The 1945 Lake Balaton campaign: the final deployment of the VI SS Panzer Army in Hungary

Ajouté : 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. Today we talk about Hungary 1945 for our new Eastern Front series. This is technically just the first time I talk about the Eastern Front ever. I obviously discussed, broadly speaking, the Eastern Front in different series, the phone carrier, in the Ukrainian history series. However, we will talk about the Soviet-Finnish War, for example. So, there is something right there overall approaches that, but for different reasons we have never properly addressed the Eastern Front.

[00:00:33]And as you know, it's just essentially from a couple of years that Shrapnel has began talking about World War II.

[00:00:42]I started with the Ardennes that I remember whether that was my first World War II video ever, but at least as a as a campaign overview, etc. It definitely was was late 2023. Uh late 2022 actually. Uh and I remember that for different personal reasons.

[00:01:02]The Ardennes are somehow very much connected with part at least with part of the here 6th Panzer Army and its Hungarian activity.

[00:01:14]However, I must say that the more time passes, the more we must properly escalate towards an all-round World War II series. This is true also. We made perhaps more more thoroughly about World War I so far.

[00:01:28]This is also part of Hungarian history as a war. Recently made a video about the 1956 uprising.

[00:01:35]Uh there are very interesting perspectives to to appreciate in the broader context of this from a strictly Hungarian point of view, right? The fact that, for example, Hungary, as as we'll see now, was fundamentally before the the main engagements between the Axis and and the Soviets was split in two.

[00:01:56]And it really makes you think not just because we know naturally that Hungary fell into the so-called Eastern Bloc, but it had had a quite tormented history right after World War I where the Hungarians had fought in fact in the Austro-Hungarian army against the Tsarist Empire, you have a Soviet parenthesis where there is literally a communist takeover of the country and other countries as we've seen also in the video about Romanian military history stepped in into Hungary and restored order so so to say.

[00:02:30]Naturally the interwar period is is pretty hard like you have this broader perspective of the old regime empire where the Hungarians as we know also from our series about Vienna etc. had always played an ambiguous role.

[00:02:43]And also an increasingly ambitious one for that matter. It's very tragic, dramatic history as we've seen also in fact in the video about the 1956 uprising.

[00:02:53]And this is actually part of a mini-series because I want for the both of them I mean the the 1956 and the 1945 um campaigns to make also some a focus on the actual uh armies per se, how they were organized, how they were trained where they came from. Naturally today we will partially address that, but I would like to make a bit bit more sort of technical videos about the actual tactics employed, weapons uh etc. in a more granular fashion.

[00:03:25]Uh for that matter here as you will see now there's a sort of prominent SS Waffen SS uh military history. So if you're interested in that last year so to say uh it was actually 2024, but I mean last year in a as a broader season a yearly season I made a couple of videos about Waffen SS.

[00:03:47]We began to talk about National Socialism a bit more so given that I recently started a contemporary history series properly drawn from a broader manualistic background to starting filling and start filling the gaps that we left and the the broader gap left by the fact that we just covered military history as far as later modern contemporary history is concerned and like we did mostly for the Middle Ages in fact.

[00:04:15]There is going to be an ever greater attention towards politics, ideology, warfare, uh tradition and what what was left of that. Some of you ask me actually most of they write me privately say Schlieffen Plan they like World War content. Could you please make more uh about that and I realized that my content is not bad. Like I usually I've never really been modest but I rarely sort of blow my own horn so to say.

[00:04:46]Uh but I realizing say the type of content I make as far as medieval history is concerned you would expect like you know, talking about the 20th century is more difficult. Not quite.

[00:04:56]Actually I think I am well sort of grounded so to say for this kind of analysis that are never strictly military either because there is in fact as I just said a broader context to take consideration. But it is still a military history video.

[00:05:15]So we can start from this as when the 6th Panzer Army was established by Hitler near Paderborn in September 1944.

[00:05:28]Tough moments as you know there's been Market Garden and there's lots of um sort of the push the Western trust towards Germany is now sort of evident.

[00:05:39]The 6th Panzer Army was a new formation representing one of the final major concentrations of elite armored forces available to the collapsing German war effort.

[00:05:54]Right, I still have to make a major video about the Bewegungskrieg or some more turn properly known, but still properly known as the Blitzkrieg cuz we tend to give the a bit too much for granted doctrinally speaking and explain why Germany had developed this doctrine. Now, obviously, you know, the the war had informed the the the entirety of this mechanism, but it's never merely about technology or technique or even some simple tactical module.

[00:06:28]All right, it is about something else that after all Nazi Germany did still possess as a from its historical national uh legacy of military culture and so on. I mean, I have the von Clausewitz avatar for a reason. But, that's also an aspect that people don't usually think too much about like how continuous and at the same time discontinuous Nazi military culture or Nazi Germany's military culture was um in the in the wake of its of Germany's previous history.

[00:07:01]Now, as the Reich faced defeat on multiple fronts, it desperately sought to stabilize its lines.

[00:07:09]Disassembly occurred as Allied forces pressed from the west following the successful Normandy landings and subsequent breakout. I have the little surprise for you as usual every June the 6th that is approaching.

[00:07:23]Uh while Soviet armies advanced relentlessly from the east after victories like Operation Bagration which I horrifyingly learn in English being pronounced Bagration.

[00:07:36]Right, you know, that's something that hurts my ears, but probably my English hurts you, especially native language um speakers as well as others. So, I owe you more probably you owe me for for this mispronunciation.

[00:07:54]But in any case, as you know, this was sort of comparable to what sort of the broader Overlord offensive uh and subsequent once had uh been as far as in in West um and had shattered German Army Group Center the previous summer. As you know, since Barbarossa, the Germans had three army groups, North, Center, and South in Eastern Front.

