Abstract
This article discusses and analyzes British and American perceptions, postwar planning aims, and stereotypes about Austria and its future restoration–post World War II. The article uses the concept of “militourist gaze” in order to compare differences and similarities between the British and the American attitudes reflected in their military handbooks for Austria. Through comparative research and close reading of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, with other Second World War II soldier’s guides that were published by the British and the Americans respectively, we can conclude that it was the British and not the Americans who published the booklet Austria—A Soldier’s Guide. Furthermore, a typeset titled “A Short Guide to Austria,” found in the British National Archives, reveals the American version of the soldier’s guide to Austria, although this version was never published and both armies distributed the British guide to their troops. Using the militourist gaze in our interpretation of the soldier’s guide(s) to Austria we can better understand how British and American military media used prewar stereotypes on Austrians and Austria in order to rebuild Austrian nationhood vis-a-vis Germany. In this sense the British Austria—A Soldier’s Guide holds a special place since it is intended not only for army indoctrination of troops and their mission in Austria, but also as a means of national propaganda for the Austrians themselves, both by using the Moscow Declaration as subtext in the guide and by voicing prewar Austrian self-understanding from the interwar period.
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide: The British Militourist Gaze in the Service of Austrian Restoration and Renationalism
Previous studies of the Allied occupation of Austria have discussed the Anglo-American contribution to Austria’s independence and national restoration; however, they have not featured an in-depth discussion of the military handbook published by the British under the title Austria—A Soldier’s Guide in terms of the British conception of Austria and Austrian nationalism.1 One reason for this omission is the fact that, up until now, it was not clear that the guide had actually been published by the British, with scholars ascribing it to the Americans instead.2
How did the British and the Americans perceive Austria and the Austrians? And in what sense were their perceptions utilized to propagate the Austrian national identity in 1945, when Austria was considered both a “liberated” and an “occupied” country? What is the “story of Austria” as it was told to the British troops and to the American GIs, preparing them for their mission in postwar Austria?
In this article, I demonstrate that the booklet Austria—A Soldier’s Guide is a British handbook—and not American, as has often been claimed.3 This is important for three reasons: (1) the British had been far more preoccupied than the Americans with the question of postwar Austria and its future—hence, Austria—A Soldier’s Guide reflects the British postwar planning goals; (2) the Americans prepared their own version of the soldier’s guide to Austria, titled “A Short Guide to Austria,” but it was never published; and (3) a second American version of the soldier’s guide to Austria was, indeed, eventually printed but only much later, in 1953, under the title A Pocket Guide to Austria.4 All these editions, I argue, reflect the “militourist gaze,” a term developed by Daniel Milne in his work on Allied troop education for Japan post-1945, which combines the discourses of both “militarism” and “tourism.”5 In applying this term to the texts, I hope to show how the Allies utilized prewar perceptions of Austria and the Austrians in order to inform their troops about their mission in that country. Moreover, I will argue that the British guide was a vehicle for disseminating Allied national propaganda among the Austrians themselves, with the goal of establishing a stable Austrian renationalism and separating Austria from Nazi Germany. For the most part, this was a British postwar aim, which the Americans subsequently adopted.
Scholarship about World War II–era soldier’s guides is relatively scant. To date, few works have been written about the various guides to France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.6 More research has been done on the pocket guides from the Cold War period, but mainly for Asia.7 In addition, most of the works focus on the American pocket guides, and not on their British counterparts, which were often called Instructions for British Servicemen in (e.g., France, Germany, and so on).8 Altogether, then, what a comparative study of the guides for Austria and other World War II–era soldier’s guides offers, among its other contributions, is a broadened understanding of the differences and similarities between the Allies themselves in terms of their respective approaches to Austria, Germany, and other countries, both prior to and after 1945.
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide: Whose Guide Is It, Anyway?
In 2017 Philipp Rohrbach and Niko Wahl edited a reprint of the booklet Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, that is, the British guide, in a bilingual German-English edition.9 The reprint was subsequently criticized by both Siegfried Beer and Günter Bischof, with Beer disputing the editors’ claim to have “discovered” the booklet in 2016, since the text had been known for decades to experts working on the subject of the Allied occupation of Austria.10 Indeed, in my own research, I encountered two dissertations that mentioned and cited it before the 2017 reprint.11 Beer is correct: Austria—A Soldier’s Guide has neither been forgotten nor is unknown.
Another error inthe republished guide is the introduction of Rohrbach and Wahl, in which they identify its publisher as the Americans.12 This attribution is most likely because they found a copy of the guide that had belonged to an American GI named Godrick James Williams, and they dedicated the reprint to him. Williams’s copy had a coversheet that read “Published by Information & Education Section MTOUSA” (Mediterranean Theater of Operations United States of America). However, according to Beer, such an office for “Information and Education” may not have even existed within MTOUSA.13 While it is hard to determine exactly where and when the handbook was published, a good guess would be 1945, which was shortly before the British and the Americans entered Austria; Rohrbach and Wahl concluded this as well.14 After all, the opening of the guide already mentions the Allies’ victory over Austria: “You are going into Austria as a member of the Allied Armies, both as victors and liberators.”15 Comparing these opening lines with the British Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, which was written in November 1944, before the German defeat, does suggest that the German guide was written ahead of the Austrian one. Indeed, the Austria—A Soldier’s Guide would seem to have been composed in early 1945 and published shortly before Western Allies entered Austria in late April that year.
