Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

RESISTANCE AT HOME AND THE MINORITIES

Until the summer of 1941, the war between Hitler and Stalin, the Slovak Communists were not enthusiastic at all about the restoration of a Czechoslovak state. In fact, they were spreading anti-Czech slogans and propagated the idea of a separate Soviet Slovakia.¹ Also, there was no mention in communist circles of an eventual postwar punishment of the --Hungarian minority, let alone of the expulsion. At that time, Communist internationalism, class solidarity and tolerance towards the nationalities, was to a certain extent in harmony with the initial "democratic" phase of the Western exiles. This harmony, however, was not a matter of agreement between home front and exiles. Rather, it was the result of international constellations which affected the same way both the exiles and the home fronts, at least as far as the question of minorities was concerned. In this period, before the summer of 1941, Benes in exile occasionally promised more rights to the national minorities than they had enjoyed before Munich in 1938. And such promises actually matched the internationalist tone of underground Communist propaganda. For instance on July 15, 1940 Hlas L'udu wrote: "We protest most energetically against the persecution of the Hungarian workers in our country, just as the Hungarian Communist Party objects to the persecution of the Slovaks in Horthy's Hungary."²

In the wake of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 the Slovak Communists promptly changed their attitude. They accepted the theory of Czechoslovakia's legal continuity and gradually they changed their views on the German and Hungarian minority questions as well. The changes corresponded to the direction nationality policy took among the exiles and also reflected the impact exile propaganda had on the home front, especially following the Allied recognition of the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile in London.

An important tactical goal of exile politics for gaining mass support at home was the formulation of common postwar national objectives, attractive to both Czechs and Slovaks, such as: recovery of Slovakia's lost territories from Hungary, elimination of German power in the Czech lands and, after 1943, the concept of a homogeneous Slav nation-state, which en-tailed the expulsion of the Hungarians as well. An ideological compromise on the Benes interpretation of a centralist Czechoslovak concept was necessary in order to gain Slovak and Communist support in the common struggle. This need was clearly expressed in a letter written by the Communist V. Kopecky to J. Sverma in Moscow, on August 5, 1942: Military mobilization against the Germans will be more successful at home [in Slovakia] if carried out on a Slovak basis, rather than on a Czechoslovak basis. If done on a Slovak basis we may be able to include even the L'udik elements followers of Hlinka and Tiso] in the united struggle against the Germans and the Hungarians . . ."³ This tactic proved fruitful in subsequent struggles, especially during the Slovak uprising in 1944.

From available domestic documents, it is not possible to reconstruct in all its details the evolution of the anti-Hungarian stance of the resistance movement nor its ideological or psychological motivations. A record of early manifestations of anti-Hungarian attitudes at home can be found mainly in the archives of the Czechoslovak government in London. The exiles have carefully appraised the desires, proposals, and reports received from the home front. There were often errors in their interpretations because the London exiles were obviously unable to evaluate the relative weight of resistance sources of information. Those who wrote the largest number of letters were deemed the strongest. The Communists, who remained relatively quiet, were underestimated. Half a dozen nationalist individuals reporting regularly were mistaken for a serious force, but Communist revolutionary manifestations founded on internationalist class struggle were barely noticed. All letters received from home were systematically collected by Jaromír Smutny, Benes's Presidential Cabinet Secretary.

Not until after the battle of Stalingrad did the correspondents from the home front begin to express views on the Hungarian question in the spirit of radical postwar retaliation. "Everyone is anti-German, and of course, anti-Hungarian as well,"⁵ wrote one correspondent whom Smutny identifies only as "a participant of the Slovak resistance movement,, though the letter came from Geneva. The anonymous letter's observations are debatable and the reference to "everyone" is certainly an exaggeration. Most likely, the letter carne from intellectual circles for at that time, the letter was dated March 9, 1943, anti-Hungarian sentiments had not yet reached the masses.

Another letter which makes reference to the Hungarians is dated Istanbul, June 23, 1943, and Smutny simply refers to the writer as an informant. " It says: "The inhabitants of the areas occupied by Hungary await impatiently the restitution of Czechoslovakia. This applies not merely to the Slovaks, but in part to persons of Hungarian nationality as well . . . "⁶ The reference to the Hungarians is hardly accurate. At that time Hungarians of "occupied" Southern Slovakia saw their salvation in the fall of the Horthy regime in Hungary, not in their return to Czechoslovakia, And if a few Hungarians did opt for Czechoslovakia, they certainly did not yearn for the nightmares that came with their return to Czechoslovakia.

