Immediately following the plebiscite, the policy of »Germanization« was intensified. The German kindergarten served »Germanization,« the Slovenian language virtually vanished from the schools, and the existing Slovenian organizations were put under strict supervision. Priests, teachers, and functionaries disliked by the Nazis were transferred from the bilingual districts. The Carinthian Heimatbund requested their local officials to provide the names of leading Slovenian nationalists. A total of 245 »national Slovenian leaders« were registered and many of them included in the expellee lists of 1942.

Resistance in the years 1938–1941 consisted of the desertion of Slovenes serving in the German Wehrmacht, individual Slovenes were also involved in the attacks on railway lines carried out in Styria and the Kanal valley. The majority of Carinthian Slovenes, however, remained passive until 1941.