Volume 52, Number 6 · April 7, 2005
The Siege of Budapest
By John Lukacs
The merits of Krisztián Ungváry's Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II are at least twofold.[*] First, as a military history it is unrivaled. None of the otherwise quite good military histories of the battles of Stalingrad or Warsaw or Berlin comes close to its minute details and to its vivid reconstruction of where and when and how troops moved and fought. Military historians ought to study The Siege of Budapest with jewelers' eyes. So must the people of Budapest, and the diminishing minority among them who experienced its siege sixty years ago (as did I, a historian, who found many details in this superb reconstruction that were new to me).
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