Colonel General Matvei Zakharov, head of HQ of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, reported Wallenberg’s detention to Nikolai Bulganin, Stalin’s new deputy.89 From the end of 1944, military commanders reported to Stalin through Bulganin. However, Abakumov still reported directly to Stalin and SMERSH issues, such as the question of Wallenberg’s arrest, were decided by Stalin himself.
On January 17, 1945, Bulganin answered Zakharov: ‘Raoul Wallenberg should be arrested and brought to Moscow. The necessary orders have been given to counterintelligence “SMERSH.”’90 On January 19, Wallenberg and Langfelder were arrested.91 Persons like Wallenberg and Langfelder, arrested without arrest warrants and detained, were called the spetskontingent or special contingent.
On January 22, Nikolai Korolev, head of the UKR of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, sent a list of addresses of embassies in Budapest to the head of the SMERSH operational group with a footnote stating that the list was ‘based on data in the Reference Book received by the Political Directorate of the front from Ambassador of Slovakia SPASHEK [Spišjak], as well as on the basis of [blank, where a word was erased—possibly “interrogations”] of the detained [sic!—not arrested] Secretary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest, Wallenberg.’92 Most probably, Wallenberg was interrogated at the OKR of the 18th Rifle Corps. On January 25, Wallenberg and Langfelder were put on a train, under guard.93 After arriving in Moscow on February 6, they were taken to Lubyanka Prison. The events that followed will be described elsewhere.
Interestingly, witnesses in Budapest reported to Stockholm the actual true date of Wallenberg’s arrest:
Mr. Raoul Wallenberg, attaché of the Swedish legation in Hungary, was arrested on January 17th by Russian military authorities. Some letters written in prison have been received from him, but he has now disappeared. In Stockholm it is believed that he has been killed, because he was fearless and would never have refrained from speaking the truth.94
On January 27, 1945, Bulganin ordered Spišjak and two Swiss diplomats, Max Meier and Harald Feller, to be arrested and sent back to Moscow.95 They were transported there as SMERSH prisoners guarded by NKVD convoy troops. Two years later, on January 8, 1947, after interrogations in Moscow, Spišjak was handed over to the Czechoslovak security service, to stand trial in Prague.96 Meier and Feller were luckier, eventually being exchanged for Soviet citizens arrested in Switzerland.
On February 13, 1945, the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts took the rest of Budapest, and the 102-day siege was over. The former Hungarian minister of finance Nicholas Nyaradi recalled the final battle he witnessed:
The Germans were behind a barricade of ripped-up paving blocks and overturned trams… A line of Soviet infantrymen simply marched, as though on a parade… Naturally, they were mowed down by German machine guns… I counted a total of twenty such attacking waves of Soviet infantrymen, each new row falling on top of the dead… Then the last waves of the Russians, charging up the stack of corpses, vaulted the barricades and slaughtered the Germans with savage ferocity.
What made my blood run cold was not the way in which the Nazis were exterminated, but the complete indifference with which the Russian officers commanded their men to die, and the complete indifference with which the soldiers obeyed the orders.97
Marshal Malinovsky granted his troops three days of ‘pillage and free looting,’ which turned into a two-week rampage of rape, murder, and drunkenness.98 Nyaradi wrote: ‘Even the women of the Red Army managed to rape Hungarian men, by forcing them into sexual intercourse at the point of tommy guns!’99 Swiss diplomats presented a detailed description of events in a report they compiled in May 1945, after returning to Switzerland:
During the siege of Budapest and also during the following fateful weeks, Russian troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing, and valuables… There were also small groups which specialized in hunting up valuables using magnetic mine detectors in search of gold, silver, and other metals. Trained dogs were also used… Furniture and larger objects of art, etc. that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also put on fire…
Bank safes were emptied without exception—even the British and American safes—and whatever was found was taken… Russian soldiers often arrested passersby, relieving them of the contents of their pockets, especially watches, cash and even papers of identity.
Rapes are causing the greatest suffering to the Hungarian population. Violations are so general—from the age of 10 to 70 years—that few women in Hungary escape this fate. Acts of incredible brutality have been registered… Misery is increased by the sad fact that many of the Russian soldiers are ill and medicines in Hungary are completely missing…
Near the town of Godollo, a large concentration camp has been erected where some forty thousand internees are being held and from where they are being deported for an unknown destination toward the East. It is known that these internees get very little food unless they sign an agreement to engage as volunteers in the Red Army or accept a contract for work in Russia… The population of Germanic origin from the age of two up to the age of seventy is deported en masse to Russia…
Russians have declared that all foreigners who stay in Budapest will be treated exactly as if they were Hungarians… During looting the [Swiss] legation, at one of four occasions, the Russians put a rope around the neck of Mr. Ember, an employee of the legation, in order to force him to hand over the keys of the official safe. As he refused to do so, even in his plight, they pulled the rope around his neck until he lost consciousness. Then they took the keys from his pocket, emptied the safe, and took away all the deposits, amounting to several millions…
A big safe of the Swedish legation which the Nazis had unsuccessfully tried to remove was removed by the Russians with all its contents. This affair will have a diplomatic consequence as the Swedes propose to protest to Russia.100
The Swedish press did complain about the last event. Amazingly, Soviet diplomats confirmed that Soviet soldiers had looted the Swedish legation and raped a servant.101
Witnesses reported more on Soviet behavior to Stockholm: ‘The Russians seemed not to differentiate in their treatment of good or bad Hungarians, Jews or Gentiles, pro Allies or quislings. The Russians did not respect the “protective passports” with which Hungarian Jews had been issued by neutral legations. They qualified these as “interference in Hungarian domestic affairs.”’102
During this period, SMERSH, as usual, was hunting enemy agents in Budapest. Between January 15 and March 15, 1945, operatives of the UKR SMERSH of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arrested 588 people, including 110 agents of German intelligence services, 20 agents of Hungarian counterintelligence, 56 terrorists, 10 officers of German intelligence and counterintelligence, and 30 officers of Hungarian intelligence and counterintelligence.103
All high-ranking officers, diplomats, and other important foreigners were taken to Moscow. Count István Bethlen, Hungarian Prime Minister from 1921 to 1932 and an influential figure in politics, was among them. His main offense, in Soviet eyes, may have been that in 1943, he was among those Hungarian politicians who tried to organize secret, separate peace negotiations with the British and Americans, but not the Soviets. Apparently, the Soviets ignored information received in March 1943 from a Soviet spy ring in Switzerland that Count Bethlen also planned peace negotiations with the Soviet Union.104