After the incorporation of Austria into a "Greater Germany", the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda had reconfigured the country's national radio broadcaster into the organisation with effect from 1 January 1939. By 1943, with so many young men conscripted into the armed forces, there was an acute awareness that the only male voices heard on the national radio service were those of men "too old to fight", and there was a move to recruit a radio announcer with a "young voice". By October 1943 Baier's father was based in Berlin, providing musical accompaniment for musicians entertaining the troops, and it was through his contacts there that he became aware of the broadcaster's search for a young voice. This was how Richard Baier, a few days before his seventeenth birthday, found himself one of twenty candidates invited to Berlin for an interview-audition. Each was required to read an "army report" and a compilation of composers, opera titles and other music related words. Most had difficulty with correctly enunciating names such as "Puccini" and "Ravel", but for the son of the Kappelmeister these words were completely familiar. On 23 November 1943, the "day of the first heavy bombing raid on Berlin", Richard Baier was offered a six-month internship with the .