Kurt Alois Josef Johann Schuschnigg (German: [ˈʃʊʃnɪk]; 14 December 1897 – 18 November 1977) was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg accepted that Austria was a "German state" and that Austrians were Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.