Bernd Stöver. Der Kalte Krieg: Geschichte eines radikalen  Zeitalters 1947-1991. Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2007. 528 pp. EUR    24.90 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-406-55633-3.   

A German Master Narrative of the Cold War

Later this year, the end of the Cold War will be twenty years in the past. While many of the principal documentary records up to the mid-1970s are becoming available in western archives, a growing body of records is now open from former communist archives too, even though Russian opening practices and accessibility rules are not as generous and consistent as in western archives. Given the both the growing distance in time of these events and the burgeoning archival record, we should not be surprised that the Cold War continues to attract enormous interest as a central historical epoch of the twentieth century and that historians are increasingly inclined to historicize it. A number of recent Cold War histories follow this trend.[1] In his new book, German historian Bernd Stöver presents a new interpretation that breaks into the predominant phalanx of Anglo-American Cold War historiography that has established the master narratives of the Cold War.

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Günter Bischof in an one-hour radio interview with Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Vorarlberg. In German language. Originally published at ORF Vorarlber's pages: http://vorarlberg.orf.at/magazin/klickpunkt/imlaendle/stories/250078/

Professor Günter Bischof zu Gast
Dr. Günter Bischof ist gebürtiger Mellauer und seit vielen Jahren Professor für Zeitgeschichte an der Universität von New Orleans. Dort leitet er auch das "Center Austria" das enge Verbindungen zur Uni Innsbruck unterhält und Österreich in der Region präsentiert. Als vor drei Jahren eine Flut im Gefolge des Hurrikans "Katrina" weite Teile der Stadt zerstörte, verließ auch Günter Bischof mit seiner Familie die Region:

Ans Wegziehen denkt er jedoch nicht

Von Mellau bis New Orleans - wie ging das überhaupt?

Günter Bischof zum Phänomen Obama

... und zu den vorzeitigen Neuwahlen in Österreich

Please be patient while the stream buffers.

*Vladislav Zubok: A Failed Empire. The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev, Chapel Hill, NC / London: University of North  Carolina Press 2007, 488 S., 12 illus, ISBN 978-0-8078-3098-7, USD 39,95*

Rezensiert von:
Günter Bischof
Department of History, University of New Orleans

Der an der Temple University in Philadelphia lehrende Vladislav M. Zubok hat zusammen mit Constantine Pleshakov bereits 1996 mit dem Buch /Inside  the Kremlin's Cold War/ Furore gemacht und die "Kalter-Krieg-Forschung"
gründlich aufgewühlt. [1] Auf der Grundlage unzähliger Akten aus sowjetischen Archiven, Zeitzeugenbefragungen und profunder Kenntnisse nicht nur der russischen, sondern auch der  westlichen Sekundärliteratur prägten die beiden russischen Historiker  das Paradigma des /"revolutionären und imperialistischen"/ Charakters  von Josef Stalins und Nikita Chruschtschows expansiver Außenpolitik. Wie  vor ihnen bereits Vojtech Mastny [2], brachten die beiden  Historiker die zentrale Bedeutung der Ideologie für die Kremlherren wieder in den Mittelpunkt historischer Betrachtung zum Sowjetreich zurück.

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Paper for Panel “New Forms of Public Diplomacy”

Politische Gespräche, Europäisches Forum Alpbach, 26. – 29. August, 2007

Günter Bischof
Chair and Marshall Plan Professor of History and Director, CenterAustria, University of New Orleans

    In order to assess new forms of U.S. public diplomacy, one needs to know whether the old public diplomacy worked and how it was practiced. My argument here is that American Cold War “people to people” networking was probably the most successful part of the U.S. public diplomacy posture. The American style of public/private partnerships was unique – some argue it even helped bring down the iron curtain in 1989. After the Cold War ended, the U.S. took a turn towards isolationism and privileging economic over public diplomacy. Only after the 9/11 disaster and Bush’s unleashing of preemptive war in Iraq, which brought about a precipitous decline of American prestige in the world and an upsurge of anti-Americanism, did the Bush White House rediscover the necessity of public diplomacy. The public diplomacy strategy fashioned by Karen Hughes, seems to be harkening back to Cold War models of state/private networks, citizen diplomacy, buttered up by “virtual diplomacy” utilizing the new digital media.

>>> Click here to download the entire paper as a Word document 

“Am Rand der Weltgeschichte? Osttirol und die Welt,” in: Museum der  Stadt Lienz Schloss Bruck, ed., /Spurensuche 3: Randlange im Wandel:  Osttirol – 1850 bis zur Gegenwart/ (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2007), pp. 20-29.

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Towards A Life of Arnold

The usual paradigm in which the history of Austrian immigrants to the United States has been narrated is one of "the quiet invaders."[1] There is nothing quiet or bashful about Arnold Schwarzenegger, the body builder turned actor and Hollywood icon turned politico. He has been an in-your-face superstar producing serial blockbuster movies. With this image of his global star power, much of which he has very consciously cultivated, a political career was launched that brought him to Sacramento and the governorship of California in 2003. As the governor of a state comprised of almost 40 million residents (illegal immigrants included), and with aneconomy that is the sixth strongest in the world, he has perforce become a major player in the American political arena. Ever since he listened with the help of a translator to the Nixon vs. Johnson presidential race in 1968, when he first entered the United States, he has called himself a Republican.

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Günter Bischof, University of New Orleans

Paper for presentation at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo, on May 15, 2007 

“Occupation is not a science but a deep art that can only be learned through
experience.”

This essay briefly assesses the historiography on the post-World War II quadripartite occupation of Austria. I first speculate why in recent analyses of historical case studies of the United States as an occupation power, as well as in U.S. “nation building” efforts, the case study of the highly successful American occupation regime in postwar Austria is blithely ignored. Secondly, I run through the cycles of preoccupation  in contemporary history research with the Austrian occupation and note that the highpoint of occupation studies came with a cohort of Austrian “baby boomers” mining the newly opened Western archival holdings in the 1980s. Occupation studies—as has much of the scholarly engagement with political and diplomatic history--have largely fallen by the wayside as a priority in recent gender- and cultural studies driven Austrian contemporary history research. Finally, some tentative suggestions are made about what we can learn from the occupation of postwar Austria for the current occupation challenges in Iraq after the transition from war to peace in the building of a stable political and economic nation.

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Günter Bischof
Contemporary Austrian Studies
Introduction: A Surfeit of Memory?

The year 2005 produced a memory blitz in Austria of unprecedented proportions. The major commemorations celebrated were the fiftieth anniversary of the Austrian State Treaty and the end of the four-power occupation, the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the reestablishment of an independent republic, and the tenth anniversary of the Austrian accession to the European Union. A cornucopia of additional anniversaries were thrown into the hopper of the big year of commemorations: Bertha von Suttner’s Peace Nobel Prize 100 years ago, the Allied liberation sixty years ago, the establishment of the Austrian Army, the reopening of the State Opera and the national theater (the Burgtheater), and the beginning of Austrian state television, as well as the conclusion of the Austrian neutrality law and membership in the United Nations fifty years ago, and the less “round” anniversary of the beginning of Austrian soldiers serving in UN missions forty-five years ago. In the age-old tradition of Josephinian state paternalism, the federal chancellery gave marching orders to make 2005 not only a memory year (Gedenkjahr), but also a year of thoughtful reflection (Gedankenjahr).

>> Click here to read the entire essay in .pdf format