Peter Pirker

University of Innsbruck | UIBK · Institut für Zeitgeschichte

Over the last thirty years, no other concept has defined the politics of history concerning Austria’s Nazi past to a greater extent than the concept of the Austrian “victim myth.” The term emerged in the mid-1980s as part of an effort to expose the victim hypothesis formulated in the Declaration of Independence of April, 27, 1945—namely that Austri...

The article presents results of a case study on draft evasion in the Vorarlberg village of Krumbach during World War Two. A remarkable number of conscripted men from this agrarian and conservative Catholic community deserted from the Wehrmacht during the war or tried to avoid military service by committing self-mutilation or applying for indispensa...

The article presents results from empirical research on deserters from the Wehrmacht and draft evaders in the former Alpine regions of Nazi Germany during World War Two. Based on research in state and private archives in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Slovenia, a sample of more than 2,000 cases of desertion and draft evasion was...

How did and does the fate of refugees unfold in internment camps? The contributors to this book facilitate an extensive engagement with the organized, state led, and forced placement of refugees in the past and present. They show the parallels and differences between the practices and types of internment in different countries – while considering t...

How did and does the fate of refugees unfold in internment camps? The contributors to this book facilitate an extensive engagement with the organized, state led, and forced placement of refugees in the past and present. They show the parallels and differences between the practices and types of internment in different countries - while considering t...

Seit geraumer Zeit hat sich um das Wiener Heeresgeschichtliche Museum eine öffentliche Debatte über dessen notwendige Reformierung entsponnen. Der vom Ringstraßen-Architekten Theophil Hansen geplante Prachtbau wurde 1869 als k. k. Hofwaffenmuseum eröffnet und schließt sowohl architektonisch als auch thematisch bis heute bruchlos an das Erbe der Mon...

Von der Wehrmacht blieb kaum eine Familie unberührt. Obwohl sie ein zentraler Pfeiler, die größte Massenorganisation und ein wesentliches Instrument des NS-Regimes war, gibt es nur wenige Publikationen, die sich wissenschaftlich fundiert mit den Erfahrungen von Tiroler und Vorarlberger Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg beschäftigen. Da das organisatori...

Sie kämpften mit der Kamera: Fotografen der US Army schufen im Zweiten Weltkrieg Bilder der Befreiung, um in den USA und Europa die Moral für den Krieg gegen den Nationalsozialismus zu stärken und die Besatzung zu legitimieren. Die jungen amerikanischen Soldaten befreiten aber nicht nur Menschen. Sie befreiten auch Dinge, mit Vorliebe Kameras. Vers...

The authors examine three recent large-scale mnemonic projects and transformation processes in Austrias’ capital, Vienna: The staging of celebrations of May 8 as a “day of joy” at Heldenplatz in the city center, the subsequent reshaping of Heldenplatz, and the placing of pavement memorials dedicated to victims of the Shoah throughout the cityscape....

Nach außen hin zehrte das Selbstbewusstsein der Wiener SozialdemokratInnen im Exil von der Erinnerung an die Größe und Stärke ihrer Partei, die nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg basierend auf den Wahlerfolgen in Wien ein einmaliges kommunal-autonomes Aufbauwerk sozialen Fortschritts geschaffen hatte. Es speiste sich aus dem Stolz auf eine genuine Theorie u...

This paper presents a model for exploring urban memorial landscapes on political violence. It is based on a survey of more than 1,600 memorials erected in public spaces of the Austrian capital, Vienna, since 1945 with references to the Austrofascist and the National Socialist regimes. The paper builds on existing theoretical and methodological conc...

Florian Traussnig. Geistiger Widerstand von außen: Österreicher in US-Propagandainstitutionen im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2017. Pp. 360. - Volume 50 - Peter Pirker

Peter Pirker and Johannes Kramer offer a comprehensive account of 70 years of the politics of history and memory towards Wehrmacht deserters in Austria. Analyzing their social and legal discrimination after World War II, the chapter draws attention to the political and social processes that led to the rehabilitation of deserters and the erection of...

A few months after its founding in 1949, the US anticommunist broadcasting organization Radio Free Europe (RFE) established a newsgathering bureau in Vienna. With Austria's sovereign and neutral status, ongoing presence was crucial to maintaining its reputation among Eastern European audiences. In its programming, RFE presented the country as an ex...

In 1943, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) launched one of the Allied intelligence services' biggest efforts to foster resistance within Nazi Germany in cooperation with Slovene partisans in the Carinthian borderland. The so-called Clowder Mission systematically supplied weapons and other military assistance to the partisans who, in su...

In 1939, agents of the D Section of British Secret Service MI6 started to build a secret sabotage and intelligence organization in Yugoslavia directed against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The article identifes various actors of the network who developed crossborder links into Italy as well as into former Austria. The focus lies on two types of a...

In 1944, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) tried to infiltrate agents into the Third Reich by using Slovene partisans in the Carinthian borderland to foster resistance in Austria (Clowder Mission). The article examines the reciprocal perceptions of the mission's agents and the partisan leadership. It argues that from a geopolitical poi...

In November 1940 the British wartime secret agency Special Operations Executive formed a German Section, a sub-section covered secret operations in Austria. Therefore, SOE had to recruit German speaking agents, who were ready to enter Austria, to collect intelligence, to do sabotage, to look for resistance groups and to stir up opposition against t...