Battle of Budapest
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| Battle of Budapest | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of World War II | |||||||
| Image:Russian Soldier Budapest.JPG A Soviet soldier writing "Budapest" in Russian on a signpost after the siege. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Combatants | |||||||
| Germany, Hungary | Soviet Union, Romania | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch | Rodion Malinovsky, Fyodor Tolbukhin | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 180,000 (90,000 for city defense) | 500,000+ (170,000 for city assault) | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| Low estimate: ~ 48,000 killed, ~ 51,000 captured, High estimate: ~ 150,000 killed or captured, Est. 40,000 civilians killed | Low estimate: ~ 70,000 killed, High estimate: ~ 160,000 killed | ||||||
| Eastern Front |
|---|
| Barbarossa – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague |
| Hungary 1944-1945 |
|---|
| Debrecen – Budapest – Balaton – Vienna Offensive |
The Battle of Budapest was a siege lasting from 29 December, 1944 to 13 February, 1945 in which Soviet forces captured the city of Budapest from German SS and Hungarian forces in World War II. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war, being comparable, in terms of casualties, to the sieges of Berlin and Stalingrad.
Contents |
[edit] General Situation
At the end of 1944, Hungary remained an "unwilling satellite" of Germany, and was seen by Germany as reluctant to take measures against Jews to the degree the Germans wished.
On 16 October, 1944, Germany forced Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy to resign, and to install Ferenc Szálasi, leader of Hungary's fascist party, Arrow Cross (Nyilaskereszt), as Prime Minister. Any hope of a peaceful outcome for Hungary was lost.
[edit] The Siege
[edit] Encircling Budapest
On 29 October, 1944, the Red Army started its offensive on Budapest. More than 1,000,000 men split into two operating maneuver groups rushing towards the city, planning to cut it off from the rest of the German and Hungarian troops.
On 7 November, 1944, Soviet troops entered Budapest's eastern suburbs, 20 kilometers from the city's old town. Curiously, very few inhabitants wanted to leave the city.
On 19 December, after a necessary break, the Red Army resumed its offensive. On 26 December, the road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by the Soviet Troops, therefore encircling the city.
Budapest was a major target for Stalin. Indeed, the Yalta Conference was approaching and Stalin wanted to display his full strength to Churchill and Roosevelt. Therefore, he issued a directive to General Rodion Malinovsky, ordering him to seize the city as quickly as possible.
The 29 December, 1944, Rodion Malinovsky sent two emissaries in order to negotiate the city's capitulation. The emissaries never came back. This particular point is widely disputed by the Soviet Union, with some German and Hungarian historians arguing that the emissaries were deliberately shot down. Others believe that they were in fact shot by mistake on their way back. In any case, Soviet commanders considered this act as a refusal and ordered the start of the siege.
[edit] The start and first German offensive
The offensive started in the eastern suburbs, advancing through the town of Pest, making good use of the large central avenues to speed up their progress. The defenders, overwhelmed, tried to trade space for time to slow the Soviets' advance to a crawl. They ultimately withdrew to shorten their lines, hoping to take advantage of the hilly nature of Buda.
On 1 January, 1945, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Konrad, trying to launch an offensive through hilly terrain north of Budapest and break the siege. Simultaneously, Waffen-SS forces struck west of Budapest, trying to gain tactical advantage.
On 3 January, 1945, the Soviet command sent four more divisions to meet the threat, stopping the offensive less than 20 kilometers north of Budapest. On 12 January, 1945, Wermacht and Waffen-SS forces were forced to withdraw - Operation Konrad had failed.
[edit] Combat intensification
Meanwhile, urban warfare in Budapest gained in intensity. Supplies became a decisive factor because of the loss of the Ferihegy airport just before the start of the siege, on 27 December, 1944. Up until 9 January, 1945, the German forces were able to use some of the main avenues as well as the park next to Buda Castle as landing zones for planes and gliders, although they were under constant artillery fire from the Soviets. Before the Danube froze, some supplies could be transported on barges, under cover of darkness and fog.
Nevertheless, food shortages were more and more common and soldiers had to rely on finding their own sources of food, some even resorting to eating their own horses.
Quite quickly, Soviet troops found themselves in the same situation as the Germans had in Stalingrad. Still, their troops were able to take advantage of the urban terrain by relying heavily on snipers and sappers to advance. Extreme temperatures strongly affected German and especially Hungarian troops, who started to desert in considerable numbers. Fighting even spread to the city's sewers, as both German and Soviet troops used them for moving troops. Six Soviet marines even managed to get to Castle Hill, remaining there for several hours and capturing a German officer before returning to their own lines - still underground. Although such mobility was rare due to the use of the sewers by German and Hungarian troops, who were helped by local people acting as guides.
In mid-January, Csepel Island was taken, along with its military factories which were still producing Panzerfausts and shells, even under Soviet fire. Meanwhile in Pest, the situation deteriorated, with the garrison facing the risk of being cut in half by the advancing Soviet troops.
