HUNGARY IN THE MIRROR OF THE WESTERN WORLD

CHAPTER II

HUNGARIAN MOSAIC

1941-1945

In this chapter we will report on the writings of leading western historians in connection with four historic events and five leading individuals of that era.

The first event was the "Everlasting Peace" treaty with Yugoslavia and the suicide of Prime Minister Pal Teleki. The second event was the aerial bombardment of Kassa, Hungary's entrance into the war and the politics of Prime Minister Laszlo Bardossy. The third event was the politics of Prime Minister Miklos Kallay and the resulting German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. The fourth event was the declaration over Radio Budapest by Regent Miklos Horthy and the subsequent takeover by the leader of the Arrow Cross movement, former Major of the General Staff, Ferenc Szalasi. In addition to the three Prime Ministers we report the curriculum vitae of those two men who had leading roles in Hungarian politics.

We believe that in the English language literature the "Everlasting Peace" Treaty and the suicide of Prime Minister Pal Teleki are best described by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in his book, The Second World War therefore, our description of events is a review of a chapter in Churchill's book.

The most comprehensive description of the aerial bombing of Kassa, the politics of Prime Minister Laszlo Bardossy and the entrance into the war by Hungary, can be found in the book entitled October Fifteenth; A History of Modern Hungary, 1929-1945, written by the English historian C. A. Macartney. We are reporting this event based on his writings.

The politics of Prime Minister Kallay and the German occupation of Hungary is well reported by the former American Minister to Budapest, Mr. John Flournoy Montgomery; the American historian, Randolph Braham and the English historian, Macartney. Therefore, we are using the writings of all three authors in our description.

Horthy's radio address and the subsequent takeover by Szalasi has been covered by Macartney.

The two leading personalities in addition to the three previously mentioned Prime Ministers, were the Head of State (Regent), Miklos Horthy and the leader of the Arrow-Cross Party, Major Ferenc Szalasi. The curriculum vitae of Horthy is well reported by Macartney and the characteristics of Ferenc Szalasi are very well described by the American historian Randolph Braham. Therefore, we are reporting these two subjects based on the writings of those two authors.

The Arrival of the Great Powers
to the Borders of Hungary

The relationship of Hungary with her neighbors between the two wars was very poor. The relationship was poisoned constantly by bilateral suspicions and accusations. The reason for this situation originated from the fact that at the end of the First World War the newly created Republic of Czechoslovakia, the newly created Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the newly created Greater Romania, received large chunks of Hungarian territories, and with those territories, 4,000,000 Hungarians became subjects of these three states. Hungarian minorities did not receive equal treatment in political, economic and cultural affairs.

At the same time a buffer state in the form of the free Austria existed between Germany and Hungary. A buffer state, Poland, lay between Hungary and the Soviet Union.

A radical change occurred when on March 12, 1938, Hitler, using the invitation of the Austrian National Socialist leaders, marched into Austria and subsequently made it a part of Germany. That was the time when the German military might arrived on the western border of Hungary.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler attacked Poland and based on the secret pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, the eastern part of Poland was annexed by Stalin. The Soviet military might had reached the eastern border of Hungary.

As soon as the German military arrived at the borders of Hungary, the German influence over Hungary increased tremendously.

For a while the cooperation of Hungary with Hitler's Germany produced tangible benefits for Hungary. Before the outbreak of the Second World War Czechoslovakia disintegrated under German pressure. In this process Germany, Poland and Hungary received border corrections, without military intervention. In the arbitration between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, performed by the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy (Ribbentrop and Ciano), Hungary recovered the southern part of Slovakia, with nearly 1,000,000 Hungarian inhabitants. (The First Vienna Award.)

In 1940, through the arbitration of the same two personalities, Hungary recovered Northern Transylvania, with more than 2,000,000 Hungarian inhabitants, from Romania. (The Second Vienna Award.)

The German influence on Hungarian international politics created the first real problem and the first great casualty in the form of a German attack on Yugoslavia.

The "Everlasting Peace" Treaty with Yugoslavia
and the
Suicide of Prime Minister Pal Teleki

Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in his work titled, The Second World War, describes the peril of Yugoslavia and the suicide of the Hungarian Prime Minister Count Pal Teleki. The subject is discussed in Volume 3, "The Grand Alliance," Chapter Nine.

