Why was Adolf Hitler obsessed with German nationalism when he was an Austrian?

[Kahid87445]

Hello everyone and hopefully some history buffs,

I was recently talking to my friend on the phone about the sad fact that Captain Sir Tom Moore (Captain Tom) had died and we began to discuss WW2.

Inevitably the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler came up in the conversation.

I stated something which I feel a little bit ignorant to have said now my friend explained me to the reasons. I said, "I'll never understand why the Germans happily accepted an Austrian who hated non-Germans to lead them when he must have hated himself".

My friend told me that I should read some history books to understand why an Austrian in the early 20th century was obsessed with German nationalism and annexed Austria to Germany. She told me that Austrians are a type of Germans who were excluded from Germany by the Prussians; a quick Google search confirms this - the 1866 German war. She told me that the Austrians after WW2 quickly distanced themselves from Germany and began to develop their own national identity. She made the analogy of an Austrian leading Germany to a Taiwanese leading China - they belong to the same ethnic group, but live in different countries for whatever reason.

Do you think that most people know that Austrians are ethnic Germans?

I have researched all of this and Austrians these days definitely don't consider themselves Germans. Ironically, it was an Austrian who caused the German national identity in Austria to eventually be largely dismissed by the Austrians.

Interestingly, I also learnt that Hitler had blue eyes. I am a bit angry that I was taught in school that he had brown eyes!

Because if moving borders over history. Austria wasn't austria like it is today. There had been the historical German Empire which H sought to reunite

Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote:

"TODAY it seems to me providential that Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal.

German-Austria must return to the great German mother country, and not because of any economic considerations. No, and again no: even if such a union were unimportant from an economic point of view; yes, even if it were harmful, it must nevertheless take place. One blood demands one Reich."

So, yeah, it all makes sense now.

I don't want to blow your mind OP but are you aware that the English are also ethnic Germans? English is a Germanic language.

@FatCatThinCat

That's not true.

The English people are a Germanic people and speak a Germanic language, but they are not ethnic Germans.

Germanic and German are not synonymous.

Yes, it’s exactly why he pushed for the Anschluss

What's the difference then?

England - back in the day - yes a mixture of Angles Saxons and Jutes but that does not = German

English language is not a romance language but it borrows from pretty much most languages.

@Kahid87445 - most historians say that ( wherever he came from ) Hitler in his earlier times used the reason - the reparations after WWI to gather people together to get Germany back some national pride & then used laws to keep him in power once he had an office - The Weimar republic had been a grim time.

But do ask someone more knowledgeable than me.

There is definitely a lot of history there...
I think it goes far deeper, partly due to the Austria Hungary Empire and the Habsburg Empire and all the European connections.

But in the end, I think the simplest way of looking at this is by looking at Hitlers role in WW 1 and understanding the Treaty of Versailles.

I recommend you do a lot more reading around European history OP. Germany wasn't actually unified as one country until the 1870s. Italy didn't become a unified country until roughly the same time with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Most of Europe was made of principalities and territories that were exchanged between countries for centuries (which is what led to the First World War). A lot of people living in Austria at the time probably alied themselves with Germany or though of themselves as German. It was as a direct consequence of the second World War that Europe has the borders and national identities it has today.

the town where adolf hitler was born is now directly at the border to germany. it's actually a twin city (simbach and braunau) divided by a river.
the border has moved a few times in history but that part of austria has a lot in common with bavaria, including the dialect spoken.

@FatCatThinCat

The Germanic people are those people who speak a Germanic language e.g. the Dutch people, the English people, the German people, etc.

Ethnic Germans refer to people who are descended from the Germanic tribes who inhabited Germany and speak German.

Remember, Germany as a country did not exist until 1871, prior to that there were lots of different German states in Central Europe, the two biggest German states were Austria and Prussia.

I thought it was the Aryan and Nordic races that he was obsessed with (which includes Anglo Saxons) rather than just German people.
I may be wrong - but we can't ask him now... unless one goes to Argentina (see Conspiracy thread)

I've been researching this topic vigorously for a few hours now, haha.

It's actually quite easy to see why Hitler considered himself a German, despite the fact that he was born an Austrian citizen since he was born in Austria-Hungary, not the German Empire.

Up until 1866 Austria was considered to be as much a part of Germany as Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, and all of other independent German states. In fact, the Austrians (The Habsburgs) had ruled Germany (The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (HRE)) for six hundred years. When the HRE was dissolved in 1806, the German Confederation was formed and the two biggest German states - Austria and Prussia - became rivals and the Austrians and Prussians had different ideas about how Germany should be unified as a nation-state.

