Cover Key to Maps MILITARY UNITS – TYPES MILITARY UNIT COLOURS RED ARMY (SOVIET UNION) ARMOUR AXIS FORCES (NAZI GERMANY, INFANTRY ITALY, HUNGARY, ROMANIA) ARMY GROUP MILITARY MOVEMENT ATTTACK/ADVANCE CAVALRY (IN NATIONAL COLOURS) AIRBORNE INFANTRY RETREAT (IN NATIONAL COLOURS) MOTORIZED / MECHANIZED INFANTRY GEOGRAPHICAL SYMBOLS MILITARY UNITS – SIZE ROAD XXXXX URBAN AREA ARMY GROUP RIVER XXXX ARMY RAILWAY XXX CORPS MILITARY UNITS – NAME XX DIVISION The upper number is the unit’s official designation. The designation of corps-level formations is usually X written in Roman numerals. The lower letters show BRIGADE any special characteristics the unit has. III SS Waffen-SS REGIMENT Gds Guards (Red Army élite units) Sh Shock (A Red Army formation II intended to spearhead major BATTALION offensives) I OG Operational group (Romanian) Country names in brackets indicate COMPANY a foriegn formation fighting under the overall command of another nation. Rapid Reads This short ebook is part of the “Rapid Reads” series on the German Army of World War II. This series, when complete, will offer a comprehensive overview of this absorbing topic, covering the key campaigns, tactics, commanders and equipment of the World War II Wehrmacht. We hope you enjoy this Rapid Read and that you will recommend the series to friends and colleagues. You should be able to read one of these handy eBooks in less than an hour. They’re designed for busy people on the go. If you would like to place a review on our website, or with the retailer you purchased it from, please do so. All feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated. All these Rapid Reads plus supplemental materials and ebooks on other military topics are available on our website, www.germanwarmachine.com The enormous bulk of a Tiger II (‘King Tiger’) tank on the streets of Budapest in 1945. The frontal and turret armour of these 68-tonne behemoths was invulnerable to almost all anti-tank weapons fielded by the Red Army during the war, and their powerful 88mm main gun could destroy a T-34 from a range of more than 1km. The Tiger II’s sheer size was often a major problem, however, reducing its fuel efficiency to a level that the strained German logistics network struggled to support. On the battlefield it was vulnerable to flanking manoeuvres by groups of upgunned allied tanks like the T-34-85 and the Sherman Firefly. Spring Awakening: Hungary 1945 The failure of the Sixth SS Panzer Army in Hungary. 5 n his Berlin bunker in February 1945, an all-out offensive Iled by six Waffen-SS panzer divisions to secure Hungary’s oil fields seemed very logical to Adolf Hitler. Almost to a man, however, the Führer’s generals thought it was madness. Huge Soviet armies were at this time on the eastern bank of the River Oder, less than 160km (100 miles) from Berlin itself. The Third Reich’s élite armoured forces were needed for the last-ditch battle to defend its capital from the Russians, or so it seemed to General Heinz Guderian, the penultimate chief of staff of the German Army. The father of Germany’s panzer élite could only shrug his shoulders and pass on the lunatic orders of his Führer. Hitler was now a nervous wreck, who could only keep going with the aid of drugs prescribed by his equally insane personal doctor, Theodor Morell. The Führer was reduced to moving flags around the map table in his bunker. The flags no longer represented armies or divisions, merely ghost units with no equipment or ammunition and even less will to fight. It was as if the Führer did not want to hear the bad news that his Thousand Year Reich only had a few weeks left, before it would be erased from the map for good. The Waffen-SS panzer divisions started concentrating in Hungary in December 1944, after a Soviet offensive had pushed deep into the country and surrounded its capital, Budapest. SS-Obergruppenführer Karl von Pfeffer-Wildrenbruch and a combined force of 70,000 German and Hungarian troops were trapped in the city. What followed was depressingly predictable: a rescue force was organized; after it fought its way to within a few kilometres of the trapped garrison, Hitler refused to allow it to break out. In the end only a few hundred men were able to escape from the city. 6 By Christmas Day 1944, the city was surrounded. In response, Hitler ordered IV SS Panzer Corps to be moved from Poland to spearhead the rescue mission with the Totenkopf and Wiking Divisions. SS-Obergruppenführer Herbert Gille’s men spent four days on freezing trains moving down to Komorno on the River Danube. They unloaded their 100 tanks and headed east to intercept Russian spearheads advancing westwards along the south bank of the Danube. Operation