NAZI RAID

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3796, 17 August 1936, Page 7

NAZI RAID

ON A PRINCE’S CASTLE. THE PLOT BETRAYED. The mysterious Nazi raid on Prince Starhemberg’s castle at Waxenberg, in Upper Austria, is being investigated by the police, said the Manchester Guardian’s Vienna correspondent on May 24. During the night of Friday-Saturday a group of Nazis, numbering between forty and fifty, attempted to break into the castle, apparently with the purpose of obtaining possession of Heimwehr arms which they suspected were stored there.

The gendarmerie, however, had been given information of the Nazi plot, and when the raiders entered- the castle they ran into a police ambush. The Nazis opened fire, which the gendarmerie returned. A young peasant from Waldschlag was killed on the spot, and a second man was seriously wounded. According to earlier reports from Linz this man died in the Linz hospital, but the latest official communique reports that he is out of danger. The group of young Nazis were apparently members of the secret S.A. group at Oberneukirchen. A Storm Troop leader with a group of his men were waiting in the woods, while his other men were undertaking the raid. The leader succeeded in escaping under cover of darkness, but eight of the raiders were arrested on the spot, and I understand that altogether twenty people have been arrested. Several of the arrested men are reported as having confessed. It appears that the Nazi raiders hoped to seize the Heimwehr arms which they thought were stored at the castle, but the Heimwehr declares that there are no arms there, and other sources assert that the arms had been removed three weeks ago. Prince Starhemberg and his mother, Princess Fanny Starhemberg, were in Vienna when the raid took place. The Prince has large estates in Upper Austria, and besides Waxenberg Castle, which is his chief mansion, he possesses thirteen other country seats.

It appears that the raid was the private enterprise of a number of the Austrian Storm Troop formation, who hoped to use the quarrel between the Government and the Heimwehr for getting possession of the Heimwehr arms. The incident shows that the atmosphere is still tense in Austria.

On the other hand not too much importance should be attached to various Heimwher threats which are still being uttered in the provinces. Thus the leader of the Voralberg Heimwher, Toni Ulmer, has declared in the local Press that he considers unjust and untimely the various attacks directed against Prince Starhemberg.

He said that the Heimwehr was at present the armed protection of the country and would remain so, and no arms or munitions would be surrendered until Austria was a country such as the Heimwehr wished her to be. The power of the Heimwehr was so great that no Government could be imagined which would be directed against the Heimwehr. Such actions would lead to chaos, out of which would arise National Socialism, or, if the national question was not solved, Bolshevism.

At the end of the article Ulmer declared that nobody intended to disarm the Heimwehr. The militia was the successor of the Heimwehr, and the leader of the militia, Herr Baar (the Vice-Chancellor), was a devoted friend of Prince Starhemberg. This threat is typical of the attitude the Heimwehr is trying to adopt to prevent further action against it. But it was obvious from the beginning that Dr. Schuschnigg did not intend to disarm the Heimwehr. He seeks only to end its special position in which it tries to act as a separate body, forming a kind of State within the State. Dr. Schuschnigg realises that a direct conflict with the Heimwehr would merely benefit the Nazis, but he knows, as the army knows, also, that the importance of the Heimwehr as a fighting unit must not be over-estimated.