"The White Horses of Vienna" is Kay Boyle's short story of Nazi sympathizers in Austria in the 1930s. The main characters are a village doctor, his wife and a student doctor from Vienna whose encounter symbolizes the two political factions at work in Austria prior to World War II.

The unnamed village doctor suffers an ankle injury as he climbs the surrounding mountains at night. The doctor is middle aged yet spry, and the mountainside walks are normally no problem. On this particular night, though, the doctor is injured, and some of the other men with him must help him down the mountain.

The doctor lives in a remote house that he built himself on the mountainside so that the villagers cannot reach him at home unless there is an emergency. The doctor's wife is a skilled nurse and helps her husband in his medical...