Early life Schuschnigg was born in Reiff am Gartsee (now
Riva del Garda) in the
Tyrolean crown land of
Austria-Hungary (now in
Trentino,
Italy), the son of Anna Josefa Amalia (Wopfner) and Austrian General Artur von Schuschnigg, member of a long-established Austrian officers' family of
Carinthian Slovene descent. The
Slovene spelling of the family name is
Šušnik. 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. Schuschnigg himself later called his orders a "faux pas". 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. , 1936
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 he was during World War I]—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
fascist 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. 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.Rumours 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.
Anschluss On 12 February 1938, Schuschnigg met with Hitler in his
Berghof residence in an attempt to smooth the worsening relations between their two countries. To Schuschnigg's surprise, Hitler presented him with a set of demands which, in manner and in terms, amounted to an ultimatum, effectively demanding the handing over of power to the Austrian Nazis. The terms of the agreement, presented to Schuschnigg for immediate endorsement, stipulated the appointment of Nazi sympathiser
Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of security, which controlled the police. Another pro-Nazi, Dr.
Hans Fischböck, was to be named as minister of finance to prepare for economic union between Germany and Austria. A hundred officers were to be exchanged between the Austrian and the German armies. All imprisoned Nazis were to be amnestied and reinstated. In return, Hitler would publicly reaffirm the treaty of 11 July 1936 and Austria's national sovereignty. "The Fuhrer was abusive and threatening, and Schuschnigg was presented with far-reaching demands ..." According to Schuschnigg's memoirs, he was coerced into signing the "agreement" before leaving Berchtesgaden. 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: :1. The Chancellor resign and the President call on a new Chancellor to form a Cabinet, which would be under no obligation to the commitments of Berchtesgaden. :2. The Berchtesgaden agreement be carried out under a newly appointed Chancellor. :3. The agreement be carried out and the Chancellor remain at his post. In the event, they decided to go with the third option. 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. 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!" 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?" 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. 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. On the morning after the invasion, the London
Daily Mail's correspondent asked the new Chancellor, Seyss-Inquart, how these stirring events came about, he received the following reply: "The Plebiscite that had been fixed for tomorrow was a breach of the agreement which Dr. Schuschnigg made with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, by which he promised political liberty for National Socialists in Austria." On 12 March 1938, Schuschnigg was placed under house arrest.
Prison and concentration camp After initial house arrest followed by solitary confinement at
Gestapo headquarters, he spent the whole of
World War II in
Sachsenhausen, then
Dachau. In late April 1945, Schuschnigg narrowly escaped an execution order by Adolf Hitler, along with other prominent concentration camp inmates, by being
transferred from Dachau to South Tyrol where
SS-Totenkopfverbände guards abandoned the prisoners into the hands of some
Wehrmacht officers, who then freed them. They were then turned over to
American troops on 4 May 1945. From there, Schuschnigg and his family were transported, along with many of the ex-prisoners, to the
isle of Capri in Italy before being set free.
Later life After
World War II, Kurt Schuschnigg was forbidden from joining the
Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) because the party wanted to distance itself from the
Austrian dictatorship. Moreover, the ÖVP did not expect their
social democratic coalition partner to tolerate Schuschnigg's presence in the party, since after the
civil war of 1934 he had had many social democrats killed as Minister of Justice. Schuschnigg emigrated to the
United States, where he was sheltered at the chateau estate Vouziers of the
Desloge family in
St. Louis, Missouri; and then he became a
professor of
political science at
Saint Louis University from 1948 to 1967. He became an American citizen in 1956. His first wife Herma died in a car accident in 1935. He remarried in 1938, but lost his second wife, Vera Fugger von Babenhausen (), 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. == Awards and decorations ==