One of the publishing events of the past year was Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies. It was in every way a work worthy of his reputation as one of our most respected historians of Poland. An intensely researched, vividly written account, Rising '44 dealt with the heroic but doomed attempt by the Polish Home Army to liberate its capital city just before the arrival of the Red Army on the banks of the Vistula. The casualties included thousands of Warsaw's valiant fighters, hundreds of thousands of civilians and the city itself, much of which was pounded into rubble by the Germans. In the end, a war that had begun to keep Poland free surrendered the country to Soviet occupation and Communist tyranny. After 1945 the entire affair fell into the Stalinist memory hole. With the Communist government of Poland condemning the Home Army as reactionaries and criminals, the entire subject was taboo. Indeed, Davies' book could not have been written before the fall of communism.
Many of these same things can be said of Krisztián Ungváry's The Siege of Budapest. Once again we have a serious scholar tackling a subject that has not garnered anywhere near the attention it deserves. Once again we have the Red Army seemingly irresistible in the advance, the Wehrmacht resisting desperately and enough death and destruction to turn even the strongest of stomachs. And once again we have the martyrdom of a great city, yet another historic European capital blown to smithereens. Ungváry's research is almost completely new, based heavily on testimony from Hungarian participants who could talk only after the fall of communism. For all these reasons, Siege of Budapest makes an eerily perfect companion volume to Rising '44, and deserves the widest possible readership.
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