Steven Welch on the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era
GÖ¼nter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, Alexander Lassner, eds.. The Dollfuss/ Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003. 321 pp. $40.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-7658-0970-4. Reviewed by Steven Welch Published on H-German (April, 2005) This collection of eight essays seeks, in the seven essays in the collection. So we are left with words of the editors, "to shed new light on the do‐ assertions about previous scholarly shortcomings mestic, economic, foreign, and security policy of but not a sustained and well-grounded critique. the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg governments" (p. 4). As the editors point out, how to define the A reassessment is needed, they argue, because Dollfuss/Schuschnigg period has remained a per‐ previous scholarly work on the years 1934-38 has plexing issue in the historiography of interwar been highly politicized: "in the wake of the disas‐ fascism. The title of a 1976 essay by R. John Rath trous Anschluß and the world war, those employ‐ conveys the nature of the problem quite neatly: ing the words "Ständestaat" and "Austrofascism" "The First Austrian Republic--Totalitarian, Fascist, have sought, too often, to defend or to accuse the Authoritarian, or What?"[1] Emmerich Tálos is Dollfuss and Schuschnigg governments, rather perhaps the most prominent proponent of the than to uncover evidence in as objective a man‐ view that the system which Dollfuss and ner as possible" (p. 1). Previous historians are also Schuschnigg headed in the mid-1930s qualifies as taken to task for having relied on faulty and frag‐ fascist; in his view, its specific Austrian features mentary evidence and for having failed to be suf‐ justify the use of the term Austrofascism.[2] In ficiently critical of that evidence.
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