The Communists correctly foresaw the eventual evolution toward the dictatorship of the proletariat. But, whatever their political coloration, nobody could foresee the anti-Hungarian terror following the victory over Fascism.

Until February 1945, the radical measures prepared against the Hungarian minority remained strictly confidential. The Hungarians at home were totally ill-informed about their future prospects. They knew nothing about the recognition of the legal continuity of Czechoslovakia by Allied diplomacy. They were convinced that a revolution would come in Hungary, and that this would solve their problems. A fundamental mistake on their part was the assumption that both Hungary and Slovakia, since both of them were Hitler's allies, would lose the war. They did not know

That from 1942 on, Slovakia literally ceased to exist in Allied eyes. There was only a Czechoslovakia," safely entrenched on the Allied side, thanks to Benes's diplomacy.

Notions cherished by pro-Allied Hungarians that anti-Fascist resistance would earn dividends in the territorial conflict with Czechoslovakia, were to be proven illusory. By the spring of 1944, the Great Powers had already reached agreement on this matter. True, in May 1944, the Great Powers appealed to Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Finland to withdraw from Hitler's war and to contribute to the common victory over Fascism. But, significantly, Fascist Slovakia was not mentioned, because it was considered nonexistent and therefore not a member of the Hitler coalition.?

Slovak intellectuals at home in particular when talking to foreigners made no secret of their anti-Hungarian sentiments. In fact, by 1943, they openly expressed a desire for extreme reprisals against the Hungarians. Smutny quotes from the report on a visit to Bratislava by Colonel Edouard Chapuisat, representative of the International Red Cross, stressing the anti-Hungarian sentiments among Slovaks: They hate the Germans and the Hungarians." Chapuisat did not elaborate on the causes of anti-Hungarian sentiments among the Slovaks. But there can be no doubt that the main reason for it was the loss of territory to Hungary in 1938. Though a Czech correspondent in Smutny's collection of letters also stressed different aspects of hostile Slovak sentiments at that time: "No one has forgotten yet how shamefully the Poles had behaved towards us during the days of deepest crisis. The people believe that the Hungarians had shown more moderation.

Anti-Polish sentiments among Slovaks are also mentioned by the Slovak ambassador in Bucharest, J. Milec, a clandestine pro-Benes diplomat who was informing the London government via Ankara on the mood at home. He wrote in a letter, in September 1943: "In Slovakia they do not like and do not trust the Poles, especially because of their friendly feelings towards the Hungarians. " And he went on: "When the turn comes there will have to be a drastic purge not only in our own ranks. First of all, Slovakia will have to be ridden of the Hungarians . . . . People do not speak of the fate of the Slovaks in Hungary. Yet everybody expects that Slovakia will regain its southern boundaries of 1938, and that the Hungarian population of Slovakia will be resettled or exchanged for the Slovaks of Hungary."¹⁰ A similarly biased report by a member of the former Czechoslovak Agrarian Party, V. Radákoviè, is also noteworthy: "In Slovakia, they hate Hungary, they tall: about how it might be possible to eradicate Hungarian influence completely in Central Europe, even at the price of deporting them to the Ural region . . . As regards the minority issue, only the most radical solutions are discussed. The Germans will have to be expelled or possibly suffer an even worse fate. The Hungarians have to be expelled too, and exchanged for the Slovaks in Hungary and Austria."¹¹

The political atmosphere at home was teeming with ideas how to liquidate the minority ethnic groups; and these ideas seemed to spread independently of any particular political ideology But the basic objectives were always the same: acquisition of territories. Also, it should be noted that the population transfer idea as a means of territorial conquest was planted in so many Central European minds already by Hitler's and Stalin's practices following the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939.

The idea of mass expulsions popped up in General Henrik Werth's head following Hungary's entry into the war against Soviet Russia. The pro-Nazi Chief of the Hungarian General Staff advised Regent Horthy in the summer of 1941 that "following the restoration of Hungary's millennial frontiers," the Slavs, the Rumanians, and the Jews should be expelled for the sake of "definitive territorial security." The irrational proposal was rejected by Premier Lázló Bárdossy, for the following reason. The evacuation of such immense territories would result in an extraordinary decrease in national wealth. For most likely the expelled population would take its cattle and movable belongings along, as happened in such resettlement programs in the past elsewhere. The idea expressed in the memorandum of the Chief of the General Staff so fantastic, that its practical application is inconceivable and, considering the strength of Magyardom, its realization would not at all be in the interest of the country."¹² It is worth noticing that, in 1941, the "Fascist" Bárdossy took it for granted that people forcibly transferred would be allowed to take their cattle and movable belongings. The postwar "democratic" concept of deportation with property confiscation was still unknown.

