The expropriation and seizure of Austrian property after the "Anschluss" and right up to the breakdown of the Nazi system constituted one of the shortest but also most radical and extensive processes of redistribution of property in Austrian history. Both the state as such and all classes of the population were affected. With its large reserves of foreign exchange, its raw materials, its unexploited hydroelectric power, its industrial potential, much of which was lying idle because of the world economic crisis, and its manpower reserves, Austria offered the Reich exactly the resources which Germany lacked and without which the pursuit of the "Four-Year Plan", the Nazi policy of "autarky" and thus the arms buildup for the coming war were in jeopardy. Thus the "Anschluss" deprived the Austria as a nation state (i.e. the federation, the constituent states and local communities) of considerable assets. This included the federation's shareholdings, later vested in the "Land Österreich", and the management of state-owned industries. In addition, the Reich took over Austria's gold and foreign exchange reserves and appropriated the country's financial assets located in other countries. When the new administrative units, the "Reichsgaue", were set up in Austria, complicated wrangles started in some cases between the Reichsgaue and the German agencies over the distribution and modes of transfer of these assets. But their seizure alone did not guarantee the complete integration of the Austrian economy into the German economy. In order to exploit Austria's economic potential, considerable investments were necessary. Hence the German Reich invested considerable sums with an eye on the needs of the arms industry (a policy which had a distorting effect on the Austrian economy). After 1945 this led to the vexed question of "German property" in Austria, especially in the context of reparation payments.

Already under the "Anschluss" itself in 1938, some foreign property was seized in Austria. As a result of the growing internationalsations of business in the interwar years, substantial assets owned by nationals of enemy countries were located in the German Reich, including Austria. On 15 January 1940, the Reich Justice Ministry issued an ordinance on enemy property which did not provide for the outright confiscation and expropriation of such assets but placed them under trusteeship, i.e. ordered their sequestration. "Enemy property" did not only mean possessions of foreign nationals located in German territory but also property owned in Germany by Germans, including of course Austrians, resident in enemy territory. For the purpose of sequestration in accordance with international law, a special agency, the "Reichskommissariat für die Behandlung feindlichen Vermögens" (Reich Commission for Handling Enermy Property - RKV) was established. Later, in November 1941, the 11th implementing ordinance to the Reich Nationality Law explicitly removed the property of German (and thus Austrian) Jews resident abroad from the purview of the enemy property ordinance, to which it had been subject. This meant that such property could be seized by the authorities.