Hungarian Second Army

The Hungarian Second Army (Second Magyar Honved) was a Hungarian field army which saw action during World War II. The Hungarian Second Army took a peripheral part in the Battle of Stalingrad and at the Battle of Debrecen.

Commanders

The Hungarian Second Army had four commanders from 1 March 1940 to 13 November 1944. The army's commanders were as follows:

* Lieutenant General Gusztáv Vitéz Jány - From 1 March 1940 to 5 August 1943 (awarded German Knight's Cross on 31 March 1943)
* Lieutenant General Géza Lakatos - From 5 August 1943 to 1 April 1944 (awarded German Knight's Cross on 24 May 1944)
* Lieutenant General Lajos Veres von Dalnoki - From 1 April 1944 to 16 October 1944
* Lieutenant General Jenő Major - From 16 October 1944 to 13 November 1944

Occupation Duties

Hungary was an Axis state at the beginning of the European conflict. Hungary's leader was Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy.

The small Hungarian Army had a peacetime strength of only 80,000 men. Organizationally, the nation was divided into seven Corps commands. Each Army Corps consisted of three infantry divisions with three infantry regiments and an artillery regiment in each of these divisions. Each Army Corps also included two cavalry brigades, two motorized infantry brigades, an anti-aircraft battery, a signals company, and a cavalry reconnaissance troop. [Cite book | author=Mollo, Andrew; McGregor, Malcolm; Turner, Pierre | authorlink= | coauthors= | title=The armed forces of World War II: uniforms, insignia, and organization | date=1981 | publisher=Crown Publishers | location=New York, N.Y. | isbn=0-517-54478-4 | pages=207] On 11 March 1940, the Hungarian Army was expanded to three Field Armies. Each Field Army had three Corps. All three of these Field Armies were to ultimately see action against the Red Army before the end of the war.

Hungary did not immediately participate in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler did not directly ask for, nor necessarily want Hungarian assistance at that time. Most of the Hungarian forces, including the three Field Armies, were initially relegated to duties within the newly enlarged Hungarian state. Hungary regained substantial portions of its former territories that were ceded following the loss of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon.

At the end of June in 1941, Hungary was summoned by Germany to join in the attack on the Soviet Union. War was precipitated by the bombing of Košice (Kassa), allegedly by the Romanian Air Force according to Soviet sources. At first, only Hungary's "Karpat Group" with its "Gyorshadtest" (Fast Moving Army Corps) was sent to the Eastern Front.

Stalingrad

Voronezh

Prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, the Hungarian Second Army was involved in the Battle of Voronezh as part of Army Group South. This battle was fought in and around the city of Voronezh on the Don River in June and July 1942. The Hungarian troops supported the German 4th Panzer Army as it fought against the forces of the defending Soviet Voronezh Front. While technically an Axis victory, the battle delayed the arrival of the 4th Panzer Army in the Caucasus at a crucial time.

The Don River, Operation Saturn, and disaster

The Hungarian Second Army is probably the best known of Hungary's World War II-era armies because of the part it played in the Battle of Stalingrad. By the time that the Second Army was sent to Russia, the rank-and-file of the Hungarian Army had undergone only eight weeks of training.Fact|date=July 2007 The only tactical experience for many of these soldiers were the manoeuvers held just prior to the departure for the front. This had a poor effect on the morale of the troops in the Hungarian Second Army.

In 1942, the Hungarian Second Army was given the task of protecting the 8th Italian Army's's northern flank between the Novaya Pokrovka on the Don river to Rossosh. [p.199, Haupt, Army Group South] This allowed the 6th Army to continue to attack Soviet General Vasily Chuikov's 62nd Army defending Stalingrad.

The Hungarian Second Army, along with almost all of the other the armies protecting the 6th Army's flanks, was annihilated when the Soviets launched Operation Uranus, Operation Saturn, and Operation Little Saturn. As part of these operations, two Soviet pincers drove through the Romanian Third Army to the north of Stalingrad and through the Romanian Fourth Army to the south and cut off the 6th Army.

On 12 December 1942, as a counter move, the Germans launched Operation Winter Storm to relieve the 6th Army by attacking through the pincers of the Soviet armies participating in Operation Uranus. On 16 December 1942, the Soviets counter-attacked and launched Operation Little Saturn. The Soviet penetrated between the Italian Eighth Army and the Hungarian Second Army at the junction held by the Italian Alpine Army Corps and threatened the flank of the German forces attempting to relieve the 6th Army by cutting them off at the Donets river.