Yugoslavia, the new southern Slav state, was created at the end of World War I. The mentor of the new state was France and the closest political and military ally was Czechoslovakia. By 1939 Hitler had dismembered Czechoslovakia without one shot being fired and by 1940 the Germans had overrun and subjugated France. It was necessary for the Yugoslavs to try to place the country into the new political situation. Under the leadership of Regent Prince Paul and Prime Minister Milan Stoyadinovic, Yugoslavia tried to follow a neutral course. The "neutrality" meant to try to keep peace with Germany.

Hitler, as proof of the good will of Yugoslavia, demanded that Yugoslavia follow the example of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and join the Tri-Partite Pact. (The Tri-Partite Pact was created by Germany, Japan and Italy in 1940 and had as its goal the prevention of any new states from joining the war on the side of Great Britain.)

Under German pressure the Yugoslav Regent visited Hitler and was willing to bring his country into the fold of the Tri-Partite Pact. In order to formalize the situation the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Cvetkovic, who had replaced Stoyadinovic and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Lazar Markovic, went to Vienna on March 25, 1941 and signed the Agreement to become a part of the Tri-Partite Alliance.

After they returned to Belgrade a bloodless coup was executed under the leadership of Air Force General Richard Simovic. The Regent, Prince Paul, was forced to resign and leave the country. The Prime Minister and Secretary of State also were forced to resign and many leading military figures were apprehended. At the same time, the faction under the leadership of Simovic denounced the Treaty and refused to join the Tri-Partite Pact.

Hitler's reaction was violent. He gave the order to the German High Command to work out a military plan for the destruction of Yugoslavia. At the same time, Churchill was jubilant. He tried to create a situation wherein Yugoslavia, in the impending German attack, could help the cause of Britain. Churchill, in his letter to Simovic, stated that the best military course for Yugoslavia would be to attack the rear of the Italian Army engaged in Greece and, by capturing the war materiel of the Italian forces, bolster Yugoslavia's ability to resist the impending German attack. Simovic did not follow Churchill's suggestions.

At the same time Hitler wrote to Mussolini and urged him to hold off any Italian military move against the Greeks and to bolster his defence on the Yugoslav border.

One of the first reactions of the German Government to the events in Belgrade was to send the Hungarian Ambassador in Berlin to Budapest with an urgent message to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Horthy, that Yugoslavia would be annihilated. It was necessary for the German armed forces to pass through Hungary, but the principal attack would not be made on the Hungarian frontier. In return for her cooperation, Hungary would regain her territories which had been lost to Yugoslavia.

The main ground attack against Yugoslavia came through Bulgaria.

The devastating air attacks against Belgrade were executed by German planes taking off from Romanian airfields.

Churchill states in his above mentioned book the dilemma that Hungary faced at that moment. As recently as December 1940 Hungary had signed a friendship treaty with Yugoslavia. But at the time when the German-Yugoslav War broke out on April 6, 1941, Hungary had to choose between accepting the German demands for German troop transport into Yugoslavia (with whom she had a peace treaty) or to face certain occupation by Germany. The pressure on Prime Minister Teleki was further increased when he received a note from the Hungarian ambassador stationed in London that the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anthony Eden, had warned him that if Hungary did not resist the German demand, then England would declare war on Hungary. As Churchill suggests, the pressure on Prime Minister Teleki became unbearable. When Teleki learned that the German military transports had crossed the Hungarian border with the cooperation of the Hungarian Chief of Staff, General Werth, but without Teleki's approval, he committed suicide.

Churchill expressed his personal reaction in the following statement, "His suicide was a sacrifice to absolve himself and his people from guilt in the German attack upon Yugoslavia."

Radio Budapest and the Hungarian Press reported Teleki's suicide immediately. Macartney, who at that time lived in Budapest and knew the Prime Minister and his family well, discussed the suicide with Teleki's son and, based on the conversation, came to the same conclusion as did Churchill.

The Bombing of Kassa
and
Hungary's Entry into the War

The German attack on the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941. Professor Macartney, the English historian, writes on this subject extensively in his book, titled October Fifteenth.

According to Macartney, there was a meeting between the Head of State, Miklos Horthy and Prime Minister Laszlo Bardossy, probably on the 23rd of June, when the two men agreed that Hungary should wish the best for the Germans but refrain from entering the war.

The decision of those two men to continue this policy became difficult when Romania and Slovakia both entered the war on the side of Germany. The incident which changed Bardossy's attitude was the bombing of the northeastern Hungarian city, Kassa.

On June 26th, at 1 p.m., three aircraft appeared above Kassa. After they had circled around for a while, unmolested because it was believed they were friendly aircraft, they began to drop bombs and then flew away. The bombs caused considerable loss of life and material damage.

