She was politically engaged from a young age. She joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party (as it was known at that time) in 1915 and was also a member of the , a trades union for private sector workers. After the there was a transition to one-party government and the Social Democratic Workers' Party was crushed. Further dramatic political change arrived in March 1938 when Austrian was invaded. The invasion met with little resistance, and it led to the integration of Austria into an Nazi German state. Sources are largely silent about Anna Wala's political involvement during the 1930s, but it is known that from 1939 she was involved as an activist with the Young Communists, which had been the focus of increasingly aggressive government repression since 1934. Anna Wala made her apartment in Vienna 9 available for (by definition illegal) political meetings and for the storage of (illegal) literature. She donated money to , a workers' welfare organisation widely seen - especially by political enemies - as a branch of the Communist Party.