Quiet Invaders Revisited

The history of Austrian immigration to the United States is a widely under-researched field of study. In 1968 the American cultural diplomat E. Wilder Spaulding published his book, The Quiet Invaders, with an Austrian publisher, Bundesverlag, but it never got the attention in American immigration literature that it deserved. Spaulding argues that the Austrians entered the US quietly and assimilated quickly into the American mainstream. They never formed what today we would call an ethnic "lobby" learned English quickly, and blended into the American mainstream without vigorously hanging onto their heritage. As a result of this quiet assimilation, there is a lapse in literature around Austrian-American immigration. The contributions to this volume present case studies and biographies of Austrian immigrants who left Austria for reasons of economic betterment, political persecution, or career improvement. It is an important contribution to American immigrant history.