On 17 January, 1945, Hitler agreed withdraw all of the remaining troops from Pest to try to defend Buda. All of the five bridges spanning the Danube were clogged with traffic, evacuating troops, wounded men and civilians. On 18 January, 1945, German troops destroyed the five beautiful bridges, despite protests from Hungarian officers.
[edit] Second German offensive
On 20 January, 1945, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops launched their second major offensive, this time south of the city, blasting a 20-km hole in Soviet lines and advancing to the Danube, threatening Soviet traffic.
Stalin ordered his troops to hold their ground at all costs, and two Army Corps that were dispatched to assault Budapest were hastily rerouted south of the city to counter the German offensive. Nevertheless, Waffen-SS troops who got to less than 20 kilometres from the city, were unable to maintain their offensive due to fatigue and supply issues. Budapest's defenders asked permission to leave the city and escape the encirclement. Hitler refused.
On 28 January, 1945, German troops could no longer stand their ground and were forced to withdraw. The raid constituted the Wehrmacht's last attempt to execute a strategic maneuver. For the rest of the war, they would be constantly on the defensive. The fate of the Budapest defenders was sealed.
[edit] The battle of Buda
Unlike Pest, built on flat terrain, the city of Buda is built on hills. This allowed the defenders to place artillery and fortifications above the attackers, greatly slowing Soviet progression. The main citadel, Gellért Hill was defended by elite SS troops that successfully repelled several Soviet assaults. Nearby, Soviet and German soldiers fought for the city cemetery, often fighting amongst tombs that had been ripped open by shell fire.
Fighting on Margaret Island, in the middle of the Danube, was particularly merciless. The island was still attached to the rest of the city by the remaining half of the Margaret Bridge and was used as parachuting area as well as for covering improvised airstrips set up in the downtown.
On 6 February, 1945, the Gellért Hill finally fell after a vicious Soviet attack launched from three points of compass simultaneously, after six weeks of fighting. Soviet artillery was finally able to dominate the entire city and to shell the remaining Axis defenders, concentrated on less than two square kilometres and suffering from malnutrition and diseases (daily rations were reduced to 150 grams of bread and meat from slaughtered horses). Nevertheless, the defenders refused to surrender and defended every street and house, fighting Soviet troops and tanks. At this time also Hungarian soldiers were fighting on the Soviet side ("The Volunteer regiment of Buda") against the Germans with high casualities.
After capturing the southern railway station during a two-day bloodbath, Soviet troops advanced to the Castle hill. On 10 February, 1945, after a violent assault, Soviet marines establish a bridgehead on the Castle hill, while almost cutting the remaining garrison in half.
[edit] The Defenders' Sortie
Confronting a hopeless situation, General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch decided, against Hitler's orders, to attempt to break out of the encirclement. Image:Budamarch1945.jpg
German and Hungarian troops along with several civilians used fog to their advantage and went in three waves. The first wave managed to surprise the Soviet soldiers and artillery, and its sheer number allowed them to escape. The second and third waves were less fortunate, as Soviet artillery had time to bracket the area and shell the escaping troops. Despite Soviet fire and heavy losses, 10,000 men managed to gain wooded hills north-west of Budapest and escape towards Vienna.
[edit] Aftermath
On 13 February, 1945, the remaining defenders finally surrendered. Budapest lay in ruins, with more than 80 percent of its buildings destroyed or damaged, and historical buildings like the Hungarian Parliament Building and the Castle in ruins. All five bridges spanning the Danube were destroyed. Some 40,000 civilians were killed, with an unknown number dying from starvation and diseases.Mass rapes of women between 10 and 70 were common.<ref>"The worst suffering of the Hungarian population is due to the rape of women. Rapes - affecting all age groups from ten to seventy are so common that very few women in Hungary have been spared." Swiss embassy report cited in Ungváry 2005, p.350.</ref> In Budapest alone 50,000 are estimated to have been raped by Red Army soldiers.<ref>Mark 2005, p.157.</ref>
For the Wehrmacht, the siege of Budapest was their last major operation on the southern front, further depleting the German Army and especially the Waffen-SS.
For the Soviet troops, the Budapest siege was a final rehearsal before the Battle of Berlin. It also allowed them to race toward Vienna, which would fall two months later.
[edit] References
- James Mark. Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945. Past and Present 2005: 188: 133-161 (Oxford University Press).
- John F. Montgomery, Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite. Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1947. Reprint: Simon Publications, 2002. Available online at Historical Text Archive and at the Corvinus Library of Hungarian History.
- Nikolai Shefov, Russian fights, Lib. Military History, M. 2002
- Krisztian Ungvary, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II (trans. Peter Zwack), Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10468-5
[edit] Notes
<references/>de:Schlacht um Budapest es:Sitio de Budapest fr:Bataille de Budapest sr:Битка за Будимпешту
