Word: vienna
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
Fritz & Hedy. Fritz Mandl was the scion of Austria's pre-Anschluss Hirtenberg Arms factory. In Vienna of the 1920's he acquired notoriety as a young viveur who gambled for high stakes, and kept fancy apartments. His grande affaire was Second Wife Hedy Kiesler (Lamarr) of Ecstasy fame...