Hitler’s Homecoming
Adolph Marcus reacts to Hitler's return to Linz
“From day to day the anxiety among the personnel is growing [...].”
Linz
From March 12 to 14, Hitler visited Linz, which he had considered his home town since his adolescence there. In his address to the local populace he stylized himself as the enforcer of the people’s will and invoked the German soldiers’ “willingness to sacrifice” and the “greatness and glory” of the German people. While many reacted with enthusiasm, others were seized by fear. In his diary, Adolph Markus captures the anxious atmosphere at his workplace in Linz days after the “Anschluss.”
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Chronology of major events in 1938
Adolf Hitler celebrates the annexation of Austria
Central Linz, Austria, following the Anschluss. Time Inc.
The Heldenplatz in Vienna is crowded when Adolf Hitler hails “the accession of my homeland to the German Reich.” According to the Führer, the annexation of Austria places the country in its proper role as a “bulwark” of the Reich. Hitler challenges the Austrian people to never let themselves be “exceeded by anyone anywhere in their fidelity to the greater German national community.” Many newspapers carry the speech the following morning, including Vienna’s Volks-Zeitung, whose masthead is henceforth emblazoned with a swastika.
View chronology of major events in 1938