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
Polish authorities have ordered a new investigation into the crimes against humanity committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The Germans murdered an estimated 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, located near Krakow, until the Red Army libereated the camp late in January 1945.
The crimes committed at Auschwitz were central to Nazi Germany's plans to create lebensraum in Eastern Europe - to be done mostly at the expense of the Slavic and Jewish people, though hundreds of thousands of Roma and other peoples characterized as "sub-human" were also murdered.
