The Road to Berlin (93 page)

On 3 December 1944, at a mass meeting in Szeged, the programme of the Hungarian Liberation Front was formally proclaimed, demanding the elimination of all fascist and ‘anti-national’ organizations, the purging from the state apparatus of such elements, the institution of political rights and freedom, a comprehensive programme of land reform, state control of the banks, the nationalization of the petroleum industry, coal and bauxite mines, and the guarantee of an eight-hour working day. The ‘Szeged programme’ also called for the establishment in every town and village of a ‘national committee’ acting as an organ of the Liberation Front, as well as the summoning of a ‘national assembly’ to draft a constitution and to set up a provisional government. Two days later, another mass meeting in Debrecen adopted this programme. A ‘national committee’ was set up in Debrecen, which became the seat of the provisional government later in the month, though the Szeged centre continued to exercise considerable influence. Within a week elections were afoot for the ‘provisional national assembly’, which
convened on 21 December in Debrecen with its 237 delegates (71 of them Communists). On 22 December this assembly voted a ‘political council’ into power, which in turn selected Col.-Gen. Miklos (former commander of the 1st Hungarian Army) as prime minister and head of a provisional government with its coalition component (three Communists, three representatives of the Small Farmers, one National Peasant Party man and four ‘Horthy-ists’, including General Miklos himself). Amidst the ruin brought about by military operations and the havoc wrought within the administration, a new socialist order began to emerge and beside it a form of government, a ‘provisional government’, with which Stalin could talk armistice terms. The Hungarian delegation duly arrived in Moscow at the beginning of January 1945.

But even as the national committees in ‘liberated’ Hungary set about organizing elections for the National Assembly, Hitler determined to fight on and fight back in Hungary, issuing orders in mid-December that Budapest was to be turned into a fortress and defended building by building. In addition to this defensive investment, he proposed to launch an armoured counter-stroke between lake Balaton and lake Velencze, with the object of driving south-eastwards to the Danube. Three
Panzer
divisions and two infantry divisions from East Prussia were to be transferred to Friessner in Hungary in order to carry out these missions. Both of these tasks brought fresh problems for Friessner: the armoured attack with the three
Panzer
divisions (attached to Sixth Army) was to be launched across ground already soggy or crisscrossed with ditches, while the defence of Budapest as envisaged by Hitler meant tying down a large force in the eastern side of the city (Pest) and making much more effective provision for a defensive battle, few signs of which showed in Budapest even at this late hour. Buda on the western bank of the Danube formed a natural fortress, dominated by the Gelerthegy heights dropping precipitously into the Danube itself and honeycombed with underground caverns, passages and casements hewn into the rock. Further to the north lay another height, the Palace Hill, similarly mined and tunnelled; these twin heights of Buda were protected in turn by the Buda Hills proper. To the east, on the other side of the Danube and on the low-lying land dominated by the heights of Buda, lay Pest with its several industrial suburbs—Ujpest, Pestujhel, Kobanya, Kispest and Erzsebetfalva, each with solid, massive structures and a variety of public buildings which lent themselves readily to conversion into formidable urban fortresses.

While the inhabitants of Budapest prepared for Christmas in a city which was not yet fitted out for war, with everyday life not so far removed from the usual, the two Soviet fronts closed in on the Hungarian capital. A German tank attack with 8th
Panzer
Division to the north of Budapest failed to deflect Kravchenko’s 6th Guards Tank Army; the
Dirlewanger
Brigade, which had the barbarous suppression of the Warsaw rising to its dubious credit, broke up almost to a man and fled. To plug the gap the German command, no less than Guderian and Hitler in person, ordered the two
Panzer
divisions to the south of Budapest
to shift their infantry northwards, leaving the armour in the Balaton area on the Margareten line—a decision which left III
Panzer
Corps in this southern region without infantry and thus at the mercy of the Soviet divisions facing it. Guderian had not long to wait for the inevitable reckoning. On the morning of 20 December Malinovskii and Tolbukhin renewed their offensive in line with the
Stavka
directive of 12 December. Kravchenko’s tanks from 6th Guards Army pushed on to the north-west, covering up to twenty miles and reaching the river Hron on the first day of the attack. Shumilov’s infantry from 7th Guards gained up to ten miles and approached the valley of the river Ipel, the signal for heavy German counter-attacks with strong tank forces—the armour brought up from Balaton, launching repeated attacks which lasted for more than a week in the strip of land between the rivers Ipel and Hron. On the evening of 24 December Malinovskii instructed Kravchenko to attack towards Esztergom (involving a turn to the south) and Shumilov was ordered to break through to the river Hron with his left-flank divisions. Covered from the north by a corps from Pliev’s ‘mobile group’, Kravchenko duly swung south, only to meet stiff German opposition; fighting now almost side by side, the tanks of 6th Guards and the infantry of 7th Guards pressed southwards and reached the Danube to the north of Esztergom on 26 December. Tolbukhin had also started his main offensive effort on 20 December, driving from south-west of Budapest to link up with Malinovskii coming from the north and north-west. German resistance was also heavy in this southern sector, with fierce fighting in the area of Szekesfehervar; Tolbukhin committed two armoured formations (2nd Guards Mechanized and 7th Mechanized) on this first day, followed by a second (18th Tank Corps) on 21 December. Soviet rifle formations made slow progress at first, since their infantry-support tanks had been taken away to fight the considerable numbers of German tanks; the mechanized formations also became snagged in the infantry fighting for many hours.

