SS member Otto Planetta is taken from court after being sentenced to death for assassinating Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss during a failed Nazi coup. Planetta had expected to be released and sent back to Germany. Instead, he was executed just three hours after sentencing (Austria, 1934) [733 x 873].

On July 30, 1934, a military tribunal tried Planetta and his accomplice, Franz Holzweber, for murder and high treason. The trial ended the next day. At his trial, Planetta had feigned ignorance and claimed that he killed the chancellor by accident. While giving evidence, Planetta said he fired at Dollfuß, but did not know who he was, since the room was dark. Despite Dollfuß being less than 1.52 metres (5 ft 0 in) tall, Planetta claimed to have seen a big man in the room, whom he ordered to put his hands in the air.

>”I felt my revolver arm touched, and then saw an other man fall to the floor. It was the Chancellor. I vainly tried to get a doctor.”

In response to Planetta’s telling of what happened, the presiding judge, Albert Oberweger, replied, “Your story is too stupid to be believed.” Planetta was found guilty of murder and high treason. Holzweber was found guilty of just high treason. At the end of the trial, Planetta, with tears in his eyes, maintained that he had killed Dollfuss by accident.

>”I do not know how many hours I have to live. But one thing I would like to say, I am no cowardly murderer. It was not my intention to kill. One more thing. As a human being I am sorry for my deed, and I beg the wife of the late Chancellor to forgive me.”

Both men were sentenced to death. Austrian Nazis warned that if a single member of their party was executed, Catholic priests would be executed in retaliation and Catholic churches, starting with St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna, would be destroyed.

The threats were ignored.

Otto Planetta, 34, and Franz Holzweber, 29, were executed by hanging at the Vienna Regional Court later that day. They were hanged only three hours after their convictions, the minimum wait time required before carrying out a death sentence in Austria. On the court’s instructions, Planetta was the second to be hanged. His last words were “Heil Hitler.” Their bodies were not handed over to their relatives but instead cremated in the Semmering crematorium. Planetta’s ashes were later buried in the Dornbach Cemetery.

When Holzweber’s widow attempted to place a ribbon of German colors on the coffin, officials told her that if she did, she would be charged with high treason. When the officiating clergyman attempted to deliver a funeral oration, he was forced to stop. He was saying that Holzweber died for an idea when a police officer intervened and ordered him to be silent. Less than a week after the executions of Planetta and Holzweber, their lawyer, Eric Fuehrer, was arrested for being a Nazi sympathizer. After every other defense had been rejected by the court, Fuehrer had made an appeal based on Nazism. He argued that Planetta and Holzweber could not be guilty of high treason, since they did not recognize Austria as a state. He referenced their viewpoint, stating, “One People; One Empire”.

>”I do not accept the new law of treason formulated under the new Constitution. The accused’s ideal can be expressed in one sentence, namely, ‘One People; One Empire,’ which is the Nazi slogan.”