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CHAPTER FOUR
Hungary During the Second World War
The rise of Nazi
Germany, Hitler's aggressive revisionist and expansionist policy aimed at
acquiring 'living-space' in the East and Hungary's growing dependence on its
dynamic and unpredictable neighbour caused growing
disquiet in Budapest despite the government's satisfaction at regaining the
territories in the north of the country which had previously belonged
historically to the Kingdom of Hungary. The sharp increase in support for the
extreme Right, even among the workers, was worrying for the Magyar
politicians, as were the increasing claims of the leaders of the German
minority who stepped up their demands and openly espoused the new 'German
ideology', demanding special privileges and a degree of autonomy which
Budapest could scarcely tolerate. Many Hungarians were painfully aware of
their limited freedom of action in domestic and foreign policy and felt that,
for better or for worse, they had been placed at the mercy of Hitler's
dictates without any longer being able to represent effectively or give
priority to the nation's vital interests. The existing political and social
order with its anti-liberal, semi-feudal power structure and spiritual and
moral values rooted in the nineteenth century appeared to be threatened if
the National Socialist revolution were to spill over to Hungary and if the
limited, though still existent opportunities for action, were to be
eliminated under a totalitarian system. Since many Hungarians were aware that
Nazi Germany would not in the long term be able to maintain military
superiority over the anti-Hitler coalition, they hoped to achieve the maximum
possible revisionist gains in the wake of German expansion, but at the
minimum possible risk. At the same time, however, they sought to maintain
contacts with the western Allies who they saw as the ultimate victors in
order to avoid territorial losses once more in the wake of a German defeat.
Most members of the upper nobility, including the increasingly influential ex-premier,
Count István Bethlen,
many writers, academics, some of the grande
bourgeoisie and, after some vacillation, Horthy himself, took the view that
despite Hungary's cautious
collaboration with Germany,
imposed by the situation, links with the western Allies had to be preserved.
The preconditions for the development of a 'strong Hungarian Empire' had to
be exploited and every means used to defend Hungarian independence.
The officer corps and the generals, many
civil servants, social climbers and even younger industrial workers were
convinced that the Third Reich would ultimately win the war, especially after
the success of German arms in the summer of 1940. Hitler's Social Darwinist
views on race and the Nazi 'Lebensraum' ideology appealed to them. They were
also attracted by the thought of bringing about a radical transformation of Hungary's ossified social structure,
implementing social changes, completely eliminating the political Left and
the Jews and restoring the historic Kingdom
of Hungary to its former position of
dominance in the Danube region. Although
they were very chauvinistic in outlook, they had little sympathy for the
anti-Nazism of their internal political opponents which was based on Magyar
nationalism and ethical and religious objections. Despite their differences,
however, both groups paid homage to the primacy of revisionist policy.
Against this background of polarisation in
Hungarian politics, the government pursued a vacillating policy over the next
five years which was doomed to fail from the outset because of its
opportunism. While Horthy and each successive government were at pains to
feign unconditional loyalty towards Germany's leaders, they rapidly
lost credibility with the Allies because of their collaboration with Hitler
and their growing involvement in the war despite the clandestine contacts
they maintained with the West. Because Horthy, who habitually procrastinated,
was personally incapable of recognising when the
right moment had come to desert Germany,
Hungary
was forced to make immense sacrifices in the final year of the war when it
was handed over to the Arrow Cross' reign of terror.
