Heldenplatz in the context of "President of Austria"

The Anschluss (German: [ˈʔanʃlʊs] , or Anschluß, lit. 'joining' or 'connection'), also known as the Anschluß Österreichs (pronunciation, English: Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938.

The idea of an Anschluss (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany") arose after the 1871 unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire. It gained support after the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1918. The new Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain and Treaty of Versailles forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" (Deutschösterreich); they also stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the Sudetenland. This left Austria without most of the territories it had ruled for centuries and amid economic crisis.

Austrian nationalism (Austrian German: Österreichischer Nationalismus) is the nationalism that asserts that Austrians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Austrians. Austrian nationalism originally developed as a cultural nationalism that emphasized a Catholic religious identity. This in turn led to its opposition to unification with Protestant-majority Prussia, something that was perceived as a potential threat to the Catholic core of Austrian national identity. It was also used to protect the rule of the Habsburgs.

Austrian nationalism first arose during the Napoleonic Wars, with Joseph von Hormayr as a prominent Austrian nationalist political leader at the time. In the 1930s the Fatherland Front government of Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg rejected current pan-German aspirations to join Austria with a Protestant-dominated Germany, whilst not wholly rejecting a potential union and claiming that any unification of Austria with Germany would require a federal German state where Austria and Austrians were guaranteed privileged status recognizing an Austrian nation within a German Kulturnation. Following the events of World War II and Nazism, Austrians began to reject the German identity, and a broader Austrian identity replaced it. After the war, some Austrians went as far as describing themselves as "Hitler's first victim".