Kurt Schuschnigg

Uncommon card · No. 86646

Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg (German: [ˈkʊʁt ˈʃʊʃnɪk]; 14 December 1897 – 18 November 1977) was an Austrian politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg considered Austria a German state and Austrians to be Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent. When Schuschnigg's efforts to keep Austria independent had failed, he resigned his office. After the Anschluss he was arrested, kept in solitary confinement, and eventually interned in various concentration camps. He was liberated in 1945 by the advancing US Army and spent most of the rest of his life in academia in the United States. Schuschnigg gained American citizenship in 1956.

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