This initiative was spearheaded by Richard Steidle, who was supported by German emigre Waldemar Pabst in his attempts to convince the Heimwehr to support the corporatist-state economic policy which Benito Mussolini was putting into practice in Italy.

Tensions continued between Austrian section of the Nazi Party, who believed in a pan-Germanic state, which would bring Austria into a Greater German Empire and the Heimwehr, who believed that Austria should remain an independent nation.

In 1934, the town became one of several battlegrounds between Social Democrat and Christian Social Parties ( and their respective Schutzbund and Heimwehr militias ) in the Austrian Civil War that brought about the fascist corporate state that ruled the country until the German Anschluss in 1938.

In Carinthia a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to grab power but were subdued by the loyalist Heimwehr units.

It was based on a ruling party, the Fatherland Front ( Vaterländische Front ) and the Heimwehr ( Home Guard ) paramilitary militia.

It was opposed by the right-wing Heimwehr (" Home Guard "), which had been formed after the end of the war from local guards and similar combat units.

The Patriotic Front ( Vaterländische Front ), into which the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party were merged, became the only legal political party in the resulting authoritarian regime, the Ständestaat.

In the 1930s he became close to Prince Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, the commander of the Austrian fascist private army (" Heimwehr ") leader, whom he furnished with weapons and ammunition.

In September 1933 Dollfuss merged his Christian Social Party with elements of other nationalist and conservative groups, including the Heimwehr, which encompassed many workers who were unhappy with the radical leadership of the socialist party, to form the Vaterländische Front, though the Heimwehr continued to exist as an independent organization until 1936, when Dollfuss ' successor Kurt von Schuschnigg forcibly merged it into the Front, instead creating the unabidingly loyal Frontmiliz as paramilitary task force.

The parliamentary system prescribed by the constitution was highly unpopular, however, with the authoritarian Heimwehr movement evolving during the 1920s.

In rural Austria the Catholic Christian Social Party collaborated with the Heimwehr militia and helped bring Dollfuss to power in 1932.

Although opposed to parliamentary democracy, the Heimwehr maintained a political wing known as the Heimatblock, which cooperated with Engelbert Dollfuss ' conservative government.

This led to low level violence, including one incident where Nazi Party members attacked a Heimwehr march with eggs.

After Engelbert Dollfuss created the Fatherland Front in 1934, he gained control over and incorporated the Heimwehr into other right-wing militaries with the help of Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg.

When Engelbert Dollfuss, with the assistance of elements of the Christian Social Party and the Heimwehr, installed an authoritarian, corporatist dictatorship in 1933, the activities of the Austrian Social Democrats were severely curtailed.

In addition there were the armed but ill-trained Totenkopfstandarten ; three of these together with SS Heimwehr Danzig were organized into the Totenkopf-Division under Eicke's command.

In the wake of the Polish conquest the three senior Totenkopf-Standarten were combined with the SS Heimwehr Danzig and some support units transferred from the Army to create the Totenkopf-Division, with Eicke in command.

It endorsed a union of Austria with Germany and opposed Marxism, Austrofascism and the Heimwehr.

From 1929 onwards, the party tried to form an alliance with the Heimwehr movement.

Those engaged in the revolt barricaded themselves inside the building and were forced to surrender after the Austrian army, the police, and the Austrofascist paramilitary Heimwehr bombarded the site regardless of the unarmed dwellers, mainly worker families, with artillery.

Despite the nation having a steady political party in power, the politics of the nation were fractious and violent, with both left-wing ( Republikanischer Schutzbund ) and right-wing ( Heimwehr ) political paramilitary forces clashing with each other.

Only three years later, however, the Fatherland Front -- an alliance of the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party -- tore down Austrian parliamentarism altogether, formally annulling the constitution on 1 May 1934.

Ignaz Seipel, Christian Social Austrian Chancellor at the time, reorganized the Heimwehr as an " answer to the Socialist Schutzbund "

The Austrofascist movement's origin lies in the Korneuburg Oath, a declaration released by the Christian Social paramilitary organization Heimwehr on 18 May 1930.

The declaration was directed mainly at the Social Democratic opposition, largely in response to the Linz Program of 1926, and was not only taken by the Heimwehr but also by many Christian Social politicians, setting Austria on a course to an authoritarian system.

The election in Vienna in 1932 made it likely that the coalition of Christian Social Party, the Landbund, and the Heimwehr would lose their majority in the national parliament, depriving the Dolfuss government of its parliamentary basis.

* Jill Lewis: Austria: Heimwehr, NSDAP and the Christian Social State ( in Kalis, Aristotle A .: The Fascism Reader.

The conservatives shored their position against the Social Democrats, on 18 May 1930, the Heimwehr of the CS declared their Korneuburger Eid ( Oath of Korneuburg ), in which they openly called for the overthrow of the parliamentary democracy (“ Wir verwerfen den westlichen demokratischen Parlamentarismus und den Parteienstaat !”)

The crushing of the Social Democrats opposition by the conservatives however meant a further weakening of Austria, as infighting within the Heimwehr and the conservatives continued.

The conservatives began organizing the Heimwehr () in 1921 – 23 ; the Social Democrats organized paramilitaries called the Republikanischer Schutzbund () after 1923.

On 12 February 1934, a force, led by Heimwehr commander in Vienna Emil Fey, searched Hotel Schiff in Linz, a property belonging to the Social Democratic Party.

Dollfuss was sworn in on May 20, 1932, as head of a coalition government between the Christian-Social Party, the Landbund — a right-wing agrarian party — and Heimatblock, the parliamentary wing of the Heimwehr, a paramilitary ultra-nationalist group.

The Communist Party of Austria ( KPÖ ) formed their Red Brigades, the conservative CS also followed suit, founding their own “ Heimwehr ” (“ Homeland Protection Force ” or " Homeguard ").

The Heimwehr continued to lack any real national coherence up to 1930, when Heimwehr leaders committed themselves to the Korneuburg Oath, which established an Austrian conservative nationalism base ( as distinct from the pan-German nationalism of the Nazi Party ), a rejection of liberal democracy and Marxism, in favour of a more autocratic government, and a rejection of " class struggle " ( see Austrofascism ).

After this, many Heimwehr groupings, including the Styrian section, increasingly defected to the Nazi Party.

See also: Republikanischer Schutzbund, Heimwehr

On 30 January 1927, members of the conservative " Heimwehr " party shot at members of " Republikanischer Schutzbund " party in Schattendorf ( Staat Burgenland ), resulting in two deaths.

This move away from a government steered predominantly by a fairly large and ( by definition ) fractioned deliberative body towards a system concentrating power in the hands of a single autonomous leader was made in an attempt to appease the para-fascist movements ( such as the Heimwehr, the Republikanischer Schutzbund or later the Ostmärkische Sturmscharen ) thriving in Austria at that time.

Violence increasingly escalated, breaking out during the July Revolt of 1927 and finally the Austrian Civil War, when the Schutzbund was defeated by the Heimwehr, police, and federal army.

Similar organisations also existed in the Republic of Austria, most notably the Schutzbund and the Heimwehr.

Linz Schutzbund commander Richard Bernaschek was the first to actively resist, sparking off armed conflict between a conglomeration of the Heimwehr, the police, the gendarmerie, and the regular Federal Army against the outlawed, but still existent, socialist Schutzbund.