The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940-1945 (Hardback) - Adam LeBor

The Last Days of Budapest tells the powerful story of one of the least-known but most important episodes of the Second World War: life and death in the Hungarian capital from autumn 1940 to early 1945, a gripping story of spies, fanaticism, genocide and military disaster.

Budapest, autumn 1943. Four years into the war, Hungary is allied with Nazi Germany and the Hungarian capital is the Casablanca of central Europe. The city swirls with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But Budapest remains at peace, an oasis in the midst of war where Allied POWs, and Polish and Jewish refugees find sanctuary. The riverside cafes are crowded and the city's famed cultural life still thrives.

All that comes to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invade. By the summer, Allied bombers are pounding its grand boulevards and historic squares. Budapest's surviving Jewish population has been forcibly relocated to cramped, overcrowded Yellow Star houses. By late December, the city is surrounded and under siege from the Red Army. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians die in the savage siege as Budapest collapses into anarchy. Hungarian death squads roam the streets as the city's Jews are forced into ghettos. Russian artillery pounds the city into smoking rubble as starving residents hack chunks of meat from dead, frozen horses.

Using newly uncovered diaries, documents, archival material and interviews with the last survivors, Adam LeBor brilliantly recreates life and death in the wartime city, the catastrophic fate of half of its Jewish population and the destruction of the siege.

Told through the lives of a cast of vivid, gripping characters, including glamorous aristocrats, spies, smugglers and SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish schoolboy, Hungary's most popular actress and her spy chief lover, a Jewish businesswoman who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a Christian doctor hiding her Jewish neighbours and a teenage Hungarian soldier, the story of how Budapest slowly dies as the war destroys the city is utterly compelling.

About the Author

Adam LeBor is a veteran former foreign correspondent who lived in Budapest for many years, reporting on Hungary and Central Europe for newspapers including The Times, the Independent and the Economist. He is the author of seven novels and nine non-fiction books including Hitler's Secret Bankers, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He is an editorial trainer for several publications and organisations and writes for the Financial Times, The Times and the Critic. He divides his time between London and Budapest. www.adamlebor.com @adamlebor