Inferno - Max Hastings [377]
Soon afterwards, the Hungarian capital became the focus of one of the most brutal struggles of the war, scarcely noticed in the West because it coincided first with Hitler’s Ardennes offensive and thereafter with the massive Russian offensive farther north. During the last days of December, in deep snow Marshal Rodion Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front closed its grip on the city. A Nazi-sponsored coup preempted an attempt by the Hungarian government to surrender to Stalin. Thereafter, the country fell into the hands of a fascist regime supported by the brutal Arrow Cross militia. The army fought on beside the Germans, though a steady stream of desertions testified to its soldiers’ meagre enthusiasm.
The civilian population remained curiously oblivious of catastrophe: in Budapest, theatres and cinemas stayed open until the New Year. During a performance of Aïda at the opera house on 23 December, an actor dressed as a soldier appeared in front of the curtain. He offered greetings from the front to the half-empty stalls and expressed pleasure that everyone was calmer and more hopeful than a few weeks earlier, then, in the words of an opera-goer, he “promised that Budapest would remain Hungarian and our wonderful capital had nothing to fear.” Families decorated Christmas trees with “Window,” the silver foil strips dropped by British and American bombers to baffle German radar. Many of the city’s million inhabitants, ignoring looming disaster, spurned opportunities to flee west. Some looked forward to greeting the Russians as deliverers: hearing Malinovsky’s guns close at hand, the liberal politician Imre Csescy wrote, “This is the most beautiful Christmas music. Are we really about to be liberated? God help us and put an end to the rule of these gangsters.”
Stalin had ordered the capture of Budapest, and at first hoped to achieve this without a battle: even when the Russians had almost completed the capital’s encirclement, they left open a western passage for the garrison’s withdrawal. The German front commander wanted to abandon the city; Hitler, inevitably, insisted that it should be defended to the last. Some 50,000 German and 45,000 Hungarian troops held their positions, knowing from the outset that their predicament was hopeless. One artillery battalion consisted of Ukrainians dressed in Polish uniforms with German insignia. An SS cavalry division was described as “totally demoralised,” and three Hungarian SS police regiments were classified as “extremely unreliable.” Gen. Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, commanding the German forces, did not leave his bunker for six weeks and displayed unbridled gloom. One Hungarian general was so disgusted by his men’s incessant desertions that he declared haughtily that he “would not ruin his military career” and relinquished command, reporting sick.
But, as so often, once battle was joined the combatants became locked in a struggle for survival which achieved a momentum of its own. On 30 December, a thousand Russian guns opened a barrage on Budapest that continued for ten hours daily, with air raids