Labor history and domestic politics have not been the primary focus in the study of the Austrian occupation in recent years. Instead, historians have concentrated on the international history of the occupation and the making of the Austrian State Treaty. To refocus on the domestic scene, as Jill Lewis does in her new book, is therefore welcomed. The core of the book (chapters 4 through 9) deals with the elections of 1945 and 1949, politics within the Socialist Party, and the prominent role the Austrian Trade Union Federation (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund, ÖGB) played as a consensus builder in the Sozialpartnerschaft with its Proporzsystem. Johann Böhm, the shrewd, long-time leader of the ÖGB, joined the rarified circles in Vienna that made key decisions on the postwar Austrian economy and social system. Along with the leaders of the business and agricultural sectors, Böhm represented the interests of his labor constituency to reach behind-the-scenes deals on economic and social policies. The larger goal was to overcome the partisan strife of the First Republic and to build a more stable polity.

The institutions set up by these “social partners” were arrangements forged in secret by a small, bipartisan, conservative/socialist ÖVP/SPÖ elite in unelected bodies (such as the Economic Commission) and in the five Wages and Prices Agreements (1947–1951) (121f). These uniquely Austrian wage and price agreements stabilized the economy with regular price increases of basic staples and services while lagging behind in wage increases. For the sake of economic stability, Böhm and the ÖGB went along with these arrangements. Lewis also analyzes the swing to the right of the postwar Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) once it became part of the grand coalition government at the end of 1945. As a result of anti-Communism within the SPÖ, radical Linkssozialisten were stamped out by 1948. Thus the field of industrial confrontation was left “wide open to the Communist Party” (130).

Lewis pulls no punches in her interpretation of the strike activities of late September and early October 1950—”the putsch that never was” (170). She insists that there is no evidence for Soviet direction of these strikes. Rather, they sprang up spontaneously in the industrial centers of Upper Austria, Upper Styria, and Vienna. Not all of them were inspired by Communists as the workers' grievances were widespread as a result of the unfair Fourth Wage and Price Agreement signed on 22 September 1950. Lewis's interpretation of the domestic politics of 1949–50 adds the agency of ethnic German refugees (especially the Sudentendeutsche), who joined the industrial work force in large numbers and represented the core of the strike activity in Linz. Lewis concludes that the Austrian government did not fear a Soviet-backed coup attempt. It rather used the “putsch label” to deflect criticism from the Fourth Wage and Price Agreement (188)—and to scare the Western allies. Exaggerating the Communist threat also helped Austria pry more money out of the Economic Cooperation Administration in Vienna to fight inflation and rising unemployment (197f).

These consociational arrangements built a stable social and economic postwar order. Lewis sees the problem in the concentration of power in too few hands, which produced “little accountability and an unhealthy level of patronage” (204). These nondemocratic institutions and secretive arrangements cooked up by a small oligarchy represented the core of postwar Austrian political culture, along with the infamous “Austria as victim” myth. This thesis, however, is not new. Anton Pelinka has already analyzed these two principal strains of Austrian political culture more succinctly in his book Austria: Out of the Shadow of the Past (Boulder, CO: 1998).

Lewis also treads a lot of well-worn ground in her first three chapters on the Anschluss and the myth of the “victim's doctrine,” the liberation and the formation of Karl Renner's provisional government in April 1945, and the great problems with famine, Soviet rape, and looting after the liberation of eastern Austria. The title of the book is in fact a misnomer—it only covers the years 1945 to 1950. And one final point: Kurt Waldheim was not reelected to a second term as Austrian president (5).