“Austria Is About as Big as Scotland . . .”: In Search of the British Militourist Gaze in British World War II–Era Guides
A cursory comparison between Austria—A Soldier’s Guide and Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany confirms that the former book was, indeed, the work of the British, rather than the Americans. Versions of the soldier’s guides often used the same template. Thus, we find that in the British editions for Austria, France, and Germany the opening chapter is titled “To Begin With,” and is followed by chapters about the geography of the country and its climate. Subsequent chapters deal with the country’s history, its people, culture, daily life, food, sports, and leisure. Each guide has an appendix with helpful information on the local currency and measurements, together with a brief dictionary of useful phrases in the local language. Austria—A Soldier’s Guide used the same text, with minor or no changes at all from the German one. Thus, in the section dedicated to women’s rights in Austria and Germany before and after Nazism, Austria—A Soldier’s Guide reads:
Women. Under the republic Austrian women had won a great deal of freedom to live their own lives, but the Nazis thrust them back into the position of slaves in the field, factory and kitchen. Shortage of manpower in wartime brought them back into the professions, but only on sufferance.16
Women. Before Hitler came to power the German woman was winning the same freedom to live her own life as British women enjoy, but the Nazis took away her newly won rights and made her again the traditional Hausfrau (Housewife). Shortage of man-power in war time brought German women back into the professions, but only on sufferance.17
Another guide of interest is the Soldier’s Guide to Sicily, which was issued to all English-speaking Allied troops. It was written by Colonel Harari in 1943 and distributed to troops shortly before the launching the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky).20 The booklet was published by the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE). The PWE engaged in political warfare in enemy territories. As the war progressed, it supplied guides and other materials to the troops to teach them about liberated and occupied countries.21
The Soldier’s Guide to Sicily contained a message to all Allied troops from the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower. A report in the US military newspaper for GIs, Stars and Stripes, Mediterranean, and Algiers, from July 24, 1943, recounts its distribution to the GIs:
Two days before the landings the inevitable “Soldier’s Guide” appeared for distribution among the troops. Called simply “Soldier’s Guide to Sicily,” this one was put out by the British and was much more down to earth than the American-edited “Pocket Guide to North Africa,” for instance.22
Another example is the Instructions for British Servicemen in France, published in 1944. As Guy Woodward, who studied it in the PWE archive at the British National Archives, notes regarding the modular character of its contents:
The archive shows that editions [of the soldier’s guide to France] varied slightly depending on the intended readership. As the maple leaf on the cover suggests, the pocket guide to France pictured above is addressed to Canadian troops—the draft version of the guide in the same file shows that only perfunctory changes were made to adapt the text however, as in most cases “Britain” or “British” is simply replaced by “Canada” and “Canadian.”23
The question of exact authorship of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide is impossible to answer, mainly because guide authors generally remained anonymous. From the text, it seems clear that there was no single writer. The authors were probably professionals working for the Foreign and Research Press Service (FRPS) of the British Foreign Office under the leadership of historian Arnold Toynbee, head of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA).27 In any case, it is a hybrid text that speaks in more than one voice. The template of the booklet, with its guidelines and useful information (e.g., “Do’s” and “Don’ts,” a language guide, the local currency, and so on), serves for the edification and instruction of the troops. At the same time, it provides a window into how the army perceived its own soldiers. Hence, the guide warns troops not to fraternize with Austrians and not to “fall” for local Austrian or German women. From this, for example, we can deduce that troops were likely to fraternize with the locals and even sympathize with them— or at least that possibility was anticipated.28
It does seem unlikely that one of the coauthors of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide was an Austrian exile working for the British special intelligence and research units, since the PWE employed known writers and historians specializing in Central and Southeastern Europe.29 We know, for instance, that the PWE’s guide to Hungary—which was never distributed because it was the Russians, and not the Western Allies, who entered Hungary—was written by British historian A. J. P Taylor, an expert on the Habsburg Monarchy. He could also have contributed to the guide to Austria, as could any other member of that group, including historian C. A. Macartney, another expert on Hungary and Central Europe.30 If it was indeed the experts from the Central European desk at the FRPS who wrote the guide, then it might have been produced in London and then shipped to the Allied Force Headquarters in Caserta. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Americans shared their version with the British, and there may have been some overlap in authorship between the guides.
