For more than eight decades, the mortal remains of two German soldiers lay in the mud of the Danube. Only the exceptionally low water level of the Danube in Budapest has brought their story back to light.
Both men were found with fully intact German identity discs. This offers an unusually good chance of identifying them more than 80 years on.
The discovery is closely linked to a remarkably well-preserved DKW NZ 350-1 motorbike, found at the beginning of August on the Buda bank of the Danube.
Beneath or immediately next to the motorbike, staff from the Hungarian Institute and Museum of Military History came across the human remains. Volksbund employee Gábor Kohlrusz recovered the bones of the two men from the exposed riverbed.
Kohlrusz has been working in Hungary for many years as a reburial specialist for the Volksbund. His duties include searching for, recovering and documenting German war dead, as well as securing personal effects and identity discs. Together with historians and local partners, he helps to establish who the fallen were and to shed light on wartime fates that have long remained unresolved.
Two dead men who were probably still listed as missing
At that time, the identity discs of fallen German soldiers in the Second World War were split in two: one half remained with the dead man, the other was sent to the Wehrmacht information office in Berlin, allowing deaths to be recorded and relatives to be notified.
Because both halves of the identity discs of the two men from the Danube were still present, this suggests that their families probably waited in vain for an official notification.
Alongside the identity discs, a wedding ring and a Kuban sleeve shield were also found. If the badge can be assigned beyond doubt to one of the two dead men, it could provide an important clue to his military career. The Kuban shield was awarded to German soldiers who served in 1943 at the Kuban bridgehead in the south of the Soviet Union. It was instituted in September of that year.
If it is confirmed that one of the two soldiers wore the shield, it would indicate that he had already been deployed to the Eastern Front years before his death.
Arne Schrader, head of the War Graves and International Relations Department, knows how difficult such an attribution can be. Several examinations are needed to determine whether the two identity discs really belong to the bodies that have been found. The names of the original bearers may be established relatively quickly, but that in itself is far from clarifying their identity.
Identification is a lengthy process
The process begins with a detailed examination of the bones. The length of individual bones alone can provide clues to the height of the deceased. Wherever possible, various bones are used – for example the lower and upper leg bones. Gradually, the individual findings build up into a picture that can be compared with the known data on the possible bearers of the identity discs.
There are various anatomical indicators for determining the age of the soldiers, which make it possible, with a high degree of probability, to assess whether a bone belonged to someone under 20, between 20 and 25, or to an older person, up to and including over 40.
How old the two soldiers were is not yet known. Anthropological analysis of the bones is intended, among other things, to use bones, epiphyses and wisdom teeth to provide information about their approximate age.
“Here, among other things, the sacrum and the epiphyses on the long bones can be assessed, and the wisdom teeth can also provide information,” explains Arne Schrader. “Dental fillings can also offer clues to origin: teeth filled with amalgam indicate that a dead person probably came from Western Europe.”
One of the identity discs now found on the Danube belonged to a Wehrmacht soldier, the second to a member of the Waffen-SS.
However, it still has to be established whether the respective discs really belong to the two recovered bodies. Any provisional identification by the Volksbund would then have to be officially confirmed by the Federal Archives.
Over the course of the war, around 900,000 people served in the Waffen-SS. They included committed National Socialists and foreign volunteers, but also, especially towards the end of the war, conscripts and minors. The Waffen-SS was responsible for many war crimes and was involved in the Holocaust; in 1946, at the Nuremberg war crimes trial, it was declared a criminal organisation.
The site of the discovery lay in an area where harbour mud had accumulated, mixed with gas oil. These particular conditions apparently helped ensure that both parts of the motorbike and the identity discs were preserved in exceptionally good condition.
The Volksbund can now compare the information from the discs with military records, missing person reports and its own “Gräbersuche Online” database, a resource that now contains around 5.4 million records.
What does the DKW NZ 350-1 have to do with the soldiers?
According to current knowledge, the motorbike was a DKW NZ 350-1, manufactured in Saxony. This model was developed from 1944 specifically for wartime use.
The mere fact that the motorbike was found together with the two dead men does not in itself prove that the soldiers had been travelling on it.
Several scenarios are conceivable: the two men could have ridden the motorbike themselves, with one acting as driver and the other as pillion passenger. It is equally possible that the DKW belonged to a unit, while the two soldiers came from a different context. It is also conceivable that the motorbike only reached the findspot after the men had died. The machine could have ended up in the Danube during the fighting, or been deliberately sunk there later.
Ammunition was also lying on the riverbed
During the recovery work, the bomb disposal service had to be called in because, in addition to other items of equipment, Tellermine 35s were discovered – German anti-tank mines from the Second World War.
The Hungarian Institute of Military History (source in German) (source in Hungarian) considers it possible that the site of the discovery could be a wartime and refuse dump that formed after the end of the siege. It is not yet possible to say definitively whether the objects found were deliberately disposed of at this spot and under what circumstances.
A link to the Battle of Budapest?
From a historical perspective, a connection with the fighting for Budapest would seem plausible.
The Battle of Budapest lasted from late October/early November 1944 until 13 February 1945 and was among the bloodiest and militarily most ferocious engagements of the final phase of the Second World War in Hungary. Budapest was defended by German and Hungarian units against the Soviet Red Army and Romanian forces. After the city was encircled at the end of December 1944, the battle turned into a protracted siege, ending with the capture of Budapest by Soviet troops on 13 February 1945.
The fighting was extremely brutal and claimed numerous lives on both sides.
Today’s German-Hungarian war cemetery at Budaörs, west of Budapest, is the largest site for German and Hungarian war dead in Hungary. It is the final resting place mainly for those who fell in Budapest and in the areas east of the Danube. According to the Volksbund, 16,630 dead have now been laid to rest in Budaörs.
Whether the two men from the Danube actually died during the Battle of Budapest is something that only the future will tell. What is already certain is that their remains will be interred at the Budaörs war cemetery.
The discovery underlines how many traces of the past are still hidden today in Europe’s rivers. The Danube was not only an important transport and traffic route during wartime.
The Volksbund explicitly expects that, because of the current low water level, further war dead could be recovered from emerging shipwrecks as well.
The find in Budapest may therefore not be the last of its kind.