When, in the late summer of 1939, German
preparations for the attack against Poland could no longer be kept
secret Prime Minister Teleki informed Hitler that
his country, which enjoyed good relations with the Poles, would not
participate in the campaign. The Ffihrer and Reich
Chancellor, who had a low opinion of the Hungarians and their military
capabilities, informed Foreign Minister Csáky on 8
August 1939, that he had no intention of requesting Hungary's military assistance,
but at the same time did not expect an open declaration of neutrality. Thus,
after the outbreak of hostilities Teleki declared
Hungary a 'non-belligerent country', refused German troops free passage and
opened Hungary's borders to more than 150,000 Polish military and civilian
refugees. His appeal to the political parties that they should maintain a
political truce for the duration of the war was agreed to by all parliamentary
factions except the left-wing deputies and the Arrow Cross. The latter
demanded Szálasi's immediate release and the repeal
of Ordinance No. 3400 which banned civil servants and state officials from
joining the party. As a result of the truce Teleki,
supported by a generous consensus, managed to undo many social welfare
achievements, limit the freedom of the press and control the trade unions by
placing them under the control of government officials. Even those directly
affected did not protest. Since the wartime economy required an increasing
supply of labour, and German demands -- which
proved increasingly difficult to fulfil -- for the
volume of raw materials and agricultural exports to be increased, used up
every available source of labour, wages rose
substantially and living standards noticeably improved which made employees
in all sectors of the economy initially contented. The prospect of further
revisionist gains also rapidly silenced the critics.
The surprisingly easy successes of the
German armies in northern and western Europe led, in the summer of 1940, to
growing public pressure on the Teleki government to
play an active part in the war. Arguing that even now 'a German victory' was
'by no means certain', Teleki, who had established
secret contacts with the British government, refused 'to place ourselves
completely and unreservedly on Germany's side'. He stepped up
military preparations with the aim of forcing Rumania
to return Transylvania. But since Rumania contributed significantly to Germany's oil requirements, and since there
was still a danger of British military intervention in the Balkans because of
the guarantee pact still in force with Britain, the German government
vetoed any unilateral Hungarian military action. Only when the sudden Soviet
ultimatum of 26 June 1940 forced the Bucharest government to cede Bessarabia
and the northern Bukovina, and King Carol terminated the assistance pact with
France and Great Britain, did Hitler and the Italian foreign minister, Ciano,
summon Teleki and Csdky
to Munich on 10 July, to give them permission to seek a negotiated solution
of the Transylvanian conflict with Rumania. Since, however, Hungary's
excessive demands ruled out a bilateral agreement, Ribbentrop and Ciano
decided to impose the Second Vienna Award on 30 August 1940, giving Hungary
northern Transylvania with its mainly Magyar and Szekler-inhabited
districts amounting to 43,103 square kilometres and
2.53 million inhabitants. In a special agreement Germany
obtained extended rights for the German minority in Hungary and, under the terms of
an economic agreement signed on 10 October 1940, larger consignments of
Hungarian agricultural produce.
At the same time, the German government,
which was dissatisfied with Teleki's vacillating
policy made renewed use of its sympathisers within Hungary to
secure a domestic and foreign policy which would be unreservedly sympathetic
to National Socialism. At the beginning of October Berlin encouraged Béla
Imrédy, who had risen rapidly to become the
spokesman of the government's increasingly stronger and bolder right-wing, to
defect from the Party of Hungarian Life. Joined by eighteen like-minded
colleagues, he founded the Party of Hungarian Revival (Magyar Megújulás Pártja) on 21
October 1940. Shortly before, on 29 September, negotiations on a merger
between County Pálffy's United National Socialist Party and the Arrow Cross
had been successfully concluded. Szálasi, released
early from prison, took over as party leader on 7 October and was soon in
control of more than 300,000 members. His new programme,
however, which alongside 'Hungarianism' proclaimed
the unity of nationalism and socialism and aimed at a 'seizure of power',
caused arguments and divisions which in turn provoked several splits in the
party and a steady decline in membership. With the support of German
intermediaries the Hungarian National Socialist Party was refounded
on 18 September 1941 and on 24 September fused with the Party of Hungarian
Revival to form a new Hungarian Revival and National Socialist Alliance led
by Jenő Rátz. Now
the German authorities could exert influence through a parliamentary pressure
group of over thirty-three deputies who ensured that Germany's demands were satisfied
up until the country's occupation by German troops on 19 March 1944. While Teleki attempted to counteract German pressure by
strengthening his position by a cabinet reshuffle, he could only curb the
growth of right-wing extremism by himself adopting increasingly right-wing
policies.
