German nationalism in Austria an independent Austria, rejected his merger proposal, Strasser said "Don't talk to me about Austria. There is no Austria ... there was once a living corpse which called itself Austria ... that this Austria collapsed in 1918 was a blessing ... particularly for the German people, who were thereby given the chance to create a Greater Germany." After this, tensions between the Nazis and Austrofascists worsened, culminating in the July Putsch of 1934, when Nazis attempted to overthrow the government. Whilst they managed to assassinate chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the putsch was quickly crushed by the police, army, and Heimwehren. In
Cesare Battisti (politician) Cesare Battisti (politician) Cesare Battisti (4 February 1875 – 12 July 1916) was an Italian patriot, geographer, socialist politician and journalist of Austrian citizenship, who became a prominent Irredentist at the start of the First World War. He was born the son of a merchant at Trento, a city with a predominantly Italian-speaking population, which at the time was part of the Cisleithanian crown land of Tyrol in Austria-Hungary. Battisti attended the University of Florence, where he became a follower the Italian irredentism movement, aiming at the unification of his Trentino homeland with the Kingdom of Italy, though contrary to