Furthermore, the content of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide is derived not only from creative input, but also from intelligence reports acquired by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).31 In November 1940 the SOE opened its “German and Austrian Section,” which was also known as Section X. The Austrian section (X/Austria) employed three British women who had served as MI-6 agents in interwar Vienna and experienced both the Anschluss and early Nazi rule in Austria. Beer describes them as “Austrophiles,” concluding moreover that it was in the Austrian section that the early ideas about the reconstruction of Austria as separate from Germany first emerged, particularly Austria as a member of a revived Danube Confederation.32
If the British guide to Germany was written before the guide to Austria, that would be expected. After all, Germany loomed much larger in the postwar planning of the Allies than Austria did. Moreover, prior to the Moscow Declaration of November 1943, the official stance of both the British and the Americans vis-à-vis Austria was not so clear, for at that time the country was regarded as an integral part of the German Reich.33 Thus, the intelligence and political warfare branches of both armies dedicated a small part of their work to Austria, with the British certainly having worked on Austria more extensively since the early 1940s. In the United States, only after the Moscow Declaration of 1943 was a separate Austrian desk opened at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the postwar CIA.34
“A Short Guide to Austria”—In Search of the American Militourist Gaze
In the British National Archives I came across a file of the War Office (WO), W.O./219/896, entitled “Notes on civil affairs and the troops in the field. Soldiers guides to occupied and liberated territories.” It contained a typeset called “A Short Guide to Austria.” The text seems to be the American version of the Soldier’s Guide to Austria, although it was probably never published.35 The section titled “Your Attitude” makes it clear who the guide’s target audience is:
American troops will be in a temporary occupation in Austria. You are expected to observe local laws and regulations. [. . .] Don’t kid or belittle the fighting of former soldiers. [. . .] The point is—Americans don’t kick people when they are down.36
The wealth of detail on display in the section titled “The Mountain Men” and in the description of religion suggests the experience of a proud Austrian. As the text says:
The mountain Austrians who live in the Tyrol and Styria, and on the Alpine slopes, are entirely another breed of cat.
They are tough. Highly religious, uneducated, suspicious and liable to dangerous violence when they consider themselves affronted. On the other hand, they are honest, hard-working, decent and are completely products of the high, rocky land from which they win living. [. . .] Don’t try to kid them. They have dignity and little humor. Keep away from their women. You’ll live longer.39
Other sections in the text also suggest the standpoint of an Austrian patriot. In the section on Austrian history, the following interpretation of the 1938 Anschluss is put forward:
During the flush 16th and 17th century (days of the great Holy Roman Empire) a large part of Germany was under Austrian rule. The Germans never forget and never forgave. You will later see how they had their revenge.40
This is how they spend their mornings’ breaks. Yes, they are great football fans, these continentals. We even have an international star amongst us. That is him, Charlie Ehrlich [Karl Ehrlich—AV], former center forward of the Hakoah Sports Club. One of the crack-teams of Austria. For the Nazis abolished professional football in Austria, simply because the Austrians were better than the Germans.42
Some reviewers of (the American) “A Short Guide to Austria” versions have noted that the various soldier’s guides are no different from any popular travel guide in terms of propagating contemporary stereotypes of the “self” and the “other.”44 Moreover, we often find the “touristic-gaze,” or touristic discourse, utilized for national and foreign policy propaganda purposes.45 Nevertheless, unlike traditional travel guides, these were made to disseminate the Allied occupation policy (where it applied), to instruct the soldiers of one country in the proper way to treat civilians in a foreign land (whether foes or friends), and in some respects to be a sort of “survival guide” for troops abroad. However, this was done not only for their benefit, but also in the name of the national interest and homeland security.46 Troop behavior in foreign countries was seen to reflect on their respected nationalities; troops represented the collective characteristics of the Americans or the British.
In his study of the instruction of US Army troops in Japan, Daniel Milne writes of how the military media, including the Pocket Guide to Japan, utilized the concept of the militourist gaze—namely, “ways of representing, perceiving, and interacting with others that combine militarism and tourism.”47 Of the militourist gaze in the American and British guides to Austria, it may be said that it was utilized not just for troop instruction, but also to convey national propaganda aimed at the Austrians themselves. As Gundolf Graml has remarked, “Every action undertaken by the Allied forces that used the images of the tourism discourse reaffirmed the conviction among Austrians that this is the most effective way of reconstructing an autonomous nation.” Thus, in 1948 the Austrian Federal Press Service published the Book of Austria, edited by Ernst Marboe. This pocket-sized Austrian handbook was given as a gift to diplomats and foreign visitors.48 In this book, Marboe employed the pre- and postwar touristic discourse about Austria for spreading national propaganda and affirming the Austrian national identity.49 According to Graml, the Book of Austria was the official Austrian “cover-up” of the Nazi past. Here, Austria was presented in a passive way, to project its image as Hitler’s first victim.50 In this context, the “touristic gaze” served the national founding myth of the Second Republic, according to which the Austrians were the first victims of the Nazis.
Indeed, in the British Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, the militourist gaze served to remind Austrians of their distinctive culture and to separate the Austrians from the Germans. For as we read:
Austria may be expected to recover quickly [. . .] because Austrians have not been starved so long of mental nourishment, and the poison of Nazism has not infected them so deeply as it has the Germans.
