In the introduction to Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938–1955, Rolf Steininger, while acknowledging the existence of an already sizeable literature on the genesis of the State Treaty, points out that, for the most part, it has been done from an Austrian perspective and what he has attempted to do is to expand that perspective to include the roles played by Germany and the Cold War in its realization. His book accomplishes that end with cogency and concision, but in doing so, it connects the struggle of Austria to be free of her military occupiers to the broader issue of how the identity of one nation ceased to be occupied by that of another. The story told by Professor Steininger certainly fits into its ostensible contexts of postwar diplomatic history and international affairs, but, whether intended by the author or not, this is also the story of the course of post-imperial Austria's incestuous infatuation with, marriage to, and divorce from its German cousin. How the first decade of the Cold War helped to bring this about so that the Austrian entity that emerged from this German liaison did so with relatively few congenital deformities is not only the underlying story of this book, but perhaps its more important accomplishment.

Despite the date indicated in the title, the starting point of this book is 1918, not 1938, and as the temporal beginning of the first chapter it belies the apparent Cold War focus of the book. The next two chapters covering the Anschluss, Nazi, and wartime years further signal that a significant leitmotif of Steininger's work is the issue of Germany and its relevance to the development of an Austrian state and national identity. To be sure, what happened to Austria on the international stage between 1945 and 1955 was linked to Germany in terms of great power politics and the ideological division that characterized the east-west confrontation of those years. In that context the German question concerning whether Germany would be evacuated by the victorious Allies and reunited or remain a divided set of front-line bastions for each opponent vexed the question of Austria's future as each side considered what advantage the Austrian pawn could provide them in the bigger game of determining Germany's fate and, thereby, that of Europe, as well. The issue of Austria's evacuation was both strategic and historical. In the former instance it involved either maintaining or dividing NATO's north-south front facing what was to become the frontier of the Warsaw Pact. Historically, however, it was based on Austria's relationship to Germany during the twenty-seven years between 1918 and 1945. It was not accidental that the State Treaty of 1955 contained a clause forbidding the union of the two countries as did the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain that ended World War I for Germany and Austria, respectively. Austria's desire in 1918–1919 to become an appendix to the German state, its Hamlet-like approach to the issue up until 1938, and its much less than hostile reception to the fulfillment of its wish before 1945 gave the west and the east pause when contemplating the futures of both countries, and the Austrians knew it. Thus, instead of the more or less ardent suitor role history provided, Austria's leaders sought to project the image of the raped virgin in an effort to court the good opinion of their occupiers and to decouple their state and people from an incriminating and damaging relationship. “Austria for the Austrians” was their tacit slogan, and when the opportunity to put it in effect came with an opening from the Soviets in 1955, they seized it with both hands and gladly accepted the persona dictated by a Swiss-like neutrality that until the end of the Cold War gave Austria the status of an honest broker between the opposing camps.

In Cold War terms, of course, Austria's attainment of independence for the price of neutrality (and several million dollars) was linked to dividing NATO's Austro-German front, and, more importantly, was designed by the Soviets to entice the Germans into a similar deal as the price of reunification. It failed in that purpose, and the existence of two Germanies seemed cast in concrete while a unified Austria was free to enjoy its independence and an identity unburdened by the German millstone. Adenauer's subsequent characterization of the State Treaty as the “Austrian Scandal” (“österreichische Schweinerei”) and his threat to send Austria Hitler's remains if they were ever found underscored how successfully the erstwhile lover and protégé had broken the German connection. However opportunistic Austria's claims to victimhood under the Nazis or reprehensible its denial of an Austrian guilt in the Holocaust, these actions served not only to give both sides in the Cold War plausible grounds to rehabilitate Austria, but in combination with the implications of the State Treaty, they provided an indispensable (if largely false) foundation on which to build a new Austrian identity separate from a German connection. If there is a criticism to be leveled at Professor Steininger it is that he does not make this process and outcome more explicit. For those uninitiated in Austrian history, the author's presentation of what happened between 1918 and 1945 may seem to be no more than a requisite interwar background for the unfolding of yet another aspect of what happened during the Cold War, yet for those who are among the initiates, Steininger's presentation of the relationship between Germany and Austria in that era and up to 1955 is more like that between Banquo's ghost and Macbeth, except that in this version the guilty Macbeth gets to enjoy his feast.