Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria

"As U.S. troops marched into vanquished Austria at the end of World War II, they faced the dual tasks of destroying the remnants of Nazi power and establishing a new democratic nation. The military was adept at the first task; it was woefully unprepared for the second. These halting efforts, complicated by the difficulties of managing the occupation along with Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, exacerbated an already monumental undertaking and fueled the looming Cold War confrontation between East and West." In this first English-language study of secret postwar U.S. military operations during the occupation of Austria and of the American effort to create a garrison state for NATO's defense, James Jay Carafano traces U.S. policy and behavior from the end of the war until 1955 and the signing of the treaty that finally led to the withdrawal of the occupation forces. From the very beginning of American presence, he demonstrates, the U.S. Army could not wean itself from the operational habits it had forged in war, practices that skewed U.S. postwar foreign policy while earning Austrian resentment and Soviet mistrust. The fog of peace, he concludes, befuddled U.S. planners.