![]() Its walls were breached by Turkish sappers who had tunnelled under the walls, packed the tunnels with gunpowder, and detonated the explosive charges. When after two months the relief army under the command of Polish king Jan Sobieski arrived in the first half of September, Vienna was on the brink of collapse. On 15 July 1683 Starhemberg refused an offer by the Turkish commander Kara Mustafa Pasha to capitulate, counting on the speedy arrival of an Imperial army, sent by the Habsburg emperor Leopold I who had fled his residence, and the strength of city walls which had been fortified after the first Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1529. In 1683 he was military commander of the city of Vienna, with fewer than 20,000 men to oppose about 120,000 besieging Ottomans. Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg fought in the 1660s under Imperial Lieutenant general Raimondo Montecuccoli against French and Ottoman forces. His cousin Count Guido von Starhemberg also became a famous soldier and fought as an adjutant at his side. He was born in Graz, Styria, as son of Count Conrad Balthasar von Starhemberg (1612-1687) and his first wife Countess Anna Elisabeth von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (died in 1659). By birth he was member of the House of Starhemberg. On October 25, 1955, the last foreign troops left Austrian soil.Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg (12 January 1638 – 4 January 1701) was military governor of Vienna from 1680, the city's defender during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Imperial general during the Great Turkish War, and President of the Hofkriegsrat. In return, the two superpowers granted Austria full independence. In 1955, the United States and Soviet Union reached an agreement whereby Austria declared its perpetual neutrality. ![]() Although the first postwar democratic City Council elections in Vienna took place in November 1945, Allied troops jointly administered and occupied Austria until May 1955. 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. A period of general lawlessness followed until the situation began to improve as Allied troops from other nations arrived to begin the joint occupation of Vienna.Īustria fared marginally better than Germany in the immediate postwar world. In the wake of the city’s capture, large numbers of Soviet soldiers brutalized the population and looted the city. ![]() By April 13, the battle for Vienna was over. Unable to hold out any longer, the remaining German defenders retreated northwards. Meanwhile, the 3rd Ukrainian Front moved to outflank Vienna and rushed towards Linz and Graz. The German commanders struggled to retain control of their scattered units and officers resorted to holding isolated positions. Nearly a week of heavy street fighting ensued, which destroyed many of Vienna’s historic buildings and seriously damaged all but one of the city’s bridges over the Danube River. German forces were unable to delay the well-equipped Soviet forces and quickly retreated to the heart of the city. But as the Soviet assault on Vienna’s southern suburbs began, the German forces assembled to defend the city consisted of only the depleted II SS Panzer Corps, anti-aircraft units, Hitler Youth members, and convalescing soldiers. From Hitler’s bunker beneath Berlin, the German dictator issued orders to his commanders to hold Vienna at all costs. These attacks destroyed more than a fifth of the city’s housing, an estimated 80,000 apartments. ![]() On April 13, 1945, Soviet soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts completed their conquest of Vienna, the Austrian city where Hitler had spent six years before World War I as a starving artist.īy the time Soviet soldiers approached Vienna’s suburbs on April 3, 1945, the city had already endured over 50 Allied bombing raids in the course of the war.
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