October fifteenth: a history of modern Hungary, 1929-1945, Vol. 1 7m01bm109

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EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS No. 6

A: HISTORY OF MODERN HUNGARY 1929-1945

C. A. MACARTNEY M.A., D.LITT. Professor of International Relations, University of Edinburgh

Part I :

) EDINBURGH AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1956

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PREFACE | T is my duty and my pleasure to express my thanks to the Edinburgh University Press for their enterprise in undertaking the publication of this book; to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and to the

Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for making it financially / possible for them to take this decision. My acknowledgments to those whose no less valuable contributions of factual information, criticism and advice have alone enabled my text to take such form as would justify anybody in publishing it at all will be found in

| C. A. MACARTNEY

| the Note on Sources.

TO THE HONOURED MEMORY OF

IVAN HINDY, GENERAL : | TAugust 26th, 1946

CHAP. PAGE CONTENTS

NOTES ON SOURCES , . ; , ; . , 1X J. PRELUDE TO TRIANON. . , . , . , 3

II. FLurpity , , , , , ; , ; . 25 III. CONSTITUTIONAL , . , , , . , 46 IV. RECONSTRUCTION. , , . ; , , , 61

V. FOREIGN AFFAIRS in Vacuo , ; . . , . 8]

VI. CrasH . , , , ; , , , , . 89 VII. FRUSTRATION . , , , , , , . 114

VIII. Axis RAINBOW ; . , ; , ; , . 136

IX. PROPHET , , , , ; , , , . 155

X. HALF LEFT WHEEL . , , . ; ; ; . 173

XI. Eyes RIGHT . . , ; . , ; , . 202

XII. SPRAT AMONG WHALES . , , . . , . 249

XIII. FIGHTING FIsH , . , , , , . . 276 XIV. AN AxIS POLICY. . , , , , . . 305 XV. GREAT-GRANDMOTHER , , , ; , . 325

XVI. RUTHENIA.. oo, . , . 329

XVII. DILEMMA , , , , , . ; , . 344

XVIII]. PHONEY War. , ; , ; , ; , . 364 XIX. FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED ; . , , . 393

XX. THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD . ; , , , . 404

XXI. THE TRIPARTITE PACT . , , , , , » 429 XXII. ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP , , . , ; ; . 446

XXII]. SLIPPERY SLOPE , , ; , , . ; » 455

XXIV. SUICIDE , ; , . , , ; . . 474

NOTE ON PLACE-NAMES . . , . , . 49]

APPENDIX . , ; . ; , ; , . 494 MAPS

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY , . , , , , f. p. 24 HUNGARY AND THE SUCCESSOR STATES . . between p. 24, 25

HUNGARY, GEOGRAPHICAL. ; , . , f. p. 25 HUNGARIAN REVISIONISM, 1938-1941 , - f. p. 490

NOTES ON SOURCES I

ROM the point at which I start my detailed consecutive narrative (in Chapter 6) my authority for the overwhelming majority of statements of facts of public nature, and the source of almost all quotations from public speeches, articles, etc., is the Hungarian Press of the relevant dates. To give the reference each time in such cases would mean filling half my pages half-full with footnotes. The reader may assume that when I write, e.g. that Parliament met, or that X addressed his constituents, or that Ciano arrived in Budapest (this was always publicised), on such-and-such a date, the fact was recorded in the Hungarian Press of the afternoon of the day in question, or of the next morning. He may also assume that my authority for recording the fact is direct, in that I personally read it in the papers whence I took it. I have, of course, given the name of the paper when referring to leading articles, etc., which appeared in only one of them. The almost total lack (due to the boycotting by the new Hungary of almost any reference to the old) of secondary works covering the period of which I write has also often forced me to take the contemporary Press as authority in cases where a historian otherwise placed could have cited books; e.g. for more general statements on social and economic conditions, etc. Fortunately the Hungarian Press of the old days used to carry a great number of such

articles. In any case, authors of books on contemporary subjects nearly always used to publish their material first in the form of newspaper articles, which were afterwards reprinted in book form. When using articles of this description, I have given the reference. There were certain subjects on which the contemporary Hungarian Press could not write, and, when conditions changed, a spate of articles appeared in the Press of the New Hungary, purporting to tell “‘what really happened.”’

After the spate had died away in Hungary, a trickle of similar articles continued to appear in the émigré Press. In a minority of cases these articles (to which, again, when using them, I have given the reference) have yielded

authentic and valuable material. Many of those appearing in Hungary in 1945 and 1946 were, however, almost pure (or rather, impure) fiction, and I respectfully warn the reader not to be taken in by them. In a few cases I have also used the non-Hungarian Press. In all such cases ' T have given my authority.

II

The most important of the non-Hungarian primary sources bearing on

| my subject are well-known ones: the published collections of British and German diplomatic documents, including the little series published by the Russians under the title Documents Secrets; the records and documentation of the Nuremberg and Ministries Trials (of which the latter has been more valuable to me than the former, since Hungarian affairs were discussed in some detail during the hearing of Veesenmayer, whereas references to

X OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Hungarian affairs at the main trial were always incidental, and usually inaccurate), the Schmidt Trial in Austria and a few volumes of memoirs, ete. of which Ciano’s Diaries and Papers and Mr. J. F. Montgomery’s Hungary the Unwilling Satellite (N.Y. 1947) contain the most material bearing on my subject. None of these call for any description from me, and the abbreviations which I use when quoting them will be readily understood, except in

the two following cases: “‘Ciano Papers (MS.)” refers to certain papers belonging to the Ciano collection, but, for some reason, not included in Mr. Muggeridge’s translation (which I have used for the rest of the collection). There are only half a dozen or so of these papers, but two or three of them, as it happens, bear on Hungarian affairs.

The ‘‘Stakié MS.” is a short, unprinted narrative of Yugoslav policy kindly lent to me by H.R.H. Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.

There is no printed collection of Hungarian diplomatic documents covering any period later than 1921, but I have been able to draw on a certain

number of unprinted collections. Of these, the work quoted under the symbol “‘Sz. I. MS.” is the most important. This is a substantial collection

of Hungarian Foreign Ministry documents, some given only in extract, mainly covering the period 1938-43 (one or two refer to earlier dates). To this has been appended Bardossy’s last speech at his trial, in full, and one or two write-ups of special subjects, including the Volksdeutsch question, which are based on documents but summarise and interpret them rather than quote them. The collection is selective, not comprehensive, and the selection has

been made chiefly with a view to showing the independent character of Hungarian policy; but the collection is a pretty full one and documents when given have not been bowdlerised. It is thus a source of first-class importance for the history of Hungary’s foreign policy during the period covered by it,

although not a complete record of it. It exists only in typescript, and so far as I know, only in a single copy, which was placed at my disposal by the gentleman to whose safe-keeping the compiler entrusted it. “Lajos’’ (the Dr. Ivan Lajos mentioned on p. 353) can be named, because he is dead: the Russians arrested him in 1945 for no known crime except

that of being independent-minded, and he died in prison. He had been allowed access to the Foreign Ministry archives in 1945, and had written an essay some fifty pages long, consisting mainly of extracts from documents, strung together with comment. The point of view is the same as that of the compiler of the Sz. I. MS., and the documents drawn on are largely, but not entirely, the same.

‘Béla’? is the name which I have given to a still shorter collection, consisting exclusively of verbatim reproductions of some twenty important documents dating principally from 1940-41. The documents cited under the title ““Kallay MS.” reproduce correspondence which passed in 1943-44 between M. Kallay and those of his Ministers or ex-Ministers abroad who were in contact with the West. M. Kallay at

first intended to print these as an appendix to his Hungarian Premier, then changed his mind, but allowed me to make use of them. In his original MS. he said that they included all correspondence which had passed between him and MM. Barcza, Bakach-Bessenyey and Ullein-Reviczky, and a selection of his correspondence with M. Wodianer. Comparison with the Barcza MS. (see below), in which M. Barcza also claims to give the complete file of the correspondence between himself and Kallay, shows that at least in this case

NOTES ON SOURCES XI neither file is quite complete. This is presumably not due to intention, but to the loss of an odd paper here and there during the long wanderings of the files. There cannot be many omissions. Baron Bakach-Bessenyey also placed at my disposal copies of the dozen or so telegrams which passed between him and Hennyey in August-September

1944; and Count Géza Teleki made me the invaluable gift of a copy of the archives of the delegation which went to Moscow in September 1944. This

gives the wireless messages which passed between the delegation and Budapest, and the Notes which passed between the delegation and the Government of the U.S.S.R.

A documentary source of a different character is that quoted as ‘“‘Barczy.”’ M. Barczy, who is mentioned several times in my pages, especially in Pt. II, **Revulsion,”’ had, as there remarked, the duty of taking the minutes of Crown and Ministerial Councils. It used to be M. Barczy’s habit to take short notes at the meetings and write them up at home. He kept all his archives in his

own house. This was bombed during the siege of Buda and most of the papers were destroyed, but a few of the rough notes and still fewer of the revised minutes (but some of these very important ones) survived. The Russians then shut M. Barczy up in a room with all the papers which could be salvaged and told him to make them into a coherent record. J have a copy of this, given to me by M. Barczy. It is half reproduction, half comment. Both the documentary records and the comments—for M. Barczy knew a great deal—are often very valuable, but must be used with caution. The shorter notes, in particular, contain slips, some of them probably typing errors, and the collection is in any case only one of disjecta membra. That it contains no record that a Ministerial Council was held on some day is no guarantee that no such council was held, nor, when a meeting is recorded, can it safely be assumed that the notes record all subjects discussed at it. The Hungarians indulged themselves in their own war criminal trials,

very numerous and usually most scandalously conducted. The first big trials were those of Bardossy, Imrédy and Szalasi and his Arrow Cross colleagues in his Government, Szd6llési, Kemény, Vajna, Csia, Gera and Beregffy, who were tried with him. These three trials were fully reported in the Press, and reports of them were also published in pamphlet form, under the misleading title “Itél a t6rténet’’ (history judges). Unfortunately, these pamphlets were not only heavily censored to omit anything which would have told in favour of the defendants (not that this involved much cutting, for material witnesses for the defence were seldom allowed to give evidence at all), but were also most deplorably edited. Lines, paragraphs, probably often whole pages are dropped out, out of sheer carelessness; statements are attributed to the wrong person, and minor misprints abound. A few of these errors can be corrected from Press reports, but the reports themselves are

often not much better. Nevertheless, the trials produced much very important information. None of the other trials were republished, but some of them were reported fairly fully in the Press. From these reports I have drawn some details.

