World Battlefronts: Across the Danube

South of Germany three Russian armies were now in action. One army, stalled at Budapest, had pivoted northward, by week’s end had captured Miskolc, fortified and held by the Germans as a bastion of northern Hungary. Farther east a second had sprung to life, attacked in the mountains of Slovakia. Moscow did not announce it until last week, but in mid-November a third army had joined in, crossing the Danube 130 miles below Budapest.

That assault was a model of sound tactics. First a shock unit rowed across the river at night, set up a small defense perimeter before German patrols caught on. By the time the Germans could muster local reserves, the Russians were moving in light guns and mortars. When the Russians held firm, the Germans called in more troops from other sectors along the river bank. In an area thus weakened, the Russians drove through a new crossing. Now the alarmed Germans began reaching back for strategic reserves, but the Russians, working quickly, joined the two bridgeheads, consolidated communications across the river, moved across in force.

From the bridgehead, the Third Ukrainian Army of brilliant, heavy-set Marshal Feodor I. Tolbukhin then began an offensive. Despite the constant drizzle and occasional snow, despite rivers and swamps and wide ditches, the Russians spread out on the plain like a Danube flood. Through the railroad network of southwest Hungary they swelled to within 21 miles of Lake Balaton, central Europe’s largest, reached 72 miles from Austria’s nearest frontier. Mud was a curse. Moscow newspapers told of one unit that wallowed through mud for days, finally reached its first highway. Men cheered when they saw the narrow ribbon of asphalt, happily lay down to sleep on the unique comfort of firm ground.