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By Root 1077 0

from a handful of right-wing nationalists, shown much inclination to join Germany. They were after all the dominant group in a great empire. “God save the Emperor,” the old anthem went, “Closely with the Habsburg throne, Austria’s fate remains united.” Anschluss, or union, never commanded widespread support until the last days of the Great War. On October 16, as Austria-Hungary was scrambling desperately to get out of the war and indeed to survive, Emperor Karl announced the creation of a new empire “in which every people would build its own political community in its own area of settlement.” Unlike Czechs or Poles or Slovenes, German-speakers had never developed such a community. Who would need them when, as looked increasingly likely, there were no more emperors? How would they live among a Slavic majority? The German-Austrians faced a bleak future, whether or not Austria-Hungary survived, and it was out of that pessimism that the demand for Anschluss with Germany burgeoned.17

On October 21, German-speaking deputies in the Austrian parliament met as a Provisional National Assembly. They did not truly represent a nation as the Czech or Slovenian deputies did and, at that point, they asked not for union with Germany but for self-determination for Germans within the old Habsburg empire. By November 11, however, there was no longer either emperor or empire. It was also clear that the states emerging out of the wreckage of Austria-Hungary had no interest in any sort of political arrangement with German-speaking Austria. On November 12, the assembly, speaking in the name of all Austrian Germans, proclaimed the republic of Austria in one breath and asserted that it was part of the larger German republic in the next. It was an act born out of fear, much as Croatia’s decision to join with Serbia was. Germany, the onetime enemy and the mistrusted ally, suddenly looked like a refuge. Unlikely political groups joined forces in those bewildering last days of the empire— anti-Semites, Jews, nationalists, socialists, liberals, Tyrolese and Styrians fearful of falling under Italian or Serbian rule—to demand union with Germany.18

Many Austrians, in fact, had reservations about Anschluss: Catholics, the great majority, who did not like North German Protestants; businessmen who feared German competition; and Viennese who did not want their city to take second place to Berlin or Weimar. Austrians of all classes remembered the long rivalry between Prussia and Austria for leadership of all Germans and the way in which Germany had refused to let Austria-Hungary make a separate peace during the war. But what alternative was there for them now?

By 1918, many Austrians saw Anschluss as the only hope for protection and prosperity for their little country. In the universities and coffeehouses, pan-German intellectuals talked dramatically of rejoining the severed branch to the great German tree. The Socialists were enthusiastic because, as Bauer argued, Germany was moving leftward. Joining the Austrian and German working classes would strengthen socialism everywhere. Renner’s attitude was more pragmatic and more typical: “the fear of famine and unemployment and Anschluss as the only possible solution.”19

The new provisional assembly in Vienna opened negotiations with Germany. The Austrians moved cautiously, making it clear to the Germans that any union must respect Austria’s unique character. The Germans were equally cautious. Germany did not want to annoy the peacemakers unnecessarily, especially before its own terms were settled. As Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German foreign minister, made clear to Bauer, Germany had to think of itself. If the Allies thought that it was gaining territory in the south, they would be all the more inclined to take away its land in the west and east. 20

These discussions were academic. The Allies had made up their minds, largely at France’s insistence, to forbid any union between the two German-speaking countries. Briefly, at the end of the war, the French had toyed with the idea of encouraging Austria and Bavaria