In the 1800s the Austrian Empire ruled a lot of non-German territory and they were unwilling to give up the territory so the Prussians didn't want to include the Austrians. The Austrians favoured a Greater Germany to include Austria and the Austrians and the Prussians favoured a Little Germany without Austria and the Austrians. Things came to a head in 1866 during the German war and as it turned out the Prussians defeated the Austrians which subsequently excluded both Austria and the Austrians from the newly formed German Empire in 1871. The Bavarians and Bavaria only joined the German Empire because the Bavarians helped the Prussians defeat the French in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

A few facts I have discovered:

The Prussians weren't even originally a Germanic tribes. They were a Baltic tribe who were later Germanised.

The Austrians don't speak German because of a mistake - it is because they are Germans.

The name of Austria in German - Österreich - refers to the 'eastern realm' when Austria was formed from the Margraviate of Austria, a borderland of the Duchy of Bavaria in 976. That explains why so many cities and towns have changed from Austrian rule to Bavarian rule thoroughout history, including Hitler's birthplace, Braunau am Inn. No wonder Hitler described the town as "Bavarian by blood" in Mein Kampf.

In 1918, after the end of WW1, Austria was a rump-state and renamed itself 'The Republic of German-Austria' and declared itself to be a part of the German Republic, but the victors of WW1 forbid the name and the union between the two countries.

In 1938 when Hitler annexed Austria it made his popularity was greater than ever before.

I understand why it's a touchy subject for Austrians today, but people shouldn't ignore facts.

Mozart also considered himself to be a German and his birthplace, Salzburg, was not a part of Austria when he was born.

Up until 1945, Austrians were seen as just another type of Germans like Bavarians, Prussians, etc.

If history had turned out differently then the Austrians would have unified Germany and excluded Prussia, would people then be saying Prussians were not Germans?

Although Hitler only became a German citizen in 1932, less than a year before he became the Chancellor of Germany, it is ridiculous to claim that he was 'not German'.

The British historian Alan Bullock in his book "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" wrote:

"Hitler, of course, was a German, but he was born a subject of the Habsburg Empire, where Germans had played the leading for centuries. However, with Bismarck's creation in the 1860s of a German Empire based on Prussia, from which the Austrian Germans were excluded, the latter found themselves forced to defend their historic claim to rule against the growing demands for equality of the Czechs and the other "subject peoples"."

I also find it strange that German nationalism became so strong before WW2, when Germany had only become a unified nation in the recent past.

In 1938 when Hitler annexed Austria it made his popularity was greater than ever before.

I don't think it was popular with Austrians. Like many annexed peoples, they felt they had no choice but to cheer and appear to welcome the Nazis because if they didn't, they'd have been forcibly 're-educated'.

I also find it strange that German nationalism became so strong before WW2, when Germany had only become a unified nation in the recent past

There is a bit more to this: the areas that are now central Europe where actually United as the Holy Roman Empire - again, you need to look at the ruling houses of Europe and how they relate to each other, how power was distributed and how families held on to it.

@LApprentiSorcier

The Anschluss was very popular amongst Austrians before the Austrian-born Hitler decided to annex Austria in 1938.

In fact, Hitler was initially going to make Austria a satellite state, but it was the Austrians' overwhelming support for the Anschluss which made Hitler annex Austria straightaway and rename it the Ostmark.

@GameofPhones

Pan-Germanism became popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century because many Germans felt like it was not complete because it excluded many ethnically German territories like Austria and the Sudetenland and ethnic Germans such as the Austrians and the Sudeten Germans.

I also find it strange that German nationalism became so strong before WW2

Germany was a defeated nation. They lost some key industrial areas to France, they were made to pay a huge amount of money to the vicors and only allowed to have 100.000 Soldiers. This lead to a high level of unemployment and poverty. Add the 1920's recession and you find a nation in despair.
Now along comse a political concept that promises to remove the oppressors and creating jobs and wealth for a nation...

The victors also didn't grant the Wilsonian principle of self-determination to the Austrian Germans and Sudeten Germans. That contradiction really annoyed many Germans who lived both inside and outside of the German Reich's borders.

He wanted to reunite the German speaking people (Austria could have become part of Germany). He also saw the slavic people including the Hungarians as inferior, and was hung up on the Hapsburgs.

And if you travel that bit of Germany/Austria you keep crossing the border. We drove one bit of road and crossed countries and back again without any roads joining or leaving.