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. 

The German Question, Part One Hundred Nineteen

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/B
"Foreign Policy & The German Question" (Part Two)

The Nazis held annual rallies in the city of Nuremberg (Nürnberg). In 1935, Hitler convened a session of the Reichstag in Nuremberg, where it had not met since the 1500s! The purpose? To pass laws aimed at Germany's Jews. The two laws passed by the Reichstag in Nuremberg were collectively called "The Nuremberg Laws" ("Die Nürnberger Gesetze"), and they passed by (surprise, surprise) a unanimous vote. These absolutely racist laws stripped German Jews of citizenship and prevented marriage between Jews and Germans. The Nazis also laid out the definition of a Jew: a person with three or four Jewish grandparents, while those people with one or two Jewish grandparents were termed "Mischlinge;" that is, "mixed," or in plain old racist American English, "half breeds."*

Around that same time, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, sent troops into the East African nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The League of Nations voted sanctions against Italy, these sanctions essentially being a ban on weaponry being sold to Italy (and Abyssinia) and the prohibition of loans to Italy. The two powerhouses of the League of Nations, Britain and France, kept any sanctions from being too severe, as they wanted to remain on good terms with Mussolini, and to continue to use him to maintain a firewall, so to speak, against Hitler moving into Austria or southeastern Europe.** The League of Nations, however, still wanted to show it opposed Mussolini's aggression. This attempt "to have it both ways" failed miserably. The League, along with leaders Britain and France, was seen as too feeble to prevent aggressive wars, yet the sanctions against Italy, mild though they were, coupled with Hitler's verbal support of Mussolini's war in Abyssinia, moved Mussolini and Hitler closer together. The next time, the two fascist dictators worked in conjunction with one another to support Spanish fascism (the Falangist Party) and right wing strongman, General Francisco Franco, in the Spanish Civil War.

* For non-American readers, a bit of an explanation: When white American settlers came to this country, dating back to colonial times and through the westward expansion, some had children with the native population here. For quite some time these children were very much looked down upon by many (but not all), and the term "half breed" was essentially a derogatory term. We've come a long way since those times, and "many" Americans are now proud to claim "American Indian" heritage, at least many people I've talked with over the years, but I'm sure there are still some holdouts. They probably want to get even for "Custer's Last Stand," not being satisfied with the sweep of the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series.

** In 1934, the Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, actually a dictator and a fascist himself, wanted to model Austria after Mussolini's Italy. Dollfuss stood in the way of any attempt to merge Austria with Germany (the term in German for this merger was "Anschluss," which means "merger, joining"). Mussolini guaranteed Austria's independence, and when Austrian Nazis assassinated Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini sent Italian military reinforcements to the border with Austria to discourage any attempt by Hitler to achieve an "Anschluss." So it is important to remember, Hitler and Mussolini were not always "friends," but that was about to change.

Next... "Spain Brings Hitler and Mussolini Together" or alternate title, "Tapas and a Bullfight For Two?"

WORD HISTORY:
Luftwaffe-English got this compound from German, as it was the name for the German air force. Its component parts, "Luft" and "Waffe," both have related words in English, so I'll begin with "Luft," and its closely related English words "lift" and "loft." The ancient origin of "Luft" (and also therefore of "lift" and "loft") is unknown. Old Germanic had "luftuz," which meant "air, atmosphere, sky, heavens, even roof." This gave Old High German (the direct ancestor of modern German) "luoft," then "luft," and meaning "air," which then later was spelled with a capital "L," as all German nouns are capitalized. The same Old Germanic "luftuz" gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "lyft," and with the same meanings. "Lyft" then "seems" to have altered under the influence of the related Old Norse (North Germanic) word "lopt" (the "p" was pronounced "f"), which had the same general meaning, but also with more emphasis on the extended meanings "roof, ceiling, and then upper room, room by the ceiling." By the 1200s, English had borrowed the word "air" from Old French (from Latin, which it got from Greek), and it overtook "loft" in that meaning, leaving "loft" with its secondary meaning "room by the ceiling, upper room." Besides German "Luft" and English "loft," some Low German has "Loft" and some have "Luft," Dutch has "lucht," Frisian has "loft," Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have "luft," Icelandic has "loft." Of all these related Germanic words, only English "loft" no longer means "air," in general usage; however, Scottish English dialect still has "lift" for "air." German also has the verb "lüften," which means "to air out, ventilate;" just as English uses the verb form of "air" (air out a room). Lift, the verb, traces back to the same Old Germanic word "luftuz" (see above). This then gave off a verb form, "luftjaz." German has the verb "lüften," as noted above, Old Norse "lypta," seems to have used the notion of "air rising" to give its form of the Germanic verb the meaning "raise," and this then was borrowed into English in the late 1100s or early 1200s.^ Dutch has "lichten," which means "to empty out;" apparently the notion being "to lift items out of something." Low German Saxon has "lüchten," Norwegian has løft, Danish has "løfte," Swedish and Icelandic have "lyfta." The "Waffe" part of "Luftwaffe" will be in the next article.

^ The noun use of "lift" for elevator goes back to the 1850s.