How to stop anschluss?

[Skyman100]

Do I need to rush building a huge army?

[Abuelas5000]

Uhm, either play non-historical or die. That's it ig

[󠁳 ⁧HardLimiter]

You need to play as fascist, annex hungary.
Join italy and fight against "him".

That´s the best way.

But for me, I play only non-historical and there is always rng.

In one run, I started austria as communist, hungary and waited for UK, because they changed to communist too.
Defend only and waited until UK invaded germany.

Soviet would be possible too but they need often too long for starting an invasion from leningrad.

Your best "partners" are UK, Italy.

My best run was as communist, defend only.
Switzerland took control from italy and france (focus tree).
I attacked them.
So I had full switzerland, piece from italy/france and full hungary.
I was strong enough to defend and waited, until he attacked other countries and pushed him back.

But it´s random and a little bit of luck.

If you want to play historical, try to go as fascist, annex hungary and join italy.
Because you can´t hold your line and you need a bigger country next to you, who can help you.

[Antimon]

Here is what I just found out in my first run with Austria (historical)

Initially germany needs a massively stronger army than Austria, factor > 20. That is one condition of their Anschluss focus.

You won't be able to rush more divisions as Austria. First you'll have to deal with some national spirits that destroy your military factory output. Once the worst factory production debuffs are gone, training more divisions helps.

As the date for Anschluss approaches, several events might happen:
The factor decreases over time. The higher fascism support in Austria is, the faster.
When Germany asks you to hire an advisor, decline. Even if they ask several times. Hiring him decreases Germany's required army strength factor.
Germany wants to assassinate one of your high command officers. You'll get a warning a few weeks before that and then you'll have a decision available to increase security. Use that in time. If that assassination attempt is successful it decreases Germany's required army strength factor.

And finally, this one is specific to the national focus path I took:
I managed to delay Anschluss long enough to go communist and join comintern. After that Adolf gave up on Anschluss and skipped it in his focus tree.