Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

entourage — should Hungary betray its alliance with Germany.

Skorzeny immediately began detailed planning of the complex operation (which he dubbed ‘Panzerfaust’ — ‘Bazooka’) against the heavily fortified government quarter, with its labyrinth of subterranean passages. He was adamant that the action could only follow, not precede, a hostile act by Hungary against Germany.²⁵³ Probably, German intelligence was aware of the Hungarian delegation’s visit to Moscow. In any case, it was plain that events were rapidly reaching their denouement. The SS commander in Budapest, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Otto Winkelmann, pressed for urgent action. Hitler sent SS-Obergruppenfuhrer von dem Bach-Zelewski, fresh from his brutal suppression of the rising in Warsaw, to Budapest to take charge of ‘Panzerfaust’. Skorzeny had some initial difficulty in deflecting Bach-Zelewski from using the same crude brutality — including deployment of his massive 65cm mortar against the city of Budapest as earlier against Sevastopol and Warsaw — but eventually a more sophisticated approach was agreed.²⁵⁴ This involved the kidnapping of Horthy’s son, Nicklas (who, as German intelligence knew, had been working through Yugoslav contacts to promote a separate peace with the Soviet Union) in order to blackmail his father into abandoning intentions to defect. Skorzeny called the operation — a play on the name of Horthy’s son — (Nicky) ‘Mouse’.²⁵⁵ In a daring ambush on the morning of Sunday, 15 October, Skorzeny’s men, following a five-minute flurry of shooting with Hungarian bodyguards, carried off the younger Horthy, rolled up in a carpet, bundled him into a waiting lorry, whisked him to an airfield, and put him in a plane bound for Vienna and his eventual destination, Mauthausen concentration camp.²⁵⁶

Admiral Horthy was faced with the fact of his son’s kidnap when Veesenmayer arrived for their prearranged meeting at noon. Veesenmayer told Horthy that at the first sign of ‘treason’, his son would be shot. The Regent’s response was a combination of furious protestation and near nervous collapse. Neither were, of course, to any avail. But nor could German threats deter him, given the predicament he was in, from making his radio announcement two hours later of the separate peace with the Soviet Union. No sooner had he finished speaking than the radio building was seized by Arrow Cross men who put out a counter-declaration avowing Hungary’s continuation of the fight against the Soviet Union on Germany’s side. A little later Szalasi announced his takeover of power. That evening, the blackmail on Horthy came into full effect. He was told that if he resigned and formally handed over power to Szalasi, he would be given asylum in Germany, and his son would be freed; if not, the Citadel would be taken by force. Horthy buckled under the extreme pressure. He agreed to step down from office and make way for Szalasi. Skorzeny met little resistance when, accompanied by units of ‘Panther’ and ‘Goliath’ tanks, he entered the Citadel early next morning. Two days later, on 18 October, Horthy was on his way to Germany in a special train, accompanied by Skorzeny and a German army escort. He would spend the remainder of the war ‘as the Fuhrer’s guest’, in Schlo? Hirschberg, near Weilheim, in Upper Bavaria. Under its new, fanatical fascist leadership, Hungary’s fate remained tied to Germany’s until the encircled defendants of Budapest gave up the struggle on 11 February 1945. Only a few hundred succeeded in breaking through to German lines. It was the end of Hitler’s last remaining ally in south-eastern Europe.²⁵⁷

With the failure of Horthy’s attempt to take Hungary out of the war, the final torment of the largest Jewish community still under German control began. As we noted earlier, Horthy had halted deportations — mainly to Auschwitz — in July. By that date, 437,402 Jews — more than half of the entire community — had been sent to their deaths.²⁵⁸ By the time of the deposition of Horthy and takeover of power by Szalasi in mid- October, Himmler was halting the ‘Final Solution’ and terminating the killings at Auschwitz.²⁵⁹ But the desperate labour shortage in Germany now led to plans to deploy Hungarian Jews as slave labourers in the underground assembly sites of V2 missiles. Without trains to transport them, they would have to walk. Within days of Szalasi taking over, tens of thousands of Jews — women as well as men — were being rounded up and, by the end of the month, beginning what for so many would turn into death marches as they succumbed to exhaustion, cold, and the torture of both Hungarian and SS guards. So high was the death rate among Jewish women, in fact, that Szalasi, probably concerned for his own skin as the war fortunes continued to worsen for Germany, stopped the treks in mid-November. Subsequent attempts of the SS to remove more Jews by rail were vitiated by lack of transport.²⁶⁰ Meanwhile, for the 70,000 remaining Budapest Jews, crammed into a ghetto within range of Soviet guns, deprived of all property, terrorized and killed at will by Arrow Cross men, the daily nightmare continued until the surrender of the city in February. It is estimated that the bodies of some 10,000 Jews were lying unburied in the streets and houses of Budapest by that time.²⁶¹

