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Why did the Trapp family leave Austria in 1938?
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Robert Wise
Robert Wise.
The Trapp family fled Austria in 1938 because the country had become Nazi-dominated following the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany).
While the popular 1965 film directed by Robert Wise depicts the family escaping over the mountains to Switzerland, the historical reality is that the family fled to Italy before eventually emigrating to the United States.1