The Austrians

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 31 MARS 1997

How could the nation that produced Mozart and Schubert also have brought forth Hitler and served as accomplice to the Nazi genocide? "There is a pendulum built into the Austrian psyche," observes popular British historian Brook-Shepherd (The Last Empress and others) in this engrossing, elegantly written history. He views the Austrian national character as instinctively conservative, hesitant and ambivalent, with a tendency to brush unpleasantness of any kind under the carpet--a trait made glaringly evident with the Kurt Waldheim affair, when Austrians were forced to face up belatedly to their role as collaborators in Hitler's Third Reich. This dramatic, lively narrative is primarily a political, military and diplomatic history, with astute passing references to Biedermeier and baroque, to Freud, Klimt, playwright Arthur Schnitzler, satirist Karl Kraus, architect Adolf Loos. Brook-Shepherd persuasively portrays the Austrians as a people whose quest for national identity has been thwarted by their multinationalism--the sprawling Hapsburg Empire was a loose confederation of Danubian peoples--and, even more so, by their fateful ties to Germany. Stalin ironically emerges as the founding father of Austria's postwar independence--the U.S. and Britain initially opposed Austrian self-rule, while Stalin insisted on it, the author speculates, because of secret plans to roll in the tanks later, an option never taken. Austria's 1994 decision to enter the European Union, the author opines, was a major turning point away from isolationism and neutrality. Photos.