Hungary 1. Introduction
Hungary's support for the Axis can only be understood in the light of its experiences at the end of the
First World War. By the Treaty of Trianon (see
Versailles settlement) in 1920, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Austria. Before 1914 its population was almost 21 million, of whom roughly half were ethnic Magyars; after Trianon the population was fewer than 8 million, and the boundaries of 1920 stranded some 3 million Magyars within the successor states. Rightly or wrongly, the affront offered to Hungary's national sentiment meant that it was almost inevitably inclined to side with whichever great power promised help in revising the treaty.
There were other factors which made alliance with the Axis likely. Hungary's brief experience of communist dictatorship, the Soviet Republic of 1919, left a deep-rooted fear of Bolshevism amongst the upper and middle classes, which reinforced traditional fears of Russian pan-slavism. The prominent role played by Jews in the Republic also fuelled
anti-Semitism, in a country where Jews were already highly visible, numbering over half a million even after Trianon. Some 2–300,000 refugees from the successor states flooded the country after 1920, most of them middle class, nationalist, and embittered; they formed a fertile breeding-ground for a new type of right-wing radicalism. Hungary's sizeable minority of ethnic Germans (see
Volksdeutsche), and their preponderance in the officer corps, engendered a sympathy for Germany which was shared by many of the right-wing radical movements.
After 1933 Hungarian governments made clear their interest in association with Nazi Germany. The first fruit of this policy was the cession of southern Slovakia to Hungary in the wake of the
Munich agreement in 1938, followed by the reoccupation of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939, on the final partition of Czechoslovakia. In 1940, under German pressure, Romania returned northern Transylvania to Hungary. Henceforward Hungarian leaders were mesmerized by the fear that, if they did not co-operate with the Germans, Romania might be allowed to take back this territory. It was to guard against this possibility that Hungary joined the
Tripartite Pact in November 1940. And in April 1941, when Hitler launched his invasion of Yugoslavia across Hungary, the latter was rewarded with additional Magyar-populated territory (see Map 49).
These territorial gains gave Hungary a powerful reason for throwing in its lot with Germany when Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941 (see
BARBAROSSA). In addition, the conviction was widespread that it was in Hungary's interests for Germany to eliminate the joint threat of pan-slavism and
communism, and that Germany was bound to win. The official pretext for Hungary's declaration of war on 27 June, however, was the mysterious bombing of Kassa in northern Hungary, which has not been adequately explained to this day. The Hungarian government claimed the bombing was the work of the Soviet Air Force; but no convincing reason has ever been offered as to why the Soviets, then under attack by the Germans, should gratuitously bomb Hungary. The general assumption was that the aircraft involved were disguised German machines, although no evidence has emerged to prove this. The fact remains that it was the Germans who stood to gain most by forcing Hungary into the war, since they thus ensured access to the oilfields of neighbouring Romania, already a German ally.
2. Domestic life and economy
Hungary between the wars was still a predominantly agricultural economy, with 55.8% of the population in 1920 deriving its living from the land. It was also a class-bound, inegalitarian society, dominated by a numerous gentry, where over half the arable land belonged to some 10,000 landowners. These large estates were dependent on the labour of the 1.5 million landless agricultural workers, many of them living in conditions of extreme poverty. In the towns the middle classes and, to a certain extent, the growing industrial proletariat, had profited from Hungary's post-war reconstruction boom, only to experience renewed economic difficulties in the 1930s. This insecurity increased the appeal of the right-radical parties.
Traditional markets and resources were lost at the end of the First World War, although much of the agricultural and industrial wealth was retained. The country was heavily dependent on exports of grains, especially wheat, and was drawn irresistibly into the German economic sphere of interest. By 1939 Germany took 52.2% of Hungary's exports, and provided 52.5% of its imports, reflecting the growing interest of the Nazis in south-eastern Europe generally, as a source of foodstuffs and
raw materials as well as a market for German manufactures. During the war the principal Hungarian exports to Germany were livestock, wheat, corn and flax, bauxite, manganese ore, oil, and charcoal. In addition Hungarian industry produced ammunition and, from 1941, aircraft, including Messerschmitt 109s and 210s. Exports of wheat fell off substantially after 1941, however, owing to a succession of poor harvests. The real economic surprise of the war was Hungary's emergence as an important oil producer. From the start of commercial exploitation, in 1938, production rose rapidly: in 1942, Germany imported 125,418 tons from Hungary; in 1943, 203,629 tons. As the war turned against the Reich, Hungary became, next to Romania, its most important source; this fact influenced the Nazi occupation of the country in March 1944, and Hitler's determination to hold on there for as long as possible in 1944–5.
