Operation Spring Awakening

• 1. Introduction

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  Sepp Dietrich joked about the fate of his army after Operation Spring Awakening collapsed. "6th Panzer Army is well named - we have just six tanks left."

  The Germans called the operation Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen, and they also knew it as the Plattensee Offensive. In the Soviet Union it was the Balaton Defensive Operation. It was the last major German offensive of World War II, fought in western Hungary in March 1945.

  Why would Germany send its best remaining panzer forces to Hungary while the Red Army pressed in from the east? How do you hide a build-up of that size from an enemy who is watching for it? And why did a plan argued over for weeks fail so completely?

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• 2. Oil Over Berlin

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  On the 12th of January 1945, the Soviet 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian Fronts opened the Vistula-Oder offensive with over 2 million men. Hitler responded by planning a major offensive of his own, and he aimed it at Hungary.

  A Situation in the East conference on the 23rd of January 1945 set out his reasons. The Hungarian oil region and the Vienna oil region together held 80% of the remaining reserves. Without them, the war effort could not be continued. The Upper Silesian industrial region, vital for the war economy and for coal, came second.

  The Nagykanizsa oil fields of southern Hungary counted as the most strategically valuable assets left on the Eastern Front. One recorded account says Hitler "would rather see Berlin fall than lose the Hungarian oil area and Austria". Another says he "accepted the risk of the Russian threat to the Oder east of Berlin".

  Heinz Guderian, of the army high command, only partly agreed. He wanted the 6th SS Panzer Army on the Eastern Front, but he would have preferred to use it in the defence of Berlin. Alfred Jodl later recalled Hitler's answer in a post-war interrogation: "You want to attack without oil - good, we'll see what happens when you attempt that." Hitler chose to ignore Guderian's view.

  The army at the centre of that argument was, at that moment, still fighting in the Ardennes.

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• 3. Pulled From the Ardennes

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  Hermann Göring and Gerd von Rundstedt were both present at the Situation Conference on the 7th of January 1945, when Hitler proposed pulling the 6th SS Panzer Army into reserve. His stated reason was severe Allied air attacks. Rundstedt received the withdrawal orders the next day, and the divisions began preparing to leave the stalled Ardennes offensive. Allied air superiority made the withdrawal slow.

  On the 20th of January, Hitler ordered Rundstedt to take forces out of the Battle of the Bulge. The 1st SS Leibstandarte, the 2nd SS Das Reich and the 12th SS Hitlerjugend panzer divisions disengaged that same day. Almost all support units were out by the 22nd. The 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen was the last to leave, on the 23rd.

  These divisions made up I SS Panzer Corps and II SS Panzer Corps, and Sepp Dietrich would command them as the 6th Panzer Army. Hitler wanted them refitted by the 30th of January. That deadline proved impossible.

  While the army refitted in Germany, Hitler ordered a preliminary offensive, Operation Konrad III, which began on the 18th of January. Its aims were to relieve besieged Budapest and to recapture Transdanubia. The Germans took the Danube towns of Dunapentele and Adony and annihilated the Soviet 7th Mechanized Corps. The savagery of the push led Soviet command to consider evacuating to the far shore of the Danube.

  Before the end of the fourth day, the Germans had retaken 400 square kilometers. That matched the early German gains in the Ardennes offensive in December 1944. By the 26th of January the Axis lines stood within 20 km of Budapest's southern perimeter and about 10 km of its northern one, but the attackers were exhausted.

  From the 27th of January to the 15th of February, Soviet counter-attacks took back most of the ground. The front settled in the area between Lake Velence, the village of Csősz and Lake Balaton. The Margit Line ran straight through it.

  A Soviet bridgehead over the Garam River, north of Esztergom, then became a worry for the Germans. It threatened the planned push past Lake Balaton toward the southern oilfields, and it opened a straight route to Vienna. Operation Southwind began on the 17th of February to remove it, and it succeeded by the 24th. It was the very last successful German offensive of the war.

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• 4. Plans and Quarrels

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  The operation received its preliminary name, Operation Süd, on the 28th of January 1945. Its main objectives were to secure raw materials such as oil, bauxite and manganese for iron, to defend arable land and the Austrian military industrial complex, and to protect Vienna. A side-objective was the hope that the attack would pull some Soviet forces away from their northern offensives toward Berlin.

  Four plans came out of Army Group South, the 6th SS Panzer Army and the 6th Army. Fritz Krämer of the 6th SS Panzer Army wrote Lösung A. Helmuth von Grolman of Army Group South wrote Lösung B and Lösung C2. Heinrich Gaedcke of the 6th Army produced Lösung C1. There was much fighting and bickering over which to use, and Army Group South's commander, Otto Wöhler, chose Lösung B.

  The four plans reached Guderian on the 22nd of February. On the 25th, Hitler ordered Wöhler, Maximilian von Weichs and Dietrich to present them in person at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, with Guderian and Jodl attending. There he chose Lösung C2, overruling Wöhler. That plan favored a quicker, farther-reaching joint operation by the 2nd Panzer Army and the 6th SS Panzer Army. Lösung B would first have secured the left flank of the main thrust.

