Linking Arms: Central Europe´s Weapons Sector, 1954-1994

Czechoslovakia and Austria were two of the main weapons producers of the Cold War, but are rarely thought of among the conflicts major players. Moreover, if research has shed important light on arms and their uses in regions like the Middle East and Africa, then the conditions in which they were made are less clearly understood. Focusing on arms workers, businesspeople and politicians in Czechoslovakia and Austria between 1954 and 1994, Linking Arms corrects this, arguing that smallness allowed representatives of Czechoslovakia and Austria in the arms trade room to maneuver and a relative lack of scrutiny not enjoyed by larger players. We reveal, furthermore, how similarities and continued connections characterized the experiences of those in the arms sector in Central Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain, despite the Cold War`s political shifts. Linking Arms tests how infrastructures, technological know-how, and production techniques dating from the Habsburg Era and the Second World War continued to shape the international trajectories of Austria and Czechoslovakias arms industries into the Cold War. The project reveals the influence wielded by small states, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the periods arms trade. By taking a transnational approach, it illuminates the Cold Wars significant grey arms trade and techniques of sanctions evasion spanning ideological and geographical divides. It thus enriches: A) Central European history, B) Cold War history, and C) transnational history. Using oral histories, business, police and government files, we compare Austrian and Czechoslovak production and distribution strategies, and map actor networks common to both. A grant such as WEAVE allows multiple researchers to approach the topic from different angles beyond national borders. Arms production shaped interactions between workers, businesspeople, and politicians in Central Europe and underlay the regions relationship with the rest of the world. By mapping this, Linking Arms demonstrates that political ruptures were less important for the regions arms sector than previously assumed. Spotlighting the weapons that were most prevalent and destructive during the Cold War, it marries two often separately-told stories: of European economic stability on the one hand, and of conflict beyond the European continent on the other.