Ill There are a few important personal records, three of them available to persons who do not read Hungarian. These three are the Regent’s Ein Leben

Xil OCTOBER FIFTEENTH fiir Ungarn (Bonn, 1953),! Kallay’s Hungarian Premier (N.Y. and Oxford, 1954) and Ullein-Reviczky’s Guerre Allemande, Paix Russe (Neuchatel, 1947). Ihave, of course, drawn freely on all three, but must remark that all three authors were writing in exile and without the assistance of their own private papers. They were therefore dependent either on public sources available in Western Europe, on which the Regent, in particular, draws freely (he has also used a copy of Barczy), or on their memories, which in one or two cases seem to the writer to have been humanly fallible. ‘There has, so far as I know, only been one full-length published work of this kind in Hungarian dealing with any part of the period covered by my book, after 1921: Végzetes Esztendék (Fateful Years), published in Budapest in 1947 by V. Nagy, Minister of Defence 1942-43 (see Pt. II, p. 114 ff.). Nagy’s work

deals chiefly with his Ministerial career, but also, more shortly, with other events with which he was concerned, or of which he had knowledge, between 1938 and 1944. It is ill-written, discursive and egotistical and sometimes demonstrably inaccurate, but it contains much material of great value, notably a number of reports from Bartha, Csatay, Szombathelyi and other

military figures (often quoted verbatim), and an account of 14th-15th October which seems, on internal evidence, to have been written to the

author by Hennyey. ,

J. Darvas’ Varos az Ingovanyon (The City on the Swamp), Budapest, 1945, is part-memoir, part-sociological polemic. Where the author’s outpourings are to be trusted at all, which is not very often, they are valuable, since they throw a light, albeit a turgid one, on an aspect of my story on which

all too little material is available: the history of the Left-wing Resistance Movement. The other printed sources for this are chiefly pamphlets, of which the most authoritative are: A Reakcio Ellen; a collection of articles, of unequal value, by half a dozen Social Democrats), and A Fiiggetlenségi Mozgalom; personal reminiscences given in lecture form, early in 1946, by G.

Kallai, Communist, and I. Kovacs, National Peasant). Some years after delivering his lecture, M. Kallai, who in the interval had been through extremely varied experiences, re-told his story at much greater length in a book entitled 4 Magyar Fiiggetlenségi Mozgalom, 1939-45 (Budapest, 1955). In this he revealed some valuable details of Communist organisation and activities, but also found it necessary, or advisable, to revise history, and the deliberate

falsifications in which he consciously engaged, superimposed on the distortions deriving from his mental outlook, make of his book a midden out of which the pearls of truth—although it contains some such—have to be scratched very laboriously. Kovacs has also some picturesque pages at the beginning of his Jim Schatten der Sowiets (Zurich, 1948), and the émigré

Latohatar of 1953-54 contains an interesting polemic between MM. Schépflin (Communist) and Peyer (Social Democrat). A Magyar Tragédia, by D. Sulyok (Newark, N.J., 1954) is a strongly polemical work in which certain historical facts are embedded. The strongly expressed judgements with which it is replete are always stimulating, and occasionally acceptable. For obviously secondary works, see below.

One very valuable unprinted source of the memoir type is that referred

to as “Barceza.” This is an unpublished autobiography by M. Barcza, Hungarian Minister to the Court of St. James’s, 1938-41, and subsequently 1 English translation, under the title Memoirs, London, 1956. This reached me too Jate to alter my references, which are to the German edition,

NOTES ON SOURCES XI one of Kallay’s contacts with the Allies. M. Barcza kindly placed his MS. at my disposal, and J have drawn heavily on it, both when describing AngloHungarian relations in 1938-41 and in my narrative of Kallay’s secret negotiations. M. Barcza’s MS. also contains some valuable documents, not all of them directly connected with his own activities. Another source which is partly autobiographical, partly documentary,

and partly Heaven knows what, is that quoted as Szalasi’s Diary. This enormous manuscript work, a copy of which was given me in a rash moment by one of the leaders of Democratic Hungary, is a sort of personal history of the “‘Arrow-Cross Party, Hungarist Movement.” Most of it is Szalasi’s own composition, although Szalasi never once refers to himself in the first person, but only as “‘Szalasi’’ (during the first period) and “PV” (Partvezet6—Party Leader) during the later stages. It is in every sense an extraordinary production. Most of it is in a sort of diary form, and seems to have been compiled day by day (no tense except the present is ever used), but there are cases in which the composition seems to have taken place some time after the event. As a rule it describes only events in which Szalasi himself was concerned, as

politician; thus it passes over his early life altogether, beginning with an account (this certainly not quite contemporary) of his first excursions into politics. It is moderately short up to Szalasi’s imprisonment in 1939; leaves

his prison experiences undescribed; and reopens, much more fully, in September 1941. The doings of other persons are hardly ever reported directly in the main body of the Diary, except in a line or two explanatory

of some action or decision taken by Szalasi, and similarly, important happenings in the outside world get only a line or so, followed by: “*Sz.’s

opinion: Such and such.” On the other hand, reports from Szalasi’s friends, subordinates or agents are often given in appendix form. Some of

these are exceedingly valuable. The earlier appendices include “Lajos Keresztes-Fischer’s action’ in 1936 (see p. 175), ‘““General Sods’ intervention with Horthy”’ (see p. 212 ff.), and several other valuable glimpses behind the scenes. From March 1944 onward the appendices become exceedingly full. They include immense reports by Kemény of interminable conversations with

Haller, other subordinates’ reports of conversations with Hungarian politicians, and from August onward, reports from Szalasi’s informants ‘Lajos’ (not identical with the Lajos mentioned above), “‘Ede” and Gémbés,

jun., on German and Hungarian military movements, as well as intimate secrets of Hungarian policy. Unfortunately, the Diary breaks off on 12th October.

Two other diaries which I have been able to use are (1) the diary of a Hungarian lady covering March and April 1944, kindly lent to me by the Countess of Listowel, and (2) a Diary of the Resistance Movement from March to October, by Countess Eva Dessewffly. An omnibus volume published in 1946 under the title A debreceni Feltamadds contains some forty articles, mostly dealing with the beginnings of the

New Hungary, a subject which I have not attempted to treat. But three or four of them appear to reproduce the reminiscences of Faraghd, Miklos, Vo6rés and Nemes.

One other book used by me is in places a near-primary source. This is Szigoruan Bizalmas (Strictly Confidential), by L. Sallo (Budapest, 1947). It is a sort of diary, kept by a Liberal journalist who used to note down daily “‘the things he heard and was not allowed to print.”” It is a good job that he

XIV OCTOBER FIFTEENTH did not print most of them, for nine-tenths of the book consists of the wildest gossip imaginable, but here and there the writer has got hold of a genuine piece of confidential information. The military sources stand quite apart from all the rest, except in so far

as Nagy straddles the gap. When I was in Hungary in 1946 I confided to Colonel Tombor, who was then Minister of Defence, that I had found it very difficult to get information on this subject, and a fortnight later he presented

me with a folder containing half a dozen essays on various aspects of Hungary’s war effort: statistics on mobilisation, a short narrative of the Mobile Corps’ operations in 1941, some figures on war production, etc. I refer to this collection as the ““Tombor MS.” Colonel Tombor afterwards utilised part of the same material, with a few additions, in a roneographed pamphlet (““Tombor Typescript’’). The same material, still further revised, appeared in printed form over the signatures of T. Peth6 and E. Csebe and under the title of Hungary in World War IT: a Military History of the Years of War (cit. as ““Csebe-Peth6’’). Some of the same material seems to have been used once more as one element in a series of articles which began to appear in 1952 in the émigré Hadak Utjan (On the Warpath), which, however, greatly expanded the accounts of the Hungarian Army’s operations between June 1941 and April 1945. These have been collected and republished with

further additions by V. Adonyi, A Magyar Katona a Mdsodik Vilaghaboruban | (The Hungarian Soldier in the Second World War), Klagenfurt, 1954. An entirely independent source is that quoted as “‘Suhaj.”” This is a typescript essay of some fifty pages, written in 1945. General Suhaj collected his own material, and his account often covers gaps left in the Tombor series. Even so, I have found it difficult to get adequate accurate military information, especially on the cardinal question of armaments, and in particular of

the Hungaro-German armament agreements. Information for the period before 1941 is also very scanty. Colonel Nadas has helped me to fill in some of the gaps, but Jam aware that many remain. I regret this the more because the deeper I have studied the history of Hungary after 1919, the more clearly I have felt the dominant influence on it of military considerations. No secondary work in any language, or from any country, even attempts to cover the whole field. I. Kertész’ Diplomacy in a Whirlpool (Indiana, 1953)

is a rather slight, but very useful, history of Hungary’s foreign relations. Mr. Montgomery’s work quoted above does not confine itself to the author’s personal reminiscences: he seems to have been supplied with further material

from Hungarian sources. His interests, too, are mainly diplomatic. Lady Listowel’s Crusader in the Secret War has some interesting passages on Hungary’s “get-out negotiations.”” Mr. Laffan’s chapters on Munich and the First Vienna Award, in the Survey of International Affairs for 1938, are fair and accurate, but have not served me as source, as I had completed my own chapters before they appeared. There is no satisfactory comprehensive

work on Hungarian internal political history. Of the flood of pamphlets which appeared in Hungary after the war, the best were those issued under Government auspices to prove that all Hungary had not been pro-German (The Other Hungary, by I. Boldizsar; German Economic Influences in the Danube Valley and Hungarian Economic Resistance against German Penetra-

tion, by L. Jocsik). These contain some useful statistics. The political pamphlets of “‘revelations” are generally totally unreliable. The best is 4 Tizhénapos Tragédia (The Ten-months’ Tragedy), Budapest, 1946, which is

