“I saw no way to end Nazi rule other than through war.”

Like Alfred Diamant, the “reluctant pacifist” and Jewish forced migrant from Vienna quoted here, at least 6,000 other Austrians fought in the US Army during World War II. As refugee soldiers, most of whom quickly became Americanized, these “38ers” made an often costly contribution on the side of the American “Anlehungsmacht” (Peter Steinbach) to the military “resistance from outside” against National Socialism and to the liberation and reestablishment of democratic Austria.

In the wake of the “memory boom” since the turn of the millennium, there is a constantly growing demand for the historical narration and documentation of these life stories. There is a high level of interest in the exile resistance and the struggle of former Austrians on the side of the US – also from the perspective of broader sections of the population on both sides of the Atlantic. Of particular socio-political importance is the fact that the 15 years of research conducted by project leader Florian Traussnig now has concrete significance for the lives and identities of the descendants of Austrian exiles and displaced persons who helped to restore Austria as a democratic republic in the US Army and other US war institutions: Since the recent amendment to the Citizenship Act, the descendants of victims expelled during the Nazi regime can become Austrian citizens without bureaucratic hurdles. Based on decades of archival sources, documents, and literature, phase 1 of the overall project will document around 1,100 (of a total of approximately 6,000) Austrians who served in the US Army during World War II. The names and basic biographical data of these Austrians (most of whom fled around the time of the Anschluss) are being collected step by step and entered into a database; Short exile and war biographies, created on an ongoing basis as a “work in progress,” will ultimately give these names a biographical face and will be published in a “growing” online biography collection: freely accessible and bilingual in German and English. The follow-up project (Phase 2) will systematically process the entire cohort of “the 6,000” and result in a database and collection of short biographies that is as complete as possible, using some completely new digital evaluation methods, as well as an interdisciplinary anthology.

Das biografische Online-Projekt zu exilösterreichischen US-Soldaten wird am Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Kriegsfolgenforschung in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Geschichte der Universität Graz durchgeführt, durchgeführt, vom Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich gefördert und vom Land Niederösterreich unterstützt, beim Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus wird ebenfalls um Fördermittel eingereicht.  Das Center for Inter-American Studies der Uni Graz und das Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands sind unterstützende Kooperationspartner (Projektleitung: Florian Traussnig)

Introductory literature: 

Florian Traussnig, Militärischer Widerstand von außen. Österreicher in US-Armee und Kriegsgeheimdienst im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Wien: 2016. More about the book here