Tough little Chancellor Leopold Figl maneuvered so skillfully that even Austria's Communists backed his gesture of defiance to Russia.
Silently, seriously, Austria's Parliament met in its badly bombed white building near what was lately called the Adolf Hitler Platz. Representatives of one of the weakest nations in Europe, they nevertheless held their ground while Figl read to them what amounted to a Russian attempt to dictate Austrian legislation. The Parliament had before it Figl's bill to nationalize 81 industries, amounting to 50% of the country's production. The Russian note asked for 25 exceptions on the ground that they were "German...
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