In foreign policy Teleki
had to surrender to growing Germanpressure and join
the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy
and Japan
on 20 November 1940. His attempts to exploit
what room was left for manoeuvre led to the signing
of a Treaty of Eternal Friendship between Hungary
and Yugoslavia
on 12 December 1940, which was formally ratified in February 1941. The new
appointment of the former ambassador to Bucharest,
László Bárdossy, to the
post of foreign minister on 4 February -- a man known to have little sympathy
for National Socialism -- could also be seen as a gesture intended to
demonstrate Hungary's
independence. But the fall of Cvetković's
pro-German Belgrade government on 27 March and
Hitler's decision to occupy Yugoslavia
in preparation for the attack on Russia
also demanded that Hungary
adopt a clear position. Whereas Horthy was blinded by the prospect of new
territorial gains and wanted to accede to German requests for the right of
passage for their troops, Teleki, after sounding
out the British government, decided to honour the
treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia
and maintain Hungary's
non-belligerent status. Since he could not, however, make his views prevail
against the opposition of the general staff, his cabinet colleagues and the
Regent, he shot himself during the night of 2-3 April 1941. Teleki, who had not wanted to place himself on 'the side
of the villains' had recognised
the consequences of the failure of his 'vacillating policy'. Hungary
could achieve revisionist demands which he himself had encouraged only if it
joined the Axis and violated the treaties it had signed. Subtle political
arguments and the hope that the British government, realising
Hungary's predicament,
would continue to show goodwill, could not conceal the real power-political
situation and the extent of the country's dependence on Germany. The new prime minister, Bárdossy, who was convinced of Germany's ultimate victory
and became increasingly subservient to Berlin as time went on, ordered the
Hungarian army to follow in the steps of the German Wehrmacht
on 11 April 1941 by invading Yugoslavia and occupying the Bácska
and parts of the Voivodina, a territory of 11,000
square kilometres with a mainly Serbian and Magyar
population, but also some Slovaks and Germans. Thus, within the space of two
years, supporting Germany
had enabled Hungary
to recover an area of 80,000 square kilometres with
5 million inhabitants, including over 2 million Magyars who had been living
under foreign rule since the signing of the Trianon
peace treaty. With a territory of 172,000 square kilometres
Hungary now comprised 52.9
per cent of the historic kingdom
of St Stephen. Of its
14,628 million citizens, 9.78 million were Catholic, 2.79 million were
Calvinist, 830,000 Lutheran and 725,000 Jewish. Having failed to learn any
lessons from its misguided nationalities policy before the First World
War, the government implemented new measures of coercion and magyarisation against the national minorities, whose
proportion of the total population had now grown to more than a quarter.
These policies soon provoked opposition, especially in newly incorporated
districts which remained under military rule. In particular, the
expropriation of non-Magyar property, undertaken on the pretext of redressing
the inequities of land reform measures carried out by the Rumanians and the Czechoslovaks, were especially bitterly opposed.
The new premier, Bárdossy,
who had a reputation for arrogance, pride but also intelligence and a certain
recklessness, resolutely believed that Hungary was destined to take a leading
role in the Danube region. He had little time to familiarise
himself with the work of his office before he was required to make some more
momentous decisions. News of the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 was welcomed by Hungary's
latently anti-Communist political leaders, especially since the military
estimated the length of the campaign at about six weeks, basing their
forecast on their experience of German Blitzkrieg tactics. Nevertheless, liberalconservative circles had reservations about
acceding to Germany's
request for the Hungarian army's direct participation in the Russian campaign.
But after the bombing of the towns of Kassa and Munkács, which was probably carried out by German
aircraft or, perhaps, by Slovakian pilots who had defected to the USSR, Bárdossy
violated the constitution and pushed through a declaration of war on the Soviet Union on 27 June 1941. However, only a force of some 40,000 men were initially sent to the
eastern front.