[00:08:19]And uh at this point, all these were taking pretty heavy blows to say the least. It is true actually that in 1944, doesn't matter how in the sense overall successful the Soviet thrusts really were, this happened notoriously at staggering levels of human cost that at that point actually made the Stavka even ideate a possible coup in the Soviet Union for the sheer amount of human losses. There's something incredible in scale uh as the Germans had been so effective in attack. You can imagine now in defense as also their war economy was still however effective, especially in 1944 to to the degree that could inflict this this casualties. And even though Stalin in fact was at the peak of of his power in part also for for that. Obviously, there would always be uh plots, plans, uh intentions of regime change, but in any case, um that's another story for for another video.

[00:09:20]At this point, Germany scraped together its remaining high-quality Waffen SS armored units in a last-ditch effort to create a mobile strike force capable of countering multiple threats simultaneously.

[00:09:36]And it's very important to make this prehistory of Hungary 1945 as this will be heavily influenced by what naturally the Germans had been up to in the previous months.

[00:09:48]The Wehrmacht drew from battle-hardened but depleted Waffen SS units that had seen extensive combat across Europe, as you know.

[00:09:59]These units emphasized fanatical loyalty and aggressive armor tactics that defined SS Panzer operations throughout the war. Rapid concentrated thrusts supported by combined arms.

[00:10:12]They had been born even as some sort um political force um as also other totalitarian regimes had installed but and and initially like if you look at the very first operations it's not like the SS were that qualitative as one thinks. Rommel, for example, did not have a high opinion uh of them but it's obvious that by 1944 >> [snorts] >> the experience gathered by these formations aside from the sort of obvious recruitment issues at this point were still quite uh quite qualitative.

[00:10:47]But this late stage uh in the war in fact such tactics were increasingly hampered by chronic shortages of fuel, spare parts, and trained crews due to the relentless attrition from years of fighting on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean theater.

[00:11:04]SS General Sepp Dietrich, a veteran of the early Nazi movement who had risen from commanding Hitler's personal bodyguard unit the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler through numerous Eastern Front campaigns took command and oversaw the first SS Panzer Corps.

[00:11:25]Dietrich's leadership style was characterized by personal bravery and direct engagement with troops often leading from the front, which earned him respect among enlisted men but criticism from professional Wehrmacht officers who viewed him as lacking formal strategic depth.

[00:11:45]His appointment reflected Hitler's preference for politically reliable SS commanders over traditional army generals in critical operations.

[00:11:55]That, as you know, is a bit like the light motive of much of the Hitler's for military mismanagement aside from also his successes at a point in part a bit like Columbus egg because he he wasn't um aware of the risks to the point of being willing to gamble big and this actually brought to Nazi Germany's early victories um in the war.

[00:12:20]Now, born in 1892 in Havangen, Bavaria as a butcher's apprentice before serving as a decorated sergeant in World War I, Dietrich joined the Nazi Party early and became one of Hitler's most trusted enforcers from the 1920s onward, including participation in the famed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

[00:12:43]He built the Leibstandarte into a premier SS formation known for its fanatical loyalty and combat effectiveness across the invasions of Poland in 1939, France in 1940, the Balkans in 1941, and grueling battles in the Soviet Union such as Kharkov and Kursk where it suffered and inflicted heavy losses as well. Wever has visited Lake Balaton and just for shifting to the ground of the operations we will be describing what is really necessary. We'll never actually forget it even once. Like an enormous palette, it has been splashed with all the colors of the rainbow. The blue mirror of the water strikingly reflects the emerald green of the banks and the ornate buildings beneath orange tile roofs.

[00:13:31]It's no coincidence that songs are sung and legends written about Balaton, as we know from our medieval um Hungarian history playlist. There There is something really deep about this corner of Europe. Lake Balaton is the one around like great um migration groups had stationed, like the especially for the invasion of Italy. If you look at the early probably like Dorian and sort of Italic, later to be called Italic, groups um at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, later the the Goths of Theodoric, the Lombards of of Alboin. And as you know, Hungary has a pretty tormented history throughout all the actually its own Magyar history, but also especially the post uh Hungarian kingdom at least independence phase that we routinely visit in our early modern warfare series.

[00:14:26]Um but it's even more striking to compare with the shockingly traumatic brutality of its history throughout the millennia.

[00:14:38]And in 1945, things were actually uh not very much better than it had been also in a while. Um the image of this landscape contrasted sharply with the grim reality in fact of conquest for Soviet soldiers slogging through knee-deep mud and snow where between January and March 1945, they faced hostile Hungarian fire because as you know, Hungary was part of the broader sort of Axis alliance.

[00:15:09]Hungarian fire coming from attics and vineyards uh against the communists, right? And so, not for the reasons that had once drawn already tourists to to the region. At the time this peaceful scenery. You know how bitter the last months of the war actually were, right?

[00:15:32]Considering the escalatory uh acceleration of the collapse of the of of Nazi Germany and its allies, but also in fact the details strikes of the same the desperate effort that were ideological as sort of broadly national political strategical. Um communism was hated as much as from the other side there had been naturally a terroristic idea of the Nazi Germany and and the Axis especially from a Soviet perspective with what happened in Eastern Europe had naturally a base for that. And so we are looking at the indistrictably deadlocked uh situation would spiral down towards the final destruction of the Nazi regime.

[00:16:30]The war drawing close didn't again make it better. All right. Um imagine even just environmentally dirty gray snow covering the wineries and forests. The buildings with their empty window frames appearing completely different to the fighters of the Red Army than they would have to a side observer given the sharp shooting that was pouring on them from some such locations.

[00:17:01]The situation in Hungary was therefore rather hostile. Flowers weren't being tossed into the passing vehicles of the Red Army's advancing armor columns.

[00:17:10]Hungary was as we said an ally of Nazi Germany when the fortunes of war turned against the Red Army for a spell, the Hungarians who had been sourly smiling at the Soviet soldiers and officers just the day before were now firing at them as a veritable civilian resistance.

[00:17:29]Right. And the battleground again is interesting. Uh the Balaton Lake itself, the largest lake in Central Europe, spans about 77 km in length and up to 14 km in width.

