Portal:History/Featured article/January, 2006

The Anschluss was the 1938 incorporation of Austria in "Greater Germany" under the Nazi regime. The events of March 12, 1938 were the first major step in Adolf Hitler's long-desired expansion of the Third Reich, preceding the inclusion of the Sudetenland later in 1938 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and finally leading to World War II with the assault on Poland. Although the Wehrmacht entered into Austria to enforce the Anschluss, no fighting took place, in part because of prior political pressure exerted by Germany, but primarily because of the well-planned internal overthrow by the Austrian Nazi Party of Austria's state institutions in Vienna on March 11, the day before German troops marched across the border. The international response to the Anschluss was moderate: the United Kingdom held to its policy of appeasement and did not enforce the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I and specifically prohibited any attachment of Germany and Austria. Austria ceased to exist as an independent nation until a preliminary Austrian government was finally reinstated on April 27, 1945, and was legally recognized by the Allies in the following months.