  Guderian backed Lösung C2 because it shortened the time the SS panzer force would need to stay in Hungary. On the 26th of February he ordered Wöhler to raise the daily fuel allowance from 400 to 500 cubic meters. By the 28th, the plan was complete under its final name, Operation Frühlingserwachen. It had three prongs. Frühlingserwachen itself ran toward the Danube through Lakes Velence and Balaton. Eisbrecher, meaning Icebreaker, struck east from the western end of Lake Balaton. Waldteufel, or Forest Devil, attacked north from the Drava River.

  The German command structure made everything harder. OKW was the command for all the armed forces and OKH was the army's high command beneath it, yet Hitler led both. OKW ended up responsible for the Western and Southern commands, and OKH for the Eastern ones. That overlap bred disagreements, shortages, waste, inefficiencies and delays, often until Hitler had to settle a matter himself.

  The new offensive sat exactly on the border between OKW's Army Group F and OKH's Army Group South. Army Group E wanted to assemble north of the Drava by the 25th of February, but Army Group South was not ready because of Operation Southwind. OKW and Hitler grew impatient. The two commands did not even share terms. OKH called the whole offensive Frühlingserwachen, while OKW used Waldteufel for the attack north of the Drava.

  The 1st Cavalry Corps caused another dispute. OKH wanted it sent south-west to the 2nd Panzer Army, which Wöhler thought pointless. He wanted it on the eastern shore of Lake Balaton, where German intelligence reported that "the enemy is still the weakest between Lake Balaton and the Sárviz Channel".

  Manpower was thin too. Wehrmacht personnel were used to keep Waffen-SS units at acceptable strength, and only a third of the 6th SS Panzer Army's staff came from the Waffen-SS.

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• 5. A Hidden Build-Up

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  Zossen, south of Berlin, was the first stop for the 6th SS Panzer Army after it left the Western Front, with elements of the III. Flak-Korps protecting its journey. From there, the cities along the Oder River looked like the likely destinations. That was a calculated misinformation measure. The real route ran south through Vienna to the city of Győr and its surrounding area.

  The 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division Reichsführer-SS came up from Italy through the Brenner and joined the 2nd Panzer Army. Some units needed for the offensive arrived only days before it began. The last was the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, which reached Győr at the beginning of March.

  Many units travelled under cover names. The Leibstandarte became SS replacement unit "Totenkopf", and Das Reich became SS training group North. Hohenstaufen was SS training group South, and Hitlerjugend was SS replacement unit "Wiking". The 6th SS Panzer Army headquarters appeared as Higher Pioneer Leader Hungary.

  By the 7th of February, Hitler's orders had imposed strict secrecy. Command infractions carried the death penalty. License plates, vehicle insignia and uniform insignia were covered. Units could not carry out reconnaissance in forward combat areas, and they moved only by night or in overcast conditions. Radio traffic was forbidden, and the units were kept off situation maps.

  On the 17th of February 1945, the Stavka told the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts to prepare an offensive toward Vienna, to begin on the 15th of March. Within a day, the 2nd Ukrainian Front noticed the Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend divisions fighting at the Garam River during Operation Southwind. Panzer divisions were not built for defence, so the Soviet fronts in Hungary grew suspicious.

  Prisoners taken during Southwind testified that the Germans were gathering a large offensive force. By the 20th of February, the Soviet fronts understood what was coming and where.

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• 6. Tolbukhin's Defenses

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  Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin of the 3rd Ukrainian Front ordered his armies to finish defensive preparations along the whole front by the 3rd of March. Stockpiles of war materials and fuel were built up on both sides of the Danube. Engineers put a ferry into use and built extra temporary bridges and gas pipelines across the river.

  His plan had three steps. First, slow the German advance to rob it of momentum. Second, grind down the attacking armies. Third, launch the planned Soviet offensive to finish off what remained. The layout resembled the Battle of Kursk, though it drew on lessons learned in 1943.

  The differences were telling. The Soviets had only half a month to prepare, and fewer forces took part. There was less focus on perfecting the lines, because the 3rd Ukrainian Front would have to launch its own offensive from them. Barbed wire, anti-tank obstacles and bunkers were scarce or absent. The 4th Guards Army command did suggest placing the burnt-out wrecks of 38 destroyed German tanks in useful positions, but it is unclear how many were set up.

  The front had five armies and one air army. The 1st Bulgarian Army and the 3rd Yugoslav Partisan Army joined the defence. The 26th Army was expected to take the brunt of the attack, spreading three rifle corps along 44 km of front but only 10-15 km deep.