[. . .] Vienna. [. . .] It is one of Europe’s most beautiful and gracious cities and was for centuries an eastern outpost of Christian Culture [. . .] Music. The Austrian are extremely musical and have produced some of the world’s greatest composers and performers.51
As it had been for the British earlier, “Join the Army and See the World” was a popular military slogan encouraging young Americans to enlist in the army during World War II. This slogan, which drew upon the discourse of tourism, suggested to young Americans, especially working-class ones, why they might wish to enlist. Now that the fighting was over, the troops could finally benefit from their service:
Austria is a picture and travel poster land. Before the war, thousands of American tourists visited Austria annually. They indulged in Alpine climbing and skiing in the Tyrol, visiting such picturesque cities as medieval Innsbruck, or the Kitsbuhl [sic]; they flocked to old Salzburg visiting Linz and Gras [sic], old world cities of great beauty and antiquity, and spent much time in the cultural center of Vienna where theater, opera and music reached their highest level in Europe. [. . .] You will be in Austria “on the house” so to speak. Remember, if you are irked by the tedium of occupation, that there is another side to the picture.52
The Moscow Declaration as Road Map for the British and American Soldier’s Guides
The liberation of Austria was decided upon at the Moscow Conference by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Russia, and the United States. According to the 1943 Moscow Declaration:
The governments of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free country to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination.53
Austria is reminded, however, that she has a responsibility, which she cannot evade, for participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany, and that in the final settlement account will inevitably be taken of her own contribution to her liberation.54
The Allies’ public promise in 1943 of future Austrian independence [. . .] did not represent a serious Anglo-American planning, but formed part of a broader military strategy of fanning revolts by the continent’s suppressed yet latently explosive populations against their Nazi oppressors.55
One of the Allies’ war aims is to restore a free and independent Austria. [. . .] We want the Austrians to settle down as a contented, peace-loving nation. You can help by showing self-discipline and treating the Austrians fairly and decently.59
However sick of the Nazi Party the Austrians may be, however disillusioned with the promises of the “Master Race,” remember that twice in the last quarter century, Austria has been the ally of Germany in the two bloodiest wars of conquest and destruction the world has ever known.
It is up to the people of Austria to prove they sincerely desire a place in the family of decent, law-abiding nations.60
You may not understand why, once the fighting is over, US troops are kept in Austria, standing guard, running a jeep or policing.
Here are the facts: The temporary occupation of former enemy territory is as important (if not more important) than winning of the war itself. [. . .] Your physical occupation and the help you render the Austrians in their coming struggle to throw off the poisons of Nazism is part of your guarantee that this time you will get the kind of peace that will make it unnecessary for your children or your children’s children to take up arms against this thing you fought.
When the kind of peace is written that will forever destroy the German-Nazi-Japanese will and physical power to attempt world conquest, then your job will be ended.61
Unlike the British and the Russians, the American government was not keen on maintaining long-term occupation zones in Austria.63 Roosevelt had to be persuaded by his ambassador to the United Kingdom, John Winant, to give up his original intention of occupying northwestern Germany, in exchange for southern Germany and Austria.64 The United States agreed in principle to participate on a national level in the tripartite (i.e., Russian, British, and American) occupation of Austria in the spring of 1944. However, the final decision to establish an occupation zone in Austria was taken only in July 1945, when the Americans finally ratified the zonal agreement of the European Advisory Commission (EAC).65 Hence, since the guide refers to a temporary occupation, it may be that the text was written before American approval of zonal occupation, sometime in early 1945.
