The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-08-01
Liberal Viewpoint
by DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES =
This is the second of series of articles by
Harry Elmer Barnes. Phi. ID.


Harry Elmer Barnes Phi. D.
IN March, 1884, the Anechluss problem was
Il brought to the fore as a result Of visit Of
the German foreign minister, DR.. Curtius, to
Vienna. 1t was announced that negotiations had
| been opened looking to a customs union between
Germany and Austria.
Immediately. the entente powers and the
elements in Austria and Germany opposed to
union exhibited the grayest alarm. They remem-
bered that the customs was set up by Prussia
hundred years ago had been the main factor in
promoting the political union Of the scattered
German states-a task brought to completion by
Bismarck with blood and iron in 1870.
The World Court Immediately got busy and
by strictly political vote declared the proposed
customs union not permissible. The court thus
did more to undermine confidence in its i'm
Partially ard usefulness than all the criticism
Of American isolationists could accomplish in a
generation.
Then the entente put the financial screws on
Austria. The latter had to have financial loans
S42 100000 through the Bank of International
Settlements but forced Austria as a condition to
agree that she would not enter into any customs
union with Germany.
The Hitler triumph faced the world in 1888
and brought up union with Germany through
another channel. The Na1s knew that they
could not annex Austria forcibly without pro-
ducing serious international complications SO
they proposed to achieve the reality without its
form for the time being through solidarity in
common Austro- German Nazi National Social
ist party.
A NAZI overturn in Austria would produce
N effective Austro-German unity and in
form with which the entente could not inter
fere save by war.
The diminutive chancellor had just one
chance Of forming a force sufficiently strong to
up with the Socialists in Vienna, Linz and other
urban centers and with the Christian Socialists
of the rural areas, he would have had behind
him the overwhelming ma jOritv of the Austrian
people and could have more than held his own
without setting up a dictatorship The rural and
urban Socialists were willing to forget at least
temporarily. their differences in their common
fear Of Naziism and dictatorship
But DOllfuSs either was shOrt-Sighted or else
ambitious to ape Mussolini and Hitler with his
own brand of dictatorship. Therefore, he turned
against socialism, believing it more important
to suppress the labor movement, abolish demo-
cratic government and establish his own brand
of Fascism than to present an invincible front
against the Hitlerites'
He suppressed the Socialist "Schutzbund"
and the Communist party in the summer of 1888
and then threw himself in the arms of II Duce
for aid and counsel.
TN the late summer of 1888 Dollfuss and Mus
Il solini entered into an agreement designed to
link Austria and Italy more closely in a COM
mercial and industrial way, while DOllfusS prom
sed to resist with all means at his command
any movement for an Austro-German union.
But matters got hotter in Austria. The I'M
expected success of Hitler in building up united
front in Germany strengthened the Nazi deter
mnation to press for union through the party
permeaCion of Austria. NIussolini advised the
desperate Dollfuss to mop up the Socialists and
to support the Fascist "heimWehr." DOllfuSS took
this advice and thus dug his own grave by tenn
porarily breaking the only strong party which
might have helped him resist the Brown Shirts.
The February massacre in Vienna was the
most disgraceful incident in the history of con-
temporary FaScsm. Nothing in the record of
either MuSSolini or Hitler has been so contempt
ible or indefensible.
Dollfuss bloody tactics then only increased
his difficulties Many who had supported his
campaign against the Nazi now threw up their
hands in disgust. Why worry about German
Nazi when Austria had dictator at home who
was more brutal and anti-demOcratic than Hit
Ter? Why get exercised periodically about union
with Germany when Dofuss was selling out
Austria to Italy? So reasoned hundreds of
thousands of long suffering Austrians after the
February orgy.
Further, Naziism made great Roadway among
the Austrian "heimwehr," upon whom Dollfuss
now had to place his sole reliance. The "heim
wehr" was violently anti-Semitlc and hence
pleased vastly by Hitler's raid on the Jews. And
most of them were German in race. If they
we're to be bosSed from abroad, why not by
German rather than an Italian?
From the end of February it was only mat
ter of time until Dollfuss' fading support would
encourage the Nazi to launch their long-pre-
pared "putsch" which could result in nothing
less than Dollfuss DEATH imprisonment or fight.
On July 25 Dollfuss reaped the reward for his
almost predetermined statescraft.