Death for Freedom

The dire presentiment which caused devout little Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss to send his young wife and chubby children away to Italy with the words "You will be safe where you are going" (TIME, July 23) was fulfilled last week by a grisly and relentless fate.

On the tragic afternoon Frau Alwine Dollfuss, safe at Riccione on the Adriatic as the house guest of Donna Rachele Mussolini, showed her babies, Rudolf and Eva, how to make sand pies. She had taken them in to supper and put them sleepily to bed before she learned that in Vienna 144 brutal young men had contrived the assassination of her husband in a manner which, said the outraged London Times, "makes the name of Nazi stink in the nostrils of the world."

There were tears in Benito Mussolini's eyes as he put Frau Dollfuss aboard an airplane in which she insisted upon dashing to her husband's bier. Wordlessly Il Duce gripped her hand. He knew that she expects a child within five months. Cried Donna Rachele, weeping as she kissed Frau Dollfuss goodby: "I will take good care of your children. Come back to us soon."

As the plane roared away Premier Mussolini, longtime patron of the Dollfuss Dictatorship, stepped into his motorcar and sped to Rome. There he issued orders which galvanized the Great Powers (see p. 14), mobilized 140,000 Italian troops to guarantee the independence of Austria, took steps to break with Adolf Hitler.

"Let the animal die!" Last week after more than a year of terrorist Nazi bombings in Austria, Chancellor Dollfuss had reluctantly enforced for the first time his recent drastic decree-law providing death for civilians caught with explosives. The first terrorist caught and hanged was neither an Austrian nor a Nazi but a wild-eyed Czechoslovak Socialist, one Josef Gerl, who bellowed from the gallows as the noose was put about his neck, ''Long live Austrian liberty!"

This hanging emphasized the delicate position of Chancellor Dollfuss' "Christian Fascist" Cabinet striving to hold the balance between armed Nazis and Socialists in troubled Austria. In Germany the exiled Austrian Nazi leader, leather-lunged Alfred Frauenfeld, promptly took Austria's first terrorist hanging as his text for an ominous threat: "The moment Dollfuss hangs a Nazi civil war will break out in Austria!"

Just 15 hours after Socialist Gerl was hanged, Chancellor Dollfuss summoned a Cabinet council in Vienna's big white Ballhaus, the historic Chancellery of Prince Metternich in which Napoleon's Europe was carved up by the Congress of 1815. Routine matters were dealt with and Minister of Education Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg had slipped off with one or two other Ministers to an early lunch. Suddenly a breathless secretary rushed in with a slip of paper which he handed to the little Chancellor and strapping Major Emil Fey, Commissar for Emergency Measures for Defense of the State. "Action against the Government is being prepared," read the paper. Almost before this warning could sink in five truckloads of men dressed as soldiers, Heimwehren ("Home Guards") and police rumbled up to the Ballhaus. So closely did these invaders resemble lawful forces of the State that the Ballhaus' sentries had not even challenged them. Jumping down from a truck, their leader, dressed as a high Austrian Army officer with medals blazing on his chest, barked orders to close and bolt the great oak doors of the Ballhaus. Even this seemed regular enough to the sentries but an instant later they quailed as pistols were pressed to their ribs with the order: "Drop your arms! You and the rest are hostages. If the Ballhaus is attacked you die!"

Upstairs panic-stricken State functionaries tore about with flying coattails, locking the thin, white doors that were now the Cabinet's sole defense. Swinging rifle butts like battering rams, the invaders crashed down door after door, advancing slowly and methodically through the vast building and making up batches of hostages as they went. "This lot is to be shot first, if we are attacked. That lot next."

While Chancellor Dollfuss, Major Fey and Under-Secretary Baron Karl Karwinsky were being trapped in the State Apartments, Vienna's chief radio station RAVAG was falling in the hands of eight desperate youths in Austrian Nazi gear. They had burst in, shot the manager and forced the chief announcer to tell all Austria in a trembling voice: "It is one minute and 30 seconds past one p. m. We have to inform you that the Dollfuss Cabinet has resigned and Anton Rintelen has taken over the Government."

There is only one Rintelen. All Austria knows that last year Chancellor Dollfuss bought off potent pro-Nazi Dr. Anton Rintelen, the uncrowned "King Anton" of the Austrian province of Styria, by the fat plum of making him Ambassador at Rome. The stark, one-sentence radio announcement was seemingly intended to convey to Austria that a Nazi Putsch headed by "King Anton" had succeeded. When a radio actor found a revolver and started shooting, a cool Nazi hurled a hand grenade, blew him to blazes. Meanwhile back at the Ballhaus ten pistol-brandishing Nazis had burst down the last white door and caught Chancellor Dollfuss at bay on the threshold of the historic Yellow Room in which met the Congress of Vienna.

Without a word to the Chancellor Nazi gunmen shot him down, first bullet in the chest, second in the neck, as he threw up his arms and fell, crying "Help!"

"Let the animal die," growled a Nazi. Others roughly picked up bleeding Dollfuss, dumped him on a divan.

