The German Question, Part One Hundred Twenty-One

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/B
"Foreign Policy & The German Question" (Part Four/1)
"Hitler Goes Home; Austria Joins Germany" (Part 1)

An overview:
Austria now re-enters the picture, although it had been on the periphery since the end of World War One. Talk about a people with an identity crisis! As I've shown in this series, Austria had been THE leading German state among a multitude of German entities, and indeed, the Habsburg family of Austria provided the German emperors (Kaiser) of the old German Empire for centuries. Austria's defeat by rival German state, Prussia, in 1866, brought about the exclusion of Austria from German affairs, and left Austria out of the new German nation formed by Bismarck. While ties remained close between the two nations (Austria then shared its former exclusive rule of its multi-ethnic territories with Hungary, as Austria-Hungary), the fact was "they were two separate nations." After suffering defeat in World War One, Austria-Hungary was broken up into various new nations, leaving the German part simply as its own sovereign nation, but seen by many as a nation without purpose. Many Austrians then sought to join Germany, and numerous German leaders wanted the same, but the victorious Allies forbid such unification, unless approved by the League of Nations, which, at that time, was highly unlikely, as France, in particular, opposed it. Attempts by democratic forces to unite the two German entities failed, leaving the situation unresolved when Adolf Hitler, an Austrian by birth, and certainly NOT democratic, became leader of Germany.

The Austrian Nazi Party agitated for "Anschluss," that is, "union with Germany," especially with the onset of the Great Depression, as Austria was staggered by the economic collapse, and unemployment soared. The Nazis assassinated the chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934, but the attempted takeover of the government failed, and Mussolini, at that time no close friend of Hitler, sent Italian military forces to the border to intervene if Hitler sent troops into Austria. Kurt Schuschnigg became the new Austrian chancellor and events cooled down for a time, but that would change.*

* Also rendered as "von" Schnuschnigg, but this nobility indicator was done away with in Austria after World War One and even the once powerful "von" Habsburg name became just Habsburg.

WORD HISTORY:
Autobahn-This compound was borrowed into English from German during the 1930s, but it consists of two words with English forms. First, "auto" is simply an abbreviated form of "automobile," which was borrowed into both English and German from French. "Auto" goes back to Greek "autos," with the meaning "self," so "automobile" means "self mobile;" that is, animals were not used to make it go. Where Greek got "autos" is not known. German, too, borrowed "Auto" from French, and for those studying German, the noun is neuter; thus, "das Auto" (all German nouns are capitalized). German "Bahn" and English "bane" are related, although the meanings have diverged. They go back to Indo European "gwhen," which meant "to hit, to beat, to wound, to kill (presumably by beating/hitting)." This then gave the Old Germanic spinoff "bano(n)" (remember, it is assumed that sounds in ancient times were not very specific, and indeed, we all don't pronounce things the same today, although in most cases there are some modern standards), with the same basic meanings. This gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "bana," with the meaning "killer," and also "benn," meaning "wound that kills." The idea of "killing" gave modern English the meaning "something that causes serious harm or death;" thus "wolfbane" is a "poisonous plant." The same Old Germanic word above gave Old High German "bano," which also meant "killer," but also had a slight variation in meaning for non-human items as, "knock down, strike, cause destruction by striking." This secondary meaning gave Old High German the notion of "path cleared by knocking things down by striking." Later in German the word was spelled "bane" (short "a"), with the meaning "pathway, road," and this then became "ban" (still short "a"), and then modern "Bahn," with the meaning "road, pathway, railroad tracks." The German national rail system is called "Die Bahn" (it is feminine; thus, "die," pronounced "dee"). So, "Autobahn" is literally an "autopath;" that is, a "highway/motorway." This meaning was only present in German, Low German and Dutch, but Danish and Swedish borrowed forms of the word from Low German. This "seems" to indicate that the "road, pathway" meaning developed AFTER the Anglo-Saxons left continental northern Europe for Britain, where they founded England; thus, the secondary meaning was left out of English.