Battle for Budapest

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Siege of Budapest

Part of: Second World War

date	October 29, 1944 to February 13, 1945
place	Budapest , Hungary
output	soviet victory

Parties to the conflict
Soviet Union	German Empire Hungary
Commander
Rodion Malinowski , Fyodor Tolbuchin	Otto Wöhler , Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch , Iván Hindy
Troop strength
156,000	70,000
losses
80,000 dead soldiers	50,000 dead, 138,000 captured soldiers only among the trapped troops (188,000)
38,000 civilians dead

The fighting in and around the besieged Hungarian city of Budapest between the Soviet Red Army and Hungarian and German troops from October 29, 1944 to February 13, 1945, in the final phase of World War II , is called the Battle of Budapest .

prehistory

On September 8, 1944, the Red Army launched the East Carpathian Operation . Between October 10 and 14, 1944, strong armored troops from the 2nd Ukrainian Front and the 8th Army of Army Group South under General Infantry Wöhler in the Debrecen area fought a major tank battle. On October 23, the Soviet cavalry group Pliyev was trapped near Nyíregyháza , but it managed to fight its way out. In the second phase, the Debrecen operation (October 27-28), the Soviet Marshal Malinovsky was unable to achieve his goal of encircling the opposing forces. After the fall of Debrecen (October 20, 1944), the Soviet troops broke through several German and Hungarian lines of defense and advanced as far as the Tisza section.

In mid-October 1944 the Hungarian ruler Miklós Horthy wanted to disarm the German allies and conclude a separate armistice with the Soviet Union. This project failed, and the small Hungarian party of extremely anti-Semitic Arrow Cross members under Ferenc Szálasi became Nazi Germany's new political ally from November . The monarchist army was loyal to the new Arrow Cross government, but the pogroms and provocative marches by the black-shirted militia weakened the will of the civilian population to resist the Soviet army. The oil production in Hungary has been following the withdrawal of Romania from the wartime alliance with Germany in August 1944 and more important for Germany.

First attack on Budapest

Hungarian anti-tank gun secures an arterial road from Budapest (November 1944)

On October 29, 1944, the 2nd Ukrainian Front from the area northwest of Szeged opened the first attack on the capital Budapest. The focus was on the 46th Army, which advanced with the 2nd Guards Mechanical Corps and the 37th Rifle Corps in the direction of Kecskemét and captured this city on October 31. To protect Budapest, Colonel General Johannes Frießner had the Margaret Bridge prepared for demolition (two arches detonated by mistake on November 4th) and three tank corps deployed in the eastern apron of the city, which the Soviets were able to bring to a standstill by November 5th. While the Breith group took over the defense of Budapest, the LVII secured . Panzer Corps (General Kirchner ) the area between Cegléd and Szolnok and the IV. Panzer Corps "Feldherrnhalle" (General Kleemann ) in the Jászberény area .

After reserves had been withdrawn from Eastern Slovakia and Hungary for the planned Ardennes offensive on the western front , the four armies of the Army Group had to slowly withdraw to the west in northern Hungary as well. At the beginning of December, Adolf Hitler declared the city of Budapest a fortress .

On December 9th, Balassagyarmat fell into Soviet hands. The left wing of the 6th Guards Panzer Army penetrated the Danube at Vác , so that Budapest was also threatened by the enclosure from the north. Because of the critical military situation in Transdanubia , the General Command of the III. Panzer Corps withdrew from Budapest on December 12th and relocated to Stuhlweissenburg . The leadership was the German IX. Transferred from the SS Mountain Corps, the Hungarian Lieutenant General Imre Kalandy was appointed to maintain the combat discipline of the Honvéd troops in the capital.

On December 20th, the offensive of the 3rd Ukrainian Front began against the Margaret Line, which ran between Lake Platten and Lake Velence . The front of the army group Fretter-Pico (German 6th and Hungarian 3rd armies) was breached quickly, on December 22nd, Stuhlweissenburg fell. On December 24th, the Soviet 18th Panzer Corps (Major General Pyotr D. Goworunenko) and the 2nd Guards Mechanical Corps (General Sviridow) were able to advance with 228 tanks over a width of 60 kilometers via Bicske to Gran to the Danube. Budapest was cut off from the west, the German 8th Army was pushed back to the northern bank of the Danube.

The siege

On December 25, 1944, Budapest was completely enclosed by the Soviet 46th Army (south and west sections) and the 7th Guard Army (north and east sections) . In the resulting cauldron there were around 800,000 remaining inhabitants as well as 70,000 soldiers, including 37,000 Hungarian and around 33,000 German combat troops.

