 Major towns include Rohrbach, Bad Leonfelden, Freistadt and Perg.The region was the site of a notorious war crime at the end of World War II, when hundreds of starving Soviet POWs escaped from nearby Mauthausen concentration camp and were pursued and murdered around Mühlviertel; the SS referred to the event as the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd ("Mühlviertel rabbit hunt").During the Allied occupation of Austria after World War II, the Mühlviertel belonged to the Soviet occupation zone, while the rest of Upper Austria belonged to the American occupation zone.