NOTES ON SOURCES XV bad only in parts. Unfortunately, my collection of these pamphlets is incomplete, but I cannot think that those which I have missed contain much material of great value. The history of anti-Semitism in Hungary from 1939 on has been made the

subject of a special study by M. J. Lévai, who first published the results of | his researches in Hungarian in three volumes (all published Budapest, 1947), entitled respectively Fekete Kényv (Black Book: this describes anti-Semitic

legislation and action), Sziirke Kényv (Grey Book: opposition from and _ interventions by Hungarian authorities) and Fehér Kényvy (White Book: opposition from and intervention by foreign and international bodies). In 1951, all three books were published together in English under the title “Black Book’? (which does not, however, mean that the grey and white elements in the picture were omitted). This gives a great mass of material, very fairly set out; but also very confusingly edited, so that the reader finds it hard to get a coherent picture of the development of events. Lévai’s work is the basis of the chapters on Hungary in G. Rettlinger’s Final Solution (London, 1953). I have used both works, but precisely because neither seemed to me to explain satisfactorily how these atrocities came to occur, I have also utilised other sources, notably the evidence and documentation of the Veesenmayer trial, and the contemporary Hungarian Press. For my written economic data I have had to depend almost solely on the Press (fortunately, the Pester Lloyd’s economic pages were always first-class,

and concealed little except expenditure on armaments and, in war-time, certain foreign trading transactions) and on the extraordinarily useful

publications of the Hungarian Statistical Office. A detailed study of Hungarian social policy and legislation (A Magyar Tarsadalmi Politika és Torvenyhozas) by M. B. Kovrig appeared in New York in 1954, in roneo form. While the authorities listed above cover fairly adequately the field of such

information as lies open to any student with patience and a knowledge of the Hungarian language, they are lamentably short on that inside information for which the historian’s usual sources are official documents, when released for publication, and biographies or autobiographies of those who made that

inner history. Nor is it likely that these gaps will ever be filled by the ordinary processes. Many of Hungary’s official archives perished in the siege of Buda; the rest look like staying sealed for ever with an iron ring. It is unlikely that the papers of Bethlen, Gémbés, Imrédy, Kanya or Teleki, if they have survived at all, will ever be allowed to see the light. The only other possible sources of such inside information are thus the memories of those who once possessed it and still survive. It was clearly urgently desirable in the interests of history that someone should tap as many as possible of these sources before they, too, ran dry; and it was the recognition of the fact that certain special and fortuitous circumstances had given me peculiar advantages for undertaking the task myself that led me to replan this book on a scale far more ambitious than its original design. The unfailing generosity with which my importunities have been met has been truly touching; the richness of the response may be gathered from my pages themselves, probably more than half of which are, if I include among my private helpers those who placed at my disposal unpublished and generally unobtainable material such

as the MSS. listed above, based on such direct information, supplied

personally.

XVI OCTOBER FIFTEENTH It would be impossible for me to give here a full list of all my helpers. Discretion compels me to withhold some names, and to put down all those who supplied a single fact, or corrected one impression, would burst the bounds even of these two volumes. Under these circumstances, to mention any names at all, while others are omitted, is invidious. Yetit would be more ungracious still to pass over in silence some friends who have devoted quite special pains to helping me. In this sense, while expressing here my genuine gratitude and appreciation to all who have helped me, I may acknowledge my especial indebtedness to the following: H.R.N. the Archduke Otto Habsburg; H.S.H. the Regent; Frl. B. Hacke; Mme Ilona Horthy; BaronG. Apor, Baron G. Bakach-Bessenyey, L. Baranyai,

G. Barcza, the late I. Barczy, G. Baross, S. Bede, L. Béry, T. Eckhardt,

Baron von Erdmannsdorff, the late T. Fabinyi, E. Fekete, A. Frey, F.M. Halder, General K. Hardy, A. Hlatky, General G. Hennyey, N. KaAllay,

Colonel G. Kiralyi, B. Kovrig, Count Lubiensky, A. Michaelis, Colonel L. Nadas (who also obtained information for me from General Bartha and others), G. Ottlik, Baron A. Radvanszky, R. Rahn, Baron P. Schell, the late G. Soos, A. Szegedi-Maszak, J. Széll, Rev. A. Szentivanyi, Count Géza Teleki, Count Mihaly Telek, the late A. Ullein-Reviczky, E. Veesenmayer, L. Veress, T. Zsitvay. None of these ladies or gentlemen, of course, is responsible for any of the opinions expressed in this book, and not all of them would necessarily endorse

my accounts of events in which they were themselves participants. One of the embarrassments which attend the writing of contemporary history is that the writer sometimes finds himself unable to follow exactly some person’s account of his own doings, in whatever good faith this has been given. Sometimes flat contradictions between the accounts given by two or more witnesses to the same event make it absolutely necessary to assume that at least one of them contains errors of recollection; in some other cases irrefutable documentary evidence has provided disconcerting but absolute proof of the fallibility of homan memory. For many passages in this book, as where I have attempted to assess such things as the state of feeling prevailing in Hungary as a whole, or in certain classes or groups, at different periods and over different subjects, the inner nature of institutions, or the qualities of persons, I cannot, as a rule, shelter

behind anyone else’s authority at all. Most of these passages represent impressions and views formed by myself as the result of personal observation and experience gleaned in the course of a close preoccupation with Hungarian

affairs which has extended now over many years. I naturally do not claim infallibility for these passages. I can only say that if ever I have failed to achieve understanding or do justice, it has not been for lack of conscientious endeavour.

Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, I-V, and VIII, have been used. No. VI was published when the work was at press, and a few amendments have therefore been included as an appendix. All these are referred to in the text by an asterisk.

OCTOBER FIFTEENTH PART I

..

CHAPTER ONE

PRELUDE TO TRIANON HIS work describes the end of a world. It has been relatively easy to | decide the approximate point at which the story should close. When the Germans carried off the Regent of Hungary, Miklés Horthy, to Germany, on 17th October 1944, they were abducting a political and social system. The weeks during which the Arrow Cross, under Ferencz Szalasi, exercised a nominal and disputed control over a steadily dwindling remnant of the country were only an epilogue, even if it was one which put a sad and appropriate finishing-touch to the story; they will not be described here in any detail: while the new Government of “liberated Hungary” formed at Debrecen, under Soviet auspices, at Christmas 1944, represented, of its very raison d’étre, a break with the past and a new Start, and its activities do not belong to the theme of this book. The choice of a starting-point is much more difficult. Horthy’s Hungary was a casualty of the Second World War. But it is not possible to open the | narrative in September 1939. For Hungary, that date is either too early or too late. If our theme was Hungary at war, it would be technically too early, since Hungary did not become a belligerent, in the legal sense of the word, until 26th June 1941. Yet the step which Bardossy took on that day, fraught as it proved to be with consequences so disastrous to his country and himself, was at the time in his own view, and in that of most of the politically conscious opinion of Hungary, a mere shuffle, and not even an irretrievable one, along

a path on which his predecessors had entered long before. But neither did Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Ist September 1939 begin anything new for Hungary. For her, as for most of Eastern Europe, this act of overt violence did not transmogrify a world at peace into a world at war. It simply erased, with local effect, the syllable ‘‘un’’ from the undeclared war which had long been in progress, and in several episodes of which Hungary herself had participated briskly. The transition was the less decisive for her because she was, as we have said, able to keep for herself, for nearly two years more, the

conventional little prefix. ,

To find the real beginnings of Hungary’s war we must go back far beyond °: 1939. We should, indeed, never be finished if we pushed too hard the obvious | truth that the seeds of every present event lie in the past. We may assume the reader’s acceptance of the direct and inevitable sequence of cause and effect which runs—to go back no earlier—from the decay of the Turkish power, the great recolonisation of Hungary around A.D. 1700, the clash of nationalisms in the nineteenth century, the alliance between the Court and the nationalities in 1849, the re-establishment of the partnership between the Crown and the Hungarian ruling classes in 1867, the entry of Hungary into the war of 1914-18 as partner of Austria and ally of Germany and the alignment on the other side of Yugoslavs, Roumanians and Slovak leaders. It is, however, necessary to insist more explicitly that for Hungary, as for all of Central Europe, the wars of 1914-18 and of 1939-45 were not two wars but one: two chapters of

4 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH open fighting separated by an intervening period which differed from them in degree rather than in kind. To go no further back, the Treaty of Trianon, which Hungary signed on 14th June 1920, formed, once signed, a fixed point to which every subsequent act of Hungarian international policy was directly related, in attempts or preparations for attempts to secure revision of it, or, more rarely, in debate whether it might not be wise to modify or abandon

_ the claim for revision on certain points in the light of new considerations most of which also arose out of the Versailles Peace System. _ Thus it is in any case necessary to recall, without criticism or justification,

but simply in factual form, what the Treaty of Trianon did to Hungary. It made an end of the historic State which had existed ever since Arpad led his warriors across the Carpathians at the end of the ninth century A.D. | Of its area (excluding Croatia-Slavonia) of 282,876 square kilometres, it assigned

