite leave.

A preliminary Army court of inquiry quickly uncovered the true story behind the frame-up. Schmidt, the blackmailer, had indeed caught an Army officer having sex at the train station, but the officer had been named Frisch, not Fritsch, and was a now-retired cavalry man. The blackmailer had been pressured under threat of death by Heydrich's agents to frame General Fritsch.

Meanwhile, rumors surfaced in Berlin that Army leaders, outraged at the shabby treatment of their top commanders, were contemplating a move against the entire Nazi hierarchy, possibly on January 30, the fifth anniversary of Hitler's coming to power, when the Reichstag would assemble to hear Hitler speak.

The Nazis abruptly canceled the Reichstag meeting, giving credibility to the rumors. At Gestapo headquarters there were concerns the Army might even attack the place in an attempt break the power of Himmler and Heydrich.

But in reality, the Army leaders had no plans to do anything on January 30, partly out of fear of the consequences and also out of dogged devotion to their oath of loyalty. Hitler responded to their hesitation by seizing the opportunity to exercise his power. On February 4, 1938, he convened a meeting of his Cabinet and had them promulgate a decree stating: "From now on I take over personally the command of the whole armed forces."

He abolished the entire War Ministry, replacing it with the new High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW) headed by himself with complete control of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The nominal post of OKW chief of staff was assigned to General Keitel. To replace Fritsch as Army commander, Hitler chose General Walther von Brauchitsch.

Göring, who had hoped to command the armed forces himself, was placated with a promotion to Field Marshal, becoming the highest ranking officer in the Reich. To the German people, Hitler announced that Blomberg and Fritsch had both resigned "for reasons of health." Along with their dismissals, Hitler sacked sixteen senior generals including von Rundstedt, von Kluge and von Kleist. Forty-four others were reassigned. Many of them would be brought back in the years ahead in what ultimately became a revolving door policy, with generals hired and fired at will by the Führer, whenever they displeased him.

The German armed forces were now in the hands of an amateur, a self-taught strategist whose actual battlefield experience involved serving as a dispatch runner during World War I. Although he had received the Iron Cross 1st Class for bravery, Hitler failed to received a promotion because he appeared to lack leadership potential. Military officers, with their innate understanding of men's character, didn't trust the Austrian corporal enough to make him a sergeant. Now, so many years later, they still didn't trust him, but they didn't have the nerve to oppose him.

Hitler likewise never trusted his generals, preferring to rely on his own gut instincts while surrounding himself with weak-willed yes-men such as Keitel. Hitler's hands-on style of military leadership would consist of two main habits; first, he took forever to make up his mind, constantly delaying big decisions while he waffled, even when the time element was critical; secondly, once he made up his mind, the decision became the unshakable will of the Führer, no matter how disastrous it proved to be, a fatal stubbornness that would send hundreds of thousands of German soldiers to their early graves.

Now, in the spring of 1938, most of the old conservative appointees from the Hindenburg era were unceremoniously dumped by Hitler. Along with the Army house cleaning, Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath was replaced by Joachim Ribbentrop. Hjalmar Schacht was replaced as Minister of Economics by Walther Funk. Some diplomatic house cleaning also took place. The ambassadors in Rome, Tokyo, along with Franz von Papen in Vienna, were all relieved.

In his diary, Ulrich von Hassell, who had been ousted as ambassador to Rome, penned his recollection of comments spoken to him by the now-exonerated Fritsch. "This man, Hitler, is Germany's destiny for good and for evil. If he now goes over the abyss, which Fritsch believes he will, he will drag us all down with him. There is nothing we can do." The future lay wide open for Hitler. The German nation and the entire armed forces were his to command. The time for Lebensraum had come. The initial target would be Austria, the first step down the path that would lead to a new world war.

Nazis Take Austria

Nineteen months would elapse from the day Hitler grabbed control of the German Army until the actual start of World War II. During those months, Hitler engaged in a kind of gangster diplomacy in which he bluffed, bullied, threatened, and lied to various European leaders in order to expand the borders of his Reich.

His very first victim was Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria, a country being torn apart from within by Nazi agitators and also feeling threatened from the outside by Germany's newfound military strength. Hoping for some sort of peaceful settlement with Hitler, Schuschnigg agreed to a face-to-face meeting at Berchtesgaden. The meeting was arraigned by Franz von Papen, the former ambassador to Austria.

On the chilly winter morning of February 12, 1938, Schuschnigg's car was met at the German-Austrian border by Papen, who joined him for the ride up to Hitler's spectacular mountaintop retreat. Papen informed Schuschnigg that Hitler was in a very good mood this morning. But, Papen added, Hitler hoped that Schuschnigg wouldn't mind if three of Germany's top generals were also present during the day's discussion.

