It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.

[17] The Fatherland Front, which was strongly linked with Austria's Catholic clergy, absorbed Dollfuss's Christian Social Party, the agrarian Landbund and the right-wing paramilitary Heimwehren, all of which were opposed to Nazism, Marxism, laissez-faire capitalism and liberal democracy.

[10][18] The Front banned and persecuted all its political opponents, including Communists, Social Democrats—who fought against it in a brief civil war in February 1934—as well as the Austrian Nazis who wanted Austria to join Germany.

The Fatherland Front maintained a cultural and recreational organisation, called "New Life" (Neues Leben), similar to Germany's Strength Through Joy.

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.

[22] Defunct While the Front's aim was to unite all Austrians, superseding all political parties, social and economic interest groups (including trade 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[23]—(with its centre of gravity in western Austria),[24] some loyalists to the Habsburg dynasty, and a significant part of the large Jewish community of Vienna.

Support for the latter, concentrated in Vienna and industrial towns, came from unionised workers and the party's paramilitary Republikanischer Schutzbund ("Republican Protection League"), whose February 1934 uprising (or "Austrian Civil War") was crushed in a few days.

He began to surpass the slim majority of his government in parliament ruling by emergency decrees, and on 15 March 1933 finally prevented the gathering of the National Council.

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 12 February 1938 Hitler summoned Schuschnigg to his Berghof residence, constraining the readmission of the Nazi Party and the replacement of the Austrian chief of staff Alfred Jansa by Franz Böhme to pave the way for a Wehrmacht invasion.

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.