Nathan Marcus

Defeat or liberation are usually understood as a rupture, but important continuities link Vienna’s collaborationist Nazi period to that of liberation and democracy. This project looks at the black market in Vienna from 1943 to 1948 as the continuous product of both economic warfare and of military defeat, linking the years of war with the postwar period. Studying how black-marketeers, lawyers, policemen or judges thought about what it meant to be a good citizen during these years will shed new light on Austria’s transition from Nazi collaborator to sovereign Republic. Austria’s trajectory following the Second World War was unique. Although considered a defeated enemy, Austrians argued they had become the first victims of Nazi aggression in 1938. The project will therefore help us to understand how Austrians––not unlike most citizens of European countries that came under Nazi rule––failed to come to terms with their own Nazi past.