Dollfuss

Dollfuss by Gordon Brook-Shepherd, 284 pages

In 1932, Engelbert Dollfuss, until then a little known government minister and agrarian reformer, accepted the office of Chancellor of Austria.  In 1933 he closed Parliament and outlawed the Marxist and Nazi parties, leading to a brief civil war between government-backed militias and socialist paramilitaries which climaxed in the use of artillery to reduce socialist strongholds in the working class suburbs of Vienna.  In 1934, after a little over a year of dictatorial rule, he was murdered during a coup attempt by Austrian Nazis.

Shepherd firmly situates Dollfuss' public career in the context of the particular problems of his time and place, only briefly surveying his life before becoming Chancellor in order to devote the bulk of the book to the labyrinthine politics of interwar Austria.  In this account, Dollfuss' primary aim - and his legacy - was the cultivation of a distinct Austrian identity which was independent of the departed Habsburgs and resilient enough to resist the pan-Germanism which animated both the far right and far left.