The Battle for Budapest

Military Historian Damien Fenton joins us once again. Tonight he marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle for Budapest (24 December 1944 - 13 February 1945). Surrounded by the Red Army on 24 December 1945 the Soviet High Command (STAVKA) estimated that it would take no more than four days to force the remaining Axis forces inside the Hungarian capital to surrender. Instead the garrison of approximately 79,000 German and Hungarian troops held out against impossible odds for almost two months turning the Battle for Budapest into an epic siege second only to Stalingrad in terms of its duration, the ferocity of the fighting and the scale of destruction unleashed upon the city.