The only major German force facing the Soviet attackers was the German II SS Panzer Corps of the 6th SS Panzer Army, along with ad hoc forces made up of garrison and anti-aircraft units. The ' O-5 Resistance Group,' Austrians led by Carl Szokoll, wanting to spare Vienna destruction, actively attempted to sabotage the German defenses and to aid the entry of the Red Army. Involved in this action were the Soviet 4th Guards Army, the Soviet 6th Guards Tank Army, the Soviet 9th Guards Army, and the Soviet 46th Army. Baden and Bratislava were overrun on 4 April.Īfter arriving in the Vienna area, the armies of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front surrounded, besieged, and attacked the city. On the same day, Soviet troops approached Vienna from the south after they overran Wiener Neustadt, Eisenstadt, Neunkirchen and Gloggnitz. On 2 April, Vienna Radio denied that the Austrian capital had been declared an open city. Romanian troops, that were on the Allied side since King Michael's Coup, also took part in the offensive. Having secured his right wing by 2nd Ukrainian Front, Tolbukhin was now ready to advance into Austria and take Vienna. On 30 March the Front crossed also the Nitra river and quickly rushed across the Danubian Lowland towards Bratislava. On 25 March, the 2nd Ukrainian Front launched the Bratislava–Brno offensive by crossing the Hron river. After they took Sopron and Nagykanizsa, they crossed the border between Hungary and Austria. In the Spring of 1945, the advance of Soviet Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Front through western Hungary gathered momentum on both sides of the Danube. The Germans desperately prepared defensive positions in an attempt to guard the city against the rapidly arriving Soviets. Īfter the failure of Operation Spring Awakening ( Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen), Sepp Dietrich's 6th SS Panzer Army retreated in stages to the Vienna area. As a result, the success of a Soviet offensive against Austria and subsequent liberation by the Red Army of a large part of the country would have been very beneficial for subsequent postwar negotiations with the Western Allies. Joseph Stalin reached an agreement with the Western Allies prior to April 1945 concerning the relative postwar political influence of each party in much of Eastern and Central Europe however, these agreements said virtually nothing about the fate of Austria, then officially considered to be merely the Ostmark area of Greater Germany after the Anschluss. Vienna had been bombarded continuously for the year before the arrival of Soviet troops, and many buildings and facilities had been damaged and destroyed. 3.1 Final orders of battle (after the Vienna offensive).

Siege of vienna