“Austrians Are Not Our Allies. They Are Not Yet Our Friends”: The Ban on Fraternization in Austria, as Seen by the American and the British Guides
In the introduction to Understanding Austria, Martin F. Herz explains what made him ask to be transferred to Austria from Germany to serve as a political officer at the American legation in Vienna, where he was stationed for three years (1945–48):
By the end of the war I was a Major, deeply involved in planning for the aftermath of the war in Germany, with no particular eagerness to go to Austria—but my hand was forced by the no-fraternization policy in Germany and certain other aspects of our policy toward the defeated enemy, which I thought not only distasteful but also ineffective (the policies did not last long, but I was unaware of that fact at the time), so that I asked to be transferred to Austria. The policy of treating that country as liberated, which I regarded as a psychologically reasonable and effective fiction, was much more palatable: Between fiction in Germany—as I saw our government’s initial attitude—that all Germans were guilty, and the fiction in Austria—also greatly oversimplified—that all Austrians were innocent, I was convinced that the latter policy would show better results.66
During the summer of 1944 Anglo-American groups worked together in London and Italy to plan for the military machinery in Austria.67 It was here that they drew up the “Handbook for Military Government in Austria.”68 The handbook stated that fraternization in Austria was forbidden. The Americans adopted the nonfraternization order from the handbook, as their draft of the soldier’s guide makes clear: “There must be no fraternisation. This is absolute and for your own protection.”69 At the same time, since the Russians and the French were allowed to fraternize with the Austrians, the British believed that, while fraternization should not be encouraged, it must not be forbidden either. Hence, the British Austria – A Soldier’s Guide contains a terse injunction not to fraternize with the Austrians, who are characterized there as “kindly” and “easy-going.” Likewise, the section on “Do’s” and “Don’ts” states: “don’t fraternize, sell or give away articles of your dress and equipment.”70
The ban on fraternization in Austria was relaxed already in the early stages of the Allied occupation in the summer of 1945. As Bischof noted, the Americans and the British could not give the Austrians the “cold shoulder,” especially since according to the Moscow Declaration Austria was separate from Germany and to be treated as a liberated, rather than as a defeated, country.71 Nevertheless, before the occupation, the Americans had, in fact, treated Austria as an integral part of defeated Germany. Thus, their guide opens with the section titled “The Defeated.”72 It may be that here, as in the Pocket Guide to Germany, that the American ban on fraternization reflected both an intent on the losers of the war, including the Austrians, but also a reminder of the previous failure of the fraternization policy following World War I. Back then, Allied troops, including American ones, had occupied the territory of the Rhineland, applying a more liberal fraternization policy that was considered a failure.73 And impressions of Austria as a defeated nation persisted. Thus, as the American “A Short Guide to Austria” reminds its soldier-readers:
Your Physical occupation and the help you will render the Austrians in their coming struggle to throw off the poisons of Nazism is part of your guarantee that this time you will get the kind of peace that will make it unnecessary for your children or your children’s children to take up arms against the thing you fought. [. . .] You will hear that the Austrians are quite different people from the Germans even though they speak the same language, and that they were never so hostile to us as were the Germans. This is true. Nevertheless, you cannot afford to forget that Austria has been Nazified for six years and Austrians have been infected with Nazi ideas.
Any man, German, Austrian or otherwise who has yielded to the Nazi way of life remains a potential enemy.74
Still, generally speaking, in the eyes of the Americans Austrians were not the same as the Germans. Thus, the American guide to Austria stresses to GIs that “unlike the Germans the Austrians did not vote for Nazism,” and that Austria was also taken over by German aggression. In addition, the section in the guide titled “The People” presents presumed differences between the Germans and the Austrians. Thus, “The educated Austrians, quite the opposite from bad-tempered, humorless and militarised Germans, are friendly, light-hearted, easy-going, witty people, famous for their charm.”76
Many Austrian exiles in the United States also argued for seeing the Germans differently than the Austrians. In 1941 the Voice of Austria, a monthly magazine was launched to promote these views and influence American and British public opinion about Austria. Most of the contributors to the Voice of Austria belonged to the Austrian Conservative-Catholic milieu; some had ties to the Christian Social Party and the Ständestaat before 1938. The first issue of the Voice carried an article titled “Are the Austrians Germans?” marking the beginning of this propaganda effort to distinguish between the Germans and the Austrians. It said:
Americans who have traveled in Germany and Austria generally realize the profound difference between these countries and also between their inhabitants. [. . .] The fact that Austrians speak the German language has no bearing on political issues.77
Conclusion
In the spring of 1945, the Americans and the British troops had finally crossed the borders from Germany and Slovenia respectively and entered defeated Austria. Troops carried in their pockets and backpacks the small booklet Austria—A Soldier’s Guide that the British published shortly before entrance into the Alpine country. Once American GIs received this text, it may be said, this was the story of Austria that they came to know. From that standpoint, it is no less an American guide than a British one. At the same time, Austria—A Soldier’s Guide illustrates that there is more than meets the eye in the preparation, publication, and reception of these soldier guides. Indeed, a close reading of the British and the American guides to Austria adds to the picture of how the army prepared its troops for the occupation of defeated Europe after victory, how military media and propaganda worked, and how the Allies interacted and shared resources with one another. Of course, with respect to the broad perception of the peoples, together with their customs and culture, it seems that Americans and British as English-speaking nations held the same beliefs regarding the Germans and the Austrians. That also included assumptions about what the Germans and Austrians thought about their English-speaking occupiers. Thus, both the British and the Americans acknowledged that the Austrians “as a people were never hostile to us as the Germans.”78 Both agree, as well, that the Germans and the Austrians hold the same view of all Americans as rich uncles. Thus, we read in the American “A Short Guide to Austria” that:
The average Austrian’s conception of America is hazy and not well defined because we are so far away, but he believes it is a land of milk and honey and immense wealth. To him, every American is a rich uncle.79
The Germans think of Americans much in the same way they think of us, but they do not know them so well and many of their ideas come from Hollywood films. [. . .] That is why they think, for instance, that all Americans are rich.80
Notes
Note: This article is based on a paper presented at the international conference Americans in Vienna, 1945–1955, on April 27, 2021. The conference was hosted by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies and the Center for Austrian and German Studies (CAGS) at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. I wish to thank my PhD adviser Dr. Nathan Marcus from CAGS, for the opportunity to participate in the conference. A special thanks is also due to Dr. Michael Burri, the editor of the Journal of Austrian-American History and to the anonymous reviewer of JAAH, for their helpful remarks and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.
