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 First a plan of attack was decided upon. Hasse and Schoenerer agreed that if Germany was ever to rule over Austria the latter country must first be forced to break with Rome (Roman Catholicism). In order to achieve this objective the leaders decided upon a roundabout course of action. They therefore first created an artificially stimulated pseudo-religious revivalist movement having anti-Semitism as its primary and immediate purpose.

The German Hasse found some renegade, so-called Catholics (though such men were no more Catholics in spirit than those men of any religion who, hiding behind a pulpit of a church, rail against God and preach hatred and intolerance) members of the leading Catholic Party, who agree to act as leaders of such a movement. It was not long thereafter that a frightful wave of anti-Semitic persecution began to sweep over Austria, continuing unabated in intensity, until Schoenerer and Hasse felt that a sufficiently high degree of agitation and terrorism had been reached. Thereupon they turned their efforts against the Catholic Party and in turn, started a rabid anti-Catholic, "free-from-Rome" movement of their own, Schoenerer declaring that —67—