The desperate struggle between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army for Budapest in 1944 and 1945 was as lethal and destructive as any of the urban battles fought during the Second World War. The losses of men and equipment sustained by the Germans were so great that they hastened the collapse of Hitler’s regime. Yet what happened in Budapest is less well remembered today than other flash points in the conflict on the Eastern Front. Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history is a fascinating and graphic introduction to this neglected episode in the closing months of the war. The battle began with Operation Panzerfaust in October 1944 when the Germans seized Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy to prevent his country defecting to the Soviets. Red Army advances then left German and Hungarian units trapped in the city and sparked fifty days of intense fighting. Then in March 1945 Hitler launched Operation Spring Awakening, the reckless final German offensive of the war, designed to recapture Budapest and stabilize the Eastern Front. It failed spectacularly, opening the road to Vienna for the Red Army. The selection of archive photographs gives a sharp insight into every aspect of the fighting in and around Budapest and records the ravaged city the battle left behind.

This volume of WWII military studies examines significant yet neglected clashes of German-Hungarian and Soviet armor north of the river Danube. In Days of Battle, Dr. Norbert Számvéber, chief of Hungary's military archives, examines armor combat operations in the southern territory of the historical Upper Hungary (part of Hungary between 1938 and 1945, at the present time now part of Slovakia) in three separate studies. The first is an account of the battle between the Ipoly and Garam rivers during the second half of December 1944, in which the élite Hungarian Division "Szent László" saw action for the first time. The second study examines the fierce tank battle of Komárom, fought between January 6th–22nd of 1945. This was an integral part of the Battle for Budapest, parallel in time with Operation Konrad. The third study describes the combat during the German Operation Südwind in February 1945, as well as the Soviet attack launched in the direction of Bratislava in March 1945. Based on files and documentation from German, Hungarian and Soviet sources, Dr. Számvéber’s authoritative text is supported by photographs and color battle maps.

A gripping and detailed study of the brutal urban battle for Budapest, which saw German and Hungarian troops struggling to halt the joint Soviet-Romanian offensive to take the key city on the Danube. The 52-day-long siege of Budapest witnessed some of the most destructive urban fighting of the war. The Transdanubia region was strategically vital to Nazi Germany for its raw materials and industry, and because of the bridgehead it allowed into Austria. As a result, Hitler declared Budapest a fortress city in early December 1944. The battle for the city pitted 90,000 German and Hungarian troops against 170,000 Soviet (2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts) and Romanian attackers. The operations to take the city ran across several phases, from the initial Soviet approach to Budapest commencing in late October 1944, through the encirclement of city first on the Pest side of the Danube, and then on the Buda bank, and on to the savage urban fighting that began in December 1944 for the Hungarian capital. This superbly detailed work analyses the background, chronology and consequences of the siege from both a military and political perspective, and documents the huge losses in military and civilian casualties and material damage.

The book tells the story of the air battles over Hungary that took place from October 1944 to March 1945 between the Red Army Air Force and the Luftwaffe, in which the Air Forces of Hungary and Romania also played a part.

The desperate struggle between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army for Budapest in 1944 and 1945 was as lethal and destructive as any of the urban battles fought during the Second World War. The losses of men and equipment sustained by the Germans were so great that they hastened the collapse of Hitler’s regime. Yet what happened in Budapest is less well remembered today than other flash points in the conflict on the Eastern Front. Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history is a fascinating and graphic introduction to this neglected episode in the closing months of the war. The battle began with Operation Panzerfaust in October 1944 when the Germans seized Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy to prevent his country defecting to the Soviets. Red Army advances then left German and Hungarian units trapped in the city and sparked fifty days of intense fighting. Then in March 1945 Hitler launched Operation Spring Awakening, the reckless final German offensive of the war, designed to recapture Budapest and stabilize the Eastern Front. It failed spectacularly, opening the road to Vienna for the Red Army. The selection of archive photographs gives a sharp insight into every aspect of the fighting in and around Budapest and records the ravaged city the battle left behind.

October 1944: Soviet troops launched a powerful attack on Budapest from the south, the culmination of a series of military, political, diplomatic and underground moves undertaken by Hitler, Stalin and Churchill since the collapse of the Axis front in the Balkans two months earlier. However, what had been planned as a bold stroke to knock Hungary out of the war and bring the Red Army as far as Munich quickly became a statemate. The end result was taht Stalin's forces failed to reach Bavaria, but the dictator was not disappointed: Soviet pressure against the German southern flank forced Hitler to transfer a consdierable number of his armoured reserves to Hungary and thus largely facilitated Zhukov's drive on to Berlin. Here, Kamen Nevenkin tells the fascinating story of this 'Market Garden'-like operation using a number of never before published German and Russian archival documents, including German papers exclusively held in the Russian militiary archive. The text is dynamic, easy to read and accompanied by previously unpublished photographs. A detailed tactical narrative, Nevenkin also uses first-person accounts to render a human tale of war to create an ultimately fascinating read.

