The Siege of Budapest: October 25, 1944-February 13, 1945
The Battle of Budapest was a siege of the Hungarian capital city of Budapest fought towards the end of World War II in Europe. The siege started when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 24 December 1944 by Soviet forces. The siege ended when the city was unconditionally surrendered on 13 February 1945. The Soviet forces besieging the city were part of Rodion Malinovsky's 2nd Ukrainian Front. Arrayed against the Soviets was a collection German Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, and Hungarian forces. The Battle of Budapest was one of the bloodiest sieges of the World War II. In terms of casualties, Budapest was comparable to the sieges of Berlin and Stalingrad.
Between the appearance of the first Soviet tank and the final capture of Buda Castle, 102 days were to pass. In comparison, Berlin and Vienna fell after 2 weeks and 6 days respectively, while no other European city, with the exception of Warsaw, was the scene of a major battle. Even those German units that persevered the longest, like Königsberg (Kaliningrad) and Breslau (Wroclaw), resisted the attackers for 77 and 82 days respectively. The fierceness of the battle of Budapest can be compared only to the sieges of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Stalingrad (Volgograd) and Warsaw. Budapest has been one of the most besieged capital cities in Europe, which bares witness to its strategic importance: there have been 15 different major battles fought here throughout history, yet not one of them comes close to the siege of 1944-1945 in the scope of its destruction. The stifling of the Warsaw uprising took 63 days, the blockade of Leningrad lasted almost 3 years but no battles were fought on the streets. Stalingrad was a combat zone for 4 months, but most of the civilian population was evacuated prior to the struggle. At the same time, more than 800,000 people were eyewitnesses to the bloody conflict that contemporaries compared to Stalingrad in its ferocity. The casualties of the Red Army were 80,026 dead and 240,056 wounded during the military operations in Budapest and its vicinity, and for each Soviet soldier killed elsewhere in Hungary, two lost their lives in the capital city. The material damage was also great.
The entire German-Hungarian loss of life amounted to about 60% of Red Army losses. Between November 3, 1944 and February 16, 1945, there were about 40,000 dead and 62,000 wounded (including victims of the attempt to break out of the blockade). In terms of numbers, Hungarian losses did not surpass that of the Germans and were a far cry from the Soviet casualties. However, this was the most inane sacrifice of all three. Regardless of his allegiance, the Hungarian soldier was but a spectator of the destruction of his country. Many felt that it was their duty to fight even when the outcome was obvious, others capitulated right away citing Horthy Miklós' order of cease-fire. To chose meant to wager between the lesser of two evils: persistence only prolonged the bloody war and the sufering of the civilian population, capitulation did not ensure true liberation. During the siege, very few took the risk of taking photographs. Almost all pictures taken by the defenders were destroyed. Therefore this exhibition primarily presents materials of the Soviet war correspondents and civilians, as well as the pictures taken after the siege. For this very reason, there is virtually no evidence of several significant events and important people. The street battles, the atrocities, the Arrow Cross collabaration, or the anti-Fascist resistance cannot be revisited either.
In 1941, Budapest was a city of about 1,165,000 inhabitants. During the war, tens of thousands of Hungarians fled to the West, while thousands of men were on military duty or were doing labor service. The city's population also swelled with refugees from the East, especially from Transylvania. By the time of the siege in 1944-45, there were less than a million people in the Hungarian capital, literally all living in cellars, aside from the nearly 80,000 German and Hungarian soldiers who fought the Soviet advance. A third of these soldiers were killed and the rest would end up in Soviet captivity along with numerous civilians, most of whom would end up perishing in Soviet POW camps.
On 29 October 1944, the Red Army started its offensive against the city Budapest. More than 1,000,000 men split into two operating maneuver groups rushed towards the city. The plan was to cut Budapest off from the rest of the German and Hungarian forces. On November, 7 1944, Soviet troops entered the eastern suburbs of Budapest, 20 kilometers from the old town. On December 19, after a necessary break, the Red Army resumed its offensive. On December 26, a road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by the Soviet troops, therefore encircling the city.
As a result of the Soviet link-up, nearly 33,000 German and 37,000 Hungarian soldiers, as well as over 800,000 civilians, became trapped within the city. Refusing to authorize a withdrawal, German dictator Adolf Hitler had declared Budapest a fortress city (Festung Budapest), which had to be defended to the last man.
Hungarian Gendamerie's making friends with a German soldier
Budapest was a major target for Josef Stalin. Indeed, the Yalta Conference was approaching and Stalin wanted to display his full strength to Churchill and Roosevelt. Therefore, he ordered General Rodion Malinovsky to seize the city as quickly as possible. Overconfident, Malinovsky said that he would only need 5 days to capture Budapest. In reality, it took him 102 days.
