Customer Reviews

The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For years, I have known about the Battle of Budapest and the SS last stand on Castle Hill, but because of the communist dictatorship in Hungary, was unable to obtain little information on the subject. Now thanks to the dilligent and factual research by Mr. Ungvary, the story can finally be told. His approach is objective, fact filled and very believable. He tells the story-good, bad and sometimes very ugly from the Hungarian, Russian and German points of view. It is unfortunate that the truth about this battle, that matched the ferocity of Stalingrad, had to wait until the collaspe of the Soviet Union to be told. My next trip to Europe will be to Budapest. This book belongs in every WWII library. In short it is a masterpiece.

Typically, books on World War II say that the Battle of Budapest was one of the biggest on the Eastern Front and then skip on to another topic. "The Siege of Budapest" finally sheds some light on this forgotten battle. (One reason for the neglect of this battle, as the book shows, is that none of the Soviet or German generals was especially famous or that talented.)

My response to the book is mixed. It is betrayed by its maps, which I found too cluttered to be useful. Thus when I read that the Soviets had advanced from Hungarian town X to town Z, I really had trouble placing this in any context, as the maps weren't that helpful.

However, the strength of the book is in showing the Hungarian perspective on the war. The Hungarian army was not thrilled about being allied to the Germans, but they feared Communist rule. Tragically, their resistance against the Soviets permitted the Arrow Cross fascists to massacre the Jewish population of Budapest. The eyewitness accounts included in this book on the combat, the massacres, and the struggle to live a normal life during modern urban combat, is invaluable.

The Soviet perspective is slighted, which weakens things. Until the last chapter, I had the impression that the battle pretty much went as the Soviets wished. They kept squeezing the Germans and Hungarians into a smaller and smaller quadrant. Then in the last chapter, the author revealed that the Soviets had intended to capture Budapest FOUR times before they actually took the city. Yet this wasn't apparent from what he presented earlier.

So "The Siege of Budapest" is a flawed book, but it is essential for anyone seriously interested in the Eastern Front.

Ungvary has written an tragic account of the Hungarian people during the siege of Budapest. The Hungarian army suffered tremendous losses in trying to defend the city and the failed breakout attempt. While Hungatian civilians were victims of starvation and the atrocities committed by the Red army. Ungvary is also critical of his fellow Hungarians in the Arrow Cross party for murdering thousands of Jews in Budapest. Ungvary also has a critical perspective on the German commnader of the city for not breaking out sooner or surrendering earlier thereby saving his soldiers lives. The only weakness of this book is that Ungvary leaves out the Russian side of the battle, but otherwise this an excellent account the Battle for Budapest.

A great book on another of history's forgotten battles....Unlike Prague in WW2, Budapest was encircled and fought over, heavily damaged to the point that you can see bullet and shrapnel damage on many buildings even today. The Axis forces, anti Nazi/Arrow Party nationalists, and the Soviet/Allied forces converged to rip each other to pieces in this historic gateway to Europe.

We were visiting Budapest last spring and found this gem of a first edition English translation in a bookstore. The book seller recommended it but did so with the caveat that it would be difficult for a non local to keep up with. The detail is astounding and the author deserves kudos. The only drawback is a lack of clearer small scale maps to keep up more with the flow of the fighting. The daring and bravey of both sides on a tactical level is only matched by the strategic incompetence of the political leadership of the same.

I'm a big fan of Eastern Front warfare books (WW2) and this has been a welcome addition. A bit dense but a great story and worthy of widespread attention.

The battle for and siege of Budapest has not received the attention it deserves and this deficit was made up by Ungvary. Inasmuch as I participated in the early stages of the battle (Panzer Grenadier Division Feldherrnhalle) up until December, 22 1944 the book was of great personal interest. Although I had the good fortune not to be caught up in that cauldron, after complete encirclement, which led to the annihilation of our division, I found Ungvary's descriptions to have been accurate, with some minor mistakes. For instance: Table 3 lists the Felherrnhalle in the southern theater of operations while we were in the North around Hatvan as depicted in the map.The battle for Vienna lasted only a little over a week, rather than 31 days, because Hitler's orders were disobeyed and the major portions of the army were withdrawn to spare the city Budapest's fate.
That the lack of Soviet infantry at the beginning of the offensive delayed the taking of Budapest was new information. This is a fact our war planners should take cognicanze of. Tanks and planes alone don't win wars. The behavior of the Soviet troops was also depicted correctly as experienced personally during their stay in Vienna and other parts of Austria. All in all a very worthwhile contribution to the history of WWII.

