The spring of 1944 witnessed two major developments in the course of the Second World War that significantly affected the fate of Hungary. First, during one of the longest offensives on the Eastern Front, the Red Army broke through the German lines, and in the north Soviet forces advanced to the immediate vicinity of the Hungarian borders. Almost simultaneously, German forces occupied the country, as a result of which the Hungarian First Army was deployed to the Eastern Front. One of its formations was the 27th Szekler Light Division, whose history forms the subject of this thesis. Thus began the light division’s ‘first war’: the period spent by the formation’s troops on the Eastern Front – more precisely in Galicia – between April and September 1944. One of the questions examined in this respect concerns how its soldiers related to military service and deployment to the front, only a year after another Hungarian army – also fighting against the Soviet Union – had suffered a catastrophic defeat. It will be argued that both the population’s – and, by extension, the soldiers’ – relationship with Hungary’s head of state at the time, Miklós Horthy, and the media-shaped perception of the war played a significant role in influencing the attitudes of the troops. A second question concerns the wartime experience of the light division’s soldiers on the Eastern Front. Accordingly, the analysis seeks, in part, to provide a comprehensive overview of the formation’s participation in both open battles and periods of positional warfare, as well as a detailed examination of a series of other factors that shaped this experience. The period termed the ‘second war’ refers roughly to the months between September and December 1944. At the beginning of this phase, the 27th Light Division was briefly redeployed to Northern Transylvania – the home region of most of its personnel, which had by then become a theatre of war following Romania’s realignment on 23 August 1944. For the troops, the fighting there effectively amounted to the defence of their broader homeland, but lasted only until early October, when the formation – by this time reorganised as a division – was withdrawn towards the Tisza River, into territory that had formed part of Hungary during the interwar period. Its remaining personnel then saw combat along the defensive line established on the river before being gradually pushed northwards out of the country. While the phase termed the ‘first war’ was marked by a strengthening of small-group bonds, attachment to the unit, and a certain improvement in the light division’s combat effectiveness, the second was characterised by a series of crises. These included the separation of Hungarian troops from their own command structure and their integration into German units, the psychological impact of witnessing wartime destruction in their home region, and the consequences of Miklós Horthy’s unsuccessful attempt to conclude an armistice, which resulted in the emergence of a new political regime. All these developments placed considerable strain on the relationships that bound the soldier to his immediate comrades and to his unit, while simultaneously undermining the perceived legitimacy of the demands placed upon him by the country’s political leadership. Ultimately, they led to the disintegration of the division – although the formation itself did not cease to exist, even if it temporarily lost its combat effectiveness.