 As a student at Vienna University, he became a member of the social-democratic youth movement.After the assassination of Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss by the Nazis in 1934, Bauer became convinced that the only way to fight the Nazis was within the framework of the Vaterlandische Front, the only political organization allowed in Austria at that time.Bauer joined its propaganda office as a volunteer and spoke at international youth conferences in Prague and Paris in 1937.