Krivosheev, G. F. Soviet casualties and combat losses in the Twentieth Century. It was during this time that the heroic Swedish emissary Raoul Wallenberg made his name by resorting to every means possible — Red Cross and Swedish government passes, real and forged, cajolery, bribery, and reckless courage — to save as many of Budapest’s Jews as possible. Two rifle corps slated for the final reduction of Buda were hurriedly redirected south. ‘Potato-peeling’ – The Mass Rapine of the Red Army: Above: Two Red Army soldiers during the Battle of Budapest in the early weeks of 1945. Shell battered building, pan to wreckage in street and knocked out Russian tanks. The collapse of the invading fascists 1939-1945. A. Ostapenko. The German weekly Die Zeit graphically described these conditions: At first the girls, women and men of Budapest worked on. In the heart of Budapest the German garrison defends itself with fanatical bravery.  • Lithuania At eight o’clock that night, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt was dining with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, the garrison began its breakout attempt. Moskva.  • Western Ukraine Defended by a mixed Hungarian and German garrison, this narrow, 250-yard-wide strip of earth, linked to Buda by the intact half of the Margit Bridge, was the site of a pure infantry battle, complete with extensive trench lines and river landing attempts on the defenders’ flanks. The battle of Budapest in the bleak winter of 1944-45 was one of the longest and bloodiest city sieges of World War II. The extreme temperatures also affected German and Hungarian troops. The module is noted for attention to historical accuracy and detail including Orders of Battle, maps and battles. Due to heavy German fire, only during the night of 29 December did the Soviets manage to retrieve Ostapenko's body. Immediately after the siege, thousands of Hungarian civilians were rounded up and added to the prisoner of war count, allowing the Soviets to validate their previously inflated figures. Upon hearing of Horthy's efforts, Hitler launched Operation Panzerfaust to keep Hungary on the Axis side, and forced Horthy to abdicate. The siege further depleted the Wehrmacht and especially the Waffen-SS. Most people just tried to survive with obscene indifference towards others while fourteen-year-old Hungarian fascists, probably neighbors I played soccer with — shot the helpless thousands of Jews, but first removing their gold teeth before pushing them into the indifferent Danube. Heeding Hitler’s directive that Budapest remain a fortress city, the garrison did not attempt to battle out of the pocket, a prospect that at this juncture had some prospect of success. Share. At the same time, fighting raged from villa to villa below and other detachments infiltrated the Orthodox Church in the Taban district, almost splitting the defense. Apart from the windows, it’s a miracle our flat remained intact. The Hungarian paramilitary Vannay Battalion, which was made up of municipal workers who knew the city’s underground well, worked deep in the city’s bowels to counter the Soviets. Yes, it was not easy to bear the sight of it. Troop quality ranged from excellent to substandard. Although a number had fled into western Hungary, the overwhelming majority of residents remained, including many who gravitated to the capital from the countryside. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by Hungarian Arrow Cross Party militia. However, immediately after the siege, they rounded up thousands of Hungarian civilians and added them to the prisoner of war count, allowing the Soviets to validate their previously inflated figures.[12].  • Strategic bombing, • Expulsion of Germans The memoirs of the 14 year-old dispatch runner of the Vannay Volunteer Battalion, Ervin Y. Galantay, give an insight into the battle and urban combat. The Soviet failure to track these dangerous units enabled the Germans to achieve full tactical surprise and a quick breakthrough. The Ministry of Defense, on the opposite side of the square, was aflame, too. The Siege of Budapest or the Battle of Budapest was the 50-day-long encirclement of the Hungarian capital of Budapest by Soviet forces near the end of World War II. Lieutenant N. F. Orlov and Sergeant Ye. The Germans defended Margit Island because of its importance as an excellent site to airdrop supplies and as a final approach for any aircraft trying to land on the Vérmezö. The Second Ukrainian Front, roughly the size of a U.S. army with four armies and 625,000 men — including a Romanian corps — first stormed westward just north of the Danube River bend.  • Changsha The Siege of Budapest or Battle of Budapest was the 50-day-long encirclement by Soviet and Romanian forces of the Hungarian capital of Budapest, near the end of World War II. The garrison was now engaged in a battle of attrition that it could not hope to survive. Rapes—affecting all age groups from ten to seventy are so common that very few women in Hungary have been spared." About Battle for Budapest. From the park, the tempo of the Soviet advance quickened, passing the many embassies and ornate villas on the broad Andrassy Boulevard. When Soviet tanks overran the racetrack on January 9, the Germans converted the Vérmezö, an eight-hundred-yard-long park directly below Castle Hill, into a last-ditch landing zone. Three German division commanders lay among the fallen. Budapest is a Beta + global city with strengths in commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. By now daily rations were down to melted snow, horsemeat, and 150 grams of bread. In theory the dogs would bark or draw enemy fire if they encountered any Soviets. Advancing German spearheads were just miles from the Soviets’ main supply routes crossing the river and were just one bound from Budapest. On February 6, the Soviets, attacking from three sides, finally took Eagle Hill after six weeks of continuous fighting. Nevertheless, German troops who got to less than 20 kilometres from the city were unable to maintain their impetus due to fatigue and supply problems. Meanwhile in Pest, the situation for the Axis forces deteriorated, with the garrison facing the risk of being cut in half by the advancing Soviet troops.  • Budapest In Buda, Soviet marksmen on the rooftop of the Janos Hospital, just eight hundred yards to their front, plagued defenders deployed across Városmajor Park. The waiters serve on, nobody makes a fuss. On 3 January, the Soviet command sent four more divisions to meet the threat. The miserable mounts could be seen everywhere in lower Buda standing inside shops, inner gardens, and narrow streets. Nine rifle divisions supported by two mobile corps quickly shattered the thin defensive line, and by December 21 they had penetrated deep into the Axis rear. In January 1945, 32,000 ethnic Germans from within Hungary were arrested and transported to the Soviet Union as forced laborers. Picked up by the Soviets after Pest’s capture, ostensibly to meet Marshal Malinovsky in Debrecen, he forever disappeared. The Soviet force… Hell itself. The storied First Panzer Division, with its infantry augmented by the Hungarian SS Regiment Ney, retook the key city of Székesfehérvár on the 23rd, unhinging the entire Soviet sector. Once again Pfeffer-Wildenbruch requested to break out, and once again Hitler ordered the wavering garrison to remain in place. Deseő kept a diary throughout the siege. The siege ended when the city unconditionally surrendered on 13 February 1945. Sandor Marai, noted Hungarian novelist and poet, later wrote: Beware, now your feet will sink in blood, here at the mud dazed Bulwark, the scattered dead yet gaze at the Heavens. Citizens calling from suddenly occupied western Buda were dumbfounded when inner Budapest residents confirmed, via still intact phone lines, the unimaginable — the dreaded Russians had surrounded and were storming the city. Part of the broader Budapest Offensive, the siege began when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army and the Romanian Army. Approaching the grounds of the imposing Janos Hospital, they were surprised by a hail of small-arms fire.  •  • Romania Troops, along with the civilians, used heavy fog to their advantage. Their assault groups, supported by armor, assault guns, and several Lend-Lease Sherman tanks, slowly swept past the forward Axis strongpoints. They had an even less fortunate fate as, when the emissaries arrived, the German garrison fired at them. Hungarian formations destroyed included the 10th and 12th Infantry Divisions and the 1st Armored Division.  • Lend-Lease  • Military production Entire families, pushing prams, trudged through the snow and ice. This Soviet action stopped the offensive near Bicske, less than 20 kilometers west of Budapest. Battle area in the main street of Budapest, with Russian tanks in the distance. Defenses were easily broken through and urban fighting began within the city. Battle of Budapest is a scenario in Panzer Corps. Cadet Ervin Galantay, a dispatch runner for the recently mustered Hungarian paramilitary Vannay Battalion, was headed for home to partake in holiday celebrations when he saw a throng of civilians surrounding a group of tram conductors in Buda’s central Szell Kalman Square.  • Lapland The fleeing soldiers left thousands of dead strewn in heaps in their wake, while most of the others — those wounded, exhausted, frozen, or in shock — meandered aimlessly around until rounded up by the victors. An unusual battle for Margit Island, once Budapest’s playground and site of several well-known cafes and baths, continued throughout January. The German reporter Werner Hannemann exclaimed, ‘Budapest is unique among front-line cities!’ He expressed his astonishment and admiration of the residents when he described their life in Budapest: On the Danube bridges connecting Buda and Pest you encounter a German guard every twenty meters. The Allied summit at Yalta was just three months away, and the swift seizure of Budapest and Vienna would greatly increase his bargaining power. Without enough forces to fully exploit their near coup de main of Budapest, the Soviets went to ground, but not before securing vital positions on Schwabian Hill and at the Janos Hospital, within one and a half miles of the Royal Palace. The fate of Raoul Wallenberg remains unknown. This attack from the northwest heralded an extraordinary month of maneuver warfare, coupled with strikes and counterstrikes in western Hungary, with Székesfehérvár and Bicske as the hubs and Budapest always the prize. The situation in the beleaguered city became increasingly serious, however. After all what could Panzers, anti-tank and cavalry units do in a labyrinth of houses? For weeks afterward, especially after the spring thaw, bloated bodies piled up against these same pontoons and bridge pylons. The six weeks between the Soviets’ November arrival in Pest’s eastern suburbs and the Christmas night encirclement of the entire city proved surreal for the capital’s almost one million inhabitants. The fighting on Margaret Island, in the middle of the Danube, was particularly merciless. On 28 January 1945, German troops could no longer hold their ground and were forced to withdraw. For more great articles, subscribe to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History today! Overall, more than 500,000 Hungarians were transported to the Soviet Union (including between 100,000 and 170,000 Hungarian ethnic Germans) . Some were deadly accurate Siberian riflemen. The Battle of Mohi (11 April 1241), also known as Battle of the Sajó River or Battle of the Tisza River, was the main battle between the Mongol Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary during the Mongol invasion of Europe.It took place at Muhi (then Mohi), southwest of the Sajó River.After the invasion, Hungary lay in ruins. In addition, the Axis’ only remaining crude oil plant was in southwest Hungary. In the beginning, they cowered together when a round exploded nearby. Handily defeated by the now highly proficient Soviets, this reverse of Hitler’s best divisions finally broke German resistance in Hungary. During this intense bombardment, General Afonyin, the Soviet group commander, was severely wounded. At night the relief force and the defenders communicated with each other using flares. They emerged and waited for hours in the shadows, letting several German soldiers pass by. By noon of the 26th, forward detachments of the Eighteenth Tank Corps, spearhead of the Soviet Forty-sixth Army, triumphantly capped this double envelopment by linking up with Malinovsky’s forces at the ancient cathedral city of Esztergom at the bend of the Danube River. He was killed together with his two subordinates when the German fire struck the Soviet car.[7][10]. Although the subway tunnels were blocked early in the siege, the city was laced with countless sewer mains, maintenance tunnels, and passages.  • Home front We lost track of time. On December 29, Marshal Malinovsky, impatient to complete the capture of Budapest and continue his drive on Vienna, sent two officers, Miklos Steinmetz and Ilya Ostapenko, to offer surrender terms. The swift and unexpected arrival of numerous dusky-brown Soviet T-34 tanks near the small towns of Vecsés and Soroksár, just fourteen miles from the Royal Palace, threw the city into a panic. As the Danube flows north to south, the Germans attempted early during the siege to float supplies by motor launch and barge from the recaptured Esztergom area into Budapest. Unlike Pest, which is built on flat terrain, Buda is built on hills. While the defense of Pest collapsed, the Germans were surreptitiously disengaging Gille’s bloodied but still dangerous corps from the northern sector and stealthily redeploying it south by rail. Nearby, Soviet and German forces were fighting for the city cemetery amongst shell-opened tombs; it would last for several days. Despite horrific losses, the surviving defenders, with almost all their small-arms ammunition expended, made a desperate rush for the concealment of the hilly, wooded terrain in Buda’s northwestern suburbs. In our rear area there are as many swine as in your rear area. Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Joachim Boosfeld was in the initial Eighth SS attack. München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Near the Janos Hospital a company of the untrained Hungarian University Storm Battalion scrambled to stop the early Russian probe. Source about Soviet casualties, estimated at 80,000, not 160,000. Soviet artillery and rocket batteries bracketed the escape area, with deadly results. Bessel, Richard; Dirk Schumann (May 5, 2003). The Soviets claimed that that they had trapped 180,000 German and Hungarian 'fighters' in the pocket and declared they had captured 110,000 of these soldiers.  • Tannenberg Line I pulled him in and treated his face as best I could, my hands shook so much I had difficulty binding the wound.’ They then joined the attack that overran the Soviet positions opposite Szell Kalman Square, rushed through a factory, and hobbled their way into the Buda hills. Reluctant to become decisively engaged so far from Budapest’s urban heart, the enemy gradually gave ground, inflicting enough casualties to slow the Soviet advance to a crawl. The Soviets on December 19, after a brief respite and aided by excellent deception — false radio signals and unit designations to conceal the intended breakthrough sector — launched a two-pronged attack against hastily built Axis Magarethe Line fortifications. Resupply did not come only by air.  • Sevastopol In October 1944, after successive Allied victories at Normany and Falaise, and after the collapse of the Eastern Front following the stunning success of the Russian summer offensive, Bagration, Horthy again attempted to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. Within five days the German attack had split Tolbukhin’s front, pinning it against the Danube. So began the Siege of Budapest and the destruction of Central Europe’s ‘Pearl of the Danube.’ Unimaginable to all who lived in Budapest during this unfolding drama was that this first skirmish near the hospital would soon turn into one of the most frightful urban battles of World War II. By January 14, Hungarian infantry and assault guns were locked in mortal combat for the Eastern Railway Station with most of General Nicholae Sova’s Seventh Romanian Rifle Corps. Archbishop Gennaro Verolino, then a young assistant to the Papal Nuncio in Budapest, Father Angelo Rotta, vividly described the nightmare scene: We had only to cross Disz Square, which already separated the non-existent building of the Nunciature from the Royal Palace. The Third Ukrainian Front, about 450,000 strong and spread from Yugoslavia to south of Budapest, then attacked from a Danube bridgehead near Lake Balaton with twice the forces the Germans had anticipated. Despite this setback, the Germans successfully brought its cargo down to Budapest under cover of fog and darkness. Harsh weather conditions prevented aid from reaching Budapest during the siege and constant artillery fire ground out any chance the Nazis had of keeping their Hungarian stronghold. The Soviet Genetral Staff at War, Book 2, Chapter 7, "Budapest – The Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS" by Richard Landwehr. The majority of the escapees were killed, wounded, or captured by the Soviet troops.  • Finland Cowering behind quickly erected barricades, moving with exemplary tenacity from cellar to cellar, SS-men, tank grenadiers of the army, Hungarian parachutists, supported by German tanks encounter the Soviet storm troops again and again. Options evolved into northern and southern solutions. [12], According to researcher and author Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000 civilians were killed during the siege: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. A successful offensive along this axis would not only break into Budapest but also split Tolbukhin’s front in half. Joseph Szentkiralyi, who had worked in the United States prior to World War II, had been deported back to Hungary after war broke out. He went over to ask what was going on. Consequently, on January 17 the Chain and Elizabeth bridges into Buda were jammed. [16], Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, had issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory, saving tens of thousands of lives. During the siege, he and his family endured constant artillery bombardment and street-by-street tank and infantry battles between the Germans, the remnants of the Royal Hungarian Army, and the attacking Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian forces. Below, in Farkasreti Cemetery, Soviet and German soldiers fought a macabre battle among its gravestones and crypts. В боях рожденная... — М.: Воениздат, 1982. Dean G. Acheson, U.S. secretary of state (1949-53) who helped create NATO. The Germans lost all or most of the 13th Panzer Division, 60th Panzergrenadier Division Feldherrnhalle, 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer and the 22nd SS Volunteer Cavalry Division Maria Theresa. There was an extraordinary symmetry between these two offensives; the Germans advanced east along the southern bank of the Danube while an equally strong Soviet offensive advanced west along the northern bank.  • Iraq [4] Roughly a third of these soldiers belonged to the "Feldhernhalle" Panzergrenadier Division, and 170 to the Waffen-SS. Faced with fresh Soviet forces to their front and the erosion of their dangerously extended southern flank, the German relief force was forced to postpone the offensive on January 28, thereby sealing Budapest’s fate.  • Technology [19], After the city's surrender, occupying troops forcibly conscripted all able-bodied Hungarian men and youth to build pontoon bridges across the Danube River. On 7 November 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops entered the eastern suburbs, 20 kilometers from the old town. 1 Briefings 1.1 Decisive victory 1.2 Victory 1.3 Defeat 2 Walkthrough 3 Locations 4 Messages In the capital, the progress of the offensive was closely monitored. On 26 December, a road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by Soviet troops, thereby completing the encirclement. Science Publisher. To prevent starvation and help keep their families alive, Szentkiralyi and others risked their lives to leave their bomb shelters at night and butcher frozen horse carcasses they found in the streets.  • Okinawa It was built by Adam Clark in the Age of Reform.  •  • Baltic States  • Military equipment Hungarian formations destroyed included the 10th and 12th Infantry Divisions and the 1st Armored Division. The war in Europe ended three weeks later. From Eagle Hill’s summit, Soviet artillery spotters were able to call in accurate fire on the garrison’s positions below them on Castle and Gellert Hills. At the siege of Budapest, the zoo was bombed and most buildings and animals were destroyed. Hitler still forbade the German commander, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, to abandon Budapest or to attempt a breakout. In Pest, the Soviets pressed their attack through the eastern suburbs along several avenues of approach, mainly from the north- and southeast. They then launched Operation Konrad II on 7 January. And side by side in the castle church lie corpses of dead princes and slaughtered horses…. In turn, the German-Hungarian forces narrowly avoided the Soviets occupying all the tactically significant high ground of Buda behind the bulk of the Axis troops deployed east of the Danube in the Pest lowlands. The IV SS Panzer Corps attacked from Esztergom towards Budapest Airport. The garrison managed to make radio contact with the fading German spearhead, greeting it with the words, ‘Warm wishes towards your success and our liberation, ten thousand of our wounded await you.’. The Soviet forces experienced from 100,000 to 160,000 casualties. The four SS soldiers were immediately stripped naked and shot, while the Hungarians barely escaped with their lives by promising to help the Soviets with the roundup. Concealed Soviet infantry ambushed and captured the small group. In our immediate neighborhood everything was completely destroyed by mines and bullets. For the Soviet troops, the Siege of Budapest was a final rehearsal before the Battle of Berlin. The battle of Budapest in the bleak winter of 1944-45 was one of the longest and bloodiest city sieges of World War II. Several German and Hungarian field hospitals operated in this dank, fetid environment. Despite the realization that further defense of Buda was pointless and that there would be no relief, the Germans and Hungarians hung grimly on for another six days. Although strategically the war was clearly lost, January 1945 would be the last month of the war during which the Germans fought the Soviets with some possibility of securing any sort of tactical victory. Rations within the city were primarily horseflesh and thin soup. The staff of the defense had no independent signals system of its own. Buildings, under the Russian artillery and machine-gun fire from low-flying planes fell like tree leaves while human shaped creatures terrorized the city. It was the most significant conflict fought in Transylvania between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Charles Evans Hughes, 11th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.