Half-Forgotten History: The Last German Offensive of World War II

It’s March 1945 and Heinz Guderian, Chief of the German General Staff, is wondering how things could have gone so wrong. After more than five years of war, the once mighty army is now a barely existing skeleton, facing a full-scale attack from virtually every nation on planet earth. Orders are issued by a leader who has less and less understanding of reality, who marches deeper into the abyss of illusion and madness every day. And now the last reserves of the empire are to carry out a new offensive against the Soviet enemy. An offensive to secure the future of the German war machine. The offensive, which is to become the last major attack of Nazi Germany.

There are very few situations in history that can be perceived as unsolvable. However, the position of the Third Reich in March 1945 definitely belongs to them. On the Western Front, the Ardennes operation, which Adolf Hitler interpreted as a chance to drive the Western Allies back into the sea, had recently failed. Instead of fleeing, however, the same Allies advanced as far as the Rhine River and prepared for a full invasion of the German interior. In the east, the situation is even worse. During its January offensive, the Red Army was able to occupy most of Poland and drive Nazi forces as far as the Oder River, where a full assault on Berlin was now threatened. However, Adolf Hitler’s mind was elsewhere. The last foreign country where the Nazis had a strong military presence became the center of his attention. Hungary, one of the first Nazi allies.

Hungary had a rather complicated history with the Third Reich. Even before entering the war, it collaborated with Hitler on the division of Czechoslovak and Romanian territories and subsequently participated in the invasions of Yugoslavia and the USSR. The Hungarian army suffered significant losses in the Soviet Union, and the Hungarian autocrat Miklós Horthy began to consider switching to the other side of the conflict in 1944. Unlike the successful change of sides in Romania and Bulgaria, the Hungarian attempt was stopped in October 1944 by a German operation that overthrew Horthy and replaced him with a puppet government. Hungary thus became the battlefield where the Red Army advanced on the capital Budapest, which it completely surrounded in December 1944.

The Germans, together with the remnants of the Hungarian army, attempted to relieve the siege of the city during Operation Konrád in January 1945, but without much success. Most of the army reserves were busy in the Ardennes and the troops in Hungary were underpowered. Budapest held out until mid-February 1945 before the remaining units in the city surrendered. In the meantime, however, the German western reserves were freed up, primarily the Sixth SS Panzer Army, which was paying for one of the last offensive-capable units of the Third Reich. Chief of the General Staff Heinz Guderian wanted to use it on the Oder, for a counterattack in the event of a Red offensive on Berlin, but Hitler had other ideas. Western Hungary was one of the last places where Germany extracted oil, and Hitler considered it critical to the continuation of the war.

Instead of the Odra, the reserves were to head south to Lake Balaton. At first glance, their task was simple. Together with other German units in the area, they were to push the Red Army back to the Danube and re-establish an effective defensive line that would support this mighty river. The General Staff also hoped to reoccupy Budapest, which could once again become an effective fortress. On paper, this operation was supposed to take place with a massive military force. 220,000 troops and 877 tanks. The reality was that this army was severely depleted after months of continuous fighting, and its fighting potential was severely limited by the absolute lack of replacement forces. There was nothing to replace every tank that the Germans lost, and only the very young or the old could be recruited to replace the soldiers.

The Sixth Panzer Army, which was to serve as the main part of the offensive, was then under the command of SS General Sepp Dietrich. Dietrich was one of Hitler’s old supporters and joined the Nazi Party as early as 1928. He subsequently served as the dictator’s bodyguard and played a significant role in establishing the Nazi dictatorship. He formed the first division of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and participated in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, helping to purge the leadership of the rival SA. During the Second World War, he proved to be a capable divisional commander, but he owed his later rise to his absolute loyalty to Hitler, who distrusted traditional army officers after the assassination attempt in 1944. Dietrich was willing to get his hands dirty for the regime, which he demonstrated several times during the massacres of prisoners of war on both the Eastern and Western fronts. Hitler hoped that it was Dietrich who could bring about the longed-for war reversal in the south.

Again into the maw of the beast

If the troops of the Third Reich were at the bottom of their capabilities, the Red Army had never been stronger. Despite absurdly high losses over the last four years, Soviet troops managed to advance within reach of the heart of Nazi power and had a unique opportunity to suffocate it once and for all. After the capture of Budapest, the Soviet command’s plan was to immediately advance on to Vienna and Brno, but news of a planned German offensive made them reassess the situation. German communications were largely deciphered at this stage of the war, so the Red Army had a fairly good idea of ​​where to expect a Nazi attack. The plan was to let the Germans attack and exhaust themselves. Then it would be much easier to carry out the desired advance further west, completely occupy western Hungary and enter Austria.

Marshal of the Soviet Union Fyodor Tolbuchin, unlike Dietrich, was a career soldier. He served in military positions without a break since 1914 and participated in many important battles of the Second World War, including the operation at Stalingrad and the siege of Crimea. As the commander of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, he had a major role in the occupation of Hungary and the capture of Budapest. Now he intended to defeat the last elite troops of the Third Reich and then resume his western advance. He had 407,000 soldiers and 407 tanks at his disposal, which he deployed in defensive positions around Lake Balaton and the Drava River. Despite his numerical superiority, he left nothing to chance and asked the General Staff for additional reserves. A surprise defeat in Hungary could damage the entire Soviet war strategy, and nothing was to be left to chance.