This book is a must-read for history buffs in general and anyone interested in Hungarian history. The opening sections deal with the movement of various units during the fighting, and the maps (apparently from OKW) sometimes could be a bit more clear (Lake Valence is often not labeled) but the descriptions are vivid and include some startling firsthand accounts from all sides. Subsequent chapters deal with the Holocaust in Budapest, the civilian population during and after the siege, the anti-Arrow Cross resistance, and an epilogue. The firsthand accounts are gripping and paint an excellent picture of what really happened (the author is not afraid to discredit one witness against the statements of several others), and the author pulls no punches in his descriptions (many are not for the squeamish) but remains objective throughout. About the only thing I could have wished for was a bit more detail on what was happening in transdanubia at the time, but that was not the subject of this work. The book also includes a mind-bogglingly comprehensive bibliography. A lot of good work went into the creation of this book, and it shows.

It somehow seems that the history of the end of World War II goes something like this, The United States and Britain land on D-Day, jump into Holland, the Germans wind up in the Ardennes from where they launch an offensive around Bastogne and shoot POWs in Malmedy which is known as the last great German offensive. The war somehow comes to an end with the Soviets in Berlin. Lots of people seem to disappear along the way and we discover concentration camps.

This book covers one of the vacant spaces. As serious students of the war know, the ground war was won and lost on the Eastern Front in battles that dwarfed their western front counterparts in land area, troops and equipment involved. We also tend to forget that it was not just between the Germans and the Russians, but eventually included representatives from pretty much all of Europe and much of Asia. Each of the combattants had their own motivations for participating, some ideological and some entirely self-serving.

In the closing days of 1944, the Soviets began their push to seize the Balkans. Their concept and objectives were as political as military. At the end of the war, they wished to control as much of Europe as possible and the seizure of Budapest was but a piece of the plan, albeit an important one. Budapest was important to the Germans for political purposes to maintain an ally in the war, protect the Hungarian oil fields and protect the approaches to Vienna. It was designated a Fortress and defended as such. In fact units desparately needed on the Oder Front were sent to Hngary to stabilize the situation leaving Berlin in grave danger. The battle was fought with both skill and savagery; the citizens of Budapest, since they were not evacuated, being both witnesses and participants in the tragedy. In the end, the Germans lost four divisions plus various corps and police units from their order of battle, and the Hungarians a little bit more. The Soviets paid a heavier price for their victory, but the citizens of Budapest and Hungary were the real losers being caught between the Arrow Cross, German occupation forces, and an unsympathetic liberating army.

Krisztian Ungvary's book is interesting and well written. It provides a complete picture of the battle and incorporates personal perspectives as well. The personal remembrances are mainly Hungarian perspectives, but also include German and Soviet viewpoints as well. It makes very clear what being liberated by Soviet forces meant for Europe, Soviet actions in Eastern Germany and Berlin were not an aberation, but a systemic pattern of behaviour in all the conquered and occupied lands.

I only gave this book four stars not because of any particular deficiency but rather because it tends to be somewhat didactic in nature. It is easy to get lost in Hungarian names for both people and places. While there are numerous maps, it is sometimes hard to pick out the detail of the terrain and in limited cases, figure out where units and actions took place. I had some trouble with the naming convention for Hungarian units, but I also have very little experience in studying the Hungarian Army.

This book fills a niche, it is well research and highly detailed. It is a good companion to Drama between Budapest and Vienna. It is well written and thought inspiring, worth the price. I recommend it for serious students of the Eastern Front.

This updated version of the Battle for Budapest is well written.
It is full of first hand accounts and paints a sorrowful picture.

It is amazing that to see Budapest today after reading this book.

Ungvary has done a great service to those that died and suffered during these horrific days. He does this by neatly combining a professional historian's thoroughness, organisation and fact-filled text with a deep sense of the humanity of what happened. His description of the "break-out" is particularly harrowing and gives full weight to the tragedy and horror of that particular part of the seige. There are many villians and precious few heroes in this story but Ungvary has given us a work that will become the standard reference for this battle.

The title is misleading; this attempts to be a military history, but the author is clearly ignorant of most things military. He writes a good social history and his personal interview material is good. But when he tries to incorporate that into a larger presentation of military issues, he is clearly out of his league. Corps and divisions are frequently reversed. "7.62 mm" weapons become "76.2 mm" (there IS a difference!). He looses track of units he was just describing! It is almost all stuff that any decent editor would have caught and fixed and this easily would have gotten one more star, but it sadly appears that editors today are flunkies and morons. And they can't compensate for an ignorant author anymore. In the absence of good editors, this author desperately needed a co-writer.