Heimwehr
The Heimwehr or Heimatschutz was a nationalist, initially paramilitary, group that operated in the First Austrian Republic from 1920 to 1936. It was similar in methods, organization, and ideology to the Freikorps in Germany. The Heimwehr was opposed to parliamentary democracy, socialism and Marxism and fought in various skirmishes against left-wing and foreign groups during the 1920s and 1930s. Some of its regional groups also opposed Nazism while others favored it. In spite of its anti-democratic stance, the Heimwehr developed a political wing called the Heimatblock that was close to the conservative Christian Social Party and took part in both the cabinet of Chancellor Carl Vaugoin in 1930 and in Engelbert Dollfuss' right-wing government from 1932 to 1934. In 1936 the Heimwehr was absorbed into what was at the time the only legally permitted political party in Austria, the Fatherland Front, and then later into the Frontmiliz, an amalgamation of militia units that in 1937 became part of Austria's armed forces.
Origins
After the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, local residents' militias and self-defense associations formed mainly from demobilized soldiers sprang up across Austria. Their purpose initially was to protect the local population from dangers such as those posed by soldiers trying to make their way to their home countries who, driven by hunger and largely without leadership, sometimes looted and assaulted the population in the areas they passed through. Such local self-defense associations over time formed individual Heimwehr units.Beginning in April 1919, the Vorarlberg provincial government approved and promoted active paramilitary people's militias to combat Austromarxism, either equipping the militia members with weapons or allowing them to use their own. They were led by the Christian Socialist provincial governor Otto Ender and financed primarily by local industry. In the summer of 1920 they had about 3,000 members, whereas the Austrian army in the province had only 800 soldiers under arms. The Vorarlberg Heimwehr subsequently emerged from the militia groups.
The first association of the Heimatwehr, as the Heimwehr was called in Tyrol, was founded on 12 May 1920 by Richard Steidle, a member of the Tyrolean parliament from the Christian Social Party who was the regional leader of the Heimatwehr in Tyrol until 1936. His deputies either supported or held parliamentary seats with the Greater German People's Party, an Austrian political party calling for unification with Germany. The group's statutes listed four program points:
- protection of the constitution and defense against any attempt to change the constitution by force
- protection of persons, employment and property
- support of the existing state authority in maintaining peace and order
- intervention in the case of fundamentally important events
The Heimwehr was involved early on in border disputes with troops from the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When it turned its opposition primarily against Austromarxism, from which it wished to protect the middle class, the Social Democrats in response formed the Republikanischer Schutzbund in 1923 as a defensive counterweight to the Heimwehr.
The Heimwehr registered significant gains after the SDAP published its militant Linz Program in November 1926. Because it used the language of Marxism and class conflict to provide the theoretical basis for political confrontation with the Christian Social Party and the Heimwehr, it caused many in the middle class, including some who were merely not socialist minded, to fear a domestic political turn toward a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Years of rapid growth 1927–1930
On 30 January 1927 members of the SDAP who were holding a meeting at Schattendorf in Burgenland were fired on by a group from the right-wing Front Fighters Association of German Austria, leaving two dead and five wounded. When the men who had been accused of the deaths were acquitted by a jury, protestors in what came to be known as the July Revolt of 1927 burned the Vienna Palace of Justice. More than 80 demonstrators died in the subsequent clashes with the police, leading the Social Democrats to speak of it as the "July Massacre" of workers. When they engaged in transportation strikes, the Heimwehr stepped in to break them, especially in areas outside Vienna.In the years from 1927 to 1930, the Heimwehr movement experienced a period of rapid growth and became a significant part in the increasingly radicalized domestic political situation. It aspired to be more than what Richard Steidle called a watchdog let off its leash when needed by the middle-class parties. Many Heimwehr leaders began to develop a more political profile and demanded a fundamental change in Austria's political system that would move it towards authoritarianism and corporatism – that is, a society similar to the type favoured by Italian fascism that was organized around corporate groups such as agriculture, manual labour, the military, business, trade and the like. In 1927 the various provincial Heimwehr associations joined to form an umbrella organization, the Federation of Austrian Self-Defense Associations. The Heimwehr's leaders attempted to implement the political change they wanted both through ongoing agitation in the streets – mainly in the form of massive Sunday marches – and behind the scenes through political pressure on the federal government. A large march on 7 October 1928 in Wiener Neustadt, an industrial area of Vienna that was a stronghold of the SDAP, was a self-confident demonstration of strength. Many in the middle class cheered the Heimwehr as a "saviour in the time of need".
