The Devil's Cavalry: How 30,000 SS Horsemen Died Trying to Escape Budapest
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The Devil's Cavalry: How 30,000 SS Horsemen Died Trying to Escape Budapest
On the night of the eleventh of February, nineteen forty-five, a Hungarian lieutenant colonel named Alajos Vajda walked into Széll Kálmán Square in Budapest under searchlights so bright he said the square was almost as light as day. Tracer rounds crossed it in both directions.
In this video:
The night of 11 February 1945: about 28,000 troops break northwest out of the Buda pocket in three waves
Two SS cavalry divisions, Florian Geyer and Maria Theresia, and the 1941 Pripyat Marshes record the Red Army had not forgotten
The failed air bridge, the three Konrad relief drives, and a bread ration down to five ounces a day
Szell Kalman Square: searchlights, pre-ranged artillery and rockets, and a half-mile gap left open as bait
Of roughly 30,000 men, six to eight hundred reached the German lines; both divisions ceased to exist
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The Devil's Cavalry: How 30,000 SS Horsemen Died Trying to Escape Budapest
WW2 Cauldron
14,123 views
#ww2history #wwii #militaryhistory
The Devil's Cavalry: How 30,000 SS Horsemen Died Trying to Escape Budapest
On the night of the eleventh of February, nineteen forty-five, a Hungarian lieutenant colonel named Alajos Vajda walked into Széll Kálmán Square in Budapest under searchlights so bright he said the square was almost as light as day. Tracer rounds crossed it in both directions.
In this video:
The night of 11 February 1945: about 28,000 troops break northwest out of the Buda pocket in three waves
Two SS cavalry divisions, Florian Geyer and Maria Theresia, and the 1941 Pripyat Marshes record the Red Army had not forgotten
The failed air bridge, the three Konrad relief drives, and a bread ration down to five ounces a day
Szell Kalman Square: searchlights, pre-ranged artillery and rockets, and a half-mile gap left open as bait
Of roughly 30,000 men, six to eight hundred reached the German lines; both divisions ceased to exist
Quick Facts on Budapest Breakout are pinned in the top comment.
Subscribe for more untold history, and tell us what to cover next below.
#WW2 #WorldWarII #Budapest #EasternFront #WaffenSS #SiegeOfBudapest #History #FlorianGeyer
Trapped: the IX SS Mountain Corps, including the 8th SS Cavalry Florian Geyer and 22nd SS Cavalry Maria Theresia, plus Hungarian troops, sealed in Buda from 26 December 1944. (Wikipedia, Siege of Budapest)
The breakout: about 28,000 tried to break out northwest from Castle Hill on the night of 11 February 1945; only about 700 to 785 reached German lines near Bicske. (HistoryNet; Wikipedia, Siege of Budapest)
The odds: roughly a 1 in 100 chance of reaching safety; the Soviets had pre-ranged the escape routes with artillery and rockets. (HistoryNet)
Commanders: Rumohr of Florian Geyer and Zehender of Maria Theresia both took their own lives on 11 February; corps commander Pfeffer-Wildenbruch fled through a sewer and was captured. (Wikipedia, Joachim Rumohr)
The units' record: Florian Geyer grew from the SS Cavalry Brigade responsible for the 1941 Pripyat Marshes atrocities; Fegelein's 18 September 1941 report listed over 14,000 dead. (Wikipedia, SS Cavalry Brigade)
Siege toll: about 38,000 Axis military and 38,000 civilians died, and roughly 800,000 civilians were never evacuated; often called the Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS. (Wikipedia, Siege of Budapest)
Relief failed: Operation Konrad III stalled about 25 kilometers short in late January; the Buda garrison surrendered 13 February 1945. (Wikipedia, Operation Konrad III)