The Nazi-inspired idea of population transfer found early favorable reception in official circles of Tiso's Slovakia. As one chronicler noted:

"Thus in the fall of 1939,Hitler's resettlement policy of national minorities to make countries nationally pure aroused considerable hopes in Bratislava."¹³ The leaders of the Slovak state at that time were quite confident that a German victory would lead to frontier rectification's with Hungary, to be followed by ethnic resettlements at the expense of the Hungarians.

The Nazi Germans were preparing similar plans for the removal of the Czechs from their Bohemian homeland. Bohuslav Eèer cites the following proposal made by Bohemia-Moravia's Nazi Reich "Protector," Baron Neurath: "The most radical and theoretically the most perfect solution would be the total resettlement of the Czech population, and the settling of Czech lands with Germans . . . A total resettlement, however, is not necessary to achieve the desired end. Considering the racial mixing with the Germans over the past thousand years, Neurath believes it may be possible to leave a large part of the population on Czech territory . . ."¹⁴ Leaving the Czech population meant of course assimilation.

The Nazi Germans had secret plans on the liquidation of their friends and allies, the Slovaks too. According to a confidential report dated February 1943: "There is no need for a large scale resettlement [of the Slovaks]. On the contrary. [Such measure] may lead to resistance that would be difficult to repress. On the other hand, all conditions for assimilation are available to us."¹⁵

As can be seen, there was quite a variety of plans regarding population transfers circulating in Central Europe during the war. And the justification for all of them was "national interest." Such are the "just" causes of blind nationalism! For instance, if Henrik Werth's plan for expelling Hungary's "disloyal" nationalities would have been carried out, most likely historic Hungary's national minorities would have been accused of "collective betrayal," not unlike Czechoslovakia's national minorities had been by the Benes plan. And, incidentally, Werth's "national cause" would have been as "just" as was Benes's even the percentage of the "disloyal" populations in question were about the same.

Nobody could foresee clearly under what circumstances would the war end, where would the armies of the victors be at the time of Hitler's collapse. Nor could anyone foresee the mode of disintegration of the Hitlerian coalition. Not even the example of the Italian collapse in 1943 could provide safe answers to these speculative questions.

In 1943, prompted by the peace feelers put out by Miklós Kállay, Premier of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile in London be-came restless. They were worried lest the Hungarians somehow succeeded in going over to the Allied side and thus creating an entirely new situation, endangering the existing agreements of wartime diplomacy. In September 1943, a message that Benes had sent to certain noncommunist anti-Fascist Slovak resistance groups clearly reveals his worries regarding the Hungarian activities at that time: "The more automatic and natural the transition to the new power situation will be, the better for our country and for the solidity of our international position, especially with regard to the Hungarians."¹⁶ Another Benes letter, addressed to the srobár group, admonishes Benes' former National Socialist Party followers of the precarious domestic situation:

In any case, unity is needed, among you as well as among us [in exile]. Our work can succeed only if we are united; then we need not fear that there will be chaos in Slovakia after the fall of the regime, a chaos which would be immediately exploited by the enemy, especially the Hungarians . . . In our opinion, not even for a moment should we allow the existence of an exclusively Slovak government, nor of something similar which might be regarded as the legal continuity of independent Slovakia of today. The Hungarians and the Germans, and perhaps even some of the Allies, would immediately take advantage of such a situation, and would exploit it against us in the matter of boundaries and against Our other aspirmions.¹⁷

Not only the Czechoslovak government in London but others in Europe too, including the Hungarian government, assumed for a while that the war would end, not unlike in 1918, without the actual presence in Central Europe of the victorious armies of the Great Powers. However, after the Teheran conference in December 1943, the mood had changed. New perspectives opened up for the Czechoslovaks, both in exile and at home. In expectation of a total victory it also became possible to concretely con-template the expulsion of the Hungarian minority. The issue was discussed simultaneously in exile and at home, through the effective unification of all resistance movements. Several resistance groups in Slovakia found links to one another, leading to cooperation and to the creation of a common revolutionary organ, the Slovak National Council (Slovenská národná rada) in December 1943. The minutes of the foundation were later named "Christmas agreement" because of its date, Christmas 1943. The Slovak National Council (SNC) originally consisted of eight members. At the time of the Slovak uprising, on September 1, 1944, two civilian and three military representatives (Golián, Ferjenèik, Marko Polak) were added, and thus the total membership was increased to thirteen.

