With the Nazi takeover of Austria, Stix and Benesch lost their positions.
Stix stayed in Vienna and worked, apparently surreptitiously, with Spitzmüller in the Albertina collections.
Nazi directors were appointed at all the Viennese museums, but according to Spitzmüller, they were figureheads who had little impact on the running of the institutions. "
We continued our research, but couldn’t publish anything", she recalled.
 As war became imminent, her most important task became to secure storage for the museum's collections, which were found in the salt mines of the Salzkammergut.
After the war, American officials transferred all the Salzkammergut art objects to Munich, mixing the stolen German objects with the meticulously cataloged Austrian ones, so Spitzmüller was required to go there to sort through them.

On March 13, 1945, an Allied bomb struck the Albertina.
Spitzmüller recalls that she and her colleagues were repairing the resulting hole in the museum's roof on the day Perry Blythe Cott (one of the "Monuments Men") visited them.
 With Cott, she went to Munich to retrieve the paintings and graphic art that had been stored before the war; she was able to see many of the Jewish artworks confiscated by the Nazis.
During the war, she had met Otto Benesch's family, and through his father, Heinrich Benesch, an important art dealer and friend of Egon Schiele, had secured for the Albertina the Roessler collection of Schiele’s graphic art.

After the war, she spent much time in Vienna's French zone, organizing exhibitions and finally travelling to France to reestablish art contacts there.
In 1946, she mounted a cooperative exhibition with the French, highlighting artworks in the Albertina's holdings.
Her catalogue of the show, Französische Phantastik, was one of the first art publications produced in Vienna after the war.
With the Nazi takeover of Austria, Stix and Benesch lost their positions. Stix stayed in Vienna and worked, apparently surreptitiously, with Spitzmüller in the Albertina collections. Nazi directors were appointed at all the Viennese museums, but according to Spitzmüller, they were figureheads who had little impact on the running of the institutions. "We continued our research, but couldn’t publish anything", she recalled.  As war became imminent, her most important task became to secure storage for the museum's collections, which were found in the salt mines of the Salzkammergut. After the war, American officials transferred all the Salzkammergut art objects to Munich, mixing the stolen German objects with the meticulously cataloged Austrian ones, so Spitzmüller was required to go there to sort through them.
On March 13, 1945, an Allied bomb struck the Albertina. Spitzmüller recalls that she and her colleagues were repairing the resulting hole in the museum's roof on the day Perry Blythe Cott (one of the "Monuments Men") visited them.  With Cott, she went to Munich to retrieve the paintings and graphic art that had been stored before the war; she was able to see many of the Jewish artworks confiscated by the Nazis. During the war, she had met Otto Benesch's family, and through his father, Heinrich Benesch, an important art dealer and friend of Egon Schiele, had secured for the Albertina the Roessler collection of Schiele’s graphic art.
After the war, she spent much time in Vienna's French zone, organizing exhibitions and finally travelling to France to reestablish art contacts there. In 1946, she mounted a cooperative exhibition with the French, highlighting artworks in the Albertina's holdings. Her catalogue of the show, Französische Phantastik, was one of the first art publications produced in Vienna after the war.
Anna Spitzmüller