  Mines tell the scale. On average, every kilometer of front received over 700 anti-tank and over 600 anti-infantry mines. In the 26th Army's sector those numbers rose to 2,700 and 2,900. The 233rd Rifle Division, on a frontage of just 5 kilometers, dug 27 kilometers of trenches between the 18th of February and the 3rd of March. It also built 130 gun and mortar positions, 113 dugouts and 70 command posts and observation points. It laid 4,249 anti-tank and 5,058 antipersonnel mines. That sector averaged 17 anti-tank guns per kilometer, forming 23 tank killing grounds.

  Serious tank losses along the Margit Line in January and February led Tolbukhin to forbid front-level and army-level counter-attacks. Only very limited local attacks were allowed. The aim was to hold the line and grind down the Germans. The 17th Air Army flew reconnaissance missions, but excellent German camouflage meant it could report little.

  Soviet command was decentralized. Armies could make independent decisions, and the Stavka stepped in when asked or when necessary. The Soviets often searched out the boundary between OKW and OKH, expecting poorer command there. The advance to Budapest is one example.

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• 7. Mud and Steel

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  On the 28th of February, the start date was finally moved from the 5th of March to the 6th of March, though many commanders felt a longer delay was needed. In the first days of March, alarming reports about roads and terrain, caused by the spring thaw, flooded Army Group South headquarters. The thaw had already hurt three other operations in the area. Operation Spätlese was planned for December, Operation Southwind suffered, and the Waldteufel attack had to move its bridgehead from Osijek to Donji Miholjac.

  On the 3rd of March, the 6th SS Panzer Army suggested a naval assault across Lake Balaton itself to help the 1st Cavalry Corps. It proved impossible, because spring storms had blown pack ice against the southern shore.

  The offensive began on the 6th of March 1945, but the units did not start together. The 6th SS Panzer Army attacked at 04:00, while the 2nd SS Panzer Corps went in at 18:30. The 6th Army and the 6th SS Panzer Army pushed in a pincer north and south of Lake Balaton. Ten armoured and five infantry divisions struck the 3rd Ukrainian Front, including many new Tiger II tanks. Leibstandarte spearheaded the attack, but it was by then seriously degraded by constant fighting and heavy losses.

  Dietrich's army made "good progress" at first. Near the Danube, however, muddy terrain and strong Soviet resistance ground the advance to a halt.

  The numbers on the 10th of March were stark. The Axis forces around Lake Balaton had 230 operational tanks and 167 operational assault guns across 17 divisions. A fully equipped late-1944 Panzer division would officially have held no fewer than 136 tanks. The whole offensive therefore had enough tanks for about 1.7 Panzer divisions, though 11 were in action.

  By the 14th of March, the operation was at risk of failure. The 2nd Panzer Army had not advanced as far south of Lake Balaton as the 6th SS Panzer Army had to the north. Army Group E met fierce resistance from the Bulgarian First Army and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans, and it failed to reach Mohács. Heeresgruppe Süd lost 15,117 casualties in the first eight days.

  Strength returns on the 15th of March showed the Hohenstaufen Division with 35 Panther tanks, 20 Panzer IVs, 32 Jagdpanzers, 25 Sturmgeschützes and 220 other self-propelled weapons and armoured cars. Some 42% of those vehicles were damaged or under repair. Das Reich had 27 Panthers, 22 Panzer IVs, 28 Jagdpanzers and 26 Sturmgeschützes on hand.

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• 8. Retreat and Disgrace

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  On the 16th of March, the Soviet forces counter-attacked in strength, and the Germans were driven back to the positions they had held before the offensive began. The Red Army's numerical superiority made defence impossible, yet Hitler still believed victory was attainable. By the 19th of March the Red Army had recaptured the last territory it had lost.

  On the 22nd of March, the remnants of the 6th SS Panzer Army withdrew toward Vienna. By the 30th, the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front had crossed from Hungary into Austria. By the 4th of April, the German army was setting up defensive lines around the Austrian capital while the Soviet 4th and 6th Guards Tank, 9th Guards and 46th Armies closed in. Vienna fell on the 13th of April.

  Between the 16th and the 25th of March, the Hungarian Third Army was destroyed about 40 km west of Budapest by the Soviet 46th Army. Some other Hungarian units survived. The Szent László Infantry Division was still listed as attached to the German 2nd Panzer Army on the 30th of April.

  Hitler's armband order followed the failure. He told Dietrich that the troops, and above all the Leibstandarte, "did not fight as the situation demanded". As a mark of disgrace, the Waffen-SS units in the battle were to remove their cuff titles. Dietrich did not pass the order on, for two reasons. The cuff titles had in many cases already been removed under a secrecy measure ordered on the 30th of January 1945. And he saw no need to disgrace his men further after the heavy loss they had just suffered.

  Soviet collection teams scoured the newly retaken countryside and towns to document and photograph knocked-out Axis vehicles. They wanted a record of the sudden German build-up, intelligence, and a chance to assess the quality of the enemy's technology. Four main commissions were formed, by the artillery headquarters of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, the 17th Air Army, the 9th Guards Army and the 18th Tank Corps. Hundreds of tanks and armoured fighting vehicles were documented.

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