4,020 to Austria, 61,633 to Czechoslovakia,! 589 to Poland, 103,093 to Roumania, 21 to Italy and 20,547 to Yugoslavia, which also received the 42,541 square kilometres of Croatia-Slavonia, leaving Hungary herself with

only 92,963. Of the population of 18,264,533 (Inner Hungary),* Austria received 291,618, Czechoslovakia 3,517,568,° Poland 23,662, Roumania 5,257,467, Italy 49,806 and Yugoslavia 1,509,295, besides the 2,621,954 inhabitants of Croatia-Slavonia. 7,615,117 persons were left to Hungary. And although the dismemberment of Hungary was effected in the name of national self-determination, substantial numbers of Magyars. were, on any computation, transferred to the Successor States. The pre-war Hungarian census classified the inhabitants by “‘mother-tongue,”’ and the persons of Magyar mother-tongue shown by the 1910 census as residing in the areas assigned to the Successor States* amounted to 26,183 to Austria, 1,063,020 to Czechoslovakia,® 230 to Poland, 1,704,851 to Roumania, 6,493 to Italy and 441,787 to Yugoslavia (besides 105,948 in Croatia-Slavonia). Some of these were landlords, officials, traders or other upper and middle-class elements living in preponderantly non-Magyar areas, and there were also in all the main Successor States some Magyar villages which were remote from the. new frontiers (notably the Szekels of Transylvania, a solid bloc several

hundreds of thousands strong, in the extreme south-eastern corner of Transylvania). In many cases, however, solidly or preponderantly Magyar areas contiguous to the main central bloc of Magyar population were left outside Hungary’s new frontiers for the economic or strategic benefit of the Successor States. In Hungary itself, the 1920 census showed 833,475 persons of mother-tongue other than Magyar, 551,624 of these being Germans and 141,918 Slovaks; nearly all these lived remote from the frontiers.

_ Thus while the authors of the Treaty had held the ethnic principle to possess an overriding validity before which all historical, economic and other considerations must give way, they had, in practice, violated that principle

very largely to the detriment of Hungary. And those other considerations had not been negligible, , Historic Hungary had constituted a geographical unit of a perfection hardly to be matched in Europe, and the directors of its economic development in the nineteenth century had not only worked on the assumption that it would remain undivided, but had, for political reasons,

* Census figures of 1910. | : 1 Slovakia, 48,994; Ruthenia, 12,639.

3 Slovakia, 2,946,080; Ruthenia, 571,488.

| * Adjusted after the Sopron plebiscite and other minor rectifications. ros

| .' . * Slovakia, 893,586; Ruthenia, 169,434. | | oe

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 5 stressed the interdependence of its parts even more strongly than would be suggested by natural conditions. So the Treaty which dismembered Hungary did not lop off outlying parts unconnected with the centre, or with each other; it cut through organic nexuses, severing sources of supply from factories, primary industries from their finishing counterparts, the finished product from its purchaser. The remnant which still called itself Hungary was left with useless amputated stumps sticking out in every direction and

an economic structure unsuited to its natural conditions, being semiindustrialised, with emphasis on the finishing industry, but containing, so far as was then known (since the existence of neither its bauxite deposits nor its oil-fields was yet suspected), few mineral resources or sources of power and thus, as it appeared, destined by nature to be an agricultural country. _ The Treaty of Trianon contained two other important sets of provisions:

the chapters relating respectively to reparations and to the limitation of armaments. The reparations clauses in the Treaty did not specify what sum Hungary would be required to pay, merely laying down that she would have to pay reparations, which would be “‘the first charge upon all the assets and resources of Hungary.” The armaments provisions limited Hungary’s armed forces to a long-service force of 35,000 officers and men, to be used exclusively

for the maintenance of internal order and the defence of the frontiers. -The

armaments permitted were strictly limited: no heavy artillery, tanks or military air-force were allowed. The control over the execution of the provisions was entrusted to an Inter-Allied Control Commission. As Hungarian revisionism will dominate our entire story, it will be well to emphasise at this point that the desire and determination to achieve some revision of this Treaty were nation-wide in Hungary throughout the entire period. Obviously, they were more active among the politically minded classes, and obviously also there were in Hungary, as there are in every country, some persons—belonging chiefly to the socially unfortunate classes —to whom wider considerations made no appeal. Again, there developed, especially in the decade 1934-44, very considerable differences as to the amount of revision for which the country should work: a feeling then began to prevail fairly widely, especially among the younger generation, that the re-extension of Hungary’s sovereignty over non-Magyar masses, unless with their full consent, was not practicable or even desirable. There were many and deep divergences of opinion on what would be the best tactics to pursue,

and some of the courses advocated involved renunciations, on practical grounds, of revision in one direction or another, for very long periods. There was even a party which thought that so long as revision remained outside the

sphere of practical politics all active revisionist agitation ought to be set temporarily aside in favour of a constructive social and domestic policy. In the 1930’s the same party was so acutely aware of the German danger as to favour very far-reaching concessions indeed to Hungary’s neighbours if by that means a common front could be established against the threat from

Germany. But even this was essentially a tactical consideration. It is completely untrue to say that revision was desired only by landowners who wanted their estates back, and it is not even more than a half-truth that the regime kept the revision question alive in order to divert attention from social injustice at home; the not very flattering truth being that the remedy favoured

suppression. a 7 , ,

by. the regime. against social discontent was not diversion but simple

6 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH We propose, in fact to take the signature of the Treaty of Trianon as the starting-point of our story, and make even that statement with the qualification that it is not our intention to give a detailed narrative of the first decade

which followed the signature of the Treaty. But from that point onward we shall be describing not only the diplomatic history of Hungary but also her internal social and political developments: partly as affecting her struggle for revision, partly for their own sakes. And for that purpose it is necessary not only to describe in some detail the system which was in force, and the

conditions which prevailed, at the end of the 1920’s—at which point our historical narrative proper begins—but also to give some brief indication of the internal developments which formed the heritage to which Trianon Hungary succeeded. This is the more necessary because the Government which signed the Treaty was a counter-revolutionary one, the declared purpose of which was to revert as completely as possible, both at home and abroad (the word ‘“‘possible”’ is operative and implies the admission that some modifications, which might even be extensive in certain fields, were not only necessary but even desirable), to the status quo ante 1918. The world to which the counter-revolution looked back was that which in its turn looked back to the Compromise of 1867 as the starting-point of its development; and .we may begin, as the counter-revolutionaries did, by

thinking ourselves back into the last years of the Compromise Era; while remembering that in the eyes of Hungarians the Compromise itself was only a restoration, adapted as necessity dictated or expediency suggested, of the

still earlier world of 1848. ,

How, then, did Hungary stand in the last years before the dismemberment of the State: the last years of the ‘““Compromise Era’’? The period then drawing to a close had undeniably been one of remarkable

economic progress. In the 1830’s Hungary’s great patriot and reformer, Istvan Széchényi, had called his country “the great fallow-land”’ and it had in truth been little more. The prolonged Turkish occupation of central Hungary, with the scarcely less devastating wars which accompanied and followed the expulsion of the Turks, had left the whole country not merely far behind those more fortunate lands: of the west which Hungary’s own blood had saved from the same disasters, but far behind the stage of develop-

ment which she herself had reached before Mohacs; and the succeeding century of Habsburg rule had brought only a very slow and partial recovery which, except in the point of a rapidly increased population (and even this introduced new problems and dangers), still failed to keep pace with the advance which the countries west.of her were making during the same period. Even geographically a large part of Hungary—substantially larger than before the Turks arrived—was a mere mass of fever-haunted swamp or impenetrable

jungle. The rest was cultivated, except in the case of a few large estates belonging to landlords of Western education and ideas, by methods which were almost inconceivably primitive; and even where the natural and unexhausted richness of the soil triumphed over those methods, and brought forth abundant fruits, the indescribably backward nature of the communications largely nullified the results. It was not uncommon for the better part of a good harvest to rot away in the fields, while a bad harvest the next year brought starvation. And yet this agriculture was the sole means of existence for nine-tenths of the population. The proportion of the population wholly

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 7 or mainly employed in trade or industry cannot greatly have exceeded 5 per cent., and practically all the ‘“‘establishments”’ of either category were of the most modest character. The professional classes were almost confined to the Church and the teaching profession (two categories which overlapped to a considerable extent), and a certain number of lawyers, who were always in demand to cope with the innumerable lawsuits in which nearly every landed family was embroiled over the disputed ownership of estates. The professional Civil Service and judiciary were minute, most of the functions of both being

. performed by local landowners.

The proportion of the population living in agglomerations classified as

“towns” was, again, about 5 per cent. There were, it is true, large : agglomerations which did not possess urban status; on the other hand, many of the “‘towns”’ lived mainly from agriculture or viticulture. Furthermore, the inhabitants of most of the towns outside the Alféld, and a large proportion of the industrial and trading populations, were Germans living a life which even constitutionally was only partially integrated into the general life of the country. The political and social system had remained practically unaltered for centuries. The line drawn (or rather, redrawn) by Werboczy in 1519 between

noble and non-noble had lost something of its sharpness: of the 136,000 “noble” families in 1848, only about one-quarter possessed full ‘‘noble’’ rights, and a considerable number of non-nobles were, in one respect or another, above the line of complete servitude, which itself did not mean absence of any personal security whatever; but the nobles alone still possessed political rights and the guarantee of personal freedom, besides most important economic privileges, while the nineteen-twentieths of the population who still

ranked as “‘misera contribuens plebs’’ had to provide the entire revenue, national and local; had no voice whatever in public affairs; laboured under important restrictions of their personal freedom; and in all minor matters were subject to the jurisdiction of the same men who were also their economic

masters. There were also substantial differences between the degrees of freedom and status enjoyed by the different religious confessions. By 1910 almost every surface feature of this had been changed. The very face of the land had altered, clearing and reclamation had reduced marsh and forest and had added no less than 6 million ho/d' to the cultivable area of the

country, of which only 5 per cent. now ranked as uncultivable, against 15 per cent. before 1848. The agriculture now employed in this enlarged area had been modernised by the introduction of machinery and fertilisers. The area under arable and intensive crops had risen sharply, and average yields, especially of breadgrains, maize and potatoes, had increased in spectacular fashion, so that the national production of agricultural products almost doubled between 1870 and 1890. Withal, the percentage of the population living on the land, or employed in agriculture, had fallen substantially. Of the total population, which had grown to over 18 million,” only 64-5 per cent. was now employed in agriculture, and over 20 per cent. (3,675,000) lived in

towns, which had grown by 40 per cent. in the years 1890-1910 alone. Of

these towns, which had been largely rebuilt, to the admiration of the 1 One cadastral hold =0-576 hectares =1:43 English acres. There was also an old ‘Magyar

hold,” which varied slightly from place to place but usually =0-43 ha. =1-07 acres. .

