The involuntary demise of Austria as an international legal personality was called upon as a legitimization for accepting the victimization of the country of Austria - standing in accord with the imprisonment of members of the Austrian government immediately after the invasion of German troops. Supporting this theory was a passage of the "Moscow Declaration" of November 1, 1943, in which the minister of foreign affairs of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Soviet Union claim that "Austria [was] the first free country that should fall prey to the typical aggressive policy of Hitler [and that it] should be liberated from German rule", and that the Annexation of 1938 should count as "invalid and futile".[1] As a consequence, the state of Austria was under constitutional law regarded as a victim of NS-policy.