Meanwhile, on 21 October a delighted Hitler, recovered from his recent illness, was welcoming Skorzeny with outstretched arms as he led him into his dimly-lit bunker at the Wolf’s Lair to hear the story of his triumph in Budapest and reward him with promotion to Obersturmbannfuhrer. When Skorzeny stood up to leave, Hitler detained him: ‘Don’t go, Skorzeny,’ he remarked. ‘I have perhaps the most important job in your life for you. So far very few people know of the preparations for a secret plan in which you have a great part to play. In December, Germany will start a great offensive, which may well decide her fate.’ He proceeded to give Skorzeny a detailed outline of the military operation which would from now on occupy so much of his time: the Ardennes offensive.²⁶²

VII

Hitler had laid out his demands for an Ardennes offensive on 16 September. Guderian voiced grave misgivings because of the situation on the eastern front, the theatre for which he was directly responsible. Jodl warned of air supremacy and the likelihood of parachute landings. Hitler ignored them. He wanted, he said, 1,500 fighters by 1 November, when preparations for the offensive must be complete. The launch of the offensive would take place in bad weather, when enemy aircraft were badly handicapped. Enemy forces would be split and encircled. Antwerp would be taken, leaving the enemy without an escape route.²⁶³

By this time, the enemy was already on German soil in the west. Even by mid-September, American soldiers from the 1st US Army had penetrated the Westwall and reached the outskirts of Aachen. German rule in the city had been momentarily in disarray. The Party leaders had tried to organize a chaotic evacuation of the population, while the local Wehrmacht commander, General Gerd Graf von Schwerin, countered the order, dismissing it as ‘stupid’, and made preparations for surrender.²⁶⁴ Schwerin had been peremptorily dismissed, and Hitler had issued orders that every inch of German soil should be defended by the most radical means; that nothing of value should be allowed to fall into enemy hands — a ‘scorched earth’ policy which prompted sharply varying responses even among Nazi leaders.²⁶⁵ Rundstedt, reinstated on 5 September as Commander-in- Chief in the West, had declared, in his proclamation of Hitler’s defence order, that every house was to be turned into a fortress, and that the destruction of German property and cultural monuments had to be carried out if it served defence needs.²⁶⁶ In the event, Aachen had held out longer than had at first seemed likely. But after a month of heavy fighting in the area, the city was eventually surrounded by American forces on 13 October and, after a week of sustained bombardment, finally taken on 21 October.²⁶⁷

A few days earlier, on the very day that the Citadel in Budapest was capitulating to Skorzeny’s men, the enemy had also burst into German territory in the east. On 16 October, the ‘3rd White Russian Front’, led by General Ivan Tscherniakowski, had broken through into East Prussia as far as Nemmersdorf, Goldap — the first sizeable town in the province — and the fringes of Gumbinnen, heading for Konigsberg.²⁶⁸ The roads were full of refugees fleeing in panic from the oncoming Russians.²⁶⁹ The Red Army was within striking reach of Fuhrer Headquarters. Bormann told his wife that ‘we would like rather more safety for the Fuhrer — sixty or eighty kilometres are no distance for armoured cars’.²⁷⁰ For the time being, however, Hitler resisted pressure to leave the Wolf’s Lair. A move to the Berghof or to Berlin, he thought, would send the wrong signals to his fighting men at the front.²⁷¹ He gave strict instructions that there should be no talk of leaving. But the staff was reduced, while Schaub packed all Hitler’s files and possessions, ready to depart at any moment.²⁷² It proved possible to delay the moment. Gumbinnen was recaptured — revealing horrifying scenes of atrocities (including untold cases of women raped and murdered, and houses plundered at will by Soviet troops). The Red Army was forced on the defensive in East Prussia. Goldap, too, was retaken by the Wehrmacht a fortnight or so later. The immediate danger was contained.²⁷³

When Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, returned to the Wolf’s Lair on 24 October, after recuperating for several weeks from the effects of the bomb-blast on 20 July, he found the dictator heavily involved