Gasping for breath and at first almost unconscious the Chancellor was to lie there in agony the whole afternoon, slowly bleeding to death. His weak pleas for a doctor and a priest were ignored, though a Nazi gave him a cup of water. Mean while Major Fey had been forced at pistol point into another room and with him the Nazis parleyed.

"Surrender or We Dynamite!" Since the dying Chancellor was himself almost a one-man Cabinet, the duty of besieging the Ballhaus and the radio station with loyal troops fell to the resolute leader of the Austrian Catholic Storm Troops,* scholarly Minister of Education Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, luckily at large because of his early lunch. He rushed to the Ministry of Defense, muzzled Vienna's Press which printed not a line of what was happening all afternoon, ordered out the Army and the Heimwehr and telegraphed to kindly old President Wilhelm Miklas who was rusticating in Lower Austria, to dashing young Vice Chancellor Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg who was vacationing with swank friends at Venice.

Easy-going Viennese took no alarm even when the Ballhaus was surrounded by a double ring of army and Heimwehr who grimly unlimbered machine guns. Street cars rattled past. And no one outside the Ballhaus yet knew that Chancellor Dollfuss had been shot.

To hard-faced Major Fey fell the role of playing an astounding series of balcony scenes. With his captors digging pistols into the small of his back he appeared again and again on the balcony of the Ballhaus, out of earshot of Viennese loitering beyond the double ring of State forces.

To the Juliet of nerve-racked Major Fey, Romeo was played by grim State Secretary Baron Neustaedter-Stuermer, acting for that cautious generalissimo Minister of Education Dr. Schuschnigg, who kept well out of the siege.

"What about the Rintelen Government?" shouted down pistol-prodded Juliet Fey.

"There will be no Rintelen Government and unless the Ballhaus is surrendered we will dynamite it!" roared Romeo Neustaedter.

Prodded and primed by his captors, Major Fey blustered: "I have not given any order that this building is to be stormed."

"Neither you nor any other Minister held prisoner by the rebels have any authority," boomed Baron Neustaedter. "President Miklas has so ordered. Authority has passed to Dr. Schuschnigg. Surrender or we dynamite."

Since the Ballhaus telephones were still working, its Nazi captors called up the German Minister to Vienna, Dr. Kurt Rieth, and begged him to intercede. When he at first refused they forced Major Fey to plead by telephone with Diplomat Rieth. Finally at 6:30 p. m. the sleek, aristocratic German Minister drove up to the Ballhaus in his limousine. Soldiers and Heimwehren greeted him with growls : "We ought to shoot the dog ! The shameless fellow has dared to come here!"

At this rough insinuation that Chancellor Hitler might be behind Nazi desperadoes who had telephoned the German Ministry in their extremity, Dr. Rieth paled and said uneasily, "It is true I am the German Minister but I am here only on the request of Dr. Schuschnigg."

Within half an hour truce terms had been struck. The Nazis understood, on the word of the German Minister, that Dr. Schuschnigg had agreed to send them with an Austrian army escort to the German frontier, where, again on the word of Dr. Rieth, they would be admitted. Vastly relieved, the nervous Nazis promptly surrendered, threw down their arms and jumped cheerfully into army trucks which jounced them off not to Germany but to jail.

Radio station RAVAG had meanwhile been seized after it had been nearly cut to pieces with machine guns and grenades. The Nazis left alive within were savagely beaten, half stripped of their clothes and marched to jail, prodded and beaten on the way by bayonets and rifle butts. Not until 10 p. m. was the Austrian Government ready to give out the first explanation of why the Ballhaus truce was not observed and the first news that Engelbert Dollfuss was dead.

"The others--God forgive them." Stepping to the microphone Major Fey told in a low voice, broken with emotion, how, before his appearance on the balcony, the Nazis had taken him in to where Chancellor Dollfuss lay caked with clotted scarlet on the divan.

"To me," said Major Fey, "his last words were, 'Take care of my wife and children. Settle this with as little bloodshed as possible.' "

To two captured police officers who saw the Chancellor after Major Fey was forced to leave him. Engelbert Dollfuss gasped what were probably his last words: "Boys, you have been good to me! I thank you. Why are not others the same? I wanted only peace. The others -- may God forgive them!" Then after a long, gasping sigh: "Give my love to my wife and children."

As loud and firm over the radio as Major Fey had been husky and broken. Minister of Education Dr. Schuschnigg announced: "The Putsch has failed!" According to him, the Government made truce with the rebels without knowing they had killed Chancellor Dollfuss. That unspeakable crime, he maintained, cancelled the truce.

Prince, Rebels and "King Anton." Dr. Schuschnigg was automatically supplanted as Acting Chancellor by Vice Chancellor Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg when His Serene Highness returned by air from Venice.

This scion of Austria's oldest and proudest nobility was left 13 castles and several hundred servants by his father. In 1923 he came under Adolf Hitler's spell and was with the No. 1 Nazi in the Munich beer hall Putsch that failed. Later the Prince broke with Hitler because of Der Fuehrer's crackpot "race" theories. Back in Austria Prince von Starhemberg started drilling his servants as members of the Heimwehr ("Home Guard"). Getting thoroughly interested, His Highness bought them green uniforms and rifles and called for volunteers. Eventually so many Austrians flocked to Prince von Starhemberg's standard that he found the Home Guard was driving him into bankruptcy-- but by that time he had found an angel, Benito Mussolini.