German occupation, paradoxically, limited Hungary's value as an economic partner. The costs of occupation, mass deportation of Jews (see
Final Solution), and intensive Allied bombing (see
strategic air offensives, 2) all reduced production. From October 1944 the country itself was a theatre of war, and by April 1945 almost 40% of the national wealth, in the shape of crops, rolling-stock, infrastructure, housing, and so on, had been destroyed.
3. Government
Hungary was a kingdom without a king. In 1920 the Hungarian parliament repealed all legislation passed since the revolution of 1918, thus effectively restoring the monarchy. The Habsburg royal family, however, was not welcomed back; instead a Regency under
Admiral Horthy was installed. Horthy, as
de facto head of state, had wide powers. He was C-in-C of the armed forces, whose officers swore an oath of personal allegiance to him. He appointed and dismissed the prime minister, could dissolve parliament, and had a veto over legislation. Horthy's position during the war was crucial since, although deeply conservative, he resisted until quite late in the day an openly fascist government.
Politics in inter-war Hungary revolved around the struggle between the conservative Unitary Party and the rising right-radical movements. The system set up in 1919 gave only 27.5% of the population the vote, there was open balloting in rural constituencies, and the party in power was more or less enabled to fix elections. Dissent was tolerated, but the government was essentially oligarchical. By the late 1930s governments were an uneasy mix of conservatives and right-radicals. In response to pressure from extreme right-wingers, such as Ferenc Szálasi's Arrow Cross movement, attempts were made at land redistribution, anti-Semitic laws were passed limiting the property Jews could hold, and closer relations were sought with Germany. Subservience to Germany, in turn, made it even harder to ignore the views of the Arrow Cross, after 1939 the second largest party in parliament and the openly pro-German officer corps.
The Arrow Cross was only the most prominent of a number of such factions, all openly fascist and drawing support from a wide social spectrum including the industrial working class. Arrow Cross ideology, like Nazism, relied on an authoritarian, chauvinist populism, appealing to Hungarians' yearning for a ‘just’ society, but also to primitive notions of an order based on the power of the strongest or, in Szálasi's words, a ‘brutally realistic étatism’. Since Szálasi regarded the Hungarians, with the Germans and Japanese, as one of the world's three chosen peoples, it was with full Arrow Cross backing that the government of László Bárdossy ( April 1941– March 1942) found itself forced into declaring war on the USSR. By December 1941 Hungary was also at war with the UK and the USA.
War with the western Allies represented a defeat for Horthy and the conservatives, who were convinced it lessened Germany's chances of defeating what they regarded as the real enemy, the USSR. Bárdossy's successor, Miklós Kállay ( March 1942– March 1944) therefore pursued a ‘see-saw policy’ which sought to limit Hungary's military involvement, without provoking German retaliation. After the military disaster of
Stalingrad in January 1943, Hungary was briefly permitted to take a back seat on the Eastern Front, but it was no easier to resist German demands for raw materials and for further restrictive measures against the Jews. Kállay's inconclusive negotiations with the western Allies for Hungarian withdrawal from the war merely confirmed the suspicions of Hitler, who was kept informed by pro-German figures in Kállay's own cabinet. On 19 March 1944 German forces occupied the country. Horthy was browbeaten into appointing an unambiguously pro-German government under General Döme Sztójay, and a Reich plenipotentiary was installed to ensure Hungarian compliance.
For several months this puppet government strove to satisfy its masters. Anti-Nazi parties were suppressed, and a new army sent to the front. Deportation of the Jews, hitherto resisted, was now implemented under
SS supervision: between March and July 1944 some 400,000 people, mostly from outside Budapest, were sent to
Auschwitz. The realization of what was happening to these victims, coupled with Romania's switch from the Axis to the Allied cause, appears to have led Horthy to make a stand. The deportations were stopped, and a new government under General Géza Lakatos appointed on 29 August. Most significantly, Horthy finally accepted that
armistice negotiations would have to be conducted with the USSR, within whose sphere of influence Hungary fell. The Hungarian–Soviet preliminary armistice concluded on 11 October, and Horthy's broadcast announcing it four days later, were the signal for a Nazi-inspired coup (see
Skorzeny). Horthy was removed and an Arrow Cross government under Szálasi installed. The Szálasi regime, however, could do little to influence events, and after the fall of
Budapest in February 1945 its writ hardly ran beyond the German-occupied west of Hungary. In the meantime a Soviet-sponsored provisional government had already been formed at Debrecen on 21– 22 December.
