Hungary |
Poland |
Hungary–Poland relations are the foreign relations between Hungary and Poland. Relations between the two states date back to the Middle Ages, with the two peoples enjoying a traditional close friendship.
Hungary has an embassy in Warsaw, a general consulate in Kraków and 2 honorary consulates (in Łódź and Poznań). Poland has an embassy in Budapest. Both countries are full members of NATO and of the European Union.
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Good relations between Poland and Hungary date back to the Middle Ages. Louis the Great was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1342 and King of Poland from 1370 until his death in 1382. He was his father’s heir, Charles I of the House of Anjou-Sicily (King of Hungary and Croatia) and his nephew’s heir, Casimir III the Great (King of Poland - the last ruler of Piast dynasty). King Casimir had no legitimate sons. Apparently, in order to provide a clear line of succession and avoid dynastic uncertainty, he arranged for his nephew, King Louis I of Hungary, to be his successor in Poland. In the 15th century, the two countries briefly shared the same king again, Poland's Władysław III of Varna, who perished, aged barely twenty, fighting the Turks at Varna, Bulgaria. In the 16th century, Poland elected as her king a Hungarian nobleman, Stefan Batory, who is regarded as one of Poland's greatest kings.
In the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, a Polish general, Józef Bem, became a national hero of both Hungary and Poland. He was entrusted with the defence of Transylvania at the end of 1848, and in 1849, as General of the Székely troops.[1] On October 20, 1848 Józef Wysocki signed an agreement with the Hungarian government to form a Polish infantry battalion of about a thousand two hundred soldiers. After agreement Wysocki organized in Hungary "Polish legion" of volunteers contained 2090 foot soldiers and 400 Polish uhlans. They took part in the siege of the Arad fortress; in the spring of 1849 it participated in all important battles at Szolnok, Hatvan, Tapio-Biczke and Isaszegh. After the Battle at Temesvar in August 1849, and the Hungarian capitulation at Vilagos, eight hundred the remnants of the Legion escaped to Turkey.[2][3]
During the Polish–Soviet War (1919-21), Hungary offered to send 30,000 cavalry to Poland's aid, but the Czechoslovak government refused to allow them through the demilitarized zone that had existed between Czechoslovakia and Hungary since the end of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian war a few months earlier. Nevertheless, some Hungarian munitions trains did reach Poland.
From the Middle Ages well into the 18th century, Poland and Hungary had shared a historic common border between Poland and Carpathian Ruthenia (also known as "Carpathian Rus"), governed by Hungary. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious allies had, at Versailles, transferred Carpathian Ruthenia, with its Slavic population, from defeated Hungary to Slavic nascent Czechoslovakia. Following the Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938) — which doomed Czechoslovakia to takeover by Germany — Poland and Hungary, from common as well as their own special interests, worked together, by diplomatic as well as paramilitary means, to restore their historic common border by engineering the return of Carpathian Rus to Hungary.[4] A step toward their goal was realized with the First Vienna Award (November 2, 1938).
Until mid-March 1939, Germany considered that, for military reasons, a common Hungarian-Polish frontier was undesirable. Indeed, when in March 1939 Hitler made an about-face and authorized Hungary to take over the rest of Carpatho-Rus (which was by then styling itself "Carpatho-Ukraine"), he warned Hungary not to touch the remainder of Slovakia, to whose territory Hungary also laid claim. Hitler meant to use Slovakia as a staging ground for his planned invasion of Poland. In March 1939, however, Hitler changed his mind about the common Hungarian-Polish frontier and decided to betray Germany's ally, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who had already in 1938 begun organizing Ukrainian military units in a sich outside Uzhhorod, in Carpathian Ukraine, under German tutelage — a sich that Polish political and military authorities saw as an imminent danger to nearby southeastern Poland, with its largely Ukrainian population.[5][6] Hitler, however, was concerned that, if a Ukrainian army organized in Carpathian Rus were to accompany German forces invading the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists would insist on the establishment of an independent Ukraine; Hitler, who had designs on Ukraine's natural and agricultural resources, did not want to deal with an independent Ukrainian government.[7]
Hitler would soon have cause to rue his decision regarding the fate of Carpatho-Ukraine. In six months, during his 1939 invasion of Poland, the common Polish-Hungarian border would become of major importance when Admiral Horthy's government, on the ground of long-standing Polish-Hungarian friendship, declined, as a matter of "Hungarian honor,"[8] Hitler's request to transit German forces across Carpathian Rus into southeastern Poland to speed that country's conquest. The Hungarian refusal allowed the Polish government and tens of thousands of military personnel to escape into neighboring Hungary and Romania, and from there to France and French-mandated Syria to carry on operations as the third-strongest Allied belligerent after Britain and France. Also, for a time Polish and British intelligence agents and couriers, including Krystyna Skarbek, used Hungary's Carpathorus as a route across the Carpathian Mountains to and from Poland.[9]
After World War II, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Poles demonstrated their support for the Hungarians by donating blood for them; by 12 November 1956, 11,196 Poles had donated. The Polish Red Cross sent 44 tons of medical supplies to Hungary by air; still larger amounts were sent by road and rail.
On March 12, 2007, Hungary's parliament declared March 23 the "Day of Hungarian-Polish Friendship", with 324 votes in favor, none opposed, and no abstentions. Four days later, the Polish parliament declared March 23 the "Day of Polish-Hungarian Friendship" by acclamation.[10]
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