Godot
Gone Fishin'
PART ONE: "SCHACHMATT"
[...] in any case, the report that Chancellor Dollfuss had been near-fatally shot came as a shock to Mussolini, whose wife was at that very moment entertaining the Dollfus family at Riccione on the Adriatic. The possibility of a putsch had been downplayed by the Servizio Informazioni Militare, Mussolini’s military intelligence unit prior to the uprising, and while Berlin’s intentions had been more than clear since before Hitler had even come to power, the willingness of Austrian collaborators to carry out a coup without authorization from Germany (which Hitler had assured the Duce had never been given) was somewhat surprising to Rome.
It is ultimately unclear whether Mussolini’s response was rooted in frustration for having been blindsided, out of a commitment to Italian diplomatic commitments, out of a keen awareness of the threat posed towards Tyrol, or simply out of a sense of personal injury on behalf of his wife, feeling that it was against good etiquette to attempt to assassinate a man whose wife was dining with your own.
In any case, Mussolini’s response was quick and decisive. Austrian authorization was not forthcoming, with its de facto dictator lying on death’s door and the apparatus of state paralyzed by Nazi militants, but this was no roadblock for the Italian army as they began to move into Carinthia. Lower Carinthia, just across the Brenner Pass, was beset with a score of Nazi paramilitary organizations, and was host to some of the best-armed Putschist groups in the country. Yet they were no match for the Italian regulars that soon moved through the state, and it became apparent that many Nazi paramilitary groups were in fact quite poorly armed, having planned the uprising ardently believing that the Austrian military and gendarmerie would join in. Instead, the vast majority of both stayed loyal, and with their forces bolstered by Italian soldiers, the coup was quickly put down.
The willingness of Rome to act on its assurances to Vienna surprised Hitler, and proved decisive in his decision to disavow the coup regardless of how many of his fingerprints were quite evident on the proceedings. Berlin tried to pacify Mussolini, with Nazi offices in Munich closed, but the damage was done. Documents taken from a Nazi courier at Kollerschlag proved that the putsch had been authorized from Bavaria, which of course could not have occurred without Hitler’s knowledge. Italo-German relations reached a low ebb. Dollfuss, shot nearly a half dozen times, hung onto life, but managed to pull through over the course of the next few weeks. Mussolini, pursuing his project of Italianization in Trentino and South Tyrol, was caught between the horns of a dilemma: could Germany be counted as an ally in their efforts to alter the borders set at Versailles and overthrow the interwar order? Or would ‘riding the tiger’ eventually leave Italy in the tiger’s mouth, robbed of the few territories they had actually managed to gain from the Great War simply due to their German heritage?
As time wore on, the question of Italo-German relations became Mussolini’s primary concern [...]
Excerpt from: “Abortive Anschluss” Central European Historical Journal, University of Linz, Issue 14 Volume 23, by N. Hagen, 2002
Pictured: Dollfuss of Austria, Mussolini of Italy, and Gömbös of Hungary, Rome 1934
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