CLICK
ON YHE MAP TO ENLARGE
Source:
Darby, H.C. and Fullard, H. (Eds),
The New Cambridge Modern History Atlas, Cambridge, 1970
Hungary now had to place
its entire economy in the service of Germany's cause. Around half of
its oil production and 90 per cent of its bauxite extraction were henceforth
exported to the Reich. The Germans also benefited from Hungary's iron and steel
production, which was increased by 30 per cent, and from its increased coal
output. The expansion of Hungarian aircraft production and the manufacture of
vehicles and weapons similarly benefited the German armaments industry. The
export of cereals, oil seeds and meat produce had to be continually stepped up, with the result that Hungary experienced growing food
shortages from 1942 onwards, since a lack of artificial fertilisers
and insufficient agricultural machinery meant that the harvest yield could
not be rapidly increased. Since Germany was very slow in paying
its debts and stopped making any further payments after 1943, the economy could
be kept going only by another issue of paper currency, which in turn led to
high inflation. The money supply grew from 863 million pengé
in 1938 to 12.3 billion in 1944. Rising prices and shortages of food and
consumer goods for the civilian population led directly to a substantial
decline in living standards from 1942 onwards. Longer working hours,
increased production targets, the forced subordination of the trade unions to
state control, a ban on the free movement of labour
and the appointment of military commissars in the factories contributed to a
growing opposition which began to emerge in the course of the war and spilled
over to the peasants who were forced to produce higher quotas. As against the
agricultural sector, the 450,000 or more workers employed in heavy industry
and 400,000 or so small tradesmen absorbed an ever larger share of national
income exceeding 50 per cent.
Bárdossy's conscientious
compliance with German demands, which sprung from his belief in an ultimate
German victory, so skilfully promoted by Berlin,
led to a situation in the latter half of 1941 where relations between Germany
and Hungary ran 'perfectly and harmoniously', to use Ribbentrop's words. Hungary responded to Britain's long awaited declaration of war on 7
December with its own declaration of war on the USA on 13 December. When it
became clear after the German defeat before Moscow
that the war against the Soviet Union would continue for some time to come,
Ribbentrop and the Chief of the Wehrmacht High
Command, Wilhelm Keitel, forced Hungary to make a substantially
greater military contribution to the war during their visits in January 1942.
The Second Hungarian Army, which had around 200,000 combat troops, 50,000
occupation troops and a labour service corps of
40,000 men, had to reinforce certain sectors on the eastern front from the
spring of 1942 onwards. In addition, the Waffen-SS
was allowed to recruit volunteers from Hungary's German population. Hungary
thus found itself increasingly involved on Hitler's side during the Second World
War, the successful outcome of which began to look increasingly doubtful.
In order to lend greater stability to his
régime, Horthy had his son, István
(who died later on 20 August 1942 in an aircrash on
the eastern front) elected Vice-Regent on 19 February and moved closer to
those advocating closer ties with the Allies. Bárdossy's
inability to withstand German pressure and flattery also caused the Regent to
nominate a prime minister whom he found personally more acceptable. Miklós Kállay, appointed to the
post on 9 March 1942, was a wealthy landowner and agricultural expert. He
came from one of Hungary's
oldest aristocratic families and had been minister of agriculture under Gömbös, but because of his preference for Bethlen's politics had already retired from public life
in 1935. His reservations towards National Socialism, both in its German and
Hungarian forms, were well known, with the result that he was expected to
pursue a policy which would distance Hungary more from the Third
Reich. Resuming Count Pál Teleki's
double-edged policy, Kállay moved against both the
so-called 'German Party' and the political Left. He also restored clandestine
contacts with the Allied governments. The former chairman of the
Smallholders' Party, Tibor Eckhardt,
who had emigrated to the USA
and placed himself at the head of a movement for an independent Hungary
(Független Magyarország),
tried to make his country's difficult predicament comprehensible to the
Allied politicians. His supporters' efforts to transform the Smallholders'
Party into a western-style bourgeois-democratic party, which induced many
intellectuals to join, facilitated increased cooperation with the Budapest government after Stalingrad.
Despite these attempts to maintain a circumspect distance from Germany, Kállay's
period in office failed to witness any significant reduction in Hungary's dependence on Hitler's Germany,
although growing opposition to German domination was encouraged and
cautiously promoted by the country's highest authorities.
