The first Austrian to be sentenced to death since Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss revived the death penalty to cow Nazis was a non-Nazi farm boy named Hans Breitweiser. Like the hero of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, he had resolved to marry a well-dowried girl, after he had seduced a poor one. His solution was to murder the poor girl last week, so bunglingly that she lived long enough to accuse him.
Martial law snapped Hans Breitweiser up greedily. The court had two choices: clean acquittal or conviction with death. Quickly convicted, he...
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