On 13 January 1943, the Russian forces, an overwhelming force in numbers and equipment, began the Voronezh-Kharkov Strategic Offensive Operation on the Bryansk, Voronezh, and Southwestern Fronts. They rapidly destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don River. An attack on the German 2nd Army further north threatened to bring about an encirclement of that Army as well. However the German 2nd Army managed to withdraw, and was forced to retreat. By 5 February 1943, the troops of the Voronezh Front were approaching Kharkov.

During its 12 months of activity on the Russian front, the Second Hungarian Army's losses were enormous. With an initial force of about 200,000 Hungarian soldiers and 50,000 Jewish forced-laborers, [cite web |title=Hungary in the Mirror of the Western World 1938-1958|author=Gabor Aron Study Group|accessdate=2008-09-22] about 100,000 were dead, 35,000 wounded, and 60,000 taken prisoner of war. Only about 40,000 returned to Hungary, scapegoated by Hitler for the catastrophic Axis defeat. "No nation lost as much blood during World War II in such a short period of time." [cite book |title=A Thousand Years of the Hungarian Art of War |author=Anthony Tihamer Komjathy|publisher=Rakoczi Foundation| location=Toronto| isbn=091945017|pages=144-45|date=1982]

The Hungarian Second Army, like most of the other Axis armies of the Army Group B, ceased to represent a meaningful fighting force. The German 6th Army, encircled in Stalingrad, surrendered on 2 February 1943. The remnants of the Hungarian Second Army returned to Hungary on 24 May 1943.

Order of Battle 1942

In 1942, Colonel-General Gusztav Jany commanded the Hungarian Second Army during the Stalingrad disaster. The order of battle was:

Second Army
* IIIrd Field Corps
** 6th Light Field Division
** 7th Light Field Division
** 9th Light Field Division
* IVth Field Corps
** 10th Light Field Division
** 12th Light Field Division
** 16th Light Field Division
* VIIth Field Corps
** 19th Light Field Division
** 20th Light Field Division
** 23rd Light Field Division
*1st Armored Field Division

Most of the field divisions sent to the Eastern Front as part of the Second Army in 1942 were light field divisions. Hungarian field infantry divisions typically had three infantry regiments. By comparison, "light" divisions typically had two regiments.

In addition to the three infantry Corps, the Hungarian Second Army included the 1st Armored Field Division. Most of the armor in this division was included in the 30th Tank Regiment. At the time of the Battle for Stalingrad, the primary battle tank in this unit was the Czechoslovakian Panzer 38(t). These were augmented by Hungarian Toldi tanks for scouting duties, Hungarian Nimrod armoured self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, and Hungarian Csaba armored cars. The tank regiment also had about ten German Panzer IV/F2 tanks and a few German Panzer III tanks in its heavy tank battalion. Unfortunately there were far too few of these better German tanks to make much of a difference.

Attached to "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico"

Hungary becomes a battlefield

On 19 March 1944, Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy surrounded himself with anti-fascists. Relations between Hungary and Germany became more and more problematic. Horthy met Hitler on April 16 and 17 at German headquarters. Horthy told Hitler, "We Hungarians have already lost one hundred thousand men in this bloody war, counting dead, wounded and missing. Those we have left have but few arms with which to fight. We cannot help you one bit more. We are through. We are doing our best to stave off the Bolshevik menace and we won't be able to spare a single man for the Balkans." [cite book |title=Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II|author=Lee, Bruce |publisher=Da Capo Press|date=2001|isbn=9780306810367|pages=112] The German dictator arranged to keep Horthy busy by conducting negotiations while Hungary was quietly and efficiently overrun by German ground forces in a quick and bloodless invasion in Operation Margarethe.

Soon all of Hungary was to become a battlefield. By mid-August 1944, German Colonel-General (Generaloberst) Johannes Friessner's Army Group South was on the brink of collapse. To the north, the Soviet's Operation Bagration was completing the destruction of Army Group Centre.

To the south, Germany's former ally, Romania, declared war on Germany on 25 August 1944 as a result of the Yassi-Kishinev Strategic Offensive Operation (20 August 1944 - 29 August 1944). On the eve of the Soviet East Carpathian Strategic Offensive Operation (8 September 1944 - 28 September 1944) as the Soviet forces crossed the Hungarian border, Bulgaria declared war on Germany. The subsequent Budapest Strategic Offensive Operation (29 October 1944 - 13 February 1945) attack by the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts far into Hungary destroyed any semblance of an organised German defensive line. By this time, Fyodor Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Front, aided by the 2nd Ukrainian Front commanded by Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, had annihilated 13 Axis divisions, capturing over 100,000 prisoners.

Wartime Mobilization

On 30 August, Hungary mobilized the Hungarian Second Army (for the second time) and the Hungarian Third Army. Both armies were primarily composed of weak, undermanned, and under equipped reserve divisions.

