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Antisemitic Government Expected in Austria Following Cabinet Resignation

May 7, 1932
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A Government of the Right with a strongly antisemitic tendency and including Ministers belonging to the antisemitic Heimwehr Organisation is expected to follow the Government of Dr. Buresch, which resigned to-day, in consequence of the repeated demands for its resignation and the dissolution of Parliament made separately by the Socialist Party, the Pan-Germans, and the Heimwehr.

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS MAY ALLY THEMSELVES WITH NAZIS LONDON “TIMES” SAYS

Dr. Buresch has opened negotiations with the Heimwehr in the hope that a reconstruction of the Cabinet may bring him its support, the London “Times” writes to-day in dealing with the prospect of the Government yielding to the demands for its resignation.

It is difficult to see, it says, what has induced the Socialists to press for a dissolution, since they are as strongly represented as they can ever hope to be in both the National Assembly and the Vienna City Council. Whatever their motive, they have taken the risk of provoking a crisis which would be extremely difficult to solve at a time when the reconstruction of the Credit-Anstalt and the plan of economic collaboration between the Danubian States, questions as difficult as any Austrian Government has had to face, are both under consideration.

It is known that the Socialists are not prepared to bear full responsibility for the debts of the Credit-Anstalt to foreign creditors and to the National Bank, and that the Christian Socials are not inclined to ally themselves with the Socialists in a coalition. The Socialist demand for a dissolution is therefore held to be ill-considered.

It may drive the Christian Socials to ally themselves with the Nazis, who, flushed by their unexpected successes in the recent elections, were the first to demand the dissolution of a Parliament in which they were entirely without representatives. The Socialists, having had smaller losses than any of the other established parties in the recent elections, perhaps feel that it must be now or never if they are to stem the tide of Nazi successes, while the Pan-Germans and the Heimwehr may hope for some compensation for the crushing defeat which they suffered on April 24th. in bargaining with the Christian Socials.

WE HEIMWEHR HAVE SAME CONCEPTIONS AND AIMS AS HITLERISTS: HEIMWEHR MINISTER’S DECLARATION WHEN HEIMWEHR PREVIOUSLY PARTICIPATED IN GOVERNMENT

When the Heimwehr participated in the Government in 1930, being represented by two Ministers, Prince Starhemberg, as Minister of the Interior, and Dr. Hueber, as Minister of Justice, they neither of them disguised their antisemitism and the Jews of Austria were seriously concerned about the anti-Jewish policy which they were conducting in their official capacities.

Speaking while he was Minister of Justice, Dr. Hueber declared at a public meeting that “we (the Heimwehr) have the same conceptions, the same purposes, and aims as the Hitlerists”, adding that the negotiations for a bloc with the Nazis had broken down not because of any disagreement on the question of race-antisemitism, but only on tactics.

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