History of Austria wanting to annex the country to the German Third Reich, resulting in the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. While the coup failed, Adolf Hitler succeeded in annexing Austria on 12 March 1938 as "Ostmark", until 1945. Austria was partitioned after the Second World War and then in 1955 became the independent sovereign state (Second Republic) that has existed to the present day. In 1995, Austria joined the European Union. The modern state of Austria is considered to have three geographic zones. The biggest third consists of the Alps, which covers 62.8% of the country's landmass. In the north, across the
Cesare Battisti (politician) Cesare Battisti (politician) Cesare Battisti (4 February 1875 – 12 July 1916) was an Italian patriot, geographer, socialist politician and journalist of Austrian citizenship, who became a prominent Irredentist at the start of the First World War. He was born the son of a merchant at Trento, a city with a predominantly Italian-speaking population, which at the time was part of the Cisleithanian crown land of Tyrol in Austria-Hungary. Battisti attended the University of Florence, where he became a follower the Italian irredentism movement, aiming at the unification of his Trentino homeland with the Kingdom of Italy, though contrary to