Tomb of the Panzerwaffe: The Defeat of the Sixth SS Panzer Army in Hungary 1945

by Aleksei Isaev

  It shouldn’t be thought that only the 3rd Ukrainian Front was receiving fresh formations. The German 356th Infantry Division had arrived in subordination to the IV SS Panzer Corps just before the described events – on 28 January. It was immediately placed in the front line in the most vulnerable sector from the point of view of the German command – at Székesfehérvár. It is impossible not to note the revealing confluence of events. The 23rd Tank Corps and 104th Rifle Corps arrived in the 4th Guards Army on 25 January. If Tolbukhin had reached the decision to move these units promptly to the Székesfehérvár area, then it is fully possible that the attack could have been launched prior to the arrival of the fresh German division in its defensive positions on the approaches to the town. The Soviet armored battering ram consisting of 150 tanks of Akhmanov’s tank corps would have fallen upon the relatively weak defense by the dismounted cavalrymen of Gruppe Holst. However, this decision would have required iron nerves. It is rather difficult to condemn the 3rd Ukrainian Front’s command for the cautious regrouping of the arriving reserves in closer proximity to the enemy’s armor spearhead. If the German panzers had broken out of the defile between Lake Velence and the Danube River, this would have unquestionably raised alarms and would have required a rapid decision.

  The transfer of the 3rd Ukrainian Front’s point of attack on the final day of January, however, took place under completely different circumstances. The German command correctly assessed the strong probes by the 20th and 21st Guards Rifle Corps, the results of which had prompted Tolbukhin to shift the 5th Guards Cavalry Corps and 1st Guards Mechanized Corps to the Székesfehérvár area. In addition, the implementation of the hasty regrouping according to the 3rd Ukrainian Front commander’s order wasn’t kept concealed from enemy aerial reconnaissance: “The attacks undertaken today in the sector of divisional Gruppe Holst should be taken as a reconnaissance in force. In connection with the bringing up of reserves to this area, which was detected by aerial reconnaissance, major attacks should be expected in this area.”1

  Commander of the 26th Army Lieutenant General N.A. Gagen.

  A T-34/85 tank with tank riders aboard. In view of the almost complete absence of armored personnel carriers in the Red Army, tanks were often used to transport infantry.

  A German 75mm PAK-40 anti-tank gun left behind in its position in the Budapest area. (TsAMO)

  A StuG III self-propelled gun with its gun removed. Most likely, this machine was abandoned and cannibalized for its useful parts in order to repair other StuG IIIs.

  A knocked-out Panzerjäger 38(t) Ausf.M (Marder III) 75mm self-propelled anti-tank gun.

  A knocked-out Panther, Hungary, January 1945. Shell holes are clearly visible in the side armor of the turret. (TsAMO)

  A StuG 40 abandoned on the street of a Hungarian village.

  However, it was through the combat dispositions of the fresh 356th Infantry Division that the units of the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps succeeded in breaking through toward Székesfehérvár. Wintertime combat on the Eastern Front must have come as a shock to the men of this German infantry division, fresh from Italy. As the IV SS Panzer Corps headquarters reported to the Operations Department of Armeegruppe Balck: “In the opinion of the division commander based on the experience of today, the 356th Infantry Division in no way corresponds to the demands of warfare on the Eastern Front, particularly in winter. The conduct of II/871 Grenadier Regiment on the battlefield threatened to undermine the combat morale of the neighboring units.”2

  After the defeat of the units that were targeted by the new Soviet offensive, German hopes for retaining the occupied positions began quickly to melt away. The dismantling of the German assault grouping continued. One of Totenkopf’s regiments, the 6th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Eicke, was sent to Székesfehérvár as a reserve. On the second day of the offensive, 1 February, the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps managed to break into the northern and northwestern outskirts of Székesfehérvár, where it became tied up in street fighting. Thanks to the arrival of Totenkopf’s regiment, the Germans managed to hold on to Székesfehérvár, and the units of the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps were pushed back to the outskirts.

