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The position of women in Austrian society, politics, and in the economy follows the familiar trajectory of Western societies. They were expected to accept their "proper place" in a male patriarchal world. Achieving equality in all spheres of life was a long struggle that is still not completed in spite of many advances. The chapters in Women in Austria attest to the growing interest and vibrancy in the area of women's studies in Austria and present a cross-section of new research in this field to an international audience. The volume includes with book reviews on Austrian business history, the Waldheim memoirs, Jews in postwar Austria, and political scandals in twentieth-century Austria. Women in Austria covers a plethora of significant social issues and will be essential to the work of women's studies scholars, sociologists, historians, and Austrian area specialists.

The Austrian people are primarily interested in putting an end to the occupation, which they regard as an intolerable burden on the nation’s depleted resources. The Austrian people are primarily interested in putting an end to the occupation, which they regard as an intolerable burden on the nation’s depleted resources. The Soviets doubtless hope to exert a long-term influence over Austrian economy by forcing a settlement of the German assets question which will leave them in control of important industrial assets. The Austrian Government therefore wants to steer a middle course between Eastern and Western Europe. The Austrians, on the other hand, are anxious merely to get rid of them because they constitute a grave social menace as well as a future economic liability. Austrian industry, also concentrated in the Soviet zone, was first crippled by mass Soviet removals of machines.

In the culture of memory of World War II, Austria has been considered for some time to be among the postwar champions of forgetting this horrendous war, and Austrians have been considered the negative models of successful denial regarding their complicity in Nazi war crimes. The role of the veterans’ organizations in Austrian war memorial culture became a central factor in aiding and abetting the ongoing hibernation of a complex non-compartmentalized past, at least among the war generation. Like Austria, the GDR denied that National Socialism had taken root among their Germans and refused to share in any responsibility or guilt for Nazi genocide; any continuity of anti-Semitism was simply denied. A rare exception to the Austrian postwar memorial culture of the “good comrade,” is the memorial in the soldiers’ cemetery of Hieflau-Wandau. The Austrian historical profession also needed some outside prodding.

The USSR could absorb Austria only by military force, or by a combination of economic and political pressures supplemented by Satellite interference following quadripartite troop withdrawal. The actual potential of Austrian industry cannot be gauged by pre-Anschluss characteristics, and, until the future relationship of the USSR to the Austrian economy has been established, cannot be assessed with accuracy. The enthusiasm of both major parties in Austria for an early treaty settlement has been considerably reduced by the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and by other external evidences of Communist strength, particularly in Italy. The new industrial capabilities will require development abroad of new markets and supplies of raw materials; at the same time, Austria could produce important new industrial wares for home consumption and sale abroad in exchange for the needed raw materials. The fact that Austrian communism is regarded as a tool of the USSR continues to stigmatize the movement.

Numerous private corporations such as German and Austrian banks and insurance companies set up their own private historical commissions to probe the extent of their companies' World War II collaboration with the Nazi regime and the utilization of slave labor. The German investigations and settlements put further pressure on Austrian corporations and the government to act and address Austrians' involvement in Nazi victimization and exploitation. The new Schussel government had to operate in a unique pressure-cooker environment of intense international scrutiny. On the one hand Schussel and his coalition partner had no choice but continue previous Austrian efforts to make amends—at last—for its long record of procrastinating its confrontation with the unsettled World War II past. As a result of Schaumayer's negotiations, the Austrian government set up a reconciliation fund to pay restitution to some 150,000 former slave laborers still alive in Eastern Europe.

Under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, the United States refrained from intervening during the three major Cold War crises in the Soviet bloc in 1953, 1956, and 1968. The uprisings in the German Democratic Republic and Hungary came at a contentious stage of the Cold War. In 1968 East–West relations were again groping towards detente and, the Czechoslovak Communist Party unleashed an ambitious reform agenda under Alexander Dubcek. On 20 August, a massive military invasion by Warsaw Pact forces squashed the reform spirit. All three challenges to Soviet control on the periphery of its Cold War empire followed power struggles in the Kremlin and intimations of a slackening of the reigns of control in Moscow. Eastern Europe was terra incognita for most Americans, and the United States had never pursued an active policy in Eastern Europe. All three crisis scenarios were overshadowed by crises in other parts of the world—part of larger arcs of crises the superpowers were confronting simultaneously...

Five distinguished scholars offer separate commentaries on the article by Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. All of the commentators reject the broad interpretation and many of the specific arguments put forth by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe. They point out several crucial issues that are omitted from the article and raise questions about the authors' sources, use of evidence, and selective invocation of secondary literature. They regret that Cox and Kennedy Pipe seem to dwell on a large number of the same matters that preoccupied radical revisionist historians in the 1960s. They argue that although Cox and Kennedy-Pipe offer a more sophisticated version of revisionism, their article suffers from many of the same shortcomings. Most of the commentators believe that the Marshall Plan merely reflected a division of Europe that was already well under way rather than being the precipitating cause. In that sense, the debate on the origins of the Cold War needs to go well beyond the issues raised by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe.

Weinberg pursues a simple question: What “visions” of the postwar world did the principal leaders of the major belligerent powers develop during the war? Weinberg's unsurpassed mastery of World War II as a global war allows him to pen eight compelling portraits of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt and their ideas for the future positions of their country. Each essay constitutes a minor masterpiece of concision and erudition in and of itself. My only quibble is that Weinberg exclusively concentrates on the top leadership and ignores the lower working levels of postwar planning—there may have been less “vision” there but most of the “grunt” work was done by those planners. Much information in these portraits is known to specialists, but there are some surprising insights, too.

