Author Description

A constellation of distinguished people examine in these pages the pivotal and most traumatic experience in twentieth-century Austrian history - the Anschluss to Germany in March 1938 - an event also heavy with import for all Europe, for it was a necessary antecedent to World War II. First, it was painfully apparent that there was little capability for Austria to resist the Germans, either from internal strengths or from external diplomatic support. Austria's government, her writers, and, most disappointingly, her universities were without effect in bracing Austria's people against the Anschluss, and indeed may have hastened it. Once the Anschluss was a fait accompli most Austrians accommodated as German citizens, but some resisted, either in civil disobedience or in active opposition, especially late in the war.. The events of the years 1938 to 1945 have had far-reaching effects in the Second Republic of Austria. In the last decade, especially, various interpretations of how the Anschluss came about, and how and why Austrians responded to it as they did, have sparked animated, sometimes bitter debate - all the more heated because it has been just now in the Second Republic that Austrians have begun to shape their national consciousness as an independent, self-confident, viable people. The issue of Austrian identity and self-consciousness is most poignant for Austrian Jews. These and other historical and contemporary matters are subjects for the attention of the contributors to this volume.