Then, as Document Number Seyss-Inquart-2, I should like to submit—it is on Page 4 of the document book—the resolution which the witness has already mentioned, passed by the Provisional Austrian National Assembly on 12 November 1918, which says:
“German-Austria is a democratic republic. All public authorities are installed by the people. German-Austria is a part of the German Republic.”
The leader of the biggest national party of the time, Dr. Karl Renner, explained the reasons for this law on 12 November and said the following, which appears on Page 6 as Document Number Seyss-Inquart-3:
“Our great people is in distress and misery, the people whose pride it has always been to be called the people of poets and thinkers, our German people of humanism, our German people which loves all mankind is deeply bowed in misery. But it is just in this hour in which it would be so easy and convenient and perhaps also tempting to settle one’s account separately and perhaps to snatch advantages from the enemy’s ruse, in this hour our people in all provinces wish to proclaim: We are one family and one people living under a common fate.”
Then I come to Document Number Seyss-Inquart-4, which is on Page 18...
THE PRESIDENT: Page 8, is it not?
DR. STEINBAUER: Page 18. I beg your pardon, yes, Page 8.
That refers to the plebiscite on 24 April 1921 in the Tyrol, when 145,302 voted for the Anschluss and 1,805 against it. On 18 May 1921, there were 98,546 votes for the Anschluss in the district of Salzburg, and 877 votes against it.
Your Honors, while submitting the document, I said that I maintain there were three component factors leading to the Anschluss: First, the economic emergency which runs as a recurring theme through the entire history of the period. Second, the disunity among the democratic parties, resulting therefrom. Third, the attitude of the rest of the world, particularly the big powers, toward our small country.
Those thoughts are laid down in my document book, and I should like now with reference to the economic emergency of that time to submit as my next exhibit the speech of Prelate Hauser, President of the Austrian Parliament. The speech, made on 6 September 1919, appears on Page 14 of my document book. As President of the Parliament he suggested the acceptance of the Peace Treaty of St. Germain, giving the following reason: