prisoners. Maier, "impressed" with charisma and enthusiasm, had a high level of intelligence and scientifically sound training, was interested in art and politics and felt deeply connected to his home country. Enthusiastic contact, coupled with a warm and open personality, made many friendships open to him across all social classes; however, he paid special attention to the care and upbringing of children and adolescents to independent and mature personalities; "dealing with them was uncomplicated and comradely [...]" According to contemporary witnesses, Maier was "a real buddy", "a happy person" and an "accurate soccer player". With the abolition of religious instruction by the Nazi regime, Maier also lost his job as a religion teacher at the Albertus Magnus School in Vienna
Währing in 1938, but remained a chaplain in the parish of Gersthof-St. Leopold in Vienna, Währing, deepened his theological studies and received his doctorate in July 1942 (second doctorate - theology). He then violated the orders of his ecclesiastical authorities in that he not only acted "purely as a pastoral" but also politically. Maier was very involved in the resistance against the Nazi Party. Maier had been actively involved in the idea of resistance since 1940 and saw himself as a priest committed to it. His Christian faith and his humanistic worldview forced him to take action, against the advice of his superiors, against Nazism. As early as May and June 1940, he contacted resistance groups around Jakob Kaiser, Felix Hurdes, Lois Weinberger,
Adolf Schärf and
Karl Seitz. Out of his conviction, the Catholic faith and Austrian patriotism, he was a resistance fighter who ultimately did not rule out militant means to suppress the Nazi regime. He founded the resistance group Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi together with the Tyrolean Catholic-monarchist resistance fighter Walter Caldonazzi from Mals in
South Tyrol and later from Kramsach in North Tyrol, who already led a resistance group with a few hundred members in
Tyrol with the policeman Andreas Hofer (a direct descendant of the Tyrolean freedom hero of the same name,
Andreas Hofer), and Franz Josef Messner, the Tyrolean director of the
Semperit works. It was Maier who brought the very different members of the resistance group together and was able to build on a large network of his contacts. Maier advocated the following principle: "Every bomb that falls on armaments factories shortens the war and spares the civilian population." The group (also called CASSIA or Maier-Messner group - opposite the OSS, the resistance group called itself the Austrian Committee of Liberation - the Americans codenamed Arcel using the acronym ACL) took care, among other things, of collecting and passing on information about locations, employees and productions about Nazi armaments factories to the Allies. This information for targeted bombing by the Allies was partly passed on to middlemen in Switzerland to the British and Americans. Heinrich Maier stated, in the interrogation of the group's strategy on 27 April 1944, that he had hoped to prevent further air strikes on Austrian cities by providing information about the "armaments factories in the
Ostmark" and "that this would prevent the other industries that we had after the war absolutely needed, and the civilian population was spared. [...] Shortly thereafter, I familiarised Dr. Messner with my plan and talked to him about which armament centers we wanted to reveal to the enemy powers' (– such as Steyr, Wiener Neudorf and Wiener Neustadt) eye." Via Walter Caldonazzi, the group had contacts with Italian resistance groups through Italian construction workers. The exact drawings of the
V-2 rocket, the production of the
Tiger tank and
Messerschmitt Bf 109 and others could be passed on via Maier's relationship with the Commandant of Vienna, Heinrich "Rico" Stümpfl. Lieutenant General Stümpfl, a former officer of the
Austro-Hungarian Army and
Austrian Army, knew about the activities of the resistance group and was always ready to help them comprehensively. As a result, precise location sketches and production figures for steel mills, weapons, ball bearings and the German production situation for synthetic rubber (Buna) and aircraft factories soon reached Allied general staffs. Maier's saying, based on Shakespeare's Richard III, "A kingdom for a ball bearing" has come down to us in this regard. Via Walter Caldonazzi, there were contacts to numerous armaments factories in Tyrol, such as the
Heinkel factories in Jenbach, where drive components for the
Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and V-2 rockets were manufactured. The information about the aircraft factory in Wiener Neustadt, the most important and largest German factory for the production of fighter aircraft at the time, was particularly important. In some cases, Maier had received information from front-line soldiers on leave about the industrial facilities. American and British bombers were able to strike armaments factories such as the secret V-rocket factory (
V-1 and
V-2) in
Peenemünde and the
Messerschmitt plants near Vienna. These contributions by the resistance group via the defense industry and production sites (crucial for the
Operation Crossbow and
Operation Hydra, both preliminary missions for
Operation Overlord) were later to prove to be 92% correct and were thus an effective contribution to Allied warfare. On the one hand, the Allies were able to target the arms industry and on the other hand, this information and the subsequent air strikes decisively weakened the supply of the German Air Force, which together also had the effect of shortening the war. In this regard, it is often stated that if the war against Nazi Germany had lasted longer, the first atomic bomb would have been used over Berlin or the industrial centers of Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Mannheim. Messner provided the first information about the mass murder of Jews from his Semperit plant near
Auschwitz - a message the enormity of which amazed the Americans in Zurich. However, the Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi resistance group's plan to bring an American transmitter of the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from Liechtenstein to Austria failed. In 1943 the British
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was in contact with the Austrian resistance group through an SOE officer in Istanbul, G. E. R. Gedye, but Gedye was not convinced of the reliability of the group’s local contact person, Semperit-Istanbul branch director Gustav Rüdiger (sometimes incorrectly identified as “Franz Josef Riediger”) and, because of these security concerns, decided not to cooperate with the group. In addition to establishing contact with Allied secret services, the resistance group also tried to educate its own countrymen in order to prepare them politically for a future peace order. To this end, a central committee or preparatory groups in the event of a collapse of the German Reich and a future independent state of Germany with a monarchical form of government were planned, which, in addition to
Austria, should also include
Bavaria and
South Tyrol. Helene Sokal and her later husband, the chemist Theodor Legradi, who had international connections to the communist resistance, among others, included the doctor Josef Wyhnal and the student Hermann Klepell. Klepell had relationships with socialist circles, while another member, the communist Pawlin, made connections with the
KPÖ. Since Maier grew up in poor circumstances, he was very open to social issues. In the summer of 1942, the resistance group was able to send a "memorandum" drawn up by Maier, Sokal and Legradi to the
Allies (addressed to the British and Soviet Foreign Ministers), in which a current social analysis, military and economic information and the goals of a new Austria were presented. The reception was confirmed by the
BBC, but not by the
Soviets. Maier and Hofer also planned the arming and liberation of prisoners of war and Hofer and Caldonazzi distributed feverish drugs to
Wehrmacht or
SS soldiers who were subjected to a military investigation or who did not want to be drafted into the Wehrmacht. By injecting such substances - including Hofer himself - he tried to keep himself from being drafted back into the army. Maier had to pay hush money to influence some people around him so that they would not betray him to the Gestapo. == Arrest, trial and execution ==