The objectives of the SNC were worked out in line with the accurate assessment of the international military-political situation, and also in complete harmony with the policies of the exiles. This is particularly true of the issue of the national minorities. Point Four of the SNC program emphasizes complete agreement with the exiles: "The Slovak National Council shall act in harmony with the Czechoslovak government and with the entire resistance movement abroad; it recognizes and supports their work both on the diplomatic and military levels." Also, the program declares the desire of close cooperation exclusively with Slav states and Slav nations. Yet future developments are perhaps most clearly indicated by Point Six of Part Two, which guarantees freedom of religion, but does not even mention the national minorities.¹⁹ No doubt, the success of Benes's negotiations in Moscow at that time had an effect on this document, especially his declaration regarding the necessity of a homogeneous Slav nation-state. This opinion is corroborated by Jozef Jablonicky: " . . . 'The final text of the Christmas agreement was determined by the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of friendship signed on December 12, 1943."²⁰

Benes himself voiced his opinion of the "Christmas agreement" on March 29, 1944: "He hailed the accord, and agreed with it in its general outline."²¹ He deplored, however, the exclusion from the SNC of certain non-Communist groups(Kaviar, Muzeum, Flora).

It should be emphasized that in 1944 the united Slav stand against the Hungarian minority was limited to the highest levels of the Slovak National Council and to the intellectuals. The peasantry and the workers remained by and large indifferent to the anti-Hungarian propaganda. In fact, units of the Hungarian army were well received in the Slovak villages even after the defeat of the Slovak uprising in 1944, even though the occasion was not particularly conducive to fraternization.

In 1944, it seemed questionable in fact whether it would be possible to sway Slovak public opinion to accepting the idea of physical liquidation of the Hungarian ethnic community. Those who favored the expulsion, but doubted its success, found encouragement in the smooth process of the deportation of Jews under the Tiso regime. Terrorized by an atmosphere of fear, the masses remained silent and indifferent at that time. It was possible to assume that at the end of the war, the anti-Hungarian propaganda would do what the anti-Semitic propaganda did during the Fascist period. These assumptions proved correct. After the war, public opinion responded with general passivity and cautious indifference to the persecution of Hungarians. Though the most likely reason could have been that there were but very few Slovaks who had nothing to hide in their political past. The majority had cause to remain silent, and those who might have wavered were brought in line by the force of nationalist propaganda.

No written proof exists (with the exception of two newspaper reports, which will be discussed in subsequent chapters) of anyone voicing after the war any kind of dissenting opinion against the expulsion policies of President Benes and Prime Minister Gottwald, either on the grounds of a thousand years of Hungarian-Slovak coexistence or by virtue of humanitarian principles. Among the intellectuals, in particular, a stand against the Hungarians became a matter of national moral imperative. Workers and peasants did express disagreement individually according to eyewitness reports. But no other evidence of such "proletarian" dissent survived.

In July 1944, Benes's political secretary P. Drtina, sent a message to the resistance groups at home in which he gave a foretaste of Benes's tactics of accomplished facts: "It will be necessary for us to settle accounts with many Germans in the first days of liberation; to see to it that most guilty Nazis should flee our land out of fear, terrorized by the evolving revolution rising against them; and to beat to death most of those who would offer resistance."²²

Even though Drtina advised this tactic explicitly only against the Germans, we must keep in mind that the advocacy of the German-Hungarian parallel had by then become a matter of routine. Moreover, if Drtina's advise was followed, it would be up to the crowd of lynchers to decide who was a Nazi and who was not, who was guilty and who was not, irrespective of nationality. There was a real danger that the method of punishing the Germans would be extended against the Hungarians as well, even though the exchange of populations was the only punishment Drtina had explicitly mentioned at that time with reference to the Hungarians.

