Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

FRANCE IS TO BLAME 677impossible, it was for the little country to break inwardly with Germany.Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, for example, declared the aim of hisgovernment to be the establishment of a 'Catholic German state.'In March, 1933, Hans Frank, Hitler's friend, now a Bavarian minister,took a trip around Austria making speeches against Doll-fuss and thegovernment as though he had been home in Germany, attackingBruning or Severing; the Austrian government deported him, and thebattle was on. The Austrian National Socialists, led by Theo Habicht, aGerman, and an Austrian named Frauenfeld, began to hurl bombs,mostly harmless, to be sure, at government officials and publicbuildings. The government answered with arrests and established a mildsort of concentration camp. Hitler countered with a serious blow: at theend of May, Germany exacted a payment of a thousand marks fromtravelers desiring to visit Austria. This virtually closed the frontier; Austria'sAlpine provinces had largely lived on the German tourist trade. Inanswer, Dollfuss suppressed the National Socialist Party and arrested itsleaders; Habicht, Frauenfeld, and thousands of their supporters fled toGermany.These National Socialists were organized into an 'Austrian Legion';equipped with arms, even cannon, they lived in camps, ready to marchat any moment; planes regularly crossed the Austrian frontier and threwdown proclamations. It was an international civil war, and the NationalSocialists conducted it with an efficiency that might have been the envyof the Communist International. But the German Foreign Office insistedthat it was all an internal affair of Austria; the Austrian NationalSocialists had chosen Hitler as their Leader; this was their right andtheir own affair.Dollfuss turned to the great powers for help. But the days were pastwhen Germany could be frightened by frowns in London or Paris. Aslong as the world could come to no decision on disarmament, it wouldnot go out of its way for Austria, and more than a protest in words wasnot to be expected. On July 5, in the House of Commons, Sir AustenChamberlain described the international menace of National Socialismwith epigrammatic sharpness: 'The