The Ständestaat concept, derived from the notion of Stände ("estates" or "corporations"), was advocated by leading regime politicians such as Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg.

During the Great Depression in the First Austrian Republic of the early 1930s, the CS on the basis of the Quadragesimo anno encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI in 1931 pursued the idea of overcoming the ongoing class struggle by the implementation of a corporative form of government modelled on Italian fascism and Portugal's Estado Novo.

The CS politician Engelbert Dollfuss, appointed Chancellor of Austria in 1932, on 4 March 1933 saw an opportunity in the resignation of Social Democrat Karl Renner as president of the Austrian Nationalrat, after irregularities occurred during a voting process.

Dollfuss called the incident a "self-elimination" (Selbstausschaltung) of the parliament and had the following meeting on 15 March forcibly prorogued by the forces of the Vienna police department.

The revolt was suppressed with support by the Bundesheer and right-wing Heimwehr troops under Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, and ended with the ban of the Social Democratic Party and the trade unions.

Hitler officially denied any involvement in the failed coup, but he continued to destabilise the Austrian state by secretly supporting Nazi sympathisers like Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Edmund Glaise-Horstenau.

One of the reasons for the failure of the putsch was Italian intervention: Mussolini assembled an army corps of four divisions on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with a war with Italy in the event of a German invasion of Austria as originally planned, should the coup have been more successful.

[citation needed] John Gunther wrote in 1940 that the state "assaulted the rights of citizens in a fantastic manner", noting that in 1934 the police raided 106,000 homes in Vienna and made 38,141 arrests of Nazis, social democrats, liberals and communists.

Under the mediation of the German ambassador Franz von Papen, Schuschnigg on 12 February 1938 traveled to Hitler's Berghof residence in Berchtesgaden, only to be confronted with an ultimatum to readmit the Nazi Party and to appoint Seyss-Inquart and Glaise-Horstenau ministers of the Austrian cabinet.

Schuschnigg, impressed by the presence of OKW chief General Wilhelm Keitel, gave in and on 16 February Seyss-Inquart became head of the strategically important Austrian interior ministry.

As part of his effort to ensure victory, he released the Social Democratic leaders from prison and gained their support in return for dismantling the one-party state and legalizing the socialist trade unions.

A highly dubious referendum – organized and implemented by Josef Bürckel, the Nazi Gauleiter of the Pfalz and the Saarland, who was appointed by Hitler to be in charge of the election – was held on 10 April, ratifying the Anschluss with an implausible 99,73% of votes.

Hundreds of thousands of "undesirable" Austrians – 18% of the population – were removed from the voter lists due to being Jewish or members of the Social Democratic party, which opposed the Nazis, and were therefore unable to vote.