The Heimwehr was supported financially, logistically, and with arms by industry and large landowners, especially from Styria, as well as by Italian fascists, the Hungarian regime of Miklós Horthy and groups on the Bavarian right. Numerous World War I front-line officers served as military "advisors" and functionaries. Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who became the Heimwehr's national leader in 1930, approached right-wing circles in Great Britain, including the fascist politician Oswald Mosley, from whom he was able to receive no financial support. Konstantin Kammerhofer, leader of the Styrian Heimwehr, received money from the German Reich government until mid-1932. When the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini came to believe that the Heimwehr would not achieve its goal of making Austria a corporate state, he stopped his financial contributions in October 1933.
Inability to unify
In 1929, the government of Chancellor Ernst Streeruwitz, a coalition of the Christian Social Party, Greater German People's Party and the agrarian Landbund, engaged the Heimwehr in negotiations regarding constitutional reform. They and the Social Democrats were close to a compromise when in late September, the Heimwehr and Christian Social Party brought down the government. Ignaz Seipel, leader of the Christian Socialists, chose to install the independent Johannes Schober as chancellor. Schober, who had been Vienna's police chief during the 1927 July Revolt and had approved firing on the demonstrators, was seen by the Heimwehr as strong and a beacon of hope. He proved, however, to be a bitter disappointment to them. In the dispute over the 1929 amendment to the Austrian constitution that strengthened the position of the federal president, he worked out a compromise with the Social Democrats that was completely unacceptable to the Heimwehr, and in addition he was unwilling to give in to their other demands. It represented a significant setback for the movement, which until then had seen itself moving in a steadily upward arc.The Heimwehr's failure in the constitutional dispute and the onset of the world economic crisis in Austria in the early 1930s ushered in a period of stagnation and increasing drifting apart within the Heimwehr movement. Its national leader Richard Steidle hoped to overcome the problems in May 1930 with the so-called Korneuburg Oath, which he read out at a general assembly of the Lower Austrian Heimatschutz. It included statements that supported authoritarian conservative ideals such as "We want to seize power … and bring a new order to the state and the economy" and "We reject Western democratic parliamentarianism and the party-state!". The oath established Austrian conservative nationalism – as distinct from the pan-German nationalism of the Nazi Party – as a basic part of its ideology.
Such attempts to unite the Heimwehr under an integrated leadership failed in the long run due to the differing objectives of the individual Heimwehr associations and the rivalries of their various leaders. The Styrian and Carinthian Heimwehr in particular rejected the Christian, corporatist course of the federal leadership and moved increasingly close to the Nazis. They were also openly anti-Semitic, calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses and banning Jews as members after 1933. The attitude of the rest of the Heimwehr was less definite. Although anti-Semitism was brought into play as a political weapon, as it was against refugees from eastern Europe and the allegedly "Jewish" social democracy, its use was more opportunistic than ideological and did not play a dominant role as an integrative element of the movement.
Heimatblock
After Schober's resignation on 25 September 1930, the new Christian Socialist Chancellor Carl Vaugoin offered the Heimwehr a share in his minority cabinet. Although the national leadership of the Heimwehr at first rejected the offer, it was forced to agree under pressure from provincial functionaries. On 1 October 1930, Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, the Heimwehr's newly elected national leader, became Minister of the Interior and Franz Hueber Minister of Justice in Vaugoin's cabinet. Vaugoin hoped that this would lead to an alliance with the Heimwehr in the next election.The Heimwehr's national leadership contemplated the electoral alliance and one with the Greater German People's Party, the Landbund and the Austrian National Socialists. There was considerable disagreement over questions of ideology and political strategy. Starhemberg advocated a separate Heimwehr list for the 1930 National Council election, while the Styrian Heimwehr rejected the idea. Walter Pfrimer, leader of the Heimwehr in Styria, was fundamentally opposed to participating in the election, while his chief of staff, Rauter, pursued the idea of an electoral alliance with the National Socialists. Rauter met with the German Nazi Party's organizational leader, Gregor Strasser, to discuss cooperation in early October 1930. Because there were not enough supporters for such an alliance in the movement, they drew up their own electoral list, the Heimatblock.