[00:17:42]With shallow waters averaging around 3 m deep and surrounded by gently sloping shores. Volcanic hills on the northern shore. Now, the lake formed a major geographical obstacle and reference point that split German attack axes and complicated Soviet defensive preparations alike by creating natural barriers that forced attackers into predictable corridors.

[00:18:09]Uh and that in this sense would in any case tendentially favor the defense. The Hungarian theater featured complex geography that heavily influenced armored operations.

[00:18:20]The area could be precisely divided into a northern and a southern portion. The northern part from the line Csákvár Mór to the banks of the Danube River east of Komárno is covered by the forested Vértes Hills, part of the Transdanubian Mountains. These hills stretch along a slanting axis from south to north. Their rounded peaks rise approximately 300 m above the surrounding terrain, reaching an elevation of 600 and 30 m above sea level.

[00:18:55]The slopes are cut by deep narrow ravines overgrown with trees.

[00:19:00]Um there are very few roads or passages through the hills. Movement of all types of troops was possible only along a single railroad, two paved roads, and one dirt one. inter mingling now.

[00:19:13]In places where the roads cut through ridges and rocks that heightened up to literally mountains above 600 m, um defiles ranging from 10 to 40 m in width are created. In fact, you can still see it obviously in in the local landscape with no pedestrian or vehicular bypasses.

[00:19:35]Populated points in the Vertes Hills are relatively few as well. So, it was difficult probably to sustain some broader manpower concentration. You have mostly mining settlements at the time in the foothills and valleys near bauxite deposits.

[00:19:53]Numerous paths lead from the villages into the hills, but typically end abruptly at cliffs and ravines. And and so these footpaths turned to be accessible only and mostly to infantry.

[00:20:06]West of the Vertes Hill in the expanse stretching from Komarno to the Kisber-Ker near railroad lies rolling open terrain with elevations of 100 to 230 m and a well-developed network of paved and dirt roads, the majority converging on Tata and making the that town a major road hub as a consequence that as you understand in armored warfare would acquire crucial strategic value.

[00:20:36]North of the Vertes Hills, the Danube River flows west to east before turning south towards Budapest.

[00:20:44]The right bank rises well above the left bank permitting observation out to 20 to 12 km. A highway and railroad main line run along a narrow corridor of level ground 1 and 1/2 to 2 km wide paralleling the right bank between Komarno and Budapest, the only corridor where all types of troops could operate, right? So, narrow enough to be actually dangerous.

[00:21:15]To the east, closer to Budapest, the hills gradually descend into a rolling plain with altitudes of 190 to 300 m where the road network is better developed.

[00:21:26]Most roads run from the west with Budapest for and from Bicske to the south.

[00:21:33]The southern portion instead consists of open ground with elevations of 100 to 200 m descending gradually from the southern spurs of the Vértes Hills to the east, southeast, and south. This region possesses a well-developed network of railroads as well as paved roads, dirt roads, etc. Székesfehérvár, the second largest road hub in Hungary, lies here. In fact, six railroads and more than 10 paved and dirt roads converge in the area. The territory contains a large number of settlements connected by roads.

[00:22:10]Their homes and buildings are primarily stone with many cellars underground, vine vaults, attics, and gardens. You see some of this within the pictures, aside from the destructions.

[00:22:21]There There are numerous vineyards with detached stone buildings, country estates, manor farms, and farmsteads.

[00:22:29]The presence of a multitude of small rivers and canals, however, somewhat diminishes the favorable picture of the southern sector for maneuver warfare.

[00:22:40]The most significant are the Sárvíz, Sió, Malom, and Kapos canals, and the Váli Vizsla River. They all flow from northwest to southeast and enter the Danube south of Budapest. These waterways are not fordable, but their narrow width makes it possible to cross them at least with improvised means. Terrain would prove critical throughout the campaign as we will see. And so it was important to really spend an adequate amount of time to to describe it. Bearing in mind, you can go back in the video in case you're you're confused maybe later on, but it's, you know, unfortunately there aren't um copyright uh free expandable sort of commercially employable detailed maps of of the of the battle, but they just by uh concise description like this, you can understand a lot about the war. Now, to a certain extent, Hungary's notable role in the events of the final months of the war was the result of a combination of circumstances at the time when a calm before the storm prevailed in the autumn of 1944 on other battle fronts stretching from the Baltic to Silesia.

[00:23:54]The Soviet offensives launched on the southern flank back in the summer were still in motion. However, by the end of 1944, the Soviet second and third Ukrainian fronts had entered Hungary, reached the approaches to Budapest from the east, forced a crossing of the Danube south of the capital, broken through the Margarethe Line, and encircled Budapest together with its German and Hungarian garrison on December the 26th, 1944.

[00:24:30]Hitler, but this is what in parallel, obviously as you know, with the Battle of the Ardennes. Now, Hitler possessed a deep preoccupation with petroleum, viewing it as the lifeblood of his military mechanism and rightly so. And but this was a fixation that grew acute by 1945 due to the Allied strategic air campaign devastating the Reich's oil refineries, and especially the Red Army capturing the Ploesti oil fields in Romania the previous year. Ready Ploesti fields had supplied the majority of Axis oil needs earlier in the in the war, but their loss shifted critical dependence to Hungarian production now which Germany guarded fiercely.

[00:25:18]This left Hungary as the sole remaining oil producer accessible to Nazi Germany supplying roughly 4/5 of Hitler's remaining petroleum reserves through fields concentrated around Nagykanizsa in the Transdanubian oil region of Western Hungary near the Austrian border as a matter of fact and so Germany actually.

[00:25:41]These fields operated partly by German-Hungarian companies represented the last major natural oil source under German control making their defense a strategic imperative that overrode other military considerations.

