RAID BY NAZIS

Evening Post, Issue 122, 25 May 1936, Page 9

RAID BY NAZIS

STABHEMBEBG'S CASTLE

CLASH IN DARK WITH POLICE

VIENNA, May 23. One Nazi was killed and several injured in a raid on Prince Starhemberg's castle at Wachsberg. The police were forewarned of the plan arid arrived simultaneously with the Nazis. A fierce fight ensued. The motive apparently was the capture of a quantity of Heimwehr arms stored in the castle. Prince Starhemberg was not present at the time of the raid. ' ■ '.-..'•' The attack on Prince Starhemberg's castle has aroused fears of renewed Nazi violence. Police in Upper Austria have been ordered to remain permanently on alarm duty and' prevent trouble arising from a clash of Heimwehr demonstrations. Armed guards are stationed at Prince Starhemberg's twelve other castles in Upper Austria. So far twenty-eight arrests have been made in connection with the affray at Wachsberg, in which the police declare forty or fifty Nazis attacked, firing revolvers. The police replied with rifles. The fighting raged for fifteen minutes in darkness. One of the wounded died. The ringleader and others escaped to Czechoslovakia. ••...''. It is believed that several of the raiders were former members of Prince Starhemberg's bodyguard, one of whom revealed the plot. Prince Ernst yon Starhemberg, the leader of the Heimwehr or Home Guard, Is said to have thirteen castles in or about Upper Austria. He was born in 1899 and served on the Italian front in the World War, being severely wounded arid revealing great gallantry at the age of 17. After the World War he fought with the Germans against the Poles in Upper Silesia, and with the Austrians against the Yugoslavs along the Styrian border. A student at Munich, after the war, he came under the spell of Herr'Hitler and took part in the abortive Munich beerhall putsch of 1923. His mother, horrified at his action, took him back to Austria. He then decided to organise his own private army, and in one of his castles created a "hunter detachment" of about 800 retainers. For some years he financed the beginnings of the Heimwehr himself. Then his funds ran low, and his friends and Signor Mussolini came to his aid. Today he commands the chief private armed forces in Austria.