10 MAY 1986, Page 25

Austrian resistance

Sir: I have just read Paul Johnson's article about Austria (The press, 19 April). He lays stress on the high percentage of Nazis there: that is certainly a fair point, though who knows how anyone would have be- haved had they been in the position in Which Austria was placed by the injudi- cious Treaty of Saint Germain in 1919? More important, though, it would be just to recall that there was an Austrian resist- ance, not much helped by the West, in which some 100,000 Austrians participated in one way or another; 2,700 Austrians were executed between 1938 and 1945, 16,500 died in concentration camps and another 10,000 in prisons for political reasons.

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton House of Lords,

London SW1