Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] On the morning of February 13, 1945, the shooting on the streets of the Hungarian capital, the storming of which lasted a record 108 days, died down. In terms of the ferocity of the fighting, Budapest is on par with Berlin and Königsberg, and its capture opened the way for the Red Army to further advance on Vienna, depriving Germany of its last ally.
The Germans clung tenaciously to the city for two reasons. First, it was their last chance to save any oil. The Hungarian region of Nagykanizsa provided the Wehrmacht with fuel, and access to the Romanian oil fields had been lost as early as August 1944.
Secondly, Hungary borders Austria, and the Fuhrer, who had many good memories associated with the city, planned to defend Vienna to the end.
To hold back the onslaught of the attackers, the German command transferred the elite 4th SS Panzer Corps from Poland, which tried to break through the encirclement of the city three times. The last time, the SS men came so close to Budapest that it seemed they would break through any minute. The Soviet troops barely held back the blow.
Anti-aircraft gunner Isaak Braginsky, a participant in the battles for Hungary, confirms that the resistance of the Germans and Hungarians was extremely stubborn:
"It is enough to remember that the city of Székesfehérvár changed hands several times. The Germans bombarded our troops with leaflets, in which they announced that Hitler was ready to let Marshal Georgy Zhukov into Berlin, but to drown the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front of Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin in the Danube. The enemy attached such importance to holding its positions in the center of Europe."
But unlike the Warsaw garrison, the Budapest group failed to break out of the cauldron.
By the new year of 1945, thanks to the coordinated actions of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts of Marshals Rodion Malinovsky and Fyodor Tolbukhin, 188,000 people were encircled. Understanding that the assault would be difficult and would entail many casualties, on December 29 the USSR prepared an ultimatum for the enemy - an offer to capitulate in exchange for humane treatment.
Two envoys were sent to the enemy camp: the Hungarian anti-fascist Miklos Steinmetz, who had previously fought in Spain with Malinovsky, and the Soviet officer, Captain Ilya Ostapenko. The Germans killed both of them - this was sadly reported in the New Year's issue of the newspaper "Red Star".
"The negotiators had not yet begun negotiations when they were shot. This news horrified everyone; no one wanted to believe it. About a week later, I met a Fenrich named Vargush from the 13th Assault Artillery Division in our house; he was looking for an apartment. I asked him if it was possible that the Germans would shoot the Russian negotiators. He replied that the German command had ordered that the Soviet negotiators be fired upon if they appeared. Each battalion commander had to confirm receipt of this order with a personal receipt," Hungarian Major General Mikloi Frygyash noted in his written testimony.
The Germans' position was fundamental because they almost lost an ally without any military action.
After heavy defeats, in particular the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh offensive operation on the Don, where Soviet troops killed or captured 80,000 Hungarian soldiers and officers, the mood of the Hungarians changed. Many were looking for an opportunity to surrender, a major turn was brewing in the country: the head of state, Admiral Miklos Horthy, foreseeing the imminent collapse of the Reich, announced a truce with the USSR in October 1944.
However, Horthy, unlike the King of Romania, Michael I, failed to withdraw his country from the war. A German-backed coup d'état took place in Budapest, and Horthy's son was kidnapped by a special SS unit led by the Reich's chief saboteur Otto Skorzeny and taken hostage. Under pressure from Hitler, a few days later the admiral handed over power to the leader of the Nazi pro-German Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szalasi, and was taken to Germany, where he was held under arrest along with his wife, daughter-in-law, and grandson.
Afterwards, German troops entered Budapest, taking full responsibility for the city's defense.
Across its entire 200 square kilometer area, Nazi units erected barricades. They installed machine guns and cannons in every building, turning attics and basements into firing points. And the Germans had never had such a density of tanks on the Eastern Front as here.