[00:25:59]Because and as as you know as we've seen in the pertinent video the Ardennes offensive had failed on the Western Front. As you know, this operation had almost successfully broken in half the Allied lines right that however managed to resist carried out very famous brilliant um counterattacks like force marches uh the incredibly complex energetic maneuvers. And so much of the Ardennes are considered naturally in the broader offensives of the war the last true um German um attempt at breaking especially the the the Western front line. I'm not going to enter also because fortunately never been part of uh the various debates regarding this macro uh uh, strategic and historical as historiographical interpretations what was happening cuz politically we should start actually from a Clausewitzian standpoint um, regarding these broader offensives many people think about what ifs too much but it's clear that essentially German leadership at this point was hoping for some kind of success in the east. This could not be a decisive outcome in this specific circumstances. However, it is true that if you look at every military operation, there is a margin for some further positive achievement and albeit Hungary would obviously prove to to be a failure and it does rank as a secondary uh, German offensive. Nevertheless, its potential was particularly relevant, right? Uh, at this point and obviously the Germans still have resources to wage this this operation. Hitler deployed the 6th SS Panzer Army to Hungary to construct a defensive perimeter shielding the oil fields as we've seen at Nagykanizsa near the Drava River and to prevent a Soviet thrust toward Vienna and the Austrian industrial areas which included vital manufacturing centers still producing war material.

[00:28:21]This campaign drew little support from the Wehrmacht General Staff who argued that the 6th SS Panzer Army ought to be retained as a strategic reserve and not spent like that in that theater. Hitler overrode their objections and the 6th components entered Hungary masked by the deceptive moniker Engineer Army of Hungary, literally, to maintain operational secrecy at least as long as possible.

[00:28:53]After all, the Ardennes had been a master stroke of uh the same successful surprise, right? Um this deception in Hungary involved false radio traffic and camouflage, though Soviet intelligence networks quickly revealed the elite SS presence.

[00:29:12]For rehabilitation after the Ardennes, the formation was redeployed eastward on January the 20th, 1945, simultaneously receiving the new moniker of the 6th SS Panzer Army.

[00:29:26]While the 2nd SS Panzer Corps relocated to Pirmasens, Neunkirchen, the 1st SS and 12th SS Panzer divisions were ordered to Amersfoort, Rotterdam.

[00:29:40]Upon reaching their destinations, these elements were replenished with 22,000 fresh conscripts alongside 1,000 salvaged and reconditioned vehicles.

[00:29:52]These reinforcements included many inexperienced teenagers from the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm militias. Although both corps managed to regain maximum numerical strength on paper, they were severely deficient at least in veteran expertise, tactical proficiency, and resilient morale due to the loss of many experienced officers and NCOs in prior campaigns.

[00:30:18]Combat power had declined sharply since the heavy losses of 1943 in particular in the Eastern Front, even as the divisions retained elite status compared to many Wehrmacht formations.

[00:30:32]Several days later, the wheels of the German war machine began to turn. The German armies standing on the Vistula River received a terrible blow from their own high command, the 4th SS Panzer Corps was in fact withdrawn and sent to Hungary.

[00:30:49]In December 1944, it had been positioned north of Warsaw.

[00:30:54]The reputation of its commander, Obergruppenführer and General of SS troops Herbert Gille, was a significant factor in the Führer's choice. Gille had previously broken through to the German units encircled in the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky pocket while commanding the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. Right, not Division Viking as a matter of fact. The mere radio message that Gille was coming raised the morale of the encircled German units in Budapest. The Konrad operations had been a series of desperate efforts by the 4th SS Panzer Corps under Gille involving elite divisions in fact like the Wiking and Totenkopf to relieve the besieged Hungarian capital earlier in the year.

[00:31:46]Naturally, objective factors also played a role. The divisions of Gille's Panzer Corps had more personnel than those of General Balck's Nehring's 24th Panzer Corps. The SS Wiking Panzer Division had two extra battalions, the first battalion of both the Norgern Danmark Panzer Grenadier Regiments, which had been reconstituted.

[00:32:12]The German 96th and 711th Infantry Divisions were also sent to reinforce the corps.

[00:32:20]You won't appreciate also from the Soviet side how in fact this frontier was relatively secondary. Right, naturally it was important to strike Hitler in Hungary and approach [snorts] Austria, his native land as a matter of fact, but of course the main effort was being carried out in the northern plains of the Baltic.

[00:32:43]Back in August 1944, the arrival of the two SS Panzer divisions in Poland had helped seal the fate of the Warsaw Uprising itself. However, the and you know what happened there as far as who was waiting for the carnage to consume itself across the Vistula as a matter of fact. Um however, this powerful formation was sent to Hungary literally just 2 weeks before the Soviet Vistula-Oder Operation as well, which was one of the most intense.

[00:33:14]In February 1945, almost half of the German Panzer divisions on the Eastern Front were thus operating in Hungary. All right. So, this was unitly uh another concentration.

[00:33:27]Uh unlike many other relief attempts, the Fourth SS Panzer Corps was to fight its way into Budapest to strengthen the and reestablish the front along the Margarethe Line so that the SS divisions might later return to Poland at some some point. The first Konrad thus began as a hasty surprise offensive launched before full assembly of forces. Fierce fighting developed, but by January 8th, consider that their tanks were not even over. Like the the battle had been continuing uh into 1945, but say by January 8th, Konrad One had been stopped. Right. Subse- Subsequent Konrad Second and Third operations saw further attempts, particularly near Székesfehérvár, but Soviet mobile reserves repeatedly contained the advances. On February 21st, a Berlin meeting occurred between Deitrich and General Balck, who was the commander of the 6th Army.

[00:34:34]Hermann Balck, born in 1893, was a highly decorated Panzer commander who had excelled in mobile warfare.

[00:34:41]Balck outlined four strategic alternatives.

[00:34:45]Hitler endorsed the second on January the 25th as a compromise.

[00:34:51]His commanders viewed the operation that would unfold with skepticism, privately calling it a useless endeavor because any territory taken could not be permanently defended given Soviet numerical superiority and stretched German logistics at that point.

[00:35:08]They dreaded that the 6th SS Panzer Army would end up cut off and encircled.

[00:35:15]The operation's top leaders were relatively new in their posts as well.

[00:35:20]Gille had just arrived from Poland and would go into battle straight from the trains.

