Waffen SS LSSAH Standartenführer Max Hansen with his staff waiting for the Red Army’s attack in the enclosed area of Balaton,Hungary 1945 Operation Konrad.
In January 1945, five Waffen-SS divisions were in the process of pulling out of Belgium after the failure of the Ardennes Offensive. Hitler wanted them concentrated to lead his offensive into Hungary, which he thought would turn the course of the war. He repeatedly told his generals that they did not understand that modern warfare was about the control of economic resources. A special order was issued by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, for the divisions to be pulled back into Germany to be refitted for their new offensive. Almost the total production of Germany’s shattered armaments industry was to be diverted to the SS divisions. In the skies over the Third Reich, British and American bombers were pounding Germany’s factories and cities on an almost daily basis, while Russian tanks were rampaging through the 5ilesian industrial region. The efforts to re-equip the Waffen-SS divisions therefore stretched Germany’s armaments industry to the limit. There were no more reserves left. The coming offensive would the last throw of the dice for Hitler’s Third Reich.
Throughout January and into February 1945, new tanks, assault guns, halftracks, artillery and other equipment arrived by train at barracks and training grounds in central Germany. Thousands of raw recruits and drafted Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine (German Navy) personnel, who no longer had aircraft or ships to serve in, found themselves impressed into the Waffen-SS. Crash training courses were organized to try to mould this raw material into an elite fighting force. The results were very mixed.
For the first time, six SS panzer divisions would be committed to an operation on the Eastern Front under the command of SS panzer corps, and two of those corps would be under the command of the 5ixth SS Panzer Army. This army had been raised in 5eptember 1944 to lead the Waffen-SS panzer divisions in the Ardennes. Hitler’s favourite Waffen-SS general, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, remained in command of this army, even though he obviously did not relish such a high-level command. He left most of the day-to-day running of the army to his staff and concentrated on what he liked doing best: carrying out morale-boosting visits to frontline regiments. Dietrich loved being in the thick of the action, and relished organizing small squads of men for daredevil operations. Not surprisingly, therefore, many army generals – and some Waffen-SS ones as well-thought Dietrich had been promoted way beyond his ability. He just about coped as a divisional commander, but was out of his depth as a corps and army commander. The Führer would not have a word said against him, however, because of Dietrich’s early work as Hitler’s bodyguard in the 1920s.
There was great rivalry between the two corps in the 5ixth SS Panzer Army. The most favoured formation was I SS Panzer Corps Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler led by SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Priess, the former commander of the Totenkopf Division. It boasted the Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend Divisions (the latter was to see action on the Eastern Front for the first time during the coming offensive). The Leibstandarte Division’s panzer regiment was reinforced with a full battalion of 36 of the new super-heavy Tiger II, or King Tiger, tanks. These 71.12-tonne (70-ton) monsters boasted frontal armour 250mm (9.84in) thick that was impervious to almost all antitank weapons then in service. However, they were notoriously mechanically unreliable, and more would be abandoned on the battlefields of Hungary following breakdowns than were lost to enemy fire. The 501st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion was one of three such units created by the Waffen-SS in the final months of the war, which used the Tiger II tank. These units grew out of the Tiger I companies that had served with the three original SS panzer divisions since 1943. The two other battalions, the 502nd and 503rd, were sent to the East Prussian and Berlin sectors in the final months of the war, and so missed the offensive in Hungary. The Leibstandarte’s other panzer battalion fielded 27 Panzer IV tanks, 41 Panthers and eight antiaircraft tanks. The latter were now essential to tank operations because of Allied air supremacy, which made it very risky for Germans tanks to move around in the open during daylight hours.
The Hitlerjugend Division could only muster one battalion for its panzer regiment, with 40 Panzer IVs and 44 Panthers. The division also had 20 of the new Jagdpanzer IV antitank self-propelled gun, plus more than 150 armoured halftracks. Also attached to the division was the 560th Heavy Anti-Tank Battalion, which fielded 31 Jagdpanzer IVs and 16 Jagdpanthers. This latter vehicle combined a Panther chassis with a fixed 88mm cannon.
A heavy punch was also packed by II SS Panzer Corps, under the command of SS Gruppenführer Willi Bittrich, which contained the Das Reich and Hohenstaufen Divisions. Like I SS Panzer Corps, Bittrich’s command had a heavy artillery regiment equipped with towed 210mm howitzers, and a rocket launcher regiment with Nebelwerfers to provide heavy fire support during assault operations.
Bittrich’s panzer regiments were short of tanks, but the shortfall was made up with Sturmgeschütz (StuG) assault guns. They were distributed to the panzer regiments’ second battalions to augment their Panzer IVs. The Das Reich Division boasted 34 Panthers, 19 Panzer IVs and 28 StuG Ills, while the Hohenstaufen Division had 31 Panthers, 26 Panzer IVs and 25 StuG Ills. The Hohenstaufen’s sister division, Frundsberg, had served in II SS Panzer Corps all through the Normandy campaign, at Arnhem and during the Ardennes Offensive, but in January 1945 it was detached and posted to the Vistula sector of the Eastern Front, taking with it its 38 Panzer IVs and 53 Panthers. It would not join the rest of the Sixth SS Panzer Army for the Hungary offensive.
Hitler was determined that the move of Dietrich’s army to Hungary be kept secret, so he ordered the famous Waffen-S5 general to move his headquarters to the Eastern Front via Berlin. There he made a number of high-profile visits to the front in an attempt to convince the Soviets that the Waffen-SS panzer reserve was about to be committed to the defence of Germany’s capital. The Leibstandarte’s King Tigers were also shipped via the Reich’s capital to add to the pretence. The chaotic state of Germany’s rail network at this point in the war meant the exercise was fraught with risks, and the trains carrying the tanks were lucky to have escaped the attention of Allied bombers and make it to their start line in Hungary.
Operation 5pring Awakening was envisaged by Hitler as a knock-out blow against Soviet forces in the Balkans. The initial phase of the assault would be a three-pronged pincer attack to trap and destroy the Russian troops on the west bank of the River Danube. German forces would then turn eastwards and free the trapped garrison in Budapest. There was then talk of the offensive continuing southwards to drive the Red Army out of the Balkans altogether and regain control of Romania’s oil wells. However, the whole scheme was based on fantasy. For one thing, Budapest was on the brink of falling even before Dietrich’s troops had started their attack.
On 16 February, Pfeffer-Wildrenbruch led a breakout attempt at the head of the last 16,000 German troops in the city. They did not get very far before they were ambushed. The Waffen-SS general tried to escape through the sewers, only to emerge in the middle of a Soviet regiment and was captured. Only 785 Germans made it through the Soviet ring.
