Question about Germans capturing the Romanian Army

Great! Undoubtedly, details are to follow...

Hallo Gen. Denes,
Very interesting photo indeed. But it comes with a question : what's your definition of the Battle of Budapest. Do you include here the prelude operations from the so-called Battle of Debrecen -october 1944-or the Budapest Operation from november 1944 to february 1945. Cause I foud doubtful to have so many romanian POW in an offensive operation -so like the Budapest Operation was. It's more likely that these romanian soldiers were captured in the Debrecen Operation - especially the battles near Szolnok . Otherwise I has no logic.
Waiting your answer.

Right, Andreas! Especially when we know that Budapest was surrounded, we can't but wonder: why would they even take prisoners?

This post has been edited by MMM on March 26, 2009 01:32 pm

The Battle for Budapest (not the siege itself) started in late October 1944 and for the Rumanian troops ended in mid-January 1945.

I published an extensive study on the Rumanian army's participation in this battle. Interestingly, Rumanian primary sources do not give the number of missing in the list of casualties, so there is no information on the prisoners captured by the Hungarian-German defenders of 'Fortress Budapest'.

Unfortunately, I don't have more details on the photo I posted.

Gen. Dénes

What do you mean

?!?!
Did you research the military archive of the divisions/regiments participating there and didn't find out the numbers? It's shocking - I see no appearent reason to conceal that, because it was "trendy" to fight against "fascism", and nonetheless against Hungarians - at least after 23.08.1944...

The Battle for Budapest (not the siege itself) started in late October 1944 and for the Rumanian troops ended in mid-January 1945.

I published an extensive study on the Rumanian army's participation in this battle. Interestingly, Rumanian primary sources do not give the number of missing in the list of casualties, so there is no information on the prisoners captured by the Hungarian-German defenders of 'Fortress Budapest'.

Unfortunately, I don't have more details on the photo I posted.

Gen. Dénes

Looks very logic to me - similar to the Hurtgen Forest situation IMO.

Not quite similar - at the Budapest Siege, the city (thus the troops) were encircled totally, with no links on the ground with the rest of the Wehrmacht and Hungarian troops. So their situation was quite hard; why bother to take prisoners instead of killing them on the spot (as it happened, for example, at Stalingrad or Cherkassk encirclements, where German troops took no prisoners). You wanted to make a parallel, maybe, with the German offensive of the Ardennes from 16-th of Dec. 1944... then, yes, they took a couple of prisoners, mostly because of confusion. But I repeat myself: there was no encirclement!

No, I was talking about the American defeat in the Hurtgenwald battle (September - November 1944), where the casualties figure (over 30,000 dead and wounded) was not released untill some years ago.

Al

Oh, I thought you reffered to the Hurtgen Forrest battle in Jan. 1945 as part of the Alsacian offensive led by Himmler... Sorry

This post has been edited by MMM on March 27, 2009 02:23 pm

I didn't say I actually researched myself the Rumanian archives for Army documents. What I said is that I (also) used primary documents (courtesy of someone else), and also documents published in facsimile form.
There is info on dead and wounded casualties, particularly the officers, but not on missing (or prisoners).

As for the topic of taking prisoners, as I said earlier, the battle for Budapest started in late October 1944. Budapest was encircled completely only at around Christmastime. That leaves about 8 weeks when prisoners could still be evacuated to West.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on March 27, 2009 03:09 pm

Perhaps the proud and mis-informed Romanian authorities believed there were NO prisoners taken and the few that were taken were also released? Just a thought...

The casualty reports I was referring to were done usually the very same day in the evening, or early next day. So we are not talking of 'sanitized' summaries published after the war.

Gen. Dénes

In conclusion, there were no Romanian POWs, just Hungarian soldiers posing in Romanian uniforms as prisoners

Or, the Rumanians are indeed Rumanians, but the Hungarian is also a Rumanian in Hungarian uniform and with a fake moustache. Photo staged to confuse stupid historians of the XXIst Century...

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on March 28, 2009 06:28 am

Well, they succeeded, didn't they...