I get austria means east of germany right? but im still a bit confused I thought the ethnicity was different.
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Enicity is a human concept and what exact grouping you pick is subjective. Remember Germany as a country is a very recent concept, the unification of Germany was in 1871. That was 18 years before Hitler was born. So it is not in any way unreasonable to consider austria a part that had not but should join Germany.
So you can look at the German nation as all the German-speaking people regardless of what country they lived in at that time. Hitler wanted to build a unified country with them that would be a lot larger then what is started as. Lots of Eastern Europe would be colonized by German people to replace the Slavic population there,
The idea of a German people has existed for over a millennia before the country of Germany. For a long time, it was the Holy Roman Empire that united the land with Germanic but alos other people. It was not an empire like we think of them today, the emperor had control of his own part which for the later part was Austria. The independent kingdoms, principalities etc were functionally independent and there were lots of internal wars. The 30 years war (1618-1648) was in large part a German civil war between the Catholics and the protestants. Around 50% of the population was lost. The imperial alliance led by the emperor in Australia was one of the sides in the conflict.
The Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806 and it is then you start to see a separate Germany form alongside Austira and you end up with two large empire at the start of WWII. Germany from around the Kingdom of Prussia fought to be de-dominant with the Austrian Emperor. It is after the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 that Prussia formed the North German Confederation and managed to exclude Austria from German internal affairs. Looking at Germany and Austria as separate is a 19th-century idea.
Even after German unification Kingoms and other parts had lots of independence. Ask yourself who Hitler fought for in WWI. It was not the German or Austrian Army it was the Bavarian Army. The Kingdom of Bavaria was a part of the German empire but had its own army. It is after WWI when the German Empire fell and the Weimar Republic is formed that you get a Germany unified like you see today.
So looking at Germany and Austria as separate missed the history of the area and that Germany as a country was formed only 153 years ago. Austria as a separate country was only formed in 1918, It was a part of Austria-Hungary 1867-1918. Before that, you had the multinational Austrian Empire 1804-1867. Before that, you had the Holy Roman Empire where the Emperor was in Vienna but only controlled a small part directly
Well you have to remember here that “Germany” as we know it only existed from 1871. Before that, there were a bunch of different states and kingdoms where the people spoke German and thought of themselves as German, but there was no “German government” per se and instead they were politically under the Kingdom of Prussia or the Duchy or the Kingdom of Bavaria or the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin or whatever. Plus, there were lots of Germans living in the various parts of the Austrian empire that weren’t Austria proper, especially the Bohemian lands (present day Czech Republic.)
At the end of the first world war, the German empire and Austrian empire were both defeated. The German empire was allowed by the allies to stay intact, but heavily punished with territorial concessions and financial penalties, while the Austrian empire was completely divided into new nations. Many Austrians at the time just thought, well, if we’re not an empire anymore, we’ll join with Germany, thanks. But the allies specifically disallowed this and mandated that Austria become it’s own republic, because the whole point was to make Germany weaker. So, in the interwar period, it wasn’t exactly strange for an Austrian to think of themselves as German. The majority of Germans in the 1930s had parents who weren’t born in Germany, and had lived through both a German Empire and a German Republic existing with quite different borders. “What should Germany be/look like” and “who is German” were all still open questions.
His father (or grandfather, can’t remember) had land in Bavaria, which he inherited and lived in when he was around 18-20 (can’t remember exactly). Adolf was born in a border town. His teachers at school were into pangermanism.
He enlisted in Bavaria in WW1 after he was deemed unfit for service in the Austrian army.
The country of Germany was less than 50 years old when this happened. National identity was not as clear cut as today.
Like the Europeans of today who post non stop on American political subs???🤷🤷🏾🤷🤷🏾🤷
Austria means east, but it is south of Germany not east of it. Austria wasn’t a country when Hitler was born. Austria-Hungary was.
Austria-Hungary was a multi ethnic empire dominated German speakers in what is now just Austria.
It was less a German state that Hitler was obsessed with and more the German people.
Germany as a united country only came into existence less than 2 decades before Hitler was born.
Before Germany united into the country it was before WWI, there were a number of different scenarios in play of what a united Germany should look like including ones that included what is now Austria or what was then the German speaking parts of Austria-Hungary.
For many people Germany was not just the states that were part of the German Empire but all places where Germany lived.
People like Hitler wanted a German Ethnostate a greater Germany that was home to all Ethnic Germans.
This would include people like Hitler, but exclude people who were born in and were citizens of the German empire but didn’t fit their idea of what was a real German. It would also exclude all the non German speakers in places were various people lived in the same place next to each other like in Bohemia.
Hitler was always pretty consistent about those views even if they are inconsistent with how we we nationality today.
He fought for the Bavarian military in WWI not the Austro-Hungarian one and after his failed coup-attempt he gave up his Austrian citizenship while imprisoned.
He gained (after many failed attempts) citizenship in Brunswick through some underhand deal with a no show job and thus became an official German citizen shortly before running for office.
All the other comments about Germany and Austria not being so different are kinda right, but histoty wise they had been separated for quite a while at the time so it’s probably wrong to just assume austrians felt as germans and vice versa.
A more personal reason is that since Austria didn’t enroll him for ww1 because he was too weak, he renounced to his austrian citizenship and became an apolide. He was able to get enlisted for germany as a volunteer and thus fought for them, he then spent most of his time after ww1 in germany (especially munich) where he easily got the support from germans as they were tired of the peace treaty imposed to them after ww1 and the failure of the weimar republic and they wanted a strong man to drive the country out of crisis. Personality wise it is said he was pretty apathetic, he didn’t feel any love to any country. He probably didn’t even “love” Germany, likely only using it as a mean to get power.
Why is Trump so obsessed with controlling the United States when his heart belongs to Russia? Why do evangelists support an obvious Russian puppet?
Mentally ill groups tend to decide that they’re “chosen”. They will accept any evidence that bolsters this conclusion, no matter how absurd. They will reject any evidence that diminishes this conclusion, no matter how strong.
It’s like identifying as a Southern American, but born in New York. Nationality vs ethnicity.
Austria doesn’t mean “east of Germany.” It sounds similar to “*Österreich*” which is the actual name of that country meaning “eastern empire.”
As others have said, borders and identity are not always the same thing. Modern Germany as we know it only exists since 1989, and we still have an “insurmountable” border between East and West Germany. (see each election result and map)
My grandmother (mother’s side) is originally from Silesia (nowadays it is Poland) and her family fled to Germany after WW2 because of the forced population transfer. One of her siblings died of tetanus during the “transfer”. Since my grandmother was born after they got to Germany, they quickly became Germans and identified as Germans. But my grandfather’s mother was racist and called my mother and her sibling the z-word, a racial slur. I think the English used “gypsy” and nowadays Romani People. So I never had contact with my grandfather’s family. My grandmother speaks Silesian German and visited her mother’s house once.
So borders can shift, identity can shift, and I think Hitler saw himself as German. His family moved to Germany when he was 3 years old, before moving back to Austria later, and he spoke a “Bavarian dialect” rather than an “Austrian” one. “Funny” that he was brown-haired and brown-eyed, disabled/sick and short and obsessed with tall blond blue-eyed Germans or as he called them “Ayan” people. Basically he was a very sick, twisted and strange man.
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