See, for example, Siegfried Beer, “SOE, PWE und Schließlich FO: Die Britten als Vorreiter der alliierten Österreichplanung, 1940–1943,” in Die Moskauer Deklaration 1943: “Österreichwiederherstellen,” ed. Stefan Karner and Alexander Tschubarjan (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 99–108; James Jay Carafano, Waltzing Into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Robert H. Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II: An Anglo-American Dilemma (Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988); Gerald Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit: Staatsvertrag, Neutralität und das Ende der Ost-West-Besetzung Österreichs, 1945–1955, 5th rev. and expanded ed. (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2005).
Previous research into this guide was done in the broader context of works dealing either with the information given to American GIs about the old Europe during the Second World War, or with the American occupation of Austria. See Gundolf Graml, “Remapping the Nation: Tourism, Space, and National Identity in Austria after 1945” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2004), 79–82; Peter Schrijvers, “The Crash of Ruin: The American Combat Soldiers’ Perception of the Old World at War, 1942–1945, Volume I” (PhD diss., University of Ohio, 1995), 313–15.
I will discuss this in the section about the background to the guide below .
The typeset titled “A Short Guide to Austria,” which is about thirty pages long, is held in the British National Archives (BNA). As far as I can tell, this version was never published, and American GIs used the British guide. A Pocket Guide to Austria was prepared by the Office of Armed Forces Information and Education, Department of Defense in 1953 and reflected the Cold War and American interests vis-à-vis the USSR.
Daniel Milne, “From Decoy to Cultural Mediator: The Changing Uses of Tourism in Allied Troop Education about Japan, 1945–1949,” Japan Review, no. 33, Special Issue, War, Tourism, and Modern Japan (2019): 143–72, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26652979.
See, for example, Andrew Buchanan, “‘Good Morning, Pupil!’ American Representations of Italianness and the Occupation of Italy, 1943–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 2 (2008): 217–40, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036504; Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 46–51; Milne, “From Decoy to Cultural Mediator,” 143–72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26652979; Guy Woodward, “don’t Drink Yourself Silly in Public: The PWE’s Pocket Guide to France,” The Political Warfare Executive, Covert Propaganda, and British Culture (blog), October 31, 2019, https://writersandpropaganda.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2019/10/31/dont-drink-yourself-silly-in-public-the-pwes-pocket-guide-to-france/.
See Scott Laderman, “Tourists in Uniform: American Empire-Building and the Defense Department’s Cold War Pocket Guide Series,” Radical History Review 129 (October 2017): 74–102.
A project by Durham University is dedicated to research into the Political Warfare Executive division of the British Foreign Office. The PWE was responsible for publishing the soldier’s guides for the troops in preparation for D-Day. Durham University has launched a blog dedicated to the project. Guy Woodward from Durham is working on the topic of the soldier’s guides published by the PWE. So far, he has published his findings on the British guide to France, Instructions for British Servicemen in France. See n. 6 above. On the history of the PWE, see David Garnett, The Secret History of PWE: The Political Warfare Executive 1939–1945 (London: St. Ermin’s Press, 2002), 242, 410.
Philipp Rohrbach and Niko Wahl, eds., Austria—A Soldier’s Guide. Österreich—Ein Leitfaden für Soldaten (Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2017).
See Siegfried Beer, review of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide. Österreich—Ein Leitfaden für Soldaten, ed. Philipp Rohrbach and Niko Wahl, Contemporary Austrian Studies, CAS 27 (2018): 339–41; Günter Bischof, review of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide. Österreich—Ein Leitfaden für Soldaten, ed. Philipp Rohrbach and Niko Wahl, Austrian History Yearbook 49 (2018): 333–34.
See Graml, “Remapping the Nation,” 79–82; Schrijvers, “The Crash of Ruin,” 313–15. Both authors consider Austria—A Soldier’s Guide to be an American product.
Rohrbach and Wahl, eds., Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 17. The editors also assume that an early draft of this guide was written in 1942 by the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and that the work on these soldiers’ guides was halted in 1943. Since they cite no references to back up their assumptions, it is unclear what these assumptions are based on.
Beer, review of Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 339.
As the Anglo-American forces were not able to enter Austria from the Italian front in 1944, their war efforts took place far from Austria. See Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II, 156–58; Carafano, Waltzing Into the Cold War, 10–23. During early 1945 the Allied Forced Headquarters (AFHQ) was situated in Caserta, Italy, thus, under the MTOUSA.
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 59.
Ibid., 69. Italics in the original text.
Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany (Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2007), 42.
See and compare Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 69, and Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 42. Both guides cite a report by a German expert from May 1943 to the effect that “venereal disease strikes at every fourth person between the ages of 15 and 41.” This report is not cited in the American Pocket Guide to Germany, although venereal disease is mentioned in the section on “Health.” See 16–17.
Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 64; Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 76.
Garnett, The Secret History of PWE, 242, 291.
