Eastern Front · Soviet Union and Romania vs Germany and Hungary
Siege of Budapest
26 December 1944 – 13 February 1945
Soviet forces encircled Budapest at the end of 1944 and reduced it in fifty days of street fighting. Three German relief offensives, codenamed Konrad, failed to reach the city. A breakout by the garrison on 11 February was destroyed, and Buda fell two days later.
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Day by day
— The ring closes
Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Front breaks the Margarethe line at Szekesfehervar and reaches the Danube at Esztergom on the 26th, meeting Malinovsky's 2nd Ukrainian Front coming round the north of the city. Some 79,000 German and Hungarian troops are inside; Hitler forbids a breakout.
— Konrad I
The IV SS Panzer Corps, brought down from Warsaw, attacks from Tata along the Danube on New Year's night. It gets within 25 kilometres of the city at Bicske by 6 January and is stopped there by the 4th Guards Army. In Pest the ring is tightening street by street.
— Pest falls
The last defenders of Pest cross to Buda and the five Danube bridges are blown that morning. The same day Konrad III opens between Lake Balaton and Szekesfehervar: the IV SS Panzer Corps reaches the Danube at Dunapentele in two days and cuts the 3rd Ukrainian Front in half.
— Konrad III halted
Szekesfehervar was retaken on the 22nd and the panzers reached the Vali stream, 25 kilometres from Buda. There they stop, out of infantry and fuel, with Tolbukhin's reserves arriving across the Danube ice. The garrison, promised relief, can hear the guns.
— The breakout
With the garrison compressed into the Castle Hill and its ammunition gone, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch orders a breakout west through the Buda hills at 20:00. Some 28,000 men and civilians go; they are cut down on the roads to Zsambek and Perbal. Fewer than 800 reach the German line, and the commander is captured in a drain.
— Buda falls
The last positions on the Castle Hill surrender in the morning. Fifty days of siege have cost the garrison and the Soviet attackers about 100,000 casualties each, and some 38,000 civilians are dead. The road to Vienna is open.
