[8] After the war, he was still a student and was employed by the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union, which helped him to secure his material existence, and it was here where Dollfuss gained his first political experience.

[11] On 10 May 1932, Dollfuss, age 39 and with only one year's experience in the Federal Government, was offered the office of Chancellor by President Wilhelm Miklas, also a member of the Christian-Social Party.

Dollfuss took the three resignations as a pretext to declare that the National Council had become unworkable and advised President Wilhelm Miklas to issue a decree adjourning it indefinitely.

When the National Council wanted to reconvene on 15 March, days after the resignation of the three presidents, Dollfuss had the police bar entrance to the chamber, effectively eliminating democracy in Austria.

Dollfuss was concerned that with German National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany from January 1933, the Austrian National Socialists (DNSAP) could gain a significant minority in future elections (according to fascism scholar Stanley G. Payne, should elections have been held in 1933, the DNSAP could have mustered about 25% of the votes – contemporary Time magazine analysts suggest higher support of 50%, with a 75% approval rate in the Tyrol region bordering Nazi Germany).

Social Democrats however continued to exist as an independent organization, nevertheless, though without its paramilitary Republikanischer Schutzbund, which until banned on 31 March 1933[16] could have mustered tens of thousands against Dollfuss's government.

Dollfuss modelled Austrofascism according to Catholic corporatist ideals with anti-secularist tones and in a similar way to Italian fascism, dropping Austrian pretenses of unification with Germany as long as the Nazi Party remained in power there.

Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the régimes of Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national-socialism and communism in Europe.

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's successor Kurt von Schuschnigg forcibly merged it into the Front, instead creating the unabidingly loyal Frontmiliz as a paramilitary task-force.

Dollfuss was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in October 1933 by Rudolf Dertill, a 22-year-old who had been ejected from the military for his pro-Nazi views and had joined the Nazi Party in 1932.

[17] Defunct In its drive to eliminate the Social Democrats' Schutzbund, the Dollfuss government searched the homes and meeting places of its members for weapons.

On 12 February 1934, the Austrian Civil War was sparked by the armed resistance of the Linz branch of the Social Democrats to the search of their party headquarters.

[18] Word of the fighting in Linz spread quickly, and additional armed conflicts broke out, primarily in Austria's industrial regions and Vienna.

Opposing the Anschluss, Dollfuss and the Fatherland Front made heavy use of the Austrians' Catholic religion in an attempt to cultivate a sense of nationalism and prevent it from being absorbed by Nazi Germany.

[24] As a result of his consistent opposition to Nazi demands, Dollfuss was assassinated on 25 July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis, including Otto Planetta, Franz Holzweber, Ernst Feike, Franz Leeb, Josef Hackl, Ludwig Maitzen, Erich Wohlraab, and Paul Hudl, who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état.

He also put at the disposal of Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who spent a holiday in Venice, a plane that allowed the prince to rush back to Vienna and to face the assailants with his militia, with the permission of President Wilhelm Miklas.

[29] Mussolini also mobilised a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch.

Hitler became convinced that he could not face a conflict with the Western European powers, and he officially denied liability, stating his regret for the murder of the Austrian Chancellor.

He replaced the ambassador to Vienna with Franz von Papen and prevented the conspirators from entering Germany, also expelling them from the Austrian Nazi Party.

[28] Kurt Schuschnigg, previously Minister of Education, was appointed new chancellor of Austria after a few days, assuming the office from Dollfuss's deputy Starhemberg.