Word: budapests
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...Italy, astute Field Marshal Kesselring had fought patient General Sir Harold Alexander almost to a standstill, but Alexander in turn was still pinning down 28 German divisions. In Hungary, the Germans were clinging desperately to Budapest; they had to hold it to shield Austria. It seemed too late and too risky to milk the south to reinforce the west. Least of all could the Germans weaken the line from the Baltic to the Carpathians, for there the Russians were cranking up what may be their heaviest blow...
...Germans prepared to move into Slovakia in force, occupy road and railway lines needed for their troops. At the end of August the Slovaks rose, hauled out arms from their hiding places, seized control of central Slovakia and the industrial town of Banska Bystrica (80 miles north of Budapest...
...Budapest itself was holding out but it was in trouble. Apparently the Germans were determined to fight to the last Hungarian, determined to make the romantic, sophisticated old capital another Aachen or Cherbourg. Refugees, food shortages and lack of bomb shelters had brought the city near to chaos. Pest, the section on the east bank of the Danube, was ordered evacuated. Pillboxes, barbed wire, tank obstacles blocked the streets...
...Russians might not attempt to take Budapest by frontal attack. But the forces moving northwest could wheel over to envelop the city from three sides, pounce down on Pest. Buda was in danger from a Russian force which was reported to have crossed the Danube far south in Yugoslavia, begun a march north on the west bank of the river. And northwest from Budapest the plain is flat...
They began when the Red Army, having swept up most of southeastern Europe, began to roll across the Alföld, the vast Hungarian plain, toward Budapest. Aged (76) Regent Admiral Nicholas Horthy had asked the Allies for an armistice. Thereupon Major Ferenc Szálasi, Hungarian Nazi leader, took over the Government. The Germans took over Horthy, carried him off to Germany, together with Hungary's national gold reserve of 80,000,000 pengö ($27,500,000). But the Hungarian peace delegation had already flown to Moscow...