Towards the end of 1938, some months after the rapid integration of "Austro-fascist" Austria into a newly enlarged German state under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, she became involved with the Young Communists.

She faced trial at the special "People's Court" at Krems on 22 September 1943 and was found guilty of "preparing to commit High Treason and Helping the Enemy" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat und Feindbegünstigung").

[1][2][3][4] Hartmann grew up with her parents and elder sister, Gerda, in Döbling, a prosperous quarter of Vienna on the northern side of the city centre.

[3] On leaving school she worked for some months both at "Fuchs, Meindl und Horn", a prestigious fashion house and embroidery business in the city centre, and at "Hübner & Mayer", a machinery and boiler manufacturer located on the northern edge of town near the Hartmanns' home.

Hartmann's "underground" political activism on behalf of a Communist organisation was against the rules, enforcement of which was intensified after the outbreak of war in September 1939.

[5] Hartmann was also a member of the young communist resistance group "Der Soldatenrat", named after the workers' and soldiers' soviets that had emerged in Germany after the previous "world war".

[12] It was Hartmann who composed the letter - described in some sources as a leaflet - that she addressed to members of the army She organised the large scale production of copies and co-ordinated their distribution.

[9] Between October 1941 and February 1942 many more envelopes were addressed to soldiers and civilian personnel in order to send out more leaflets urging desertions.

[6][8] At the time of her arrest she reported to be was in possession of [political] leaflets which she was deemed to be distributing (probably by discretely leaving them on park benches).

After she learned that her partner had been condemned to death, she smuggled out of her cell a succession of impassioned notes, mostly addressed to her parents, scrawled in tiny handwriting on the back of dockets.

[14] She urged the recipients to intercede with the authorities, stating that any wrongdoing on Masl's part had occurred only because he was infatuated with her and completely under her influence.

[9] The charge would be the usual one of "preparing to commit High Treason and Helping the Enemy" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat und Feindbegünstigung").