Fatherland Front

Through most of the 1930s Austria was governed by an autocratic dictatorship that attempted to navigate a middle course that would prevent the national socialists and social democrats from pulling the country into civil war. Adolph Hitler upset that balance when he ordered Austrian Nazis to orchestrate a putsch to take power and join Austria with Germany. Kurt von Schuschnigg was Austrian chancellor and leader of the Fatherland Front party. As street riots escalated, Schuschnigg called out his own supporters to push back against the Nazis.