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The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.

The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt. 


Engelbert Dollfuß (4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. 

Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government. 

In early 1933, the so called "Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. 

Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. 

Dollfuss was assassinated on 25 July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis, who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état. 

During mass trials which took place after the coup, Hudl was sentenced to life in prison, while the others were sentenced to death for their involvement.

In his dying moments, Dollfuss asked for Viaticum, the Eucharist administered to a dying person, but his assassins refused to give it to him.  

Mussolini had no hesitation in attributing the attack to the German dictator: the news reached him at Cesena, where he was examining the plans for a psychiatric hospital. 

Mussolini personally gave the announcement to Dollfuss's widow, who was a guest at his villa in Riccione with her children. 

He also put at the disposal of Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who spent a holiday in Venice, a plane that allowed the prince to rush back to Vienna and to face the assailants with his militia, with the permission of President Wilhelm Miklas. 

Mussolini also mobilised a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch. 

Then he announced to the world: "The independence of Austria, for which he has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously", and then replaced in the main square of Bolzano the statue of Walther von der Vogelweide, a Germanic troubadour, with that of Drusus, a Roman general who conquered part of Germany. 

This was the greatest moment of friction between Italian Fascism and National Socialism and Mussolini himself came down several times to reaffirm the differences in the field.

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