• German IX SS Mountain Corps under the command of SS Obergruppenführer Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch with the two SS cavalry divisions Florian Geyer (SS Brigadführer Rumohr ) and Maria Theresia (SS Brigadführer Zehender ), the remnants of the 271st Volksgrenadier Division (Lieutenant Colonel) Schöning , later Lieutenant Colonel Kündiger) as well as the remnants of the 13th Panzer Division (Major General Schmidhuber ).
• Hungarian 3rd Army under Colonel General Iván Hindy with remnants of the 1st Armored Division (General János Vértessy), 10th Infantry Division (Colonel Sandor Andras) and the 12th Reserve Division (General Istvan Baumann).

In addition to the besiegers of Budapest, which the 2nd Ukrainian Front provided Marshal Malinowski in December 1944, troops from the 3rd Ukrainian Front Tolbuchin as well as parts of the Romanian 1st Army and Hungarian red volunteer units had come, so that in mid-January 1945 there were around 177,000 men were involved in the containment. After the Romanian VII Corps withdrew from the eastern siege front, the number of troops on the 2nd Ukrainian Front fell back to around 156,000 men.

Relief battles in Transdanubia

Soviet troops counterattack south of Budapest

Hitler forbade any attempt to break out of Budapest by the occupation and insisted on an immediate counter-offensive because of the last oil fields in western Hungary, which were important for the war effort. The Chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Guderian , had to reluctantly agree to Operation Konrad I at the end of December and send the 96th and 711th Infantry Divisions and 200 tanks to Hungary as reinforcements. On January 7th, Guderian went to Tata to personally see the operations. The IV. SS Panzer Corps ( 3rd and 5th SS Panzer Divisions ) had already started a relief attack to Budapest on January 1st between Tata and Almasfüzito, while from the north the 96th Infantry Division crossed the Danube at Süttö with assault boats, to stab in the rear of the Soviet 46th Army. The attack was able to overcome the Gerecse Mountains by January 6 , but then stopped on the Bicske and Zsámbék line. The northern group managed to take Gran on January 6, 1945 and two days later to reach the northwestern apron of Budapest at Pilisszentlelek.

The attack of the III, which started in the Konrad II company on January 7, 1945. Panzer Corps ( 1st , 3rd and 23rd Panzer Divisions ) from the Várpalota area and southeast of Mór started promisingly. The 1st Cavalry Corps of General Harteneck was deployed against Csákvár , the 3rd Panzer Division took the place Sarkeresztes on January 8th. On January 12th, the Breith group got stuck on the Stuhlweissenburg-Zamoly line at the resistance of the 4th Guard Army . The 20th Guards Rifle Corps (General NI Biryukov ) in the main attack area near Zamoly was reinforced in good time by the 7th mechanized corps. The IV. SS Panzer Corps with the 5th SS Division “Wiking” was still 21 kilometers from Budapest west of Gran on January 11 and got stuck there.

On January 20, 1945, the official Hungary concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union and entered the war against the German Reich.

For Operation Konrad III , which ran between January 19 and 27, the IV. SS Panzer Corps under SS-Obergruppenführer Gille was relocated from the Danube to Stuhlweissenburg in the section of the Hungarian II Corps in order to attack between Lake Balaton and Polgárdi . On January 22nd, the 3rd SS Panzer Division succeeded in retaking Stuhlweissenburg, on January 24th it penetrated the southern part of the city of Baracska and on January 26th reached the Danube north of Adony , only 25 kilometers from Budapest away. The 26th and 27th Armies of the 3rd Ukrainian Front then halted the German attack along the Vali Bach.

On January 27th, Marshal Tolbuchin launched a counterattack, the attack wedge driven by the Germans to the Danube was attacked on the flanks. In the north, the 7th Mechanized Guard Corps and the 23rd Panzer Corps, operating together with the 104th Rifle Corps, attacked in the direction of Veréb: The Soviets lost 122 tanks, but the Germans had lost around 70 tanks and 35 guns and had to Clear most of the land you have just gained. At the end of January 1945, all German relief attempts had failed, and the lack of ammunition and food became more and more threatening.

Last fighting in town, breakout and surrender

At the beginning of February the front stretched in the Buda bridgehead at the Margaret Bridge to Széll-Kálmán-Platz and further on at the northern corner of the Blutwiese to the mouth of Kékgolyó utca, where the Soviet troops were already standing in front of the South Station. On February 4, the Soviet troops attacking from Orbán Mountain broke through the defensive line and reached Németvölgyi utca, on February 6 the Eagle Mountain was encircled. On February 9th, the 25th Guards Rifle Division succeeded in taking the German positions on the Kleiner Gellertberg. The southern station fell completely into Soviet hands. On the following day, Soviet tanks penetrated to Döbrenteiplatz, the connection between the citadel, Lagymanyos and the castle was lost.

