The Road to Berlin (94 page)

Gille’s IV
Panzer
was, however, only starting on its rampage amidst the Soviet positions. While Tolbukhin tried feverishly to shore up the southern face of his front, German armour turned north and north-west towards Soviet units located between lake Velencze and the Danube—the shortest route to Budapest. Starting on the morning of 22 January German tanks again battered 4th Guards Army, the main German force moving into the Velencze–Danube area with a second attack developing against Szekesfehervar, which Soviet troops abandoned that same evening after holding on for four days. It was now plain that Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front could not hold the German drive towards Budapest. During the night of 24 January a strong force of German tanks broke through the defensive positions held by 5th Guards Cavalry and 1st Guards Mechanized Corps, striking on to the north-west and approaching a point only twenty-five kilometres from the southern suburbs of Budapest, from which at least one German corps could have fought its way out to meet the relieving tank force. That moment was never realized, simply because Hitler did not want it so—he wanted Budapest recaptured rather than the defenders rescued. Malinovskii also stepped in with a remarkable show of initiative, transferring 23rd Tank Corps to the western bank of the Danube and putting it in a blocking position across the southerly route to the city, a decision and a redeployment made without the authorization of the Soviet General Staff. Unauthorized or not (though
Stavka
instructions of 22 January proposed the movement of this tank corps), this deployment shored up the Soviet defences south-west of Budapest and saved 4th Guards Army from further punishment. Slowly but surely IV
Panzer
Corps was running out of steam.

While German tanks flailed away west and south of Budapest, Malinovskii’s assault units were fighting their savage battles inside the city, already under heavy Russian shellfire and now bombed by Russian aircraft seeking to destroy strong-points across the length of Budapest. On the western bank of the Danube Soviet guns closed in on Buda, hammering defensive positions in the hills—Gelerthey in particular—while to the north Matyas Hill fell to the Russians and from this vantage-point fire could be directed not only against Buda but also against Pest. By the beginning of the New Year Malinovskii’s forward detachments were already in the outer suburbs—Ujpest, Rakospalota, Pestujhel and Kobanya—and it was on this easterly bank of the Danube that Malinovskii proposed to open his assault on the city with his Budapest group (30th Rifle, 18th Guards
and 7th Rumanian Corps); the western sector of the city, Buda, was assigned by the preliminary plan to 46th Army of 3rd Ukrainian Front, but the heavy fighting on the approaches to the city virtually eliminated this formation from taking any part in the protracted and bitter operations to clear the city street by street.

After being encircled, the German garrison had worked frenziedly to fit out the city for a siege: buildings were fortified and the massive multi-storey dwelling houses, railway stations, industrial installations, together with the pompous but solidly built public buildings, each received its complement of defenders and weapons. The underground passages and caverns promised special advantages to the defenders, who could use this extensive underground system to link one miniature fortress with another; up above, at street level, German tanks,
SP
guns and armoured troop-carriers could tackle Soviet assault squads, but only for so long as the fuel lasted.

At the end of the first week in January, with the necessary artillery concentrated and the special
shturmovye gruppy
formed up, Malinovskii opened the first purposeful and preplanned attack on the eastern suburbs. On the outer edge of the city the German command was not prepared to fight last-ditch actions—
Kampf Haus um Haus
—which must lead almost inevitably to German combat groups being encircled by swift Soviet tank raids and thrusts. These first few days of fighting brought Soviet troops deeper into the eastern sector of the city—the suburbs of Ujpest, Rakospalota, Palotaujfalu, Pestujhel, Kobanya and Kispest—but already the Soviet General Staff was concerned at the straggling nature of the operation. On 10 January a General Staff signal to Malinovskii pointed to the absence of ‘unified direction’ for the Soviet units committed (the two rifle corps operated under the command of the 7th Guards Army commander, 18th Rifle Corps under direct Front command), and proposed the establishment of a special combat group under Front control. The next day the
Budapeshtskaya gruppa voisk
formally came into being and was put under the command of Maj.-Gen. I.M. Afonin, 18th Independent Guards Corps commander.

