Fatherland Front Vaterländische Front | |
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| Federal leader | Engelbert Dollfuß (20 May 1933 –25 July 1934) Ernst Starhemberg (31 July 1934 – 15 May 1936)[1] |
| Founded | 20 May 1933; 92 years ago (1933-05-20) |
| Dissolved | 13 March 1938; 87 years ago (1938-03-13) |
| Merger of | CS,Landbund,Heimwehr |
| Youth wing | Österreichisches Jungvolk[2] |
| Paramilitary wing | Ostmärkische Sturmscharen (Until 1936) Assault Corps [de][3] |
| Membership | 3,000,000 (1937est.)[4] |
| Ideology | Austrofascism[5][a] |
| Political position | Right-wing[15] tofar-right[16] |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Colours | Red Green White |
| Slogan | "Österreich, erwache!" (lit. 'Austria, awaken!')[17] |
| Anthem | "Song of the Youth [de]"[18] |
| Party flag | |
 Other flag: | |
TheFatherland Front (Austrian German:Vaterländische Front,VF) was the ruling political organisation of theFederal State of Austria. It claimed to be anonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions.[19] Established on 20 May 1933 byChristian Social ChancellorEngelbert Dollfuss as theonly legally permitted party in the country, it was aligned with theCatholic Church, and did not advocate anyracial ideology. Aright-wingconservative,authoritarian,nationalist,corporatist, and Catholic organisation, it advocated independence fromGermany on the basis of protectingAustria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered aProtestant-dominated German state.[20]
The Fatherland Front, which was strongly linked with Austria's Catholic clergy, absorbed Dollfuss's Christian Social Party, the agrarianLandbund and the right-wing paramilitaryHeimwehren, all of which were opposed toNazism,Marxism,laissez-fairecapitalism andliberal democracy. It established anauthoritarian andcorporatist regime, theFederal State of Austria, which is commonly known in German as theStändestaat ("corporate state"). According to the Fatherland Front this form of government and society implemented thesocial teaching ofPope Pius XI's 1931 encyclicalQuadragesimo anno.[12][21] The Front banned and persecuted all its political opponents, includingCommunists,Social Democrats—who fought against it in a briefcivil war in February 1934—as well as theAustrian Nazis who wanted Austria to joinGermany.[22] Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in July 1934. He was succeeded as leader of the VF and Chancellor of Austria byKurt Schuschnigg, who ruled until the invigorated Nazis forced him to resign on 11 March 1938. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany the next day.
The Fatherland Front maintained a cultural and recreational organisation, called "New Life"(Neues Leben), similar to Germany'sStrength Through Joy.[23] The "League of Jewish Front Soldiers" (Bund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten), the largest of several Jewish defense paramilitaries active in Austria at the time, was incorporated into the Fatherland Front.[24]
The role of the Fatherland Front has been a contentious point in post-war Austrian historiography. While many historians consider it to be the exponent of an Austrian and Catholic-clerical variant of fascism—dubbed "Austrofascism"—and make it responsible for the failure of liberal democracy in Austria, conservative authors stress its credits in defending the country's independence and opposition to Nazism.[25]
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While the Front's aim was to unite all Austrians, superseding all political parties, social and economic interest groups (includingtrade unions), it only enjoyed the support of certain parts of the society. It was mainly backed by the Catholic church, the Austrian bureaucracy and military, most of the rural population—including both landowners and peasants[26]—(with its centre of gravity in western Austria),[27] some loyalists to theHabsburg dynasty, and a significant part of the large Jewish community of Vienna.[28] The VF was strongly linked with the Catholic student fraternities of theCartell-Verband—that maintained networks similar toold boys in English-speaking countries—in which most VF leaders had been members.[12]
Despite its self-identification as a unifying force, in reality the front was opposed by both the Austrian Nazis and the Social Democrats. Support for the latter, concentrated in Vienna and industrial towns, came from unionised workers and the party's paramilitaryRepublikanischer Schutzbund ("Republican Protection League"), whose February 1934 uprising (or "Austrian Civil War") was crushed in a few days. The Austrian Nazis, by then dominating Austria's existingpan-German nationalist movement, were supported by a part of the secular, urban middle and lower middle class, including civil servants and public sector workers, professionals, teachers and students. However they did not have a mass following as in Germany.[26][27][29][30]
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AfterWorld War I and the dissolution ofAustria-Hungary sealed by the 1919Treaty of Saint-Germain, three political camps controlled the fate of the AustrianFirst Republic: theSocial Democrats, theChristian Social Party, and theGerman nationalists, organised in theGreater German People's Party and theLandbund. Since 1921 the Christian Social Party had formedcoalition governments along with the German nationalists; ChancellorIgnaz Seipel, a proponent ofCatholic social teaching, advocated the idea of a"corporated" state surmounting theparliamentary system, based on the encyclicalsRerum novarum (1891) byPope Leo XIII andQuadragesimo anno (1931) byPope Pius XI.