The report which reached the Hungarian General Staff stated that the perpetrators were Soviet planes. With this news, the Head of the General Staff, General Werth, and the Minister of Defense, Laszlo Bartha, went to Horthy and reported the incidents immediately. Horthy felt that this was an unprovoked attack on Hungary and ordered immediate reprisals by Hungarian aircraft.

Prime Minister Bardossy saw Horthy after Werth and Bartha had left. Their meeting was very short and it is not clear whether the two men understood the intentions of the other. After he left Horthy, Bardossy called a Cabinet meeting. When Bardossy brought up the question of entering the war on the side of Germany, all the Cabinet members thought that this was the wish of the Head of State, Regent Horthy, and agreed to it, with the exception of the Minister of the Interior, Kerestes-Fischer. It is suggested that Horthy expected that Bardossy would report back to him after the Cabinet meeting. However, this did not occur.

According to the Hungarian Constitution which was in effect at that time, the Declaration of War was based on mutual consent between the Parliament and the Head of State. Bardossy went to the Parliament but instead of arranging a debate, stated that the country was at war with Russia. The statement was accepted with a cheer from the members of the Lower House. Bardossy did not go in person to the Upper House but sent a letter stating Hungary's Declaration of War which, when it was read, was warmly received.

Macartney suggests that Bardossy "deliberately disregarded the Constitution in order that if things went wrong, all responsibility should fall solely on himself" and "no member of the then Parliament could be charged, under those later circumstances, with having voted in favour of the war."

On June 28, 1941 Horthy sent a message to Hitler, stating that he would declare war on Russia and sent his best wishes to the Fuehrer.

Hitler answered Horthy on the 1st of July, emphasizing that Hungary and all the other states who had joined the war against the Soviet Union had done so of their own free will. In the same telegram came two requests which could be translated as orders; namely, the route on which the Hungarian troops should advance and a demand for the safety of all oil transports coming from Romania.

Although Hungary joined the anti-Soviet war on June 27, 1941, the Western Powers did not break off diplomatic relationships with Hungary. The British hesitated to declare war on Finland, Hungary and Romania, but after Stalin's repeated demands, Britain declared war on all three countries on the night of December 6th, 1941.

On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Germany, as a signator to the Tri-Partite Pact, declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. The next day the German, Italian and Japanese ambassadors visited Prime Minister Bardossy and demanded that Hungary, as a signator to the Pact, declare war on the United States.

On December 13, 1941 Bardossy, responding to the pressure as a signatory to the Tri-Partite Act, declared war on Britain and the United States of America. On the same day he telephoned Mr. Pell, who was in charge in the American Legation and told him verbally that Hungary was in a State of War with the United States of America. Pell's response was that he believed that Hungary must have taken this step under German pressure, to which Bardossy responded that, "Hungary is a sovereign state and capable of handling her own affairs." Pell answered that for such a momentous decision he would need a written and not a verbal statement. Bardossy sent a written statement in that vein to him on December 13, 1941.

The question of who really bombed Kassa was and remains a mystery. During the war the official Hungarian line was that the bombing was done by Russian aircraft. The Russians denied that they were the perpetrators, which was not believed in 1941. After 1945, it became an article of faith that the bombings were done by the Germans, either at the request of the Hungarians or as a provocation to bring Hungary into the war. The head of the Air Training Unit at the airfield of Kassa an official named Krudy, reported to Budapest soon after the bombing that the planes were of German make and they also had the yellow markings on the fuselage which identified them as Axis aircraft.

To complicate the situation the Hungarian officials found and dug out a bomb which had failed to explode and showed it to a committee which included an American observer: the bomb was made in Russia at the Putilov Works in Leningrad and bore markings in Cyrillic characters. In 1941 this fact was taken at face value. After the war it was labeled as a conspiracy to put the blame on the Soviets.

A third theory suggests that pro-Soviet pilots stole three German aircraft from the airport at Iglo, flew to Russia via Kassa and they bombed that city en route.

Hungarian newspapers published the story that when a Hungarian officer was stationed in Dnepropetrovsk, a Soviet schoolmaster told him that he had a Czechborn officer named Ondrey Andele in his home. This officer said that before he had joined the Soviet Army he had done the bombing of Kassa. According to the author, the absolute truth about who committed the bombing was never fully established. Macartney points out that investigations after the war never proved that the bombing was done by Germans, with or without Hungarian cooperation. Therefore, the theory that it was done by Czech or Slovak pilots remains a possibility.

