[烛光生存狂]-围困布达佩斯

Haupsturmführer Kurt Portugall, commander of the German battle group that defended Eagle Hill, also failed to escape the cauldron. Captured on Rose Hill, he expected immediate execution when his winter smock was torn open, revealing his SS runes and combat decorations. As he could speak some Russian he was taken to a tall, distinguished major who told him:

I have a lot of respect for the combat soldiers of the Waffen SS. You will shortly be transported behind our lines. In our rear area there are as many swine as in your rear area. I'm telling you, leave your SS runes and your decorations here; it will be better for your future health. I will not keep your decorations nor will any of my soldiers because we are Guards soldiers, the Russian Waffen SS!

A brief orgy of horror and violence ensued in Buda after its capture. An estimated two thousand wounded were burned or suffocated to death in fires that broke out in the catacombs under the Royal Palace. Soviet soldiers plundered, looted, and raped the populace. Occupation troops rounded up all able-bodied Hungarian men and youth and sent them down to the Danube to build pontoon bridges across the river. For weeks afterward, especially after the spring thaw, bloated bodies piled up against these same pontoons and bridge pylons.

Budapest lay in ruins. Thousands of structures were destroyed or damaged. The distinctive Parliament building and Royal Palace were gutted, and all five of the city's unique and graceful bridges lay broken in the Danube. Almost forty thousand Hungarian civilians, about half of whom were Jewish, died in the carnage. Sandor Marai, noted Hungarian novelist and poet, later wrote:

Beware, now your feet will sink in blood, here at the mud dazed Bulwark, the scattered dead yet gaze at the Heavens. Smoke signals swirl up from the depths to the firmament. For somewhere below Krisztina town blazes. All traces of zither and Gypsy have been blown from the "Broadaxe," filled now by shadows and stench alone. And side by side in the castle church lie corpses of dead princes and slaughtered horses.... This used to be the bridge. You rode out here in full moon. Halfway across the hansom cab put on the brakes. It was built by Adam Clark in the Age of Reform. Above the arches seagulls used to oscillate. Then so many suicidal leant against the railings. Now the suicidal lie below water with the balustrade. A cold wind cuts through the Tunnel and its fingers stroke the hair of the dead.

The cost of the campaign to the Soviets has never been confirmed, although estimates range from one hundred thousand to as high as 160,000 casualties. Postwar Soviet statistics claim that more than 180,000 German and Hungarian "fighters" were trapped in the pocket, of which 110,000 were captured. Immediately after the siege, thousands of Hungarian civilians were rounded up and added to the prisoner of war count, allowing the Soviets to validate their previously inflated figures.

There is an epilogue to Budapest's fall. Hitler committed significant reserves to Hungary, including the battered Sixth SS Panzer Army fresh from the Ardennes counteroffensive. Consisting of four of the most battle-hardened Waffen SS Panzer units, including the dreaded Leibstandarte and Das Reich divisions, this formidable force was squandered in early March during an ill-conceived panzer "death ride" into waiting and well-prepared Soviet anti-tank defenses near Lake Balaton. Handily defeated by the now highly proficient Soviets, this reverse of Hitler's best divisions finally broke German resistance in Hungary. Within a month Vienna had fallen.

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