Soviet troops reached the border from Hungary at the end of March 1945 and captured Vienna after two weeks of savage fighting by the middle of April. By the end of 1945 the Soviet occupiers had acquiesced in the creation of a provisional government under Karl Renner which immediately came into line with the tide of history by endorsing the 1943 Moscow Declarations and repudiating the 1938 annexation. War formally ended in May 1945, and with it the National Socialist chapter in Austrian (and European) history. When he was released from prison Viktor Riemann was already relatively close to home and in July 1945 he became a contributing editor on the newly launched Salzburger Nachrichten (daily newspaper). Austria had been divided into four zones of military occupation: Salzburg had ended up not in the Soviet occupation zone but in the US occupation zone, and initially the newspaper's publication was under the close control of General Eisenhower's twelfth army corps. By the end of 1945 Reimann had become deputy editor in chief, a position he retained till 1948. There are nevertheless suggestions that his (at this stage) pro-US political stance sometimes led to difficulties with senior colleagues at the paper.