Interviewing Hitler opens in Linz, Austria, in 1938: the year before the outbreak of World War Two. Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria, has just announced the Anschluss, the forced political union of Germany and his birth country. Since seizing power in 1933, he has been overseeing Germany’s rearmament and increasingly belligerent foreign policy moves.
Now, on March 12 1938, Hitler has returned to Austria as a hero, greeted by enraptured crowds lining the streets. Author Richard Evans describes the triumphant dictator soaking it all in,
standing in the cold on the balcony of the city hall, looking out at buildings festooned with swastikas and a crowd of thousands who are looking up at him and chanting in union: “One leader; one people; one state.”
