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Gunter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945-55. Basingstoke: Macmillan and New York: St Martin's Press, 1999, xvii + 237 pp., 45.00 h/b.
EVEN FOR SOMEONE WHO TEACHES CONTEMPORARY HISTORY at the University of Innsbruck this book makes fascinating reading. The author starts off with an episode from 1937. In April of that year US ambassador William C. Bullitt warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Paris that the failure of the British and French to guarantee to defend Austria by force from German aggression left Austria `hanging in the bough to be plucked at an appropriate moment by Hitler'. Roosevelt hoped it would give Hitler indigestion: `If he does pluck that apple and eats it, I hope it will have the effect of a green apple'. That was wishful thinking. In March 1938 Hitler plucked the apple; the Anschluss took place.
In Chapter 1 Bischof explains this `rape by consent' and then describes how Austrians became perpetrators and Hitler's `willing executioners' in World War II. Austrians were over-represented in the terror system that committed mass murder on the Jews in Europe; many of the death camps were commanded by Austrians.
But Austrians were also victims of Hitler's war: Allied bombs killed 20 000 civilians, some 240 000 Austrian soldiers serving in the Wehrmacht died, 500 were executed, 130 000 Austrians went into exile; 65 000 Austrian Jews were killed.
For the Allies Austria was a `flabby country', but it was of strategic importance to keep it separate from Germany...