Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

by Philipp Blom

The front lines in the Austrian struggle for nationhood were drawn mainly between socialists and conservative Catholics, between visions of a modern workers’ paradise and a rigid, rightist autocracy of national virtue. With Dollfuss, the latter had won by what amounted to a coup d’état. A new, dictatorial Austria rapidly took shape. Dollfuss introduced censorship of the press, prohibited political assemblies, and outlawed the paramilitary wing of the socialist party, the Republikanischer Schutzbund. Political opponents were arrested and sent to prison camps, and the death penalty was reintroduced for even usually non-capital offenses, including “public violence and malicious damage to foreign property.” From the very beginning of his dictatorship, Dollfuss was particularly concerned to reverse the secular reforms of previous governments and to make his homeland into an obedient daughter of the Catholic Church.