With Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg scrambling to hold a last-minute plebiscite to preserve independence, Hitler moved to preempt any vote. The directive, signed in Berlin, ordered the Wehrmacht to be ready to cross the border. German troops entered Austria on March 12, met by cheering crowds in many towns, and the annexation was formalized within days, erasing Austria from the map of independent nations until 1945.
Kurt Schuschnigg, Austria's beleaguered chancellor, had spent weeks resisting Nazi pressure to fold his country into the Third Reich. On March 11, 1938, sensing Schuschnigg's plan to call a plebiscite that might reaffirm Austrian independence, Hitler signed 'Directive No. 1' ordering the Wehrmacht to prepare 'Operation Otto,' the invasion plan for Austria. He could not risk a democratic vote proving Austrians wanted to remain independent.
The directive set in motion a diplomatic and military sequence that moved with startling speed. Within five days, German troops crossed the border unopposed, greeted in Vienna and elsewhere with flowers, swastika flags, and roaring crowds rather than resistance. Schuschnigg resigned rather than order Austrian troops to fight. The Anschluss, formally completed by a rigged plebiscite in April claiming over 99 percent approval, gave Hitler his first territorial conquest without firing a shot and emboldened him toward Czechoslovakia and, eventually, world war.