The author introduces this compact book as an unabridged version of his original 2005 German-language edition, with some alterations to accommodate recent research. The German book drew high praise and justifiably so. In a 17 May 2006 H-Net Review, Timothy C. Dowling described it as “an exceptionally useful work” and observed that it was a shame the book was not available in English. Well, now it is, and the competent translation makes for smooth reading. The book is organized into eight chapters, has twenty-two illustrations, and offers a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition. Steininger has included a useful chronology of important events and a comprehensive bibliography and index. Steininger asserts that: “Austria was from the very beginning inextricably linked with the more important German question … the [Austrian] State Treaty became a weapon in the Cold War” (ix). He suggests that the secondary literature often overlooks this linkage, but most of us who write about Austria acknowledge that, no matter how heated the Allied interaction in and about Austria became during the ten years of occupation, the more important issue all along was Germany. That Austria was an important Cold War battleground is beyond doubt, but Germany remained the real prize.

Steininger begins with Austria's first flirtation with democracy, in the failed First Republic. After assuring us that “the majority of Austrians desired union with Germany” (2), he takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the turbulent 1930s, up to and including the 1938 Anschluss. The first two chapters concentrate on the apparently obligatory recital of the ways Austrians collaborated with their new Nazi brothers in the commission of war crimes and other atrocities, thereby weakening the 1943 Moscow Declaration's identification of Austria as a victim of Nazi Germany, a liberated rather than a conquered state.

Steininger recovers the historical narrative of Austria's postwar fate, first during Allied postwar planning, then during the intense Allied negotiations, through the long and frustrating European Advisory Council sessions, and through the various summits involving the Allied chiefs of state. Here he has summarized the more reliable secondary literature to produce a short, compact, and useful presentation that can be read and understood well within an hour.

Steininger also introduces some interesting ideas and the odd item of information. We learn, for example, that Stalin saw Austria as a “place where Germans live” and that he wanted to see Austria spun off as a separate, independent state, whereas Germany would be carved up into smaller states (25). He suggests that the South Tirol was the first victim of the Cold War when, in 1945, the Council of Foreign Ministers decided against returning it to Austria (64). He wonders what might have happened if the Allies had taken Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg into exile when he appealed to the British for help in the face of Hitler's 1938, pre-Anschluss ultimatums (8). During the war there was no Austrian resistance movement of any consequence, but with an Austrian government in exile in London, might the Allies have been able to generate something useful?

One of the few weaknesses of Steininger's German book was the absence of Soviet archival sources. Few Soviet source documents were available at the time. In the meantime, however, thanks to the diligent efforts of young scholars like Wolfgang Mueller, who has gained access to the files of the Soviet Element of the Allied Commission, as well as to the personal files of Stalin and Molotov, more valuable source material is finding its way out of Moscow and into the hands of welcoming historians. We now see Steininger putting some of this material to use (42, 54, 94, 153, 154, 158, 159).

Steininger does contribute to our knowledge of Soviet behavior regarding Austria and Germany, while summarizing with remarkable skill the complex and frequently baffling events that transpired over a period of seventeen years—events that have kept many of us waiting with bated breath for some reliable insight into Soviet thinking and motivation. Many important issues in the narrative of Austria's fate under four-power occupation have been resolved, or at least it is fair to say that they have lost the fire of robust disagreement. We need a much more comprehensive look at the Soviet side, and there is now reason for optimism. Steininger's book fits in nicely with the historiography of Austria's role as a battlefield in the Cold War and indeed of Austria's importance in four-power wrangling over the fate of Germany, a more important issue.