When the Allied forces – which included, in the opinion of the British, also the Yugoslav Army and the partisan detachments – finally liberated Austria, thepeople living in the Austrian Carinthian districts with Slovenian or mixed population found themselves in a new situation. After the retreat of the Yugoslav Army, demanded by the notes of Great Britain of 12 May and United States of America of 15 May 1945, the units of the British 8th Army or the established military authorities assumed the responsibility for all the issues of security andadministration in the region. The provisional provincial government, serving as a consultative body and even named as such by the military authorities for a few weeks, had practically no powers whatsoever. The military government ruled by means of orders, primarily aimed at providing security for its armed forces and administrative staff, and regulating the most important issues, like food, for example. In the first control agreement, which entered into force on 10 August 1945, the Allied forces stated their purpose of gradually creating the conditions enabling the transfer of the jurisdiction to the central Austrian administration andensuring the establishment of a freely elected Austrian government. In the preambleof the second control agreement, entering into force on 26 June 1946, the Allies referred to the Moscow Declaration of 1 November 1943 and precisely outlined the powers of the Austrian authorities. Among other things they retained the following responsibilities: maintenance and repatriation of prisoners of war and dislocated people and court proceedings initiated against these people; tracking down, arresting and extraditing those who had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The military government in Carinthia established military courts immediately. Information about the sentences imposed by these courts can be found in the Kärntner Nachrichten daily newspaper, and later also in the Koroška kronika weekly. The articles reveal that military courts were strict, especially with regard to theft of food from the stock of the British units, persons failing to hand over weapons or other military materiel, and black marketeers. When the British established the internal Carinthian border, these courts punished people who crossed it without the necessary documents. In this case we come across names of partially known Carinthian Slovenians, and the names of Slovenian refugees or Slovenian political emigration also appear. The latter mostly attempted to retreat to Italy. Because the British military authorities did not know the situation in this country, naturally, they soon recruited many Austrians who had served in the Austrian security forces before March 1938. As such some of them had also been active during the Nazi regime. Although the provisional Carinthian provincial government announced it would rectify any injustice caused to the Carinthian Slovenians by the Nazism, it then stalled the restoration of the organisations of Carinthian Slovenians in agreement with the military government and later the civilian administration. The British authorities may have promoted the revitalisation of the Slovenian language and some forms of cultural life, but they by no means agreed with the political efforts of Slovenians gathered in the Provincial Committee of the Liberation Front. They resorted to repression in order to stop the Liberation Front from taking part in the national and Provincial Assembly elections on 25 November 1945. While the parties of the majority constantly discussed the issue of the border during the election campaign, the Slovenian side was prevented from doing so. Slovenians initiated their cultural activities already in August, but the Slovenian Education Association could not officially start operating until as late as the end of March 1946. The repression carried out by the British and Austrian security bodies especially affected the people arguing for the unification of the Carinthian Slovenians with Slovenians in Yugoslavia. Only a few Carinthian Slovenians were convicted by the military court because they disrespected or insulted the members of the military government or British civilian administration. However, that happened to Karel Prušnik – Gašper, who publicly criticised a certain English judge in November 1946. The Carinthian Slovenian youth was frequently punished because they spread leaflets promoting the unifi cation with Yugoslavia. They were also punished for putting up bilingual signposts and for crossing the border between Austria and Yugoslavia illegally. The peaks of these proceedings correspond with the Austrian State Treaty, culminating in February 1947.Gradually, the British civilian authorities handed the powers over to the Austrianbodies. Verbally these were more radical in their opposition towards CarinthianSlovenians. Among other things they hindered the establishment of the Democratic Front of the Working People as the organisation succeeding the Liberation Front. Furthermore, the Austrian provincial and federal authorities were most consistent in their obstruction of the restoration of Slovenian cooperatives.