As early as the autumn of 1941 anti-German
demonstrations were held to coincide with important national festivities. The
founding of the Hungarian Historial Memorial
Committee in February 1942 saw the creation of a coordinating authority. On
15 March, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848-49
War of Independence, a crowd of 8,000 people gathered at the Petöfi Monument in Budapest
to demand an 'independent democratic Hungary'. When the insignificant
Hungarian Communist Party, which operated underground in Budapest,
received fresh impetus from Germany's
attack on Russia
and tried to participate in the growing opposition movement through
sporadically published newspaper and leaflets, the police acted decisively,
arresting 500 activists. The party's leaders, Ferenc
Rózsa and Zótan Schönherz were executed. Following the dissolution of the
Third International in May 1943, János Kádár, who took over as First Party Secretary in December
1942, also had to order that the party officially cease its activities,
although it continued to operate as the Peace Party (Békepárt).
From now on the régime's left-wing critics were frequently forced into newly
formed punishment batallions.
These 'labour
companies' had already been used to solve the 'Jewish question', which had
been resolutely insisted upon by the Third Reich. As a result of German
pressure, a third anti-Jewish law was passed in 1941 which, despite protests
from the Christian churches, led to even greater discrimination against Hungary's
787,000 citizens of Jewish origin, including 725,000 professing Jews. The new
legislation prohibited marriage between Christians and Jews and prepared the
way for the exclusion of more than 80,000 Jewish employees from state
employment and the country's economic life. In August 1941, 12,000 Jews, who
had been settled mainly in the Carpatho-Ukraine
area, were, on account of their ' ambiguous' citizenship, evicted across the
border into Germanoccupied Poland and murdered. Later
deportations on a smaller scale may well have involved a further 10,000 to
15,000 Jews. When, however, large numbers of Serbs and Jews were massacred in
a pogrom in the Novi Sad
area in January 1942, public outrage was so great that Horthy and Bárdossy had to order a formal investigation. Those held
mainly responsible by the inquiry escaped punishment by fleeing to Germany
which refused to extradite them. From 1940 onwards, Jewish males eligible for
military service were forcibly conscripted into 'labour
companies' which amounted to little more than mobile concentration camps in
which they were subjected to brutal treatment. Whereas Jewish women, children
and old men were left to continue living in increasingly difficult, but still
comparatively tolerable circumstances, German pressure grew on Kállay's government to agree to German plans for a 'final
solution'. Horthy was initially able to avoid fulfilling Hitler's and
Ribbentrop's threatening demands, made in Klessheim
on 17 April 1943, for Hungary's Jews to be sent to concentration camps or
liquidated in the mass extermination camps in Poland. But the German
authorities, through SS Standartenführer Mayer,
subsequently established direct contacts with the 'German Party' and the more
prominent antisemitic organisations
in order to prepare the way for the 'final solution', as envisaged by Berlin.
From the summer of 1942 onwards, the Second
Hungarian Army supported the northern wing of the German advance towards Stalingrad. Its almost complete annihilation at Voronezh on 12 January
1943 was of decisive importance for the future course of Hungarian politics.
Prior to the defeat 7,000 men had already frozen to death. Heavy losses
suffered in smaller engagements with the enemy had sapped the soldiers'
morale and, because the German High Command prevented a timely retreat,
40,000 men were killed and 70,000 taken prisoner during the Soviet
counteroffensive. Convinced that the Hungarian troops had been senselessly
sacrificed by the Germans and that the Axis had already lost the war, Kállay's government stepped up its contacts with the Allies
via its accredited diplomats in neutral countries. In Istanbul,
Madrid, Stockholm
and Lisbon they attempted to discover which
position and role the Allies were prepared to grant Hungary in the Danube
region after the war had ended. At the same time, they hoped to receive
assurances that Hungary's
revisionist gains would be recognised. After the
fall of Mussolini on 25 July 1943, the Hungarians stepped up their efforts to
create the preconditions for Hungary
to get out of the war at the earliest opportunity. In negotations
with the British Government, held after the signing of the armistice with Italy on 3
September 1943, Kállay agreed to order the
withdrawal of Hungarian troops from the eastern front, which were now engaged
only in fighting partisans. He also agreed to reduce the armaments supplies
to Germany, to make
personnel changes in the general staff and introduce social reforms in the
long term, if in return Hungary
were given guarantees that the territorial status quo would be maintained and
no further conditions imposed in a subsequent peace treaty.