In the years1945 to 1953, Karl Gruber exerted an influence over Austrian foreign policy at times resembling the dominant influence of a Kaunitz or a Metternich. But as a diplomatist Gruber did not come close to the finesse and shrewd sense of power that his two great predecessors possessed. Moreover, Gruber had to maneuver in less predictable domestic and international terrain. During his tenure in the Ballhausplatz, foreign policy wassubject to domestic partisan struggle as well as parliamentary control and public opinion. Furthermore, Austria no longer figured as a great power and was locked into the monumental Cold War struggle between East and West on the frontline of the superpower tensions. Gruber operated in an extremely hostile international environment. Instead of the traditional well-balanced nineteenth-century “concert of powers,” which had profited so much from Austrian professional statesmanship, the inexperienced Gruber faced the United States and the Soviet Union, which were in almost total control of international politics. The two superpowers were engaged in a gigantic ideological struggle, each striving for a preponderance of power. A small nation such as Austria was buffeted to and fro between the conflicts in Central Europe and could hardly escape the pull of the global “empires” fashioned at the time. The United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other in spiraling arms races (nuclear and conventional) and rigid alliance systems in an uneasy truce called the Cold War. In this context of a tight bilateral international system, even England and France—the former great powers reduced to the status of middling powers after the ignominious loss of their great colonial empires—had a difficult time holding on to their traditional influence in the international arena. Small powers like Austria were largely impotent, unless they fashioned for themselves some room to maneuver between the superpower blocs.

Traditional Cold War histories usually see the postwar international arena as a gargantuan struggle between the superpowers. Even declining great powers such as Great Britain and France were seen as affecting the postwar course of history only minimally. Small countries such as Austria are not present at all in such monochromatic histories, let alone being viewed as independent actors. Yet Austrian diplomacy slowly managed to assert itself after the war, as this chapter will show. There was much continuity in political life from the First to the Second Austrian Republics. Most of the “founding fathers” of postwar Austria had been politically active before the war. The prewar diplomatic staff untainted by (and often victims of) Nazism, returned to the Ballhausplatz. Together they initiated the difficult task of regaining Austrian independence. The country was divided by the Chinese Walls of the zonal borders, and the first few months were chaotic. With the election of the Figl Government Austrian diplomacy created manoeuvring space between the occupation powers. First the world was persuaded to accept the construct of the “occupation doctrine”. This “Rip Van Winkle myth” of dormant Austrian statehood during the war presented Austria as Hitler’s “first victim”, not liable to pay reparations. This lawyers’ version of the past expunged Austrians’ complicity in Nazi war crimes. The Foreign Office spearheaded this invention of collective victimhood.

As the year 1953 was rung in there were significant changes in world leadership. These respectively changed the domestic contexts of politics and in turn came to affect dramatically the Austrian question. Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 changed the international arena at once. His successors signalled a departure of post-Stalinist foreign policy towards “peaceful coexistence”. The new Republican administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower was reluctant to test the sincerity of the Soviet peace initiative. To appease the Republican right wing they demanded concrete deeds rather than words, but took no further initiative. The Americans were not willing to threaten Western plans for West German rearmament with a new round of negotiations with the Soviets. In London the Conservatives were back in power and Prime Minister Winston Churchill pushed Washington relentlessly to meet the new Kremlin leaders for a summit meeting. A series of shaky French governments only dared to table German rearmament in the French Parliament along with diplomatic initiatives for detente and a summit meeting.

The Cold War broke into the open early in Austria as the result of Soviet economic depredations in their zone of occupation and the hardening of the American response during 1946/7. Flush with the success of the Red Army against Hitler’s Third Reich, the Soviet Union stayed on the offensive and built an “empire by coercion”, adding security zones all along its extended periphery. As a response, the United States overcame its isolationist instincts and embarked on containing Soviet expansionism. The outbreak of the Cold War in Europe is best understood as a game of tit-for-tat between Soviet pressure, probing Western weaknesses along its peripheries, and Western responses, containing perceived Soviet aggression.

The four occupation powers negotiated the Austrian treaty to restore its sovereignty. Yet the longer Austrian treaty-making lasted the more it got swept up in the maelstrom of Cold War tensions. When no treaty was signed by 1948 the “militarization” of the Cold War made its timely conclusion increasingly unlikely. Stalin’s fluid security goals made him test Western resolve in Berlin and Korea and consolidate his empire in Eastern Europe. He refused to abandon Austria as long as the German question remained unresolved and his reparations-take from the German assets in Eastern Austria continued to flow. The Austrian Communists did not abandon their pursuits of undermining the Figl Government, and concocted putsch plans. This increased Western threat perceptions over Austria, especially after the “elegant” Communist coup in Prague. The American military wanted to ensure that Austria could be adequately defended before withdrawing its forces from Austria. The Pentagon would not tolerate a “military vacuum” in Austria and the Alpine passes became geostrategically increasingly important for the defence of Western Europe. The North Korean Communist attack in June 1950 and the Communist-inspired October strikes in Austria only confirmed the worst fears of American military planners. Now Washington’s plans for the secret rearmament of Western Austria were implemented. By the early 1950s Washington clearly had advanced to the position of Western hegemony and no longer contemplated negotiating with the Soviets when pushing for Western rearmament.

The Red Army remembered that Austrians had participated in the Wehrmacht’s spoliation of their homeland. When it liberated the Ostmark, in spite of professing to the contrary, it treated Austria like a defeated country. The “liberated” population was humiliated in a ruthless campaign of raping women and looting cities and countryside. Soon special teams began to remove industrial plants from Austria as war booty. The undisciplined behaviour of the raging soldateska left an indelible mark on the Austrian population and eerily reconfirmed the anticommunism preached by Nazi Greuelpropaganda. Large-scale Soviet extraction of reparations from Austria threatened the economic viability of the country. There is no evidence that Stalin planned to incorporate Austria into its extensive postwar security sphere.