Propaganda Poster Expressing Austrian Bishops' Support for the Anschluss

German forces marched into Austria early on the morning of March 12, 1938. The next day, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signed a law officially announcing the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany). Hitler also ordered a vote to be held on April 10, 1938 as part of a propaganda campaign to show that Austrians supported the annexation.¹

Most Austrians did not resist the German takeover, and many welcomed the Germans enthusiastically.² Some Austrian Catholic leaders wrote letters that praised the Nazi regime and urged people to vote in support of the annexation. Nazi propagandists used images of these letters on the featured poster, which is nearly 4 feet tall by 3 feet wide. Nazi officials distributed millions of posters like this before the April 10 vote.³

On the upper left side of the poster is a letter written by Theodor Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna.⁴ Innitzer’s position as the head of the Catholic Church in Vienna made him very influential among Austria’s overwhelmingly Catholic population. In the days following the Anschluss, Innitzer had a private meeting with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Shortly afterward, Innitzer wrote this letter urging Austrian Catholics to cooperate with the Nazi regime,⁵ even taking the extraordinary step of signing it by hand with “Heil Hitler!”

Catholic leaders in the Vatican were shocked by Innitzer’s declaration of support for the Nazi regime. Innitzer’s pan-German⁶ views made him sympathetic to the political unification of Austria and Germany—but the Vatican’s official position was more cautious and more critical of the Nazi regime. After his letter was published, Innitzer was summoned to Rome to discuss the matter with Pope Pius XI and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli.⁷ Shortly after he met with the Pope, Innitzer released an official statement calling for an end to the Nazis’ anti-Catholic actions. He became less supportive of the Nazi regime in the months following his meeting at the Vatican.

Innitzer began delivering sermons that criticized Nazi policies more directly. On October 7, he gave a sermon about Nazi anti-Catholic policies and inspired thousands of young Catholic Austrians to protest against the Nazi regime.⁸ Hundreds of Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung) men soon gathered at his residence and called for Innitzer to be sent to Dachau concentration camp. The following evening, a mob of Hitler Youth assembled outside the Archbishop’s residence. They broke into the building, vandalized the property, destroyed crucifixes, and attacked priests—even throwing one junior priest out of a third-story window. When the Vienna police arrived,⁹ they stood by and did not arrest the perpetrators.¹⁰

Innitzer and other Austrian Catholic leaders continued to speak out against Nazi policies that targeted Catholic institutions, clergy, and individuals. Innitzer also supported so-called “non-Aryan” Catholics who had converted from Judaism or other faiths. But his concerns were focused on the experiences of Catholics, and he did not speak out against Nazi anti-Jewish violence following the mass violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938—or at any other time during the years of Nazi rule.¹¹

Innitzer survived the years of Nazi rule and continued to serve as Archbishop of Vienna until his death in 1955.

For another primary source on the April 1938 referendum on the Anschluss, see the related Experiencing History item, Film of Woman and Child with Propaganda Displays.

Some Austrian Nazi supporters participated in acts of anti-Jewish violence and public humiliation immediately following the Anschluss. To learn more, see the related Experiencing History item, Photograph of Jews Cleaning Streets in Vienna.

Radomir V. Luža, "Nazi Control of the Austrian Catholic Church, 1939-1941," The Catholic Historical Review 63, no. 4 (October 1977), 542, f10.

An archbishop is a member of the Catholic clergy who leads a large and important diocese such as Vienna. As Archbishop of Vienna, Innitzer was the highest ranking member of the Catholic hierarchy in Austria. He was also a cardinal, which meant that he had special advisory roles with the Vatican that included electing popes.

News of Innitzer’s extraordinary message of support and use of “Heil Hitler!” was widely reported at the time. For example, see "Innitzer Letter to Nazis Ends With 'Heil Hitler,'" New York Times, March 29, 1938, 13

Pan-Germanism was a widespread and popular movement in the early 20th century that greatly influenced the development of Nazi ideology. The political unification of Germany and Austria had been a central goal of the Nazi Party and other pan-German political factions for years, but the Treaty of Versailles did not permit this without the consent of the Council of the League of Nations. To learn more, see Erin R. Hochman, Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016); and Julie Thorpe, "Pan-Germanism after Empire: Austrian 'Germandom' at Home and Abroad," in From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria, edited by Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser and Peter Berger (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2010).

William M. Harrigan, “Pius XI and Nazi Germany, 1937-1939,” The Catholic Historical Review 51, no. 4 (January 1966), 476-7.

Somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 young people attended the October 7 service and excitedly poured into the streets of Vienna afterward—making this the single largest public demonstration against Nazi rule to ever take place in Nazi Germany. To learn more, see Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 103.

To learn more about the reactions of Austrian police to the Anschluss and Nazi rule, see the related Experiencing History item, Film of Austrian Police during the German Annexation of Austria. For more primary sources on the roles of police in Nazi Germany, see the Experiencing History collection, German Police and the Nazi Regime.

To learn more about the attack on Innitzer’s residence, see William M. Harrigan, “Pius XI and Nazi Germany, 1937-1939,” 481-2; and Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945, 103.

Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945, 106.

Unanimous Statement of Austria’s Bishops Concerning the Balloting:

[top left]

Vienna, March 18, 1938

[emblem]

The Archbishop of Vienna

Dear Gauleiter,

I am forwarding to you herewith the enclosed declaration of the bishops. From it, you will understand that the bishops voluntarily and under no duress have fulfilled our national obligation. I know that good cooperation will follow this statement.

With the assurance of my highest esteem

[handwritten] and Heil Hitler!

[Signature of Archbishop Innitzer]

____________________

[bottom left]

Preface to the Solemn Declaration
of the Austrian Bishops in the Matter
of the Plebiscite

After extensive deliberations, we bishops of Austria, in view of the great historic moments that the people of Austria are experiencing, and in the awareness that the thousand-year-old yearning of our people for unification in a single great empire of Germans is coming to fruition in our times, have decided to address the following appeal to all our faithful.

We can do so all the more confidently, as the Führer’s representative for the plebiscite in Austria, Gauleiter Bürckel, has announced his sincere policy, which is to be guided by the motto: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Vienna, March 21, 1938

For the Vienna Ecclesiastical Province:
[Signature of Innitzer]

For the Salzburg Ecclesiastical Province
[Signature of Waitz]

__________________

[center]

Solemn Declaration!

Out of the innermost conviction and of our own volition, we, the undersigned bishops of the Austrian Ecclesiastical Province, declare on the occasion of the great historic events in German-Austria:

We joyfully acknowledge that the National Socialist movement has achieved and is achieving outstanding results for the German Reich and people, especially for the poorest classes of the people, in the area of national [völkisch] and economic development, as well as social policy. We are also convinced that the actions of the National Socialist movement averted the danger of utterly destructive, godless Bolshevism.

The bishops support these actions for the future with their greatest blessings, and will also enjoin the faithful along these same lines.

On the day of the plebiscite, it is a self-evident national duty for us bishops, as Germans, to pledge ourselves to the German Reich, and we also expect all faithful Christians to be cognizant of what they owe to their people.

Vienna, March 18, 1938 [Signatures of Innitzer, Waitz, Gföllner, Pawlikowski, Memelauer, and Hefter]\

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