  As was the case in December 1941 in front of Moscow, the failure of the German offensive meant serious difficulties for the Germans in the event that the Red Army went over to the offensive. There was simply nothing left with which to parry the Soviet attacks against the sectors that had been weakened in order to reinforce the assault grouping. As the result of the nearly two weeks of intensive combat, the assault grouping of Gille’s IV SS Panzer Corps had suffered heavy armor losses. Information about the IV SS Panzer Corps armor park is shown in Table 3:

  Table 3 Condition of the Divisions of the IV SS Panzer Corps on 1 February 1945

  Note: The numbers in the parentheses indicates the number of vehicles under short-term repair.

  The 509th Heavy Panzer Battalion of King Tigers had only 11 operational tanks on 1 February 1945. Having available only a limited quantity of serviceable armor, Gille could not count upon holding the broad area extending from Lake Balaton and Székesfehérvár to the Danube. Moreover, the attack in the Székesfehérvár area threatened the main lines of supply that fed the German grouping that was extended in the direction of the Danube. On the other hand, the further dismantling of the assault grouping in order to support the defense of Székesfehérvár was weakening the positions in the interval between Lake Velence and the Danube, as well as the southern flank of Gille’s IV SS Panzer Corps.

  On 2 February, equilibrium was established at Székesfehérvár. The 1st Guards Mechanized Corps and the rifle units that were operating with it dug in on the outskirts of the city and repelled German counterattacks. On this same day, a German staff car was ambushed by a reconnaissance patrol from the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps. Inside the car was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations of the IV SS Panzer Corps and a lieutenant-interpreter. They had been driving out along the road to Seregélyes to visit one of the forward units in order to interrogate a prisoner. The senior officer was killed in the exchange of fire, and the interpreter was taken prisoner. Unfortunately for the Germans, the deputy chief of the Operations Department happened to be carrying with him operational materials of the IV SS Panzer Corps, including the plan for Operation Konrad III, and a printed transcript of the discussions between Gille and Balck. It was information from these particular captured documents that was cited above.

  If the divisions of the IV SS Panzer Corps literally had only a handful of operational panzers, the situation on the opposite side of the front also wasn’t rose-colored. The 23rd Tank Corps had suffered heavy losses in its counterattack against the main forces of the German’s assault grouping. On 1 February 1945, it had serviceable only 24 T-34/85 tanks and 13 ISU-122 self-propelled vehicles. The irrecoverable losses in armor from the moment it entered battle amounted to 84 T-34 tanks and 3 ISU-122 self-propelled guns, while an additional 24 T-34 and 5 ISU-122 required medium-term repairs. Another 11 T-34 tanks needed major overhauls. The 23rd Tank Corps had also left behind T-34s subordinate to the 2nd Ukrainian Front, and they were involved in the street fighting in Budapest. Given such a decline in armor numbers, the strike capabilities of the tank brigades were substantially reduced. For example, the 9th Guards Tank Brigade had only 9 tanks in formation. However, the overall situation smiled upon the offensive operations of the 23rd Tank Corps and the 104th Rifle Corps, when after the successful attack of the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps at Székesfehérvár, the German forces between Velence and the Danube were compelled to break up their assault grouping and to begin a gradual retreat.

  The attacking forces of the 4th Guards Army encountered serious resistance on the approaches to the road hub of Seregélyes. The 23rd Tank Corps pushed toward the town on 2 February, but the infantry of the 66th and 151st Rifle Divisions moving in its wake were lagging behind. However, the Germans had no intention to yield the road hub without a fight; moreover, they launched a counterattack. The
brigades of Akhmanov’s tank corps that were approaching Seregélyes were counterattacked in both flanks and the rear. As a result of two days of maneuvering combat, the 23rd Tank Corps was compelled to fall back, but then was sent to outflank Seregélyes to the north. Moreover, the tank corps was given an ambitious assignment: it was to seize Székesfehérvár by the end of 4 February.

