ABSTRACT
Even before Hitler came to power in Germany, Mussolini was concerned about the possibility of an Anschluss. It had long been the policy of the Italian government to keep Austria as a buffer state, for, as the saying went in Rome, ‘When the Germans have breakfast in Innsbruck they will dine in Milan.’ 1 Although the inalienability of Austrian independence was guaranteed by Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles, and this had been reaffirmed in the Geneva Treaty of 1922, the Italian government was well aware of the strong movement for an Anschluss both in Austria and in Germany. Seipel’s refusal of Stresemann’s overtures for a customs union in November 1927, by which Stresemann hoped to torpedo the French scheme for a Danubian confederation, did not disguise the fact that most Austrians favoured a close association with Germany, and only a handful of Communists and extreme Austrian nationalists and monarchists opposed the idea.
