Between 1945 and 1955, Austria, like Germany, was divided into four zones under the control of the Soviet Union, the United States of America, Britain, and France. This article discusses marriages between British “occupiers” and Austrian “occupied” between 1945 and 1955, examining the policies for contact from the enactment of the non-fraternisation order until the lifting of the marriage ban. It shows how marriages were concluded despite bureaucratic and legal obstacles and discusses the experiences of Austrian “war brides” upon their arrival and settlement in Britain. The analysis draws upon a wide range of documents to survey the response of the British government and military authorities to British–Austrian relationships and marriage applications. Case studies of an Austrian war bride and children of married British–Austrian couples represent the links between state and military intervention and individual experiences set off by the presence of Allied soldiers in Austria during the first decade after the end of World War II.

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Thousands of so-called occupation children were born to Allied soldiers and Austrian women in sexual relations after the end of the Second World War. Their experiences correspond to the experiences of occupation children in Germany and, more general, to the experiences of Children Born of War, i.e., children born after sexual contact between local women and foreign/enemy soldiers in conflict and post-conflict situations, regardless of the time of birth and the geopolitical context. Now, more than 75 years after the end of the war, we have studied the changes in the social and political handling of occupation children in Austria over the past decades, using official sources such as newspaper reports, and including biographical interviews conducted with British occupation children in the 2010s. Three phases were identified into which the handling of occupation children can be divided: The post-war years, in which these children were perceived as an (economic) burden; the phase of occupation children growing up and becoming adults, in which they were hardly addressed in public; and the period since the 1990s, in which they have experienced increased media, family, and public interest, which can be attributed to their efforts to make their life stories heard, to the academic research into their living and socialization conditions, and to the formation of networks. The study complements other research on occupation children in Germany and Austria, highlighting the significant differences in the discourse on U.S. American, British, Soviet, and French occupation children, especially between white and Black occupation children, and addressing the differences in Austria compared to Germany. The article argues that challenges and opportunities in the integration of these children have been tied to changes in social values and morals as well as to collective processes of coming to terms with the war and post-war period.

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