With a strong arm front of “Heil-shouting paramilitaries of the Fatherland, he eventually rose first to electoral power and then coerced parliament into self-destruction in 1933, all done while sporting an interesting mustache and the wearing of a uniform, and the constant display in his propaganda of a cross with extensions shooting off the ends.

The government gave him near-unlimited dictatorial powers and he claimed to have saved the land from Bolshevism and disorder, and would enhance its Germanic character. He drew the country close to Mussolini. Gleaming black-steel-helmeted soldiers stood by him as he spoke from balconies about his visions of an ideal state.

OK, OK, you know who I am talking about, of course, by now:
.
Engelbert Dollfuss

Who else, indeed, but . . . Engelbert Dollfuss?

Engeh—who?--whatfutz?

Engelbert Dollfuss, possibly Hitler’s good twin, though far-less-evil twin is more accurate.

One of the more forgotten people of the twentieth century, the diminutive Austrian leader Engelbert Dollfuss was a classic Eurodictator of the 1930s. Among a great many of the time. His assassination in 1934 by Austrian Nazi partisans in what was probably an early attempt at Anschluss [unification] in the form of a pro-Nazi coup threw him off the world stage of a dramatic period somewhat early.

A lot of “what if’s” can be asked.

Would he have been browbeaten or coerced into an ultimate alliance or unification with Hitler’s Germany? More to the point, would he have been willing and able to resist and be a counterforce?

Ideologically, his Christian Social and Patriotic Front party was anti-Nazi, explicitly condemning the expansionist nationalism, obsessive racism, and violent anti-Semitism of the larger Germanic nation the Austrian-born Hitler led. Though in its own authoritarian-totalitarian fashion, the Dollfuss regime repressed the Nazis, and gave haven and a platform to anti-Nazi activists who fled Nazi Germany.

Dictatorial and repressive, he was thus Hitler’s less evil, if not necessarily good, twin.

He is certainly an interesting character and one of history’s more overlooked. There is a slight sentimental cult around him these days by fans of Euro-conservatism.