After three days, Tolbukhin’s front had broken through the German positions along a sixty-mile front, with only Szekesfehervar holding out (though the Soviet advance made further resistance pointless and German troops pulled out). Once through the German defences Tolbukhin now unleashed 18th Tank Corps on his right flank and sent it northwards towards Esztergom. Govorunenko, 18th Corps commander, decided to outflank Bicske from the three sides and then rush the town with a motorized infantry brigade. On the afternoon of 24 December Bicske was cleared, and two brigades, with a third guarding the left flank, struck out for Esztergom, also cleared after some five hours of fighting. Tolbukhin and Malinovskii linked up on 26 December when 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts joined hands. Budapest was now completely sealed off.

The line of the river Hron had caved in. In the bend of the Danube north of Budapest Tolbukhin had also trapped a sizeable force of German troops and his lead elements were pushing on to a point less than twenty miles from Komarno, the main German base. As rapidly as possible the Soviet command thickened the ‘ring’, with Malinovskii clamping his divisions round Budapest and Tolbukhin
strengthening his own line from the Danube to the east of Komarno on to lake Balaton. But once again Malinovskii’s ‘Budapest group’ (a rifle corps from 7th Guards Army, 7th Rumanian Corps and 18th Independent Guards Rifle Corps) found the task of breaking right into the city completely beyond their resources, and four days of heavy fighting from 26–31 December brought only heavy casualties and little progress in the suburbs. Soviet troops stood between seven and ten miles from the city centre, with the greater distance on the Pest side, though Pest with its level ground and good road system offered better facilities for organizing an assault. Inside the ‘ring’ the Soviet command reckoned that as many as twelve German divisions had been trapped, in all 188,000 men; within the city itself four German divisions (13th
Panzer, SS Feldherrnhalle
and two
SS
cavalry divisions) together with Hungarian units were locked in and became perforce the defending garrison. Throughout the night and on the morning of 29 December loudspeakers in Soviet front-line positions relayed in German and Hungarian the Soviet terms for the capitulation of Budapest. Soviet guns ceased firing and emissaries from both Fronts, 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian, went forward to parley with the German command about surrender, Captain Miklos Shteinmetz (a Hungarian by birth) from Malinovskii’s command and Captain Ostapenko from Tolbukhin’s front. Shteinmetz’s truck, carrying a large white flag, came under heavy fire from the German positions and was blown up by mines, killing Shteinmetz and a sergeant. Ostapenko passed through the German lines and was taken blindfolded to a headquarters, where the senior German officer refused to accept the text of the Soviet terms and declined to enter into any talks. Blindfolded once more, Ostapenko and his two companions were taken back, but the moment he passed the German forward positions a burst of fire struck him in the back; his companions Orlov and Gorbatyuk, however, escaped with their lives.