[00:35:26]Only General of Infantry Otto Wöhler, commander of Army Group South, had some familiarity with the theater. He had previously commanded the 8th Army in Hungary. Though he had been in his new army group role for just 8 days.

[00:35:42]General of Panzer Forces Balck was commanding in Hungary for the first time. His assignment represented a reduction in post after commanding Army Group G in the west.

[00:35:55]The offensive known as Operation Spring Awakening, Frühlingserwachen, commenced on March the 6th, 1945, under this auspicious name, at least, with minimal artillery preparation due to severe ammunition shortages. Only the 1st SS Panzer, 3rd Panzer, and 1st Cavalry Corps were prepared to strike effectively out the outset.

[00:36:22]The 2nd SS Panzer Corps delayed its advance to allow recuperation from the winter transit.

[00:36:30]In the opening moves, the first SS Panzer Corps breached the frontline despite minefields while the third Panzer Corps carved out a minor foothold across the Drava River.

[00:36:43]The second Panzer Army advanced only 6 km before halting. The second SS Panzer Corps joined on March the 7th, supported by Focke-Wulf 190 fighter-bombers, the Junkers 87 dive-bombers, and the Henschel 129 anti-tank aircraft from Luftflotte 4. As you know, the Ilyushin 2, for example, like they find this type of aircraft were especially in the later part of the war that are incredible sort of advanced type of anti-tank um aircraft probably to to hunt in larger numbers. In fact, the ever larger numbers of tanks that were filling from At this point, the uh the Nazis had sort of had to adapt this in very defensive ways against the the the tidal wave of Soviet armor that was pouring against them.

[00:37:41]Naturally, however, it was the same Panzers that made the difference on the field.

[00:37:48]Now, the support facilitated breakthroughs in places. The first SS Panzer Corps captured Kalbosh, but a sudden thaw turned landscape into thick mud, crippling mobility. Remember, we are still in late winter, so the weather actually sucks.

[00:38:05]Uh on March the 8th, the second SS Panzer Corps encountered additional defensive zones.

[00:38:13]The 92nd Corps reached Mohács, right, the site of the old battle where the uh king of of Hungary, Louis, was killed by the Ottomans in the early 16th century, but was stopped by the 12th partisan corps, including the 84th Soviet Infantry Division and Bulgarian units.

[00:38:38]Cuz Bulgaria was already into the hands of the Soviets.

[00:38:42]The Second Panzer Army spearheaded by the 68th Corps ran into devastating defensive fire. Soviet defenses featured deeply echelon belts with extensive minefields, anti-tank regions with 15 to 25 guns each, and mobile blocking detachments.

[00:39:02]Tolbukhin's style as commander of the Third Ukrainian Front emphasized artillery-heavy defense with rapid shifts of the Katyushas and howitzers.

[00:39:14]On March the 9th, worsening thaw immobilized the 1st SS at Szekesfehervar.

[00:39:21]The 2nd SS Panzer Corps engaged in a high attrition slugfest. The Luftwaffe flew 350 combat missions that day. Right, this tells you how intense actually the German offensive actually was, but at the same time how it would be bogged down by not just terrain conditions. This this helped obviously, but it was the Soviet defense that succeeded in that. With the many ways can say scrap forces, but indeed with the possibility that the Nazis could break through.

[00:39:54]Right?

[00:39:56]The 1st SS Panzer Corps was however ordered to shift its axis westward toward the Danube due to this failure.

[00:40:05]On March the 10th, rain turned the terrain into a veritable quagmire.

[00:40:10]The 12th SS Panzer Division occupied Szekesfehervar and the 23rd Panzer Division arrived. The 2nd SS Panzer stalled near Sárkeresztúr.

[00:40:23]The 3rd Panzer Corps captured Gardony on Lake Balaton.

[00:40:29]Soviet responses included rapid reserve shifts with T-34s, ISU-122s, and mass artillery.

[00:40:41]All right. While these Soviet mass tank hunter forces probably stem the quality of the SS Division. You have also mass artillery before we listed like aside from normal field artillery, but you have the Katyushas, rocket rocket launchers. You have um the We also said that the 17th Air Army uh contesting the skies with the Ilyushin two Sturmoviks that weren't Yeah, they were also pretty um handy in terms of dog fight with however similar um bombers. Obviously, most of of the skies were dotted with actual fighters, in fact, taking down one another and protecting these other bombers.

[00:41:29]Faced with Hitler's demands, General Wöhler ordered the 4th SS Panzer Corps into a spoiling attack north of Lake Balaton and committed the 6th Panzer Division.

[00:41:42]The following days featured rain, mud, and minimal gains again.

[00:41:48]The 1st SS Panzer Corps was defeated in its main objectives despite isolated successes by heavy Tiger units.

[00:41:58]Wöhler directed further force to secure a lodgement over the Sió Canal and Simontornya.

[00:42:06]A rare success came when the 509th Tiger Battalion with King Tigers. I discussed this in some of my World War II tanks videos knocked out 20 Soviet tanks.

[00:42:21]By March the 13th, the first SS Panzer Corps fought defensively to hold its bridgehead. The 23rd Panzer Division liquidated strong points at Tsar Egers.

[00:42:34]The second SS Panzer Corps advanced only 9 km.

[00:42:38]though. Dietrich assured Wöhler that a breakthrough was imminent, though both actually knew the essential conditions for success had practically evaporated.

[00:42:50]On March the 14th, dry weather briefly appeared, but the Red Army launched a counter-assault establishing a bridgehead across the Shiok Canal near Alzoor. At Komarom, American heavy bombers destroyed local oil refining facilities.

[00:43:08]The 6th Panzer Division helped clear shambles, and the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division captured Schomand.

[00:43:19]General Heinz Guderian phoned Wöhler warning of Soviet encirclement attempts at that point. Now that the Germans had de facto exhausted the initiative.

