Following the end of the war, US troops controlled Tyrol for two months starting in May 1945, before administration of the occupied territory was handed over to France. While the end of the war meant the air raids were over and the danger of a destructive final battle in the streets of Innsbruck was averted, hardship and anxiety persisted. During the first three postwar years, hunger was the greatest enemy. Fiorello La Guardia, head of UNRRA (*United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration*)—which supplied war-devastated areas with basic necessities—counted Austria "...among those nations of the world closest to starvation." May 1945 was less a "month of bliss" and more freezing cold, with snow reaching all the way into the valleys. The winter of 1946/47 went down in Tyrolean climate history as particularly cold and long, followed by a summer that was exceptionally hot and dry. Crop failures reached up to 50%. The supply situation was catastrophic, especially in the city. Obtaining daily food became a life-threatening, everyday worry for the people of Innsbruck. In addition to its own citizens, thousands of Displaced Persons, liberated forced laborers, and occupation soldiers had to be fed. Milk, bread, eggs, sugar, flour, fat—there was a shortage of everything. The Tyrolean state government and the French occupation forces could not cover the required per capita kilocalorie intake. To improve the logistics for incoming supplies, the French laid the foundation for the new airport on the *Ulfiswiese* in Höttinger Au as early as 1946, which replaced the airbase in Reichenau (opened 20 years earlier) after two years of construction. Contemporary witnesses remember with horror the flown-in food cans and their far-from-tasty contents, such as whale meat, that were allocated to them. Food supply was managed through ration cards. Adults had to present confirmation from the employment office to receive these cards. Rations varied depending on the worker category: heavy laborers, pregnant women, and nursing mothers received food worth 2,700 calories. Craftsmen with light jobs, civil servants, and freelancers received 1,850 kilocalories, while office workers received 1,450 calories. Housewives and other "ordinary consumers" (*Normalverbraucher*) received 1,200 calories. Foreign relief organizations ran charitable initiatives such as soup kitchens and school feeding programs. The American welfare organization CARE (*Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe*) sent CARE packages. Many children were sent to foster households in Switzerland during the summer to regain their strength and put a few extra pounds on their bones. However, these measures were not enough for everyone. Housewives and other "ordinary consumers" in particular suffered under the low allocations. Despite the risk of being arrested, many Innsbruck residents set out for the surrounding villages to forage for food (*hamstern*). Those with money paid astronomical prices to the farmers; those without had to beg for food. In extreme cases, women whose husbands had fallen in battle, were prisoners of war, or were missing saw no other way out than prostitution. Women who became pregnant as a result faced severe verbal abuse targeted at both themselves and their offspring. Decriminalized abortion in Austria was still 30 years away. For the most part, politicians were powerless in the face of this. Satisfying all interests was impossible even in normal times. Many decisions made between the parliament in Vienna, the Tyrolean state parliament (*Landtag*), and Innsbruck City Hall were incomprehensible to the public. Office buildings and commercial enterprises were given free rein by the Innsbruck municipal electric company, while private households faced repeated restrictions on power access starting in October 1945. This disadvantage of households compared to the economy also applied to the coal supply. While children suffered from malnutrition, some enterprising farmers legally distilled profitable schnapps from fruit. The old divides between city and countryside grew larger and more bitter. Innsbruck residents accused the surrounding rural population of deliberately withholding food for the black market. Raids, thefts, and illegal logging occurred. Transports at the train station were guarded by armed units. Appropriating food from a warehouse was both illegal and an everyday reality. Hungry children and teenagers roamed the city, seizing any opportunity to get food or fuel. The first Governor of Tyrol, Karl Gruber—who had himself been part of the illegal resistance during the war—understood the situation of people rebelling against the system, but could do nothing to change it. Innsbruck Mayor Anton Melzer's hands were tied as well. It was not only difficult to reconcile the needs of all interest groups; time and again, cases of corruption and favors for relatives and acquaintances surfaced among the civil service. Gruber's successor in the governor's chair, Alfons Weißgatterer, had to weather several minor uprisings when public anger boiled over and stones were thrown at the *Landhaus* (state parliament building). The state government's response came via the *Tiroler Tageszeitung*.

„Are the broken windows that clattered from the country house into the street yesterday suitable arguments to prove our will to rebuild? Shouldn't we remember that economic difficulties have never been resolved by demonstrations and rallies in any country?“

The newspaper had been founded in 1945 under the administration of the US armed forces to promote democratization and denazification. Its first editor-in-chief, Anton Klotz (1889–1961), had worked for the conservative *Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger* before being sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp by the National Socialists. After just one year, the daily newspaper was transferred to *Schlüssel GmbH* under the leadership of ÖVP politician Joseph Moser. In the first few months after the war, a paper shortage made it the only available newspaper in the region. The second paper, the *Tiroler Nachrichten*, which began publication in late 1945, was under the direct administration of the ÖVP. Thanks to high circulation and almost direct control over the content, the Tyrolean state government was able to shape public sentiment. However, this dominance over public opinion did nothing to change reality, such as the precarious housing situation. An estimated 30,000 Innsbruck residents were homeless, living in cramped conditions with relatives, or residing in temporary barracks settlements. These included the former labor camp in Reichenau, the settlement colloquially known as the "*Ausländerlager*" (foreigners' camp) for displaced persons from formerly German areas of Europe, and the *Bocksiedlung*. Maria-Theresien-Straße, Museumstraße, the railway station district, Wilten, and Pradlerstraße would likely be much more visually appealing today had officials not been forced to quickly plug the gaps in the cityscape to create housing as fast as possible for the many homeless residents and returning soldiers. Aesthetics, however, was a luxury that no one could afford in this situation. Tens of thousands of citizens pitched in to clear the rubble and debris left behind on the streets by air raids. The exhausted population urgently needed new living space to escape the unhealthy living conditions, in which large extended families were sometimes squeezed into single-room apartments.