Schuschnigg was somewhat taken aback by this, but it was too late to change anything now. He arrived at the steps of Hitler's villa and was greeted by the Führer himself. Standing behind Hitler were the three generals; Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command, Walter von Reichenau, Commander of Army troops along the German-Austrian border, and Air Force General Hugo Sperrle.

Hitler led Schuschnigg into his villa and up to the great hall on the second floor, a big room featuring a huge plate glass window with sweeping views of the Alps, and in the far distance, Austria itself. Schuschnigg, taking it all in, broke the ice with a little small talk about the view. But Hitler cut him right off. "We did not gather here to speak of the fine view or the weather!"

Thus began two hours of hell in which the quiet-spoken Austrian Chancellor was lambasted without mercy by the Führer. "You have done everything to avoid a friendly policy!" Hitler yelled. "The whole history of Austria is just one uninterrupted act of high treason...And I can tell you right now, Herr Schuschnigg, that I am absolutely determined to make an end of this. The German Reich is one of the great powers, and nobody will raise his voice if it settles its border problems."

After regaining his composure, Schuschnigg tried to settle down Hitler, telling him: "We will do everything to remove obstacles to a better understanding, as far as it is possible."

But Hitler didn't let up. "That is what you say!...But I am telling you that I am going to solve the so-called Austrian problem one way or the other...I have a historic mission, and this mission I will fulfill because Providence has destined me to do so...I have only to give an order and all your ridiculous defense mechanisms will be blown to bits. You don't seriously believe you can stop me or even delay me for half an hour, do you?"

Hitler pointed out that Austria was isolated diplomatically and could not halt a Nazi invasion. "Don't think for one moment that anybody on earth is going to thwart my decisions. Italy? I see eye to eye with Mussolini...England? England will not move one finger for Austria...And France?"

Hitler said France had the power to stop him during the Rhineland occupation but did nothing and that "now it is too late for France."

An exasperated Schuschnigg finally asked Hitler what his terms were. But Hitler cut him off again, rudely dismissing him now. "We can discuss that this afternoon."

By the afternoon, the 41-year-old Schuschnigg had aged about ten years. He was then introduced to Germany's new Foreign Minister, an amoral character named Joachim Ribbentrop who presented him with a two-page document containing Hitler's demands. All Nazis presently jailed in Austria were to be freed. The ban against the Austrian Nazi Party was to be lifted. Austrian lawyer, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a staunch Nazi supporter, was to become the new Minister of the Interior with full control of the police. In addition, Nazis were to be appointed as Minister of War and Minister of Finance with preparations made for the assimilation of Austria's entire economy into the German Reich. This was, Schuschnigg was told, the Führer's final demands and there could be no discussion. He was to sign immediately, or else.

Under such pressure, the Austrian Chancellor wobbled and said he would consider signing, but first sought assurances that there would be no further interference in Austria's internal affairs by Hitler. Ribbentrop, joined by Papen, gave friendly assurances that Hitler would indeed respect Austria's sovereignty if all his demands were met.

At this point, Schuschnigg was ushered back in to see Hitler. "You will either sign it as it is and fulfill my demands within three days, or I will order the march into Austria," Hitler told him.

Schuschnigg gave in and agreed to sign, but informed Hitler that under Austrian law only the country's president could ratify such a document and carry out the terms. And, he added, there was no guarantee the agreement would be accepted by Austria's president, the stubborn-minded Wilhelm Miklas.

"You have to guarantee it!!" Hitler exploded. But Schuschnigg said he simply could not. Hitler then rushed to the doorway and hollered out for General Keitel. Then he turned to Schuschnigg and abruptly dismissed him. Schuschnigg was taken to a waiting room, left to ponder what Hitler was saying to Keitel.

Schuschnigg didn't know he had just been the victim of an outright bluff. When Keitel arrived to ask for orders, a grinning Hitler told him: "There are no orders. I just wanted to have you here."

A half hour later, Schuschnigg was ushered back in to see Hitler. He was given three days to take the agreement back to Austria and get it signed by the president, or else.

Schuschnigg departed Berchtesgaden, accompanied during the ride back to the border by a somewhat embarrassed Papen. "You have seen what the Führer can be like at times," Papen consoled him. "But the next time I am sure it will be different. You know, the Führer can be absolutely charming."

Thus ended the first of what would be many diplomatic coups at Berchtesgaden. Like Schuschnigg, all of the heads of state and various diplomats arriving there would be at a terrible disadvantage. They were dealing with a man always willing to go the limit, willing to send in the troops and shed blood in order to get what he wanted.