However, influential groups within Hungary's ruling circles, who continued to
believe that Germany
would ultimately win the war, rejected this programme.
Kállay, it is true, no longer had to take notice of
parliament whose proceedings had been suspended indefinitely on 4 May 1943.
However, the Arrow Cross movement, which had been under pressure from the
government and the Left for advocating a closer association with Germany,
could count on the support of the right wing of the government party and Imrédy's National Socialist Party Alliance. Its officers,
ex-gentry bureaucrats and members of the bourgeoisie who had profited from
the economic elimination of the Jews supported continuing the fight against Bolshevism
and increasing Hungary's
contribution to Germany's
war effort. From late 1943 onwards, the Arrow Cross established closer
contacts with the German authorities and, helped by Horthy's hesitation,
offered Hitler the possibility of preparing operation 'Margarethe',
i.e. Hungary's occupation by the Wehrmacht.
Although the Germans did not rule out a military solution, they hoped to
maintain a semblance of legality when taking over control of the country.
Horthy, who was again summoned to Klessheim on 17
March 1944, had to agree to dismiss Kállay and
appoint a right-wing puppet government under Hungary's
long-serving ambassador to Berlin,
the narrow-minded Lieutenant-General Döme Sztójay, in which representatives of the Nationalist
Socialist Party Alliance would occupy the key posts. On 19 March, eight
German divisions invaded the country 'at the request of the Hungarian
government', encountering no opposition. The SS and the Gestapo who followed
closely on their heels immediately began their activities. SS Standartenffihrer Dr Edmund Veesenmayer
took over the German embassy in Budapest as
'The German Reich's Plenipotentiary in Hungary'.
First of all, the opponents of National
Socialism, including Communists, leading officials of the Smallholders'
Party, Social Democrats, journalists, academics and even close colleagues of
Horthy were arrested and sent to German concentration camps. With the help of
the Arrow Cross and the willing assistance of the Hungarian gendarmerie, over
450,000 people, including almost all of Hungary's provincial Jews, were
deported under Eichmann's supervision to the German extermination camps in
Poland, despite protests by Church leaders and Horthy's hesitant attempts to
halt the deportations. Only 200,000 or so Jews herded together in the Budapest ghetto were
provisionally spared liquidation. The still relatively free press was banned
and only a few newspapers propagating National Socialist aims allowed to appear. The country's economic resources were now
openly and shamelessly plundered. On 24 August 1944 a government decree
banned all political parties.
But opposition to Sztójay's
new policy of collaboration steadily grew. Horthy, encouraged by the D-Day
landings in Normandy, the rapid advance of
the Red Army and Rumania's
defection to the Allies on 23 August, still hoped to ditch the Axis and join
the Allies. As a first step in this direction he dismissed the compliant
German puppet. Sztójay, on 24 August after the
government had been seriously weakened by Imrédy's
supporters withdrawing their support on 7 August in protest at the
expropriation of Jewish businesses by the SS. General Géza
Lakatos, whom Horthy trusted, took over the
government on 29 August and immediately tried to establish contact with
Allies, but with little success. When the Red Army crossed the Hungarian
border on 23 September 1944 a delegation was sent to Moscow to enter into secret negotiations
for an armistice and an agreement was reached on 11 October which stipulated
that Hungarian troops were in future to be deployed against the German
occupation forces.