Horthy

In Churchill's description of the destruction of Yugoslavia and in Macartney's report of the entrance of Hungary into the war, the name of Regent Miklos Horthy is mentioned repeatedly. In those two accounts not he, but his Prime Ministers, Teleki and Bardossy, were the central figures. In the following years Horthy became more and more the main player of the events; therefore, it seems to be appropriate to discuss him, his character and his policies at this point.

The English historian, C.A. Macartney, in his work titled, October Fifteenth, talks repeatedly about the Regent of Hungary, Miklos Horthy. The following is a summary of Macartney's writings.

Horthy was born in 1868, the offspring of a Hungarian gentry family who held a modest landholding close to the river Tisza. The family's religion was Calvinist. Based on his childhood dreams he joined the Navy and apparently was gifted enough to reach high rank despite prejudice against Protestant Hungarians. One important post that he held in the prewar times was as Aide-de-Camp to the Kaiser Franz Josef.

Horthy learned to like and appreciate the old Kaiser. The American Minister to Budapest, Mr. Montgomery, who knew Horthy very well, mentioned that when Horthy was faced with a difficult decision, he often tried to reason out what his old Master would have decided in such a situation.

It was generally known that Horthy, as an admiral, always believed that the military officer was a superior being compared to the civilian. That explains the influence of the officer corps which, under the leadership of Gyula Gombos, helped him to gain the office of the Regency.

Born and raised in a gentry family he also believed that the gentry as a class were the backbone of Hungary and legitimate rulers of the country. Concerning the minorities he believed that the Slovaks were basically decent Hungarian subjects, who had been misled by the Czechs. He liked the Croats and always pointed out that they were good sailors. He had a healthy respect for the Serbs, saying that they were "very manly people." He disliked the Romanians.

Horthy also believed that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were artificially created states which would fall apart as soon as an historical crisis occurred.

In a memorandum that was addressed to the Allied Powers in 1945 while he was in prison, he stated that the only longrange solution for the Danubian area was the reconstruction of the borders of the prewar Hungary, including an outlet to the sea at Fiume. This was one of the prizes that Hitler dangled before him to persuade him to attack Yugoslavia.

Because he was a sailor by profession he believed not only that the country needed a seaport, he also believed in the superiority of naval forces over ground forces and apparently he stated this belief to Hitler, to the annoyance of the Fuehrer.

He never understood the feelings of minorities; he never realized that these minorities might not wish to live within the borders of Hungary.

Horthy never understood the doctrine of "democracy," government of the people, by the people, for the people. He believed always that there are rulers and those to be ruled, and as a ruler he believed that the Hungarian gentry were destined to rule. He did not deliberately try to oppress the workers or the peasants. At the same time he could not understand the need or the benefit of an agrarian reform. He was convinced that there was not enough land for everybody and therefore there was no reason to change the existing situation which included huge landholdings for certain families and the Church. He believed that Communism was invented by evil Jews, such as Bela Kun or Tibor Szamuely, who were leaders of the Communist regime in Hungary prior to Horthy's takeover, and therefore must be eradicated.

He never understood the anti-Semitic feelings of hate but always made a differentiation between "good Jews" and "evil Jews." He was willing to defend the "good Jews" only.

So far as the Germans were concerned his dislike was limited to the Prussians. Of the Nazi leaders he disliked Hitler and Ribbentrop, but not the Fascist, Mussolini. Although it was obvious he was not an admirer of the Fuehrer, Hitler treated him as an old admiral, with more deference than the head of any other nation under his influence.

Curiously enough, on one hand he believed that the war would be won by the maritime nations; on the other hand he did not hesitate to use German help to regain territories which had belonged to Hungary prior to World War I.

He was not well read and was not a deep thinker. In gatherings he led the conversation. He was unable to keep any secrets and caused his advisors to fear that he might reveal information.

Horthy achieved an absolute dominion of the Hungarian political scene in the 1930s. As Regent, although he was neither a king nor a dictator, he did have the powers attributed to those two offices. As he grew older he became less and less able to see any good in anything that was new. Therefore, he resisted any change, social or political, from the mid1930s and thereafter.

Horthy was never involved in any scandal. He never tried to enrich himself, nor was he one of those who had a Swiss bank account for his own use; therefore, when he was out of office he lived on a very meager income in Portugal after the war. He truly loved his beautiful wife and children. He was well-meaning, believed everybody else was the same and therefore he was easily influenced by people who might have an ulterior motive.

He had no problem to replace prime minister after prime minister. His usual explanation was either, "I believe he is not a good Hungarian" or "I believe he is not a gentleman."

HUNGARY IN THE MIRROR OF THE WESTERN WORLD