Arbeitspflichtin Postwar Vienna: Punishing Nazis vs. Expediting Reconstruction, 1945–48

Abstract

Even before the war in Europe ended formally on 8 May 1945, there could be no serious misconceptions—either among defeated and liberated peoples or among the victorious Allied powers—as to how complex the challenges of reconstructing physical infrastructure and social networks would be.1 This was particularly true in urban areas within what had been Germany's 1938 borders, where the impact of air raids had reduced many areas to rubble and had damaged the rail and road connections that supplied foodstuffs and other necessities. In Berlin and other cities, images of people clearing debris from lunar landscapes dominated the popular imagination in the late 1940s and over the following decades. Indeed, when images of immediate postwar reconstruction have been invoked, it would appear as if there existed a heroic, unbroken connection between the initiative of these largely female volunteers (Trümmerfrauen) and the economic miracle associated overwhelmingly with largely male labor in West Germany a decade later. If a remarkable preparedness to come to terms with the exigencies of the present manifested itself during the initial postwar months, historians have subsequently offered insights into how problematic a consistent and thorough confrontation with the Nazi past proved to be during the later 1940s and beyond.

European Planning History in the 20th Century

“…Reappraising and re-rebuilding (Larkham 2018: 431) This chapter focuses on stages 3-5. During and immediately after the conflict, stage 1 was often over-hasty or virtually absent; and stage 2 equally hasty, sometimes causing additional damage, creating personal or political problems (Berg 2006) or physical structures such as the German rubble mountains (Trummerbergen: de Maio 2013), a rubble beach near Liverpool (Schultz 2019) or the use of blitz rubble for infill and reclamation (e.g., New York, with British rubble: Jackson 1995: 393). The existence of pre-war plans was also often a consideration: for example Birmingham's City Engineer asserted that the city's redevelopment ideas predated the bombing (e.g., Manzoni 1955: 90); and Coventry and Rotterdam had exhibitions of radical Modernist urbanism immediately before their major air raids.…”

Transitional justice in postwar Austria

“…A specific measure of denazification was forced labour for Nazis to reconstruct Austria, with a slogan along the lines of ‘re-education through atonement’ (Berg, 2006, p. 201); 14,022 Austrians were assigned to work at some point between 1946 and 1948. In 1948, the measure was not renewed, as the government's focus shifted from retribution to rehabilitation and reconstruction (Berg, 2006, p. 203). It is noteworthy that the former NSDAP members who were forced to work had to wear swastikas – a parallel to the yellow star the Nazis had imposed upon their Jewish victims.…”