| Abstract: | Knight discusses both domestic and foreign aspects of the post-war Austrian 'landscape of memory', going back to the Anschluss and the antisemitic violence that followed it. In the years after 1945 this memory was sidelined, first by the West in the interests of the Cold War and then by the Soviet Union, although it has persisted in a subterranean sort of way. Since the 'Waldheim affair' it has surfaced to join a new international politics of sensibility about the Holocaust and related issues. Austria started in 1945 from a position similar to that of Germany but thereafter took a different course in respect of the 'national question' and the creation of a governing party coalition. Paradoxically, at a time when Austria has ceased to be exempt from scrutiny, sections of its society have become more sensitive about the magnitude of Nazi crimes than they ever were before. |
