Soldiers as governors

Joint Force Quarterly, Winter, 2002 by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria by James Jay Carafano College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. 288 pp. $44.95 [ISBN: 1-58544-213-5]

While overshadowed by the more familiar account of postwar Germany, the occupation of Austria is a fascinating study in Cold War history, replete with Allied friction, civil disorder, clandestine operations, bureaucratic infighting, and political reversals. Of the works that have appeared on this subject in the intervening decades, few have had the access to the historical records cited in Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria.

The author, James Jay Carafano, has taught military history at West Point and served as executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly. His story of the U.S. military role in Austria fills out an understanding of what happened on the ground after World War II. Particularly engaging is the struggle of the Army to carry out an occupation for which it was ill prepared. This work is not only a contribution to the scholarship on postwar Austria and the origins of the Cold War, but a case study of post-conflict operations and civil-military relations.

The central argument of the book is that American policy in Austria was dominated by security concerns--often at the expense of broader interests--which reflected the strengths and weaknesses of a military woefully unprepared to win the peace. U.S. thinking was influenced by habits that were locked in a warfighting doctrine with little capacity to shift toward nuanced political concerns when hostilities ended. The militarized nature of policy led to mixed results: it complicated and prolonged the occupation but also gave added importance to a state in which America had historically held little interest, ensuring the economic and diplomatic support that facilitated its postwar recovery.

American inflexibility drove occupation policy, according to Carafano. U.S. forces were preoccupied with warfighting long after the last shot was fired and neglected peacetime duties. They were concerned over disarming, demobilizing, and countering upheaval--without evaluating the political situation, coordinating with the Allies, and planning to address civilian needs. "Lack of experience, inadequate skills in interagency operations, unimaginative doctrine, poor training, and shallow professional education thoroughly exacerbated ... limitations in men and equipment." These problems unnecessarily complicated a return to civilian government and may in the longer run have delayed signing of the four-power Austrian State Treaty in 1955.

One unproductive habit of the Army was drawing black and white distinctions between friends and enemies. Although declared the first victim of the Aunschluss in 1945, Austria had been integral to the Nazi war machine. Occupation policy in the early postwar years reflected this ambiguity. U.S. forces alienated Austrians with clumsy nonfraternization rules and unfair requisitioning of housing from resistance members while Americans expected to be quartered and treated as liberators. Two years later the military shifted to a different view, influenced by the Soviet threat, even as declassified intelligence reports reflected no change in local events. With the Soviet Union as the enemy, the American military essentially recast every Austrian as a friend, naively ignoring signs of right-wing influence in the gendarmerie, which Washington was secretly arming. Indeed, with respect to postwar intelligence, Carafano pulls no punches:

United States Forces Austria did not provide unbiased and critical analysis. Following the rhythm of habits, the command generated intelligence based on the identified threat. In turn, [the American] reporting method justified concerns over Soviet intentions with a tendency to reinforce existing preconceptions.

For the Army, peacetime was just another battlefield. And the lines had been drawn. The strength of this book is a careful analysis of military policy toward Austria. There was a lack of national guidance, especially in the early days of occupation, which was reflected on the ground. Thus Carafano argues that policy emanated from below rather than from above. Indeed, he emphasizes the influence of U.S. high commissioners, in particular General Geoffrey Keyes, who had virtually unlimited freedom of action because attention at home was directed toward Germany. Commissioners and their staffs wielded tremendous influence, transforming Austria into a frontline state. It must be noted, however, that these observations may not be entirely fair since they reflect a detailed study of the U.S. military, not the twists and turns of Soviet policy. Final judgment on the claim that the Army was an important factor in militarizing the Cold War must await detailed examination of the other major players.

Carafano is a good storyteller, making the characters and the events of postwar Austria as engrossing as a novel. It is well worth picking up his book for its description of the Army at a critical point in its history. Waltzing into the Cold War is not limited to technical problems in one quarter of Europe but treats larger themes: civil-military relations, occupation government, humanitarian relief, et al. There is much that resonates with recent operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But, as the author observes, "The most powerful force of habit shaping the U.S. effort was a tradition of forgetting." One can hope that policymakers who read this book avoid perpetuating that tradition.