Fascism and Austria

Abstract

When the first Austrian Republic was established and the Peace Treaties vetoed the Anschluss in 1919, the Pan-German indignation of the more conservative Austrian Germans exceeded all bounds. They could not forgive the Austrian Social Democrats for accepting the Treaty of Saint-Germain, and their anti-Marxist indignation was immense. They volunteered to join the Heimatschutz to which the government issued arms, as it did to Socialist volunteers, so that order should be preserved and the frontiers, especially on the Yugoslav side, be protected. The Heimatschutz was the same kind of thing as the Freikorps in Germany. In the west of Austria the right-wing volunteers acquired the name of Heimwehr and were in close touch with the seething mass of right-wing groups in Bavaria.