Part 1.
"After the encirclement of Budapest, the German command launched three major offensives code-named Konrad, in an attempt to relieve the capital and recapture the eastern section of the Margit Line. Contrary to popular assumption, the intention was not to rescue the garrison but to move further forces to Budapest. By February 1945 all available reserves – including almost half of all panzer divisions in the east – had been relocated to Hungary for this purpose, and Hitler was desperate to show some success as a result.
By now the oil-fields of western Hungary were the German army's last remaining source of fuel, and this, together with the need to defend Vienna, greatly increased the importance of the Hungarian theatre of war. Between autumn 1944 and April 1945 – by which time the first Soviet tank was within 60 kilometres of Berlin – every briefing in the Führer's headquarters began with the Hungarian operations. Gerhard Boldt, one of the adjutants, recalls a mistake he made in February while preparing the maps:
Guderian began his comments on the Hungarian theatre of war. In the middle of his first sentence he stopped to give me a black look. Hitler was staring up at me with an inscrutable expression before leaning back in his chair with a bored gesture. I hastily stammered something incoherent, wishing that the ground would open and swallow me up. The general-staff maps were piled up in front of Hitler exactly in reverse order, with Kurland top and Hungary bottom.
As already noted, Hitler had insisted from the outset on holding Budapest and forbidden any break-out attempt. On 24 December 1944, before the final closure of the encirclement, he had ordered the IV SS Panzer Corps and the 96th and 711th Infantry Divisions – some 200 tanks and 60,000 men – to Hungary, and placed them under the command of SS Obergruppenführer Otto Gille, who had been highly decorated for breaking out of the encirclement of Cherkassy. Himmler cabled Gille that Hitler had chosen him because he had the most extensive experience of being encircled and because his corps had proved the best on the eastern front…"
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Part 2 here
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Amicalement
Armand
