Robert Knight

Denazification and integration in the Austrian Province of Carinthia

Denazification—whether defined narrowly as a political purge or more broadly as an attempt to change the values of post-Nazi society—has not enjoyed a good press. In the case of Austria, as in the two German “successor societies” of the Third Reich, criticism has divided roughly into a conservative and a “left-liberal” position. The former has weighed denazification in the balance against Western legal principles (notably the prohibition of “retroactivity” and collective punishment) and found it wanting. Dieter Stiefel’s 1981 study (still the only monograph on Austrian denazification) is clearly in this tradition, though its juridical concerns are overlaid by two further considerations, sovereignty and the rationality of integration. Taken together, these three factors make denazification appear to Stiefel not merely as a legally dubious project but also as an unwarranted and often inept Allied interference in Austrian society. It sought to deny the inevitable reintegration of the mass of Nazi Party members (in Austria amounting to nearly seven hundred thousand people) but could only delay it.

National Construction Work and Hierarchies of Empathy in Postwar Austria

This article seeks to link Austrian policy and attitudes towards Displaced Persons and refugees with the postwar project of establishing a national identity which was clearly demarcated from National Socialist Germany. Building on critical views of Austria as a ‘reluctant country of exile’ it goes back to postwar Austrian perceptions of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) as an organization which, though providing welcome relief, was also tarnished through association with criminality and the black market. It then examines Austria’s demarcation from ‘ethnic Germans’ on the one hand and Jewish Displaced Persons on the other, which reflected an informal ‘heirarchy of empathy’ but also indicated the potential of both groups, in very different ways, to disrupt the national demarcation project. An analysis of the treatment of anti-communist DPs and refugees in the Cold War questions the claim that Austrians sympathized with them. The article concludes that while the perception of Austrian humanitarianism towards DPs and refugees became part of the Austrian self-image as a victim of Nazi rule and a potential victim of the Soviet Union, the historical record is much less clear-cut.

‘Neutrality’ Not Sympathy: Jews in Post-War Austria

Richard Crossman’s vivid eye-witness account of the visit to Austria of the Anglo-American Palestine Committee describes the leaders of Vienna’s Jewish community in February 1946 as ‘shrill and pathetic, self-assertive and broken’. The message of this ‘wreckage of a proud and prosperous community’ was clear: there was no future in Austria for the Jewish community; anti-Semitism — contrary to the assertions of Austrian politicians — was as strong as ever; Jews driven out of Austria after the Anschluss (union) should not return; and emigration to Palestine was the only answer.1 The advice seemed to reflect the attitude of Vienna’s Jews, at least to judge from a poll of those registered with the Kultusgemeinde (cultural association) carried out shortly before. Out of 4418 respondents 3028 wished to leave, and of those 1065 wished to go to Palestine.2

Dialogue against violence. The question of Trentino-South Tyrol in the international context

Dialogue against violence. The question of Trentino-South Tyrol in the international context (Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento/Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient. Contributi/Beiträge 32), edited by Giovanni Bernardini and Günther Pallaver, Bologna/Berlin, Società editrice il Mulino/Duncker and Humblot, 2017, 256 pp., 23 Euro (paperback), ISBN 978-88-1527340-6

The Austrian State Treaty and Beyond

Gerald Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit. Staatsvertrag, Neutralitat und das Ende der Ost-West-Besetzung Osterreichs 1945–1955 (4. vollig uberarbeitete und wesentlich erweiterte Auflage) , Studien zu Politik und Verwaltung 62 (Vienna/Cologne/Graz: Bohlau, 1998), 834 pp., ISBN 3-205-98383-1. Gunter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945–55. The Leverage of the Weak (Basingstoke/London: Macmillan/St. Martins Press, 1999), 237 pp., ISBN 0-333-72547-6. Lothar Hobelt, Von der vierten Partei zur Dritten Kraft. Die Geschichte des VdU (Graz/Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1999), 303 pp., ISBN 3-702-00866-7. Anton Pelinka, Austria. Out of the Shadow of the Past , Nations of the Modern World: Europe (Boulder/Oxford: Westview, 1998), 256 pp., ISBN 0-813-32918-3.