I am of the opinion that if the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler. – Winston Churchill
In brief asides in his latest book, Charles Coulombe examines the careers of forgotten statesmen such as Engelbert Dolfuss and Pyotr Stolypin. As Prime Minister of Russia, Stolypin employed draconian measures against socialist agitators while simultaneously seeking to undermine the revolutionary impulse by providing more opportunities for peasants to own private property. As dictator of Austria, Dolfuss had sought to protect his country from being taken over by either Nazis or Communists, explicitly declaring his commitment to guide his country by Catholic principles as enunciated in