While Horthy was demanding to be taken to his special train, and Ribbentrop was berating Döme Sztojay, the Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, an air-raid alarm sounded. In fact, the ‘air-raid’ was merely a ruse, complete with smoke-screen covering of the palace at Klessheim, and alleged severance of telephone links with Budapest. This elaborate deceit was used to persuade Horthy to put aside thoughts of a premature departure and compel him to enter into renewed talks with Hitler. Ribbentrop let Schmidt know, in an aside, that if Horthy did not concur with German demands, he would not be returning with an honorary escort, but as a prisoner. The browbeating and chicanery, as usual, did the trick. When Horthy returned to his train that evening, it was in the accompaniment of Security Police chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop’s emissary in Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, endowed with plenipotentiary powers to ensure that German interests were served. And this was only once Horthy had finally agreed to install a puppet regime, with Sztojay as prime minister, ready to do German bidding.82
Next day, 19 March 1944, Hungary was in German hands. Not only could extra raw materials and manpower immediately be exploited for the German war effort; but, as Hitler had told Goebbels a fortnight earlier, the ‘Jewish question’ could now be tackled in Hungary.83
With the German takeover in Budapest, Hungary’s large and still intact Jewish community — some 750,000 persons — was doomed. The new masters of Hungary did not lose a minute. Eichmann’s men entered Budapest with the German troops. Within days, 2,000 Jews had been rounded up. The first deportation — a train with over 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children packed in indescribable conditions into about forty cattle-wagons — left for Auschwitz a month later.84 By early June, ninety-two trains had carried almost 300,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths.85 When Horthy halted the deportations a month later, triggering the events that would lead to his own deposition, 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been sent to the gas-chambers.86
On the day that German troops entered Hungary, a strange little ceremony took place at the Berghof.87 The field-marshals, who had been summoned from different parts of the front, witnessed the presentation to Hitler by their senior, Rundstedt, of a declaration of their loyalty, which they had all signed. The signatures had all been collected, on a tour of the front, by Hitler’s chief Wehrmacht adjutant, General Schmundt. The idea, characteristically, had come from Goebbels (though this was kept quiet, and not made known to Hitler).88 It had been prompted by the anti-German subversive propaganda disseminated from Moscow by the captured General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach and other officers who had fallen into Soviet hands at Stalingrad.89 In reality, the effect of the Seydlitz propaganda was minimal. But these were nervous times for the Nazi leadership. Schmundt’s main intention, in any case, was to remove Hitler’s distrust towards his generals, and to improve the icy relations which had been so much in evidence at the January meeting interrupted by Manstein. It was, nevertheless, both remarkable in itself and a clear sign that all was not well, if in the midst of such a titanic conflict the senior military leaders should see fit to produce a signed declaration of loyalty to their supreme commander and head of state. Manstein, the last field-marshal to sign the document, certainly thought so. He felt the declaration to be quite superfluous from a soldier’s point of view.90 Hitler seemed moved by the occasion.91 It was a rare moment of harmony in his dealings with his generals.
Normality was, however, soon to be resumed. Within a week, Manstein was back at the Berghof. The Ist Panzer Army, under General Hans Valentin Hube, was in imminent danger of encirclement by Soviet troops who had broken through from Tarnopol to the Dniester. Manstein insisted (against Hube’s recommendation that his army seek safety by retreating to the south over the Dniester) on a breakthrough to the west, in order to build a new front in Galicia. For this, reinforcements to assist the Ist Panzer Army would be necessary. For these to be provided from some other part of the front, Hitler’s agreement was necessary. Sharp exchanges took place between Manstein and Hitler at the midday military conference. But Hitler refused to concede to Manstein’s request, and held the field-marshal personally responsible for the unfavourable position of his Army Group. Further deliberation was adjourned until the evening. Disgusted, Manstein told Schmundt that he wished to resign his command if his orders did not gain Hitler’s approval.
