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Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg (; 14 December 1897 – 18 November 1977) was an politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg considered Austria a "German state" and Austrians to be Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.
When Schuschnigg's efforts to keep Austria independent had failed, he resigned his office. After the Anschluss he was arrested, kept in solitary confinement, and eventually interned in various concentration camps. He was liberated in 1945 by the advancing United States Army and spent most of the rest of his life in academia in the United States.Obituary of Schuschnigg in The Times, London, 19 November 1977 Schuschnigg gained American citizenship in 1956.
He received his education at the Stella Matutina Jesuit College in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg. During World War I, he was taken prisoner at the Italian Front and held captive until September 1919. Subsequently, he studied law at the University of Freiburg and the University of Innsbruck, where he became a member of the Catholic fraternity A.V. Austria. After graduating in 1922, he practiced as a lawyer in Innsbruck.
On 1 May 1934, Dollfuss had erected the authoritarian Federal State of Austria. After Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazi Otto Planetta during the July Putsch, Schuschnigg on 29 July was appointed Austrian chancellor. Like Dollfuss, Schuschnigg ruled mostly by decree. Although his rule was milder than that of Dollfuss, his policies were not much different from the policies of his predecessor. He had to manage the economy of a near-bankrupt state and to maintain law and order in a country which was forbidden, by the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, to maintain an army in excess of 30,000 men. At the same time, he had to also cope with armed paramilitary forces in Austria, which owed their allegiance not to the state but to various rival political parties. He also had to be mindful of the growing strength of the Austrian Nazis, who supported Adolf Hitler's ambitions to absorb Austria into Nazi Germany. His overriding political concern was to preserve Austria's independence within the borders imposed on it by the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which ultimately failed.
John Gunther wrote in 1936 of Schuschnigg: "It would not be too much to say that he is as much a prisoner of the Italians now as—if the Germans don't get him next week." His policy of counterbalancing the German threat by aligning himself with Austria's southern and eastern neighbours—the Kingdom of Italy under the Italian Fascism rule of Benito Mussolini and the Kingdom of Hungary—was doomed to failure after Mussolini had sought Hitler's support in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and left Austria under the increasing pressure of a massively rearmed Third Reich. Schuschnigg adopted a policy of appeasement towards Hitler and called Austria the "better German state", but struggled to keep Austria independent. In July 1936, he signed an Austro-German Agreement, which, among other concessions, allowed the release of imprisoned July Putsch insurgents and the inclusion of the Nazi contact men Edmund Glaise-Horstenau and Guido Schmidt in the Austrian cabinet.Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, Victor Gollancz 1947, London. pp. 16–17 The Nazi Party remained banned; however, the Austrian Nazis gained ground and relations between the two countries deteriorated further. In reaction to Hitler's threats to exercise a controlling influence over Austrian politics, Schuschnigg publicly declared in January 1938:
There is no question of ever accepting Nazi representatives in the Austrian cabinet. An absolute abyss separates Austria from Nazism ... We reject uniformity and centralization. ... Catholicism is anchored in our very soil, and we know but one God: and that is not the State, or the Nation, or that elusive thing, Race."Morning Telegraph" of London (January 5, 1938), reprinted in "Let the Record Speak", Dorothy Thompson, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company (1939) p. 135Rumours concerning his involvement in the Von Trapp family’s rise to fame have also come to light. It’s rumoured that upon hearing the Von Trapp family sing over the radio, he invited them to perform in Vienna which greatly helped them in their rise to fame.
The president, Wilhelm Miklas, was reluctant to endorse the agreement but eventually did so. Then he, Schuschnigg and a few key Cabinet members considered a number of options:
In the event, they decided to go with the third option. Austrian Requiem, p. 33
On the following day, 14 February, Schuschnigg reorganised his cabinet on a broader basis and included representatives of all former and present political parties. Hitler immediately appointed a new Gauleiter for Austria, a Nazi Austrian army officer who had just been released from prison in accordance with the terms of the general amnesty stipulated by the Berchtesgaden agreement. Austrian Requiem, p. 35
On 20 February, Hitler made a speech before the Reichstag which was broadcast live and which for the first time was relayed also by the Austrian radio network. A key phrase in the speech was: "The German Reich is no longer willing to tolerate the suppression of ten million Germans across its borders."
In Austria, the speech was met with concern and by demonstrations by both pro and anti-Nazi elements. On the evening of 24 February, the Austrian Federal Diet (the Austrian Bundestag), was called into session. In his speech to the Diet, Schuschnigg referred to the July 1936 agreement with Germany and stated: "Austria will go thus far and no further." He ended his speech with an emotional appeal to Austrian patriotism: "Red-White-Red (the colours of the Austrian flag) until we're dead!" The speech was received with disapproval from the Austrian Nazis and they began mobilising their supporters. The headline in The Times of London was "Schuschnigg's Speech – Nazis Disturbed". The phrase "thus far and no further" was found "disturbing" by the German press. The Times, February 26, 1938
To resolve the political uncertainty in the country and to convince Hitler and the rest of the world that the people of Austria wished to remain Austrian and independent of the Third Reich, Schuschnigg, with the full agreement of the President and other political leaders, decided to proclaim a plebiscite to be held on 13 March. But the wording of the referendum which had to be responded to with a "Yes" or a "No" turned out to be controversial. It read: "Are you for a free, German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria, for peace and work, for the equality of all those who affirm themselves for the people and Fatherland?"G. Ward Price: Year of Reckoning, Cassell 1939, London. p. 92
There was another issue which drew the ire of the National Socialists. Although members of Schuschnigg's party (the Fatherland Front) could vote at any age, all other Austrians below the age of 24 were to be excluded under a clause to that effect in the Austrian Constitution. This would shut out from the polls most of the Nazi sympathisers in Austria, since the movement was strongest among the young. Knowing he was in a bind, Schuschnigg held talks with the leaders of the Social Democrats, and agreed to legalise their party and their trade unions in return for their support of the referendum.William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Touchstone Edition) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990)
The German reaction to the announcement was swift. Hitler first insisted the plebiscite be cancelled. When Schuschnigg reluctantly agreed to scrap it, Hitler demanded his resignation, and insisted that Seyss-Inquart be appointed his successor. This demand President Miklas was reluctant to endorse but eventually, under the threat of immediate armed intervention, it was endorsed as well. Schuschnigg resigned on 11 March, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed Chancellor, but it made no difference; German troops flooded into Austria and were received everywhere by enthusiastic and jubilant crowds. Year of Reckoning pp. 91–117 On the morning after the invasion, the London Daily Mail
His first wife Herma died in a car accident in 1935. He remarried in 1938, but lost his second wife, Vera Fugger von Babenhausen (née Countess Czernin), in 1959.
Kurt Schuschnigg went back to Austria where he downplayed his time exercising dictatorial powers as chancellor and tried to justify the regime.
Schuschnigg died at Mutters, near Innsbruck, in 1977.
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