That Il Duce has financed the Heimwehr, now claiming 125,000 men, and supplied it with weapons no Austrian doubts. This force has proved an effective bulwark against Austrian Nazis and Austrian Socialists, both well-armed and militant. Since post-War treaties limit the Austrian army to a comic 30,000, the Heimwehr provided Vice Chancellor Prince von Starhemberg last week with might sufficient to deal crushing blows at Nazi revolts which at news of Chancellor Dollfuss' assassination flared in many parts of Austria.

The most savage outbreaks were in "King Anton's" Styria. He had left his post as Austrian Ambassador in Rome without authority and in Vienna he blushed and stammered brokenly when Dr. Schuschnigg demanded: "Why did you do this? What is your explanation?"

Apparently there could be no explanation. Grimly the Austrian police arrested "King Anton" and in his cell they left a pistol. Someone fired it and "King Anton" crumpled up. Screamed Frau Rintelen in her home: "My husband was not a suicide ! They killed him !"

Actually "King Anton" was not dead. In speechless condition he was rushed to a hospital where doctors said he might recover. Unable to utter a word, he scrawled on a paper, "I am innocent."

500,000 for Dollfuss, If most Austrians really want a union of their country with Germany, as both German Nazis and Austrian Nazis passionately insist they do, then it was strange that Engelbert Dollfuss--a Chancellor whose whole policy was the incarnate symbol of independent Austria--should have received this week a funeral which as a vast, spectacular outpouring of popular grief, will rank with that of NIKOLAI LENIN.

Ceaselessly for a whole day mourners of every class walked four abreast through Vienna City Hall past a towering catafalque on which tiny Engelbert Dollfuss lay in death with candles at his head and sides. Relays of nuns prayed ceaselessly for his unshriven soul. In all Austria there are only 6,500,000 people and it was estimated that 500,000 of them went to the funeral of their Chancellor.

Both President Miklas and Prince von Starhemberg seemed all but overcome as they joined in pronouncing the State's farewell to Dollfuss, made it a ringing reaffirmation of his policies. Cried the handsome, blond-mustached President: "We will complete his task and strive for a peaceful Austria and a peaceful world. May this his last wish be fulfilled!"

Prince von Starhemberg twice tried to speak, twice gave way to his emotions. Beside him stood Frau Dollfuss and the plain, bent peasant woman who bore Engelbert Dollfuss and remains a peasant still, living in the cottage where he was born. "God has given, God has taken away," she kept mechanically repeating. When Prince von Starhemberg was able to speak at last he apostrophized the dead Chancellor with the intimate pronoun.

"What thou wert and still art will not die!" cried the Prince who carried on as Chancellor. "It will remain as long as there is any Austria. In the name of all Austrian comrades I swear eternal loyalty to thine ideals and swear to the last drop of my blood that we will fight for an independent and a free Austria!"

New Cabinet. Next day swaggering Heimwehr troopers bragged: "Without us the Government would have fallen!" And a meeting of Heimwehr group leaders attended by Major Fey loudly demanded that their Supreme Leader, Acting Chancellor Prince von Starhemberg, be made Chancellor.

That night the Cabinet threw a barbed wire entanglement and a cordon of troops around the Ballhaus, retired within and hammered out a compromise which did all present much credit. Prince von Starhemberg agreed with President Miklas that Austria was not yet ready for a "Heimwehr Cabinet." Their pledge to carry on the Dollfuss tradition bound them, they felt, to pick a new Chancellor from his Catholic party and just after midnight they chose Dr. Schuschnigg, a seasoned lawyer-politician and, like Prince von Starhemberg a monarchist.

At 1:45 a. m. President Miklas announced the following new Cabinet, largely a revamping of Dollfuss':

Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, Chancellor and Minister of Defense, Education and Justice.

Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg, Vice Chancellor and Minister of Public Security.

Major Emil Fey, Minister of Interior.

Baron Egon Berger-Waldenegg, Foreign Minister.

Dr. Karl Buresch. Finance Minister.

Odo Neustaedter-Stuermer, Minister of Social Welfare.

Friedrich Stockinger, Minister of Commerce.

First business of the day was to get a court martial busy trying the Dollfuss assassins. One ex-Sergeant Otto Planetta confessed to shooting the Chancellor. Said he: "Someone jogged my arm and the gun discharged. I then noticed what seemed to be only a shadow fall to the floor.

"Later, I realized it was the Chancellor. I told him, 'Get up,' but he replied, 'I'm not able.' " Planetta and a 20-year-old electrician, Franz Holzweber, accused of leading the assassins into the Chancellery, were the first to be convicted. They were promptly hanged.

As the court martial proceeded Vienna was roused to fresh alarm as 40 Nazis suddenly appeared at the hospital in which lay "King Anton" Rintelen, burst in and tried to rescue him. Smart police work nabbed eleven, but Austria closed the week uneasily convinced that there was still plenty of fight left in her Nazis.

* Independent, non-Nazi.

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