The letters received in London at that time from the home front stress unanimity regarding the Hungarian question. And all the published letters demand deportation. One of them says: "Let the minorities be removed. We reject rapprochement with the Sudeten-Germans living in exile in England. There are no differences among them. They betrayed us. This applies also to the Hungarians."²³ Another letter by an unnamed member of a non-Communist resistance group reporting on the mood among students in Bratislava says: They do not attempt to conceal their antagonism towards the Hungarians, they grab every opportunity for anti-Hungarian demonstrations. "²⁴ A report on the student groups by the clan. Destine information officer, Captain J. Krátky, is no more encouraging from a Hungarian point of view: "All these groups are united only in their anti-German and anti-Hungarian sentiments. They do not differentiate between Nazi and German, and as far as they are concerned, even a Hungarian Socialist is but a Hungarian."²⁵

There was no direct contact between the home front in Slovakia and the exiles in Moscow until August 4, 1944, when a delegation consisting of Karol smidke and M. Ferjenèik was dispatched by the Slovak National Council to the Soviet capital. They returned a month later, on September 4. The dates are important, because the final solution regarding the Hungarian question the principle of general deportation, that is-was brought home by smidke from Moscow, and was presented to the Slovak National Council on September 5. This was a turning point, proven by subsequent developments. Until September 4, 1944, the declarations of resistance Organizations at home refer only to some kind of a population exchange, representing more or less democratic measures, whereas after September 5, 1944, the postwar ultra-nationalist slogans gained ground against the minorities, along with demands for property confiscation and denial of democratic rights.

The minutes of the 1944 negotiations at Moscow by smidke (officially published only in 1964) give a foretaste of the grim prospects. The text of the Moscow Accord between smidke and the leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist party in exile did not augur well for the Hungarians of Slovakia:

When the Red Army arrives on Slovak territory, in order to facilitate its advance, with its [Red Army] consent, there should be a general national uprising; the regime of traitors at Bratislava should be driven out; the powers of a provisional government should be exercised by the Slovak National Council; with the help of the Red Army the Germans and the Hungarians should be driven out of Slovakia's occupied territories.²⁶

It is not specified whether the Hungarians to be "driven out" from the "occupied territories" are the Hungarian troops, or the civil administration of the Horthy regime, or the Hungarian civilian population. There is reason to assume, however, that had the Moscow Accord meant only driving out the Hungarian army units, the text would have specified that it meant only that.

Be that as it may, the strategic precondition of this so-called military solution" of the Hungarian question was the assumption that the front -would advance in a north-to-south direction. Until August 1944 this seemed not merely likely, but certain. Certainly the leaders of the Slovak uprising based their plans on this assumption. However, by the end of August the Situation had changed. As a result of Rumania's switching sides from the Axis to the Allies, a new front was opened against Hungary -in an east-to-west direction. This had severe consequences for both the military and political prospects of the Slovak uprising; a large-scale Soviet offensive moving from north4o-south became our of the question. This was recognized by the military leaders of the uprising in the first days of September. General Gollan made a statement to that effect, recorded in his recollections by A. Rasla: " . . . you had planned everything as if the Slovak army could make for the Soviet army] a rapid crossing of the -Carpathian mountains possible, and thus enable Slovakia's [Soviet] occupation as well as a rapid [Soviet] advance towards Vienna and Budapest."²⁷

The military solution of the Hungarian question thus planned was also -mentioned in a memorandum sent to the Soviet government by General Cados, Tiso's turncoat Minister of War: "The moment the Soviet forces find a footing in the Krakow area, the time for a successful surprise attack against the Hungarians could come from Slovakia . . . together with possible further military operations against the Germans. The Slovak army would prepare and assist the rapid and unhampered advance of Soviet troops across Slovak territory, and would join in the attack against the Hungarians."²⁸

In the summer of 1944, the reconquest of Southern Slovakia from the Hungarians was no longer a Secret goal of the Slovak Fascist government but an open commitment of the anti-Fascist Slovak uprising. It was stated in the memorable proclamation of the Èapajev partisan brigade: "The days of German and Hungarian rule are counted, the hour of liberty and settling of account has struck "²⁹

The Hungarian resistance fighters who joined the Slovak uprising could hardly have felt encouraged by the nationalist spirit of the uprising. No-where in fact could Hungarians spot signs of encouragement that could have raised their spirit of anti-Fascist resistance. Everywhere the old Little Entente tactics of Hungary's hostile encirclement have threatened to block Hungarian efforts to forestall the approaching national catastrophe. National interests hostile to Hungary prevented above all the organization of an anti-Fascist Hungarian army under Soviet auspices, one of the last hopes of national resistance.

