The Soviets lost more than 20 million soldiers and civilians during World War II, and they were understandably enraged after fighting their way across Poland and Hungary to reach the Third Reich. Austria had been a willing participant in the Reich, and as such was a target of the vengeful Soviet army.
The Soviets were just as brutal in Hungary which had fought (albeit mostly unwillingly) on the Nazi side. Many refugees fled ahead of the Soviet army into the Klingenbach area. One wonders if they stopped their flight in Burgenland to be eventually brutalized by the Soviets anyway or if they kept walking until they reached the Allied troops.
The Soviet army reached Burgenland in February, 1945. Of course there is a lot more information about what they did in the capital city of Vienna, but one presumes they treated the citizens of Burgenland and in villages like Klingenbach the same way. In Vienna they raped over 100,000 females from girls to old women. There was a high death rates among babies born as a result of those rapes. The Viennese citizens subsisted on less than 1,000 calories per day.
After the war Austria was divided into four occupation zones. The French occupied the purple zone, the U. S. the yellow, the British the pink, and the Soviet Union the green, which includes all of Burgenland.
The Soviets didn't include Austria in its "sphere of influence" (euphemism for Iron Curtain) in central and eastern Europe. Stalin had agreed during the war that Austria would be restored to its pre-1938 borders, but after the war Austria had to be "punished" for its responsibilities during the war. It had to be demilitarized, denazified and democratically reconstructed. The Soviets intended that Austria would develop into a Moscow-friendly, socialist state but after early elections in which the Austrian communists were repudiated by the electorate, the Soviets became even more punitive. They began a systematic plan of economic exploitation, expropriating over 450 formerly German-owned businesses during that time, and by 1955 most were close to bankruptcy. They also placed almost all of Austria's oil fields (Austria was the third largest oil producer in Europe, after the Soviet Union and Romania) under their administration.
Cold War Europe with tiny Klingenbach (marked by the red dot) in the middle again.
So look at little Austria (along with traditionally neutral Switzerland) sandwiched between the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact countries and the pro-western countries. What a spot!
This is the Zollhaus (Customs House) in Klingenbach where people entering or leaving Austria would have to stop. You can just see the border barriers that blocked the street in front of the house.
Today that building is called the Upper House and is owned by Hotwell It contains several flats and a doctor's office,and we hold parties in the basement.
This is typical of the parties held in the basement that used to be the detention area.
Now here's one I don't get. Everything in the basement from the Cold War era is gone - except this one, old, nonworking typewriter that sits on the end of the bar.
These refugees fleeing the Soviet Zone came right through Klingenbach in 1951. Notice that the barrier is up - the Austrians were very welcoming of refugees from the Eastern Zone.
Things continued in this way for several years. Contrary to earlier promises, Stalin refused to remove Soviet troops from eastern Austria. Not until after his death in 1953 did significant numbers of Austrian POWs return home, and not until the emergence of Nikita Khruschev in 1955 did the Soviet Union finally pull its troop from Burgenland. Historians believe that Austria was Khruschev's showcase for his policy of "peaceful coexistence." Final negotiations among the four occupying powers required Austria to proclaim "everlasting" neutrality, a price the Austrian parliament agreed upon on October 26, 1955, a national holiday ever since.
During the Soviet occupation life continued in Burgenland. The farmers continued to plant the vineyards. This picture is from 1950.
This picture of a Burgenland woman in traditional peasant dress also dates from ca. 1950. One wonders how fashion changed for women during this era or if it did at all. The Soviets have never been known for "fashion sense."
The residents of Klingenbach must have been relieved when the Soviet troops left in 1955, but they were shocked beyond belief a year later when the Hungarian Revolution, a popular uprising by democratic forces, was brutally crushed on October 23, 1956. A shockwave of Hungarian refugees flooded over the border, many of them into Klingenbach.
They came on foot of course, but also ...
by bus ...
by wagon ...
by car ...
by truck ...
by horse-drawn wagons ...
even by tractor.
So the Cold War continued. I've heard that sometimes the traffic jams to cross the border (I presume both ways) could be days long.
The Austrian border at Klingenbach ...
and the Hungarian border at Sopron - just a few hundred feet down the road.
Nowadays you just drive straight through both checkpoints, the traffic only slowing down enough not to run into the booths. I wonder why they don't tear them down, but then I've heard that over here it costs too much to tear things down; they just let them rot and fall apart.
Here are Customs Officers in 1970.
The Soviets constructed the "anti-Fascist Protective Barrier," or as we in the West called it, the Iron Curtain from the Baltic Sea to Yugoslavia. The border near Klingenbach was a deadly zone of minefields and barbed wire. Local trains traveling from the north to the south of Burgenland operated as "Corridor trains," with doors locked as they traversed Hungarian territory.
This is one of the Hungarian border watchtowers.
And a similar, abandoned, watchtower today. Note that the woods have grown up around it.
So things continued for decades. The Soviets did cleanse the minefields from 1965 to 1971 because people were often harmed by them, even on the Austrian side of the border. Some thought this was a sign that the Soviet Union was considering opening the borders, but things didn't really change until Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and inaugurated his policy of glasnost.
Some historians say that the Cold War ended in Klingenbach. On July 27, 1989 the Foreign Ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, cut the Iron Curtain in Klingenbach.
It was ostensibly just a symbolic act, but it had far-reaching consequences. Hungary's budding opposition organized a picnic at the Austrian border to press for greater political freedom and to promote friendship with their Western neighbors. There were 80,000 Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, but these Hungarians were undaunted. There were greater things destined for that day because among the 10,000 participants were 600 East Germans who had more than a picnic on their minds - they planned to escape to the West. A decision by a simple Hungarian border guard not to fire on them changed history. The East Germans entered Austria through Klingenbach where they were heartily welcomed. Tens of thousands of East Germans followed later, many of them entering the West through Klingenbach. It must have been heady times for this little village!
After 1990 Burgenland - and Klingenbach of course - regained its traditional role as a bridge between the eastern and central parts of Central Europe. When Hungary and Slovenia later joined the European Union, the cross-border links were further strengthened. And then in 2007, border controls ceased to exist in the region. Indeed, we now drive frequently to Hungary to dine, shop or sightsee. The Cold War, except for the dilapidated border crossings, is just a memory.
This is how the cold war and ugly rules stared ending.
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