Konrad got under way with a night attack on New Year’s Day, which initially caught the Soviet XXXI Rifle Corps by surprise. The Waffen-SS Panthers and Panzer IVs crashed through the unprepared Russians and drove eastwards for almost 48km (30 miles), knocking out 200 enemy tanks as they did so. Failure before Budapest TheTotenkopf Division advanced directly eastwards on the left flank, along the banks of the Danube, while theWiking Division moved southeastwards directly towards Budapest. When the Totenkopf hit a strong pak-front (a dense concentration of Soviet anti-tank guns), it too turned southwards to join Wiking’s push. Lacking the strength to batter his way past Soviet defences, Gille used his veteran troops to try to dodge past Soviet strong- points and find a way through to Budapest. With the route south blocked, he sent Wiking’s Westland Panzergrenadier Regiment on a march deep behind enemy lines after it found a route over the Vertes Mountains. With the Soviets now alerted to the German intentions, though, it was not long before they moved reinforcements up to close off the northern route into the Hungarian capital. On 12 January 1945, the Waffen-SS troops pulled back from 7 the front and disappeared into the forests along the Danube. The Soviets were convinced they had seen off the German attack. They had no idea that Gille’s troops were in fact moving south to open a new front. Six days later they burst out of the morning mist to smash into the Russian CXXXV Rifle Corps, which without tank support was an easy target for the Waffen- SS units. The German tanks rolled over its frontline positions on 18 January, and then started to shoot up its supply convoys and artillery positions. By the evening they had covered 32km (20 miles), brushing aside a counterattack by the weak Soviet VII Mechanized Corps. More Russian tanks were sent into action the following day, and they received the same treatment. The Totenkopf’s antitank battalion, deployed with the advance guard of the division’s Totenkopf Panzergrenadier Regiment, was instrumental in breaking up several counterattacks by the Soviet XVIII Tank and CXXXIII Rifle Corps. Its new Panzerjäger IVs self-propelled guns were particularly effective. This heavily armoured version of the Panzer IV tank was equipped with the powerful L/70 75mm cannon, which was also used in the Panther tank.The Danube valley, with its open fields and small villages, was ideal tank country. The winter frost meant the ground was still hard, so Gille’s handful of panzers was able to race forward across country. They crossed the Szarviz Canal in a night-time assault, and by the morning of 20 January German armour was on the banks of the Danube. Gille’s men now motored northwards, cutting into the rear lines of communications of the Soviet Fifty-Seventh Army. The Red Army was in a panic. The Soviet commanders on the west bank of the Danube were convinced they would soon be surrounded by IV SS Panzer Corps and the German Army’s 1st Panzer Division. On 24 January, the Wiking 8 and Totenkopf Divisions surged forward again, inflicting heavy losses on the Soviet V Guards Cavalry and I Guards Mechanized Corps. They got to within 24km (15 miles) of Budapest before the arrival of the last Soviet reserves, XXIII Tank Corps, stopped them in their tracks. Gille’s men attacked with great élan, and used their tried-and-tested infiltration tactics to take advantage of the weakened state of the Soviet infantry divisions around Budapest. Most Soviet infantry divisions and tank corps were reduced to less than 5000 men each, following several months of non-stop fighting through the Balkans. It appeared that victory for the Waffen-SS divisions was at hand. Three days later, 12 Soviet infantry divisions joined the tank corps in a major counterattack against the Waffen-SS divisions. The SS units held their ground, but Hitler now ordered IV SS Panzer Corps to fall back so it could regroup and join a major operation he was planning to defeat the entire Soviet army group in Hungary. Ignoring pleas from his generals that now was the moment to order a break-out from Budapest, Hitler refused to consider the idea. Budapest would be relieved by the Sixth SS Panzer Army. Therefore, there was no need for a break-out. The situation reminded many German generals of Stalingrad two years before. Pfeffer-Wildrenbruch followed his Führer’s orders to the letter. Hitler decorated him with the Knight’s Cross for his bravery, but some thought the Führer was just trying to shame the Waffen-SS general into not surrendering. With Gille’s men now falling back in the face of massive pressure, the Budapest garrison’s position was becoming even more precarious.