Blindly trusting in the loyalty of his
generals, Horthy wanted simply to announce an armistice and Hungary's
change of allegiance without any adequate, political, social or military
preparations. But when he ordered the Hungarian troops to stop fighting in a
radio broadcast of 15 October, without at the same time ordering any action
against the German armed forces, the occupying troops and the Arrow Cross had
already taken their own countermeasures. Many officers who had been trained
in Germany
and instilled with National Socialist values were not prepared to make common
cause with the Soviets. The Arrow Cross and their right-wing sympathisers had taken control of vital key positions,
particularly since 19 March 1944. The lumpenproletariat now saw its chance of settling
scores with the old system, but the underground opposition was still not
sufficiently united to be able to put up any active resistance. The hastily
deployed 24th German Wehrmacht Panzer Division
occupied the Royal Palace in Budapest and by threatening to execute Horthy's
younger son, who had been kidnapped and taken to Mauthausen
by a special unit under Skorzeny, forced the Regent
to withdraw his announcement and appoint Ferenc Szálasi as prime minister. German units and armed Arrow
Cross squads had in the meantime occupied public buildings in the capital
without encountering any resistance. The Hungarian army also announced its
allegiance to the new rulers and Horthy was placed under custody before being
taken to Germany.
The new 'leader of the nation', Szálasi, and his supporters established a reign of terror
in the few months they were able to hold onto power. This terror was directed
against the new government's political opponents and Jews who had not yet
been deported. During the winter 1944-45 over 80,000 Jews, mainly older
people and children, were driven into concentration
camps in forced marches and perished. Whilst most of Hungary's provincial Jews fell
victim to the extermination measures carried out by the Germans and the Arrow
Cross, almost 100,000 people did, at least, manage to escape death in the Budapest ghetto. As a
result of the régime's arbitrary rule and savage reprisals, tens of thousands
of Hungarian intellectuals, civil servants, clergymen and workers lost their
lives. 'Total mobilisation' meant that all citizens
between the ages of 12 and 70 were forced into labour
service or military service. But, as defeatism and desertion spread through
the Hungarian army, it proved impossible to keep the promise to Hitler to
place 1.5 million soldiers at his disposal. Attempts at the forced evacuation
of the civilian population and the holding up of the Russians' steady advance
by a scorched earth policy provoked growing opposition and a complete
rejection of the barbaric excesses of the Arrow Cross cohorts. On 13 February
1945, Budapest,
largely destroyed after bitter street fighting, fell to the Red Army. On 4
April 1945, the last Wehrmacht units left the
country which was placed under Soviet military occupation. Szálasi's government and other leading personalities of
the Horthy era had meanwhile given themselves up to American troops in Austria.
The Hungarian underground opposition
contributed little to the military defeat of National Socialism. It was not
until July 1943 that the Smallholders' Party, whose 'bourgeois section'
included Communist sympathisers alongside its
anti-German and radical intellectual elements, suppressed its right wing and
adopted Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky's
policy of working more closely with the Social Democrats and the Communists.
A memorandum to the Kállay government on 31 July
had demanded an end to hostilities and a volte
face in foreign policy to
join the Allies even at the price of armed conflict with the Third Reich. At
the beginning of August 1943 a programme of action
was formally concluded with the Social Democrats and on 11 September a joint
declaration issued condemning the government's continuing prosecution of the
war. The various opposition groups, weakened by the harsh repressive measures
introduced during the German occupation and deprived of their leaders most of
whom had been arrested by the Gestapo, joined forces in May 1944 in the
Communist-inspired Hungarian Front (Magyar Front). They demanded a 'new
struggle of liberation' against the German occupation forces and their
collaborators and called for the creation of a new democratic Hungary after
the war. The Communist Party ( Kommunista Párt),
reconstituted on 12 September 1944, signed an agreement with the Social
Democrats on 10 October which proposed the creation of a united front and the
merger of both party organisations to form a united
revolutionary and socialist workers' party after the war. The representatives
of the Hungarian Front, who were informed by Horthy of plans for an armistice
on 11 October, were able to create a coordinating body with the founding of
the Committee of Liberation of the Hungarian National Uprising ( Magyar
Nemzeti Felkelés Felszabaditó Bizottsága) on
11 November 1944. Although immediately weakened by the arrest and execution
of its leaders, it called for an armed uprising in the German-occupied
territories, which took the form of limited isolated partisan actions and
attacks on German military installations.
