Will the German garrison leave?

On December 12, 1944, the Russian high command ordered that Budapest was to be encircled and crushed. The 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts were in excellent position to cut off the city. German counterattacks delayed the encirclement of the city …

1945-01-17

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On December 12, 1944, the Russian high command ordered that Budapest was to be encircled and crushed. The 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts were in excellent position to cut off the city. German counterattacks delayed the encirclement of the city until the 26th, with four German divisions and one Hungarian division trapped in the city. The forces trapped were named the IX SS Mountain Corps, and were ordered to hold the city at all costs. On January 17, the IV SS Panzer Corps opened a passage so the entrapped forces could have escaped, had Hitler not forbade it. This scenario assumes Hitler had wanted to withdraw the besieged forces.

Budapest, Hungary

Operation Konrad III was a German military offensive on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. It was the third and most ambitious of the three Konrad Operations and had the objective of relieving the siege of Budapest and recapturing the entire Transdanubia region. Achieving complete surprise, the German offensive began on 18 January 1945. Supported by the Luftwaffe, the IV SS Panzer Corps, the principal German attack formation, overran the Soviet 4th Guards Army in two days, destroying hundreds of Soviet tanks along the way, reached the Danube river on 19 January and recaptured 400 square kilometers of territory in four days. After nine days of high-intensity combat, and the destruction by the SS of two-thirds of Soviet tanks in the entire 3rd Ukrainian Front, the German offensive was stopped by Soviet reinforcements 25 kilometers short of Budapest on 26 January.

Wikipedia: Operation Konrad III

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