With the failure of Horthy’s attempt to take Hungary out of the war, the final torment of the largest Jewish community still under German control began. As we noted earlier, Horthy had halted deportations — mainly to Auschwitz — in July. By that date, 437,402 Jews — more than half of the entire community — had been sent to their deaths.258 By the time of the deposition of Horthy and takeover of power by Szalasi in mid-October, Himmler was halting the ‘Final Solution’ and terminating the killings at Auschwitz.259 But the desperate labour shortage in Germany now led to plans to deploy Hungarian Jews as slave labourers in the underground assembly sites of V2 missiles. Without trains to transport them, they would have to walk. Within days of Szalasi taking over, tens of thousands of Jews — women as well as men — were being rounded up and, by the end of the month, beginning what for so many would turn into death marches as they succumbed to exhaustion, cold, and the torture of both Hungarian and SS guards. So high was the death rate among Jewish women, in fact, that Szalasi, probably concerned for his own skin as the war fortunes continued to worsen for Germany, stopped the treks in mid-November. Subsequent attempts of the SS to remove more Jews by rail were vitiated by lack of transport.260 Meanwhile, for the 70,000 remaining Budapest Jews, crammed into a ghetto within range of Soviet guns, deprived of all property, terrorized and killed at will by Arrow Cross men, the daily nightmare continued until the surrender of the city in February. It is estimated that the bodies of some 10,000 Jews were lying unburied in the streets and houses of Budapest by that time.261
Meanwhile, on 21 October a delighted Hitler, recovered from his recent illness, was welcoming Skorzeny with outstretched arms as he led him into his dimly-lit bunker at the Wolf’s Lair to hear the story of his triumph in Budapest and reward him with promotion to Obersturmbannführer. When Skorzeny stood up to leave, Hitler detained him: ‘Don’t go, Skorzeny,’ he remarked. ‘I have perhaps the most important job in your life for you. So far very few people know of the preparations for a secret plan in which you have a great part to play. In December, Germany will start a great offensive, which may well decide her fate.’ He proceeded to give Skorzeny a detailed outline of the military operation which would from now on occupy so much of his time: the Ardennes offensive.262
Hitler had laid out his demands for an Ardennes offensive on 16 September. Guderian voiced grave misgivings because of the situation on the eastern front, the theatre for which he was directly responsible. Jodl warned of air supremacy and the likelihood of parachute landings. Hitler ignored them. He wanted, he said, 1,500 fighters by 1 November, when preparations for the offensive must be complete. The launch of the offensive would take place in bad weather, when enemy aircraft were badly handicapped. Enemy forces would be split and encircled. Antwerp would be taken, leaving the enemy without an escape route.263
By this time, the enemy was already on German soil in the west. Even by mid-September, American soldiers from the 1st US Army had penetrated the Westwall and reached the outskirts of Aachen. German rule in the city had been momentarily in disarray. The Party leaders had tried to organize a chaotic evacuation of the population, while the local Wehrmacht commander, General Gerd Graf von Schwerin, countered the order, dismissing it as ‘stupid’, and made preparations for surrender.264 Schwerin had been peremptorily dismissed, and Hitler had issued orders that every inch of German soil should be defended by the most radical means; that nothing of value should be allowed to fall into enemy hands — a ‘scorched earth’ policy which prompted sharply varying responses even among Nazi leaders.265 Rundstedt, reinstated on 5 September as Commander-in-Chief in the West, had declared, in his proclamation of Hitler’s defence order, that every house was to be turned into a fortress, and that the destruction of German property and cultural monuments had to be carried out if it served defence needs.266 In the event, Aachen had held out longer than had at first seemed likely. But after a month of heavy fighting in the area, the city was eventually surrounded by American forces on 13 October and, after a week of sustained bombardment, finally taken on 21 October.267
