American Diplomatic Personnel in Austria, 1945–1955: Oral Histories from the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

Abstract

Abstract During the Allied occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1955, hundreds of officials from the US Army, State Department, and various suborganizations worked in Vienna, Salzburg, and Washington, DC, on Austrian affairs. Their first-hand memories were recorded by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), which continues to interview members of the US Diplomatic Corps. The oral histories are preserved on the ADST website as well as the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress. Highlights from the interviews specifically from the critical decade after World War II speak to both familiar and more novel facets of the US occupation and the Austrian State Treaty: Rot-Weiss-Rot radio, Voice of America, the United States Information Service (USIA), the American High Commission, trade, Llewellyn Thompson, the effects in Europe of the outbreak of the Korean War, and rivalry with the Soviet Union in the early Cold War. Included in this selection are oral histories with Walter Roberts, Halvor C. Ekern, Denise Abbey, William Lloyd Stearman, Arthur A. Bardos, Mary Seymour Olmsted, Robert J. Martens, Lloyd Jonnes, Hendrik Van Oss, and Alfred Puhan.