The Siege of Budapest or Battle of Budapest, was a major battle fought between Soviet and Romanian forces and Hungarian and German forces for the Hungarian capital of Budapest, near the end of World War II. The Budapest Offensive began on October 29 1944, while the siege lasted from December 26 1944 to February 13, 1945. The Soviets began advancing into the suburbs of Pest in November and encircled Budapest on December 26. The besieged defenders resisted the Soviets for approximately fifty days, although they had already exhausted most of their supplies in the first days of the fighting. The civilian population, numbering 800,000, was not evacuated, and consequently many civilians fell victim to the fighting, the intensity of which contemporary observers compared to that of the Battle of Stalingrad. During the siege, about 38,000 civilians died through starvation, military action, and mass executions of Jews in the Budapest Ghetto by the far-right Hungarian nationalist Arrow Cross Party. The city unconditionally surrendered on February 13, 1945. It was a major strategic victory for the Allies in their push towards Berlin.
On 29 December 1944, Soviet envoys delivered an ultimatum demanding the surrender of Axis forces defending Budapest. After the ultimatum was rejected, fighting within the city proper began. The Germans attempted several operations to aid the defenders, who were in an increasingly desperate situation. The most ambitious of these offensives was Operation Konrad III, in which the Germans managed to overrun some Soviet units before being stopped. However, on none of these occasions did they succeed in reaching the city, despite roughly half of the remaining German armored divisions on the Eastern Front being deployed in Hungary. The purpose of these operations was not, in any case, to evacuate the defenders, but to reinforce the city's garrison. Eventually, despite Adolf Hitler's orders, the beleaguered defenders decided to attempt a breakout. The breakout attempt began on the evening of February 11, but only a handful of soldiers managed to reach friendly lines. Shortly afterward, on February 13, the Hungarian capital came completely under Soviet control.
General situation
Having suffered nearly 200,000 deaths in three years fighting the Soviet Union, and with the front lines approaching its own cities, Hungary was by early 1944 ready to exit World War II. As political forces within Hungary pushed for an end to the fighting, Germany preemptively launched Operation Margarethe on 19 March 1944, and entered Hungary.
In October 1944, after successive Allied victories at Normandy and Falaise, and after the collapse of the Eastern Front following the stunning success of the Soviet summer offensive, Operation Bagration, Regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy again attempted to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. Upon hearing of Horthy's efforts, Hitler launched Operation Panzerfaust to keep Hungary on the Axis side, and forced Horthy to abdicate. Horthy and his government were replaced by the far-right National Socialist Arrow Cross Party, led by "Hungarist" Ferenc Szálasi. As the new ultra-nationalist government and its German allies prepared the defense of the capital, IX SS Mountain Corps, consisting of two Waffen-SS divisions, was sent to Budapest to strengthen the city's defense.
Soviet offensive
The besieging Soviet forces were part of Rodion Malinovsky's 2nd Ukrainian Front. Formations that actually took part in the fighting appear to have included the 53rd Army, 7th Guards Army, portions of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, including the 46th Army, and the Romanian 7th Army Corps.
Arrayed against the Soviets was a collection of German Army (Heer), Waffen-SS, and Hungarian Army forces.
The Siege of Budapest was one of the bloodiest sieges of World War II.
Encirclement of Budapest
Budapest was a major target for Joseph Stalin. The Yalta Conference was approaching, and Stalin wanted to display his full strength to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He therefore ordered General Rodion Malinovsky to seize the city without delay. On 28 October, Malinovsky was ordered by Stalin personally to launch an offensive to capture Budapest in less than five days, before all of his forces had even been brought into position. Malinovsky had to obey, even though he knew that such an objective was unrealistic.
The Red Army started its offensive against the city on 29 October 1944. More than 1,000,000 men, split into two operating maneuver groups, advanced. By 5 November, as strategic command was taken over by military experts from Stalin, the Soviets abandoned the plan to quickly capture the city by a southeastern frontal assault, instead they regrouped to isolate Budapest from the rest of the German and Hungarian forces. On 7 November 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops entered the eastern suburbs, 20 kilometers from the old town. The Red Army, after a much-needed pause in operations, resumed its offensive on 19 December. On 26 December, a road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by Soviet troops, thereby completing the encirclement. The Nazi-supported "Leader of the Nation" (Nemzetvezető), Ferenc Szálasi, had already fled from the city on 9 December.
One notable action during the encirclement was the crossing of the Danube at Ercsi, south of Budapest, on 4 December 1944 by troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, for which a considerable 115 Hero of the Soviet Union medals were awarded. Heavy fire destroyed much of the assault force's watercraft during the first crossings, while Axis counterattacks overran the initial beachheads. The Soviets established stable beachheads by 6 December, but suffered heavy casualties, including the loss of several elite companies. Historian Krisztián Ungváry considers the crossing unnecessary, as General Fyodor Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Front was already advancing from Transdanubia to encircle Buda from the southwest. Ungváry argues that the operation may have been driven by General Malinovsky's desire to claim sole credit for the capture of Budapest and suggests that the subsequent award of medals may have helped to obscure the "pointless sacrifice" of his troops.
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, Adolf Hitler had declared Budapest a fortress city (Festung Budapest), which was to be defended to the last man. Waffen SS General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, the commander of the IX Waffen SS Alpine Corps, was put in charge of the city's defenses.
