Accompanied by the thunder of cannons, the Russian infantry forces poured into the outskirts of the capital. In many places, their advance initially met with little resistance. For most people, it must have been a hopeless confusion and hardly anyone knew at first which parts of the city were now controlled by which party. The community of Hidegkut was already taken on Christmas Day without me noticing this a few kilometres further into the city centre.
On the main battle line along the siege ring, there was almost non-stop fighting for every centimetre. The front line ran through streets and blocks of houses. All efforts were in vain and in the first few days after the encirclement, the ring of encirclement became tighter every hour. My group itself was not deployed along the front line. Many Hungarian commanders may soon have realised the futility of this battle and so at least my group was spared the brutal house-to-house fighting. However, this could not take away the oppressive feeling of being trapped.
The German divisions close to the siege ring made several relief attempts, but all of them were unsuccessful. We inside the encircled city did not witness these battles. For many, especially in the German battle group, the hope of a relief attack was the main motivation to continue fighting at all. Days, weeks and months passed without any sign of improvement.
While initially the area we held covered an area to the west and east of the Danube, after only a few days we had to record considerable territorial losses in the Pest bridgehead (eastern area). In mid-January, the last bridge over the Danube was blown up and the defenders of Pest retreated to the western side. In the hours before the evacuation, thousands of soldiers and civilians crowded over the bridges, which were under constant barrage. I was still on the Pest side with my vehicle until the very end and was probably one of the last to cross one of the intact bridges unscathed. Numerous fires were blazing on the Pest side, radiating great heat as one passed by. People piled up in front of the bridge, with wrecks, corpses and collapsed walls in between. Smaller calibre mortar shells struck in quick succession, interspersed with repeated aerial bombs from the Russian fighter planes circling overhead. This had already caused considerable damage to the road surface, so I had to constantly avoid obstacles. Impacts from larger calibres had already torn holes in the bridge, causing vehicles in front to plummet. I sped across the Danube as fast as I could and left this dangerous death strip behind me. Numerous soldiers were still running across the bridge with me. When I reached the other side, I immediately took cover. I never saw the blast itself.
The pressure from the Russians got stronger and stronger and they pushed us back into the castle. The term „castle“ was used to describe the entire castle district, which covered an area of around two square kilometres. At first, some of my comrades and I were billeted in a high-rise building on the edge of the castle and got to know the caretaker couple Mittermaier. Although he was a civilian, he had to go with us to the inner centre of the castle when the front was pushed back further, as he was supposed to look after our machines as a mechanic. The new quarters for us fourteen comrades were now in the cellar of a house destroyed by bombs, which was located in Uri utca (street west of the castle) in the area of the Maria Magdalena Church. The cellar was not very deep and could be reached by only 4 to 5 steps from the street side.
The town was only a fortress on paper and the storage of food had probably been neglected. A significant proportion of the supplies may also have been lost during the hasty evacuation of some districts. The daily supply requirement of the trapped troops was at least 80 tonnes. The supplies were initially delivered by night flights with German Ju 52 transport aircraft. The tighter the fortress ring became, the more difficult it became to supply the troops from the air. In the end, the supplies could only be dropped as there were no more airfields available in the urban area under our control. The interruption of air transport meant that the wounded could no longer be flown out either. They had to endure unimaginable suffering in the city. German soldiers who had already experienced several years of war reported that the situation in Budapest was similar to the conditions in Stalingrad two years previously. Every house, indeed every room, was fought over. Streets, squares and courtyards were littered with fallen soldiers. The streets presented an indescribable picture of torn-off tram overhead lines, fallen lampposts and all kinds of destroyed vehicles. Little was seen of the civilian population, who only ventured out of their cellars in extreme emergencies. The whole city was shrouded in a veil of smoke and dust.
When I think back to the 100 days in the besieged castle, it is probably the disastrous supply situation that is most deeply engraved in my memory. In the end, there was hardly anything left to eat. Water had to be fetched at great risk from a damaged but constantly flowing hydrant about 200 metres from our shelter. We had to relieve ourselves between the ruins. In the beginning we lived on tinned food from the military canteen. When these were used up and the drop containers failed to materialise, fully loaded cargo gliders brought dry food into the pocket. These supplies were intended for all trapped German and Hungarian units, but not for the civilian population. Many gliders landed on the so-called „Blood Meadow“ in Budapest. They were pulled up at night by the German supply units outside the siege ring using Ju 52 transport aircraft, towed up to the city and then released. They were to glide into the city and land on the aforementioned meadow. The pilots were mostly Hitler Youth with glider training and became prisoners after landing, as there was no way out for them either. I was able to observe many of these cargo gliders and probably most of them got stuck in the trees or on buildings, as the faint flashing lights marking the landing site were difficult to see in the dark. There were numerous fatalities among the pilots […].
(Michael Kretz: Die Belagerung von Budapest)
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