Niederösterreichisches Landesarchiv (Regional Archives of Lower Austria)
ÖBM Österreichische Botschaft Moskau (Austrian Embassy in Moscow)
OHI Oral History Interview
ÖROP Österreichisch-Russische Ölprodukte (Austrian-Russian Oil Products)
ÖSK Österreichisches Schwarzes Kreuz (Austrian Black Cross)
OSO Osoboe Soveshchanie MGB (MGB Special Commission)
ÖStA/AdR Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Archiv der Republik (Austrian State Archives/Archives of the Republic)
ÖVP Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party)
PCF Parti communiste français (Communist Party of France)
PCI Partito Comunista Italiano (Communist Party of Italy)
POEN Provisorisches Österreichisches Nationalkomitee (Provisional Austrian National Committee)
RAVAG Radio-Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft (Radio Communication Company)
RGAE Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Ekonomiki (Russian State Archives for Economics)
RGAKFD Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kinofotodokumentov (Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents)
RGANI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (Russian State Archives for Contemporary History)
RGASPI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History)
RGVA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv (Russian State Military Archives)
RGW Rat für Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Comecon)
RSFSR Rossiiskaya Sovetskaya Federativnaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic)
SAG Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaft (Soviet Joint Stock Company)
SBZ Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet Occupation Zone)
SChSK Sovetskaya Chast’ Soyuznicheskoi Komissii po Avstrii (Soviet Element of the Allied Commission for Austria)
SDAG Sowjet-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft (Soviet-German Joint Stock Company)
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
SMERSH Smert’ shpionam (“Death to Spies,” Soviet Military Counter-intelligence)
SMV Sowjetische Mineralölverwaltung (Soviet Mineral Oil Administration)
SPÖ Sozialistische Partei Österreichs (Socialist Party of Austria)
StLA Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv (Federal Archives of Styria)
TsA FSB RF Tsentral’nyi Arkhiv Federal’noi Sluzhby Bezopasnosti (Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation)
TsAMO Tsentral’nyi Arkhiv Ministerstva Oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)
TsGV Tsentral’naya Gruppa Voisk (Central Group of Forces)
USIA Upravlenie Sovetskim Imushchestvom v Avstrii (Administration of Soviet Assets in Austria)
USIF Upravlenie Sovetskim Imushchestvom v Finlyandii (Administration of Soviet Assets in Finland)
VDK Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission)
VdU Verband der Unabhängigen (Federation of Independents)
VKP(b) All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
VOKS Vsesoyuznoe Obshchestvo Kul’turnykh Svyazei s zagranitsei (Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)
VSRF Verkhovnyi Sud Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Supreme Court of the Russian Federation)
WStLB Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (Vienna City and Regional Library)
Part I
AUSTRIA IN GLOBAL POLICY
Chapter One
The Policies of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower toward Austria, 1943–1955
Günter Bischof
The historiography of the Austrian occupation after the Second World War has come in fits and starts. An initial wave of works published in the 1960s by contemporaries who experienced the occupation personally1 was followed by standard works defining the scholarly discourse in the 1970s.2 The high point of scholarship came in the 1980s and 1990s, when a cohort of scholars worked with newly opened archival sources to write doctoral dissertations.3 In the past fifteen years some notable publications have appeared, but there was no longer a strong cohort of scholars working on the occupation decade and motivating each other’s research—it is rather “lone wolves” who do research disconnected from a larger community of scholars.4 Basic monographs covered the American political, cultural, and security policies vis-à-vis Austria.5 Kurt Tweraser’s prodigious research on American policies in its occupation zone in Upper Austria is unrivaled in research on occupation zones.6 The conference volume of a big scholarly meeting on the occupation decade organized by the Austrian Academy of Science in the “memorial year” 2005 presented a “summa” of sorts of Austrian occupation studies to date.7 The fifth edition of Gerald Stourzh’s classic history of the Austrian State Treaty negotiations was also republished in the “memorial year” 2005, as was Rolf Steininger’s short history of the Austrian State Treaty.8 Stourzh’s definitive work on the political arena was matched by Hans Seidel’s history of the Austrian economy in the occupation decade, which became an instant “classic.”9 A similar massive and long overdue volume of essays has recently been published on Austrian defense and security policies during the Cold War within the context of the rival block systems in Europe.10 The most dramatic recent advances in the study of the post-war Allied occupation of Austria have been made on the Russian zone as a result of the opening of the Soviet archives after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereby the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences in Graz and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have led the way (also in the publication of weighty documentary volumes);11 the essays in this volume are testimony to this most recent progress in occupation studies.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S AUSTRIAN POLICY
American planning for the post-war world started early, long before the Second World War came to an end. The elite Council on Foreign Relations of the State Department in New York initiated the planning work before the United States entered the war. After the Pearl Harbor attack the State Department took over the entire post-war planning effort in 1942 and systematically and very deeply explored all options for the restructuring of the post-war world (“Notter Committee,” named after the secretary of this planning committee). The “Austrian Question” was discussed in various contexts. It was part of the debates about German dismemberment (e.g., a breakup of the “Third Reich” into smaller units); the (re)creation of a Danubian entity (e.g., federation, confederation, customs union), particularly pushed by the principal US ally Winston Churchill; and finally the option of reestablishing an independent Austria in the form or shape of pre-Anschluss Austria.12
Starting in 1943, the ideas contemplated separately in American, British, and Soviet planning councils (later the “Free French” too) culminated in the discussions of the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference in late October 1943. Here the Allied powers decided to reestablish an independent Austria