Members of the Swarovski family were early, active and enthusiastic champions of National Socialism, and at least six of its members maintained membership in the illegal party prior to Austria’s annexation to National Socialist Germany on 12 March 1938. Three weeks earlier, 500 marchers in the Tyrolean town of Wattens held a torchlight procession that ended with chants of "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler." The majority of the participants, police determined, were Swarovski plant employees, among them Swarovski family heirs Alfred, Wilhelm and Friedrich.