Anschluss

The other thing, though, you did you did mention how there isn't a ton of drama, but there is one point that we did mention earlier is the the thing that hangs over really, really the entire film.

Like it's not just at the end when like the Anschluss comes in and like, you know, the Nazis are fully there when the war is really, you know, picking up.

But it is so interesting.

Obviously, there's the meme.

But it's not enough to cry out with alarm that something terrible is going on, because compared to what he has been doing, things seem a little bit better.

Of course, we know that the Sudetenkrisis and the Anschluss and Munich and all that are just around the corner.

But in 1937, things look better and Hitler is seen as a legitimate international leader.

I was really interested to see how the Zeppelins and these airships played a role in the story leading up to this.

And it was in large part to bring that similarity to light that I wrote this book, because I think that if one looks for the real inspiration, and this is a clear theme of the book, for the political ideas, of the figures on whom I focus.

That inspiration does come from these 1930 figures, Carl Schmitt, and then someone who's less well known in the UK, but had tremendous influence on the right in the US, a fellow called Eric Ferguelin, of more or less the same vintage as Schmidt, also a German fascist who gets out of Austria in the late 1930s because of the Nazi Anschluss.

He's actually in disfavor with the Nazis because he was part of the Austrian fascist right who wanted to keep the Nazis at bay.

And he makes his way to the US where he's really influential in the founding of conservatism, then leaning towards right-wing thought in the 1950s in the US.

The German army had been rebuilt, an air force, the Luftwaffe, had emerged in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler's rhetoric of reclaiming lands lost after the First World War and creating a greater Germany was being ramped up.

In March 1938, this resulted in the German annexation of Austria after years of political pressure for the Union or Anschluss.

Hoffmann was unexpectedly invited to go on a drive by Hitler in the midst of it.

He had no idea where they were going, only that Hitler ordered him to bring a change of clothes with him, stating that they might be away for several days.

Once there, Hitler told Hoffmann that he had a great desire to visit the town of Braunau am Inn in Austria, where Hitler hailed from.

When Hoffmann stated that that would mean crossing into Austria, with which Germany was embroiled in a diplomatic crisis, The Fuhrer smiled and told the driver to continue on.

As they proceeded, they passed soldiers along the way, with Hoffmann only then realizing that the Anschluss was underway and German troops were moving into Austria.

They then arrived at Braunau, where Hoffmann photographed Hitler with the spire of the town clock tower in the background.

Nora, uh, Feternik were, uh, were, were ciphers.

Uh, they both wielded tremendous power and clout, but I'm talking when I say figurehead, I mean, in terms of outward appearances, um, One of Hitler's challenges with balancing Italian demands on the Balkans, and specifically Croatia, in order to placate Mussolini over, among other things, the murder of Dolfus and the subsequent Anschluss and other things, Early on, he'd agreed to cede the Dalmatian coast to Italy, at least as a sphere of influence and an event of general war as a territorial imperative that they would be permitted to capture.

This caused intense resentment in Zagreb, but Hitler realized it was a necessary evil.

Now, Pavelic, having spent so many years in Italy and having courted, really, since 1932-33, alliance with the Italian fascists, he was kind of Mussolini.

And Italy is a stabilizing influence.

So the Italians, for all of its...

For all of its revolutionary aptitude in capturing power, the fascists in this epoch, and especially before the Anschluss and things, they were behaving very much like a national conservative party.

And a lot of these guys in authority, they didn't want to openly support some radical right partisan, like Polish and the Ustasha.