Anschluss and the Reasons for Appeasement
Anschluss, March 1938
In March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria without firing a shot and without any meaningful Allied response. The pressure had been building since 1934, when the Austrian Nazi attempt to assassinate Chancellor Dollfuss had failed only because Mussolini had moved Italian troops to the Brenner Pass. Four years on, the diplomatic balance had shifted. The Rome-Berlin Axis (October 1936) had aligned Mussolini with Hitler, removing the southern obstacle. The Allies had absorbed the Rhineland reoccupation. Anschluss, banned by Versailles in 1919, was now within Hitler’s reach.
Anschluss came in three stages: the Berchtesgaden meeting (12 February 1938) where Schuschnigg was bullied into Nazi appointments; the cancelled Austrian plebiscite (9 March); and the Wehrmacht entry into Austria (12 March). A staged plebiscite in April recorded an official 99% in favour of union.
From Berchtesgaden to Vienna
In February 1938 Hitler summoned the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg to his Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden. Schuschnigg was kept waiting and then forced to accept a series of demands: the appointment of the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Interior Minister with control of the police, an amnesty for jailed Nazis, and an effective veto for Berlin over Austrian foreign policy. Schuschnigg returned home and tried to fight back. On 9 March he announced a plebiscite on Austrian independence, to be held within four days. The hurried timing was meant to outflank Hitler — an honest vote would almost certainly have rejected union.
Hitler responded by demanding the plebiscite be cancelled and Schuschnigg replaced. On 11 March the Austrian government collapsed; Seyss-Inquart took over and immediately invited German troops in to ‘preserve order’. On the morning of 12 March 1938, the Wehrmacht crossed the Austrian border without resistance. Hitler made a triumphal entry into Vienna two days later. A retrospective plebiscite in April 1938 was conducted under Nazi conditions and recorded an official 99% in favour of union — a result that no observer treated as honest, though there was undoubtedly genuine pan-German enthusiasm in many areas.
The British government issued formal protests but took no action. France was without a government for several days during the crisis. Mussolini, who had stopped Hitler in 1934, this time accepted the move without resistance — Hitler sent his thanks at once, declaring ‘I shall never forget this’. Anthony Eden had already resigned as British Foreign Secretary in February 1938, partly over Chamberlain’s willingness to negotiate with the dictators. The new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, accepted Anschluss as a regrettable but practical reality.
Why Britain Chose Appeasement
By 1938 Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was settled. Modern historians stress that this was a rational policy given Britain’s position, not the moral failure or cowardice that the wartime ‘Guilty Men’ (Cato, 1940) charge later painted. Chamberlain’s reasoning rested on six interlocking pressures.
First, military weakness. British rearmament had only begun in earnest in 1936-37 and key systems — radar, fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft guns — were not yet ready in 1938. The Chiefs of Staff repeatedly warned the Cabinet that war that year carried a serious risk of defeat. Second, imperial overstretch: the Royal Navy faced potential threats from Germany in the North Sea, Italy in the Mediterranean, and Japan in the Far East — impossible to meet all three. Third, public pacifism: the memory of 1914-18 was still raw, and the 1933 Oxford Union vote refusing ‘to fight for King and Country’ reflected a wider mood. Fourth, allies were thin: the United States was isolationist after the 1935 Neutrality Acts, and Stalin’s USSR was distrusted across the political class. Fifth, Empire and Commonwealth opinion: the Dominions (Canada, Australia, South Africa) had told London they would not fight a European war that looked unjustified to them. Sixth, the sincere belief that Hitler had real grievances which could be met by negotiation — revising Versailles, returning ethnic Germans, allowing reasonable rearmament — without a second world war.
Two schools of historians have argued over Chamberlain’s policy. The wartime ‘Guilty Men’ tradition, launched by the pamphlet of that name in 1940, presented appeasement as moral cowardice and Chamberlain as personally responsible for the war. The post-1960s revisionist tradition (Reynolds, McDonough) stresses the constraints Chamberlain faced and treats appeasement as a rational policy that bought time for rearmament. Most modern historians sit between these poles: Chamberlain’s situation was genuinely difficult, but his personal confidence in face-to-face dealings with Hitler was a serious error of judgement. Present these as competing interpretations rather than picking one.
British appeasement rested on six pressures: military weakness in 1938, imperial overstretch facing three potential enemies, public pacifism after 1918, the absence of strong allies (USA isolationist, USSR distrusted), Dominion opinion, and Chamberlain’s belief that Hitler’s grievances could be settled by negotiation.