Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Austria after 1945
Soon after liberation, Austria declared its independence from Germany. A provisional fed-
eral government was established under Socialist Karl Renner, and the country was occu-
pied by the Allies - the Americans, Russians, British and French. Vienna was itself di-
vided into four zones; this was a time of 'four men in a jeep', so aptly depicted in Graham
Greene's book and film The Third Man .
Delays caused by frosting relations between the superpowers ensured that the Allied oc-
cupation dragged on for 10 years. On 15 May 1955 the Austrian State Treaty was ratified,
with Austria proclaiming its permanent neutrality. The Soviet Union insisted that Austria
declare its neutrality as a condition for ending Soviet occupation in 1955. At the last
minute, recognition of Austria's guilt for WWII was struck out of the state treaty.
The Allied forces withdrew, and in December 1955 Austria joined the UN. The eco-
nomy took a turn for the better through the assistance granted under the Marshall Plan, and
the cessation of the removal of industrial property by the Soviets. As the capital of a neut-
ral country on the edge of the Cold War front line, Vienna attracted spies and diplomats:
Kennedy and Khrushchev met here in 1961, Carter and Brezhnev in 1979; the UN set up
shop in 1979.
The report of the Historical Commission's inquiry into Austria during the Nazi era can be found at
www.historikerkommission.gv.at .
Kurt Waldheim Affair
Austria's international image suffered following the election in 1986 of President Kurt
Waldheim who, it was revealed, had served in a German Wehrmacht (armed forces) unit
implicated in WWII war crimes. Austria seriously confronted its Nazi past for the first
time. Accusations that Waldheim had committed these crimes while a lieutenant serving
with the German army in the Balkans could never be proved, but Austria's elected presid-
ent was unwilling to fully explain himself or express misgivings about his wartime role.
In 1993 Chancellor Franz Vranitzky finally admitted that Austrians were 'willing ser-
vants of Nazism'. Since then, however, Austria has attempted to make amends for its part
in atrocities against the Jews. In 1998 the Austrian Historical Commission, set up to in-
vestigate and report on expropriations during the Nazi era, came into being, and in 2001
Vienna's mayor Dr Michael Häupl poignantly noted that after having portrayed itself as
 
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