The Last Days of Budapest

The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II

By: Adam LeBor

A brilliant new history of last great, brutal city siege of World War II and the fall of the former cultural center of Eastern Europe.

Despite Hungary’s German alliance, two years into World War II, Allied prisoners of war, French and Polish refugees, spies of every kind, and the city’s large Jewish population lived freely and openly in Budapest. While the other multicultural centers of Europe had fallen to the almost all-consuming conflict, Budapest remained intact, a shining reminder of what middle European high culture could be.

By September 1944, three months after D-Day, life in the city still seemed idyllic. By mid-October, Budapest had collapsed into anarchy: death squads roamed the streets, the city’s remaining Jews were funneled into ghettos, Russian shells destroyed city blocks, and everyone struggled to find food and survive the winter.

Using newly uncovered diaries and archives, Adam Lebor brilliantly recreates the increasingly desperate efforts of Hungary’s leaders to avoid being drawn into the cataclysm of war, the moral and tactical ambiguity they deployed in the attempt, and the ultimate tragedy that befell Hungary and, in particular, its Jewish population. Told through the lives of a glamorous aristocrats, SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish school student, Hungary's most popular actress, and a housewife trying desperately to keep her family alive, the story of how Budapest is threatened from all sides as the war tightens its noose is highly dramatic and utterly compelling.

©2025 Adam LeBor (P)2025 PublicAffairs