2 18,264,133 excluding, or 20,886,487 including, Croatia-Slavonia. The remaining figures in these paragraphs refer to Inner Hungary.

8 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH builders, in the style fashionable at the period, Budapest had now passed the million mark and fully fifty more were of considerable size. Industry, after a slow start and a setback caused by the great financial crash of 1873, had spurted rapidly. The census showed 3,361,000 persons! as deriving their livelihood from it, 1,297,000 of them gainfully employed in industrial undertakings and 44,770 in house industry. There were nearly 5,000 establishments ranking as factories, employing 750,000 persons and using an aggregate machine power of 750,000 h.p. Mines and blast furnaces employed 205,000 persons more. 720,000 were employed in commerce and banking, which was now fully developed, although it is true that most of the Hungarian banks were branches of foreign houses and dependent on their centres in Vienna or

Berlin (more rarely, London, Paris or Milan). A network of railways and main roads radiated from Budapest, or linked the provincial towns;

communications employed 630,000 persons. ,

To deal with all this, a considerable administrative and professional class had come into being. The census gave 680,000 persons as employed in the administrative services and the professions, while another calculation showed 41,442 persons gainfully employed in the administration, 25,557 in medicine,

5,304 in arts and literature and 6,767 in other professions. Gainfully employed salaried employees in agriculture numbered 11,406, in trade,

, industry, etc., 107,524, in miscellaneous occupations, 9,985. There was a not unimportant leisured class. Legislation had swept away every legal difference between noble and nonnoble and had introduced full religious freedom and equality. Withal, the era had either failed to solve, or had actually seen the creation of, a number of very serious problems. Four of these were apparent even at the time. The first was the problem of the non-Magyar ‘“‘nationalities,” many of whom had taken up arms against the Hungarian Government in 1849, in recognition whereof the country had been administratively dismembered

during the Absolutist Era which followed. When, in and after 1867, the historic constitution and frontiers of Hungary were restored, the internal subdivisions being abolished as well as the separate status of Transylvania and the Military Frontier, an attempt was made to satisfy the nationalities by legislation which promised them every freedom which a national minority

could desire within the national state of another nation. It was hoped that this would ensure their loyalty, but a vicious circle had, on the contrary, developed. On the one hand, the Hungarian authorities had largely dis-

regarded the laws; on the other, irredentism had continued, and even increased, among the Serbs and Roumanians and among sections of the Slovaks. We need not try here to assign priority between the hen and the egg, but only register the fact that, fifty years after the Compromise, the nationalities had neither been assimilated nor inculcated with a firm and incontrovertible attachment to the Hungarian State. The second unsolved problem was that of the agrarian proletariat. This had its roots largely in ancient conditions, not all of Hungary’s own making, which had resulted, before 1848, in an exceptionally high proportion of the land’s being owned by a few very large landowners. The class of free peasants

was remarkably small; and on the nobles’ estates the proportion of land + Including dependants; this applies to all figures quoted, except where otherwise stated.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 9 held in socage tenure was also very small in comparison to that which the landlord cultivated directly. In 1848 there were only 625,000 socage peasants

(heads of families), with an average socage holding of only 12 hold. The class known as zsellér (cottar or landless man) was at least half as large again. The reforms of 1848 gave the socage peasants their land in freehold, after

. which they fused with the free peasants and poor nobles to form a class of small freeholders, holding 10-15 hold each, numbering about 40 per cent. of the total population of Hungary and occupying a not much smaller proportion of its arable and meadow land. But the reforms hardly touched either the allodial land or the zsellérs.. Thus, on the one hand, the large estates remained not essentially diminished, and although many of them changed hands afterwards, the estates themselves survived and for a time actually increased. In 1913, of Hungary’s 49 million hold, 6-75 million hold were still held in estates (128 in number) of 20,000 hold -+-, 2-70 million in 196 estates of 10,000-20,000 hold, and 2-91 million in 425 estates of 5,000-10,000 hold. 26-59 million hold was in estates of 100 hold+, and of this, the estates of under 1,000 hold accounted for only 7-05 million. Many of the largest estates were now safeguarded by the system of fidei-commis, or family entail, which

rendered them inalienable and thus not available for the relief of rural

congestion, except through lease-holding. At the other end of the scale, the number of zse//érs multiplied by natural increase, and was reinforced by the overflow from the smallholdings. This

was relatively small, owing to the Hungarian habit of dividing a holding equally among all children; but the result of that was that smallholdings were subdivided again and again, until they passed far below the size which could support a family, so that besides a growing class that was entirely landless, there was also a growing class of “‘dwarf-holders.”’ Both processes were fairly gradual: in the 1850’s there were still empty spaces to fill up, and in the 1860’s devastating outbreaks of cholera kept the population almost stationary. Increased yields, due to improved methods of

cultivation, compensated for the diminishing size of the peasant holdings, and the zsellérs found employment on the great public works then in process —the railways and the regulation of the Tisza—to such an extent that labour

for the estates was in short supply and wages correspondingly high. , Then the cholera passed and population rose with great rapidity, especially

in central Hungary, which not only showed the highest rates of natural increase but also had its population augmented through internal migration from the north. The public works ended, while private industrialisation (which was, indeed, opposed by the big landlords precisely in the interests of

maintaining a cheap and abundant labour supply) had hardly begun. In 1890 the totally landless agrarian population was about 1,700,000 (wageearners), or over 48 per cent. of the total agrarian population and over a quarter of the total gainfully employed population. About one-third of these were farmhands in regular employment; most of the rest lived from casual or seasonal labour. By this time there were in Hungary nearly half a million holdings of 5-10 hold (8 hold was usually taken as the minimum on which a family could live by ordinary mixed farming); over 700,000 holdings of 1-5 hold and nearly 600,000 of under one hold.* The early 1890’s saw the peak of the congestion, for after this the safety1 Many of these were market-gardens, vineyards or tobacco plantations, and not all of them

provided the sole livelihood for their owners. :

10 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH valve of emigration began to operate on a large scale, and industrialisation also began to take up a part of the overflow. From now to 1914 the agrarian population seems to have remained roughly stationary. But the two great armies of dwarf-holders and entirely landless men, if they did not increase, also did not perceptibly diminish, and conditions and real wages, although fluctuating from year to year with the harvest (a very important factor for the large body of seasonal labourers whose wage was partly calculated on percentage of the harvest gathered by them), showed on the whole a steady

tendency to decline. It was calculated that by the end of the century the labourers got enough to feed themstlves and their families adequately only when the harvest had been “‘exceptionally good”; another authority said that the conditions of the labourers had gone down by at least 50 per cent. since 1848. Starvation diseases were common. Hours of work had been lengthened to the extreme limit. The agrarian labour legislation of the period consisted almost exclusively of enactments designed to prevent the labourers from defending their interests against those of the landlords. Thirdly, the situation of the industrial workers must also be written down as an unsolved problem. The growth of industry and banking brought great wealth to a few entrepreneurs and stockholders (many of the latter not being Hungarians), but it also brought into being a considerable class of industrial workers, among whom factory workers, properly speaking, increased steadily at the expense of the old artisans, and among the factory workers, those employed in large undertakings at the expense of small. The first factories were operated partly with imported foreign craftsmen, who had a certain scarcity value. The earliest observers’ reports do not as a rule suggest that labour conditions in Hungary were exceptionally bad; in the 1840’s, indeed, she possessed a body of labour legislation which was exceptionally advanced for the time. In the 1850’s both wages and conditions were still reported as good. After 1867, however, the Hungarian Governments of the Liberal Era deliberately neglected to develop social legislation and actually encouraged the payment of low wages in order to promote the growth of a native industry whose power to meet the competition of the older and more highly developed industries of German Austria and Bohemia depended on its ability to work with lower wage-costs.! While highly skilléd labour, which was still at something of a premium, was still able to maintain a tradition of independence and to preserve relatively advantageous standards, the great mass of unskilled labour, composed of the surplus population from the congested land, was delivered over to the mercy of entrepreneurs who were often able to amass huge fortunes from exploiting its helplessness, and it remained in a condition of economic misery and social degradation. Non-Magyar nationalities, agrarian proletariat or near-proletariat, their industrial counterparts—each of these presented a social and _ political challenge to the regime; but when considering the way in which the regime met those challenges, it is necessary to remember a fourth factor, the existence of which, indeed, determined the very nature of the regime itself: the force of Hungarian nationalism, otherwise known as the “Independence Movement,”

in arms against the Compromise of 1867, which was a true compromise, reached with the Crown. The ‘‘Independence”’ politicians not only resented the Austrian connection 1 B. Kovrig, Magyar Tdrsadalompolitika, 1920-1945 (Hungarian Social Policy, 1920-1945) (N.Y., 1954, roneoed), pp. 30 ff.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON I] as a derogation of the full sovereignty of Hungary: they also argued that it put the Monarch in a position from which he could exploit the centrifugal

forces in Hungary against her, and that by its tradition and character it favoured a reactionary and feudal social system. Against this, the school of the “necessary evil” (the ‘“‘true blessing”? school can be almost ignored) argued

