On December 26 1944 Soviet troops reached the river Danube from the west,
encircling the city of Budapest.
86,200 German
and Hungarian soldiers, along with 800,00 civilians were trapped inside.
Over the next 48 days, the capital city of Hungary would bear witness
to some of the most vicious street fighting of the entire Second World War.
The Siege of Budapest, had begun.
Having encircled the city, the Soviets were in a strong position but were now
faced with the task of overcoming a large garrison that knew the dense urban
terrain well and counted some superb fighting units amongst its ranks.
The defenders were determined and the Soviets were in a rush.
Stalin wanted to drive for Vienna as quickly as possible
but could not do this with up to 20
divisions tied down by Budapest.
In this video we're going to focus on events
east of the river Danube in the Pest half of the city, which bore the brunt
of Soviet attacks in the first half of the siege.
Later we'll look at the siege
of Buda and the various relief attempts that tried to save the garrison there.
The withdrawal of the 8th SS Cavalry Division to Buda on December 24th left
the perimeter in pest very thinly spread and both the German Army Group south and
Budapest corps group led by SS general Karl Feffer-Wildenbruch agreed that pest
should be abandoned and the focus be on defending Buda until relieved or until a
breakout could be prepared.
Hitler however forbade any reduction in the
pest bridgehead.
The Germans are Hungarians would hold their ground though of course
the Hungarian command led notionally by Ivan Hindy was not remotely consulted
while the axis discussed retreat the Red Army wasted little time in pushing into
the suburbs of pest.
Their attacking forces consisted of three main Army
Corps 30th and 18th Soviet Rifle Corps and the Romanian 7th corps.
Joining these
were a bunch of independent divisions and other smaller units.
On the map you
can see the Constituent divisions that make up each primary corps.
On December 26th Soviet and Romanian troops carved out salients in the Northeast against the
4th hussar regiment before breaking through against the 12th reserve division
and capturing Rakoskereztur the following day.
At the same time the 18
Rifle Corps took Vecses while on December 28th the 1st and 13th Hungarian
assault artillery battalions were wiped out near Pecel as the Romanian 2nd and
19th division is pushed to Kinshasa in the Northeast Soviet troops held out
against 5 counter-attacks while two Hungarian battalions recovered some
ground at Rakoskereztur.
This pattern of Soviet advances and rapid
axis counter-attacks of varying success was to continue throughout the siege
Stung by the sharp resistance of their opponents and conscious of the amount of
time it could take to clear Budapest on December 29th the Soviet command decided
to try and persuade the garrison to surrender
General Wildenbruch rejected the ultimatum presented to him and neither of the
soviet envoys sent to the germans made it back to their own lines.
Both died in
heavily contested circumstances.
The soviets accused the germans of murdering
them and the germans flatly denied it
We will be getting to the bottom of this in
an upcoming video.
After the rejection of the ultimatum the Soviet attacks were
renewed in earnest on December 30th.
A 1000 gun bombardment was accompanied
by air attacks and the Red Army's Rifle Corps were now supported by the 39th
guard tank brigade. The 12th Reserve division was forced back while the 10th
division was by this stage left with only three fighting battalions Soviet
formations won more ground before being counter attacked by the 13th Panzer
Division and forced back to Arpadfold the following day.
As the new year
dawned the fighting continued. On January 1st 1945 the 297th Rifle Division
attacked South through the new communal cemetery, while the drive against the
10th and 12th division continued towards Pestuhejy
Two days later, the 18th rifle corps advanced to within 500 meters of a
temporary airstrip at the racecourse putting it out of action.
This left a similar airfield on Csepel Island as the only landing point for airborne supplies
in the city. By January 5th the axis troops were mostly pinned back into the
city centre.
To try and stem the tide General Wildenbruch sent the
remnants of the 271st Volksgrenadier division across the Danube to
Pest, along with General Gerhard Schmidhuber
who was to take command of axis troops on the east side of the river.
In practical terms there was little Schmidhuber could do, German HQ had
poor intelligence and poor lines of communication to their troops and the
situation in any given engagement could change quickly.
In the early phase of the
battle one of the main sources of information for Hungarian units was to
simply ring up houses behind enemy lines and ask the residents about Soviet troop
movements.
Once the phone stopped working in mid-january though even this was lost
On January 7th Soviet advances put the airfield on Csepel Island out of action
leading to futile counter-attacks on the race course in the east to reopen the
air base there.
