Schuschnigg, Kurt

Description

The Fatherland Front (Austrian German: Vaterländische Front, VF) was the ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was aligned with the Catholic Church, and did not advocate any racial ideology. A right-wing conservative, authoritarian, nationalist, corporatist, and Catholic organisation, it advocated independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state. 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.