Dollfuss on the Danube

Leaving Vienna for a purpose, little Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss climbed down from his railway carriage at Budapest one day last week and shook hands with his beetle-browed confrere, Premier Goemboes of Hungary. It was an occasion. They talked. While the ignorant prattled about the restoration of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Der Kleiner Engelbert, presented with a big bunch of posies by a group of Austrian girls living in the city divided by the Danube, made a cocky little speech:

"I have heard from responsible persons that it is expected abroad that the present government will last only a fortnight or three weeks. We are reorganizing our whole life. It is possible that such a period of transition includes phases that seem unclear, even alarming, to outsiders. . . . Without boasting and with absolute certainty, I can tell you that the government's position has never been so strong as today."

Maintaining friendly relations with Hungary was important, but what Engelbert Dollfuss apparently went to Budapest for was to allow Vice Chancellor Emil Fey to perform a few blunt maneuvers for which Chancellor Dollfuss did not care to be directly responsible. The Heimwehr, fist of the Dollfuss regime, had seized virtual control of the Tyrol and was loudly demanding that the little Chancellor live up to his promise to end parliamentary government and attack Marxism in Austria (TIME, Feb. 12). Chancellor Dollfuss departed for Budapest and handed extraordinary powers to Vice Chancellor Fey, the Heimwehr's second in command.

In the absence of the Chancellor, Vienna police in steel helmets and armed with rifles promptly swooped down on a dozen Socialist headquarters, occupied and guarded the offices of the Arbeiter Zeitung and announced that they had uncovered evidence of heinous plots and enough bombs to wreck a good section of the city. The Farmers' Party sent a vigorous protest which was promptly suppressed. When Chancellor Dollfuss reappeared in Vienna, he was ready at last to commit himself. Assured of French support (see p. 16), he boldly called the Socialists by their Heimwehr tag, "Marxist-Bolshevists," patted the Heimwehr on the back for "demanding the rapid execution of my program for getting rid of the parties and Parliament.''

Much elated, Prince von Starhemberg strongly hinted that if Dollfuss did not carry out the Heimwehr program to the limit, he might sell out to the Nazis. Crowed he: "The Chancellor's first job is to clear the Socialists out of Vienna's City Hall. If he fails to do it, the Heimwehr will. If the Heimwehr fails, the Nazis will."

But the Socialists, strongest party in Austria, did not take all this lying down. Suddenly convinced that the Government meant business, they proclaimed a general strike throughout Austria. Unfortunately for the Socialists they had no means of spreading their call, since their newspaper had been suppressed. Without means of quick communication, without leadership, the Socialists had little chance, but they tried to make up in fierceness what they lacked in organization. They met the vanguard of marching police with a shower of hand grenades.

Martial law was instantly declared in Vienna and all Upper Austria and the troops called out. Machine guns riddled the Socialist headquarters at Linz. Mountain batteries smashed the barricades of Socialist workmen in the Danube shipyards. Armored trucks with blazing guns tore up & down the streets of Vienna. The Government outlawed the Socialist Party; and Heimwehr youths in grey-green overcoats and steel helmets took possession of Vienna's city hall, for years a Socialist stronghold. Burgomaster Karl Seitz was held prisoner. Army howitzers whanged away at Karl Marx court, largest apartment building in Europe, housing some 2,000 Socialist families. By the end of the second day's fighting, in what met most definitions of civil war, 400 to 500 Austrians lay dead. Austrian Socialism lay battered and bleeding, but Chancellor Dollfuss had yet to reckon with the sterner talents of Naziism.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.