Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Read Online Free PDF

from 1932 until his assassination in 1934; he was also effectively a dictator from 1933 until his death.
    The establishment of the Dollfuss dictatorship was made possible by the Austrian national quality of Schlamperei , which means a kind of slovenly good- naturedness occasionally succumbing to irrational fits of emotion. In 1933, when Dollfuss was already chancellor, a debate in the Austrian parliament on a very important topic was about to conclude with a vote. The chamber was equally divided between the Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists, each with 81 members; despite the similarity of the parties' names, they were the radical left and radical right, respectively. Just as the members began to deposit their written ballots in the Ja or Nein box, a socialist deputy left the chamber to go to the men's room. A colleague, realizing he would miss the vote, hurriedly filled out ballot for him; but in his haste he not only signed the wrong name on the ballot, he also placed it in the wrong box.
    The measure failed by a vote of 81 to 80. Outraged, the speaker of the house (who was constitutionally prohibited from voting), a Social Democrat, screamed a resignation at the members and stormed out of the chamber. Left in control were the two deputy speakers, one a Social Democrat, the other a Christian Socialist. Each put forth his own name to be elected speaker, and each received, of course, 81 votes. Hurling imprecations at each other, both of them also resigned, and the house adjourned in pandemonium.
    What no one seemed to have considered was that according to the Austrian constitution, only the speaker or one of the deputy speakers could reconvene the parliament, and they had just all resigned. Dollfuss was thus left in place as a chancellor without a parliament. He proceeded to rule the country by decree, a dictator in fact if not in name. Never in History has the need to urinate had so deleterious an effect upon government.
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    Otherwise intelligent leaders have upon occasion a remarkable lapse of judgment. In 1936, Hitler ordered German troops into the Rhineland, an area of Germany on France 's border that had been demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty. This action is generally regarded as Hitler's first aggression, and the last opportunity to stop him short of a general war. When the French approached their British ally to coordinate opposition to the act, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin dismissed their concerns by saying, "Jerry is only walking into his own back yard." ("Jerry" was an English nickname for Germans.) And when two years later Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia cede to Germany a territory called the Sudetenland , Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain indicated a disinclination to defend the Czechs from the German demand to dismember their state by referring to the whole problem as "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." Prague is 642 miles from London; and the people involved in the quarrel, the Czechs and the Germans, are people about whom, one surmises, the English knew at least something.
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    (One of the most remarkable and interesting of all British prime ministers was Winston Churchill, about whom anecdotes exist in droves. What follows are a mere handful.)
    The British are renowned for their unflappability and the redoubtable "stiff upper lip," which foreigners sometimes misperceive as a lack of emotion. In a possibly apocryphal story which nonetheless has been found in numerous sources, it is related that Winston and Clementine Churchill were attending a dinner when a cinder from his cigar fell onto the fringe of his coat and began to smolder ominously. When Mrs. Churchill pointed out to him that his coat was on fire, Churchill said, "Thank you my dear. Let me know when it reaches my lapel."
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    Among Churchill's most vocal opponents in British politics was Lady Astor, a woman of American birth who was the first female to be elected to the House of