Operation Panzerfaust, known as Unternehmen Eisenfaust in Germany, was a military operation to keep the Kingdom of Hungary at Germany's side in the war, conducted in October 1944 by the German military (Wehrmacht). When German dictator Adolf Hitler received word that Hungary's Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, was secretly negotiating his country's surrender to the advancing Red Army, he sent commando leader Waffen-SS Lieutenant-Colonel Otto Skorzeny to Hungary. Hitler feared that Hungary's surrender would expose his southern flank, where the Kingdom of Romania had just joined with the Soviets and cut off a million German troops still fighting the Soviet advance in the Balkan peninsula. The operation came on the heels of Operation Margarethe in March 1944, which was the forced, but peaceful, occupation of Hungary by German forces, which Hitler had hoped would secure Hungary's place in the Axis powers.
Read more about Operation Panzerfaust: Hitler Sends in Waffen-SS, Horthy Declares Armistice, Failure of The Hungarian Army To Respond, Germans Take Buda Castle, Horthy Captured
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“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
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