Walter M. Iber, Die Sowjetische Mineralölverwaltung in Österreich: Zur Vorgeschichte der OMV 1945-1955

1At the end of the Second World War, Austria was the third-largest oil producer in Europe after the Soviet Union and Romania. Austria’s petroleum reserves and oil industry facilities, concentrated in the country’s northeast, represented a precious treasure for the Soviet occupational force. When the Red Army entered the “Ostmark” in the spring of 1945, Moscow was already well-informed about Austria’s resources and economic potential. Walter M. Iber argues in his recent study on the Austrian oil industry during the Soviet military occupation from 1945 to 1955 that Moscow from the very beginning focused on the exploitation of these rich petroleum resources in the Vienna Basin. This became evident when Soviet soldiers immediately occupied the oil fields of Lower Austria after the invasion, confiscated large parts of the petroleum industry as war booty, and started to dismantle heavy machinery and drilling rigs. The facilities were shipped to and rebuilt in the Soviet Union, whose