Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 42. (1992)

BISCHOF, Günter: The Anglo-American Powers and Austrian Neutrality, 1953–1955

GÜNTER BISCHOF

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN POWERS AND AUSTRIAN NEUTRALITY 1953-1955*

When Geoffrey Harrison of London’s Foreign Office heard about bilateral Austro-Soviet negotiations in March 1955, he commented wryly: „The Austrians seem intent, like the Gadarene swine, on rushing over the precipice to their own doom“1)- Harrison warned the Austrian Ambassador in London about the dangers of bilateral talks with the Soviets: „We had so often been led up the garden path, from one concession to another, that we should wish to probe considerably further before we felt satisfied that Mr. Molotov was this time really aiming to conclude the Austrian State Treaty.“ The Soviets might consider it an advantage to sign the Austrian Treaty and neutralize Germany, argued Harrison. But they just might also use Austria „as a card of re-entry into talks about Germany“2). Harrison, the Under-Secretary responsible for the Austrian desk in the British Foreign Office, was sceptical, like most high-level Anglo-American policy makers and diplomats, about a „neutralization“ of Austria as a means to end the four-power occupation.

This essay tries to show why Washington and London were so sceptical about Austrian neutrality in the years 1953 to 1955. The Western powers feared that Soviet concessions in Austria might be a ruse and were designed to block German rearmament. A four-power conference, or summit, on Austria (and other Cold War issues), would bog down the military integration of the Federal Republic into the Western defense system in another round of endless negotiations between East and West.

* This paper was delivered at the symposium „Austria 1918-1988: Change and Continuity,“ organized for the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Cincinnati Ohio at the end of December 1988. I am indebted to Kurt Tweraser for his comments, and to Ferdinand Trauttmannsdorff of the Austrian Embassy in Washington for his support. I am grateful to Wolfgang Dankspeckgruber, Thomas Schwartz, and Richard Immerman for their helpful critique of earlier versions of this paper. Adrian Jones has been a most gracious and unflagging editor of my English prose. The peripatetic archival researcher on contemporary history could not fulfill his task without the financial support of many institutions. This author would like to express his gratitude for research travel support from the Kohn Family Fund to the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History at dies with a Krupp Foundation Fellowship, and a Harry S. Truman Library Institute Dissertation Fellowship have generously made the research and writing of this article possible.

1) Harrison minute, 22 March 1955, Public Record Office [herafter cited as PRO], Kew, Foreign Office [herafter cited as FO] 371/117786//RR 1071/45.

2) Harrison record of conversation with the Austrian Ambassador, 25 March 1955, PRO, FO 371/117787/RR 1071/74.

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