Eastern Front · Soviet Union and Bulgaria vs Germany and Hungary
Vienna Offensive
16 March 1945 – 15 April 1945
After the failure of the last German offensive at Lake Balaton, the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts drove through western Hungary into Austria. Vienna was taken after a week of fighting, and the Soviet advance halted along the line later agreed as the occupation boundary.
Explore Vienna Offensive on the interactive map · Wikipedia
Day by day
— The counter-stroke
Ten days after the last German offensive of the war ran into the mud north of Lake Balaton, the 9th and 4th Guards Armies attack between the Vertes hills and Lake Velence. The 6th SS Panzer Army has spent its fuel and its tanks in the salient below them and is nearly cut off within a week.
— The border
Gyor falls on the 28th and the front comes apart along the whole of western Hungary. Soviet troops cross into Austria near Koszeg on the 29th and 30th, the first Allied soldiers on what had been the Reich's soil in the south. Sopron follows on 1 April.
— The city
The 4th Guards Army comes at Vienna from the south while the 6th Guards Tank Army swings right round through the Wienerwald to cut the roads west. Fighting begins in the southern districts on the 6th. Bridges over the Danube canal are taken and lost again for a week.
— Vienna cleared
The last German troops pull out over the Danube on the 13th and a Soviet detachment takes the Reichsbrucke before the demolition charges can be fired, the only big bridge in the city left standing. The fighting has cost some 18,000 Soviet dead. Karl Renner is already forming a provisional Austrian government.
— The Enns
The offensive is closed down on the 15th with the front on the Enns and in the Alpine foothills, roughly where the occupation zones were later drawn. Graz and the Semmering are still German and stay so until the surrender. The campaign has taken about 130,000 prisoners.
