Austrian Cultural Prize Awarded To UA Historian's Book

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — More than two years after its initial publication, a University of Arkansas historian’s book on Nazism in Austria continues to gain international acclaim. The Austrian Cultural Institute in New York and the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota recently awarded Evan Burr Bukey the Austrian Cultural Forum Prize for his book, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945.

"Bukey impressed the selection committee with the range and depth of sources he used to create his portrait of Austria during the Nazi period," said Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Austrian Studies. "They praised his research and his ability to take issues that have long been discussed by historians and cultural critics — namely how Austrians welcomed the Nazi regime into their country — and offer greater texture and depth of understanding to the subject."

Funded by the Austrian Cultural Institute and administered through the Center for Austrian Studies, the prize is intended to encourage North American scholars to publish research on contemporary Austria or on the history of that nation. The prize includes a travel grant, which recipients can use to continue their research in Austria.

An independent jury consisting of scholars from a variety of disciplines judges the competition, awarding only two Austrian Cultural Forum Prizes each year — one for best book in Austrian studies and another for best doctoral dissertation. According to Cohen, jurors heralded Bukey’s book as an important work for understanding contemporary Austrian culture and the impact of World War II on 20^th century society, politics and economics in that nation.

But jurors for the prize are not the only people to have been impressed by Bukey’

From February to June of 2001, Hitler’s Austria spent five months on the Austrian best-seller list, peaking at number 2 in March. The book has been translated into German and Czech and has gained critical acclaim throughout the United States and Central Europe.

The accolades have taken even Bukey by surprise. It took a trip to Vienna to convince the UA historian that his book had gained such widespread popularity.

"I stepped off the plane and found myself in one of those Andy Warhol moments — interviewed by magazines, newspapers and television reporters," he said. "My wife and I were astonished to see the book displayed in the window of every major bookseller. It was an unexpected and overwhelming experience."

The Austrian public’s positive response is particularly surprising considering the book’s premise. In the course of researching Hitler’s Austria, Bukey spent 15 years poring through archives in Germany, Austria, England and the United States. His search brought to light records that had lain hidden since the end of the Second World War — records that revealed a shadow over Austria’s past.

For more than half a century, Austria has characterized itself as the first nation to fall victim to Nazi invasion. "German troops marched into the country in 1938, carrying live ammunition," Bukey explained. But what ensued was no valiant resistance or struggle for freedom. "In actuality, these troops were met with rapturous enthusiasm," he said.

In the years that followed, Austrian citizens came to comprise 14 percent of the Nazi Security Service and 40 percent of those involved in Hitler’s extermination projects. But this collusion was obscured at the end of the war, when Austria scrambled to sever its association with Germany and to conceal its participation in Nazi crimes.

Bukey’s book answers the uncertainties that have since surrounded Austria’s role in the Nazi agenda by citing previously unexamined documents. Compiled by the German SS, these records provide detailed information about public opinion and morale in Austria after the German annexation. According to Bukey, the SS relied on a complex network of informers, agents and spies to compile weekly reports on the "mood and bearing" of the Austrian people.

Each week, these reports were forwarded to Berlin, where SS officials combined them with reports from all other regions of the Third Reich. They delivered the resulting digest to Nazi leaders, who scanned the reports for evidence of organized resistance and for information about popular attitudes.

"The Nazis were interested in morale, and they wanted an unvarnished view of what people actually thought," Bukey said. "If officials thought a certain criticism was reasonable, they tried to accommodate. If they thought it bordered on treason, they shipped the critic to a concentration camp."

For the Nazis, these reports acted as a lifeline to the general public, enabling them to tailor their propaganda and policies to maintain the highest possible morale. For Bukey, they represented a similar lifeline to the Austrian people — a portrait of their opinions and attitudes, unsullied by subsequent decades of denial.

Drawing from these reports, Bukey’s book reveals that, despite small bands of resistance, the majority of the Austrian populace welcomed the Nazi regime and embraced its anti-Semitic policies. In fact, the reports indicated that the Nazi government might have met far less resistance in Austria than it did in Germany itself.

In light of his book’s revelations, Bukey considers it strange to have been embraced by the Austrian public. But Gary Cohen suggests an explanation: "The Austrian population is now composed of generations who neither lived through the Nazi era nor, unfortunately, heard much about it while growing up. Austrian politics and society never fully came to terms with their Nazi past," he explained. "The new generation is curious, and there’s a belated but growing appetite for books about that past."

What further sets Bukey’s book apart is the fact that the majority of historical works have addressed only Germany’s role in the spread of Nazism. Bukey has produced a book that speaks to the Austrian experience during World War II — not the deceptive guise of an invaded nation, but the actual role that Austria and its citizens played.

Since the University of North Carolina Press published Hitler’s Austria in 2000, Bukey’s book has won the National Jewish Book Prize and been widely praised by scholars and critics alike. In the February 2001 issue of the American Historical Review, David Clay Large called the book "our best study on Austria’s embrace of Nazism."

For more information about Bukey’s book, visit http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-397.html. To learn more about the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota, visit http://www.cas.umn.edu/.

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