4. Defence forces and civil defence
It was not until mid-1942, with the regular forces committed to the Eastern Front and the government obsessed by the fear of a Romanian attack, that plans were laid for a Home Army of some 220,000 men. Such plans suffered from the same problem afflicting the front-line units, the shortage of manpower and above all
matériel. The Germans, moreover, while agreeing to make good Hungary's equipment losses at the front, refused to supply the Home Army. Their suspicions had some foundation, since the Home Army rapidly became the Hungarian government's excuse for not sending more troops to the front. The result was that neither the defence force nor the front line was adequately equipped. There is no evidence that the Home Army played any serious role in stemming the Soviet offensives of 1944–5.
5. Armed forces
Despite rearmament Hungary was hopelessly ill-equipped in 1941. The regular army consisted of 9 army corps, comprising 27 brigades or light divisions (the terms were interchangeable in Hungarian usage) of two regiments each. Since the effective strength of a regiment was 4,000 men, total infantry strength was 216,000. There were also two cavalry brigades and two motorized brigades. None of these units was prepared for a modern war. The infantry relied on rifles which frequently jammed, and lacked anti-tank guns. Tanks to begin with were Italian Ansaldo light armoured vehicles, with fixed turrets. Later Hungary produced its own Toldi and Turán tanks, but these were never up to date; in 1941 only 190 were in service, and only 440 were made by 1944. There were hardly enough vehicles for the motorized brigades, let alone the whole army; even in 1943 the army had only a third of the motor transport it needed. Of an air force, on paper, of 302 machines, only 189 were operational in March 1941, and were in any case obsolete.
The so-called Mobile Corps, under General Ferenc Szombathelyi, accompanied the German Seventeenth Army on its advance into the Soviet Union in July and August 1941. It was only partially motorized, being made up of the two motorized brigades, a cavalry brigade and ten Alpine battalions, six of which were mounted on bicycles. Partly because the Red Army was continually retreating, the Mobile Corps reached the River Donets before being withdrawn at the insistence of the Hungarian government, having taken casualties of under 1,000 men. Lightly armed units were retained behind the front to deal with partisans.
German pressure led to the commitment of a much larger force in 1942. The Second Army, commanded by General Gusztáv Jány, comprised three infantry corps (the 3rd, 4th, and 7th) and the 1st Armoured Corps. Including the (mainly Jewish) forced labour battalions of perhaps as many as 50,000, it totalled some 250,000. The Second Army took part in the offensive of General Maximilian von Weich's Army Group B in the Ukraine between 28 June and mid-September, reaching the Don and suffering losses of 21,621 officers and men. It was already apparent that both infantry and armoured units were vastly outclassed by the Soviet forces, which resulted in a pervasive sense of inferiority and loss of morale.
In the aftermath of Stalingrad the Second Hungarian Army was effectively destroyed. Stationed opposite the Soviet Don
front to the south of Voronezh, it was attacked on 12 January 1943 by forces three times as strong, and overrun within a matter of days. There were no reserves, and the already depleted Hungarian light divisions were probably extended over too long a sector for their numbers. But the greatest single cause of the Voronezh disaster was undoubtedly the inadequacy of Hungarian equipment. Despite urgent pleas for anti-tank guns in particular, the German High Command had only begun to remedy these deficiencies, and the Hungarians still lacked the heavy-calibre pieces needed to stop Soviet armour. It is hard not to conclude that the Germans themselves were largely responsible for the failure of their allies. Casualty figures are still disputed, but vary between 106,000 and 190,000 including the majority of the forced labour battalions, who perished in the retreat.