On the morning of February 11th, city commander Pfeffer-Wildenbruch called a council of war and decided to attempt the breakout in smaller groups. About 17,000 men trapped in Budapest carried out a desperate attempt to escape, which ended in disaster. Major General Schmidhuber fell in battle near the Heuplatz (Széna tér). On the night of February 12, the main outbreak to the west took place through the positions of the 75th Rifle Corps over Zugliget and Nagykovacsi.

On February 13, the last German units surrendered . The Wehrmacht High Command justified the effort in Budapest with the strategic mission to defend Vienna there. Only about 700 German soldiers reached the positions of the Wehrmacht by February 16, 1945.

consequences

The battle for Budapest cost 100,000 German and Hungarian soldiers their lives, with almost 50,000 dead among those trapped. Twenty divisions and about 1,000 Red Army aircraft were tied up for 51 days. The Soviet leadership saw the capture of Budapest as a prerequisite for further advance. Of over 160,000 dead on both sides in the Budapest city area, only around 5,000 soldiers and civilians could be identified by name. Thousands of corpses were carried away by the Danube and tens of thousands are still buried in the parks, in the city ​​forest and in the Buda Mountains .

The total loss of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts in the Budapest Offensive (October 29, 1944 to February 13, 1945) amounted to 320,000 soldiers, 80,082 of them dead; plus 1,766 tanks and self-propelled guns, 4,127 guns and grenade launchers and 293 combat aircraft.

Despite the reinforcement by the 6th Panzer Army at the end of February , which was relocated from the western front to Hungary in February 1945 after the failure of the Ardennes offensive , the German troops were no longer able to retake Budapest. After the failed Lake Balaton offensive (March 6th to 14th), the Soviet counteroffensive, which opened on March 16, broke through the German front after two days of fighting. The persecution in the north-west led the Red Army to the border of the German Empire in Burgenland on March 29, and on April 3 the battle for Vienna was initiated.

See also

• Unke-Nikolaus company
• Battle for Hungary

literature

• Krisztián Ungváry : The Battle of Budapest 1944/45. Stalingrad an der Donau , FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7766-2120-6 .
• Krisztián Ungváry: Hungarian theater of war. In: Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.): Die Ostfront 1943/44 , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 849-958.
• Krisztián Ungváry: The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11985-5 .
• Peter Gosztony : Final battle on the Danube , Fritz Molden Verlag, Vienna 1969, pp. 107–158.

Web links

Commons : Battle for Budapest  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Kornelia Papp: The battle for Budapest , at DHM
• Article from “Die Zeit” on K. Ungváry's dissertation
• Battle for Hungary by Krisztián Ungváry in the Budapest newspaper

Individual evidence

1. ^ Period of the "Operation Budapest" of the Red Army ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ БУДАПЕ́ШТСКАЯ ОПЕРА́ЦИЯ 1944–45 , in: Great Russian Encyclopedia, Volume?, Year?
3. ↑ Kornelia Papp: The Battle of Budapest 1944 , at LeMO
4. ↑ Calendar of the City of Vienna, “Vienna 1945/13. February"
5. ^ Period of the "Operation Budapest" of the Red Army ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Krisztián Ungváry: The Battle of Budapest, p. 30.
7. ↑ Krisztián Ungváry: The Battle of Budapest, Herbig Verlag Munich 1999, p. 121.
8. ↑ WI Festjkow / KA Kalashnikov: Красная Армия в победах и поражениях 1941-1945, Moskwa 2003, pp. 150-160.
9. ^ Peter Gosztony: Endkampf an der Donau , Molden Verlag, Vienna 1969, p. 126.
10. ↑ Krisztián Ungváry: The Battle of Budapest , p. 240 f
11. ↑ LeMO - Chronicle 1945
12. ↑ Krisztián Ungváry: The Battle of Budapest, pp. 250–253 f
13. ↑ Krisztián Ungváry: The Battle of Budapest 1944/45 - Stalingrad on the Danube , FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7766-2120-6 , p. 292 and p. 304.
14. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The War in Austria 1945 . In: Writings of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna (Military Science Institute). Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984. p. 103.
15. ↑ Kai Guleikoff: "Young freedom": Stalingrad on the Danube: Ungváry's book on the battle for Budapest : [1]