Vienna Offensive

In March 1945 Soviet forces advanced from Hungary into Austria as part of the final campaigns on the Eastern Front. The offensive drove towards Vienna while German forces attempted to defend the approaches to the city and preserve routes through the remaining territory of the Reich.

Fighting reached Vienna in early April and the city fell to the Red Army after several days of combat. The campaign ended Nazi control of the Austrian capital and immediately raised questions about occupation, post-war political authority and the balance of influence between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

Alex Gerlis’s Vienna Spies is set in this collapsing wartime environment and turns the approaching Soviet occupation into the background for a fictional Anglo-Soviet contest over Austria’s political future.