WI: Engelbert Dollfuß escapes assassination?

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?
 
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Well, to be honest, they knew without doubt who ordered the assassination in OTL - details might change, but I wouldn't expect the broad strokes of history change because of Dollfuß surviving. It would cut down on that insufferable Dollfuß cult that sprung up and is still alive in some parts of the Austrian population - in a fit of irony much of that was aimed at the socialists and not the know perpetrators.
I'd have to reread some books that I don't have the time for at the moment, to attempt to give a more detailed answer - policy changes of Schuschnigg in the aftermath, plans by Dollfuß before the assassination, Italian stance, the work.

Off the top of my head: Despite the Organisation form as a federal state, the official diction was always "Republik Österreich", even when it was a dictatorship. Bullets simply missing would be difficult, since the Nazis were in the same room and stayed there - IIRC they actually wanted him alive. Kollerschlag wasn't a courier, but an attack by Austrian Nazis in exile - the Austrian Legion.
 
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