The city of Vienna celebrated the anniversary of its "liberation" with ceremonies at the Red Army monument in Stalin Square. In 1946, the myth that Austria, where Hitler and Eichmann were born, was somehow the innocent victim of the Nazis was being created and Stalin seemed well on his way to achieve Hitler's dream of complete domination of continental Europe.Stalin Square formerly was known as Schwartzenberg Square and would remain Stalin Square until the 1956 invasion of Hungary. At this time, Austria, like Germany, was divided into zones of occupation split between the four Allied superpowers. Vienna, which was within the Soviet zone, was administered by all four. The four commanding generals of the Allied forces took part in the official ceremony. After the military brass left, the parade continued with long columns of Communist and Socialists who were reviewed by members of the Austrian Cabinet. According to The Sunday Times one group carried a banner that read "The Red Army saved us from the atom bomb." The newspaper account reported that the participants seemed wan and listless, as if they had trouble summoning up the energy to participate after a winter of extreme hardship.Or maybe they were just not into it.
Iran was a trouble spot in spring of 1946. Russian and Azerbaijani troops still occupied northern Iran. Elections were scheduled ry after they left. A deputy from the country's leading right wing party asked for UN supervision of the elections, charging that the ruling Tudeh Party was influenced by the Soviets and would not allow a fair election. Meanwhile Tudeh Party members were clashing with rightists in Isfahan and elsewhere in Iran. The Tudeh Party called for "vigorous action" against the "terrorists," who allegedly were attacking their supporters in outlaying provinces. At this time the Tudeh Party was a broad alliance in which intellectuals and civil servants played a leading role, but it would lose support as it increasingly aligned itself with Soviet interests, including ceding territory and granting oil concessions to the Russians.
The Soviet Army paper Red Star denounced US efforts to supply witnesses to speak on behalf of General Draja Mikhailovitch, the Serbian former War Minister, being tried as a traitor by Tito's government. The article specifically criticized The Times for saying that it was not yet clear whether Mikhailovitch was a hero or a traitor. He initially had opposed the Nazis but was accused later of collaboration with the Italian Fascists in a campaign against Tito's Communist partisan forces and also of conducting a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from the territories he controlled. He was convicted and executed. Truman later awarded him a Medal of Freedom posthumously. Outside of extreme Serbian nationalists, most present day commentators, even conservatives, concur that his forces collaborated at times with the Axis and committed atrocities against Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Moslems .
Meanwhile British and American troops were guarding the borders of the ethnically mixed city of Trieste and province of Venezia Giulia against threatened incursion by Yugoslav troops. Historically the area had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The urban areas had been largely Italian speaking and the rural areas Slovenian. There had been sizable German-speaking, Hungarian and Jewish minorities as well. The area had been split between Italy and Serbia after the first world war. During the Second World War, the Italian-ruled area had been home to fierce resistance to the Fascists and their policy of forced Italianization and had been occupied by the Yugoslav Partisans by war's end. After the war, the formerly Italian-ruled area was divided into two districts, one under Yugoslavian rule and the other becoming a British and American occupation zone. Border tensions would continue for several years after the war. The Italian majority in the Allied zone accused Yugoslavia of attempting to annex Trieste and the Italian territory. Yugoslavia accused the Allies of employing former collaborators in the local police force and sheltering war criminals. After the war, many of the Italians in the Yugoslavian areas escaped to the Italian side with many of the Slovenes in the west making the reverse journey.
Another article covered the firm Turkish resistance to Soviet demands for territorial concessions and Turkish accusations that the Soviet Union sought to undermine the Turkish government. According to this story, Turkey was willing to fight Russia even if they had to go it alone. Turkey remained neutral until the final months of the war when it had joined the Allies. According to the news report, it had feared Russian wartime occupation as much as German invasion. The Times reporter called the country a police state but noted that it had the support of its populace. He also noted the draconian methods that had been used to expel the minority Armenian and Greek populations.