that the existence of the Habsburg Monarchy, and the inclusion of Hungary within it, were vital to the very existence of Hungary, since without it the centrifugal forces would operate quite unchecked. Hungary must therefore support the Monarchy, and offer the Monarch such support as to make it worth his while to forgo what the centrifugal forces could offer. In 1867 this latter school had won the day, although by the narrowest possible margin, and its adherents were thereafter in power, with hardly any real breaks, up to 1918; but it must be realised that the opposition forces against which they had to struggle included not only the irredentism of the non-Magyars, and the discontent of the dispossessed classes, but also the truculent Magyar nationalism of the Hungarian Independence politicians. Throughout the Compromise Era the national question, in this its twofold aspect, played a far more important role in Hungarian politics than the social question; and not altogether without reason, for the social question was relatively non-acute, at least in the earlier period. The reforms of 1848 had left the socage peasants genuinely satisfied, while the zse//érs were too inarticulate and the industrial proletariat too small to constitute a political factor; whereas the conflict with the nationalities in 1849 remained a lively

memory, and the Hungarian Independence movement a virile and unconquered force. It was largely in order to guard its work against these last two dangers, of which it probably ranked the latter as the greater, that the regime applied every means which the mentality of the age (less practised in such matters than its twentieth-century successors) could devise to buttress its rule against the expression of free opinion: such as an abnormally restricted franchise, as regards both property and educational qualifications, a fantastically uneven distribution of constituencies, and administrative and police pressure, both at and between elections, to prevent any movement dangerous to the regime, from any side. The exercise of political rights was actually more restricted after 1867 than before it: in 1848, 6-7 per cent. of the total popula-

tion had possessed the franchise, and in 1874 only 5 per cent. In 1910 the figure was still only 8 percent. _ Although these measures were directed as much against the Hungarian Independence politicians as against the nationalities, the former were unable to fight against them sincerely and with devotion because the vast majority feared that a regime which allowed the genuine expression of opinion would open the door to the centrifugal aspirations of the non-Magyar nationalities. Practically none of them ever held the view that Hungary should be ruled otherwise than as an unitary national State, or believed that it could continue to exist on any other basis. Their impassioned declamations against the Compromise were largely in the nature of shadow-boxing. In spite of this, they continued to the last a strong oppositional force which must be included among those which the Compromise failed to satisfy.

Although, as we have said, this system was not in its origin primarily directed against the non-possessing classes, it operated to their disadvantage,

a fact which was, of course, exploited by those whose interests it was that those classes should remain powerless, As regards professional organisation,

12 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH » the industrial workers succeeded, in the 1880’s, in obtaining permission to form Trade Unions, which were, however, strictly forbidden any political organisation. A substantial number of Trade Unions came into being round the turn of the century (in 1907, their peak year before the war, their member-

ship topped 130,000) and the ban on politics was largely evaded by the formation of so-called “‘Free Unions” (“‘shadqw’’ would be a better rendering)

which secretly duplicated the work and membership of the legal bodies. The agricultural labourers, on the other hand, never managed to form any voca-

tional organisation of even the most modest kind, and the agricultural associations were entirely dominated by the big landowners. A Labour Party, founded in 1880, developed ten years later into a fully fledged Social Democrat Party (with a Marxist programme taken over from the Austrian Party) and managed thereafter to continue in existence, but it never got a single representative into Parliament before 1918. Among the

agrarian labourers, various ‘‘anarcho-socialist’” movements came into being in the 1890’s, most of which were put down by force. In 1905 three “‘agrarian

socialists” were elected to Parliament; one of them was assassinated soon after. In 1908 one representative of a “‘Smallholder’’ Party—not even then a conspicuously subversive body by Western standards—got into Parliament in a by-election,* and was joined by three colleagues in the 1910 Parliament, the last to be elected in the old Hungary. But, broadly, it can be said that

neither the agrarian, nor the industrial proletariat had perceptibly more

political influence in 1910 than before 1848. .

A consequence of this was that in 1918 the dispossessed agrarian classes were hardly able to formulate their own wishes, much less organise in order

to secure their fulfilment. The Social Democrats were an organised, disciplined body, but the radical Marxian doctrines to which they had subscribed had taught them to look outside Hungary for their friends and allies, and they were regarded with suspicion by many other Hungarians as a ‘rootless’? and unpatriotic element; the more So as their intellectual leadership was preponderantly Jewish. ‘ In effect, then, Hungary was ruled between 1867 and 1918, as it had been

ruled before 1848, by a relatively small governing class, whose members differed among themselves on the relationship with the Crown, but united in accepting the ideology of the indivisible, unitary Hungarian national State and the principle of government by that inner ring, necessarily comprising only a minority of the population, which claimed, and was widely admitted,

to embody the traditions and innate capabilities of Hungary’s ancient “historic class.”” And when it is remembered that the unitary State had been in abeyance for a long decade after 1849, while the Hungarians themselves

had abolished the legal distinction between noble and non-noble, it is impossible not to admire the political skill and tenacity thanks to which, half a century later, those two fundamentals should have been standing there | again, the one legally, the other in practice, as though nothing had ever happened—standing, and standing firm, for during all that period neither the nationalities nor the dispossessed classes had been able seriously to

threaten the stability of the regime. In the meantime, however, that governing class had itself undergone important changes as a result of which the crisis, when it came, was destined to throw up yet another set of problems.

pp. 24, 26-7, 40-41). | 1 This was Nagyatadi Istvan Szab6, who played a considerable role after 1918 (see below,

3

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 13 One of these problems, in:the event, dominated Hungarian politics after

Trianon far more than any of those hitherto discussed. One such change—an important one—was a marked shift of the balance of power between the two categories into which the ruling class had fallen, legally and actually, before 1848. As a legislative body the magnates still retained, with some slight derogations, the legal equality with the Lower House which they had formerly possessed, but the source of their actual political strength, which had resided in the fact that they and the Crown had usually been allied against the “‘common nobles” represented in the Lower House, had dried up when the leaders of the common nobles accepted the Compromise, so that the Crown no longer needed the magnates as allies. Politically, the magnates found themselves increasingly pushed into the position of an ultra-montane opposition, while their real influence as a class was sapped by the effects of the general development of the country. They had little share in the economic activities which were growing ever more important, while their own economic basis was undermined by the fall in agricultural prices. They still retained a disproportionate influence in all walks of life, but it was an influence which was becoming ever more of a facade, just as their ““ownership”’ of the great estates was becoming increas-

ingly a fiction which screened the reality of constantly accumulating mortgages. Thus within the governing class, the formerly less important element, represented before 1848 by the middle nobility—the impoverished “‘sandalled

nobles’’, while retaining their personal freedom, had lost their political influence—had become the dominant partner in the Government. But while remaining in name (except for the word ‘‘noble’’), and to a large extent in mentality and even in outward appearance the same as their political ancestors of the pre-1848 days, this class had undergone profound inner modifications. These changes were forced on it by the new conditions. Thirty thousand

country gentlemen, with their sons and nephews, could run a relatively primitive agrarian society such as Hungary was before 1848. They could not —particularly so long as they had their own estates to look after—run the modern State into which Hungary was transforming herself after 1867. The

administration alone of such a State called for a much more complex machinery than the rough-and-ready patriarchalism of the old days, and it is interesting that the shortage of bureaucrats was so great that, despite the

extreme unpopularity of the “Bach Hussars,’! the young State perforce retained large numbers of them in their posts as Hungarian officials. Great as were the difficulties in which the land reform involved them, the Hungarian

nobles preferred to stay on their diminished acres until the hungry 1880's and 1890’s drove them into the towns. In the single decade 1892-1902 the number of State posts rose, as Professor Szekfii has pointed out,’ by over 50 per cent. (from 60,776 to 97,835), and this increase was filled largely from the ranks of the old country gentry. In this way the economic survivors of the old gentry class (such of them, that is, as did not sink into impoverishment) largely changed their economic basis; becoming a class of State-paid officials rather than one of independent 1 ‘The administrators (mainly German-Austrians and Czechs) sent to govern Hungary in the Absolutist Era by the Minister of the Interior in Vienna, Bach. * Magyar Térténet, V, 528-9,

14 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH landlords. But they were still too few for the tasks, especially as these now

included the administration, as a Magyar national State, of a country of which half the population was non-Magyar. Furthermore, the new Hungary could no longer be ruled on the bland assumption that nothing except its agricultural countryside really existed. The ruling class, therefore, needed recruits; and there were three sources from which these could be drawn: from the peasantry, from the non-Magyar

“nationalities”, or from immigrants. One of the chief complaints made against the Compromise Era by its successors, especially the Magyar nationalists of racial and radical tendencies, most strongly represented by the young “village explorers,”! has been that the first source was almost entirely neglected.

