Carnage at the Sio Canal

I SS Panzer Corps now caught up with the retreating Russians on the Sio Canal, with German Panthers and Jagdpanthers inflicting heavy losses on a number of Soviet truck convoys that had not yet crossed over the canal. The fighting along the Sio Canal reached a climax on 12 March with a major effort being mounted to push bridgeheads across the 30m- (98ft-) wide obstacle. The Hitlerjugend's attack ended in a slaughter, when its fire-support panzers and Jagdpanzers were forced to fall back from the canal bank by a withering barrage of anti-tank gun fire. The panzergrenadiers pressed on, only to be machine-gunned in their rubber assault boats as they tried to row across the canal. A few of them made it across and established a precarious bridgehead. In the Leibstandarte's sector, the attack fared better because the division was able to bring its troops forward through a town and protect them from enemy fire until the last moment, before they, too, rushed across the canal. Deadly 88mm flak guns were brought up to support the assault and, along with the King Tigers, they were able to neutralize many of the Soviet anti-tank guns and machine-gun bunkers. This firepower was enough to allow the establishment of a bridgehead during the night, and soon the division's combat engineers were at work erecting a tank bridge. A Jagdpanzer IV got over the structure, but the weight of a second vehicle was too much and it collapsed into the water. Constant repairs were needed to keep it open to allow reinforcements to cross. They were desperately needed to deal with a counterattack by a regiment of T-34/85 tanks.

The Soviets counterattack

I SS Panzer Corps managed to hold on to its bridgeheads for three more days in the face of incessant Soviet counterattacks. Battalions, then regiments, were fed into the battle by the Soviets to keep the Waffen-SS penned in. The Red Army was winning the battle of attrition.

With his route south effectively blocked, Dietrich decided on 15 March to switch the schwerpunkt of his army away from I SS Panzer Corps to Bittrich's front. The Leibstandarte and Hitlerjugend were ordered to disengage and move north, before joining the attack towards the River Danube.

The following day, however, the Soviets began their own offensive, which rendered Dietrich's orders irrelevant. More than 3000 vehicles, including 600 tanks, poured past Budapest and swept around both sides of Lake Valencei. Gille's IV SS Panzer Corps was engulfed in the storm, with the Wiking Division all but surrounded after a Hungarian division collapsed on its flank. Hitler issued orders that the division was to hold at all costs. The division's commander, SS-Oberführer Karl Ullrich, ignored the orders and pulled his troops back before they were trapped. The Hohenstaufen Division came to its rescue, also in defiance of the Führer's orders.

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