The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II | Krisztian Ungvary

The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II | Krisztian Ungvary | At last the story is told!

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The Siege of Budap...

	The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II Krisztian Ungvary Yale University Press, 2005 - 512 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In the final six months of World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union focused on Hungary: Stalin demanded victory at all costs as a key to securing his European empire; Hitler ordered an unrelenting defense of Budapest in order to prolong his grip on Vienna and preserve the route to Berlin. Consequently, the siege of Budapest was one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the entire war.

Based on formerly inaccessible documents and several hundred interviews with Hungarian and German survivors, this is the first complete and unbiased account of the siege of Budapest. Street by street, day by day, Krisztián Ungváry describes the battle and its horrors in meticulous detail. One hundred and two days passed between the appearance of the first Soviet tank and the final capture of Buda Castle. More than 80,000 Soviet troops and 38,000 German and Hungarian soldiers were killed; about 38,000 Hungarian civilian lives were lost. Civilian casualties were extraordinarily high because the city?s 800,000 noncombatant residents were never evacuated. This book represents a massive effort of historical reconstruction, and a major contribution to the history of World War II.

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Beautifully written history

I enjoyed this book cover to cover. Refreshingly free of of the snotty professorial moral outrage present in so many English WW2 histories. Not that the author doesn't convey the horror wrought by both Germans and Russians on the Hungarians- he does so in a calm step by step description of this gigantic siege. I have but two nits to pick out- in this book the siege of Stalingrad is said to have lasted 76 days vs. 108 days for the siege of Budapaest but in real life by any measure the siege of Stalingrad lasted 5+ months or around 150 days. I think the author has confused Operation Uranus (which started in late November 1942) with the whole Stalingrad siege (which started in late August 1942). Lastly- in one section the author states that the execution of Jews down by the Danube River was the most overt and largest mass atrocity in Europe since the early stages of Barbarossa but I think Ukranians, Byelorussians, Yugoslavs and even Czechs would beg to differ on that point. All in all though this is an engrossing and beautifully researched piece of history- far superior to recent works about Berlin and Stalingrad...

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At last the story is told!

The author has done an outstanding job of writing about the little known siege of Budapest during the Second World War.He goes into great detail about Hungarian,Soviet,German operations during the siege,anti-Arrow Cross activities,atrocities against the civilians etc.A must read for those who are interested in the last six months of WW 2.

Amazing horror

When I first started reading this book I was put off to some extent by the dry recitation of the villages , then cities and finally streets that fell before the Soviet onslaught. I kept thinking that better, and more regular, maps and street plans would help me "watch" the events taking place. The narative would have benefited tremendously from an introductory description of the city and its key sites - at no stage did I become "acquainted" with Budapest. Accompanying this "dryness" was a description of warfare that just numbs you with the agony of it all (it reminded me in some ways of the stark realism of "Blackhawk Down" - bullets and explosions and bits of flesh flying all over the place)... And then came the Breakout... I was previously unaware of how dramatic the events around Budapest in 1944-45 really were; it's strange how little is actually reported or written! The futility and sheer horror, of lives wasted and blind ideologies followed, ultimately rises to the surface... and leaves you filled with amazement and horror.

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Great Coverage for the Hungarian People, Almost no Russian Side, and The Military Battles are Covered Relatively Poorly

Frankly, I was conflicted over this work. It sounds like this is the military story of the siege of Budapest, and I expected a full development of the German and Hungarian defense and the Soviet attacks. Instead the author primarily covers the story of Hungary in World War II, its government, factions, people, and how they participated (or not) in the defense of Budapest, and their suffering during and after the siege. That part was excellent -- it was only that I expected something else. Maybe that was my bad, but I'd still like to see a definitive work on the siege of Budapest from a military perspective. I suspect that Ungvary could produce such a definitive work if he so wished.

The Soviet side is presented very weakly, and this was my main reason for giving this work four instead of five stars. Even the German defense is not as well handled as it could have been, and there is a great deal of detail missing. It is almost impossible to make sense out of the fighting and the progression of the ever-shrinking perimeter.

Nonetheless, the book is what it is, and I recommend it since it contains much material rarely found in other works on the Eastern Front of World War II. It definitely adds to the literature of World War II.

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Budapest

The book pays little regard to the wider context of the events it deals with, the absolute idiocy of the German command to dispatch a large share of its remaining resources to the battle for Budapest while the Soviets were ready to take Berlin. The maps are illegible. There is no map showing the wider theater of operations. Some of the horrors are described well. Overall an uneven history.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

recommendations

Recent WWII Non-Fiction (in Progress)
World War books about German Soldiers
GERMAN CAMPAIGNS, BATTLES & SOLDIERS
Best Eastern Front Books/Publishers
WAR IN THE EAST 1939-1945

budapest