Soviet delegation
Budapest was the first major European city declared a 'fortress' by Hitler that the Soviets had to capture. The Soviet commanders, drawing on their experience at Stalingrad and wary of costly urban fighting, called upon the Budapest garrison to surrender. During the night of 28 December 1944, the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Front contacted the besieged Germans by radios and loudspeakers, and told them about a negotiation for the city's capitulation. The Soviets promised relatively generous surrender conditions and not to mistreat the German and Hungarian prisoners. They also promised that the emissaries' groups would not bring weapons and would appear in cars with white flags.
The next day, two groups of Soviet emissaries appeared as expected. What happened to them later is unclear, but both leaders of the groups died. One possible version of the events is recounted below.
The first, belonging to the 3rd Ukrainian Front, arrived at 10:00 AM in the Budafok sector and was taken to the headquarters of General Pfeffer-Wildenbruch. Their negotiating effort was a failure; Pfeffer-Wildenbruch refused the surrender conditions and sent the Soviet agents back to the battlefield. While the emissaries were en route to their camps, the Germans suddenly opened fire, killing Captain I. A. Ostapenko. Lieutenant N. F. Orlov and Sergeant Ye. T. Gorbatyuk quickly jumped into a trench and narrowly escaped. Owing to heavy German fire, the Soviets were not able to retrieve Ostapenko's body until the night of 29 December. He was buried at Budafok with full military honors. However, accounts by Orlov and a German witness, suggests that the delegates were instead killed by either an uninformed Soviet artillery battery which also caused several German casualties, or Hungarian anti-aircraft guns stationed in the area.
The second group of emissaries belonged to the 2nd Ukrainian Front and arrived at 11:00 AM in the Kispest sector. When the emissaries arrived, the German garrison fired at them. The leader of the emissaries, Captain Miklós Steinmetz, appealed for a negotiation, but to no avail. He was killed together with his two subordinates when the German fire struck the Soviet car. In another account presented by an officer of the Hungarian 12th Reserve Division, Steinmetz's jeep, waving a white flag, drove into an antitank mine laid out on Üllői road. The mines had been laid out on the cobblestone in a chessboard pattern, and the driver attempted to snake through them in walking speed. The jeep hit a mine and both occupants were killed, neither side fired a shot. The accuracy of this account is disputed, but Steinmetz failed to reach German lines. Steinmetz may have also been killed by small arms fire or an anti-tank gun as his jeep approached Axis positions. The historian Ungváry concludes that neither Steinmetz nor Ostapenko were deliberately killed.
The death of the delegates was publicized by Soviet radio, prompting the Wehrmacht to investigate the incident. Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, aware that the killing of the delegates broke international law, claimed that the delegates were German prisoners-of-war and denied the existence of official Soviet delegates. This event was used by German high command to forbid all "fortresses" and army groups from accepting Soviet delegations, on the grounds that this supposed use of prisoners broke international law.
First German relief attempt
The Soviet offensive began 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 Soviet advance. They ultimately withdrew to shorten their lines, hoping to take advantage of the hilly nature of Buda. In January 1945, the Germans launched a three-part counter-offensive codenamed Operation Konrad. This was a joint German-Hungarian effort to relieve the encircled garrison of Budapest. Operation Konrad I was launched on 1 January. The German IV SS Panzer Corps attacked from Tata through hilly terrain north-west of Budapest in an effort to break the siege. On 3 January, the Soviet command sent four more divisions to meet the threat, and recalled the Romanian divisions on 15 January because of their inefficiency. This Soviet action stopped the offensive near Bicske, less than 20 kilometers west of Budapest. The Germans were forced to withdraw on 12 January. They then launched Operation Konrad II on 7 January. The IV SS Panzer Corps attacked from Esztergom toward Budapest Airport to capture it and improve ability to supply the city by air. This offensive was halted near the airport.
Combat in the city
Street fighting in Budapest increased in intensity. Supply became a decisive factor because of the loss of the Ferihegy airport on 27 December 1944, just before the start of the siege. Until 9 January 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 aircraft and gliders, although they were under constant artillery fire from the Soviets. Before the Danube froze, some supplies could be sent on barges, under the cover of darkness and fog. Food shortages were more and more common and soldiers had to rely on finding their own sources of sustenance, some even resorting to eating their horses. The extreme temperatures also affected German and Hungarian troops. Soviet troops quickly found themselves in the same situation as the Germans had in Stalingrad. They were able to take advantage of the urban terrain by relying heavily on snipers and sappers to advance.
Fighting broke out in the sewers, as both sides used them for troop movements. Six Soviet marines even managed to get to Castle Hill and capture a German officer before returning to their own lines – still underground. Such feats were rare because of ambushes in the sewers set up by the Axis troops using local inhabitants 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 for the Axis forces deteriorated, with the garrison facing the risk of being cut in half by the advancing Soviet troops. On 17 January 1945, Hitler agreed to withdraw the remaining troops from Pest to try to defend Buda. All five bridges spanning the Danube were clogged with traffic, evacuating troops and civilians. German troops destroyed the bridges 18 January, despite protests from Hungarian officers. One of them was the famous Chain Bridge, dating from 1849.
Second German relief attempt
On 18 January 1945, the IV SS Panzer Corps, whose relocation to the region north-east of Lake Balaton had been completed on the previous day, was again thrown into battle. This was Operation Konrad III. In two days the German tanks reached the Danube at Dunapentele, tearing the Soviet Transdanubian front apart, and by 26 January the offensive had reached a point roughly 25 kilometers from the ring around the capital.
Stalin ordered his troops to hold their ground at all costs, and two Army Corps that were dispatched to assault Budapest were hastily moved to the south of the city to counter the German offensive. German troops got within 20 kilometres of the city but were unable to maintain their impetus due to fatigue and supply problems. Budapest's defenders asked permission to leave the city and escape the encirclement. Hitler refused.