AUSTRIA: Poison Please

Three months after Vienna’s capture by the Red Army, Russian officers for the first time permitted Allied correspondents into Austria’s capital last week. A token force of U.S. and British troops arrived just before. Among the newsmen were TIME Correspondents Tom Durrance and William Walton, and LIFE Photographer John Phillips. Shortly after their arrival, Durrance and Phillips were arrested by the Russians.. They did not like Photographer Phillips snapping scenes that might show the Russians in a bad light. In a short time the two Americans were released.

Walton reported his first impressions of Vienna:

Gaunt and Beautiful. The glittering Staatsoper on the Ringstrasse, which circles the inner city, had been gutted. The walls of Saint Stephen’s stood gaunt and beautiful. The interior was gone. At the Chancellery a bomb had sheered away the room where Dollfuss was assassinated. One wing of the hideous neo-Roman Parliament was burned out. Both the Burgtheater and the Belvedere were in ruins. Franz Josef’s Hofburg was scarred but essentially undamaged. So were Schönbrunn and the Rathaus. One bridge remained over the Danube Canal. About 70% of the inner city, where the big stores, shops, hotels, restaurants and public buildings are concentrated, were in ruins or useless because of damage.

“I Am Hunger.” The Viennese, who have eaten probably six or seven hundred calories daily for the past few months, moved with the ominous languor of people who have been hungry a long, long time. Old women, poorly dressed but neat in their poverty, approached jeeps with notes in rudimentary English: “Give me bread please. I am hunger.”

Men & women coming away from food queues tore off chunks of bread and gnawed at them without waiting to get home. All shops were closed except food markets, and their stocks were pitifully limited. Partial electric service has been restored, but there is no gas yet, and some Viennese families have gone months without one hot meal. From the Vienna woods plod long lines of poor women, many of them barefoot, sweating and staggering under heavy loads of faggots for the city’s stoves.

$15 Chancellor. Austria’s Chancellor,

Dr. Karl Renner, 75 (whose provisional

government is recognized by Russia but not by the U.S. and Britain), is the lowest paid chief of state in Europe. Like all Austrian government employes, he receives 150 shillings ($15) a month. As Chancellor, Dr. Renner, a longtime Social Democrat, provisionally holds the presidency and portfolios of Foreign and Military Affairs. Of his nine ministers, three are members of the Volkspartei (old Christian Socialists), two are Socialists, two Communists and two without party affiliation.

Both Socialist and Volkspartei members vigorously deny that the government was formed under pressure from either Austrian Communists or Russians. To Allied eyes the Renner Government looked like a put-up job when the first news came over the Moscow radio. Now the Austrians insist that Renner sent notification simultaneously to Britain, the U.S. and Russia, but that for some mysterious reason the messages to Washington and London never got through Russian censorship.

Looting Campaign. Wrote Correspondent Durrance: since the Russians entered Vienna they have carried out a looting campaign which has left it stripped to the bone. Red redeployment troop trains leave the marshaling yards loaded with soldiers’ loot—armchairs, sofas, bicycles, statues. Gangs of soldiers have gone through entire apartments from top to bottom, forcing their way into each apartment, taking what struck their fancy. In the early days of their occupation, Red soldiers made it a habit to stop civilians in the open streets at the point of a gun, demanding their watches, bracelets, jewels, money. Three months after their entry, this still continues.

Rape stories are rampant and it is difficult to verify most of them. I do know one Viennese girl who is in the hospital now after two Red Army soldiers had killed her father and raped her. I have heard from several sources that during the first weeks here the Russians would approach an apartment house and, judging from its size, demand from the landlord that a certain number of women be delivered to them for their pleasure. Whether true or not, it is certainly true that 99 out of 100 Viennese girls live in mortal dread of the Russians. (A police official told Correspondent Walton that 200 rape cases had been reported.)

Tobacco Road to Music. The Red headquarters has been established opposite the Parliament and Volksgarten with two-story canvases of Lenin and Stalin flanking the entrance, and directly above the doorway a big hammer & sickle. Russian officers occupy the city’s three best hotels—the Bristol, the Metropole and the Imperial. They have taken every car in the city, delight in driving down the main streets at breakneck speed with horns going. Many times I have watched them deliberately force civilian pedestrians to scamper out of the way. As one correspondent remarked: “They’re like children let loose in Macy’s basement.” To me it is more like Tobacco Road put to music.

In the midst of this dismal scene the Viennese entertainment world is making a valiant effort at revival. Ten days after the Russians took the city, theaters were open again and performances going on. Neues Österreich, the organ of the three-party coalition, today listed 15 concerts, musicals or serious dramas, 14 cabarets and variety shows, 54 motion pictures. Most of the nightspots serve nothing but bad ersatz coffee or lemonade. Half of Vienna spends its day in places like these or sitting in cafés gazing sadly out of the windows upon desolate streets.

My first night in Vienna I attended a delightful performance of Wiener Blut. The music, voices and ballet were lovely. Large numbers of Russian officers accompanied by Russian WACs sat open-mouthed and goggle-eyed throughout the performance. (I’ve seen many of these amazons striding down the streets in dirty, bedraggled uniforms but wearing liberated silk stockings or evening shoes.)

It must be said that in Vienna U.S. and Red soldiers do not get along well together. Both sides display suspicion and belligerence. Minor altercations, especially at night when the Russians are quick on the trigger, have been frequent, considering the small number of Americans in the city. In addition to language difficulty, the Russians have a definite inferiority complex. Said one officer to a group of correspondents: “You cannot call us ignorant. After all, we captured Berlin and Vienna and we know how to find the best restaurant in town.”

Correspondent Walton reported one conversation that lit up like a torch the mood of many Viennese. A middle-aged Vienna woman said to him wearily: “I suppose it will be impossible for even America to send us all the food we need to survive. But the least the Allies can do is to distribute poison to those who want it. Now we don’t even have any way to commit suicide. You will see when the gas is turned on again how many of us will kill ourselves before we starve to death.”