MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · March 13 · 1938
ON THIS DAY · 13 MARCH 1938
The Anschluss
12–13 Mar 1938 — German troops cross into Austria to cheering crowds; Vienna’s Jews are scrubbing pavements within days. A country vanishes from the map without a shot.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
In one year Hitler takes two countries without firing a shot, and the map records both. First the arrow into Vienna: on 12 March 1938, German troops cross into Austria to cheering crowds and thrown flowers — and, within days, to Vienna’s Jews being forced to scrub pavements while neighbours watch. Austria turns charcoal. The union was forbidden by two treaties; Mussolini, who had blocked it with divisions in 1934, now waves it through — the wage of Abyssinia (Ch. 4). Note what the Anschluss does to the map’s geometry: Czechoslovakia, the democracy France is sworn to defend, is now held in German jaws on three sides.
From Chapter 7 — Anschluss and Munich: Appeasement at Full Stretch of The Road to War, 1931–1941 (1938).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — The bomber, the trenches and 1914. Appeasement was not mere cowardice; it was a theory of the world held by serious men with terrible memories. The guiding nightmares: another 1914,…
- The turn — Munich, 29–30 September 1938. Munich is the word every later generation reaches for when it debates concession, which is precisely why it needs careful handling. The turn is…
- What it changed — Czechoslovakia is disarmed for its conquerors. The Wehrmacht that rolled into Prague in March 1939 (Ch. 8) — and into France in 1940 — did so partly on Czech steel: a third of the German army’s…
Then ask the room: Was Munich a betrayal, a blunder, or the best of the bad options available to Chamberlain in September 1938? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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