Coming Vienna Trials By setting up a special court to
try their Austrian ex-opponents, the Nazis foreshadow yet another episode of brutal and repellent trampling upon those who are down. The scope of the court, however, seems to be misunder- stood in some quarters. It has not to try charges of treason, and will not therefore pronounce death sentences. Its penalties will be confiscation—of property and of citizenship. It seems likely, therefore, that its typical victim may be, not Dr. von Schuschnigg, but Baron Louis Rothschild. The latter, who is head of the Vienna branch of the family, a millionaire banker with very wide financial interests, has been treated ever since the Anschluss with mediaeval barbarity —the victim of a concentration camp, where he appears to be held for ransom at enormous figures. The device of the trial would enable the Nazis, failing tribute from the Roth- schilds elsewhere, to confiscate by legal process the whole of his property. The significance of this would be not merely by way of a Treasury windfall, like those obtained already by robbing Jews in Germany itself. The head of the Vienna Rothschilds has large holdings—in some cases majority holdings—in the shares of very important Czech concerns. Their confiscation would give Berlin new levers inside Czechoslovakia.
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