Hitler knew that civilized men such as Schuschnigg, and those who followed, would readily compromise to prevent the loss of life. They would all learn too late that Hitler did not value life and that war was his ultimate goal.

Years earlier, Hitler had once confided to his friend Hermann Rauschning: "We must be prepared for the hardest struggle that a nation has ever had to face. Only through this test of endurance can we become ripe for the dominion to which we are called. It will be my duty to carry out this war regardless of losses. The sacrifice of lives will be immense. We all of us know what a world war means. As a people we shall be forged to the hardness of steel. All that is weakly will fall away from us. But the forged central block will last forever. I have no fear of annihilation. We shall have to abandon much that is dear to us and today seems irreplaceable. Cities will become heaps of ruins. Noble monuments of architecture will disappear forever. This time our sacred soil will not be spared. But I am not afraid of this."

Hitler's Germany was already well on the road to war. New weapons were being manufactured day and night. The whole economy had been placed on a war footing under Göring's Four Year Plan. Germany's youth, meanwhile, was being hardened like steel via the Hitler Youth paramilitary organization which elevated Hitler to god-like status and placed supreme value on duty and sacrifice. Young people were taught that the life of the individual, their life, was not important. Duty to the Führer and Fatherland was all that mattered.

Now, in mid-February 1938, Hitler had sent the Austrian Chancellor back home to convince President Miklas to ratify the ultimatum. But the stubborn Miklas refused to accept all of the demands. He was willing to amnesty the jailed Nazis but not to hand over the police to Nazi sympathizer Seyss-Inquart.

Meanwhile, Hitler ordered General Keitel to conduct military maneuvers near the Austrian border to make it appear an invasion was imminent. The bluff worked its magic and President Miklas soon caved in. He granted a general amnesty for all Nazis in Austria and appointed Seyss-Inquart as Minister of the Interior with full control of the police. Seyss immediately rushed off to Germany to see Hitler and receive his instructions.

On the night of February 20, Hitler gave a speech in Berlin that was also broadcast throughout Austria. He depicted Austrian Nazis as a persecuted minority, saying it was "intolerable for a self-conscious world power to know that at its side are co-racials who are subjected to continuous suffering because of their sympathy and unity with the whole German race and ideology." After the speech, Nazis throughout Austria took to the streets amid wild shouts of 'Sieg Heil!' and 'Heil Hitler!'

Chancellor Schuschnigg, having regained his nerve to some degree, responded to Hitler four days later via a speech of his own in Vienna. He said Austria had conceded enough to the Nazis and would never give up its independence. "Thus far and no further," he declared. The line had been drawn.

But Austria was being eaten alive from within by the emboldened Nazi agitators. Mobs brazenly tore down the red-white-red Austrian flag and raised the swastika banner while police, under Seyss' control, stood by and watched.

The escalating political unrest soon caused economic panic. People rushed to banks and withdrew all of their money. Overseas orders for goods and services were abruptly canceled. Tourists stayed home. A few outer provinces were even taken over by Austrian Nazis. In Vienna, Schuschnigg's government was beginning to fold under the pressure - just what Hitler and the Austrian Nazis had hoped for.

In a desperate gamble to halt the demise and to stave off Hitler, Schuschnigg announced there would be a national plebiscite on Sunday, March 13, allowing Austrians to vote on whether or not their country should remain independent from Germany.

Hitler, on hearing of this surprise announcement, flew into a rage. He decided on the spot to send in the German Army to prevent the vote. Plans for the invasion of Austria were hastily drawn up by General Keitel and General von Manstein and involved three Army corps and the Air Force.

But there was still a big problem for Hitler. He wasn't sure how Italy's powerful Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, would react to a German invasion of Austria. And so Hitler rushed off an emissary to Rome bearing a personal letter justifying the coming military action and pleading for Mussolini's approval. The letter included outrageously false claims that Austria and Czechoslovakia were both plotting to restore the old Hapsburg monarchy and attack Germany.

By Friday morning, March 11, Chancellor Schuschnigg had become aware of the pending invasion. At 2 p.m. that afternoon, he informed Seyss-Inquart in Vienna that the plebiscite would indeed be canceled to avoid any bloodshed. A telephone call was then placed by Seyss to Göring in Berlin informing him of Schuschnigg's decision. The Chancellor's position was hopelessly weakened and Göring immediately pounced on him like a tiger.

A series of telephone calls, amounting to diplomatic extortion, now ensued. First, Göring successfully badgered Schuschnigg into resigning, then he demanded that President Miklas appoint Seyss as the new Chancellor of Austria. But Miklas refused. Göring then issued an ultimatum that Seyss must be appointed as Chancellor or German troops would invade that very night. But Miklas stubbornly held out.

