Hungary during the Second World War
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Contents |
[edit] Movement to the right
In Hungary, the Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further toward the right. In 1932, Regent Miklos Horthy appointed a new prime-minister, Gyula Gömbös, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany and started an effort to assimilate the small number of minority population in Hungary totalling 5-7%.[citation needed] Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany that led to the fast expansion of the economy, drawing Hungary out of the depression, but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets.
Gömbös advocated a a number of social reforms,, a one-party government, a revision of the Treaty of Trianon, and Hungary's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Although he assembled a stong political machine, his efforts to achieve his vision and reforms were frustrated by a parliament composed mostly of István Bethlen's supporters and by Hungary's creditors, who forced Gömbös to follow conventional policies in dealing with the economic and financial crisis. The 1935 elections gave Gömbös more solid support in parliament, and he succeeded in gaining control of the ministries of finance, industry, and defense and in replacing several key military officers with his supporters, but in October 1936, he died (due to kidney problems) without realizing this goal.
Hungary used its relationship with Germany to attempt revision of the Treaty of Trianon. In 1938, Hungary openly repudiated the treaty's restrictions on its armed forces. Adolf Hitler used promises of returning lost territories, and threats of military intervention and economic pressure to encourage the Hungarian Government into supporting the policies and goals of Nazi Germany. In 1935, a Hungarian fascist party, the Arrow Cross, led by Ferenc Szálasi was founded. Gömbös' successor, Kálmán Darányi attempted to appease both the Nazis and Hungarian antisemites by passing the First Jewish Law, which set quotas limiting Jews to 20% of positions in several professions. The law satisfied neither the Nazis nor Hungary's own radicals, and when Darányi resigned in May of 1938, Béla Imrédy was appointed Prime Minister.
Imrédy’s attempts to improve Hungary’s diplomatic relations with England initially made him very unpopular with Germany and Italy. Undoubtedly aware of Germany's Anschluss with Austria in March, he realized that he could not afford to alienate Germany and Italy on a long term basis; in the autumn of 1938 his foreign policy became very much pro-German and pro-Italian. [1] Intent on amassing a base of power in Hungarian right wing politics, Imrédy started to suppress political rivals, so the increasingly influential Arrow Cross Party was harassed, and eventually banned by Imrédy’s administration. As Imrédy drifted further to the right, he proposed that the government be reorganized along totalitarian lines and drafted a harsher Second Jewish Law. Imrédy's political opponents, however, forced his resignation in February 1939 by presenting documents showing that his grandfather was a Jew. Nevertheless, the new government of Pál Teleki approved the Second Jewish Law, which cut the quotas on Jews permitted in the professions and in business. Furthermore, the new law defined Jews by race instead of just religion, thus altering the status of those who had formerly converted from Judaism to Christianity.
By the June 1939 elections, Hungarian public opinion had shifted so far to the right that voters gave the Arrow Cross Party the second highest number of votes.[citation needed]
[edit] The Vienna Awards
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to enforce peacefully the claims of Hungarians on territories Hungary lost in 1920 with the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, and made two significant territorial awards.
On the 2nd of November 1938, the First Vienna Award transferred parts of Southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary with a size of 11,927 km² and a population of 869,299 (86.5%) of them Hungarians according to an 1941 census. Hitler later promised to transfer all territories of Slovakia to Hungary in exchange for a military alliance, but his offer was rejected. Instead, Horthy chose to pursue a territorial revision to be decided along ethnic lines.
In March 1939, Czechoslovakia was dissolved and Hungary occupied the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia. Hungary immediately recognized the German puppet state of Slovakia led by the fascist Jozef Tiso. But, on 23 March 1939, disagreements with Slovakia over the new common eastern border led to a localized armed conflict between the two countries. The Slovak-Hungarian War (also known as the "Little War") ended with Hungary gaining only the easternmost strip of Slovakia.
In September of 1940, with troops massing on both sides of the Hungarian-Romanian border war was averted by the Second Vienna Award. This award transferred the northern half of Transylvania to Hungary with a total size of 43,492 km² and a total population of 2,578,100 about half of them Hungarian. By dividing Transylvania between Romania and Hungary, Hitler was able to ease tension and avoid war between his potential allies. In October of 1940, the Germans initiated a reciprocity policy between Romania and Hungary which was continued until the end of World War II.
