Following the Depression, the Civil War and the transformation of the country into a German province in the late 1930s and the Second World War, Austria suffered economically. Austria was also politically diminished due to its status as an occupied country until 1955. As a result of a newly achieved political consensus within the country, production and retail of alcoholic beverages were finally released of the restrictions that had been raised for decades. Alcoholic beverages became 'ordinary goods' with circumscribed, controllable risks, and responsibility for the consequences of alcohol consumption was delegated to the individual.
