The Fatherland Front was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was organised along the lines of Italian Fascism, was fully aligned with the Catholic Church, and did not advocate any racial ideology, as Italian Fascism later did. It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.

The Republikanischer Schutzbund was an Austrian paramilitary organisation established in 1923 by the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria to defend the Austrian Republic in the face of rising political radicalisation after World War I. The Schutzbund, whose membership peaked at about 100,000 men in 1925, was armed and organised on military lines. In the July Revolt of 1927 it worked with government authorities to try to prevent the spread of violence, but it largely sat out the Pfrimer Putsch in September 1931 because it had failed so quickly.