Mostly annihilated…

The Hungarian Royal Palace after it was captured by the Soviet Red Army. This object was in the hands of the German-Hungarian defenders until the very last moment. Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

This changed radically as the Russian government decided to declassify an astonishing amount of documents related to what it refers to as the Great Patriotic War – and not just declassifying, but uploading and categorising the materials online (see https://pamyat-naroda.ru/). In this way, anyone can access the documents which, until recently, were considered strictly confidential. Here we aim to present a short summary of how the Red Army faced the German-Hungarian escape-attempt and how the operation can be evaluated based on these recently released documents.

Out of options

When the Red Army totally encircled Budapest on December 25th 1944, nobody knew that the Hungarian capital was going to be the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. The Soviet High Command planned to capture Budapest by a quick march into the city, but the German plan was to hold on to Budapest and use it as a spearhead for a future counter-attack (and by this, stop the Soviet Army). Needless to say, both parties faced disappointment. A 52-day long battle took place on the streets of Budapest, and by the very end the German defenders had run out of medicine, fuel, food and ammunition. That forced the German Commander, Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, to “look for a new position” in order to fight further. He could not say that he and his men were planning to come out of the encircled Buda castle, as Adolf Hitler strictly prohibited leaving the city alive: Budapest, he said, should have been defended to the very last German soldier, the very last bullet.

However, the situation left them with no choice (at least that was what they thought). Three attempts for relieving the Budapest-garrison collapsed (operations Konrad I-II-III), and the Germans believed that capitulation to the Soviet army would mean immediate death. A tragic decision was made: to break out of the Buda Castle, cut through the Soviet lines into the woods of western Buda and find their way back to the frontline to meet their own troops. There is no precise number of soldiers involved in the attempt, but estimations (from both the German and Soviet sides) state that around 20,000-22,000 Germans were involved and 5,000-6,000 of them were wounded in the escape.

The majority of Hungarians, on the other hand, did not execute the commanders’ order. They simply dressed into civilian clothing and deserted their posts. There is a theory which states that the plan was uncovered and the Soviets were waiting for the enemy to show up – though according to recent research this cannot be confirmed and it seems to be untrue. Of course, there were relocations of Soviet troops even on the same exact day of the escape (e.g. the 337th Rifle Division), but the decision by Pfeffer-Wildenbruch was made so late (on the morning of February 11th 1945) that the Soviets would not have had enough time to react even if they had had spies in the garrison headquarters. Documents confirm that the Soviets expected an escape attempt (e.g. on January 13th and then on January 30th) but they did not have any information regarding the exact date and time.

Massacre

The start of the operation began at 8pm (in the Soviet documents it is written as 22:00 as they used the Moscow time-zone in their reports – this applies to all time-related data in this article). The first “checkpoint” was supposed to be Széll Kálmán’s Square: a wide and empty square below the Buda Castle to the West. This part of the front was the responsibility of the 180th Rifle Division on the Soviet side. In their log book they described the event as the following:

“The enemy, concentrating significant amount of infantry on the frontline of the 1st Battalion of the 42nd Rifle Regiment, at 23:00 on 11.02.1945 started to develop as an avalanche in the direction of object No. 53 [Post Palace], got divided into 2 columns; the first column of the enemy headed to the North-Western direction to the TÖRÖKVÉSZI way, while the second column to the WESTERN direction by the RETEK and OLASZ FASOR streets. Later on, these groups united in the area of the No. 258, 377 and 348 hills in the forest, where they were destroyed by other units of our army.”

There was an alternative direction out of the Castle, of course – to the North. This frontline (precisely the Margit körút) was assigned to the 109th Guards Rifle Division. They registered the events as follows:

“During the night the enemy attacked the frontline of the division with 2-3 regiments-strong infantry on the 11th of February 1945 at 22:30, and later on at 01:00 AM, 03:00 AM and 05:00 AM on the following day, tried to break through the defence, and get the encircled German forces out in North-Western direction. The decision of the commander of the division was to strengthen the defence by dropping all reserve-units onto the frontline. The parts of the division during the night from 11.02.1945 to 12.02.1945 threw back the attacks of the enemy, destroyed the smaller groups that could infiltrate into the defence lines…”

It is known not just from the Soviet reports but from the reminiscences and archive photos that the very first hours of the fight were more like a massacre than an operation. Hundreds or maybe thousands died after the very first steps on Széll Kálmán Square. There was not any kind of leadership from the German side, and some were surging forward in panic without control. However, at least half the crowd made it through the frontline and started to look for a way out of the city. Some of them got lost in the dark and they did not have a clue where they were.

