On 2 April 1938, 200,000 Austrians gathered on the Heldenplatz (Square of Heroes) to hear Hitler proclaim the Anschluss. Hitler later commented, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say: even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier (into Austria) there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."