Austria was occupied by the Allies and declared independent from Nazi Germany on 27 April 1945 (confirmed by the Berlin Declaration for Germany on 5 June 1945), as a result of the Vienna offensive. The occupation ended when the Austrian State Treaty came into force on 27 July 1955.

The Vienna offensive was an offensive launched by the Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts in order to capture Vienna, Austria, during World War II. The offensive lasted from 16 March to 15 April 1945. [6] After several days of street-to-street fighting, the Soviet troops captured the city.

In 1943, the Allies had agreed that Austria would be treated as a victim of Nazi aggression, but the ensuing Cold War put Austria at the center of a new ideological power struggle in Europe. Although the first postwar democratic City Council elections in Vienna took place in November 1945, Allied troops jointly administered and occupied Austria ...

The city of Vienna in Austria was bombed 52 times during World War II, [citation needed] and 37,000 residences of the city were lost, [citation needed] 20% of the city's housing stock. Only 41 civilian vehicles survived the raids, and more than 3,000 bomb craters were counted.

Compared to the pre-1938 situation, the territory that now forms the 22nd district north of the Danube and the 23rd district at the southern extremity of the urban area has been part of Vienna. A year later, in May 1955, the country was restored to freedom through the conclusion of the "Austrian State Treaty" ( "Staatsvertrag" ).

This was the kind of city that experienced the Second World War, which, unlike the earlier war of 1914 to 1918, directly and brutally affected the city and its residents. From 1943 the city suffered repeated Allied bombing. When the war was brought to an end in April 1945 fighting was going on in the very heart of the city.

Vienna was the capital of a large multi-national empire under the German-speaking Habsburg dynasty for five centuries. After 1918, following World War I, Vienna became the capital of the small Republic of Austria. Vienna's population of 1.9 million was 28 percent of the country's entire population in 1934.

Soviet occupation policies in Austria were to a large extent shaped by the Moscow Declaration of 1943, in which the British, Americans, and Soviets proclaimed that Austria was Germany’s first victim, but that it would also have to pay the price for its participation in Nazi aggression.

What was the impact of World War II on Austria and Vienna? How much was the city damaged? An attempt at a brief summary could look like this: With the surprising attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 began the World War II. Hitler, as the leader of the German Reich, wanted to conquer Eastern Europe. After initial successes, the war turned in ...

The major bombing of Austria started with an attack on Wiener Neustadt by U.S. command on August 13, 1943. The US air force together with the British 205th squadron carried out bombing raids on Austria until 1945 from their Italian bases.