[edit] War
On November 20, 1940, under pressure from Germany, Pál Teleki signed the Tripartite Pact, which allied Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In December of 1940, he also signed an ephemeral "Treaty of Eternal Friendship" with Yugoslavia. A few months later, after a Yugoslavian coup threatened the success of the planned German invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa), Hitler asked Hungarians to support his invasion of Yugoslavia. He promised to return some territory to Hungary in exchange for military cooperation. Unable to prevent Hungary's participation in the war alongside Germany, Teleki committed suicide. The right-wing radical László Bárdossy succeeded him as Prime Minister.
[edit] Invasion of Yugoslavia
Days after the Teleki's death, the Luftwaffe mercilessly bombed Belgrade without warning, and German troops invaded Yugoslavia. Horthy dispatched the Hungarian Third Army to occupy Vojvodina, and Hungary eventually annexed sections of Baranja, Bačka, Medjumurje, and Prekomurje.[2]
[edit] The War in the East
Hungary did not immediately participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941, but Hitler did not directly ask for Hungarian assistance. Nonetheless, many Hungarian officials argued for participation in the war so as not to encourage Hitler into favouring Romania in the event of border revisions in Transylvania. Hungary eventually entered the war before the end of June. This was after the questionable Soviet bombing of Košice (Kassa).
On July 1, 1941, at the direction of the Germans, the Hungarian Karpat Group attacked the 12th Soviet Army. Attached to the German 17th Army, the Karpat Group advanced far into southern Russia. At the Battle of Uman (3-8 August 1941), the Karpat Group's mechanized corps acted as one half of a pincer that encircled the 6th Soviet Army and the 12th Soviet Army. Twenty Soviet divisions were captured or destroyed.
In July 1941, the Hungarian government transferred eighteen-thousand Jews from Carpato-Ruthenian Hungary to the German armed forces. Most of the transfers were executed by the German Security Police at Kamianets-Podilskyi. This mass murder had only two thousand survivors.[3]. Bardossy then passed the "Third Jewish Law" in August of 1941, prohibiting marriage and sexual intercourse with Jews.
Six months after the mass murder at Kamianets-Podilskyi, Hungarian troops killed 3,000 Serbian and Jewish hostages near Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, in reprisal for resistance activities.
Worried about Hungary's increasing reliance on Germany, Admiral Horthy forced Bárdossy to resign and replaced him with Miklós Kállay, a veteran conservative of Bethlen's government. Kállay continued Bárdossy's policy of supporting Germany against the Red Army while he also began negotiations with the Western Allies.
During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Hungarian Second Army suffered terrible losses. The heavy Soviet breakthrough at the Don River sliced directly through the Hungarian units. Shortly after the fall of Stalingrad in January of 1943, the Hungarian Second Army nearly ceased to exist as a functioning military unit.
Secret negotiations with the British and Americans continued. As per the request of the Western Allies, there were no connections made with the Soviets. Aware of Kállay's deceit and fearing that Hungary might conclude a separate peace, Hitler ordered Nazi troops to occupy Hungary in March of 1944. Horthy was confined to a castle, in essence, placed under house arrest. Döme Sztójay, an avid supporter of the Nazis, becomame the new Prime Minister. Sztójay governed with the aid of a Nazi military governor, Edmund Veesenmayer.
While Kállay was Prime Minister, the Jews endured increased economic and political repression, although many (particularly those in Budapest) were protected from the final solution.
[edit] The War Comes to Hungary
In March of 1944, the Nazis launched Operation Margarethe and German troops occupied Hungary, and mass deportations of Jews to German death camps in occupied Poland were set to begin. The infamous SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee the large-scale deportations. Between May 15 and July 9, Hungarian authorities deported 437,402 Jews, all but 15 thousand went to Auschwitz-Birkenau.[4] One in three Jews killed at Auschwitz was a Hungarian citizen. [4]
In August of 1944, Horthy replaced Sztójay with the anti-Fascist General Géza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting Interior Minister Béla Horváth ordered Hungarian gendarmes to prevent any Hungarian citizens from being deported.
