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The 'Heimwehr' (German ''Home Guard'') were a Nationalist, initially paramilitary grouping, operating within Austria during the 1920s and 1930s; they were similar in methods, organisation, and ideology to Germany's Freikorp.
Formed mainly from demobilised soldiers after World War I, the Heimwehr were used as general political mercenaries within Austria; as with Germany's Freikorp, there was no formal national leadership or political program, but rather local groupings which responded actively to whatever they considered to be ideologically unpalatable. They were employed, for example, in Upper Austria to attack striking workers and trade unions. The Heimwehr was also involved in the massacre of July 15, 1927. After 1927, the Heimwehr drew the support of Mussolini in his attempts to preserve an Austrian state.
The Heimwehr continued to lack any real national coherence up to 1930, when Heimwehr leaders committed themselves to the Korneunberg Oath, which established an arguably Fascist party platform based on Austrian Nationalism (as distinct from the pan-German nationalism of the Nazis), a rejection of Parliamentary Democracy and Marxism, in favour of a dictatorship, and a rejection of class struggle (''see'' Austrofascism). The Heimwehr won around 6% of the vote (250,000 votes) in the 1930 elections, gaining eight seats in Parliament.
However, the Heimwehr soon disintegrated once more into regional components, as party infighting broke out after the election victory. When Walter Pfrimer, regional head in Styria attempted a coup in 1931, he received no support from other Heimwehr leaders. After this, many Heimwehr groupings, including the Styrian section, increasingly defected to the Nazis.
After Engelbert Dollfuss created the Fatherland Front in 1934, the Heimwehr suffered a decline in support and significance due to the Pan-German, nationalist allure of the Nazis and Italy's gradual reorientation of its foreign policy towards Germany. As a result of these factors, Dollfuss' successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, absorbed the remaining Heimwehr elements into the Fatherland Front in 1936, and it officially ceased to exist as a political grouping.