  On the path of the outflanking maneuver in the space between Seregélyes and Lake Velence lay a canal, with a depth of 2 meters and a width of 6 meters. The 23rd Tank Corps was unable to force a crossing of it from the march, but with the onset of darkness a bridgehead was seized on the other side, and by the morning of 5 February, a temporary bridge had been laid across the canal. However, the canal passed through a broad, swampy meadow, and it was possible to reach the bridge only via a narrow dike that stretched for approximately 2 kilometers. The absence of maneuver possibilities and the lack of natural cover meant that on the approach to the bridge crossing the canal, the Soviet tanks were simply shot up. It was necessary to expand the bridgehead, but this required infantry. Only on the night of 5/6 February did the few remaining tanks of Akhmanov’s tank corps cross over into the bridgehead. At that moment, the 3rd Tank Brigade had only 8 serviceable tanks, the 39th Tank Brigade – 6, the 135th Tank Brigade – 5, and the 1443rd Self-propelled Artillery Regiment – 9 ISU-122, for a total of just 28 operational vehicles in the 23rd Tank Corps.

  Together with the 66th and 151st Rifle Divisions, the 23rd Tank Corps began to break out of the bridgehead to the northwest toward Székesfehérvár on 6 February. That day, the town of Börgönd, which was just a stone’s throw away from Székesfehérvár, fell to the attacking Soviet forces, as did Seregélyes. The simultaneous appearance of a Soviet bridgehead to the north of Seregélyes facilitated the Soviet assault on Székesfehérvár. In addition, prior to this the city had been enveloped from the south by the 26th Army’s 155th Rifle Division. Infantry of the 4th Guards Army that were attacking from the east broke into the nearly enveloped city and seized this important road hub before nightfall on 6 February.

  However, the German command had no intention to settle with the loss of this favorable line of defense. On 7 February, the Germans counterattacked. For this, the 509th Heavy Panzer Battalion, which at that moment possessed 16 King Tigers, was summoned in response to an alarm and was thrown back into the fighting. The Soviet bridgehead, which extended in the direction of Székesfehérvár, was attacked from the flank. The target of the attacking German panzers was the bridges that the Soviets had built across the canal. This attack at a sensitive place forced a regrouping of the 23rd Tank Corps in order to defend the territory that had been gained. Two of its tank brigades were withdrawn from the bridgehead and sent to the southeast to defend Seregélyes.

  On 8 February, a counterattack by the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking eliminated the Soviet bridgehead across the canal and retook Székesfehérvár. Having overrun the infantry of the 151st Rifle Division’s 581st Rifle Regiment, the German armor and panzer grenadiers cut off the 23rd Tank Corps’ 56th Motorized Rifle Brigade. The brigade spent the entire day fighting in encirclement and fell back to the eastern bank of the canal with the onset of darkness. Up to 65% of the soldiers and officers that came out of the encirclement were wounded. Under the threat of encirclement, the 3rd Tank Brigade abandoned the bridgehead and withdrew across the canal. The bridges across it were blown up.

  Over the course of 7-8 February, the 23rd Tank Corps lost 12 T-34 tanks knocked out, and 2 ISU-122s. It now had serviceable only 14 tanks and 5 self-propelled guns. The adversary of Akhmanov’s tankers, the 509th Heavy Panzer Battalion of King Tigers, had just 5 operational tanks after the elimination of the Soviet bridgehead. However, on the whole, the front began to stabilize. The lost bridgehead would have to be seized once again, but there was no longer the strength to do it. It was necessary to abandon the idea of taking Székesfehérvár for a while. The capture of Seregélyes remained the last major success of the Soviet counteroffensive.

  Despite the fact that the lines of defense that had existed prior to 18 January could not be fully re-established, the Soviet counteroffensive was an undoubted success. The IV SS Panzer Corps was pushed back away from Budapest. The garrison of the encircled city lost its last remaining hope for relief. The German command also lost favorable positions for the further development of an offensive. From the staging area that had been created as far as the Danube at the height of Konrad III, it might have been possible to strike either to the south into the rear of the 57th Army and 1st Bulgarian Army, or to the north into the rear of the 4th Guards Army. The Germans no longer held this advantageous position.

  Following the counteroffensive, the subsequent Soviet withdrawal to the positions between Lake Velence and Lake Balaton made the defensive front more compact, and enabled it to be defended with an adequate amount of strength and means. Even though Székesfehérvár had not fallen to the 4th Guards Army, it now had only extremely limited use as a logistics hub – Soviet troops were holding the heights to the east of the city that overlooked it, and were keeping it under artillery fire.

