Surveys of the First Republic include Arthur J. May, The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918, 2 vol. (1966); Mary MacDonald, The Republic of Austria, 1918–1934: A Study in the Failure of Democratic Government (1946); F.L. Carsten, The First Austrian Republic, 1918–1938: A Study Based on British and Austrian Documents (1986); and Anson Rabinbach, The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War, 1927–1934 (1983). Jill Lewis, Fascism and the Working Class in Austria, 1918–1934: The Failure of Labour in the First Republic (1991), offers fresh insight into the problematic wavering between the theory and the practice of Austro-Marxism. Michael P. Steinberg, The Meaning of the Salzburg Festivaclass="underline" Austria as Theater and Ideology, 1890–1938 (1990, reissued 2000), reviews the rejuvenation of the Austrian spirit after World War I.
Martin Kitchen, The Coming of Austrian Fascism (1980); and Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (1981), review early German national socialism in Austria. The development of anti-Semitism is chronicled in Ivar Oxaal, Michael Pollak, and Gerhard Botz (eds.), Jews, Antisemitism, and Culture in Vienna (1987), a history of Austrian Jews, from assimilation to forced emigration and extermination; and Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (1992).
Emmerich Talos, Ernst Hanisch, and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.), NS-Herrschaft in Österreich, 1938–1945 (1988), is a comprehensive scholarly volume dealing with the implications of national socialist rule for Austrian society. Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945 (2000), analyzes secret-service reports on Austrian public opinion during World War II. David Wingeate Pike, Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, the Horror on the Danube (2000), offers new insight on the fate of Spanish Republicans and other resistance members in the main Austrian concentration camp.
Robert H. Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II: An Anglo-American Dilemma (1988); William B. Bader, Austria Between East and West, 1945–1955 (1966); and Alice Hills, Britain and the Occupation of Austria, 1943–45 (2000), study the various strategic plans, international problems, and political decisions surrounding the reestablishment of Austria during and after World War II. Reinhold Wagnleitner (ed.), Understanding Austria: The Political Reports and Analyses of Martin F. Herz, Political Officer of the U.S. Legation in Vienna, 1945–1948 (1984), gives a detailed account of the first three years of occupation by one of the most insightful American postwar diplomats. Günter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945–55: The Leverage of the Weak (1999), examines the diplomatic, military, political, legal, and economic questions confronting Austria and the Allies between 1945 and 1955. Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War (1994; originally published in German, 1991), analyzes the impact of the U.S. reorientation policies toward Austria in the context of the Cold War and the development of a culture of consumption. David F. Good and Ruth Wodak (eds.), From World War to Waldheim: Culture and Politics in Austria and the United States (1999), gives a good overview of the leverage of a small state in the shadow of a superpower. F. Parkinson (ed.), Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today (1989); Richard Bassett, Waldheim and Austria (1989); and Richard Mitten, The Politics of Antisemitic Prejudice: The Waldheim Phenomenon in Austria (1992), are critical studies of the inability of some Austrians to conquer their past.
Kurt Steiner (ed.), Modern Austria (1981); and Kurt Richard Luther and Peter Pulzer (eds.), Austria, 1945–95: Fifty Years of the Second Republic (1998), examine political, social, economic, and cultural developments under the Second Republic. Melanie A. Sully, A Contemporary History of Austria (1990), is a short review of politics in the 1980s. Melanie A. Sully, Continuity and Change in Austrian Socialism: The Eternal Quest for the Third Way (1982); and Jim Sweeney and Josef Weidenholzer (eds.), Austria: A Study in Modern Achievement (1988), are also useful.
Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Ferdinand Karlhofer (eds.), The Vranitzky Era in Austria (1999), discusses the problems of the first 10 years of the second grand coalition. Anton Pelinka, Austria: Out of the Shadow of the Past (1998); and Hella Pick, Guilty Victim: Austria from the Holocaust to Haider (2000), discuss the profound political changes in late 20th-century Austria. Reinhold F. Wagnleitner