The Ideology and Practice of Militia in the Interwar Europe. The Case of the Heimwehr Movement in Austria (1918-1934)
Abstract
The paper deals with the topic of militia as a phenomenon in Central Europe after WW I. It is analysed using the example of the Heimwehr movement in Austria, which was a regionally differentiated group with a radical anti-Marxist stance and bearing all signs of fascist orientation.
The research looks for specific features of this type of militia in the context of the First Austrian Republic from the beginning of the movement in 1919 until the thirties when its influence peaked. Also the ideological background of the Heimwehr and the idea of the "Estates state" (Standestaat) of Othmar Spann is a part of the analysis.
The Heimwehr had been steadily pushing for an anti-democratic change of the political system. The authoritarian course of the Dollfuss' government that Heimwehr helped establish culminated in a civil war in February 1934.
The Austrian Social Democratic Party was outlawed. In spite of the problematic sympathy with Nazism of the Styrian group of the Heimwehr, the part of the Heimwehr under the leadership of Ernst Rudiger Starhemberg decisively helped the Austrian government to successfully withstand the onslaught from Austrian Nazis and the pressure coming from the Third Reich in the critical time between Spring 1933 and Summer 1934.