Defunct Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg[a] (German: [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.

Schuschnigg was born in Reiff am Gartsee (now Riva del Garda) in the Tyrolean crown land of Austria-Hungary (now in Trentino, Italy), the son of Anna Josefa Amalia (Wopfner)[3] and Austrian General Artur von Schuschnigg, member of a long-established Austrian officers' family of Carinthian Slovene descent.

His overriding political concern was to preserve Austria's independence within the borders imposed on it by the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which ultimately failed.

"[6] His policy of counterbalancing the German threat by aligning himself with Austria's southern and eastern neighbours—the Kingdom of Italy under the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini and the Kingdom of Hungary—was doomed to failure after Mussolini had sought Hitler's support in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and left Austria under the increasing pressure of a massively rearmed Third Reich.

It’s rumoured that upon hearing the Von Trapp family sing over the radio, he invited them to perform in Vienna which greatly helped them in their rise to fame.

The terms of the agreement, presented to Schuschnigg for immediate endorsement, stipulated the appointment of Nazi sympathiser Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of security, which controlled the police.

[15] On the following day, 14 February, Schuschnigg reorganised his cabinet on a broader basis and included representatives of all former and present political parties.

Hitler immediately appointed a new Gauleiter for Austria, a Nazi Austrian army officer who had just been released from prison in accordance with the terms of the general amnesty stipulated by the Berchtesgaden agreement.

[16] On 20 February, Hitler made a speech before the Reichstag which was broadcast live and which for the first time was relayed also by the Austrian radio network.

It read: "Are you for a free, German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria, for peace and work, for the equality of all those who affirm themselves for the people and Fatherland?

[20] Knowing he was in a bind, Schuschnigg held talks with the leaders of the Social Democrats, and agreed to legalise their party and their trade unions in return for their support of the referendum.

Schuschnigg resigned on 11 March, and Seyss-Inquart was appointed Chancellor, but it made no difference; German troops flooded into Austria and were received everywhere by enthusiastic and jubilant crowds.

[21] On the morning after the invasion, the London Daily Mail's correspondent asked the new Chancellor, Seyss-Inquart, how these stirring events came about, he received the following reply: "The Plebiscite that had been fixed for tomorrow was a breach of the agreement which Dr. Schuschnigg made with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, by which he promised political liberty for National Socialists in Austria.

[b] After initial house arrest followed by solitary confinement at Gestapo headquarters, he spent the whole of World War II in Sachsenhausen, then Dachau.

In late April 1945, Schuschnigg narrowly escaped an execution order by Adolf Hitler, along with other prominent concentration camp inmates, by being transferred from Dachau to South Tyrol where SS-Totenkopfverbände guards abandoned the prisoners into the hands of some Wehrmacht officers, who then freed them.

After World War II, Kurt Schuschnigg was forbidden from joining the ÖVP because the party wanted to distance itself from the Austrian dictatorship.

Kurt Schuschnigg went back to Austria where he downplayed his time exercising dictatorial powers as chancellor and tried to justify Austrofascism.