The Last Days of Budapest
Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940–1945
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The Last Days of Budapest
Narrated by:
David Thorpe
Buy Now for £18.29
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Narrated by:
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David Thorpe
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By:
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Adam LeBor
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.©2025 Adam LeBor (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
This book cannot be read dispassionately. The portraits are vivid and alive. I fell in love with some characters and despised others ... A city is the sum of its people and LeBor juggles numerous stories with astounding agility, constructing an engrossing narrative without ever losing his way ... The book mirrors life - adversity mingling with joy. It deserves to be read twice, first to appreciate Budapest's complicated story and then to immerse oneself in the prose. (Gerard de Groot)
Excellent…a revolving cast of Zionist secret agents, Polish refugees and American diplomats populate Mr LeBor’s account….[His] history is valuable not only for its thoroughness, but also its timeliness.
Brilliant ... LeBor creates a compelling story of one of the least remembered episodes of recent European history.
Powerful
Captivating
Powerful and brilliant.
An immaculately researched book, written in a fluent and engaging style and an important addition to the library of Second World War histories.
LeBor skilfully depicts the war years in Budapest.
Combines a detailed historical narrative with accounts of the lived experiences of a vast range of the city's inhabitants ... a thoroughly engrossing read.
An important reminder of Europe's history ... A tale of exceptional people who will haunt and inspire your thoughts.
The Last Days of Budapest is a masterpiece. Immaculately researched, it is packed with large-than-life characters and revelations about the unknown espionage history of the Second World War. Adam LeBor’s vivid, taut prose brings the story of the ‘Casablanca of central Europe’ alive in glorious technicolour. From the naïve optimism of the late 1930s to the depths of depravity and bloodshed during the siege in winter 1944, LeBor takes the reader on an emotional rollercoaster. This is history as it should be written: utterly engrossing.
This is an extraordinary book – an enthralling narrative that is full of extraordinary characters, both heroes and villains, and packed with the insights and subtle judgements that only someone with the author’s knowledge of, and love for, the city can provide. What happened in wartime Budapest is virtually unknown outside Hungary. Now thanks to Adam LeBor we have the story laid out in grim and absorbing detail, told with all the power and passion that a writer of his class can muster.
From the first to the final page, The Last Days of Budapest is difficult to put down. Using sources which offer chilling first-hand accounts and personal insight, Adam LeBor expertly narrates one of the darkest periods in Hungary’s history. This is an important and overdue book, and a must-read in the field of Second World War history.
Disappointed
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It might be OK if you are very au fait with Hungarian history and the characters but for the lay person it could be more difficult.
But overall a very sad and regrettable piece of history
Interesting but hard to follow at times
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However it should probably have a title "The last years of Jewish Budapest" as it describes the ordeal of Jewish community during the WWII.
Misleading title
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