...Soon afterwards, the Hungarian Capital became the focus of one of the
most brutal struggles of the war, scarcley noticed in the west because
it coincided with Hitler's Ardennes offensive and thereafter with the
massive Russian offensive father north...
...Stalin had ordered the capture of Budapest, and at first hoped to
achieve this without a battle:even when the Russian had almost completed
the Capital's encirclement, they left open a western passage for the
garrison's withdrawal. The German front commander wanted to abandon the
city; Hitler, inevitably, insisted that it should be defended to the
last. Some 50,000 German and 45,000 Hungarian troops held their
positions, knowing from the onset their situation was hopeless. One
artillery battlion consisted of Ukrainians dressed in  Polish uniforms
with German insignia. An SS Calvary division was described as "Totally
demoralized" and three SS Hungarian police regiments were classified as
"extremely unreliable"...
...On 30 December, a thousand Russian Guns opened a barrage on Budapest
that continued for ten hours daily, with air raids in between...
...In some places the Russians drove prisoners in front of them, who
shouted despairingly, "We are Hungarians!" before both sides' fire tore
into them. Bizarrely, a group of seventy Russians defected to the
defenders, asserting they were more afraid of retreating-to face the
NKVD's machine gunners behind their own front-than of coming forward to
surrender. Stalin's unwilling allies suffered heavily: on 16 January a
Romanian corps reported that since October it had lost 23,000 men dead,
wounded and missing-more than 60 percent of it's strength...
...Hunger gnawed at every man, woman and child. The garrisons 25,000
horses were eaten. Only 14 of 2,500 animals in the city zoo survived-the
rest were killed by Soviet fire or slaughtered for meat; for weeks, a
lion roamed the underground rail tunnels until it was captured by a
Soviet task force dispatched for the purpose....
...Throughout the siege, the persecution and murder of Budapest's Jews
continued....An estimated 105,453 Jews died in or disappeared from
Budapest between mid-October 1944 and the fall of the city...
...The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenburg, who was amoung those trapped
in Budapest, strove to check the Jewish massacres, warning German
commanders that they would be held responsible. But killings continued,
sometimes including the shooting of Hungarian police officers sent to
protect Jews. Wallenburg was eventually murdered by the Russians...
...Mastery was contested in a dozen parts of the city simultaneously.
Buildings changed hands several times amid attacks and counterattacks.
Hungarian soldiers who deserted to the Red Army were offered an abrupt
choice: they might join the Red Army to fight their former comrades or
face transportation to Siberia...After the war, it was found that the
death rate had been similar between those who chose captivity and those
who joined the Red Army...
...On 11 February 1945, resistance collapsed in Buda. The commander of
the Hungarian antiaircraft artillery disarmed Germans in his
headquarters in the Gellert Hotel, raised a white flag and had his men
shoot those who defied him and wanted to prolong resistance...
...Some defenders sought to escape along the sewers by
candlelight...Others who trudged on westwards found themselves emerging
from woodland into the open Zsambek Basin. Here, exposed against the
snow, Soviet snipers and machine gunners shot them down in the
hundreds...Only 700 of the 43,900 men on 11 February reached the German
front farther west; of the remainder, 17,000 had been killed and more
than 22,00 taken prisoner.



From:





http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-The-World-War-1939-1945/dp/0307273598

btt

Staggering when you read about the numbers of life's lost.

Unfathomable today.





 

Interesting.  Thanks for posting this.

All to write another footnote into the pages of history.

Thank you.

It's always amazing seeing the numbers of annialated forces or forces that surrendered during WWII... groups as large as a quarter of our active military at times.

Thanks for the reminder.  A friend's grandfather survived, spared as a WW1 hero and doctor, even though they knew he was a Jew.  Escaped to the US after the war.  The Hungarians suffered horribly in the Second World War and afterward.

My first thought.

Sad...

Thanks.  I never read about the Battle for Budapest.

Certainly one of the lesser-remembered battles of that war.

Very interesting.

Thanks for sharing it.

Truly tragic.

The absolute hell on earth it must have been to be a Jew there, attacked by nearly everyone.

Good read. Thanks for sharing.

Great post, thanks.

I want to know more about the capture of the lion. Knowing the soviets they tossed men at it until it got tired from killing them and passed out.

Lol, most likely.

I happen to know what your avatar is.

Once more.