1938-40 - Effect of Anschluss with Austria - March 1938

What was the Anchluss with Austria

• Union between Germany and Austria

• Originally banned under the Treaty of Versailles The Anschluss was the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938, which was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. This event significantly increased Germany's territory and was a crucial step in Hitler's expansionist policies.

How Austrians viewed the Anschluss

• Welcomed enthusiastically

• Takeover of Austria was achieved without a shot being fired

• However originally the Austrian government called a plebiscite in March 1938, to show that majority of Austrians were against the union

• However when Britain, Italy and France didn’t intervene to help Austrian independence, the Austrian government resigned, and Hitler ordered the Germman army to invade

Hitler’s view on the Anschluss

• Caused him by 1938 to be confident that Germany was ready for war - and that the union with Austria mean the Allied powers lacked the resolve to act against him

• After his ‘bloodless victory’ in Austria, his next target was Czechoslovakia

Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia

• Country included a German minority living in an area called the Sudetenland

• September 1938 - Hitler risked war with Britain and France after demanding this land to be handed over to Germany

• He again achieved a ‘bloodless victory’ after Britain and France agreed to the German takeover

• Achieved occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939

The Nazi-Soviet Pact

• August 1939

• Non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia

• Within this, the USSR agreed not to oppose the German invasion of Poland

• German invasion of Poland followed on 1 September 1939 - which led to war between Germany, and Britain and France two days later

Anschluss’s role in removing Jews from businesses

• Four Year Plan by late 1937 was beginning to improve the economic and military situation in Germany

• Schact had urged strongly against anti-Semitism in the economic field as he did not want to alienate foreign investers

• However Goering - in charge of the Plan, did not care for foreign opinion, wanted to remove Jews from businesses quickly

• The occupation of Austria in March 1938 led to a repad acceleration of economic campaigns against Jews

• As the Nazis in Austria were allowed to act against Jews without constraint

• Prompted Goering to take more economic radical action in Germany itself

April 1938 Decree of Registration of Jewish Property

• Provided for the confiscation of all Jewish-owned property worth more than 5,000 marks

• Marked the start of the Aryanisation (removing Jews and non-Aryans from key aspects of Germany’s cultural and economic life) of Jewish property and businesses

• By April 1939 (year after Decree), 40,000 Jewish-owned businesses went down to 8,000

Further legalisation of banning Jewish work within the economy

• Jews were banned from work as travelling salesmen, security guards, travel agents and estate agents

• 30,000 Jewish travelling salesmen lost their jobs

• 1938 - Jewish lost their entitlement to public welfare

• Increasing number of Jewish unemployment resulted in Jews depending on charities set up by the Jewish community - i.e the Central Institution for Jewish Economic Aid

Jewish passports and legal names after October 1938

• Passports of German Jews had to be stamped with a large ‘J’

• Meant to make Jews easily identifiable and strip them of their individuality

• Resulted in law in 1939 - Jews that were deemed as having non-Jewish names had to change them

• Jewish women had to take the name ‘Sarah’ and men had to take the name ‘Israel’

• Only in 1941 did Jews have to wear a yellow star in public