Why did Hungarian soldiers fight and die against the Soviets East from Ukraine, in the Don bend?

Almost 200 thousand Hungarian soldiers fought in the heart of the Soviet Union, not far from the original Eastern Ukrainian border, between today’s Belgorod and Voronezh in January 1943. More than 120 thousand of them never returned home. But what did they do there?

Gaining back Hungarian land and people required Hitler’s support

After WWI, Hungary lost 2/3rd of its territories and 1/3rd of its Hungarian populace. Therefore, revision became one of the most important aims of the Hungarian foreign policy. Hitler’s Germany followed the same policy between 1938 and 1941, which resulted in gaining back more than 80 thousand km2 and millions of Hungarian nationals (together with other ethnicities like Romanians, Serbs and Slovaks). Unfortunately, the successes of the territorial revision joined Hungary’s fate with Nazi Germany’s.

When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, all the neighbouring countries joined Hitler. Romania and Slovakia marched together with the Wehrmacht. Only Hungary fell behind. The political leaders feared the quick German victories would drive Hungary into a difficult situation. Moreover, military leaders were sure Nazi Germans would defeat the Soviet Union in no time. Therefore, when unidentified planes appeared and attacked Kassa (now Slovakia, then the Kingdom of Hungary), Governor Miklós Horthy ordered the Hungarian troops to join the German invading forces.

After the first defeats, Hungary became important

Hungarian help in the Soviet Union was only a minor contribution in 1941 since the Germans did not need it due to the quick victories. But after the defeat near Moscow (December 1941), everything changed. Hitler demanded an entire Hungarian army be placed on the Eastern front.

That was the Hungarian Second Army arriving in today’s East Ukraine in the summer of 1942. Afterwards, they engaged in fierce fighting near the River Don, during which they suffered considerable losses concerning more than 30 thousand soldiers out of the 190 thousand. Then came the winter and the minus 30-40 degrees.

The Soviets outnumbered the Hungarian troops, taking defensive positions on the Don Bend, for which they lacked both modern weapons, ammunition, vehicles, planes, equipment, clothing, etc. For example, the Soviet artillery outnumbered the Hungarian 5:1, while there were 2.7 times more Soviet soldiers than Hungarians. Thus, the catastrophe was inevitable.

Unstoppable Soviet attack destroyed the Hungarian army

The Soviet attack started on 12 January, and in a couple of days, they defeated the Hungarian troops even though some fought valiantly against the Soviet superiority. The Germans did not help the withdrawing Hungarians. What’s more, they took what they could and did not allow them into the villages they occupied to rest.

You may find the Hungarian troops in the centre top of the map under the name Jany. Source: Creative Commons

The Hungarian commander, Gusztáv Jány, first called the Hungarian soldiers cowards for retreating. That resulted in a general outcry, and Horthy ordered him to withdraw that statement. By 3 March, only 2,913 officers and 61,116 soldiers could escape death, freeze or the Soviet POW camps (which meant almost the same). Considering the losses suffered during the summer fights, we can say that Hungary lost about 150 thousand people to the Soviet Union by 1943 spring (dead, POWs). That was unacceptable and could not be replaced ever.

Gusztáv Jány was executed in November 1947 and posthumously exonerated in 1993 by the Supreme Court of Hungary.

Controversial opinions

Opinions about the Second Hungarian Army (and other Hungarian troops fighting or carrying out other tasks in the Soviet Union) divide. Some believe that Hungarians were defending their families, traditions, etc. against the plague of Bolshevism in the Soviet Union. As a result, they are heroes.

Others claim they were invaders who joined the bad cause (Hitler’s campaign), and some of them committed horrors even against the civilians and the Jews. They think that the lost souls in the Don Bend were at best, victims of Hitler and Horthy, who were not supposed to be there but still carried out their duties.

Hungary commemorates soldiers lost at the Don bend

Soldiers of the Second Hungarian Army who lost their lives in battle with Soviet forces at the Don bend 81 years earlier were honoured at a commemoration in Budapest’s Fiume Street cemetery on Friday.

Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky said 100,000-120,000 Hungarian troops had been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or gone missing in action during the WWII battle.

Chief of the Hungarian Defence Forces Gabor Böröndi called the battle one of the bloodiest defeats in Hungarian history.

Concert honours memory of 1956 martyr

A concert was performed in honour of Árpád Brusznyai, a martyr of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet Revolution, in Veszprém, in the west of Hungary, on Saturday.

Speaking at the event, marking the hundredth anniversary of Brusznyai’s birth, President Katalin Novák said heroes were people who “put their ideas into practice”, adding that their greatness came from the fact that they were “no different from us”.

“They were boys and girls, fathers and mothers, people facing the challenges of everyday life,” she said.

• We wrote HERE about the Don disaster.

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• Did you know that a Hungarian writer fooled the whole Soviet Union with a made-up historical character? – Read more about that in THIS article