Austria, nestled between Germany and Italy, possessed a long history as a dominant European power. However, after the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been dissolved with Austria remaining as a small, central European state; a shadow of its former imposing Imperial greatness. Austria therefore represented a ripe target for a predator such as Hitler.

In February 1938, Hitler coerced Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg into placing Nazi sympathizers in important government positions. Hitler also laid the groundwork for an Anschluss, political union, through delivering a series

Holocaust survivor Ernie Gross, age 83, and U.S. Army WWII veteran Don Greenbaum, age 87, were able to meet late last year in Philadelphia some 66 years after they unwittingly shared a day at a place and time in history that few people would ever want to be; Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.

On April 29, 1945 Greenbaum was a G.I. in U.S. General George S. Patton's Third Army when the Third Army reached Dachau and its surviving victims.