[00:43:31]Besides, as you are seeing here, the Allies have bombed some the same oil fields that the Nazis were supposed to to defend with this operation. At this point, the Western Allies could easily bomb from major staging areas in in Central Italy, as only the north remained under the Salò Republic, and we will talk about those frontiers as well.

[00:43:59]Wöhler committed his final reserves in this last desperate effort to break through. On March the 15th, the offensive thus reached its maximum penetration.

[00:44:11]On March the 16th, the situation remained, however, again largely static.

[00:44:16]The offensive had exhausted itself essentially after 10 days. Ultimately, the Red Army sacrificed around 110 tanks against the 6th SS Panzer Army and lost another 92 to the 3rd Panzer Corps, while the 6th SS Panzer Army suffered 50 completely destroyed tanks and 110 heavily damaged. Consider they were the offense, all right? The 2nd Panzer Army sustained approximately 4,000 casualties, as well. The operation mirrored the attritional dynamics of the Battle of Kursk, uh just to draw a parallelism. The elite SS units advanced up to 40 km, 40-45, but achieved no genuine breakthrough.

[00:45:02]Even if one had occurred, the simultaneous Soviet Vienna Offensive would have outflanked the gains, as well, because there is all uh rapidly evolving theater here, like the Soviets have the momentum, right? And there is forming across Central Europe, uh in a merciless fashion.

[00:45:21]Now, as you can English uh fell soon after, by the way.

[00:45:25]The Vienna Offensive swept through Austria.

[00:45:28]And so, the entire southeastern front of Germany collapsed at that point. It what Hitler had feared the most, especially because of oil, to which he attributed sort of this almost materialistically um solving capacity, as opposed to sort of the looking at the moral dimension of the fort, where the Germans were losing faith in the same he uh somehow dismissed and or like couldn't accept to a degree.

[00:45:55]On March the 19th, the Soviets introduced the 6th Guards Tank Army to trap the 6th SS Panzer Army. This triggered a general retreat.

[00:46:06]By March the 24th, Soviet forces had advanced 115 km deep, annihilating the 4th SS Panzer Corps.

[00:46:16]By April the 19th, right in here, time flies as you understand, the 1st SS Panzer Division had just 38 functional tanks, and the 2nd SS Panzer Division only 17. Right, they were really reduced to pretty meager thing, uh a ghost of of their former self.

[00:46:37]Operation Spring Awakening uh signified thus the definitive destruction of the SS Panzer Army as an effective formation, shattered Hitler's final strategic goals in the east. As you know, he would be gone by the end of the offensive in a couple of weeks. So, overall, because we could make videos about the individual battles, right? And today we just cursorily looked at this, so we actually looked in fact at different operations at a time, and there's also broader context. So, these videos are more like technical proofs of what we can do, right? Then we'll enter the proper depths of this.

[00:47:18]But, from this picture you gather some sort of relevant insight, right? Uh the the battles around Lake Balaton, including the earlier Conrad relief attempts by the 4th SS Panzer Corps under Herbert Gille, with divisions like Viking and Totenkopf, highlighted the recurring challenges of Panzer operations in wooded hills versus open southern plains cut by canals.

[00:47:47]Soviet commanders like Tolbukhin effectively used mechanized corps for rapid repositioning and reserves such as the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps with lend-lease Shermans, as a matter of fact that amplified Soviet mass and the SU Samokhodnaya Ustanovka 100 the Soviet tank destroyer regiments with very profiles very low um silhouette to to avoid in fact being you know properly hit by the much more individually effective um German tanks on average at least to regiments to blunt penetrations.

[00:48:30]Luftwaffe support could not overcome Soviet air armies or the persistent mud.

[00:48:37]The operations failure preserved the Soviet bridgehead and set the stage for the Vienna offensive.

[00:48:44]On March the 6th, 1945, the Third Ukrainian Front possessed 185 artillery and mortar regiments totaling over 2,500 mortars with calibers ranging from 82 to 160 mm.

[00:49:00]Almost 3,000 guns with calibers ranging from 45 to 203 mm, over 600 anti-aircraft guns from 20 to 85 mm in caliber and almost 200 Katyusha rocket launchers.

[00:49:18]Many units had defensive experience from January 1945, but the equipment levels were low.

[00:49:25]Actually often sort of over uh half for guns for example and far lower for vehicles.

[00:49:33]Only select brigades were fully [snorts] equipped. Artillery was grouped into regimental, core, and army groups.

[00:49:41]Anti-tank defenses were meticulously prepared especially between Lake Balaton and Lake Balaton with ambush guns, mobile blocking detachments, and plans for night fighting as well.

[00:49:56]Armored units included the 18th and 23rd Tank Corps of the and the first Guards Mechanized Corps with Shermans.

[00:50:06]Plus numerous again SU-100. The SU were essentially self-propelled guns.

[00:50:13]And so you have also this necessity of coping with the German Tigers and Panthers.

[00:50:23]With this heavy tanks. As a matter of fact, um And so there is again all the a technicality as well that we will see especially in the videos about the actual combat uh in interest of tactics of also small unit tactics at some point are mostly here at brigade uh regiment level and so on. And so when you look at this Operation Frühlingserwachen commenced on March the 6th, 1945, virtually simultaneous attacks. The main effort came at 8:47 to be specific when the 6th SS Panzer Army and Army Group Bulk attacked between Lakes Balaton and Velence after 30-minute artillery barrage. There was as you see in play even just the indicator of a scarcity um of mobility and fierce fighting developed for road hubs and villages. The first SS Panzer Corps captured Kalets on March the 7th but was slowed by the mud.

[00:51:30]The 2nd SS Panzer Corps fought heavily near Sarkeresztur. As a matter of fact, uh in Soviet commanders rapidly shifted reserves here using SU-100 ambushes in particular in the specific terrain that we described before and Katyusha fire, that was somehow saturating the broader picture, was less effective, obviously, than uh tank hunters, but could shatter the general advances of, naturally, tanks, infantry, um and other uh armored mechanized units, really.

