Conquering the Past

Book excerpt: "The history of National Socialism in Austria has not been widely examined. It was not until 1981 that an English language history was available on the "forgotten Nazis" in Austria, yet the country was well known to have been a breeding ground of Nazism. Editor F. Parkinson assembled a group of historians and political scientists to undertake a scholarly inquiry into all ramifications of Nazism in Austria before and after the Anschluss. They investigated the activities and attitudes of those in power as well as those in all other segments of the population, whether in Vienna or in the provinces, whether organized in political parties or professing certain creeds. Contributors outline Austria's political decline during the last half of the nineteenth century, Austrian inability to restore the monarchist system during the first republic, the slide of conservatives and socialists to National Socialism, reactions to National Socialism between 1938 and 1945, and the reconstruction of republicanism since 1945, with its emphasis on political conservatism. Solicited to mark the anniversary of the Anschluss, the essays in this volume will be of interest to specialists in Austrian history, students of the Holocaust and Nazi period, and historians of modern Central and Eastern Europe." (Amazon).