Austrian police came out in force on Wednesday during demonstrations by anti-fascists and right-wing activists in the Austria capital on Thursday marking the anniversary of Germany's capitulation fifty-seven years ago.

Some 2,000 police, armed with water cannons, turned parts of Vienna into no-go zones, putting up barricades around Heroes' Square, where Hitler addressed enthusiastic crowds after Austria was absorbed into Nazi Germany in 1938.

Several thousand students and left-wing activists gathered at Vienna University and marched through downtown denouncing fascism and right-wing groups. Several carried Soviet flags. One banner read, "No room for Nazis", another, "Haider is Hitler," referring to Austria's far-right populist politician.

At the same time, some 400 members of right-wing student groups held a torch-lit parade under police escort to a courtyard inside the Hofburg palace complex. There they held a commemoration ceremony for Nazi soldiers who died in the war. Earlier, representatives of their groups had been allowed to lay a wreath on the grave of the unknown soldier in Heroes' Square.

"We will not tolerate that the leftist mob decides who commemorates whom and when in this country," Ewald Stadler told fellow right-wing students before the parade.

Police put the total number of demonstrators at 3,000; organizers said that number was closer to 6,000.

Despite the numbers and worries on the part of city officials and shop owners, little trouble was reported outside of minor skirmishes with police.

Heightened Tension

The demonstrations came at a sensitive time in Europe, when far-right parties are seeing a resurgence in mainstream politics, and in the wake of Monday's assassination of the Dutch right-wing populist politician Pim Fortuyn.

Austria was eager to avoid any incitement of Nazi sympathies. The country is still smarting after being ostracized by the EU two years ago when Haider's far-right Freedom Party entered into the coalition government.

The decision to allow the right-wing student groups at all had provoked weeks of political debate in the country.

In the end, Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and Vice-Chancellor Riess-Passer, who heads the Freedom Party, had defended the wreath-laying ceremony. They said it was a traditional commemoration of soldiers who had lost their lives.

"The victims of war and suffering should never be used for political purposes," Riess-Passer told reporters. "And nobody has the right to monopolize the commemoration of death and destruction."