Afonin’s special operational group received orders to begin a double attack from the morning of 12 January with the object of splitting the defences in Pest in two: by the evening of 14 January Soviet units were to break right through to the Danube. The Soviet command was well aware that the real struggle for Budapest was about to open, now that the ring had tightened in the eastern and northern suburbs—in Pest—and Soviet troops had also taken O-Buda (to the north of Buda), as well as occupying the industrial installations on Csepel Island. From this point forward the ring would have to be tightened by brute force. Rifle divisions were assigned attack sectors of some 400–800 metres, with regiments fighting across 150–300 metres; the flanks were especially vulnerable and the special reserves played a vital part in the clearing operations, with the regimental commander usually keeping a company of tommy-gunners, an engineer and a reconnaissance squad to hand in order to secure cellars (or roofs) and to cover
the immediate rear of the lead detachments. Corps and divisional artillery engaged long-range targets, but the rest of the guns were kept ready for instant firing over open sights, often hidden in lower floors of buildings (though some were positioned on the roofs). Heavy guns—132mm, 152mm and 203mm—also fired over open sights when barricades or strong-points had to be blasted away by shellfire. But in Buda, with its narrow, winding streets and the solid stone structures of imposing houses or villas, Soviet troops found the greatest difficulty in deploying their guns, which had to be grouped to give covering and supporting fire.

After 11 January 1945 the fighting for Pest intensified. The wintry days brought mists thickened with snow, shrouding streets and buildings. Soviet assault squads could not advance along the streets swept by German guns, but instead closed on their objectives by passing through holes blown in walls or by using less exposed spaces. If holes did not exist, heavy guns blasted passages for the infantry or sappers moved up and deployed their own ‘sapper artillery’ (simple launchers for captured German shells) to reduce enemy positions and firing-points. The debris of these fierce exchanges littered the approaches to the central section of Pest. In the ceramics factory German troops took up a circular defence, using the windows as firing-points for machine-guns, forcing Soviet infantry to take the buildings by storm, fighting their way first into the shattered interior and from the outside shooting down the Germans who tried to leap to safety through the windows. In the neighbouring textile factory most of the German garrison was wiped out.

German tanks tried fighting off Soviet assault units on the patches of open ground, in the parks and gardens, but with the loss of the factories, already heavily bombarded from the air, supplies fell off drastically and artillery ammunition was running short. Fuel ran out all too quickly, leaving German tanks immobilized and marooned, firing off the last of their ammunition as fixed-gun positions. The German command organized a last desperate defence to hold the racecourse, where Ju-52s used the grass track as an emergency landing strip to bring in ammunition, the same planes then flying out the wounded. A full German artillery brigade deployed to cover the landing strip, but the growing shortage of ammunition and casualties among the gun crews made the situation more critical with each hour. On 12 January Soviet infantry finally burst through the ring of burning tanks, assault guns and assorted vehicles to capture the racecourse, thus cutting the tenuous supply line for the German garrison. With Varosliget Park in their hands on 13 January, Soviet units then cleared Negpliget Park and pressed on towards the hospitals. At the Ferencz Station, the Germans held on desperately, fighting off a Soviet attack which came at them from two sides, from the park and from the engineering works which had just been captured. Railway wagons in the sidings served as machine-gun positions, assault guns and
tanks fired across the railway lines to hold off the Russians moving in from the park, but the East Station and the Ferencz Station finally fell. By now the Russians were near the railway bridge over the Danube, though the heaviest fighting still raged in the centre of Pest, round the parliament building, the Opera House and the University.

After five days of uninterrupted street fighting, on 17 January, almost all of Pest was in Soviet hands and the German defence was split into three parts. Hungarian soldiers surrendered more readily, but German units hung on in ferocious style, only to be pressed back to the Danube, where the bridges, which might have led to safety, had already been blown up. The remnants of the Pest garrison fell back to within a thousand yards of the river bank, only to find the Russians already ahead of them, with more men using the sewers and the underground passages to break out to the bank, from which they covered the few available crossings with machine-guns. After 18 January, trapped in a hopeless position with their backs to the Danube, German troops could do nothing but surrender. Malinovskii’s command put German losses at 35,840 killed, 62,000 taken prisoner and large quantities of equipment destroyed or captured—almost 300 tanks, over 200 light armoured vehicles and 20,000 rifles. The ‘Budapest operational group’ reported that the whole of Pest (with the exception of Margit Island) was now cleared of the enemy. Pest itself had almost ceased to exist: the close-packed urban and industrial suburbs were a mass of flaming wreckage, with streets reduced to total ruin and fires roaring through innumerable buildings, leaving only burnt-out shells. The rationing system for the civilian population broke down completely on 16 January, the supply system was smashed to pieces, and even the defending Germans were getting only seventy-five grammes of bread per day (just short of three ounces.)

