They also heavily damaged the ancient and monumental St. Hitler had issued a "stay or die" order, and German soldiers fought fiercely, and to the end, for a lost cause.Įven before the Russians came, the city had suffered intensive bombing, and though the bombs were aimed at strategic targets, they managed to destroy some of the city's most important buildings, including the Staatsoper and half of the Parliament building. In thinking about what Vienna looked like in 1945, I have read enough and heard enough stories to know that the conditions were grim as Soviet soldiers attacked in early April 1945, and they became grimmer soon after that. And most were still heated by wood or coal. Many buildings, such as the one I stayed in, had apartments lacking individual toilets and bath/shower facilities. (However, Austria in 1967-68 had not yet achieved the affluence that was to come. The rebuilding started right away, and when I was in Vienna during the 1967-68 academic year, I saw few physical reminders of the destructive war that had ended twenty-two years earlier. Without such reminders as these plaques, it would be difficult today to remember that Vienna suffered extensive bomb damage during the war years. For example, a building next to the Laudongasse building (9th district) where I had a room in 1971-72 had a sign showing it had been rebuilt following the war, but no other nearby buildings had such a plaque. These signs are most frequently seen in neighborhoods around train stations, though they are scattered in a seemingly random pattern throughout the rest of the city. This sign says: This house was damaged in the war years 1939/45 and was rebuilt from the resources of the Federal Ministry of Trade and Reconstruction, under Chancellor Julius Raab, in 1955. Sign attached to a building located on Raniergasse They typically say that this building was damaged or destroyed during the war and was rebuilt in some year that followed. They are small plaques attached to the front of many buildings. Three of these flak towers were built in Vienna with walls up to eleven feet thick, and they still exist.įor more about the Vienna flak towers, see this Wikipedia article: Īmong other artifacts of World War II are small reminders of the destruction it caused. Nearby is a shorter, but still massive, concrete structure that housed anti-aircraft guns. For example, when walking down Gumpendorferstrasse between the Gürtel and the Ring, you cannot miss a huge concrete tower, now a public aquarium (Haus des Meeres), that was built as a control tower to combat WWII air raids.
If you walk around the older parts of Vienna, you can see a few artifacts from World War II.
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