Putting up resistance to a totalitarian regime that suppresses the population by means of terror, requires a high degree of courage and willingness to risk all, even one’s life. Few people are willing to sacrifice the utmost. Organizing resistance in Austria in 1938 faced considerable difficulties. Among the negative factors were the absence of an armed resistance to the German annexation at the beginning, the brutal and massive persecution, and the flight abroad of thousands of poten-tial opponents of the Nazi regime. As the resistance organizations operated to a great extent separately from their German counterparts, one can justifiably speak of a genuine Austrian resistance. It was structured along political and ideological lines. The two main groupings consisted of adherents of working-class parties who were concentrated mainly in the industrial centers in eastern Austria, and those of a Catholic, conservative or bourgeois background.

Those involved in the Austrian resistance restricted themselves mainly to traditional forms, such as setting up organizations or distributing flyers and newspapers. This policy demanded heavy sacrifices in human lives and was not very effective. Taking into account the high number of victims, the practical results were meager and never endangered the NS-regime. It brought neither serious disruption to the Nazi war industry nor was it able to win majority support in the population. The liberation of Austria from Nazi rule was solely an achievement of the Allied armed forces and 30,000 of their soldiers fell on Austrian soil. However, since the 1943 Moscow Declaration of the Allies demanded that Austria must make a »contribution of her own« to her liberation, resistance proved to be of eminent political value in the postwar years, as the negotiations on the Austrian State Treaty (1955) were to demonstrate.