Soldier’s Guide to Sicily, printed by the British in 1943, https://archive.org/details/1943-uk-soldiers-guide-to-sicily/page/n13/mode/2up; Garnett, The Secret History of PWE, 242.
J.M.W, “Pre-Invasion Note,” Stars and Stripes, July 24, 1943, 6.
See Woodward, “don’t Drink Yourself Silly in Public.”
Hence, we can find references both to British and American towns; however, the guide mentions more references to Britain/British. See and compare Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 60–61, 69, 71–72.
See Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 45. I suspect that the section that is often found in the soldier’s guides titled “What the ___” (e.g., Germans/French/Austrians) is omitted on purpose from this American copy since it was written by the British.
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 72.
On Toynbee’s work at the Central European desk of the British Foreign Office, see Robert H. Keyserlingk, “Arnold Toynbee’s Foreign Research and Press Service, 1939–1943, and Its Post-War Plans for South-East Europe,” Journal of Contemporary History 21, no. 4 (October 1986): 539–58.
See Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 68, 69. The issue of intermarriages is more detailed in both the American and the British guides to Germany. See and compare Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 42–43; Pocket Guide to Germany, 17–18.
Although research on the PWE’s pocket guide series is still in progress, we do have some studies on this topic. See Attila Pók, “British Military Handbook on Hungary,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 32, nos. 1/2 (1986): 127–32; Woodward, “don’t Drink Yourself Silly in Public.” On the contribution of Austrians to the British war propaganda effort during World War II, see Wolfgang Muchitsch, ed., Österreicher im Exil: Großbritannien, 1938-1945: Eine Dokumentation (Wien: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1992), 549–76. Most Austrian exiles participated in radio propaganda broadcasts to Austria and in leaflet propaganda. According to Muchitsch, the role played by Austrian exiles in British propaganda against the Third Reich was relatively small compared to their contribution as a fighting force within the British Army. See also Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove, and Jennifer Taylor, eds., Immortal Austria: Austrians in Exile in Britain (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).
See Robert Barta, “Historian in Service of the Foreign Office: C. A. Macartney and His Writings on Hungary,” Acta Neerlandica 15 (2019): 163–84; Pók, “British Military Handbook,” 127–32.
On the SOE activities inside and toward Austria, see Peter Pirker, “British Subversive Politics towards Austria and Partisan Resistance in the Austrian-Slovene Borderland, 1938–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (April 2017): 319–51; Beer, “SOE, PWE und Schließlich FO,” 99–108.
See Beer, “SOE, PWE, und schließlich FO,” 101–2, 103.
Already in early 1943, the British Foreign Office issued a memorandum, written by the diplomat Geoffrey W. Harrison and titled “The Future of Austria,” which outlined four possible solutions for postwar Austria. The third solution was an independent and restored Austrian Free State. The last solution, Austria as part of a central or southeastern confederation, was favored by the British and the Americans at the time. This was seen as the best way of guaranteeing Austria’s economic stability and undoing the mistakes of the post-1918/1919 treaties. See Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit, 11–12. See and compare Manfred Rauchensteiner, Der Sonderfall: Die Besatzungszeit in Österreich, 1945 bis 1955 (Wien: Styria, 1995), 15–46; Rolf Steininger, Austria and Germany and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938–1955 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 25–43.
On Austrian exiles at the American OSS, see Siegfried Beer, “Exil und Emigration als Information: Zur Tätigkeit der Foreign Nationalities Branch (FNB) innerhalb des amerikanischen Kriegsgeheimdienstes COI bzw. OSS, 1941–1945,” in Jahrbuch 1989. Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (Wien: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1989), 132–43; Peter Eppel, ed., Österreicher im Exile: USA, 1938–1945, Bd. 2 (Wien: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1995), 43–50; Florian Traussnig, Geistiger Wiederstand von Aussen: Österreicher in US-Propagandinstitutionen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2017), 145–262.
“A Short Guide to Austria” See TNA WO/291/896, BNA, 1–27. Due to the current pandemic conditions I had to order the file online and could not find any other information except for this typeset. So far, I have only been able to find the Cold War–era edition of the American Pocket Guide to Austria from 1953. While there are some similarities, it differs a great deal from this “A Short Guide to Austria,” since it was probably written and changed under the influence of the West-East bloc rivalry of the 1950s.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 2–3.
This kind of warning appears not only in the context of American guides to former enemy countries, but also in guides to other Allied countries. See, for example, the American Guide to Britain, titled Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, published in 1942. I used the modern reprint. See Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain (Cambridge: Bodleian Library University of Oxford, 2004), 18–21, 29–30.
A Short Guide to Iraq, published by War and Navy Departments, Washington, DC, 1943. I used the modern reprint from 2008. See Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II, foreword by Lt. Colonel John A. Nagel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). This guide by itself is very interesting since it is dedicated to a non-European, but Arab-Muslim country with many more cultural differences than what GIs may encounter in Europe.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 10–11.
Ibid., 17.