[00:52:05]By March the 15th, the German offensive had thus exhausted itself um after 10 days of intense combat, its failure allowed the Soviets to launch their Vienna offensive on March the 16th, driving the depleted 6th SS Panzer Army out of Hungary.

[00:52:25]And so, overall, we're witnessing to this uh this defeat coming, obviously, in a particularly terrible time uh in history. Actually, for everybody involved, as we explained at the beginning, it's not like the Soviets were enjoying a particularly light time, they were actually taking uh very heavy casualties, but as you understand here, the we are properly toward the the very end of the war, and [snorts] this is the moment in which the the German army is starting, properly, to to collapse, right in to the point of impossibility of replacement, like being cornered, losing ever more territory, and so, in the very core lands, in this case of of of the same Germany, at least with the Vienna offensive, you have all some kind of interesting references, if you were to talk about certain traditional traditionalists history biographies throughout these uh events, but in in general, we are also witnessing like the very important in this bigger picture that must be carefully studied, primarily from a in fact military standpoint and uh appreciating the sort of the resilience also the sense of of German forces the effectiveness of the Soviets in there here we're talking about broader coalitions as you've seen there are still the Hungarians in what is left of them there are units as you have heard before also coming from sort of volunteer forces of of foreigners right of countries that had not even probably joined the war at some point but it's a it it mostly speaks of the great iron arm that had started since 1941 and that in the east and that at this point overwhelms the very the very Germany the very southeast of Germany Hungary and so another would have been an important element at least a secondary one in the axis but still relevant in a broader historical sense as in fact the the later history of Hungary will also remind us right so again very little video just for essentially summing up this theater which is I would say for any World War II uh enthusiast I don't want to say amateur like it's however a well-known one in general you have to cover every single bit um to have a more comprehensive picture of the war and as I said at the very beginning of the video I think it's about time that we start properly widening the our horizons at so many different levels of World War II here I don't remember when I created the World War II playlist and it seems to me that so it doesn't get too many views.

[00:55:39]However, it's it's dense and it already has some quite interesting content that is not even necessarily it's also World War II era not necessarily like just strictly speaking military topic it actually is in this case but for example we talked about the Mischlinge and that's more like a yes it's a military topic but that's you see the difference between selling military history and the art of war right what we're done today is definitely closer to to the latter but indeed one of the most difficult aspects of this all is to properly document the background of these military events as well you can't really study World War II in the way unfortunately we've been a bit waited to at least hear of online.

[00:56:32]I know that the thing that struck me that I remember even before I I started the channel is it struck me ever since I got online when YouTube was already there naturally is the level of sort of self um I'll sort of of alienation willing alienation when it comes to specific political uh and historical military topics that is not very different from sort of brain rot that emerges today for different reasons on on social media it's as if there were some people who kind of awaited from that far of a time probably many of them actually matured and some of some of the people who post this kind of mentality now and probably find find it appalling but there are but there is really a a large part of the population not just the sort of um mentally dysfunctional but they they truly like it's not really capable of thinking World War II or history in general in sort of more than some idealized dichotomies uh in different ways or from both sides.

[00:57:48]This is kind of obvious and unfortunately when we make these videos, we have to acknowledge that there is uh much out there that has already been posted, has already been watched that didn't try that told the story of these battles, the story of of of of these campaigns but not sort of trying to appreciate their overall value. Right? And on World War II there is really a lot, right? If I uh search for this, this is normally what I do at the end of all the videos. I say, "How many people have actually talked about this?" Hungary 1945 is truly well treated. I'm sure that there are many different uh videos from bigger channels, right?

[00:58:32]So, it's really nothing strange.

[00:58:35]But say accompanying it with some more sort of thorough um information, I would say, would be better. Here you see, for example, half a million views for a a video on Budapest 1944 uh lasting 12 minutes. This other one, the the Battle of Budapest '44-'45 lasting 8 minutes.

[00:58:59]Right? There is some interesting footage that is short. So, again, not even this I thought I thought actually would be more, right? Uh I'm actually I always leave too much benefit from the doubt.

[00:59:12]If some of you think that I'm tyrannical, it's because as you can see here, there isn't actually much uh to be made. Here I see actually, interestingly enough uh a video uh of 1 hour long and it's like an actual document. This is well done, actually.

[00:59:29]At Battles of the Hungarian Front 1945.

[00:59:31]So, this would essentially an equivalent of the video that I made here. Um We have another thing about 22 minutes.

[00:59:39]But, you see, YouTube doesn't doesn't even give and this has 100 views, made 7 months ago. It seems like AI slop, as a matter of fact, considering especially the the visuals.

[00:59:50]Um There is something on Siege of Budapest that's 40 minutes. This one 1944.

[00:59:59]Um So, yeah, actually, there is a pretty interesting amount of of information, but it's also relatively scattered. There isn't that much compared to to what I'm actually doing here myself. So, considering that this is, just by the way, the first episode of a series, I can't say that there's actually very few here. And actually, here uh okay, well, yeah, but they're very short videos. 10 minutes, 8 minutes on the Siege of Budapest.

[01:00:31]Um yeah. So, we actually have to do more.

[01:00:34]We have to talk also more about Hungary during World War II and interwar period, because it's also like a very interesting scenario, um politically speaking. And that's what makes this today we didn't concentrate much on it, as I said at the beginning, because uh it would make this stuff much more political if you also follow what what happened, obviously, to Hungary after this, you know. Um but, as we were saying at the beginning, also during the intro and the arrival of the Soviets here, the Hungarian populace was not happy at all. Not just because of the war, but because they were opposing themselves actively to to communism, naturally. There were fifth columns, there were communists in Hungary, as well.

[01:01:17]But, in any case, the decisive moral majority of Hungary was sort of eroded during the destruction of of the war and the finding of the war and that's why there could be that was a fairly unstable uh communist Hungary that would rebel in 1956 so sort of bloodly and intensely.

[01:01:38]And so there is an interesting history.

[01:01:40]I'm glad that this video bridges a bit some gap like we we haven't talked about Hungarian history so much on Strapazak.