The course taken by Hungary's post-war development was decided in December 1944 in Hungary's
second biggest town, Szeged,
which had been occupied by the Red Army in September 1944. The Social
Democratic Party, National Peasants' Party. Bourgeois-Democratic Party, Communists
and trade-union representatives formed the Hungarian National Independence
Front (Magyar Nemzeti Függetlenségi
Front) on 2 December. Its programme called for
an immediate break with the Third Reich and wholehearted support for the Red
Army. It also demanded a thorough democratisation
of public life, a radical land reform to benefit the smallholders and the
comprehensive nationalisation of major industries
and banks. In the elections held in the eastern part of the country under the
auspices of the Red Army the Communists succeeded in winning 71 of the 230
contested seats. The Independent Party of Smallholders won 55 seats, the
Social Democrats 38 and the National Peasants' Party 16. The provisional
National Assembly, constituted in Debrecen
on 22 December 1944, entrusted Colonel Béla Dálnoki Miklós, who had gone
over to the Russians on 15 October, with the formation of a government. The
new government, which consisted of three generals, three Communists
(agriculture, industry and transport, social welfare), two Social Democrats
(justice, economics), two Smallholders (foreign affairs and finance) and one
representative of the Peasants' Party (interior), revoked all treaties
concluded with the Third Reich and declared war on Germany on 28 December. The
armistice, which the Hungarians signed with the Allies in Moscow
on 20 January 1945, fixed Hungary's
borders as they had existed on 31 December 1937, thus renouncing the
territorial gains achieved as a result of the Vienna Awards and subsequent
military occupation. It was also obliged to play an active role in the war
against Germany and pay
reparations for damage inflicted by the Hungarian army to the sum of 200
million dollars together with compensation amounting to 100 million US
dollars' worth of arms deliveries to both Czechoslovakia
and Yugoslavia.
The Allied Control Commission for Hungary, which was chaired by a
representative of the Soviet High Command, was to monitor the disbanding of
fascist organisations and the bringing of war
criminals to justice. The most urgent practical political tasks were to
create a functioning administration, restore public order, feed the
population, reconstruct the worst war damage and introduce new reforms. The
Supreme National Council, formed on 26 January,
consisting of the President of the National Assembly, the prime minister and
a delegate from the Political Committee of the provisional parliament took
over the duties of the head of state. Civilian government was extended to the
entire country only after the final withdrawal of German troops at the
beginning of April 1945.
Hungary entered the
post-war period with a difficult historical legacy. It was still not easy to recognise what effects the Red Army's 'liberation' of the
country would have on its political, social and economic structures. However,
broad sections of the population recognised that it
was imperative to eradicate the vestiges of the Horthy era, so strongly
shaped by semi-feudal traditions rooted in the nineteeenth
century, and to give Hungary
a modern political and social structure. Since memories of Béla Kun's Soviet dictatorship of a quarter of a century
previously were still alive, there was little desire on the part of most
people for Socialist or even revolutionary Communist changes. But they also
had no wish to see a restoration of the Horthy system which had rested on the
power of the large landowners and urban capitalists, supported by the civil
service, the judiciary and the army -- a system which had held on to power
relatively easily through its manipulation of elections and exploitation of
revisionist propaganda. Hungary,
once more restored to the frontiers laid down in the Trianon
Treaty of 1920 and without hope of restoring the historic Kingdom of St Stephen
had once again been confined to its territorial heartland. The country, which
had suffered badly from the economic effects of the war and the fighting
which had taken place on its territory, had to try as best it could to minimise the consequences of being involved in Germany's
catastrophic defeat. The rapid collapse of the Allies' wartime coalition, the
consolidation of the opposing post-war power blocs and the start of the Cold
War meant that Hungary's
path into the post-war world was to prove much more difficult than the
country's patriots and democrats expected as they set about energetically
rebuilding after the collapse.
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