The Germans chose a rather lousy time for a major military operation. The spring rains made the often ruined roads miserable places to advance. The big attack finally began on March 6, 1945. Local units attacked from the south and southwest, which were primarily intended to attract Soviet attention and facilitate the advance of the Sixth Tank Army. On the Drava River, they surprisingly encountered not the Red Army, but the Bulgarians, who had been German allies only a few months earlier and were now trying to prove their new loyalty to Moscow. The Sixth Army itself had problems from the start. Half the army couldn’t even attack in time and all progress was extremely slow, only in the first line of defense.

Despite the not-so-glorious start, the offense gradually started to develop better and better. Morning Awakening, as the operation was formally named, gradually began to achieve success. The 6th Panzer Army was able to disperse several Soviet divisions. Dietrich’s panzer divisions were able to achieve a deep breakthrough in the south and the Soviet defenses were torn to shreds. Here there was a threat that significant units of the Red Army would be surrounded and destroyed, which would make it possible to achieve the main objectives of the operation. Even the secondary units in the southwest began to achieve success, and their arrival could decide the entire battle.

Here, however, the wisdom of Tolbukhin’s caution was demonstrated. From March 10, he began to call the previously requested reinforcements to the defensive lines, which had meanwhile arrived from Budapest. The German advance now depended on the capture of several towns and villages for which fierce fighting had broken out. Sleepy towns like Simontornya and Aba became the scene of long street battles that gradually exhausted both warring parties. Here, however, the Soviet advantage in numbers of men became apparent. While the Germans had no way to replace their soldiers, the Red Army constantly brought new reinforcements into the area. By March 13, the fighting capacity of some German units was reduced to less than half of their initial levels, and the panzer divisions in particular were on the verge of exhaustion. The town was eventually captured, but the Germans were not to advance any further.

The last real advance took place in the southwest, where only 20,000 German troops were able to achieve surprising successes. However, their aim to link up with the main advance failed and by 14 March they had to begin retreating to their original positions. The fight with the Bulgarian troops ended in an absolute fiasco, and the southern army switched to a defensive strategy. The German advance was impressive given the desperate state of their armies, but it absolutely fell short of the results that Hitler and the General Staff had hoped for. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels already wrote in his diary on March 13 that the offensive would probably end in defeat. However, he had no idea that it would be completely defeated and lead to a new Soviet triumph.

Marshal Tolbuchin did not stick to defensive plans during the German offensive. A few kilometers north of the main German advance, the Nazi front was defended only by small Hungarian units and a few German divisions. Despite warnings from the generals about the problem of this position, Hitler refused to let it be reinforced, which was practically a direct invitation for Tolbuchin. While the German advance in the south gradually ended, the Red Army amassed a massive offensive force in the north and launched its counterattack on 16 March. The Hungarian units practically evaporated and only the desperate movement of part of the offensive units prevented the complete encirclement of the entire tank army. The Red Army was approaching Lake Balaton and the only chance for the remaining German soldiers was to escape.

Hitler, meanwhile, absolutely refused to accept that his offensive had failed and ordered the southern troops to continue their advance, but the local commanders were already practically ignoring these orders. Meanwhile, Dietrich decided not to let his army cease to exist because of an unattainable goal and gave the order to retreat. In the end, he was able to convince even Hitler, who allowed a partial retreat. It promptly turned into a complete escape. Each unit was fighting for itself, and the German high command had no idea where his division was at all from 20 March. Most of the units managed to escape the encirclement, but their combat capability ceased to exist. By March 20, the Red Army was able to recapture all the territories it had lost in the last German offensive.

At the beginning of April, Sepp Dietrich commented on his army as follows: “We call ourselves the 6th Tank Army because we only have six tanks left”. What should have been a joke was practically reality. The 6th Army was ordered by Hitler to stop wearing its SS badges due to the shame of defeat, which Dietrich preferred to ignore. He was far more concerned with stopping the Soviet advance on Vienna, but that proved impossible. Tolbuchin did not hesitate and immediately after the victory in Hungary launched an offensive on Vienna. The city finally fell on April 13, despite the desperate defense of the remnants of the German troops. Dietrich and the remnants of his troops were eventually able to surrender to the Western Allies, where he faced long years in prison but avoided a Soviet firing squad. He finally died in 1966. Tolbukhin proved to be one of the best Soviet generals of the war, but he died as early as 1949 due to problems with diabetes.

Spring Awakening was an act of desperation. That can hardly be doubted. Of course one can scoff at Hitler’s mad plan to hold Hungary, but even the proposed deployment on the Oder would probably not have much effect. The war had long been lost for the Nazis, and it is frankly surprising that the regime was capable of such a feeble offensive at this stage. Hitler’s time was approaching and his Berlin bunker was soon to experience a full onslaught by the Red Army. The era of the Nazi regime was coming to an end and the Cold War era was about to begin.

Resources and further reading:

ISAEV, Alekseĭ. Tomb of the Panzerwaffe: the defeat of the 6th SS Panzer Army in Hungary 1945. Solihull, England: Helion & Company, 2014, ISBN 978-1-912174-69-0.

ZIEMKE, Earl F. Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History – US Army. ISBN 978-0880290593

MAIER, Georg. Drama Between Budapest and Vienna. JJ Fedorowicz Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-921991-78-9.