In the last phase of the Second World War the Sixth Panzer Army was the last army available to the German military leadership which was more or less intact and was capable of launching a major offensive. After it had been withdrawn from the Western front in the aftermath of the failed Ardennes counter offensive, it was replenished with men and gears as fully as was possible in the given circumstances, and as a result it almost regained its 1944 autumn strength. It would not have been a surprise if it had been deployed on German territory against the Allied troops advancing to Rhine, or in Silesia or in the Baltics or even if it had been sent as a reinforcement to the Army Group Vistula to defend the distant approaches to Berlin against the advancing Soviet army - reinforcement and fresh troops capable of launching counter offensives were desperately needed everywhere. But it happened otherwise: the Sixth Army was deployed in Hungary and participated in the Operation Spring Awakening, launched in the western part of the country on 6th of March, 1945. This was the last German "big offensive" in the course of the Second World War. Several questions come to mind about the operation. What were the goals originally set to be achieved by this seemingly pointless attack? What role was assigned to the once formidable German Panzer Corps? Is it true that the Soviet command used the same defense directives as had been used during the battle of Kursk in 1943 because they had proved to be viable then? What types of tanks and armored vehicles fight in West Hungary and in what numbers? How did the American made M4A2 tanks manned by Soviet crews fare against the much heavier German Panther and Tiger B tanks on the Hungarian soil? What were the losses on both sides in tanks and armored vehicles? To what extent can be the prompt and powerful response of the Soviet side - the offensive towards Vienna - evaluated as being successful? How did the Germans, the Soviets, the Hungarians and the Bulgarians use their tanks and armored vehicles in this operation? Besides giving a detailed chronological description of the events, the book tries to find answers to these questions. The facts extracted from the operational documents of the fighting sides have been supplemented with excerpts from diaries and memoirs, and even the maps have been drawn on the basis of the original ones. The author has explored some new archival sources kept in Russian archives and also incorporated some published Russian materials into his research that was neglected up until now by other researchers, along with some newly published German memoirs - all this has made possible to create a narrative of the events related to us by the author in hitherto unprecedented detail.

In a definitive new account of the Soviet Union at war, Alexander Hill charts the development, successes and failures of the Red Army from the industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s through to the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945. Setting military strategy and operations within a broader context that includes national mobilisation on a staggering scale, the book presents a comprehensive account of the origins and course of the war from the perspective of this key Allied power. Drawing on the latest archival research and a wealth of eyewitness testimony, Hill portrays the Red Army at war from the perspective of senior leaders and men and women at the front line to reveal how the Red Army triumphed over the forces of Nazi Germany and her allies on the Eastern Front, and why it did so at such great cost.

The history of the Hungarian theater of war from late August 1944 to the end of March 1945 is a special chapter of the history of the Eastern Front during World War II. The Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts had encircled Budapest by Christmas 1944, after very heavy combat. However, this was just the first phase of a period of intense combat, as Adolf Hitler and the German High Command planned the relief of the Hungarian capital. The reinforced IV. SS-Panzerkorps was designated for this task and its units were transferred rapidly from Polish territory to Hungary. Two operational plans were swiftly devised by the Germans, before they chose the codenamed "Konrad". This was an armored strike from the Komárom region through the mountains south of the river Danube to the Buda side of the Hungarian capital. The first day of Operation Konrad was 1 January 1945, and marked the beginning of a series of fierce clashes that lasted for nearly six weeks, a very special period in the history of the Battle for Budapest. Both sides employed significant numbers of armored forces in these battles, including heavy tanks. The German-Hungarian forces tried to break through to Budapest three times in three different locations, but each time they struck relocated Soviet tank, mechanized, rifle, cavalry, artillery and anti-tank units from 3rd Ukrainian Front's reserve. In January 1945, furious tank battles developed in the eastern part of Transdanubia in Hungary, especially in the areas of Bajna, Zsámbék, Zámoly, Pettend, Vereb, Dunapentele and Székesfehérvár. After the third and strongest German attempt (code-named "Konrad 3"), which also failed, the Soviet troops launched a counter-offensive in late January 1945 to encircle and eliminate the advancing enemy forces. But the German armoured Kampfgruppen managed to blunt the Soviet attack, which eventually wound down and fragmented, mirroring the German offensives before it. This work is based mainly on German, Soviet and Hungarian archival records (e.g. war diaries, daily and after-action reports, etc.). In addition, a number of rare unit histories, contemporary private diaries and reliable personal memoirs, from generals to enlisted men, have also been used by the author. The combat actions are extremely detailed, and provide a day-by-day account. The author analyzes the command and control systems at operational and tactical levels and the losses of both sides. For a better understanding of the events the book includes many detailed specially-commissioned color battle maps.

The selection of over 150 rare wartime photographs in this volume in Pen & Swords Images of War series offers a graphic visual record of the dramatic and bloody battles fought for the Crimea during the Second World War. They show every grim aspect of the fighting and reflect in many ways the ruthless character of the struggle across the entire Eastern Front. The German-led Axis forces took eight months to conquer the Crimea in 1941-2 the Soviet defenders of the fortified city-port of Sevastopol held out against repeated assaults for 250 days. In 1944, after the course of the war had turned against the Wehrmacht and their allies, the city was liberated by the Red Army, but only after over 120,000 Axis troops had been evacuated across the Black Sea. Naval operations involving the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and the Romanian Royal Navy are covered in the book, as is the battle in the air between the Luftwaffe and the Red Air Force. But perhaps the most memorable photographs give an insight into the ordinary soldiers experience of the fighting and show the enormous material damage the conflict left behind.