After the election, when Engelbert Dollfuss came to form a Christian Socialist government on May 20, 1932, he could count on a majority of only one vote. Chancellor Dollfuss belonged to a new generation that had been educated in the conservative conviction that the Western form of parliamentary government had been forced upon the central Europeans as a result of military defeat and socialist revolution and that the political and social order could be restored only by the establishment of some kind of strong authority. The leaders of the Christian Socialist Party found themselves under attack from two ideological enemies, the Marxists and the Nazis, who apparently threatened the very basis of the conservative order. In reaction, Dollfuss determined to replace parliamentary government with an authoritarian system. The opportunity to do this came in March 1933, when, during a debate on a minor bill, an argument arose over alleged irregularities in the voting procedure. The president of the Nationalrat resigned, the two vice presidents followed his example, and Dollfuss declared that parliament had proved unworkable. It never met again in full, and Dollfuss governed thereafter by emergency decree.

By this time (spring of 1933), Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany, and Nazi propaganda for the incorporation of Austria was greatly increased. Dollfuss turned to fascist Italy and authoritarian Hungary for help, as he was convinced that British and French aid would be ineffective. This shift in foreign policy also can be attributed to the fact that Dollfuss had to rely ever more strongly on the help of the pro-fascist Heimwehr to stay in power.

The Social Democrats were subjected to increasing provocation and on February 12, 1934, took to arms. Civil war followed. After four days of fighting, Dollfuss and the Heimwehr were victorious. The Social Democratic Party was declared illegal and driven underground. In the course of the same year, all political parties were abolished except the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front), which Dollfuss had founded in 1933 to unite all conservative groups. In April 1934 the rump of the parliament was brought together and accepted an authoritarian constitution. The executive was given complete control over the legislative branch of government; the elected assemblies disappeared and were replaced by advisory bodies, appointed in a complicated and futile fashion. The human rights guaranteed under the democratic constitution also were swept away. “Republic” was removed from the official name of the country, which became merely the Federal State of Austria.

On July 25, 1934, a group of Nazis seized the chancellery and attempted to proclaim a government. Dollfuss, whom they had taken prisoner, was murdered. The plan, however, miscarried: the Nazis in the chancellery were compelled to surrender, and their leaders were executed; a Nazi rising in Steiermark was suppressed; and Hitler, faced with the mobilization of an Italian army on the Brenner Pass, repudiated his Austrian followers. Franz von Papen was sent as German ambassador to reduce Austria by other means.

Kurt von Schuschnigg, who became chancellor on the death of Dollfuss, was a man of gentler personality and of less-violent political passions. His administration of the authoritarian constitution was in the easygoing Austrian fashion, less oppressive than in Italy and Germany. Schuschnigg had a mild preference for restoring the Habsburgs, but he shrank from the international complications this would involve. The regime drifted on without popular favour, weakened by the personal rivalries and ambitions of its leaders and sustained only by a guarantee from Italy. The temporary accord of Great Britain, France, and Italy in the Stresa Front (April 1935) seemed to promise new security, but the Italo-Ethiopian War soon destroyed the unity of the Western powers, and Austria’s isolation was complete when Hitler and Italian leader Benito Mussolini allied themselves in 1936.

Schuschnigg had to negotiate a compromise with Germany, which was signed on July 11, 1936; Germany promised to respect Austrian sovereignty, and in return Austria acknowledged itself “a German state.” The agreement left Austria open to Nazi infiltration. In January 1938 the Austrian police discovered a new Nazi conspiracy. Schuschnigg hoped to defeat this by a meeting with Hitler, but at Berchtesgaden, Germany, where Hitler received him on February 12, 1938, Schuschnigg was faced with threats of military intervention in support of the Austrian Nazis. He had to agree to give them a general amnesty and to include some leading Nazis in his cabinet; the Ministry of the Interior had to be entrusted to Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the spokesman of Austrian Nazis. The open agitation of the Nazis threatened to destroy the government’s authority, and confidential contacts in the European capitals brought Schuschnigg to realize that he could not count on the support of the western European powers. He therefore resolved to challenge Hitler alone. On March 9 he announced that a plebiscite would be held on March 13 to decide in favour of Austrian independence.