On 10 May 1932, the Christian Social politician Engelbert Dollfuss was designatedChancellor of Austria by PresidentWilhelm Miklas. Dollfuss formed another right-wing government together with theLandbund and theHeimatblock, the political organisation of the paramilitaryHeimwehr forces. This coalition, however, relied on an extremely narrow majority. Dollfuss exploiteda constitutional crisis in March to suspend the National Council and rule by decree, which was tolerated by Miklas. Two months later the "Fatherland Front" was founded by Chancellor Dollfuss as a merger of his Christian Social Party, the Heimwehr forces and other right-wing groups, and was intended to collect all "loyal Austrians" under one banner.
On 30 May 1933, the government banned theRepublikanischer Schutzbund, the paramilitary troops of the Social Democratic Party; theCommunist Party and theAustrian Nazi Party were prohibited shortly afterwards. From 12 February 1934 onwards, the remainingSchutzbund forces revolted against their disbanding, sparking theAustrian Civil War against Heimwehr troops and theAustrian Armed Forces. After the suppression, the Social Democratic Party too was declared illegal and dissolved. Social Democratic officials like theVienna mayorKarl Seitz were deposed and replaced by VF politicians.
On 1 May, a rump session of the Nationalrat recast the constitution into anauthoritarian andcorporatist document. The official name of the country was changed to theFederal State of Austria, with the VF as the only legally permitted political organisation. Thereafter, the organisation held a monopolistic position in Austrian politics with both civilian and military divisions. Dollfuss remained its undisputed leader until his assassination during the NaziJuly Putsch on 25 July 1934. He was succeeded byErnst Rüdiger Starhemberg, while his VF fellow Justice MinisterKurt Schuschnigg became chancellor.
In 1936, Schuschnigg also took over the leadership of the VF. The Front was declared a corporation under public law and the only legal political organisation in Austria. Its symbol was thecrutch cross (Kruckenkreuz),[17] and its official greeting wasÖsterreich![31] ("Austria!") orFront heil!.[32] The party flag was adopted as the second stateflag of Austria. Though membership was obligatory for officials, the VF never became a mass movement. By the end of 1937 it had 3 million members[33] (with 6.5 million inhabitants of Austria); it could however never win the support of its political opponents, neither from the circles of the Social Democrats nor from the Austrian Nazis.
Schuschnigg acknowledged that Austrians were Germans and that Austria was a "German state" but he strongly opposed anAnschluss and passionately wished for Austria to remain independent from Germany.[34]
Schuschnigg's government had to face the increasing pressure by its powerful neighbour Nazi Germany under Austrian-born Adolf Hitler. The state's fate was sealed when theItalian dictatorBenito Mussolini approached the German Nazis. To ease tensions, Schuschnigg on 11 July 1936 concluded an agreement, whereafter several conspirators of the 1934 July Putsch were released from prison. Nazi confidants likeEdmund Glaise-Horstenau andGuido Schmidt joined Schuschnigg's cabinet, whileArthur Seyss-Inquart attained the office of a State Councillor, though the Austrian Nazi Party remained illegal.
On 12 February 1938 Hitler summoned Schuschnigg to hisBerghof residence, constraining the readmission of the Nazi Party and the replacement of the Austrian chief of staffAlfred Jansa byFranz Böhme to pave the way for aWehrmacht invasion. Schuschnigg had to appoint Seyss-Inquart Minister of the Interior, encouraging the political activation of the Austrian Nazis.
Realizing that he was in a bind, Schuschnigg announced areferendum on Austrian independence. In hopes of increasing the likelihood of a "Yes" vote, he agreed to lift the ban on the Social Democrats and their affiliated trade unions in return for their support of the referendum, dismantling the one-party state. This move came too late. Schuschnigg was finally forced to resign under German pressure on 11 March and was succeeded by Seyss-Inquart. The Fatherland Front was immediately banned after theAnschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany, two days later.
After theSecond World War, in 1945, former members of the Fatherland Front likeJulius Raab andLeopold Figl founded the conservative and Christian democraticAustrian People's Party (ÖVP) that became one of the two major parties of theSecond Austrian republic. Unlike the Fatherland Front, the ÖVP was fully committed to democracy and put less emphasis on religion.[35]
The proclamation of the authoritarian "May Constitution" on 1 May 1934 marked the beginning of the Ständestaat, a corporative authoritarian system under the leadership of the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front). Also known as Austrofascism, it meant the end of democratic parliamentarianism and party pluralism.
[...] fascist Italy [...] developed a state structure known as the corporate state with the ruling party acting as a mediator between 'corporations' making up the body of the nation. Similar designs were quite popular elsewhere in the 1930s. The most prominent examples wereEstado Novo in Portugal (1932–1968) and Brazil (1937–1945), the AustrianStandestaat (1933–1938), and authoritarian experiments in Estonia, Romania, and some other countries of East and East-Central Europe.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Cited inEatwell, Roger."Reflections on Fascism and Religion". Archived fromthe original on 2007-05-01.His politics were supported by the Fatherland Front, a reservoir for nationalist, Christian and generally right-wing conservative forces.
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