Ernst Kirchweger was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria but turned Communist by 1934 where he risked his life as an activist in illegal trade unions during the reigns of the Fatherland Front (the far-right nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria) and the Nazi Party.
After Austria's liberation in 1945, having survived concentration camp, he continued to speak out against Fascism and National Socialism. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists. 
