Although the Allied policy towards Austria was muddled and riven with the divisions and uncertainties about the future course of action, there was one common denominator that diplomats of Britain, the US, and USSR tended to share: Austria should not be reunited with Germany. The Moscow Declaration of 1943 asserted that the Anschluss was imposed by Germany on a reluctant Austria and was now regarded by the Alies "null and void." The Declaration served an immediate purpose of trying to encourage Austrian defections or surrenders within the Wehrmacht, however, the Declaration also reflected the Allies' fears that Austria needed to be independent for postwar peace. There was a fear that such an enlarged Germany would enable a resumption of German expansionism postwar and the ease with which Austria slipped into German control in 1938 added to these fears. As the UK Deputy Undersecretary of State Oliver Harvey put it:

were it not for the strategic importance of keeping Austria separate from Germany, we could let this flabby country stew. It is clear that Austria is doing next to nothing for herself and we shall have the greatest difficulty in infusing life into her after the war. There are no political leaders inside or outside the country who command any following. Austria will fall into the first arms which are opened to her.

The Austrian State Treaty, which ended the Allied occupation of Austria, made the Austrian government forswear any political reunion and combat any Grossdeutsche activism in politics or education.

For its part, the Allied policy on Austria's inherent separateness from Germany dovetailed with postwar Austrian attempts to disassociate themselves from Nazism and to avoid any serious reckoning with their participation within the Third Reich. Austrian schools often emphasized that Austria was among Germany's first victims and the denazification of the country was pretty lax. Various scandals like the Waldheim affair, the status of Jewish property, the activities of the Austrian right, and historical inquiries into the Austrian dimension of the Third Reich helped to shatter this victimhood narrative by the 1980s and 1990s.