The union was widely popular amongst the Austrians. Hitler's vision of a big powerful Reich had appealed to them too.
Hitler gets a standing ovation in the Reichstag after he announces the union of Austria with Germany. 1938
German police marches through the Tyrolean town of Imst during the Anshluss
Germans move into Salzburg
Tyrolean peasants wave the swastika to welcome German troops
Upper Austria. The Germans move in.
German and Austrian soldiers dismantle a border post. March 15, 1938.
These Austrian girls are full of joy in Salzburg. Advertisement
Austrians welcomes the German soldiers
Vienna welcomes the Germans
March 13, 1938. Hitler triumphantly enters Vienna.
Hitler with Seyss Inquart the governor of Austria. He was Hitler's man in Austria. Hitler had earlier forced Schusnigg, the Austrian Chancellor to resign in favor of Seyss Inquart. After the Union he was made a governor of the new province of the Reich.
The darker side of the union. Hitherto safe and prosperous Jews in Austria began to be persecuted. Here they are made to wash the roads of Vienna.
Jewish property was confiscated and the expulsion of Jews from Austria began
In the almost tribal mentality exhilaration that even these Austrian girls felt forgotten was the persecution of the Jews. But nemesis awaited them as the Red Army marched into Austrian ion 1945.
"Mander s'ischt time!" ("Men, it's time!") Was a famous battle cry of the Tyrolean freedom fighter Andreas Hofer during the uprising in 1809 against the Bavarians and French. The same words were chosen by the Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, in a speech on 9 March 1938 in view of the threat posed by Germany to emphasize that he would fight for a free and independent Austria. After the "Anschluss" of Austria, the Nazis took on this slogan to imprison politicians such as Kurt von Schuschnigg (center) as well as Jews, Social Democrats and other opponents of the "Anschluss" or drive. Only then would Austria be really free, so goes the statement of the postcard. RELATED KRISTALLNACHT: Night Of The Broken Glass REICHSTAG FIRE 1933
Nothing is worse than war? Dishonor is worse than war. Slavery is worse than war. —Winston Churchill
GERMAN INVASION OF POLAND, 1939 Advertisement
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German Army relied On Horses
Despite highly ballyhooed emphasis on employment of mechanized forces and on rapid movement, the bulk of German combat divisions were horse drawn throughout World War II. Early in the war it was the common belief of the American public that the German Siegfrieds of Hitler's Blitz rode forth to battle on swift tanks and motor vehicles. But the notion of the mechanized might of the German Wehrmacht was largely a glamorized myth born in the fertile brains of newspapermen. Actually, the lowly horse played a most important part in enabling the German Army to move about Europe.
Public opinion to the contrary, so great was the dependence of the Nazi Blitzkrieg upon the horse that the numerical strength of German Army horses maintained during the entire war period averaged around 1,100,000. Of the 322 German Army and SS divisions extant in November 1943, only 52 were armored or motorized. Of the November 1944 total of 264 combat divisions, only 42 were armored or motorized. The great bulk of the German combat strength—the old-type infantry divisions—marched into battle on foot, with their weapons and supply trains propelled almost entirely by four-legged horsepower. The light and mountain divisions had an even greater proportion of animals, and the cavalry divisions were naturally mainly dependent on the horse.
It is no idle statement that when the Third Reich began to crumble in 1945, many German fanatics went about their task as advised by Hitler in December of 1944: the hiding of vast Nazi riches for future use by Fourth Reich posterity. The statement that the bulk of this huge treasure hoard came from concentration camp inmates seems to be a safe bet...that billions of dollars worth of jewelry, gold, and money was taken from the hapless Nazi victims is a gruesome, but true, fact of history. Read More
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THE NUREMBERG TRIALS Video: Nuremberg Trials
The trial of Hermann Goering
Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.
He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.
Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.
From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.
With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock.
When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.
So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue.
'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size.
For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem. In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own.
His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.
During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.
Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.
German police marches through the Tyrolean town of Imst during the Anshluss
Germans move into Salzburg
Tyrolean peasants wave the swastika to welcome German troops
Upper Austria. The Germans move in.
German and Austrian soldiers dismantle a border post. March 15, 1938.
These Austrian girls are full of joy in Salzburg.
Austrians welcomes the German soldiers
Vienna welcomes the Germans
March 13, 1938. Hitler triumphantly enters Vienna.
Hitler with Seyss Inquart the governor of Austria. He was Hitler's man in Austria. Hitler had earlier forced Schusnigg, the Austrian Chancellor to resign in favor of Seyss Inquart. After the Union he was made a governor of the new province of the Reich.
The darker side of the union. Hitherto safe and prosperous Jews in Austria began to be persecuted. Here they are made to wash the roads of Vienna.
Jewish property was confiscated and the expulsion of Jews from Austria began
In the almost tribal mentality exhilaration that even these Austrian girls felt forgotten was the persecution of the Jews. But nemesis awaited them as the Red Army marched into Austrian ion 1945.
"Mander s'ischt time!" ("Men, it's time!") Was a famous battle cry of the Tyrolean freedom fighter Andreas Hofer during the uprising in 1809 against the Bavarians and French. The same words were chosen by the Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, in a speech on 9 March 1938 in view of the threat posed by Germany to emphasize that he would fight for a free and independent Austria. After the "Anschluss" of Austria, the Nazis took on this slogan to imprison politicians such as Kurt von Schuschnigg (center) as well as Jews, Social Democrats and other opponents of the "Anschluss" or drive. Only then would Austria be really free, so goes the statement of the postcard.
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