This neglect is generally ascribed today to social considerations: to the

cold-blooded calculation that if the peasant class were raised out of its backwardness and misery it would no longer provide the cheap and docile labour which the big estates required. This possibly was one of the considera-

tions at work, but to give it the first place is probably to commit the all too common error of representing the past as thinking and acting in terms of

the present. The social sin of the Compromise Era lay far rather in its ignoring of the social problem than in any cynical preoccupation with it. The men of that era simply did not think the social question, as such, to be urgent, much less dangerous, whereas they were greatly preoccupied with the

national question. It seemed to them more important, as well as easier, to win over the intellectual class of the non-Magyars than to foster a new Magyar intellectual class. But whatever the motive, the result was the same. Peasants’ sons did make their way upward, as they had throughout history (for the acquisition of Hungarian ‘nobility’? had never been difficult). But few pains were, in fact, taken to ease the path upward of the intelligent and ambitious young Hungarian of lowly origin. And of all the nationalities of Hungary, the Magyars came off worst in this respect; since, for reasons of “national” policy, far more money and pains were spent on schools in the

non-Magyar districts than in the Magyar; these schools being, of course, Magyar schools, having Magyarisation rather than education proper as their primary objective.’ In this objective the regime met with considerable success, although the degree and the importance of the result varied from one nationality to another. The Serbs and Roumanians, already strongly nationally conscious and living

in their own worlds, contributed relatively small quotas to the new middle class outside their own localities.2 The Ruthenes were too few and too back-

ward to make much difference either way. The Slovaks produced a substantial contingent, which also comprised a high proportion of the educated Slovak class; their special predilection was the Church. The Slovak element, however, once assimilated, blended very completely with the Magyar, 1 See below, p. 156. ” To be fair, there was one other, purely natural reason for the larger sums spent on education in the non- Magyar regions: that being the scattered farm system practised over wide parts of the

predominantly Magyar Alféld, which, combined with the difficulty of communications over that great, stoneless area, shut away its inhabitants from every development of modern civilisation. ° A further important factor in the case of these two nationalities was the presence just across the frontier of the two new and growing, but still primitive, independent Serbian and Roumanian States. The Serbs of the Bacska and the Roumanians of Transylvania, who were usually much better educated than the native products, emigrated largely to Belgrade and Bucharest, where they often rose easily to high positions.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 15 and in the later divisions which we shall be describing, never took up an attitude of its own and practically always sided with the Magyars. But of all the ‘“‘nationalities,”’ in the sense in which the word was used in Hungary, it was the German which contributed by far the largest share to the new Hungarian ruling class. This contingent, interestingly enough, did not come, except in small measure, from that German community of Hungary

which possessed a very old “‘biirgerlich” culture of its own—the oldest, indeed, in Hungary: the Transylvanian Saxons'; they continued (as they did up to 1945) to lead their own self-sufficient and self-satisfied life. It came from the descendants of the later, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonisation known as “‘Swabians.”” Some of these had already been urban,

but as such had constituted a separate element before 1848; others, the majority, were peasant colonists, and they too, in the pre-Compromise era, had retained their separate speech and national consciousness. But when the “modern age”’ set in, everything favoured their assimilation. Living in ethnic islands—some it is true, of considerable size—dotted about the Magyar sea and not contiguous to any national State of their own kinsfolk (for pre-1918 Austria was not such a State”), they were not deterred from assimilation by any counter-pull of rival national feeling; while their superior thrift, industry, sobriety® and intellectual discipline gave them a strong initial advantage over their competitors from all other nationalities. The process, once begun, went on very quickly, and it was not long before the Swabians had become the very backbone of the Civil Service, especially in the central Ministries and in those public services (e.g. the State railways) which called for a measure of technical

skill. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the higher direction of the administration of Hungary, especially on its more technical side, was in the

hands of Magyarised Swabians from 1900 onward. The Swabians contributed a very large contingent, even larger than that of the Slovaks, to the | Roman Catholic Church; the Lutheran was almost entirely theirs; and there was one particular service which they made peculiarly their own--the Army. Here we come to another question which, like that of the distribution of

land, has elicited pages of invective and has had in fact most fatal consequences; yet those effects sprang from perfectly natural causes. As is well known, the Army of the Dual Monarchy was organised in the regular kaiser-

lich und kéniglich armed forces and the second-line formations. The Hungarian regiments of the latter, the so-called Honvéd (although the high

command was k. und k.), were raised and trained in Hungary, and the language of command was Hungarian; but the regular forces were under the direct control of the Monarch, in charge of one of the three ““common”’

(Austro-Hungarian) Ministers, a mainstay of the centralist, monarchist power; and the language of command was German. Thus the Magyars did not mind taking commissions in the Honvéd, which, however, was a body not 1 The almost equally old German cities of the Zips had already in an earlier age become largely Magyarised, or in some cases Slovakised.

2 Such German nationalism as existed among the Germans of Hungary before 1918 was always strongest in the communities which lived relatively far from the Austrian frontier: the Transylvanian Saxons and the Swabians of the Banat and Bacska. It was never strong in the area transferred to Austria (under the name of “Burgenland”’) in 1920. 8 This is a generalisation based only on observation; for no statistics exist (to my knowledge) of alcoholism by nationalities. But it is a fact that the Germans chiefly drank beer; the Magyars, wine; and the Slovaks, Ruthenes and Roumanians of the mountains, the crude brandy which did the real damage.

16 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH much more serious than our own militia of the day. For political reasons they were very shy of entering the k. und k. formations!; and when they did so it was rarely that they got very far, for their suspicions were returned with

interest, as the Austrian General Staff was itself reluctant to give higher instruction to men who, they suspected, were only waiting the chance to turn

their knowledge against their masters. Further, the language question— since all the instruction in the Staff College was given in German—constituted

a genuine difficulty partly because, as an effect of and further contributory cause to the vicious circle, Hungarians regarded the Army as an unintellectual career into which they sent their boys only if not clever enough for anything else. Consequently most of the military education in Hungary was at a low

level. Thus it came about that only very few Magyars passed through the Staff College, whose certificate alone could qualify them for higher command.”

For the Swabians, on the other hand, the language question presented no difficulties; the patriotic problem was less acute; and the Army offered a particularly promising field to the ambitious young yeoman farmer’s boy, for in Austria-Hungary there were two spheres, and two alone, in which ability was thought sufficiently important to override (of course, with decent reserva-

tions) the claims of birth: these being the Roman Catholic Church and the

Army. Thus it came about that the overwhelming majority of the ‘“‘Hungarian”’ officers who achieved any standing in the k. und k. army (and thus carried over into the army of independent Hungary some memories of adequate professional training) were men of Swabian origin. The majority of the remainder were either Serbs or Croats from the Military Frontier, or Szekels from Transylvania. This fact was to have very important consequences during the inter-war

period. The officers entering the.k. und k. army were naturally imbued with its tradition, which taught them to regard themselves as a sort of élite republic, the humblest member whereof yet stood immeasurably above any civilian, and further to dissociate themselves from all national politics, their

exclusive loyalty being to the Monarch. ,

When Hungary formed her independent army after the war, that figure who will occupy so much space in our pages, Gdmb6s, succeeded in eliminating from it the legitimist elements and in giving its tradition a national twist, in that its loyalty was now to the Head of the Hungarian State, but he even encouraged its isolationist tradition, which came to its members the more

easily because so many of them were of non-Magyar origin. They had extraordinarily little contact with the civilian world: they lived in their own clubs and casinos, and even their families visited chiefly one another. Their self-dissociation from national politics also continued in the sense that they regarded the existing national political life with distaste, but under the new conditions this hostility translated itself into a tendency among the officers

to regard themselves as a positive political factor whose duty it was to preserve the State from the politicians. We shall therefore find some of them pressing Horthy to “eliminate politics” by making himself dictator.

case, and an exception. |

* The fashionable Hussar regiments in which many aristocrats served constituted a special

_ * Cf. the amazing fact, noted below (p. 275) that Werth, a German-speaking peasant’s son

from the Banat, was selected in 1938 for the post of Chief of the General Staff chiefly because he

was the only senior Hungarian General who could speak good enough German. I myself interrogated a Hungarian General during the war who refused to speak anything but Hungarian with me on the grounds that the only German which he spoke well enough to avoid misunderstanding was the technical Austrian of the k. und k. Staff College.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 17 This tendency, again, was immensely strengthened by the intrusion into it of the Jewish question; for the corps of officers was practically 100 per cent. “Aryan” and regarded all political movements, except those of the extreme

Right, as tainted with Jewish pacifism, lack of patriotism and corruption. Further, when the German question became active, the vast majority of the officers both sympathised with Germany and believed in her invincibility.

/ These feelings were, naturally, not only on one side. All the Hungarian politicians except those of the extreme Right regarded the Army officers as a foreign body, nationally unreliable—more German than Hungarian—and (returning contempt with contempt) as a set of stupid, uneducated louts. It is quite extraordinary, and very saddening, to read (as it used to be to hear) the contempt and near-hatred of the Army habitually expressed, not only by Jews or Liberals, but by such men as Kanya, Teleki and Kallay. The mutual hostility of the Army and the civilians was one of the most prominent and also one of the most disastrous features of Hungarian life in the inter-war period. The position was exacerbated by a factor to which we shall return— the constitutional and personal relationship of the Regent Horthy to the two other elements.

Meanwhile, outside the State services themselves there was developing that other, broader middle class of which the Civil Servants were only one category. Here the same process went on, in spite of appearances which suggested the exact contrary. As we said, before 1848 very many of the

towns were German-speaking, and both their burghers and the traders, industrialists, etc., not living in the towns were mostly non-Magyars and formed a world apart from that of the Magyar gentry. By the end of the Compromise Era the two worlds had fused into one, seemingly through the

absorption of the non-Magyar element by the Magyar; for throughout central Hungary, and even in many frontier areas, the towns were almost purely Magyar in language and demeanour. But in reality the bourgeoisie of the towns was, except for the ex-gentry officials, preponderantly nonMagyar in origin. Here agdin the Swabians were prominent, providing a

substantial proportion of the entrepreneur class in industry and a still larger share of the lower middle class of skilled craftsmen and artisans and even of the older-established industrial workers. The influx of these Swabian, Slovak, etc., elements into the Hungarian ruling class and its environment passed almost unnoticed up to 1918. Where the Swabians, and for that matter the other non-Magyars, assimilated at all, they did so, up to 1918, completely. They gave Hungary no cause to complain of their loyalty, and even commonly went well beyond the Magyars themselves in their demonstrative patriotism, including their intolerance towards their unassimilated brethren. In their mannerisms and their social outlook they adopted with extraordinary wholeheartedness the standards of their predecessors: the son of a small Swabian peasant or artisan, risen to an important position (and there were many such), looked down his social nose on the lower orders from an angle at least as near the vertical as the impoverished great-grandson of a historic noble family. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that the representatives of the new economic interests adapted themselves to the traditional pattern almost as completely. One may marvel indeed at the strength of the tradition which rallied in its defence so many men whose origins, incomes and occupations should, on all reasonable C

