Austria in the First Cold War, 1945-55 ― The Leverage of the Weak

At the height of the first Cold War in the early 1950s, the Western powers worried that occupied Austria might become 'Europe's Korea' and feared a Communist takeover. The Soviets exploited their occupation zone for maximum reparations. American economic aid guaranteed Austria's survival and economic reconstruction. Their military assistance turned Austria into a 'secret ally' of the West. Austrian diplomacy played a vital role in securing the Austrian treaty in bilateral negotiations with Stalin's successors in the Kremlin demonstrating the leverage of the weak in the Cold War.

GUNTER BISCHOF is an Associate Professor of History and the Associate Director of Center for Austrian studies at the University of New Orleans. He has taught as a guest professor at the Universities of Salzburg (1998), Vienna (1998), Innsbruck (1993-4) and Munich (1992-4) and also lectured at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy (1998). He was appointed a guest scholar at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna (February 1998). He is founding co-editor of Contemporary Austria Studies (6 vols, Transaction, Rutgers University) and the Eisenhower Center Studies of War and Peace (7 vols, Louisiana State University Press). He has co-edited a dozen books and written some three dozen articles on the history of World War II military history and POW treatment, early Cold War diplomacy and Austrian contemporary history. His Harvard dissertation Between Responsibility and Rehabilitation: Austria in International Politics 1940-50 won prizes both from the Harvard History Department and the Austrian Ministry of Science. He won an undergraduate teaching prize at Harvard and won the Early Career Achievement Award from the UNO Alumni Association.