See Oliver Rathkolb, The Paradoxical Republic: Austria 1945–2005 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 190–91.
Lift Your Head Comrade (1942), available online at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1004401.
Koestler’s biographer, Michael Scammell, called it “Koestler’s most ambitious project during this period.” See Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York: Random House, 2009), 219.
Some reviewers of the soldier’s guides have characterized them as the military’s version of the famous travel guides by publisher Karl Baedecker. See, for example, the New York Times review of the Soldier’s Guide to Bosnia: “The Official G.I.’s Guide to Staying Out of Trouble.” New York Times, February 11, 1996, sec. 4, p. 2. The ORF’s reviewer called the soldier’s guide to Austria a “Knigge for GIs in Austria.” Knigge in German means an “etiquette book.” See Johannes Luxner, “Knigge für GIs in Österreich,” ORF, April 25, 2017. https://orf.at/v2/stories/2388087/2388089/.
See Graml, “Remapping the Nation.” For other studies dealing with the “touristic-gaze” found in the soldier’s guides, see Laderman, “Tourists in Uniform,” 74–102; Bertman M. Gordon, War Tourism: Second World War France from Defeat and Occupation to the Creation of Heritage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 99–145; Andrew Buchanan, “‘I Felt like a Tourist Instead of a Soldier’: The Occupying Gaze—War and Tourism in Italy, 1943–1945,” American Quarterly 68 (2016): 593–615.
This is particularly true of the section about marriages to Austrian women in the American guide. See “A Short Guide to Austria,” 14–15.
Milne, “From Decoy to Cultural Mediator,” 143.
Graml, “Remapping the Nation,” 81, 71.
The use of the tourism discourse and regional loyalties in interwar Austria has been researched by Peniston-Bird. See C. M. Peniston-Bird, “The Debate on Austrian National Identity in the First Republic (1918–1938)” (PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 1997), esp. 353–458. One guidebook popular in interwar Vienna is Ludwig Hirschfeld’s Was nicht im Baedeker Steht. While the book focuses exclusively on Vienna, it is a good example of the pre-1938 discourse about the idiosyncratic Viennese culture and stereotypes. See Ludwig Hirschfeld, Was nicht im Baedeker Steht: Wien (Wien: Milena Verlag, 2020). The book was published in 1927 and an English translation appeared in 1929.
Gundolf Graml, “‘We Love Our Heimat, but We Need Foreigners!’: Tourism and the Reconstruction of Austria, 1945–1955,” Journal of Austrian Studies 46, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 51–76, here 54–57.
Austria. A Soldier’s Guide, 71. See also 61 and 70.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 21.
The Moscow Declaration (1943).
Ibid.
Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II, 189. Keyserlingk was not alone in this assessment. Austrian scholar Fritz Fellner wrote that the Allies were not interested in Austrian reconstruction and independence, but rather in the weakening of Nazi Germany. Cited by Beer, “SOE, PWE und Schließlich FO,” 99 n. 1.
See Karner and Tschubarjan, eds., Die Moskauer Deklaration.
See Warren Wellde Williams, “British Policy and the Occupation of Austria, 1945–1955” (PhD diss., University of Swansea, 2014), 40–47.
Beer, “SOE, PWE und Schließlich FO,” 100–101.
Austria. A Soldier’s Guide, 59.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 1. This guide, too, was probably written in early 1945. It uses the same template and army directives that are found in the Pocket Guide to Germany from 1944.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 3–4. Italics added for emphasis.
See Susan L. Carruthers, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 56: “The work of occupation, the booklet stressed, was in large measure simply that of being there.” See the Pocket Guide to Germany, 3.
See Donald Robert Whitnah and Edgar L. Erickson, The American Occupation (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985), 65–94.
Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II, 175.
See Whitnah and Erickson, The American Occupation, 131–33.
Reinhold Wagnleitner, ed., Understanding Austria: The Political Reports and Analyses of Martin F. Herz, Political Officer of the US Legation in Vienna, 1945–1948 (Salzburg: Wolfgang Neugebauer Verlag, 1984), 7–8.
Whitnah and Erickson, The American Occupation, 21–48, esp. 25–27.
The handbook was published in 1945 by the Allied Forces, Supreme Headquarters., Office of the Chief of Staff. See Günter Bischof, “Between Responsibility and Rehabilitation: Austria in International Politics, 1940–1950” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989), 102–3.
Cited by Bischof, “Between Responsibility and Rehabilitation,” 161; “A Short Guide to Austria,” 3.
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 75, 73.
Bischof, “Between Responsibility and Rehabilitation,” 161–63. See also Alice Hills, Britain and the Occupation of Austria, 1943–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 158–59.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 1.
Goedde, GIs and Germans, 44–51.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 3–4. Compare Pocket Guide to Germany, 2, 6–7.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 1 (emphasis in the original); Pocket Guide to Germany, 4.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 1, 9.
Voice of Austria 1 (June 1941).
Austria—A Soldier’s Guide, 59.
“A Short Guide to Austria,” 7, 12.
Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 36–37.
