Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The March 21, 1938 issue of Time magazine — Volume 31, Number 12 — featuring Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg on the cover is one of the most historically charged and most specifically significant magazine covers of the entire pre-war decade, a primary document published at the precise moment of one of the most consequential events in the descent toward World War II. The German annexation of Austria — the Anschluss — had been completed on March 12, 1938, just nine days before this issue appeared on American newsstands. Schuschnigg, who had served as Austrian Chancellor since 1934 and had spent the preceding four years attempting to preserve Austrian independence against Nazi pressure, had been forced to resign on March 11 after Hitler's ultimatum, had been placed under house arrest, and would spend the next seven years in Nazi detention — first under house arrest in Vienna, then in concentration camps including Dachau and Sachsenhausen. The Time cover of March 21, 1938 featuring Schuschnigg therefore documents the most recently deposed leader of a country that had just ceased to exist as an independent state — a cover published not in anticipation of an event but in its immediate, devastating aftermath, making it a primary journalistic document of one of the defining moments in the collapse of the European order. Collectors building a serious archive of pre-war American press documentation of the Nazi expansionist program will find the Time magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com the most comprehensive resource for issues from this critical period.
The specific historical weight of March 1938 as a month in the unfolding of the European crisis cannot be overstated. The Anschluss was the first territorial annexation of the Nazi expansion that would eventually produce the Second World War, and it was accomplished with a speed and completeness that shocked even observers who had anticipated that Austria's independence was under threat. Schuschnigg had called a surprise referendum for March 13 in a last attempt to demonstrate popular support for Austrian independence; Hitler responded with an ultimatum on March 11 demanding his resignation, and German forces crossed the Austrian border the same night. Within days, Austria had been incorporated into the German Reich as the Ostmark. The significance of this event for the subsequent history of the decade is impossible to understate: it demonstrated that Nazi Germany could annex a sovereign European state without military resistance, without significant international response, and within forty-eight hours of a political ultimatum. The lesson was not lost on the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, or any other European state that found itself in Germany's path. A Time cover on Schuschnigg published nine days after these events was therefore engaging with the single most important international news story of the year at the moment of its maximum urgency and shock. The 1938 magazines collection at OriginalMagazines.com gathers publications from one of the most consequential years in the entire history of the twentieth century.
Schuschnigg's own subsequent history gives this March 21, 1938 cover an additional dimension of historical significance for collectors who understand the full arc of the figures their documents involve. After his arrest on the night of March 11, Schuschnigg spent the years from 1938 to 1945 in Nazi captivity — an extraordinary ordeal that he survived and documented in his postwar memoir, Austrian Requiem, published in 1946. He was liberated by American forces at Niederdorf in the South Tyrol in May 1945, having been held with other prominent prisoners — including former French Prime Minister Léon Blum and former German Chief of Staff Franz Halder — in the final chaotic weeks of the war. He subsequently emigrated to the United States and taught political science at Saint Louis University from 1948 to 1967. The Time cover of March 21, 1938 documents him at the single most dramatic moment of a remarkable life — the day he was losing everything — and it is a primary record of how the most widely read American newsweekly understood and presented that moment in real time.
About the Publication
Time was founded in 1923 by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden as the first American weekly news magazine, built on the premise that educated readers needed a single authoritative source synthesizing the week's events across politics, business, science, culture, and international affairs into a coherent, opinionated, and readable package. By March 1938, it had been operating for fifteen years and had established itself as the most influential newsweekly in the United States, with an international coverage infrastructure that was particularly important as the European crisis accelerated. Henry Luce's own deep engagement with international affairs — and his specific views on the responsibilities of American democratic leadership — gave Time's pre-war European coverage a moral urgency that distinguished it from more neutralist contemporaries, and the choice of Schuschnigg for the March 21 cover reflected the magazine's editorial judgment that the Anschluss was not merely a European news story but a global one of the first magnitude.
Key Highlights Inside
- Cover story on Kurt von Schuschnigg — published nine days after the Anschluss — a major cover feature on the deposed Austrian Chancellor, published at the precise moment of maximum shock following the German annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938, representing the American mainstream press's most authoritative immediate engagement with the event that historians now identify as the first act of Nazi territorial expansion and a decisive step toward the Second World War.
- The Anschluss documented in real time — this issue appears in the specific nine-day window between the German annexation of Austria and the American public's first sustained journalistic reckoning with what had happened, making it a primary document of how the most widely read American newsweekly understood the event at the moment of its immediate aftermath rather than in retrospect.
- Schuschnigg's forced resignation and arrest documented — the cover story would have engaged with the specific circumstances of Schuschnigg's March 11 resignation under ultimatum and his subsequent arrest by the Nazis — events that had unfolded with extraordinary speed and that the magazine was the first major American publication to present in sustained analytical form.
- European crisis at its most consequential pre-Munich moment — published seven months before the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and the subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, this issue documents the Anschluss at the moment before the full scope of the Nazi expansionist program had produced the crisis that would bring Europe to the brink of war — making it a primary document of the pre-Munich phase of appeasement's failure.
- Volume 31, Number 12 — fifteenth year of publication — this issue belongs to the mature phase of a publication that had spent fifteen years establishing the editorial format and international coverage infrastructure that made its pre-war European journalism the most authoritative available to American readers.
- Note on additional interior content: Specific additional features, columns, and department coverage beyond the Schuschnigg cover story are unconfirmed from available sourcing for this individual issue. The highlights above reflect what is verifiable from the cover subject, volume and issue number, publication date, and Time's thoroughly documented editorial format and international coverage priorities for the period.
Condition & Rarity
Surviving copies of this issue must be assessed with full appreciation of what over eighty-seven years of existence means for a weekly newsweekly printed on the paper stock typical of late 1930s American periodical publishing. Paper from this era has been accumulating the effects of age, humidity, and handling for nearly nine decades, producing the yellowing, brittleness, and edge fragility that are the standard condition characteristics of Depression and pre-war era magazines in private rather than archival storage. The listing confirms a plastic protective covering, indicating deliberate preservation effort and more careful recent storage than an unprotected copy would have received. The most consequential condition factors for display and collector purposes are the integrity of the Schuschnigg cover portrait — specifically whether it retains visual coherence and the legibility of the cover's headlines and design elements — and the completeness and readability of the cover story's content. For a cover of this specific historical magnitude — Schuschnigg nine days after the Anschluss, one of the most consequential diplomatic events of the century — collector and historical relevance extends across a wide range of condition grades, and any surviving copy with a legible cover and readable interior represents an irreplaceable primary document of the European crisis at its most consequential pre-war moment.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Time covers from the late 1930s documenting the specific events and figures of the European crisis — the Anschluss, Munich, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia — are among the most historically significant numbers in the magazine's entire pre-war run, and the March 21, 1938 Schuschnigg cover, published nine days after the annexation of Austria, is one of the most precisely dated and historically specific of them all. If you're building a collection of Time's most consequential pre-war international covers, the Time magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the most comprehensive place to browse what's currently available. For collectors drawn to the full historical weight of 1938 — the Anschluss, Munich, the final year before the war — the 1938 magazines collection offers a wide range of titles from the most consequential year in the entire interwar period.