Operation Konrad III, 1945: the last drive to relieve Budapest

By Christmas 1944 the Red Army had encircled Budapest. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of History explains that the German command, with limited Hungarian participation, launched a series of attempts to help the German and Hungarian forces trapped in the city. Because the Third Reich by then got its oil essentially only from the Zala oil fields in Hungary, Hitler sent every reserve he could mobilize to the country.²

Konrad I and II

The first attempt, Konrad, began on 1 January 1945 in the Tata and Almásfüzitő area west of Budapest, and took Esztergom on 6 January before Soviet forces two to three times stronger stopped it near Bicske and Zsámbék. Konrad II, launched from the Esztergom area on 9 January, brought the Wiking division within 17 kilometers of the capital on 12 January. The German command again urged Hitler to allow the Budapest garrison to break out. He refused and chose a larger attack from the south instead.³

Five in the morning

Konrad III was launched, the Institute notes, at a critical moment for Berlin, just after the collapse of the front in Poland. The Hungarian historian Norbert Számvéber, whose detailed study of the operation draws on Hungarian and German military archives and Russian-language sources, reconstructs the morning of 18 January. The day was cloudy and misty, with light snow and a high of minus five degrees Celsius. The divisions of the IV SS Panzer Corps were in position by four o'clock; half an hour later artillery and rocket launchers opened a thirty-minute barrage, and at exactly five the panzers attacked between Lake Balaton and Csór.⁴

Számvéber stresses an unusual feature: on the first day the attack was made only by armored divisions and a cavalry brigade, with supporting tank, assault gun and artillery units, but no infantry division. Many of the troops had been told of the attack only eight to ten hours before it began.⁵

To the Danube

The surprise was complete. At eight in the morning of 19 January a German armored battle group rolled into Dunapentele, today Dunaújváros, on the Danube. In just 27 hours, Számvéber writes, the IV SS Panzer Corps had cut the defenses of the 3rd Ukrainian Front in two. Panther tanks took up firing positions on the west bank as the last Soviet troops evacuated the town by boat.⁶

The Institute adds that the surprise attack encircled the southern Soviet formations, but that they broke out because the Germans lacked infantry. On 22 January German troops, with Hungarian help, retook Székesfehérvár, one of the most important transport hubs of Transdanubia. Soon they stood about 25 kilometers from the capital.⁷

Why it stalled

Számvéber argues that by 26 January the 3rd Ukrainian Front could no longer stop the Germans on its own, and that without the 23rd Tank Corps and the 104th Rifle Corps sent from the neighboring 2nd Ukrainian Front the panzer groups would probably have reached the inner ring around Budapest. Whether they could have broken through it is another matter. He doubts that worn-out armored divisions, almost without infantry, could have fought through Soviet riflemen defending the suburbs.⁸

He sums up the failure in two words: weakness and delay. The attack began with too little force, especially too little seasoned infantry; it had poor air support against a stronger Soviet air force; there were no German reserves to exploit early success; and the forces were scattered in space and time. Engineering support was often inadequate, supply of ammunition, fuel and food faltered from the first days, and the personal rivalry between Balck and Gille made command harder.⁹

Balck himself later defended his choice to destroy the Soviet forces threatening his flank before pushing for the city. As Számvéber quotes him, a dash for Budapest would at best have put two SS corps in the city instead of one, since he lacked the strength to keep a road back open.¹⁰

An operational draw

The attack was suspended on 27 January, the day Marshal Tolbukhin's counteroffensive began. The Institute writes that by early February the Germans had to give up most of the ground they had won. Számvéber notes that the Soviet counterattack did not reach all its goals either: the Germans held the stretch of the Margit Line between Székesfehérvár and Lake Balaton, the springboard for their last great offensive in March.¹¹

His verdict is an operational draw. The Soviets prevented the relief of Budapest and, after hard fighting, took the Hungarian capital, which he counts as more of a political than a military success. The Germans had so weakened the 3rd Ukrainian Front that for a time it could only defend.¹²