Austria's Post-Wwii Territory Loss: What Changed?

Austria's territorial boundaries underwent drastic changes over time, and the territory understood by the term 'Austria' was very different in the late Iron Age to what it is today.

In the late Iron Age, Austria was occupied by the people of the Hallstatt Celtic culture, and was referred to by the Romans as Noricum. In the 6th century, the Bavarii, a Germanic people, occupied these lands until it fell to the Frankish Empire in the 9th century. The name Ostarrîchi (Austria) has been in use since 996 AD.

In the 19th century, the Austrian Empire was dissolved, and the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) and the Treaty of Trianon (1920) regulated the new borders of Austria and Hungary, reducing them to small-sized and landlocked states.

Following the Anschluss in 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and was considered an integral part of the Third Reich. After World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty came into force, and the last occupation troops left.

Austria was divided into four occupation zones, jointly occupied by the UK, the Soviet Union, the US, and France

Following the Anschluss in 1938, Austria was considered a part of Nazi Germany. However, in November 1943, the Allies agreed in the Declaration of Moscow that Austria would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. Vienna was similarly subdivided, but the central district was collectively administered by the Allied Control Council.

The occupation ended when the Austrian State Treaty came into force on 27 July 1955.

Vienna was also subdivided into four zones, with the central district being collectively administered by the Allied Control Council

In the aftermath of World War II, Vienna was divided into four zones, with the central district being collectively administered by the Allied Control Council. The Allied Control Council was composed of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. The city was divided among all four Allies, with the historical center of Vienna being declared an international zone, in which occupation forces changed every month.

The Allied occupation of Vienna was part of a broader division of Austria into four zones, with each zone being occupied by one of the four Allied powers. The occupation of Austria followed the country's occupation by Nazi Germany, which had annexed Austria in 1938 with the overwhelming support of the Austrian population. The Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France agreed in the Declaration of Moscow in 1943 that Austria would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war.

The occupation of Austria ended when the Austrian State Treaty came into force on 27 July 1955, and the last occupation troops left on 25 October that year. Austria was granted full independence on the condition that it remain neutral in the Cold War.

The Soviets treated Austria as a defeated Axis power, but adhered to the general line that it was a victim of Germany

The Soviets treated Austria as a defeated Axis power, but adhered to the general line that Austria was a victim of Germany. This was despite the fact that Austria had been an integral part of the Third Reich, with 10% of the population joining the Nazi Party. In 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria to Germany, this was supported by a large majority of Austrians.

Austria was divided into four occupation zones, with the Red Army occupying only parts of Austria, including the capital, while the Anglo-American troops entered from Germany and Italy. The Soviets occupied around 700,000 troops, while the Western Allies occupied around 150,000.

Austria avoided some of the worst aspects of Germany’s fate. It did not lose any territory, despite Yugoslavia’s claims to Carinthia, a province in the south of the country. Austrians also avoided the fate of the Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe who were expelled to Germany or rounded up and deported to the Soviet Union for slave labour.

The Soviets did, however, demand that the Soviets should be entitled to German assets in Austria in their zone of occupation. This resulted in Austria ending up paying more than five times what Stalin originally demanded. In addition, the Soviets deployed the NKVD (Soviet secret police) to extract reparations through requisitions.

The Soviets lost 26.6 million people during the war, with most credible estimates for military losses ranging between 11.4 and 14.6 million

The Soviet Union suffered the most military deaths of any nation during World War II, with 8.7 million military deaths. The war also saw a substantial number of missing and captured individuals, with efforts to exchange prisoners between conflicting parties. The Soviet Union also lost around 19 million civilians during the war. The Nazi occupation policies implemented under the Hunger Plan resulted in the confiscation of food stocks which resulted in famine in the occupied regions. During the Soviet era, the partisan campaign behind the lines was portrayed as the struggle of the local population against the German occupation. To suppress the partisan units, the Nazi occupation forces engaged in a campaign of brutal reprisals against innocent civilians. The extensive fighting destroyed agricultural land, infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food. During the war, Soviet civilians were taken to Germany as forced labourers under inhumane conditions.

The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and the imprisonment or execution of thousands of political prisoners by the NKVD in the Baltic states and eastern Poland annexed by the Red Army.

The Russian government puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million, on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of the war's effects. This includes 8.668 million military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence. The figures published by the Russian Ministry of Defence have been accepted by most historians outside Russia. However, the official figure of 8.7 million military deaths has been disputed by Russian scholars who believe that the number of dead and missing POWs is not correct and that new research is necessary to determine actual losses. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel.

The Russian researcher L L Rybakovsky assumes that the source of Nikita Khrushchev's figure of 20 million war dead was the 1957 Soviet translation of the West German book Bilanz des Zweiten Weltkrieges Hamburg 1953.

Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation.

The Soviets lost 17,000 lives in the Battle of Vienna

The Red Army lost 17,000 lives in the Battle of Vienna during World War II. The battle for the Austrian capital was characterised by fierce urban combat, but there were also parts of the city the Soviets advanced into with little opposition. The Soviets' success in the western suburbs was followed quickly by infiltration of the eastern and northern suburbs later the same day.

Austria was occupied by the Allies and declared independent from Nazi Germany on 27 April 1945. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. Vienna was similarly subdivided, but the central district was collectively administered by the Allied Control Council.

The Soviets' treatment of the Austrian population was mixed. While the assault forces generally behaved well, the second wave of Soviet troops to arrive in the city were reportedly badly undisciplined. A large number of lootings and cases of rape took place in a several-week long violence that has been compared to the worst aspects of the Thirty Years War.

In 1947, the Austrian economy, including USIA enterprises, reached 61% of pre-war levels, but it was disproportionately weak in consumer goods production (42% of pre-war levels). Food remained the worst problem. The country, according to American reports, survived 1945 and 1946 on "a near-starvation diet" with daily rations remaining below 2000 calories until the end of 1947.

In 1955, Austria was granted full independence and the last occupation troops left.

Frequently asked questions