Zachariah
Banned
As it says on the tin- what if the Chancellor and briefly the Dictator of the Federal State of Austria, Englebert Dollfuß, had escaped the attempt to assassinate him in the Austrian Nazi Party's failed July Putsch on July 25, 1934? Let's say that both of the bullets which hit Dollfuß IOTL miss instead, or hit other people. And that as IOTL, early on the next morning, the German courier of the "Kollerschlag Document" is still arrested at the border crossing in Kollerschlag, carrying precise instructions for the putsch and incriminating Hitler and the Nazis as those responsible. What would be the immediate response? And what do you think that the international response might look like?
IOTL, in the aftermath of the assassination, Mussolini mobilized 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 support the Austrian Nazis' attempted revolutionary uprising. ITTL, with the Austrofascist Dollfuß still alive, in charge and having irrefutable proof that the Nazis' SS attempted to assassinate him with the intention of annexing Austria, might this incident escalate to outright war between Hitler's Nazi Germany and the Austrian Nazis on one side, and Dollfuß's Fascist Austria and Mussolini's Fascist Italy on the other side? And if so, whose sides would the rest of the European and World Powers take?
IOTL, in the aftermath of the assassination, Mussolini mobilized 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 support the Austrian Nazis' attempted revolutionary uprising. ITTL, with the Austrofascist Dollfuß still alive, in charge and having irrefutable proof that the Nazis' SS attempted to assassinate him with the intention of annexing Austria, might this incident escalate to outright war between Hitler's Nazi Germany and the Austrian Nazis on one side, and Dollfuß's Fascist Austria and Mussolini's Fascist Italy on the other side? And if so, whose sides would the rest of the European and World Powers take?
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