A Second World War-era German DKW NZ-350-1 motorcycle was found in the Danube at Batthyány Square in the heart of Budapest at the beginning of August, and the recovery has pulled the siege of Budapest back into view through a piece of military hardware that once served a German armoured division. The bike was found in a condition described as extremely rare for a relic of its kind. Around it, anti-tank mines, ammunition and the remains of two German soldiers were also found. The river has given up a machine, not a moral lesson.
Lt Col Norbert Számvéber, a military historian and director of the Military History Archive at the Military History Institute and Museum (HM HIM), said the motorcycle belonged to the armoured division Feldherrnhalle, specifically its armoured pioneer battalion. He said it may have entered the unit's inventory in September 1944, when the battalion was called Pionier-Bataillon (mot.) Feldherrnhalle, and was renamed Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon Feldherrnhalle at the end of that month or in early October 1944. He said the motorcycle and vehicles already marked with the unit insignia were not repainted one by one, perhaps for lack of time. Even the paperwork of war, it seems, had to move fast.
A Machine From a Siege Economy
Számvéber said the motorcycle was definitely involved in a crash 81 years ago, but it cannot be determined whether that happened when it entered the Danube. He ruled out the possibility that a ferry crossing the river was sunk by the Soviets because neither the tactical situation nor the heavily iced river would have allowed that during the siege. He said the motorcycle was probably used for liaison tasks, such as carrying reports and orders, and may have become a loss near the riverbank before ending up in the Danube after the siege during debris-clearing operations. A courier bike, a river, a ruined city. That was the machinery of command.
The DKW model was produced in about 12,000 examples in 1944-45, with grey cast-iron engine blocks because of aluminium shortages. After the war, the Soviets dismantled the production line and shipped it to Izhevsk as reparations, where they made another 127,000 under the name Izs-350 up to 1951. Only an estimated 30 to 50 of the German-produced machines are thought to have survived, some in partly original condition. Scarcity, production, requisition, survival. The state system leaves its marks in metal.
Fortified Cities, Disposable Lives
Számvéber said the German motorised pioneer companies were technical support sub-units with considerable combat value. Each company had two heavy machine guns, 18 light machine guns, two 8 cm mortars and six backpack flamethrowers. He said they were "excellently equipped assault battalions designed for attacks against fortified positions and for fighting in built-up areas," and that in a major city such as Budapest, units of this kind became particularly important. The city was treated as terrain, its streets reduced to a map for assault.
The history of the Feldherrnhalle armoured division dates to 1935, when Viktor Lutze, head of the Nazi Party's paramilitary organisation, the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung (SA, in Hungarian Rohamosztag), wanted to create a regiment with weapons similar to the SS's "Leibstandarte." In September 1936 Hitler granted the SA Guard Regiment the name "Feldherrnhalle," and soldiers wore it on their uniforms, embroidered in silver thread on a brown background on the lower part of the left sleeve of their tunics. During the Second World War the unit moved between the western and eastern fronts, suffered heavy losses and took part in the occupation of Hungary.
Számvéber said some soldiers in the Feldherrnhalle division came from the SA, which had a large mass base but no military armament and played hardly any role in the war except for the Feldherrnhalle units, one of which included the motorcycle found at Batthyány Square. He also cited one Feldherrnhalle commander who left his dental practice as a reservist officer to join the army and later became a decorated armoured general. The uniforms changed. The chain of command didn't.
Between Christmas 1944 and mid-February 1945, around 100,000 German and Hungarian soldiers defended Budapest. Those forces were practically wiped out; those not killed in combat were taken prisoner of war. When the breakout was attempted, only 705 German and 36 Hungarian soldiers, together with 44 civilians, reached the German lines. Soviet and Romanian losses may have been around 38,000. Civilian deaths are estimated at around 23,000, and by the end of the siege around 15,000 Jews had died in Budapest. The numbers sit there like an indictment, even if the article leaves the indictment to the arithmetic.
Time Bought With Blood
Számvéber called the fighting "a pointless, horrific bloodletting" and said Hungary fell victim to the Germans' strategy of buying time. He said Hungary's failed attempt to break away from the war led to prolonged fighting, and that the German high command diverted virtually all its armoured reserves to Hungary from the Warsaw–Berlin axis even as the Red Army advanced on Berlin. He said operations in Hungary were intended in part to protect the oilfields in Zala and that domestic production roughly covered the fuel needs of the German troops fighting there. He said Hitler refused to allow Budapest to be abandoned because he wanted to launch an offensive from the Pest side towards the north-east and because Budapest acted as bait in the defence of the Vienna industrial region. He said the aim was to protect the Vienna Basin and gain time to build the "Alpine Fortress." He said Budapest, along with German troops and the city's innocent inhabitants, was deliberately allowed to be encircled.
Soviet troops first tried to take Budapest on the move on 29 October 1944, then attempted to encircle the capital, and after the 3rd Ukrainian Front arrived they began the systematic siege, which lasted until 13 February 1945, mainly because of German attempts to relieve the city. Számvéber said Hitler's plan to gain time succeeded. The city was trapped between armies and treated as a delay mechanism for someone else's war.
The director said the recovered motorcycle has become a symbol of the struggle and the suffering it caused. He said it confronts people with the past "like a time capsule" and, from a military-history and conflict-archaeology perspective, confirms research findings from other sources over recent decades. He said the two German soldiers can in principle be identified by name and, for their families, are no longer relatives who disappeared without trace. After 81 years, he said, they can be granted the last honours and laid to rest. The machine comes up from the mud. The dead do too.