Zwischen den Blöcken: NATO, Warschauer Pakt und Österreich, and: Grenzfälle: Österreichische und tschechische Erfahrungen am Eisernen Vorhang (review)

The field of Austrian contemporary history writing is not blessed with a surfeit of studies on Austria’s role and fate during the Cold War (1945–1990). Austria’s military position between the superpowers and the impact of the Iron Curtain on border communities have been ignored. The collection of essays in the massive volume edited by Manfried Rauchensteiner is a book long overdue. A dozen scholarly essays usually do not amount to an almost 800-page book. The editor, however, encouraged the contributors to range broadly in their analyses. The result is a series of in-depth studies of Austria’s national security policies and military position and maneuvering between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact during and even after the Cold War. The essays go beyond regular scholarly articles and serve as first drafts of monographic studies.

This is easily the best volume we have on military aspects of the Cold War in Austria and will set the parameters of the debate for a long time to come. As with all collections of essays, the contributions are uneven. The scholars fully engage the discourses of Cold War historiography, whereas the practitioners who served in leading positions in the Austrian postwar military establishment ignore them. Peter Janko-witsch’s chapter on foreign policy is not grounded in the historiography and stands out as the only weak contribution.

Summarizing such a rich volume of mostly well-informed contributions can be done only by outlining some of the larger themes addressed. Bruno Thoss’s and Wolfgang Mueller’s contributions on the formation of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact and Austria’s role in the military planning of the opposing Cold War alliance systems trace the parameters within which Austrian national security policy had to operate. During the four-power occupation of Austria, according to Thoss, the country maneuvered itself into the position of an “indirect ally” (p. 60) of the United States and NATO. In the 1950s, Austria played the role of a “glacis” (Vorfeld) for NATO’s defense efforts in northern Italy (p. 63), which helps explain why U.S. officials viewed Western troop withdrawals from Austria in 1955 as “catastrophic” (p. 69). After the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, the Western powers put considerable pressure on the Austrian government to build up “credible” defense forces for the protection of its new neutral status. A “military vacuum” in Austria had been a specter in the Pentagon since 1947 (p. 70). After the Italian defense minister suggested in 1955 that the Alpine passes be defended with nuclear arms (p. 78), the ultimate question looming over the protection of neutral Austria during the Cold War was whether NATO ultimately would defend it with nuclear weapons. From the beginning of Austria’s newborn independence in 1955, U.S. military planners never had any illusions about Austria’s military capability—the maintenance of domestic security was the primary task; Austria’s limited role in “delaying” invading Soviet forces in their advances West was only secondary (pp. 81, 85). Throughout the Cold War it was unclear whether Austria would be Durchmarschland or Aufmarschland—a venue for NATO troops to “pass through” along the Danube and the Alpine passes or an operational base for the positioning of Warsaw Pact troops to attack Bavaria and Italy (p. 83).

From the perspective of Soviet strategists, Austria constituted from the beginning a suitable blockage (Sperriegel) between the NATO fronts in West Germany and Italy, notes Wolfgang Mueller. At the same time the creation of a neutral Austria in 1955 spelled the loss of the Danube Valley through which a Warsaw Pact attack from southern Bohemia and Hungary might advance (p. 152). During a visit to Austria in 1959, Soviet Defense Minister Rodion...