The Three Lives of a Hungarian General – He Received his Highest Honours from Mystic India
The Three Lives of a Hungarian General – He Received his Highest Honours from Mystic India

Summary/Abstract: Zoltán Álgya-Pap was the only Hungarian general in the Second World War who received the coveted gold medal for extraordinary courage in face of enemy fire. Like most of the country’s military by 1944, his troops were dispirited, sick of the war and the Germans who on 19 March that year not only occupied their nominal ally Hungary but in fact took control of its armed forces, close to one million men. The Red Army’s juggernaut seemed irresistible. By the fall, the Russians were fighting on historic Hungarian territory west of the Carpathian mountain peaks. Between 23 and 26 October, Álgya-Pap rallied his troops in an old-fashioned way: he personally led them into battle. The surprise counter-attack is said to have saved his soldiers’ lives while smashing a Soviet force much larger and better equipped than the one under his command. He was promoted to Lieutenant General – altábornagy in Hungarian. Nevertheless, his victory was anomalous. It is an unremembered episode in the epic clash of the immense manpower of Germany and Russia.

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