Vienna's Turn

Last week came old Vienna's turn on the Nazi torture rack. The Germans had willed that the city of 2,000,000 Austrians should die as Budapest had died -- slowly, to gain a little more time for Naziism. But this week it seemed that the Red Army would foil that murder by swift conquest. Vienna might escape death, though it would be gravely wounded.

As the smoke of burning buildings swirled up to the spire of 800-year-old Saint Stephen's church, its bells pealed as they had in 1683, when the Turks were at the city's southern walls. But now the ancient bells pealed a Nazi call for Austrians to go out and die with their beautiful city. Said a Nazi broadcaster: "Now it is your turn."

Not every Viennese was willing to die in a Nazi delaying action. The Russians reported risings of anti-Nazis within the city. Transport workers refused to unload trains. There were reports that assassins had killed Vienna's defender, tough SS General Sepp Dietrich, trusted commander of Hitler's elite bodyguard troops.

The Germans themselves fought desperately enough. Vienna was the gateway to the Austrian and Bavarian Alps. It would have to hold if the Nazi hope of retreat to an Alpine redoubt was to be something more than the last act of a suicide. The Germans had labored mightily to build Vienna's defenses. In the orchard country to the south, cherry and apricot trees spread their blossoms over zigzagged trench works. On the heights at the north of the city the Germans had massed their guns to fire over the parks and palaces into the industrial suburbs.

At the Sides. But the Germans had not yet solved the Red Army's technique of taking bastioned cities by complex, encircling attacks. As they had at Budapest, the two big armies of Marshals Fedor I. Tolbukhin and Rodion Y. Malinovsky struck swiftly at the sides. Cossack horsemen slashed into the eastern approaches after crossing the Morava River. From a flotilla of small boats on the Danube, Red raiders leapfrogged ashore at night to attack from the rear. Infantrymen infiltrated the green Vienna Woods to the west, slammed over the main roads, then cut swiftly to the Danube, north of the city. Vienna was almost surrounded. Then the Russians burst through, by this week were battling in the parks and palace grounds in the center of the city.

Another Strong Heave? All along the broad eastern front the Russians were seemingly ready for their own last strong heave. General Andrey I. Yeremenko's Fourth Ukrainian Army inched in on Teschen and the Moravian Gap entry to the Czech industrial complex. There were rumblings of readiness from Marshals Ivan Konev's and Georgi Zhukov's fronts before Dresden and Berlin.

Hastily the Nazis changed commanders in the east, upped Colonel General Ferdinand Schoerner to Field Marshal, presumably sacked Colonel General Heinz Guderian. The time seemed right for the eastern front to erupt again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.