Anschluss

Abstract

‘Destiny’, according to Hitler, had appointed the frontier region between Germany and Austria as his birthplace, and certainly the merging of those two states was the most likely of his conquests. It was also the most improvised in its execution, an apparent lesson of the easy triumphs to be obtained by ruthless pressure and swift action in the face of a critical but passive Europe.

As long as any conventions of ordinary behaviour between independent nations prevail, I think it scarcely possible to deny the right to a head of a state to resort to a plebiscite if he so desires.

halifax to ribbentrop, 10 March 1938.¹