Anschluss

“ GEN. RUDENKO: Defendant Ribbentrop, during the last sessions of the Tribunal you explained in great detail the bases of German foreign policy. I should like to ask you a few comprehensive questions and request you to answer these questions laconically in terms of “yes” or “no.” Do you consider the Anschluss as an act of German aggression? Please answer this.
VON RIBBENTROP: Austria? ”

“ SEYSS-INQUART: I should like to add that, with regard to domestic policy, the events on 25 July were the worst that could possibly have happened to the prospect of the Anschluss. We reflected on what might be done and came to the conclusion that the Party in the Reich should cease its interference in the Austrian National Socialist Party, the existence of which anticipated the Anschluss; but in return, the National Socialists in Austria should once more receive permission to be active, and especially, there should be elections to ascertain the proportional strength of the parties. ”

“ VON SCHIRACH: Yes. I heard of the Anschluss of Austria, which of course I hailed enthusiastically, through the radio, if I remember rightly, during a trip by car from my Academy at Brunswick to Berlin. I continued my journey to Berlin, boarded a train at once, and arrived the following morning in Vienna. There I greeted the young people: youth leaders, some of whom had been in prisons or in a concentration camp at Wöllersdorf for a long time, and also many women youth leaders, who had also experienced great hardships. ”

“ I further demanded an assurance in writing from Hitler that the German-Austrian policy of the future—what is generally termed the Anschluss policy—would move on a purely evolutionary level, that is to say, that no recourse would be had to forcible measures, and aggression. Hitler immediately ordered this man Habicht to be recalled and gave me a written assurance with reference to the second question. And finally, I said that I was prepared to take over the pacification program in Austria, but only until normal and friendly relations had been re-established. ”

“ It was clear to me that a National Socialist government with a very strong Catholic tendency would control developments not in the form of an immediate Anschluss but rather—by carrying out appropriate elections and a plebiscite—in the form of an economic and possibly a military union with the German Reich. ”

“ The Austro-German People’s Union was an organization which stood above parties and religious denominations, and which, in a one-sided manner, aimed at revising the Anschluss prohibition in the peace treaties by solving the question of the Austro-German Anschluss peacefully through plebiscite. In the executive committee of this Austro-German People’s Union, all parties were officially represented with the exception of the National Socialist and Communist Parties. ”

“ I did not indulge in propaganda politics, for Austria was already annexed. I just welcomed the fact. I did not need to make any more propaganda about it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Perhaps you’ll tell me what you mean by the “Greater Germany” that you are approaching. What Greater Germany are you approaching in March 1938, a Germany greater than it was after the Anschluss with Austria?
STREICHER: A Greater Germany, a living area in which all Germans, German-speaking people, people of German blood, can live together. ”

“ Did there exist in the Austrian SS, to which you belonged, the slightest intention to bring through force the annexation of Austria to Germany or was this to be brought about through a plebiscite, through legal measures?
KALTENBRUNNER: There was by the SS neither such a plan of annexation by force nor do the facts of the political development comply with this. There was never any necessity for any such step, for the Anschluss Movement, without any such outside urge, was conclusively strong enough in itself. ”

“ As proof that this Anschluss corresponded to the wish of the Austrian population, I refer to Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 12 (Document Number Ribbentrop-12) , which I present to the Tribunal for judicial notice. It is the result of the national plebiscite and of the election to the Greater German Reichstag of 10 April 1938. From this document it is to be seen that at that time in Austria a total of 4,484,475 people had the right to vote, 4,471,477 voted, 4,453,772 voted for the Anschluss, and only 11,929 voted against it.
THE PRESIDENT: Have we got this document? We do not have it in our books. ”

“ Where there are no common interests there can be no unity of purpose, much less of action. The German Confederation, it is true, was declared [Pg 27] everlastingly indissoluble; yet the Confederation, and its organ, the Diet, never represented German unity. The very highest pitch to which centralization was ever carried in Germany was the establishment of the Zollverein; by this the States on the North Sea were also forced into a Customs Union of their own, Austria remaining wrapped up in her separate prohibitive tariff. ”

“ As between the Allied and Associated Powers and their nationals on the one hand and nationals of the former Austrian Empire on the other hand, as also between Austria on the one hand and the Allied and Associated Powers and their nationals on the other hand, all the exceptional war measures, or measures of transfer, or acts done or to be done in execution of such measures as defined in paragraphs 1 and 3 of the Annex hereto shall be considered as final and binding upon all persons except as regards the reservations laid down in the present Treaty. ”

“ Millions of Germans in Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Poland, and East Prussia were transferred to alien domination; millions of others in German Austria were denied the right of self-determination in the form of union with Germany ”

“ I myself would never have made a separate peace. I have never, not even in the hour of disillusionment—I may say of despair at my inability to lead the policy of Berlin into wiser channels—even in such hours, I say, I have never forgotten that our alliance with the German Empire was no ordinary alliance, no such alliance as may be contracted by two Emperors or two Governments, and can easily be broken, but an alliance of blood, a blood-brotherhood between the ten million Austro-Germans and the seventy million of the Empire, which could not be broken. ”

