This is a curious little book. Written by an unknown author, probably in the Anglo-American Allied armed forces during World War II, it is designed to be an introduction to Austria for Anglo-American soldiers who served in the four-power Austrian occupation. Without presenting any sources, the editors mention that “an early version of this book was part of the series of ‘pocket-sized soldier's guides’ of the ‘Psychology Division’ of the US intelligence service OSS” probably drafted in 1942 (9). It is intriguing to guess the background of the author(s). The editors speculate it may have been an Austrian emigrant that fled Austria for political or racial reasons after the Anschluss (10). That is quite likely as 6,000 to 7,000 Austrian émigrés served in the U.S. armed forces and intelligence services during World War II; most of these “1938 refugees” served in the U.S. Army (see Florian Traussnig, Militärischer Widerstand von Aussen: Österreicher in US-Armee und Kriegsgeheimdienst im zweiten Weltkrieg [Vienna, 2016], 26).
The actual text of the Soldier's Guide suggests a number of possibilities. The author may well have been a Jewish refugee from Vienna, as Vienna and its “charms” and the Jewish contribution to its culture are mentioned prominently (66f, 70). More than 50 percent of Vienna's doctors had been Jews before the Anschluss (69). The Guide also informs soldiers about the “Nazi terror” during the war in occupied Austria and that “Jews, Communists, Socialists, Liberals … were hunted down, shot, beaten, or systematically tortured in concentration camps. Some of the tormentors were Austrian Nazis” (64). But it also could have been one of the supporters of the “Corporate” Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime that were persecuted by the Nazis after the Anschluss. For the notions proffered in the Guide that the British and French abandoned Austria, once the country faced the threat of Nazi German takeover, and that Dollfuss did not display “any great liking for Fascism” (62) would have emanated from that political camp. Given the many references to England (particularly in the section on “sports,” 71), the Guide also could have been written by an émigré in Great Britain.
The Guide opens with the ambiguous statement: “You are going into Austria as a member of the Allied Armies, both as victors and liberators” (59). The Guide’s ambiguity breathes the spirit of the Allied “Moscow Declaration” of 1943 about Austria's international status after World War II, where Austrians were seen as both victims of Nazi Germany and participants in Hitler's war. The Guide unmistakably warns Allied soldiers about Austrians’ dubious roles in Hitler's Wehrmacht and the persecution of the Jews. In fact, “[T]he Austrian Nazis committed outrages, especially just after the Anschluss, as barbarous and revolting as anything the Germans had done” (67). The Guide warns the soldiers not to fraternize with Austrians. Many of them were “infected by the Nazi poison” (68), and women were infected with VD (69). In terms of their security the Guide warned the soldiers that they needed to guard themselves against a “Nazi faction … with habits and aims as vicious as the as those of its German counterpart” (75). There may also be Austrians “who are working underground for the military resurrection of the Greater Germany” (75). This was a clear anticipation of a Werwolf faction in Austria, feared to proffer German militarism and the Nazi spirit after the war.
American occupation soldiers in Germany were bombarded with War Department propaganda films like Your Job in Germany with similar dark warnings. This film advocated the continuity of the Sonderweg of aggressive German militarism from Imperial Germany to the Third Reich. The British diplomat Robert Vansittart had pioneered this view (see Michaela Hoenicke Moore, Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933–1945 [Cambridge, 2010], 259f).
A word about the editors. Their introduction is very general and does not place this Guide into the larger context of occupation studies, which has been enjoying a rich historiography; there is also no bibliography in the book. They seem to fall for the Guide’s stereotypes about the “charming” (66) and “happy go-lucky” (64) Austrians—the usual lore of gemütlich and schlampig—rather than its ominous warnings about their deep involvement in the Nazi terror state. An image of two soldiers looking nonplussed at one such yodeling Austrian, and another Austrian as a “cloak-and-dagger”-like “Third Man” type (44), perfectly symbolizes this unresolved Allied ambiguity about Austria that also deeply informed Allied postwar planning.
