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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to Battleground 44 with me, Patrick Bishop.

Today we're going to be looking at a grim event that is all but absent from the Western European

memory of the Second World War, a victim perhaps of

the historiographical process that tends to see the story, or has tended to see the story,

through the eyes of the Western armies, overlooking seismic events in the East.

Our subject is the Battle of Budapest, which raged from late October 1944 and lasted for 50 days,

until the Red Army finally captured the Hungarian capital.

By that time, three quarters of this beautiful city was in ruins and hundreds of thousands were dead.

The casualties included 38,000 civilians, among them 15,000 Jews,

murdered not by the Germans, but mainly by the Hungarian homegrown Nazis of the Arrow Cross.

With me to talk about all this is Adam LeBore, the historian, novelist and journalist,

who's married to a Hungarian and who knows the city intimately, having lived there for many years.

His latest book is The Last Days of Budapest, spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940 to 1945.

As the title suggests, it's not just about the battle and the siege, but it's a holistic account

of the city's wartime experience, full of fascinating characters and extraordinary events,

and told with the verve and piercing insight of a fine writer.

It's out early next year, so a bit late for Christmas, but do go and get it.

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