“ The German people will be told that the union of Germany has been prevented by France, that Austria has called in the national enemy, and as in Germany they may now write, read, and sing what they please, and as the newspapers and books and songs are made in Berlin, Austria's position amongst the German people would be morally annihilated, and on some future occasion--perhaps when France was engaged in some contrary direction--the perfectly ripened fruit would fall into the hands of the Hohenzollerns. ”

“ An alliance between two countries is a dead letter so soon as their interests cease to be identical. Now Austria is our ally because she is practically Germany. We are both mid-Continental Powers. We both need the same protection. But England and France! Go back only fifty years, my dear Hunterleys, and ask yourself—would any living person, living now and alive then, believe in the lasting nature of such an unnatural alliance? Wherever you look, in every quarter of the globe, your interests are opposed. You robbed France of Egypt. ”

“ Well, what I set out to say was, that most Germans would like unity if they could be the unit. Each State would like to be the center of the consolidated system, and thus it happens that every practical step toward political unity meets a host of opponents at once. When Austria, or rather the house of Hapsburg, had a preponderance in the Diet, and it seemed, under it, possible to revive the past reality, or to realize the dream of a great German empire, it was clearly seen that Austria was a tyranny that would crush out all liberties. ”

“ If, for the whole or part of the territory, the League of Nations decides in favour of union with Germany, it will be the duty of the League of Nations to cause the German Government to be re-established in the government of the territory specified by the League. ”

“ This word, negotiation, struck me. "Since we must not think, M. Werner," answered I, "of re-establishing that union and friendship between Austria and France separately, which their interests, and their family connexion, demand; at least let us not renounce the hope of a general accommodation. Never perhaps was humanity threatened with a war so terrible: it will be a conflict to the death, not between army and army, but between nation and nation. ”

“ This was a league embracing as its chief members Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the ostensible object of which was the maintenance of religion, peace, and order in Europe, and the reduction to practice in politics of the maxims of Christ. The several sovereigns entering into the union promised to be fathers to their people, to rule in love and with reference solely to the promotion of the welfare of their subjects, and to help one another as brothers to maintain just government and prevent wrong. ”

“ According to the constitution of 1871, the German empire constitutes one customs and commercial union, except a few small communes which on account of their situation remain excluded from the common line of customs, and the two Hanse towns, Hamburg and Bremen, which as free ports may remain outside of the union “until they themselves demand admittance.” Besides the states of the empire, the Zollverein embraces the grand duchy of Luxemburg and the Austrian commune of Jungholtz on the southern frontier of Bavaria. ”

“ Such alterations bear, in my mind, no resemblance to an infraction of one of those great and leading and master stipulations in which all the Powers of Europe are deeply interested. Supposing that some arrangement were made between Austria and Prussia for the extinction of Saxony, and that the Great Powers were to ask how they, only two of the parties to the Treaty of Vienna, could agree to extinguish Saxony, what answer would it be—that some little bit of territory had before been exchanged between some of the minor princes, and that then we made no protest? ”

“ When the army has been brought to such a state as to command respect, then I will take the first opportunity to declare war with Austria, burst asunder the German Confederation, bring the middle and smaller States into subjection, and give Germany a national union under the leadership of Prussia. ”

“ In a speech in the German Reichstag in 1888 Bismarck explained the origin of the Triple Alliance and the value of Austria to Germany: "without Austria" he said, "Germany would be isolated and closed in between Russia and France . . . . We cannot even imagine Europe without Austria. . . . ."
V.
Today there cannot be the slightest doubt that the present war, alike in its origin and in its development, is purely Pangerman. ”

“ But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the Ægean and Black Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive an extension of its [219] own national frontier not eastward but southward. The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria. ”

“ Germany renounces all rights accorded to her or her nationals by treaties, conventions or agreements, of whatsoever kind, to representation upon or participation in the control or administration of commissions, state banks, agencies or other financial or economic organizations of an international character, exercising powers of control or administration, and operating in and of the Allied or Associated States, or in Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria or Turkey, or in the dependencies of these States, or in the former Russian Empire. ”

“ In order to the consideration of these objections, it is necessary to observe, my lords, that national alliances are not like leagues of friendship, the consequences of an agreement of disposition, opinions, and affections, but like associations of commerce, formed and continued by no similitude of any thing but interest. It is not, therefore, necessary to inquire what the house of Austria has deserved from us or from mankind; because interest, not gratitude, engages us to support it. ”

“ The smaller princes of Germany, partly to insure to themselves a greater independence against the supremacy of Austria and Prussia, or against the influence of the nobility of their own States, partly in order to consolidate into a whole the disconnected provinces united under their rule by the Congress of Vienna, one after the other granted constitutions of a more or less liberal character. They could do so without any danger to themselves ”

“ The Zollverein, the Reform associations, the hue and cry openly made about unity, the very entrance of Austria into the Holstein war, and latterly the alliance between the liberals and a statesman whose principles they have uniformly opposed, all indicate the popular effervescence, and excite a suspicion that ere long Germany will be united. All the machinery of which governments can avail themselves is used by Austria and the secondary princes to ward off the danger which menaces them. ”

“ The national union consists in an endeavor to make the suppressed nations free, to unite them in their own states, and to readjust the states that exist; to force Austria and Prussia to give up the states that should be free. ”