Voronezh confirmed the Hungarian government's desire to keep its army out of the fighting as far as possible, and throughout 1943 the Hungarian presence at the front was confined to nine light divisions used as occupation forces. The German occupation of March 1944 was in part designed to end this reluctance, as the Soviets advanced westwards. Reorganized in larger, ‘mixed’ divisions of 15,000 men, the Hungarian regular Army made what was in effect its last stand between April and October 1944. By the end of July the Soviets had reached the Carpathians; by 22 September they had broken through into the Hungarian Plain. The confusion surrounding the Arrow Cross coup in October did little to encourage the front-line troops, and there was a steady increase in defections with, on occasion, whole battalions pulling out of the line and simply melting away. The units still fighting now did so under close German supervision, and of the new units planned by the Szálasi regime only the ‘St László’ Division and the Hunyadi SS Armoured Grenadier Division ever saw action. After the fall of Budapest, some Hungarian forces retreated into Austria with the Germans, but for most the war was over by mid-February 1945.
6. Intelligence
Hungarian intelligence was served by the counter-intelligence department of the ministry of defence, and the State Security Centre of the interior ministry. Neither office seems to have made any significant contribution to the Axis war effort; on the contrary, the Germans mistrusted them. The most notable achievement of military intelligence was an entirely negative one: a report at the end of 1942, the eve of Voronezh, concluded that the Soviet Army was still incapable of mounting any large-scale offensive.
7. Merchant marine
Hungary's numerous river craft, especially oil tankers, were of strategic importance, as shown when the Germans removed 487 of the 489 vessels available in the winter of 1944–5. There were also, in 1941, six Hungarian ocean-going ships, two of which were chartered by the Luftwaffe, and four leased as supply ships in the
Black Sea.
8. Resistance
Serious resistance in Hungary only emerged in the summer of 1944. Political opposition was in any case muted, and the few anti-war demonstrations were dealt with by mass arrests. The most likely focus of resistance, the Communist Party, was banned and, even disguised as the Peace Party after July 1943, most of its activity consisted of distributing leaflets. Britain's
SOE made contact with the Kállay government in March 1943, but the results were disappointing. To requests for industrial sabotage, the Hungarians replied that this would only provoke a German occupation. The occupation, when it came, made genuine resistance only marginally more popular. SOE sent a total of six missions into Hungary after March 1944, but all were either captured or forced to pull out. Partisan activity sprang up on a piecemeal basis, with some Hungarians joining the rising in Slovakia in July 1944, or liaising with
Tito in the south. It was not until early November that a multi-party Committee of Liberation was formed to organize armed resistance; this was promptly betrayed to the
Gestapo and most of its members arrested. Thereafter Hungarian resistance made little practical contribution to German defeat.
9. Culture
The counter-revolution of 1919, and the political oligarchy which followed it, led many of Hungary's most gifted citizens to emigrate. Those who remained often retreated into a world of fantasy or symbolism, such as the first writer of psychological novels in Hungarian, Sándor Marai. Poetry, in the hands of Árpád Tóth or Mihály Babits, became more a matter of form than of intelligibility. Writers of novels set in a fabulous world of tycoons and big business, remote from contemporary Hungarian reality, were the most enduringly popular. Socialists who stressed the struggle of the poor, like the poet Attila József, were a minority voice. So too were the glorifiers of rural values, like the novelist Zsigmond Móricz or the explicitly anti-Semitic Dezsö Szabó. Gyula Illyés, whose classic
People of the Puszta appeared in 1936, saw the rural masses as the true heart of Hungary, the improvement of whose condition was essential for democratic reform.
Popular music was a mix of gypsy tunes, Pest operetta, jazz, and whatever sentimental ditty was the rage. Artistically Béla Bartók (who emigrated in 1940) and Zoltán Kodály dominated the scene. Kodály's work was largely an adaptation of traditional folk music, as in his
Marosszék Dances ( 1944). Bartók, while also relying on folk themes, was more modern in his treatment, seeing in what he preferred to call ‘peasant music’ a primitive beauty transcending national boundaries. The fine arts reflected the chasm between establishment and artistic community. Some of the most famous Hungarian artists, such as the photographer-painter László Moholy Nagy or the painter Lajos Tihanyi, lived abroad. Those favoured by the regime still tended towards the neo-Gothic in architecture and sculpture, and an academic historicism in painting. Only towards the end of the inter-war period, after some of the émigrés returned, could the modernist influences apparent in Hungarian art before the First World War begin to reassert themselves.
Ian Armour
Bibliography
Fenyo, D. , Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary: German-Hungarian Relations, 1941–1944 (New Haven, Conn., 1972).
Juhász, Gyula , Hungarian Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (Budapest, 1979).
Macartney, C. A. , October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary 1929–1945, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1956–7).
