Word: dollfuss
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...conflict between the Viennese Socialists and the Dollfuss National Party is the first major class war since the Russian revolution of 1917. It is interesting to contrast the groups from which the two bodies are drawn. Austria of today is composed of impoverished Vienna and a hinterland mainly devoted to agriculture, quite insufficient to support the economic needs of its metropolis. The Socialist party has held Vienna in the palm of its hand since the war, while the national government has been dominated by the small land-owners, peasants, and the agrarian capitalist aristocracy...
Fortunately for Millimetternich Dollfuss, there is another Heimwehr commander who has never yet wavered in his loyalty, blue-eyed, square-jawed Major Emil Fey, Vice Chancellor. From the Dollfuss office went forth a new pronunciamento announcing that "Nazi terrorism has become so barbarous that the Government's patience is at an end." Thereupon Major Fey was given new powers to jail judges, police, city or federal authorities suspected of Nazi sympathies...
From the party that sent him first into politics, the stolid thick-necked peasants of the Lower Austrian Bauernbund, Chancellor Dollfuss got a popular demonstration to offset Nazi propaganda. By special trains 100,000 of them came up to Vienna, stomped under streaming banners eight abreast round the Ringstrasse. In the railway station the little Chancellor barked excitedly: "This shows how ridiculous is the allegation that the people are not behind the Government. . . . You are my plebiscite...
...danger to the Dollfuss cause is not that the little Chancellor has lost popularity, but that the average Austrian fears that he may be caught on the wrong side if and when the Nazis do take over the country. Austria's future, as usual, rested abroad. A united challenge to Germany from Britain, Italy, France could save her. But Britain was too timorous, Italy dared not act alone, and France was far too deeply mired in her own political garbage to pay attention...
...difficult. The seemingly hopeless division of country into completely irreconcilable faction has become an actual fact, and any chance of settling their differences amicably must be viewed as a more or less hopeless dream. The only possible opportunity for accomplishing this lies in the triumph of the ideas of Dollfuss; if anything at all is to be done to arrest the further advance of the Nazis into Austria it must all too obviously be accomplished under a form of government that is, in essence, dictatorial, for any other sort is too unwieldy to avert the danger which now threatens. Unfortunately...