41 Days. End of the War 1945 – Culmination of Violence.

On March 29, 1945, Soviet troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front under Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin crossed what is now the Austrian border near Klostermarienberg (Burgenland). In the west, French and American troops marched into the country on April 27 and 28 respectively. The final phase of National Socialist rule in Austria had begun. The 41 days from March 29 to May 8, 1945, the day of the surrender of the National Socialist German Reich, saw an intensification of the acts of violence committed by the Nazi regime of terror on Austrian soil. Hungarian Jewish forced laborers were sent on death marches from where they had been digging defenses along the “South East Wall” towards the Mauthausen concentration camp. Those no longer able to walk were shot on the spot, often by local guards. US air crews who were shot down became the victims of mob law. Opponents of the regime and Jews in hiding were put on death lists and hunted down. Hundreds of soldiers who refused to carry on fighting in the senseless battle for “final victory” were convicted as deserters by summary courts-martial and executed. The attempt by a military resistance group to hand over Vienna without a fight failed. Three of its members were hanged at Floridsdorfer Spitz on April 8 – when Soviet troops were already fighting in parts of the city. The battle for the liberation of Vienna from April 7 to 13, 1945, cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and many civilians.

Credit: "41 Days. End of the War 1945 – Culmination of Violence." An Exhibition on the Final Weeks of the National Socialist Terror in Austria. Photographs by Stefan Oláh, Authors: Dieter A. Binder, Georg Hoffmann, Monika Sommer, Heidemarie Uhl