German Center, with a tradition of paternalistic reform extending far back into the nineteenth century, but which, by the end of the 1920s, was increasingly tempted by authoritarian solutions.

A federal constitution alone enabled these two parties and the two types of society they represented to live together. For the better part of a decade they coexisted in a state of uneasy truce; the Christian Socials regularly dominated the federal government and the rural provinces, while the Socialists ran Vienna, which had been set up by itself as an urban province. Periodically the tension between the two broke out in vast street demonstrations in the capital—in 1926 and again in 1929, when the federal constitution was modified in a more authoritarian direction. The Christian Socials were scandalized at the fashion in which the Socialists ran Vienna—at high taxes and expensive public housing schemes. The latter contended that such measures were essential to relieve the economic distress of a ghost city that had lost its natural markets and was suffering grievously from the tariff policies of its neighbors. The Socialists had equal reason to distrust the Catholic party, for the Christian Socials were coming under increasingly heavy pressure from their fascist-minded direct-action groups, which by 1930 were beginning to receive secret help from Mussolini's Italy.

The coming of the Great Depression brought these latent tensions into the open. In 1931, the Austrian fascists made their first local bid for power; the next year the Christian Socials found the “strong man" they needed. With the accession of Engelbert Dollfuss to the chancellorship, a new era opened in Austrian history. The six years 1932–1938 were to be a period of growing authoritarianism, a semifascism, which steered a tortuous course between the democracy it had rejected and the ever-present menace of absorption into the Nazi state (see Chapter 9, III),

The International Aspect: The Abortive Customs Union and the End of Reparations

When the union of Austria with Germany finally came about in 1938, it was against the will of both major Austrian parties. Earlier, however, the idea of union, or Anschluss, had been very popular—indeed, it was almost the only thing on which Austrians were agreed. One of the failures that had undermined the authority both of Austrian democracy and of the Brüning government in Germany was the veto imposed by the French and their allies on the Austro-German plan for a customs union—an obvious first step toward Anschluss—which was broached in 1931. The matter finally went to the World Court, which declared against it in an eight to seven vote whose political motivation was only too apparent.

This marked the last time that the French were to take decisive action against their late enemies. From 1931 on, the trend toward revision of the Versailles settlement became irresistible. The British had always favored modification, and the Americans and Italians, for different reasons, agreed. The French found themselves isolated—particularly since they had chosen to exert their pressure for the dubious purpose of preserving Aus. tria's freedom against the wishes ofits own inhabitants.

Thus in international affairs, the years 1930–1932 can be regarded as a transi. tion period between the Stresemann-Briand era of conciliation and the era of fascist

200 The Great Depression, 1929–1935

III.