[01:01:46]I always feel this that even though probably we did the compare here to other count to other channels and um also compare actually to other countries in the same channel meaning that at least for medieval Hungary we really made a lot right? We have a haven't a unified Hungarian playlist actually I should create one in fact because again I already made something about the contemporary history but this helps There is Hungarian warfare as a whole so this will barely go into it as sort of Hungary more more than else.

[01:02:21]But um again all this stuff is fundamentally positive for our gradual scaling in the completion this case of 20th century history that we we managed in fact to accomplish is the 60th video about 20th century history right? So it's not even entirely few considering that we focused more than than else on sort of much earlier times. And so again it this does seem to be a particularly good uh good threshold we to to to cross and I'm glad that there are more people watching my my in fact 20th century history content. And unfortunately, like these videos attract from both sides the wrong attention.

[01:03:23]Most people don't understand essentially what I'm doing or what these videos are really about.

[01:03:28]Uh etc. But that's in part with if they still watch it, like what can create a chance for some bigger understanding, some kind of evaluation behind this. And so, again, there's a bunch of lessons to be drawn as we said in the beginning, there is a specific German doctrinal legacy, there's a way of war that uh in this sense, the SS Panzer Elite has developed, right? But at the same time, we're looking here at the this crops of the bottom of the barrel as far as probably manpower uh is concerned. So, they were again pretty good uh Panzer crews, there was naturally this general superiority of of the German military in quality to to the to the Red Army. But at the same time, this is where probably the tides turn and turn eventually for good, also signaling in the sense that Nazi Germany remained uh functional war machine up to the uh the very end in spite of sort of the the terrible strains it was going through, the staggering losses. And so, there was much to be learned about this in a broader political, moral, cultural sense, which is not simply saying, "Okay, well, you know, so the Germans were so great, you know, World War II, I think they should have won it." This is not the point.

[01:04:51]And that's what I was referring to before I say because most sort of general attraction towards these topics comes from this, right? On the other hand, we also have to evaluate the Soviets and so what this meant. Today we talk about the Ukrainian Front, for example. When you look at Ukrainian participation to the Soviet war effort, you remember there is a history of Ukraine behind that. They hadn't even been just as you know unequivocally communist to to say the least and especially like in the Sorry, in in specific parts for quite a long time.

[01:05:22]There were parts of of Ukraine that uh said that had never been under the Muscovy uh before, right? Some of these decades.

[01:05:33]So, um there like the capacity eventually of the Soviet Union to succeed must also be explained.

[01:05:42]Uh and it it is about also of course to the Western allies who perhaps did not entirely that, right? There is there are Nazi sins and mistakes in the Eastern Front that were however all one with their own ideology. And the same can't be said of course for the dramatic shortcomings of of the Soviet Union that was defeated even in victory from a broader moral political and social point of view as many of the the men that you see here fighting in the Red Army were people that were hoping to as they had been brainwashed and repeatedly indoctrinated with the thinking that basically this was the the great war that would end all suffering and pain and poverty and misery.

[01:06:25]Uh and so the staggeringly squalid and the unspeakably uh you know, hallucinating life quality in the Soviet Union that instead came back home to just be brutally uh repressed further by some of the peaks of Stalinist terror that did not did not in fact receive any a- any uh liberal benefit. There was not a liberalization of the system. On the contrary, further uh further repression also because many of these people had in fact been in arms in unprecedented ways that the the previous time this had happened this had brought to the same um Bolshevik uh to the same at least the same Russian Revolution. And as such, as you understand, that this this means a lot. And I also recently made a video about Germany, Italy, and Japan, specifically West Germany, becoming literally at some point in the post-war period the three largest economies in the world after the United States.

[01:07:27]And also the the three longest-living countries in the world. Something that it it's is obviously sort of explained that these countries weren't obviously faring well, not just at this point, but also for a consistent time after the war. But the reconstruction, the Marshall Plan, everything that entailed eventually, like the the history of a of peoples that have been devastatingly defeated, to say the least. You know, this like brought to a to something completely different. And so they brought the defeated actually to to leave a much better um life, peace, etc. In part in part exactly because they had been defeated.

[01:08:07]Unlike the Soviets that remained in utter misery and sort of disconcertingly appalling life conditions. As also like the peoples, including here in Hungary, of the broader Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact, you you can't look at East Germany in comparison.

[01:08:25]Um and and so this is a narrative that does not get insisted very much upon because always pointing out, as I did myself before, like the necessity in acknowledging what how the moral balance stood. And in many ways it was quite precarious, especially especially when you look at the Eastern Front and at these totalitarian regimes that were essentially just greedily and brutally fighting mostly for for a for a broader hegemony and uh broader uh sort of post-traditional imperialistic way to to to control other peoples.

[01:09:08]Th- This does not eliminate the accomplishments of these peoples.

[01:09:14]Right? They were unequal, right?

[01:09:17]Not just during the war, but, um, also as peoples, as countries, as nations. Which is actually something that, like, the same Soviet Union with Ukraine, for example, was sort of denied, right? And eliminated.

[01:09:30]So, again, there was a need to bring unity into the times of crisis and emergency. This is what essentially had brought even the Soviets to to fight to begin with. Like, the new from the other side was complete extermination. Um, and so, that was a great mistake of of of Hitler's well.

[01:09:49]And, uh, but here we're entering that field again that I'm not even particularly interested in in terms of what ifs and other sort of reflections of what could have been, in fact.

[01:10:01]And that, I think, is instead much more interesting to observing what actually happened.

[01:10:07]Instead, as I I always say, we'll surely make more videos about World War II again. We're in the next couple of of months, I can tell you we're going to make more about it.

[01:10:20]For today, however, I stop it here. I just hope that you enjoyed this video.

[01:10:28]If you did, please share it. Otherwise, leave a like or subscribe to my channel if you're interested in my upcoming content. As always, I thank you heartily for listening to me. I wish you a nice time and see you next time.

[01:10:45]Bye.

[01:12:39]>> Mhm.