“The National Assembly has no choice. Country and people need lasting peace which will open the world to them again morally and economically and which can once again procure work for the masses of our people at home and abroad....”
Then in the second paragraph he says:
“It also has no other choice because our country depends on the big powers for its supply of food, coal, and industrial raw materials as well as in the re-establishment of its credit and its currency.”
The same point of view was expressed by the two statesmen Seipel and Schober. In Document Number Seyss-Inquart-17, Seipel, regarded as the greatest Austrian statesman, said at that time:
“But we will never believe that the Central European question is solved as long as the great state which virtually makes up Central Europe, the German Reich, is not a party to the solution.”
I shall now continue with the examination of the witness.
I want to ask you, Witness, do you still remember the time and the conditions after 1927?
SEYSS-INQUART: On account of the economic situation which you have just described, the League powers again and again forced Austria to make so-called voluntary declarations renouncing the Anschluss. This had repercussions in Austrian domestic politics. The Austrians, who in 1918 had been resolved to have a democratic parliamentary form of government, turned to radical ideas of an authoritarian character.
DR. STEINBAUER: At that time a new party was formed. Which one was that?
SEYSS-INQUART: Then there occurred the so-called Palace of Justice fire, an uprising of the Marxists, which brought in its wake the creation of the anti-Marxists Home Guard, a militant organization. Thus uniforms were introduced into the political life of Austria. The controversy between the Marxists and the anti-Marxists became ever more marked. The only nonpartisan organization at that time was the German-Austrian Volksbund, and the Anschluss idea was the only political objective which still held all parties together. Around the year 1930—at least then it was first noticeable—the National Socialist German Workers Party made its appearance.