Disclaimer: This time it's not really tl;dr, but it's much easier to shorten the story and the events, rather than explain the background of those. So for those who expected a real tl;dr, just focus on bolded sentences
Propaganda played a key role in this process. Their effectiveness stemmed from the convergence of staging and fascination. Propaganda replaced real power, where it could not yet be exercised, intimidated political opponents and aroused hopes among the supporters. The construction of the necessary propaganda apparatus also created the basis for the future party apparatus of the NSDAP as an organization permeating the entire society.
Children were also mobilized to support the "Anschluss" propagandistically; they were the hope-takers of the new era of Nazi propaganda. Nationalsocialism in Austria also meant a decisive change in the school system, which was unresistably and quite willingly adapted to the new circumstances.
**The "Anschluss" presents itself as a threefold takeover:
- As a massive military threat by the invasion of the Wehrmacht, accompanied by an earlier police action of Himmler's Gestapo;
- As a takeover of native national socialists and sympathizers, who were already in lower and higher positions of the "permanent state";
- And as a demonstrative takeover of power "from below" by threatening street demonstrations, open march of so far forbidden party formations and symbolic actions.**
On a citizen
The individual should be given as little individual leeway as possible in order to capture the "whole" human being. Personal decisions about the meaning of one's own life and insight into the socio-political context were not allowed to arise. In spite of the seeming devotion to the children, this state-regulated pedagogy was characterized by a despicable humiliation ideology expressed in racist antisemitism, the doctrine of "life-unworthy" life and the devaluation of all strangers. Campaign action in the sense of solidarity with the weaker ones had no place in this education system. In his place mutual monitoring and discipline occurred for the safe execution of commands given above.
Politically "unreliable and unsuitable", such as communists, socialists, anti-Nazi socialists, religious activists, and homosexuals, were also eliminated as "parasites of culture". At the same time, the high-culture enterprise was to be instrumentalised for the establishment of the rule, without ultimately creating a new "German-German" ("blood and soil") cultural movement , It was sufficient for the regimes to document internally and abroad that the seemingly revolutionary Nazi regime was in the succession of bourgeois and monarchist leaders.
(image: Hitler in Kroll Opera, 1938)
On entertainment
Even more intensely was the Nazi engagement in the entertainment industry, especially in the film, in which the "Wien-Film" with productions full of flat operetta was more successful. Entertainment was a psychologically adeptly staged attempt to divert attention from political repression and massive racist persecution. Artists, with few exceptions to the resistance, were quick to get involved in the new political system, partly because the working and production conditions were initially much better than in the periods of high unemployment, due to increased government spending.
On Women
If possible, the women should be confined to the household or social work. In the course of the war, however, there was a delicate shortage of workers, so that mothers as workers were also forced into the armaments industry. The upbringing of girls clearly focused on household and motherhood. In the "Compulsory Year", young girls had to work unpaid in agriculture, in children's rich families or in the households of high-ranking national socialists. In this way they should practice their future work as housewife and mother.
From a political point of view, however, the women were excluded from any co-operation; the national socialist women's organization was subordinated to male functionaries at all levels. Many women nevertheless found it attractive to be now propagandistically adapted to national socialist norms. Women also participated in persecution and became partisans of the national socialist crimes of violence. However, the appraisal was based only on women who were adapted to the racist standards. Those who opposed the regime were just as ruthlessly persecuted as women who had relations with Jews, prisoners of war, or foreign workers. Despite the imminent persecution, many women opposed resistance to national socialism. They were imprisoned in prisons or concentration camps;
Even young mothers were trained. Women, who had been forced into the German Reich as forced laborers, were completely unjustified; They were even forbidden to have children, and forced abortions were made if they became pregnant. In national socialist propaganda the "national" motifs of the "Anschluss" were in the foreground.
But the real reason for the invasion of Austria was different: in 1938 the German armaments industry reached its limits. The continuation of the rearmament seemed questioned. Because there was a shortage of raw materials, labor, free industrial capacities and - last but not least - foreign exchange to import important goods. The German Reich had not reduced unemployment since 1933 because of the preparation of a new war.
The "Blitzkrieg" concept should enable Germany to integrate one country after another into its sphere of influence and to eliminate the next opponent with the resulting increase in economic power. Within the scope of the 2nd Four-Year Plan, which had been developed under the leadership of Hermann Göring in 1936, the securing of access to non-substitutable goods (such as the iron ore from Styrian Erzberg) had top priority in addition to the development of substitutes (such as rubber and oil).
images come from google image under "anschluss"