The
Stavka
now issued orders for the reduction of Buda, the other half of the twin city. With this order went a show of generosity in assigning to the Budapest group two rifle corps as reinforcement (75th and 37th, taken from 3rd Ukrainian Front). This magnanimity proved to be short-lived, for no sooner had the German garrison surrendered in Pest on 18 January than that same night German armour fell on Tolbukhin’s southern flank, cutting deep into 3rd Ukrainian Front defences before turning north-west to drive on Buda itself. The reinforcement for Malinovskii was hurriedly cancelled. The
Stavka
made 2nd Ukrainian Front solely responsible for the capture of Buda in its order of 20 January and left Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front to fight defensively along the outer encirclement line. Malinovskii’s troops therefore set about clearing Margit Island, lying in mid-Danube to the north-west of Buda, a preliminary operation which was an essential to the asault on Buda itself. Ahead of these Soviet troops lay the winding streets and catacombs of Buda, an uninviting prospect of natural deathtraps for the assault formations upon whom this task was laid. At the same time Malinovskii’s right-flank armies—40th, 20th, 53rd and 7th Guards, together with Pliev’s 1st Cavalry Mechanized Group—were trying to push into eastern Slovakia, where
Petrov’s operations with his 4th Ukrainian Front had made only slow progress. Having fought his way to the Topola–Ondava line, Petrov faced some formidable obstacles on his way to Kosice.

Malinovskii’s right-flank armies were aimed at Komarno, but in the process of striking towards it they took a heavy battering, though they did finally break through to the river Nitra. Losses told heavily in all armies. By 11 January all three corps of 6th Guards Tank Army mustered only seventy-two tanks between them, the strength of the rifle division of 7th Guards dropped to under 4,000 men and in some divisions only a thousand men were left alive and whole. The swollen waters of the river Hron and heavy snowfalls stopped all movement of supplies. Soviet engineers could not repair key bridges until 14 January, working amidst these icy conditions to join shattered supply lines. In spite of these shortcomings Soviet units managed to capture Lucenec on 14 January and continued to advance on Zvolen from two directions, but having to fight amidst the heights of the Slovenska Krusnohori without either air or artillery support inflicted a painfully slow rate of progress and brought heavy casualties. Malinovskii found himself in a difficult position indeed: his Front was committed to a full-scale assault on Buda and obliged to parry the third relieving attack mounted by the Germans, while at the same time he needed to reinforce his right flank. But the right flank fighting in the Slovak uplands was not reinforced; on the contrary it was drawn back to refit, 6th Guards Tank with less than forty tanks to its name and Pliev’s mobile group being pulled back into the interior of the Front, leaving three Soviet armies (40th, 53rd and 7th Guards) and two Rumanian armies (1st and 4th) to the north of the Danube.

Unable to attack along a broad front, Soviet infantry armies launched a series of separate attacks which cut German escape roads, except for the perilous mountainous routes of the Slovenska Krusnohori. Meanwhile Petrov’s armies occupied Kosice and Presov between 18 and 20 January and though German units were able to make their escape down the valley of the river Vah, by the end of January the greater part of the German force operating between the rivers Hernad and Ipel had been wiped out. At about the same time, towards the end of the third week in January, it was also plain that the German defenders of Buda would not be relieved by their fellows fighting towards them from the south. The Soviet Budapest operational group nevertheless faced ferocious German resistance in the western sector of the city, and decided on one last, all-out effort to crush it. During the fighting on 22 January the Soviet group commander, Afonin, was severely wounded and Col.-Gen. Managarov (53rd Army commander) took his place, though the change in commanders did not bring about any radically improved conduct in the assault. Reporting to the General Staff, a specialist Soviet officer complained of the ‘unsatisfactory’ organization of operations, the dispersal of men and equipment, the lack of co-ordination between assault groups, the separation of the supporting artillery from the infantry and the emplacement of command posts in houses still occupied by civilians.