In September of 1944, Soviet forces crossed the Hungarian border. On October 15, 1944, Horthy announced that Hungary had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. The Hungarian army ignored the armistice. The Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and, by kidnapping his son (Miklós Horthy, Jr.), forced Horthy to abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name the leader of the Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi, as Prime Minister. Horthy abdicated and Szálasi became Prime Minister.
Soon Hungary became a battlefield. Szálasi promised greatness for Hungary and a prosperity for the peasants, but in reality Hungary was crumbling and its armies were slowly being destroyed. In cooperation with the Nazis, Szálasi restarted the deportations of Jews, particularly in Budapest. Thousands more Jews were killed by Arrow Cross members. Of the approximately 800,000 Jews residing within Hungary's expanded borders of 1941, only 200,000 (about 25%) survived the Holocaust.[5] Several thousand Roma were also killed as part of the Porajmos. The retreating German army demolished the rail, road, and communications systems. The advancing Red Army committed mass rapes, mass lootings, and numerous other atrocities.
As an integral part of German General Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico, the re-formed Hungarian Second Army enjoyed a modest level of combat success. From 16 September 1944 to 24 October 1944, during the Battle of Debrecen, Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico managed to achieve a major win on the battle field. Avoiding encirclement itself, Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico encircled and destroyed three Soviet tank corps of Mobile Group Pliyev under the command of Issa Pliyev. Earlier, in the same battle, Mobile Group Pliyev had easily sliced through the Hungarian Third Army. But success was costly and, unable to replace lost assets, the Hungarian Second Army was disbanded on 1 December 1944.
In October of 1944, the Hungarian First Army was attached to the German 1st Panzer Army and participated defensively in the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive.
On December 28, 1944, a provisional government was formed in Hungary under acting Prime Minister Béla Miklós. Miklós immediately ousted Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi's government. The Germans and pro-German Hungarians loyal to Szálasi fought on.
The Red Army completed the encirclement of Budapest on 29 December 1944 and the Battle of Budapest began and continued into February 1945. Most of what remained of the Hungarian First Army was destroyed about 200 kilometers north of Budapest between January 1 and February 16, 1945.
On January 20, 1945, representatives of the Hungarian provisional government signed an armistice in Moscow.
The siege of Budapest ended with the surrender of the city on February 13, 1945. But, while the German forces in Hungary were generally in a state of defeat, the Germans had one more surprise for the Soviets. In early March of 1945, the Germans launch the Lake Balaton Offensive. This offensive is almost over before it begins. By March 19, 1945, Soviet troops had recaptured all the territory lost during a 13-day German offensive. [6]
After the failed offensive, the Germans in Hungary were defeated. Most of what remained of the Hungarian Third Army was destroyed about 50 kilometers west of Budapest between March 16-25, 1945. Officially, Soviet operations in Hungary ended on April 4, 1945 when the last German troops were expelled. Some pro-fascist Hungarians like Szálasi went with the Germans.
[edit] Aftermath
On May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl, the German Chief of Staff, signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces. On 11 June 1945, the Allies agree to make 9 May 1945 the official "Victory in Europe" day. [7]
By signing the Peace Treaty of Paris, Hungary again lost all the territories that it gained between 1938 and 1941. Neither Western Allies nor the Soviet Union supported any change in Hungary's pre-1938 borders.
The Soviet Union itself annexed Sub-Carpathia, which is now part of Ukraine.
The Treaty of Peace with Hungary signed on 10 February 1947 declared that "The decisions of the Vienna Award of 2 November 1938 are declared null and void" and Hungarian boundaries were fixed along the former frontiers as they existed on 1 January 1938, except a minor loss of territory on the Czechoslovakian border. Half of the ethnic German minority (240,000 people) was deported to Germany in 1946-48, and there was a forced "exchange of population" between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
[edit] See also
- Military of Hungary
- List of WWII Hungarian Tanks and Armours
- Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légierö- WWII Royal Hungarian Home Defense Air Force
[edit] References
- ^ Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite John F. Montgomery, Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite. Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1947. Reprint: Simon Publications, 2002.
- ^ Hungary - Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive
- ^ The Holocaust in Hungary Holocaust Memorial Centre.
- ^ a b
- ^ Victims of Holocaust - Holocaust Memorial Centre.
- ^ Page 182, The Decline an Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Hans Dollinger, Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 67-27047
- ^ Page 298, The Decline an Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Hans Dollinger, Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 67-27047
