Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1938. SCHUSCHNIGG AND HITLER

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1938. SCHUSCHNIGG AND HITLER

There is no more important and intriguing question in Europe today than where Dr. Schuschnigg and Herr Hitler stand in relation to each other. Dr. Schuschnigg succeeded to the Chancellorship of Austria (practically a dictatorship) on July 25, 1934, when Austrian Nazi rebels in Vienna murdered the then Chancellor, Dr. Dollfuss. A great amount of evidence is on record that the assassins of Dollfuss were assisted from Hitler's Germany. In "Inside Europe" (John Gunther) it is stated that: Of German moral responsibility for the Dollfuss murder, titer, was no doubt. Munich, day in, day out, preached violence. . . .' The Munich headquarters of the Nazi Party, according to the official "Wiener Zeitung," had a special aeroplane ready at 9 a.m. on July 25 for the victorious flight of Habicht and Frauenfeld to Vienna. The conspirators in Vienna did not assemble till 11 a.m.; their failure to achieve any greater success than the temporary capture of the radio station and the murder of Dr. Dollfuss upset the intended victorious flight from Munich of their German leaders, and upset Nazi plans in other ways:

For a year and a half the Germans had incited their Austrian cousins to violence; and then, at the crisis, let them down. The Austrian Legion ■[Austrian Nazis organised in Germany to cross the border into Austria] did not march; instead, as soon as the putsch was seen to have failed, the Austrian Legion was disbanded. Habicht was dismissed from his post as Hitler's "Inspector" for Austria, and Frauenfeld disappeared. Dr. Rieth [German Minister at Vienna, whp had got himself entangled with the ' murderers of Dollfuss] was summarily fired, to give way to Franz yon Papen. Dr. Rieth had been a party to a further piece of damning evidence against Germany—a promised safeconduct of the assassins to the German frontier.

During the afternoon of July 25 the extraordinary position existed in Vienna that the assassins were at bay in the Chancellery with the dead body of the murdered Chancellor beside them, but the authorities outside did not .then know of the murder. It is assumed that the acceptance of the assassins' offer to surrender,- conditional on safeconduct to Germany, was due to ignorance, outside the Chancellery, of Dr. Dollfuss's death.

The rebels came out cocky and confident. Everyone thought their free passage to Germany was assured. They thought so too. But they were wrong. What upset their final calculation was that remaining members of the Dollfuss Cabinet held a meeting contemporaneous with the surrender. One of their number took charge of the proceedings, and decided that the assassins should pay the penalty. That man, it is recorded, was Dr. Schuschnigg.

Schuschnigg was informed for the first time of the circumstances of Dollfuss's death, and he simply decided not to let the murderers go.

Instead of going to Germany, thirteen of them were hanged, including the leader Holzweber, and the slayer of Dollfuss, Planetta.

It is worth while recalling these events of July 25, 1934, because they give a glimpse of one side of the character of Dr. Schuschnigg, who succeeded Dr. Dollfuss, and who, nearly four years afterwards, met Herr -Hitler at the recent famous "conversations" in Germany, where, according to some stories, the Austrian dictator was "intimidated" by the German one. In the considerable interval since the fatal July 25, J. 934, Dr. ■ Schuschnigg has got rid of two Austrian rivals — Prince Starhemberg and Major Fey. He is responsible, for the agreement 'with Germany of 1936, which proclaims Austria a German Stale hut independent of Germany. And this agreement is ihe keynote of his speech reported yesterday. What the outside world is-wondering is whether the greater emphasis is on 'he Germanism or on ihe independence of Austria: and whether the man who signed the agreement of 1936, but who yet quashed the safeconduct of the Nazi murderers of 1934, is likely to continue to be ihe dictator of*a free Austria, or merely the custodian of a transition period during which, without putsches and assassinations, the incorporation of Austria into Germany will steadily and quietly proceed. There is a third possibility—that Dr. Schuschnigg might retreat from dictatorship, revive the Austrian Parliament which Dr. Dollfuss suppressed, and give the Austrian people a genuine self-determination, not the sham self-determination that figured nbsurdlv in the German Dielntor's Reichstag speech. But Dr. Schtischn'ms seems to have banged, bolted, and barred ihe door on democracy. As in Herr Hitler's Germany, ihe Conslitution he stands for "knows no parties." The Constitution of May,

1934, to which Dr. Schuschnigg expresses loyalty, was the work of his predecessor, Dr. Doll fuss. It can be described as an authoritarian, corporative Constitution, with a Fatherland Front as an adjunct. The Fatherland Front is "a national movement above parties, grounded on a patriotic basis." One apparent result of the recent interview with Henri, tier is the admittance of the Austrian Nazis—more or less banned since the dark year 1934. —into the Fatherland Front. Evidently Dr. Schuschnigg, in- 1938, has decided that there is room in the Front for the once-wicked Nazis. Will the Nazis always return the compliment, and find room in it for Dr. Schuschnigg? The once powerful Austrian Socialist Party, whose stronghold was Vienna, has little influence under a Constitution from which "the last vestiges of free popular suffrage have disappeared," and under which "a Chamber chosen on a guild basis replaces the old Austrian Parliament." But the Catholic element in Austria remains something for Nazis to reckon with. While Dr. Schuschnigg, a Catholic, was insisting that a German Austria does not mean an Austria subject to Germany, another Catholic, the Mayor of Vienna, was reported yesterday as declaring German reunion ("ninety million Germans in one Slate") to be Utopian. Also, he said, "a regime which is hostile to the Church will not last." Although Herr Hitler is in Austrian by birth, and personally interested in reunion with Austria, he has blundered in his Church policy as well as in the violence policy of 1934; and it would be rash to assume that all Austrians are willing to forget, even if Dr. Schuschnigg should prove to be. It is also of importance to remember that Dr. Schuschnigg is the founder of die militant Catholic <'outh organisation, the Sturmscharen, which paraded on the occasion of his speech. This organisation was also relied on by the late Dr. Dollfuss, as an offset to the Heimwehr of Starhcmberg and Fey, Nevertheless, in spite of Herr Hitler's Church policies and Nazi excesses, the Austrians are a German race. John Gunther even estimates that "80 per cent, of Austrians were pro-Anschluss before Hitler."

The oft-laboured scheme of a Danube confederation as a solution of the Austrian problem will not work while nationality remains a spiritual as well as an economic barrier between the Central European countries. Austria's fate is indissolubly connected with that of Germany; the only eventual path of Austria is in the German orbit.

Unfortunately, this affects far more than Austria. "If Austria became part of Germany, the Mittel-Europa dream would begin to be realised: the dream of an encircled Czechoslovakia, of a Nazi push into the broad plains of' Hungary and beyond." Viewed from that angle, Dr. Schuschnigg becomes more than an Austrian phenomenon. It may be in his power to hasten or to delay the Eastward march of Germany, and thus to either facilitate the materialisation of the Hitler dream, or leave "Mem Kampf" for ever in the domain of fiction instead of history.