General of Artillery Maximilian Fretter-Pico's recently re-formed 6th Army represented the nucleus of what remained of Friessner's force. By October 1944, seeing that his Hungarian allies were suffering from low morale, Friessner attached the recently re-formed Hungarian Second Army under the command of Lieutenant-General Lajos Veress von Dalnoki to Fretter-Pico's army. The combination of German and Hungarian armies was designated "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico".

The actions of Bulgaria and Romania had opened up a 650 kilometer gap in Friessner's Army Group South. As Friessner desperately struggled to reform a defensive line, news filtered through to Berlin that the Hungarian leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy was preparing to sign a separate peace with the Soviet Union. If this happened, the entire front of Army Group South Ukraine would collapse.Fact|2008-09-20|date=September 2008

In August, Horthy replaced Prime Minister Döme Sztójay with the anti-Fascist General Géza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting Interior Minister Béla Horváth ordered Hungarian gendarmes to protect any Hungarian citizen from being deported. Fact|2008-09-20|date=September 2008

[
Turan I tank of the Hungarian 2nd Armoured Division in action during the Battle of Debrecen, 1944.] On 15 October 1944, Horthy announced that Hungary had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. Most Hungarian army units ignored Horthy's orders. The Germans reacted swiftly with Operation Panzerfaust. Commando leader Otto Skorzeny was sent to Hungary, and in another of his daring "snatch" operations, Skorzeny kidnapped Horthy's son Miklós Horthy, Jr.. The Germans insisted that Horthy abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name the leader of the Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi, as Prime Minister. Instead, Horthy agreed to abdicate. Szálasi was able take power in Hungary with Germany's backing.Fact|2008-09-20|date=September 2008

uccess at the Battle of Debrecen and the end

In late 1944, a re-formed Hungarian Second Army enjoyed a modest level of combat success as an integral part of German General Maximilian Fretter-Pico's "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico".

From 16 September 1944 to 24 October 1944, during the Battle of Debrecen, "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico" managed to achieve a major success on a confusingly fluid battlefield. This operation was particularly confusing due to it being an encounter engagement by large forces owing to the Soviet Debrecen Offensive Operation. While avoiding encirclement itself, "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico" managed to encircle and destroy three Soviet tank corps of Mobile Group Pliyev (under the command of Issa Pliyev). This defeat of the Soviet mobile group was especially pleasing to "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico's" Hungarian contingent. Earlier, in the same battle, Mobile Group Pliyev had easily sliced through the untested Hungarian Third Army. However even this short-lived success on the battlefield ultimately proved too costly to the Hungarians. Unable to replace the lost equipment and personnel in the Battle of Debrecen, the Hungarian Second Army was disbanded on 1 December 1944. The remaining units of the Second Army were transferred to the Third Army.

Order of Battle - Hungary - 1944

While the Hungarian Second Army was the primary Hungarian unit in "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico", it was not the only Hungarian unit in the Army Group. "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico" also included the Hungarian VIIth Field Corps.

Hungarian units in "Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico"
* VIIth Field Corps (Hungarian)
** 8th Reserve Field Division
** 12th Reserve Field Division
* Hungarian Second Army
** 9th Light Field Division
** IInd Field Corps (Hungarian)
*** 25th Light Field Division
*** 2nd Armored Field Division
** Group Finita
*** 7th Replacement Field Division
*** 1st Replacement Mountain Brigade
*** 2nd Replacement Mountain Brigade

In 1944, the main battle tank of the 2nd Armored Field Division was the Hungarian Turan medium tank. The Turan tank represented a limited improvement over the Czech Panzer 38(t) and the Hungarian Toldi tanks used by the 1st Armored Field Division in 1942. However, the Turan I tank (with a 40 mm gun) and the Turan II tank (with a short 75 mm gun) were still no match for a standard Soviet T-34 tank, and, compared to the T-34/76, the Soviets had many much improved T-34/85 tanks by 1944. Unfortunately manufacture of the potentially lethal Turan III tank (with a long 75 mm gun) never developed beyond the prototype stage. Doubly unfortunate for the Hungarians, the few better German Panzer IV tanks, Panzer III tanks, and Sturmgeschütz III assault guns were never made available to the them in numbers that would make a difference.

See also

* Hungary
* History of Hungary
* Hungary during the Second World War
* Military of Hungary - 1940/45
* Battle of Voronezh - 1942
* Battle of Stalingrad - 1942/43
* Battle of Debrecen - 1944
* Eastern Front (World War II)
* Hungarian First Army
* Hungarian Third Army
* Gyorshadtest
* Szent László Infantry Division

References

External links

* [http://orbat.com/site/sturmvogel/Hung2Army.html The Hungarian 2. Army in Russia (Structure and Equipment, Summer 1942)] , by Jason Long.

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