SinghKing
Banned
What about a TL where Kurt Schuschnigg's 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, proves successful? IOTL, Austria's national identity had strong Catholic elements that were incorporated into the movement, by way of clerical authoritarian tendencies not found in Nazism, but which it shared with Italian Fascism. The predominance of the Christian Social Party (whose economic policies were based on the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum) was an Austrian phenomenon. Both Engelbert Dollfuss and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, turned to Austria's other fascist neighbour, Italy, for inspiration and support. The statist corporatism often referred to as Austrofascism bore much more resemblance to Italian Fascism than German National Socialism, and for his part, Benito Mussolini supported the independence of Austria, largely due to concern that Hitler would eventually press for the return of Italian territories once ruled by Austria.
However, IOTL Mussolini threw it all away for Germany's (unnecessary and irrelevant) support in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War; and after receiving a personal assurance from Hitler that Germany wouldn't seek territorial concessions from Italy, Mussolini reconciled his early falling-out with Hitler over Dollfuss' assassination by the Nazis, withdrew Italy's troops from the Brenner Pass (which Mussolini had deployed there in July 1935, with the explicit warning that a German move against Austria would result in war between Germany and Italy) and agreed to enter into a client relationship with Berlin by signing the 1937 Berlin–Rome Axis- which ended up becoming the basis for the Anti-Comintern Pact's development into OTL's Axis military alliance. So, WI, in an ATL, Mussolini decides that Hitler's moral support in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War isn't actually that important?
At this stage, Italy had effectively abandoned diplomatic relations with Germany, while turning to France in order to challenge Germany's intransigence by signing the Stresa Front agreement to protect Austrian independence. French and Italian military staff had discussed possible military cooperation at great length, involving a war with Germany should Hitler dare to attack Austria. And as late as May 1935, Mussolini spoke of his desire to destroy Hitler. Could it have been plausible for the Stresa Front to have developed into a military alliance between the French, Italians, Austrians, Hungarians and potentially the Yugoslavians (with the Stresa Front's survival maintained by ejecting the British, after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement without discussing it with any of their Stresa partners), standing firm against the Nazis' expansionism and aggression?
If the fall-out from Mussolini declaring his vocal opposition to Hitler's stated goal to conquer his homeland results in Hitler and Ribbentrop becoming bitter Romanophobes as a result (to borrow a quote from the diary of Italian Foreign Minister, in late 1937 IOTL, coming to hate Italy with all the "fury of a woman scorned"), then they'd almost certainly single out the Stresa Front as their primary enemy, and set out to build a global alliance system against them instead (with the greatest priority placed upon an alliance with Great Britain). And eventually, when Schuschnigg schedules a plebiscite on the issue of unification (along with the Stresa Front's 'Roman Alliance') in order to preserve Austria's independence from the Nazis, and Hitler subsequently invades after refusing to accept the results of the referendum, would this effectively kick off a very different WW2 (with the ejected British either standing back and adopting a stance as neutral observers at the outset of TTL's WW2, or supporting the Germans, potentially even joining the Anti-Comintern Pact in Italy's stead)?
However, IOTL Mussolini threw it all away for Germany's (unnecessary and irrelevant) support in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War; and after receiving a personal assurance from Hitler that Germany wouldn't seek territorial concessions from Italy, Mussolini reconciled his early falling-out with Hitler over Dollfuss' assassination by the Nazis, withdrew Italy's troops from the Brenner Pass (which Mussolini had deployed there in July 1935, with the explicit warning that a German move against Austria would result in war between Germany and Italy) and agreed to enter into a client relationship with Berlin by signing the 1937 Berlin–Rome Axis- which ended up becoming the basis for the Anti-Comintern Pact's development into OTL's Axis military alliance. So, WI, in an ATL, Mussolini decides that Hitler's moral support in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War isn't actually that important?
At this stage, Italy had effectively abandoned diplomatic relations with Germany, while turning to France in order to challenge Germany's intransigence by signing the Stresa Front agreement to protect Austrian independence. French and Italian military staff had discussed possible military cooperation at great length, involving a war with Germany should Hitler dare to attack Austria. And as late as May 1935, Mussolini spoke of his desire to destroy Hitler. Could it have been plausible for the Stresa Front to have developed into a military alliance between the French, Italians, Austrians, Hungarians and potentially the Yugoslavians (with the Stresa Front's survival maintained by ejecting the British, after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement without discussing it with any of their Stresa partners), standing firm against the Nazis' expansionism and aggression?
If the fall-out from Mussolini declaring his vocal opposition to Hitler's stated goal to conquer his homeland results in Hitler and Ribbentrop becoming bitter Romanophobes as a result (to borrow a quote from the diary of Italian Foreign Minister, in late 1937 IOTL, coming to hate Italy with all the "fury of a woman scorned"), then they'd almost certainly single out the Stresa Front as their primary enemy, and set out to build a global alliance system against them instead (with the greatest priority placed upon an alliance with Great Britain). And eventually, when Schuschnigg schedules a plebiscite on the issue of unification (along with the Stresa Front's 'Roman Alliance') in order to preserve Austria's independence from the Nazis, and Hitler subsequently invades after refusing to accept the results of the referendum, would this effectively kick off a very different WW2 (with the ejected British either standing back and adopting a stance as neutral observers at the outset of TTL's WW2, or supporting the Germans, potentially even joining the Anti-Comintern Pact in Italy's stead)?
So, what was the Hoare–Laval Pact all about then? And is it so inconceivable for the Stresa Front to form the basis for the Allied Powers of WW2 in an ATL? As for other goals; well, the Austrian (and Hungarian, and Croatian) fascist governments were all far more amenable to the Italians that they were to the Nazis at this early stage. Mussolini can't pick a much bigger goal to focus upon than re-establishing his own Holy Roman Empire (as opposed to merely standing aside and allowing Hitler to take it for himself); and if Nazi Germany is the aggressor in such a conflict (erupting over the Nazi invasion of Austria, with Italy and the other members of the Stresa Front fighting against them in the name of freedom), he may well have a plausible chance of actually getting it- at least, through 'soft' means, via diplomacy, mutual cooperation and federalisation, especially in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. ITTL, Fascism itself wouldn't be wholly discredited by WW2, just Nazism; and post-war, it's not inconceivable that TTL's equivalent of the EEC (precursor to EU) could be formed as the realization of Mussolini's proposed Latin Bloc...