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Unlike the Allied leaders, though, Hitler was fully prepared to back up his policies by force, even if only obliquely or by proxy. When General Francisco Franco launched a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain in 1936, Hitler saw a chance not only to acquire a new ally but also to discomfit the neighboring French. He sent bombers, tanks and "volunteers." Goring used Spain as a training ground for "my young Luftwaffe." Its most notorious action, one that other nations would soon experience, was the aerial destruction of the Basque town of Guernica.
The Allied leaders also did not understand that Hitler repeatedly lied about his plans and intentions. In a speech justifying rearmament in 1935, he declared, "Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss ((unification))." He even signed a treaty with Austria in 1936 promising not to interfere in its internal affairs. But he was an Austrian, after all, and the idea of uniting the two Germanic nations can never have been far from his mind. By 1937, when he called in his generals and told them to prepare for war, he said, "Our first objective . . . must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria."
He had actually made an abortive attempt to seize Austria in 1934, when some 150 SS men dressed in Austrian army uniforms burst into the Chancellery in Vienna and shot down Conservative Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. That was supposed to be the start of a Nazi coup, but Justice Minister Kurt von Schuschnigg rallied the police and had the assassins arrested. Italy, which had guaranteed Austrian independence, mobilized four divisions on the frontier. Hitler backed down. By 1938, however, he had built a threatening army and had won the support of Italy's Mussolini (they had signed a secret protocol in 1936 creating what Mussolini called the Rome-Berlin axis). It was time to try again.
Hitler's strategy was a classic example of what came to be known as a war of nerves. All through 1937, Austrian Nazis, armed and financed from Germany, staged demonstrations, street fights, midnight bombings. Schuschnigg, now Chancellor, banned the party and kept arresting its agents. In February 1938 Hitler invited the Austrian leader to his Alpine retreat in Berchtesgaden. There he stormed at his visitor, declaring that the Austrian problem must be solved or his army would demand its "just revenge." When Schuschnigg asked what it was that Hitler wanted, he was handed a typed "agreement" and told that no changes would be allowed. It called for all arrested Nazis to be amnestied, the ban on the party to be lifted, Nazis to be appointed to head the Police and War ministries and an economic merger of the two nations. When Schuschnigg balked, Hitler shouted, "Fulfill my demands within three days, or I will order the march into Austria!"