Hitler by now had enough of Austria's defiance. At 8:45 p.m., he ordered his generals to commence the invasion beginning at dawn the next day. Then came the news Hitler had been waiting to hear from Mussolini. Hitler was informed by telephone that Austria was considered "immaterial" to the Italian dictator. There would be no interference with the Nazi invasion.

"Tell Mussolini I will never forget him for this!" Hitler told his envoy on the telephone. "Never, never, never, no matter what happens...I shall stick to him whatever may happen, even if the whole world gangs up on him!"

Around midnight, President Miklas, realizing his own position was hopeless, appointed Seyss as the new Chancellor of Austria. At dawn on Saturday, March 12, 1938, German soldiers in tanks and armored vehicles roared across the German-Austrian border on schedule. They met no resistance and in most places were welcomed like heroes. Many of Austria's seven million ethnic Germans had longed to attach themselves to the rising star of Germany and its dynamic Führer, a son of Austrian soil.

When news of the invasion reached Britain and France, they reacted just as they had when Hitler occupied the Rhineland a few years earlier. They did nothing. In France, internal political problems once again prevented any military response. England, now led by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had already indicated it would pursue a policy of appeasement to preserve the peace. Making matters worse, Austria, proud and defiant in its hour of need, never formally requested any outside assistance.

In Germany, the Saturday editions of all Nazi newspapers printed a phony telegram supposedly sent by Chancellor Seyss to Berlin asking "the German government to send German troops as soon as possible" to restore order. There were also faked reports by Goebbels regarding rioting in Vienna and street fights involving Communists. This was the version of events Hitler presented to the world, that the Austrians themselves, desperate to restore order, had requested military assistance from Germany.

Aware that his troops were getting fantastic welcomes, Hitler decided to accompany his soldiers into his birthplace at Braunau am Inn and then on to Linz, where he had been a schoolboy. He also visited his parents' grave site at Leonding and laid a wreath.

At Linz he gave an emotional speech declaring: "If Providence once called me forth from this town to be the leader of the Reich, it must in doing so have charged me with a mission, and that mission could only be to restore my dear homeland to the German Reich."

Hitler thus ordered a law drafted providing for immediate Anschluss (union) of Austria with Germany. The next day, Sunday, March 13, the law was approved by the Austrian government led by Seyss. The formal announcement was then made to the world. Austria had ceased to exist. It was now a province of the German Reich. Hitler himself shed tears of joy when he was presented with the actual Anschluss document.

On Monday afternoon, he made his grand entry into Vienna, the city he had known so many years earlier as a down and out tramp. He stayed at the Hotel Imperial, the same hotel where he once worked as a half-starved day laborer, shoveling snow off the sidewalk outside the entrance and respectfully removing his cap as wealthy guests came and went. As a poor youth he could never go inside. Today he was the guest of honor.

Upon returning to Germany, Hitler scheduled another plebiscite, just as he had done after occupying the Rhineland. The people of Germany and Austria were now asked to approve the Anschluss. On April 10, ninety-nine percent voted 'Ja,' with most afraid to ever vote no, knowing their vote might easily be discovered.

The Nazi occupation of Austria was marked by an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, the likes of which had not even been seen in Germany. Vienna was home to about 180,000 Jews. Throughout the city, Jewish men and women were grabbed at random by Nazis and forced to scrub walls and sidewalks clean of any pro-independence slogans. Other humiliations including cleaning public toilets and the latrines in SS barracks with sacred Hebrew prayer cloths. Thousands were also jailed for no reason while police allowed open looting of Jewish homes and businesses.

SS Leader Heinrich Himmler, along with Reinhard Heydrich, had accompanied Hitler into Vienna. They quickly realized Jews there would pay just about anything to exit the country. Heydrich then set up an Office for Jewish Emigration run by an Austrian SS man named Adolf Eichmann which extorted money and valuables from Jews in return for their freedom. This office was so successful that it became the model for one set up in Germany.

Himmler also established the first concentration camp outside Germany at Mauthausen, located near Linz. About 120,000 persons would be worked to death there in the camp's granite quarry or 'shot while attempting escape.'

As for Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the man who had defied Hitler, he was arrested by the Gestapo and spent several years in a variety of Nazi concentration camps including Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

Hitler had taken Austria without firing a single shot. Czechoslovakia next door now trembled at the thought that it was surrounded on three sides by the German Army. Hitler wasted no time in pressing his advantage. He began to consider plans for the occupation of the Sudetenland, the western portion of Czechoslovakia home to about three million ethnic Germans.

A month earlier, Hermann Göring had assured the nervous Czech government, "I give you my word of honor that Czechoslovakia has nothing to fear from the Reich."