"The emergency situation jeopardises the comfort of the home. It eats away at the roots of joie de vivre. No one suffers more than the woman whose happiness is to see a contented, cosy family circle around her. What a strain on mental strength is required by the daily gruelling struggle for a little shopping, the hardship of queuing, the disappointment of rejections and refusals and the look of discouragement on the faces of loved ones tormented by deprivation."

What could be read in the *Tiroler Tageszeitung* was only part of the harsh everyday reality. Just as after the First World War, when the Spanish Flu claimed many victims, 1945 also saw a surge in dangerous infections. Vaccines against tuberculosis could not be delivered during the first winter, and hospital beds were in short supply.

Even though the situation eased after 1947, living conditions in Tyrol remained precarious. It took years before noticeable improvements occurred. Food rationing was finally discontinued on July 1, 1953. In the same year, Mayor Greiter was able to announce that all buildings destroyed during the air raids had been fully restored. This was also thanks to the occupying forces. The French troops under Émile Béthouart behaved very leniently and cooperatively toward their former enemy, treating the Tyrolean culture and population with friendliness and an open mind. Although people were initially hostile toward the occupying power—yet another war had been lost—the skepticism of Innsbruck's residents faded over time. Thanks to the soldiers of the *4th Moroccan Mountain Division*, many Tyroleans saw Black people for the very first time. The soldiers were especially popular among children because of the chocolates and sweets they handed out. Many locals also found employment within the French administration. The French Monument on Landhausplatz commemorates the era of the French occupation. On the *Émile-Béthouart-Steg*—the footbridge connecting St. Nikolaus and the inner city across the Inn River—a commemorative plaque encapsulates the relationship between the occupying forces and the local population:

"Came as a victor

Remained as a protector.

Returned home as a friend."

In addition to material hardship, a collective war trauma shaped society. The adults of the 1950s were products of interwar upbringing and National Socialism. Men who had fought at the front could only speak of their horrifying experiences as losers of the war within certain circles, while women usually had no platform at all to process their fears and anxieties. Domestic violence and alcoholism were widespread. Teachers, police officers, politicians, and civil servants had frequently been part of the National Socialist follower base—a demographic that did not simply vanish with the end of the war, but was merely met with a wall of silence in public life. Although a large number of proceedings against National Socialists took place at the Innsbruck People's Court under the direction of the Allied powers, the number of convictions failed to reflect the true extent of what had occurred. The vast majority of the accused went free. Particularly implicated representatives of the system were imprisoned for a time or lost their public service positions, but after serving their sentences, they were able to return to their old lives relatively unmolested—at least professionally. People not only wanted to draw a line under the past decades; the perpetrators of yesterday were needed to keep the society of today running. At the latest with the growing tensions between the superpowers and the USSR, former Nazis were viewed as the lesser evil compared to socialists and communists. The problem with this strategy of suppression was that no one took responsibility for what had happened, even though enthusiasm and support for National Socialism had been widespread, especially at the beginning. There was hardly a family without at least one member who had an inglorious history between 1933 and 1945. Shame over what had transpired since 1938 and during those years in Austrian politics blended with the fear of being treated as war culprits by the occupying powers—the USA, Great Britain, France, and the USSR—much like in 1918. An atmosphere emerged in which no one—neither the generation that took part nor the one that followed—spoke about what had taken place. This attitude long prevented any critical examination of the events since 1933. The myth of Austria as the "first victim" of National Socialism—which only slowly began to crumble with the Waldheim affair in the 1980s—was born. Police officers, teachers, judges—they were all left in their positions despite their political stance. Society needed them to keep functioning. A prime example of this generously spread blanket of forgetting, with strong ties to Innsbruck, is the biography of the physician Burghard Breitner (1884–1956). Breitner grew up in a wealthy upper-middle-class household. The Villa Breitner at Mattsee housed a museum dedicated to the German nationalist poet Josef Viktor Scheffel, who was revered by Breitner's father. After passing his school-leaving exams (Matura), Breitner decided against a career in literature in favor of studying medicine. He subsequently completed his military service and launched his medical career. In 1912/13, he served as a military doctor in the Balkan War. In 1914, he was deployed to the Eastern Front, where he was taken prisoner by Russian forces. As a physician, he selflessly cared for his comrades in the prisoner-of-war camp. It was not until 1920 that he returned to Austria from the POW camp, celebrated as a hero and the "Angel of Siberia." In 1932, his career at the University of Innsbruck began. By 1938, Breitner faced the problem that he could not provide the "Greater Aryan Certificate" (Großer Ariernachweis) due to the Jewish background of his paternal grandmother. However, thanks to his good relationship with the rector of the University of Innsbruck and key National Socialists, he was ultimately able to continue working at the university clinic. During the Nazi regime, Breitner—as head of the Innsbruck Clinic—was responsible for forced sterilizations and "voluntary castrations," even if he likely did not perform any of the surgeries personally. After the war, the "Angel of Siberia" managed, with some effort, to maneuver his way through the denazification process. In 1951, he was nominated as a candidate for the federal presidential election by the VdU (Federation of Independents), a political collecting basin for staunch National Socialists. In 1952, Breitner became Rector of the University of Innsbruck. Following his death, the City of Innsbruck dedicated an honorary grave to him at the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery). In the Reichenau district, a street is dedicated to him in the immediate vicinity of the site of the former concentration camp.