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
American military forces were adept at the first task; they were
woefully unprepared for the second. Their 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. He demonstrates that from
the very beginning of an American presence in Austria, 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, Carafano concludes, befuddled U.S. planners.

    In crystal-clear detail, Carafano lays out the course of the U.S.
presence in Austria, the problems America encountered, and the
problems it caused. He sheds new light on this little-studied aspect
of the Cold War, and he underscores the mundane truth that peace
is fundamentally different from war and that if armies are used
during peacetime, they have to be retrained to manage their
postwar tasks successfully.

    Those interested in contemporary military peace-keeping efforts,
as well as those trying to understand the lessons of the Cold War,
will find this study an invaluable aid.

_________________________________________________________

JAMES JAY CARAFANO is a graduate of West Point, a retired
army officer, and the former editor of Joint Force Quarterly.
Currently, he is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies
and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. His publications
include the Military Book Club main selection, After D-Day: Operation
Cobra and the Normandy Breakout. He lives in Washington, D.C.


Number Eighty-one: Texas A&M University Military History
Series


What people are saying about this book

"At a time when the U.S. military forces are involved in
post-conflict peacekeeping tasks in the Balkans and in the Middle
East and as the U.S. Army moves into Afghanistan to help rebuild
that country and maintain the peace, the appearance of James Jay
Carafano's study of the U.S. Army's occupation of Austria from the
end of World War II to the signing of the Austrian State Treaty of
1955 is especially timely."—W. Gary Nichols, The Citadel