  6

  The Storming of Budapest

  The epopee of the storming of the Hungarian capital began on 27 December 1944, when the ring of encirclement around Budapest finally snapped shut. Caught in the encirclement were the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions, the 13th Panzer Division, the SA Panzer Grenadier Division Feldherrnhalle, a portion of the 271st Volksgrenadier Division, the 10th Hungarian Infantry Division, the 12th Hungarian Reserve Division, a Hungarian armor division, a portion of the Hungarian 1st Hussar Division, and a number of separate battalions of infantry and artillery, including Hungarian volunteer corps.

  According to information cited in the book The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II by the Hungarian historian Kristián Ungváry [which has been translated into English by Ladisláus Löb and published by Yale University Press], the total ration strength of the Hungarian units and formations, police combat groups and volunteer corps that were encircled in Budapest amounted to 55,100 men. The German units and formations numbered a total of 42,600 men, including 1,600 wounded or sick in Budapest hospitals.

  The Soviet forces had to overcome several concentric lines of defense, which ran along the ring streets of the city, with their flanks resting on the Danube. There were four such lines of defense in Buda, the western half of the city. In Pest, the eastern half of the city, there were 6 main, concentric lines of defense. The first, which could already be viewed by soldiers on the front line, ran along the Rákos Canal. This canal, which was 15-20 meters wide and had a depth of 2.5 meters, represented a serious anti-tank obstacle. All the bridges across the canal had been blown up, and the approaches to it were covered by fire from the residential and factory buildings located along the canal bank. The homes and buildings on the outskirts of the city and in the city itself had been converted into machine-gun positions. The eastern suburbs of Budapest consisted of dense blocks of one- and two-story brick homes. Between the homes there were small gardens and fences, which facilitated the infiltration of assault groups.

  The central part of the city was strikingly different from the outskirts and consisted primarily of densely-packed, multi-story buildings with very narrow and straight streets. Here, the conditions for the attacker were much worse. Fortified shelters had been set up at street intersections, in which the gendarmes took cover during air raids. In the course of the assault, these shelters became improvised pillboxes. The large stone buildings and enclosures were adapted for a lengthy defense; loopholes were created in the walls of the buildings for rifles and smallcaliber guns. The streets were blocked by barricades of rubble and sandbags. The barricades were constructed according to the materials in the given area in peacetime. For example, at the crematorium, the street was blocked by a barricade made from cut stone. The approaches to the crematorium were blocked by a barricade made from tombstones with an anti-tank ditch in front of it. On Zsygmond and Ker
esztyén Streets, barricades made from large-caliber guns that were partially covered with earth and piled sandbags were encountered. In the center of Buda, there were a large number of barricades consisting of overturned trucks, cars and even armored personnel carriers.

  In view of the necessity of regrouping forces for the defense of Buda, the German-Hungarian grouping defending Pest had left to it:

  • Panzer Grenadier Division Feldherrnhalle;

  • 13th Panzer Division;

  • 10th and 12th Hungarian Infantry Divisions;

  • Hungarian armor division;

  • 22nd SS Cavalry Division.

  The divisions have been listed in the order of their location around the perimeter of defense of the eastern half of the city. Separate battalions were also scattered along the perimeter of defense.

  The Soviet attackers employed the classic principle “Break up and destroy” in the assault on Budapest. First it was decided to tackle the eastern half of the city. By 1 January 1945, the following formations of the 2nd Ukrainian Front were standing outside the walls of the city in readiness to storm Pest:

  30th Rifle Corps (25th Guards, 151st and 155th Rifle Divisions) with attached assets: the 16th Artillery Division, the 18th Howitzer Artillery Brigade, the 49th Guards Cannon Artillery Brigade, and the 115th Destroyer Anti-tank Artillery Regiment;

  7th Romanian Army Corps consisting of the 2nd and 19th Infantry Divisions and the 9th Cavalry Division;

  18th Guards Rifle Corps (66th and 68th Guards, 297th and 317th Rifle Divisions) with attached assets: the 17th Cannon Artillery Brigade, the 95th Howitzer Artillery Brigade, the 27th Mortar Brigade, the 152nd Cannon Artillery Brigade, the 48th Guards Mortar Regiment, and the 14th Assault Engineer-Sapper Brigade.