3rd SS Division Totenkopf - Budapest Relief Attempts – Hungary

Budapest Relief Attempts – Hungary

The efforts of the Totenkopf, Wiking and Hermann Göring allowed Germans to hold the Vistula line and establish Army Group Vistula. In December 1944, the IX SS Mountain Corps (Alpine Corps-Croatia) was encircled in Budapest. Hitler ordered the IV SS Panzer Corps to redeploy south to relieve the 95,000 Germans and Hungarians trapped in the city. The corps arrived just before New Year's Eve, and was immediately thrown into action.

The relief attempts were to be codenamed Operation Konrad. The first attack was Konrad I. The plan was for a joint attack by the Wiking and Totenkopf from the town of Tata attacking along the Bicske-Budapest line. The attack was launched on New Year's Day, 1945.

Despite initial gains, Konrad I ran into heavy Soviet opposition near Bicske, and during the battle the 1st Battalion, 3rd SS Panzer Regiment's commander, SS-Sturmbannführer Erwin Meierdress was killed.

After the failure of the first operation, Totenkopf and Wiking launched an assault aimed to reach the city center. Named Operation Konrad II, the attack was launched on 7 January from just south of Esztergom. It reached as far as the Budapest's northern suburbs, and by 12 January panzergrenadiers of the Wiking division spotted the church spires and turrets of Budapest's skyline. However, despite its success, Gille's corps was overextended and vulnerable, so it was ordered to fall back as part of a ruse to encircle Soviet units north of the city.

Operation Konrad III got underway on 20 January 1945. Attacking from the south of Budapest, it aimed at encircling ten Soviet divisions. However, the relief forces could not achieve their goal, despite tearing a 15-mile hole in the Soviets' line and destroying the 135th Rifle Corps. Although they had been on the verge of rescuing the IX SS Mountain Corps, the encircled troops could not be reached and so therefore capitulated in mid-February. The division was pulled back to the west, executing a fighting withdrawal from Budapest to the area near Lake Balaton, where the 6th SS Panzer Army under SS-Oberstgruppenführer Josef Dietrich was massing for the upcoming Operation Frühlingserwachen (Operation Spring Awakening).

Gille's corps was too depleted to take part in the Operation, and instead provided flank support to assaulting divisions during the beginning of the Operation.

Totenkopf, together with Wiking, performed a holding operation on the left flank of the offensive, in the area between Velenczesee-Stuhlweissenberg. As Frühlingserwachen progressed, the division was heavily engaged preventing Soviet efforts to outflank the advancing German forces.

As the offensive stalled, the Soviets launched a major offensive, the Vienna Offensive, on 16 March. Attacking the border between the Totenkopf and the Hungarian 2nd Armoured Division, contact was soon lost between the two formations. Acting quickly, the 6th Army commander Generaloberst Hermann Balck recommended moving the I SS Panzer Corps north to plug the gap and prevent the encirclement of the IV SS Panzer Corps. Despite this quick thinking, a Führer Order authorising this move was slow in coming, and when the divisions finally began moving, it was too late.

On 22 March, the Soviet encirclement of the Totenkopf and Wiking was almost complete. Desperate, Balck threw the veteran 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, into the area to hold open the small corridor. In the battle to hold open the Berhida Corridor, the Hohenstaufen bled itself white, but Gille's corps managed to escape.

On 24 March, another Soviet attack threw the exhausted IV SS Panzer Corps back towards Vienna, and all contact was lost with the neighbouring I SS Panzer Corps. This destroyed any resemblance of an organised line of defence. The remnants of the Totenkopf executed a fighting withdrawal into Czechoslovakia. By early-May, they were within reach of the American forces, to whom the division officially surrendered on 9 May. The Americans promptly handed Totenkopf back to the Soviets, and many Totenkopf soldiers died in Soviet Gulags.