Therefore, for the assault, which was carried out by the specially created Budapest Group of Forces (three rifle corps and nine artillery brigades from the 2nd Ukrainian Front), aviation was actively involved: on instructions from the ground, aircraft carried out pinpoint strikes. According to attack pilot Fyodor Gavrilov, who took part in those events, it was necessary to make six sorties a day:
"One day we were gathered in a briefing room and shown a street on a city map where we had to destroy a U-shaped building - there was a gun there that was hindering our troops. The bombing altitude was low. The attack aircraft were taking a risk, because it is difficult to dive in the city, but once you receive an assignment, you have to complete it. In the end, despite all the difficulties, we accomplished our task."
And on the Danube, the river flotilla operated with great intensity, landing troops, providing artillery support for the riverine flanks and ensuring crossings over the mighty river, which had become a kind of transport corridor. First of all, thanks to the actions of the reconnaissance sailors Viktor Kalganov from the 143rd Separate Battalion of Naval Infantry, the legendary Boroda.
They determined the depth of the fairways for the passage of armored boats and the landing sites, searched for and neutralized floating mines, and captured "tongues". It was this group that managed to carry out a daring raid on the building of the Danube Shipping Company, blow up the safe and take a map of the fairway from it. It depicted areas dangerous for movement along the river and the alternate routes used by the Germans.
A legendary woman, the commander of a platoon of Marine machine gunners Evdokia Zavaliy, also took part in those events. After the war, she told about a heroic raid through the sewers with the capture of a German general. Various publications write that she was awarded an order for this. However, Zavaliy was awarded for a brilliant battle in March, and Boroda's scouts were wandering through the sewers.
The sortie into the Fortress Hill area was undertaken on February 6, 1945. A group of nine scouts, including Kalganov himself, split up underground, emerging on the surface in the central areas of Buda. Late at night, Andreev's group captured a major from the headquarters of the 239th Assault Gun Brigade, and Kalganov's group captured a lieutenant from the operational headquarters. And they were dragged in, properly slapped on the wrist.
By February 11, 44,000 enemy soldiers and officers remained in Buda, the western part of the city. 17,000 were later killed in battle, 22,350 were captured, and only about 3,000 fled to the mountains, but surrendered to Soviet units a few days later.
"Captured: 127,202 captured soldiers and officers, including senior ranks of the German fascist group, 269 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1,257 guns of various calibers, 83 armored vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 476 mortars, 1,431 machine guns, 41,000 rifles and submachine guns, 15 aircraft, etc." - says the Extraordinary Combat Report of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Among those captured was the commander of the city's defense, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch.
This assault cost the Red Army 80,000 soldiers and officers killed, and more than 240,000 were wounded.
Although the center of Budapest suffered serious damage, it was much luckier than Warsaw: 15% of buildings were damaged, while the Polish capital was almost completely destroyed. The Soviet command deliberately refused to use heavy artillery - this way they wanted to preserve the cultural monuments of the historical part of the city.
By comparison, at the same time the British Royal Air Force and the US Air Force carried out a three-day bombing raid on Dresden, destroying or seriously damaging 80% of the city's buildings and killing approximately 25,000 people, mostly civilians, at one time.
After the liberation of Budapest, the Soviet Union began to provide assistance to the population suffering from hunger. In March 1945, food supplies began to be delivered to the city, and three months later, the distribution quotas were increased. In June alone, the city authorities received 3,000 tons of grain, 1,000 tons of sugar, 960 tons of salt, and 250 trucks. At the same time, Soviet sappers cleared the city of mines left by the Germans, and the residents of the Hungarian capital were grateful to them for this:
"We promise to build a country that will never return to the reactionary spirit and whose population will always treat the USSR with gratitude and true friendship," the newspaper Sabashdag reported on June 16, 1945. Perhaps Hungary's current position has some basis in those events.
And with the end of the Budapest operation, the entire southern flank of the German defense wavered, to hold which the Wehrmacht was forced to transfer troops from other areas. The Red Army opened the way not only to Vienna, but also to Prague: after landing troops in Yugoslavia, the Germans were forced to hastily withdraw troops from there as well. From that moment on, there was no one left to help the Third Reich, pressed by Soviet troops from the east and Anglo-American units from the west.
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