The shortage of axis troops was by now so acute that these
could only be mounted by pulling a German battalion out of the front line
and just hoping the Soviets wouldn't notice that it was gone
Overall, the axis
troops in pest by now had just 3,600 combat troops about the same as a single
Soviet division.
In the south the suburb of Kispest was secured for the Red
Army On January 8th with Soviet troops pushing north west to enter people's
park later the same day.
By this time a salient in the Northeast extended from
Pestujhely to Zuglo indicating the Soviets were trying to split the
pest bridgehead in two.
The Feldherrnhalle panzergrenadier division counter-attacked
from the north reaching as far as Czobor Street before being forced back.
In response, on January 9th the Soviets launched two fresh major offensives the
Romanian 7th army corps captured the racecourse from pushed west across
Hungaria boulevard meanwhile the Soviet 30th Army Corps attacked in full force
towards Rakosrendezo station
Realizing that the axis troops still
holding Ujpest to the north could be cut off
General Schmidhuber ordered them to evacuate.
The Feldherrnhalle fell back
but it struggled to stabilize its lines, and the Soviets secured Rakosrendezo station.
and pushed west into Angyalfold and south into the city park.
An intense night long struggle developed over the park because the attacking
Soviet and Romanian troops were initially thrown out by a company of
Budapest police.
The 13th Panzer Division went on the offensive reaching as far as
Amerikai street before two of its tanks were blown up and the Soviet
counter counter-attack pushed them back to the south.
There another assault
company arrived and launched a counter counter counter-attack which recovered
about half of the park for the time being.
The battle for the city park which
would last another three days after this was typical of the dozens of engagements
raging all over the city.
In the south of the steadily shrinking perimeter the
Soviets advanced to Ferencvaros station station and People's Park where heavy
fighting broke out
After dawn on January 11th the 25th guard Rifle Division broke
through in Angyalfold while the Kerepesi cemetery was taken by the Soviets
after close quarters fighting
13th Panzer counter-attacked was repelled and
forced back to fiumei Street.
On January 13th the Hungarian 10th Division
fell back to Keleti station from stefania street to avoid encirclement
while to the south of people's park, Ferencvaros
train station was encircled and then captured by the Soviets destroying the
first mechanized rifle regiment that defended it.
With the Red Army now just a
couple of kilometres on the Danube on the evening of January 13th general
Wildenbruch signalled to Army Group south:
"the Battle of Budapest has reached
its climax the loss of the Eastern bridgehead must be expected as from 15
January."
Day and night now the Soviet Air Force bombed and strafed the parts of
pest still in axis hands as ground troops pushed relentlessly forwards.
the next 24 hours most German and Hungarian troops fell back to the great
boulevard the last proper line of defense before the danube. you
this line was
promptly breached in both north and south on the same day prompting the
destruction of the Ferenc Joszef bridge and cutting off part of the 13th Panzer
Division in the process.
On rákóczi Road the Soviets forced
civilians to march ahead of their columns and ordered them to call on the
Hungarian defenders to surrender.
Overnight the last offenders here were
pulled back to the Great Boulevard while the Horthy Miklos bridge was blown
up by the Germans as Soviet troops approached its eastern side the next 48
hours saw the final intense assaults by the Soviets beating in the last stable
lines that the Germans and Hungarians could possibly hold.
As victory in pest
approached Marshal Rodion Malinovsky ordered the Romanian 7th Corps to
redeploy out of the city.
Supposedly this was because they were needed in northern
Hungary, but the real reason was that he did not want to share the glory of
victory with the Romanians.
This was after the 7th Corps had taken over
23,000 casualties fully 60% of its strength in the campaigns across Hungary
since October.
It's commander, General Nicolae Sova obeyed his orders but
rather too reluctantly for Malinovski's liking.
He was dismissed from his command
On February 7th for insubordination and after the communist takeover in Romania
was sent to Siberia for 10 years.
At 7:25 p.m. on January 17th with the axis lines
pressed right up against the river General Wildenbruch was finally given
permission to evacuate the pest bridgehead and a huge crowd gathered at
the eastern edge of the Elisabeth and chain bridges.
Thousands
scrambled their
way across soldiers mixed up with civilians amidst gunfire shelling and
bombing from the air all in the pitch dark hundreds if not thousands were
killed in the melee if over two bridges were blown up shortly before dawn on
January 18th
Shortly afterwards Soviet troops reached the Danube
Pest had fallen but across the river German and Hungarian troops were still standing
firm amongst the hills of Buda and it's there that we'll be going next