Hitler had no intention of giving up Budapest and was now planning to wrest it from the Russians. Having summarily dismissed Friessner and Fretter-Pico (
GOC
Sixth Army) and replaced them with Wöhler and Balck, he ordered Guderian to shift IV
SS Panzer
Corps from Army Group Centre to Hungary (a deployment which was discovered by the Soviet command, though they could not discover on what sector this tank formation would be committed). Gille’s
Panzer
corps de-trained at Komarno, going straight into an attack aimed at Bicske–Budapest, a south-easterly thrust which hit Zakharov’s 4th Guards Army full in the flank; Bobruk’s 31st Guards Rifle Corps took the full weight of the German attack, which burst on the Soviet troops at 2230 hours on 1 January 1945. German aircraft appeared in some strength to support the counter-attack, which gathered momentum in the next few days, causing Tolbukhin considerable anxiety. The
Panzer
divisions, attacking along narrow sectors with up to a hundred tanks, drove on to Bicske junction—a mere fifteen miles from Soviet troops who were fending off German attacks mounted from Buda itself. To relieve the pressure on Tolbukhin, the
Stavka
on 4 January issued orders to Malinovskii to launch an attack on Komarno with 6th Guards Tank Army and 7th Guards, a Soviet
thrust aimed at the rear of IV
Panzer
. Tolbukhin also received orders to attack towards Komarno, a joint operation with Malinovskii designed to encircle the German
Panzer
corps.

Early on the morning of 6 January Malinovskii’s left-flank armies (6th and 7th Guards) attacked from the line of the river Hron, carving out a large bridgehead on the western bank by midday. In the evening, however, German units blocked the Soviet advance and pushed along the southern bank of the Danube, taking ‘Esztergom and threatening the rear of Kravchenko’s Guards tank army. Heavy fighting went on in the area between the rivers Hron and Nitra, where German reserves managed to stem any further Soviet advance for the moment. While Soviet troops struggled to roll back this first German attempt to break through to the garrisons in Budapest, a second attack unrolled from the salient south of Mor, mounted in this area by III
Panzer
Corps and aimed at Zamoja; this second force with three
Panzer
divisions was to link up with German troops fighting north of Bicske. For five days, from 7–11 January, Biryukov’s 20th Guards Corps supported by 7th Mechanized Corps fought off Breith’s III
Panzer
Corps, which made only a few miles and then fell back on the defensive after suffering heavy losses in tanks. The German attempt to smash a way in through Bicske had failed, but a third attack—designed to slice Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front in two—produced a much more dangerous situation. Gille’s IV
Panzer
quickly disengaged from the battle and fell back on Komarno, where it was loaded on to trains and appeared to withdraw further west. The command of 4th Guards Army, wholly deceived by the move, were anxious to organize the pursuit of the ‘beaten’ enemy, who nevertheless did not disappear to the west but suddenly appeared further to the south in the area of lake Balaton, south-west of Szekesfehervar.

Out of the winter gloom on the morning of 18 January, IV
Panzer’s
tanks crashed into Gnedin’s 135th Rifle Corps, which was itself bereft of either tanks or
SP
guns. Moving off at 0830 hours, German armour made rapid progress during the course of the day, leaving the wreckage of 135th Corps behind it. Driving to the east, IV
Panzer
made for Dunapentele and covered up to twenty miles on the first day, brushing aside 7th Mechanized Corps hastily moved up to block the German advance. Two more Soviet corps, 18th Tank and 133rd Rifle Corps, also failed to hold off the German tanks, which by the evening of 19 January had reached the Szarviz canal, making a successful assault crossing at first light and reaching Dunapentele by the afternoon. On the morning of 20 January German units were on the Danube. Tolbukhin’s Front on the western bank of the Danube had been split in two, a situation which caused the Soviet command some very anxious moments. At Szekesfehervar Soviet troops were also battling to hang on to this vital road and rail junction; the Soviet defence was holding for the moment, supported by 18th and 133rd Corps even though they were fighting whilst encircled. On the evening of 20 January, with his southern flank ripped wide open and the threat of encirclement facing 57th Army (together
with the 1st Bulgarian Army and 12th Yugoslav Corps), Tolbukhin spoke to Sharokhin, commander of the 57th, by radio, asking for his opinion about pulling all Soviet units back to the eastern bank of the Danube. Somewhat laconically Sharokhin pointed out that, since the Germans could now get to the Danube crossings first, 57th Army would be in a worse plight if it tried to pull back—the only course was to stay put, and fight in encirclement if necessary. Tolbukhin agreed and presumably reported this opinion to Stalin, who had ordered him to look into the question of a Soviet withdrawal behind the Danube.