On December 29, 1944, 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. 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.
The Soviet offensive started in the eastern suburbs, advancing through Pest, making good use of the large central avenues to speed up their progress. The German and Hungarian defenders, overwhelmed, tried to trade space for time to slow down the Soviets advance to a crawl. They ultimately withdrew to shorten their lines, hoping to take advantage of the hilly nature of Buda.
In January of 1945, the Germans launched a three part offensive codenamed Operation Konrad. Operation Konrad was a joint German-Hungarian effort to relieve the encircled garrison of Budapest.
Arrow Cross soldier preparing for battle against incoming Soviet troops
On 1 January, Operation Konrad I was launched. The German IV.SS-Panzerkorps attacked from Táta through hilly terrain north of Budapest in an effort to break the Soviet siege. Simultaneously, Waffen-SS forces struck from the west of Budapest in an effort to gain tactical advantage. On January 3, the Soviet command sent four more divisions to meet the threat. This Soviet action stopped the offensive near Bicske less than 20 kilometers north of Budapest. On 12 January, the German forces were forced to withdraw.
German Panzer tanks in action
Soviet troopa on the offensive
On 7 January, the Germans launched Operation Konrad II. The German IV.SS-Panzerkorps attacked from Esztergom towards the Budapest Airport. They tried to capture the airport in order to improve air supply of the city. This offensive was halted near the airport.
On 17 January, the last part of Operation Konrad was launched - Operation Konrad III. The German IV.SS-Panzerkorps and the III. Panzerkorps attacked from the south of Budapest and attempted to encircle ten Soviet divisions. This encirclement attempt failed.
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 December 27, 1944. Until January 9, 1945, German troops 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 passed on barges, under the 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. Extreme temperatures also affected German and Hungarian troops.
Quite quickly, the 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. Fights broke out even in the sewers, as both Axis and Soviet troops used them for troops movement. Six Soviet marines even managed to get to the Castle Hill and capture a German officer before returning to their own lines - still underground. But such prowesses were rare because of ambushes set up by the Axis troops using local inhabitants as guides in the sewers.
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 accepted to withdraw all the remaining troops from Pest to try to defend Buda. All of the five bridges spanning the Danube were clogged with traffic, evacuating troops and civilians. On January 18, 1945, German troops destroyed the five beautiful bridges, despite protests from Hungarian officers.
Szalasi overseeing the destroyed Franz Joseph Bridge
On January 20, 1945, German 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 supply lines.
Stalin ordered his troops to hold their ground at all costs, and two Army Corps that were dispatched to assault Budapest were hastily moved south of the city to counter the German offensive. Nevertheless, German 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 January 28, 1945, German troops could no longer hold their ground and were forced to withdraw. The fate of the defenders of Budapest was sealed.
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 advance. The main citadel, Gellért Hill was defended by elite Waffen-SS troops that successfully repelled several Soviet assaults. Nearby, Soviet and German forces were fighting for the city cemetery. Fights on the shell-opened tombs would last for several days. 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.
The siege of Buda Castle, otherwise known as the last stand of the Waffen SS
The SS units compromised almost all nationalities. In addition to ethnic Germans many French Alsatians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Finns, Flemish, Dutch, Croats, and Spanish volunteers had fought in the SS during the Siege of Budapest.
On February, 11 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.
Hitler forbid the German commander, Waffen SS General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, to abandon Budapest and to attempt a break out of the encirclement. But the last glider flights bringing in supplies landed a few days earlier and the parachute drops had also been discontinued. Finally, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch decided to lead the remnants of his troops out of Budapest. Typically, the German commander did not consult much with the Hungarian commander of the city, General Ivan Hindy. Uncharacteristically, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch included the Hungarian for this last desperate break out attempt.
On the night of February 11, twenty-eight thousand German and Hungarian troops began to stream down from Castle Hill. They moved in three waves. With each wave were thousands of civilians. Entire families, pushing prams, treaded through the snow and ice.
German and Hungarian troops along with several civilians used fog to their advantage and moved 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 even less fortunate than the first. Soviet artillery and rocket batteries bracketed the escape area to deadly result. But, despite heavy losses, five to ten thousand people managed to reach the wooded hills northwest of Budapest and escape towards Vienna. Roughly seven-hundred German and Hungarian troops escaped.
Many of the escapees were killed, wounded, or captured by the Soviet troops. Pfeffer-Wildenbruch and Hindy were among the captured. Hindy was later executed by a Soviet military tribunal in 1946.
Victorious Red Army soldiers
On February 13, 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 ages of 10 and 70 were common. In Budapest alone between 50,000-60,000 are estimated to have been raped by Romanian and Red Army soldiers.
Magyarország
Hungary in World War 2
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