The episode below is from the diary of Fanni Gyarmati, the wife of the famous Hungarian poet, Miklós Radnóti (who was shot in a forced march together with other Hungarian-Jewish forced labourers by Nazi guard personnel), describing what she saw on the morning of February 12th 1945 in Buda:

“They got here from the Castle, by some kind of fantastic letter ‘S’-shaped way through Marczibányi square, then up to the Rózsadomb, and from there climbing down; there were thousands of them, but they had got scattered by now. They asked us the name of the village they got to. They were supposed to be in Zsámbék already (a village 25 kilometres to the West of Buda – authors’ note] – as the hopeless soldiers said … They started to throw away their weapons and ammunition in the yard of the house among squealing women. One lady who was a cook in the Academy on the other side of the street, at that time serving the SS, went from soldier to soldier and cut off the SS symbols from their tunics … Most of the soldiers were below the age of 20, or a little older – and now they had to face death here…”

Long escape

Getting out of the city did not mean that the soldiers were safe. They had to march about 25 kilometres, up the hills to the west, during the night, without any food and lack of ammunition, and possibly wounded. And, of course, tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers from the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts were hunting them. A tragic episode can be found in the operations log book of the 11th Guards Cavalry Division (taking place at 01:00 AM on the February 14th, when the enemy started to come out of the woods and attack Perbál):

“The 39th Cavalry Division, letting the enemy come close, opened fire from every existing weapon onto the Germans. The enemy side-tracked to the south and by screaming ‘Hurray!’ jumped on the firing positions of our artillery, defending the road TELKI-BUDAJENŐ-PERBÁL. Tanks of the 71st tank regiment advanced by the road BUDAJENŐ-PERBÁL, switching on the searchlight, firing from their machine guns in motion, their tracks trampled down the Germans who tried to run away. At 10:00 AM on the 14th of February, a group of 2,000 Germans came out of the forest and headed into the direction of Tinnye. Our artillery and infantry opened fire at full capacity. Tanks of the 71st tank regiment set forth quickly to face the out-breakers – they were shooting on the move and trampled German officers and soldiers to death. At least 800 German officers and soldiers died after this and at least 350 Germans were captured.”

One of the last obstacles to overcome for the former defenders of Buda before joining their own units was the 49th Guards Rifle Division. It is important to note that there was a support-attack advancing from the other side of the frontline by the German main forces as well. On the night of February 14th to the 15th 1945, a battalion of the German 3rd Cavalry Division with 11 recently repaired vehicles raided Anyácsapuszta from the direction of Szomor. However, the support was late. By this time the majority of the escapees had already been killed and their corpses were lying all along the fields of the Zsámbék-basin. The raid succeeded only partially as they could capture the trenches of the 4th company of the Soviet 144th Rifle Regiment. According to German reports, this operation cost them 100 dead and wounded soldiers and it helped about 50 people through the frontline from Buda. The 49th Guards Rifle Division took back its former positions by the early morning on the 15th of February.

Evaluation

When the defenders of Buda, about 20,000 people, decided to give up the fight and tried to join their own troops, they were already in very poor condition, lacking everything that could have given them a chance to fight against the Soviets. Heavily outnumbered by the Red Army, the chances were so low that even Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, the German commander, did not risk taking part in the break-through attempt. He chose to climb down to an underground canal and surrendered to the first Soviet troop he faced with his men.

It is known that fewer than 800 made it through to the German main forces side in total, and it is suspected that about one or two thousand people deserted shortly before the action began. Possibly 8,000-15,000 people could get out of the city and escape to the forests, but as mentioned above, barely anybody could escape in the end. In the following days, thousands of Germans were either captured or killed.

At the same time, the Soviet casualties were significantly lower. From the recently declassified sources, this information can only be accessed partially – nevertheless estimation is still possible. Around 300 Soviet soldiers died, and around 800 soldiers were wounded in total because of this event during the five-to-six days of fighting. It is also important to highlight that these were those who fought in the area from the Buda Castle to the woods in the west of Budapest – involving several rifle divisions, artillery troops and cavalry units.

From the numbers mentioned above, it is clear that the odds of the Germans winning were very low – thousands were killed because of a poor and irresponsible decision made by the German commander. On the other hand, there is another way to look at the operation: Soviet reports recorded that the Soviet troops captured enemy machine guns even in the area of Tök-Perbál (about a 30 kilometre-march from Buda, during the night, uphill, in snow). This means that even after such a long march, there were smaller German groups together who carried machine guns with accessories and ammo boxes. For some, military discipline did not collapse.

From the Soviet sources, the escape-attempt can be described as a pure manhunt. As those sources were originally for internal use only and were then declassified, there was no purpose to lie in them. Because of this it is breath-taking to realise how many people (German, Soviet, Romanian, Hungarian) died on the streets of the Hungarian capital during its siege – and its very tragic capture. The scars from the severe fights are still visible on many of houses in Budapest, but year by year many of them disappear. It looks as though the city is slowly recovering – after a war which ended 75 years ago.

This article is based on the following study of the authors, published in Hungarian: Ungváry Krisztián–Ványai Márton: „…Nagy része megsemmisült…”. A német-magyar védősereg kitörési kísérlete Budapestről a szovjet hadműveleti iratok tükrében – 1945. február 11. Budapest, Clio Intézet, 2019. Online at: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/198ee4_222f5c389d41447881bff30ed034a86b.pdf

Krisztián Ungváry is a Hungarian historian of 20th century military and political history. He has published extensively on the Siege of Budapest as well as the secret police in communist Hungary.

Márton Ványai is a Hungarian historian also focusing on military history of the 20th century.

Budapest, Second World War, Siege of Budapest