It was the first instance in history, as far as I know, in which a country was saddled with an independence which it exasperatedly resisted. Austria wished, either to be united with its former neighbor states or with its kindred Germany, but not to lead the humiliated life of a beggar in this mutilated form. But the neighbor states wanted no economic union, partly because they thought Austria too poor and partly for fear of a return of the Habsburgs; Anschluss with Germany was forbidden by the Allies because it might strengthen that defeated nation. Hence the decree that the Austrian Republic
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