Despite expressed desire by thousands of captured Hungarian soldiers since 1943, no anti-Fascist army could be formed from Hungarian prisoners-of-war. Why not? Because such an army might have hurt the rival interests of Hungary's neighbors, it might have interfered with crucial decisions on conflicting claims to national territorial rights. The Hungarian Communist Zoltán Vas, a former exile in Moscow, was the only one ever to face this painful question honestly-twenty-five years later though-when he wrote:

To organize a Hungarian army corps against Hitler and Horthy! This was, and remained, the objective of our prisoners of war movement. It continued for more than a year. Yet the drive for setting up a Hungarian army corps ended in failure. Not because of lack of effort of the exiles in Moscow, or of the [prisoners of war] officers. The fact of the matter is that we never received from our Soviet comrades the permission to set up an army corps. Hence it was as if we had been agitating in a vacuum. My conviction is that, had we received the permission, the corps could have been formed. Thus the Czechs, the Poles, the Rumanians were able to get ahead of us, while Horthy's Hungary stuck to the last as a satellite to Hitler's side.³⁰

The "vacuum" Zoltán Vas spoke about was true not only of the struggle to form a Hungarian armed force abroad. The Hungarian resistance at home too was forced into a vacuum.

The Hungarian General Béla Miklós started seemingly fruitful negotiations with General Petrov, the commander of the Fourth Ukrainian Front, on the subject of an anti-Fascist Hungarian army. Whereupon, on November 1, 1944, and again On November 18, General Miklós sent a -letter to Soviet Marshall Antonov, requesting authorization for the establishment of such an army. He received no reply. Then General Mechlis arrived from Moscow and informed General Miklós' to no small surprise of General Petrov, that according to Marshall Stalin's instructions no anti-Fascist Hungarian army should be set up.³¹

The fact of the Hungarian 'vacuum" has been ignored by all historians, both in Hungary and abroad. Instead of explaining the dire reality of the Hungarian situation and the resulting mass psychology of the Hungarian people, we hear a hail of denunciations spread by the hostile nationalist propaganda of Hungary's neighbors. We hear of the Hungarian society's passivity, inaction, Fascism, cowardice, degeneration, obsequious Submissiveness to the Germans depravity, and so on. In actual fact, the -feeling of "vacuum" determined the collective behavior of the Hungarian people toward the end of the war. It paralyzed the society at home, no less than it frustrated the efforts of the Hungarian exiles. But the historians are silent about it. And no one takes issue with such flimsy condemnations as those of Éva Teleki's one of postwar Hungary's Communist historians who wrote: " . . . Even the left was confused by the passivity of the masses. There is no excuse for this . . ."³² True, the historian should not look for excuses. But the historian should analyze and explain why the partisans in Slovakia and Serbia, or elsewhere fought bravely, whereas in Hungary - although the Hungarians are reputable fighters he proletarian masses as well as the intellectuals remained paralyzed. Éva Teleki certainly did not explain the Hungarian "vacuum" the cause of the Hungarian paralysis.

Of course, it is depressing to read a report on the Hungarian situation sent to Nikita Khrushchev (then fighting in the Ukraine) by T. Strokaè, a leader of the Ukrainian partisans: "According to partisan reports, the Hungarians are hostile to the partisans; they report our presence to the gendarmes or the military, and assist them in their attacks against us. However, we should realize that we are dealing with a phenomenon which cannot be explained by the theory of sinful passivity." For - this is a fact - the class struggle, the coming social revolution, the defeat of the reactionary Horthy regime, everything that could have inspired the Hungarian masses had lost its meaning and importance to the Hungarian people. The Hungarians knew that Horthy's regime would not survive and Hungary would be defeated. However, in the "vacuum" of their desperate situation, through no fault of their own, the Hungarian people had no choice but meeting the inevitable with resignation.

Hungarian historians of the postwar Communist era, strangely enough, do not seem to understand the Hungarian situation. They do not look beyond the facts while condemning Hungarian "passivity." Communist Party historian Ignác Ölvedi notes that the propaganda of the resistance movement, whether that of the Communist Party or that of the Hungarian Front, was "unable to arouse the masses from their passivity."³⁴ Had Ölvedi noticed the wartime propaganda beamed to Hungary's neighbors and compared it to what was beamed to the Hungarian people, he could have easily understood the Hungarian "passivity." The fact of the matter is that the Hungarian people deemed not worth dying for another Trianon that humiliated and dismembered them.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority