Following his feature on Oskar Dirlewanger’s murderous unit, Douglas E Nash charts its annihilation by the Red Army, ultimately leading to the death of Dirlewanger himself at the hands of his erstwhile victims.
EASTERN FRONT: THE BATTLE OF IPOLYSAG
he town of Ipolysag lies on the right bank of the Ipoly River, forming a portion of the northern border between Hungary and modern-day Slovakia. Positioned on the southwestern exit of the southern extension of the Carpathian Mountains, Ipolysag lies astride the historic invasion route to Vienna used during the 16th and 17th Centuries by the Ottoman Turks. To the west, beyond the narrows in the mountains formed by the Ipoly River, the terrain opens up into the Vienna Basin, a flat, relatively open expanse that forms the northern portion of the Hungarian plains or Puszta, broken only by the last great obstacle in the Red Army’s path: the Gran River.
After penetrating the German and Hungarian defensive line east of Budapest at Hatvan on 5 December 1944, the 6th Guards Tank and 7th Guards Armies of Marshal Malinovskiy’s Second Ukrainian Front had reached the eastern bank of the Danube north of Budapest at Vác by 8 December. Instead of daring a crossing of the wide Danube, Malinovskiy directed his troops northwest into the Börszeny Mountains towards Ipolysag. German and Hungarian armies had fallen back hastily to the partially prepared Margarethe Defensive Line but lacked sufficient troops to hold it against a concerted attack. Malinovskiy’s challenge was to break through this line before his opponent could fortify it.
One and a half kilometres wide at its narrowest point, the Ipolysag narrows are bounded to the north by the Carpathian foothills, to the south by the Börszeny Mountains and to the west by the narrow gap at Gyerk. These terrain factors would severely limit the manoeuvre possibilities of Soviet armour and mechanised forces should the narrows remain in Axis hands. Thus, taking Ipolysag figured prominently in the offensive plans of the Red Army, which was positioning itself to carry out its Vienna Operation during the early spring of 1945. First, Budapest had to fall quickly. For that, a two-pronged envelopment was envisioned: one from the north by Marshal Malinovskiy, the other from the south by Marshal Tolbukhin’s Third Ukrainian Front.
To carry out his part of the operation, Malinovskiy’s troops had to seize Ipolysag and cross the Gran River as rapidly as possible. Should the Germans and their Hungarian allies block th