18 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH grounds, have led them to attack it. But be that as it may, the great change in the structure and composition of the ruling class brought about by the influences described remained, up to 1918, latent and hardly perceptible. Meanwhile, however, Hungarian society had been enriched by another new element to which these remarks did not entirely apply: the Jewish. It is not easy to decide at what point we should place our description of the Jewish question in Hungary, since the Jews cut clean across the normal lines of social stratification. They did not belong properly either to the governing or to the dispossessed classes. They had one foot in each camp, yet themselves remained outside both, a corpus separatum. But described the question must be, at one point or another; for it was, as we shall see, destined to play a

part second to none in all the history, both international and domestic, of Trianon Hungary. Fortunately for the historian, the system on which the Hungarian statistics were compiled, while not allowing the enquirer to follow

in detail the fortunes and record the position at a given moment (except perhaps by a lifetime’s delving into documents not easily available) of an ethnic group whose peculiarity resided in its language, do allow for much more precision where the ethnic criterion was religious. Moreover, while no one has ever yet gone scientifically into the question of linguistic assimilation, innumerable studies have been made on the Jewish question, and although many of these are emotional or merely abusive, some support their statements

with sober factual material. From one such study—itself the work of a professional statistician, who drew on the censuses'—the following figures are drawn. The Jewish population in Hungary was estimated at only 12,000 in 1720, and 93,000 in 1787. As Jews were at that time forbidden to settle in towns, nearly all of them lived on the estates of nobles, earning their living, as a rule, by renting the landlord’s inn, butcher’s shop, etc., or acting as agents for the sale of his crops. After Joseph II’s reforms, and further concessions made by the Diet in 1840, a large-scale immigration began from Galicia. By 1848 the Jewish population was 336,000, and by 1869, 542,000. This increase

—nearly four times as rapid as that of the non-Jewish population—was mainly due to immigration, in the first instance from Galicia. After this there was a considerable westward emigration out of Hungary, while the surplus of births over deaths was also rather below that of the non-Jewish population. The rate of increase thus slowed down, but the immigration was still going on, and in 1910 Jews numbered 909,500, or roughly 5 per cent. of the total population. There were now in addition about 50,000 converts or children of mixed marriages. Meanwhile, all restrictions upon them having been successively abolished, both their geographical and their occupational grouping had altered largely. The Counties of the north-east—the first stage on the immigration route— still contained the highest proportion of Jews, while the south and the southeast held the lowest. But the Jews had tended to move from the country to

the towns, and Budapest alone contained in 1910 over 200,000 of them: nearer 25 per cent. than 20 per cent. of the total population of that city. Their position in the national life was, moreover, far stronger than even these figures would suggest. For our present purposes the published statistics for the 1910 census are not very illuminating, since these relate to all Hungary, 1 A. Kovacs, A Zsidésdg Térfoglaldsa Magyarorszégon, Budapest, 1922.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 19 including the areas detached under the Treaty of Trianon. It is preferable, therefore, to take the figures for 1920, which relate to the area of Trianon Hungary. These show that the Jews had become, as we should have expected,

a preponderantly urban and bourgeois element. The census listed 204,507 gainfully employed persons of Jewish religion. Of these, only 3,859 were employed in agriculture as labourers, farmhands or analogous occupations, or as owners or lessees of holdings not exceeding 20 hold. 33,142 were employed in mining and industry otherwise than as independent persons or salaried employees. There were also 666 casual labourers. In these occupations 28,110 Jews were listed as independent persons and 10,422 as salaried employees. 4,396 occupied analogous positions in agriculture. 81,263 were employed in trade and finance (40,275 of them independent, 22,097 employees 10,891 in inferior positions). 6,516 were employed in transport, 2,435 in the army, 1,425 in the public administrative services, 372 in the judiciary, 1,006

in the Church, 3,560 in teaching, 3,524 in the medical professions, 1,385 in the arts, literature and journalism. 3,027 were domestic servants, 10,482 capitalists, rentiers or pensioners. The social stratification of the Magyars being exactly the opposite of this, the result was that the Jews constituted only a small proportion—in some cases almost a negligible one—in the working-class occupational groups, and an extremely high one in most of the bourgeois and professional groups, the State services alone excepted; in these last they were represented roughly in proportion to their national strength, although many of the posts held by them were extremely important.’ In the largest of all the occupational subgroups—that of agricultural labourers—they were only 0-1 per cent. (891 out of 748,662). They were 0-2 per cent. of the dwarf-holders; 0-4 per cent. of the miners; 7-3 per cent. of the industrial workers and 2-5 per cent. of the

transport workers; 1-9 per cent. of the domestic servants. To the State services, they supplied only 1-6 per cent. of the Army officers (2-9 per cent.

of the defence forces as a whole’) and 4-4 per cent. of the administrative services. On the other hand, 37-7 per cent. of the “independent” persons engaged in mining, 12-3 per cent. of those in industry, 53 per cent. of those in commerce, 80 per cent. of those in finance, 50-6 per cent. of the advocates, 59-9 per cent. of the doctors in private practice, 27-3 per cent. of the authors, 34.3 per cent. of the journalists (70 per cent. in Budapest), 23-6 per cent. of the musicians and 22-7 per cent. of the actors were Jewish. Of the salaried employees in mining 21-3 per cent., in industry 39-1 per cent., in commerce 48-2 per cent., in finance 43-7 per cent. were Jewish. On the land they already

provided 16-5 per cent. of the 727 owners of landed properties of 1,000 + hold and 53-7 per cent. of the persons renting such properties.° These figures give some idea of the commanding position which the Jews had already gained in the economic, financial and also in the cultural life of Hungary; but the picture which they give is still a very incomplete one. For 1 In 1907, 7 out of the 13 members of the highest Court of Appeal were Jewish. 2 This figure was an abnormal one as in 1920 many soldiers from the First World War had still to be demobilised. The absolute figure to which it corresponded was 2,435; by 1930 this had

sony This feure was substantially lower for Trianon Hungary in 1920 than it had been for Historic Hungary; the position of the Jews on the land having been particularly strong in the north-eastern counties assigned to Czechoslovakia and Roumania. In 1913 19 per cent. of all owners of estates of 1,000+ hold and 19 per cent. of owners of estates of 200-1,000 hold had been Jews; also 73:2 per cent. of the lessees in the former category and 62 per cent. of those in the latter.

20 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the appellation of an “independent person engaged in industry” covered, for

example, with sublime impartiality the village blacksmith or carpenter working single-handed or with a single apprentice, and the great industrialist

at the head of an enormous industry. But the general rule was that the higher the income group—whether in industry, commerce or finance—the larger the proportion of Jews in it; this being particularly true for central Hungary, to which the figures quoted here relate. Even when this is taken into account, the full strength of the Jewish position in industry, in particular, is not revealed, since much of the more important industry was controlled and mainly owned by the big holding banks, which were mainly in Jewish

hands (often, it may be remarked, not Hungarian, since the economic development of Hungary had been carried out largely by Austrian capital).

Similarly, the strength of the Jewish position in literature, the theatre, journalism, etc., was far stronger than would appear from the simple figures of Jewish and non-Jewish journalists, writers, actors, etc., because the Press,

the publishing trade and the theatre were mainly in Jewish hands. And while hardly any village schoolmasters were Jews, half the professors of Budapest University were Jewish. Finally, towards the end of the period the question of conversions became an important factor when figures other than those relating to global numbers were considered. ‘These conversions were much the most numerous among the wealthiest Jews, the conversion of a single one of whom might make a big alteration in certain statistical tables. The fact, for example, that in some years the amount of land held in big estates by Jewish and non-Jewish owners

changed to the advantage of the latter might well mean simply that some single rich man had received a barony and on that occasion had made the journey to the font which was not obligatory on such occasions but was a generally recognised obligation de noblesse. And while it would be impertinent to suggest that such individual conversions were not sincere, it remains

true that the “‘Christian” character of some enterprise was often deemed sufficiently assured by the baptism of a single member of it. On the whole, as these figures show, the influence of the Jews was on the side of property, as it was also on the side of the “unitary political State’’

against the nationalities. The talent and industry of the Jewish industrial and financial bourgeoisie was indeed the most powerful prop to the ruling class, which could not otherwise have existed and developed as it did. Others

of them, while not identifying themselves with the ruling class, supplied Hungary with other important elements in its social structure, notably something which its non-Jewish population had produced in the 1830’s and was to evolve again just a century later, but entirely failed to supply during the

whole Compromise Era—a radical intellectual class. Some of these took over the intellectual leadership of the Social Democrat Party. Yet the Jews always remained something of outsiders. - It was not that they

were reluctant to assimilate; most of them were embarrassingly eager to be Magyars, and emphasised their Magyardom to caricature in their mannerisms

and utterances. But there remained, after all, with most of them the difference of religion, even a difference in physical appearance, which kept

alive on both sides a consciousness of separate origin. Moreover, the Magyars extended in some measure their non-comprehension of the lucrative 1 It was in the north and north-east that the bulk of the small ““independent”’ Jews were still concentrated.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 21 callings to those who practised them, while the Jews, even when they imitated or exaggerated the Magyar’s careless treatment of money, could never quite achieve his lordly attitude towards it, as a thing given him by God and to be got rid of at pleasure.

The infiltration of the Jewish element into Hungarian society was in reality one of the most important legacies bequeathed by the Compromise Era to that of Bethlen. But like the other changes which we have surveyed, its effects were only very partially visible before 1918. There were at times outbursts of anti-Semitism, especially in the north-east, where the Jewish population was densest and least assimilated in externals. An anti-Semitic party, with its roots in this area, maintained itself for some years. But the ruling system, whose fetish was liberalism, frowned on this, and welcomed the

co-operation of the Jews in developing the country and in providing it with economic, financial and intellectual forces not present in sufficient quantities among the non-Jewish population. It was a tacit Interessengemeinschaft, the terms of which were well understood by both parties, which worked well enough for both throughout the long period of development which constituted the Compromise Era. ,

. : re

At the end of the First World War all Hungary’s submerged grievances

rose suddenly and simultaneously to the surface. The great bulk of the nationalities fell, or were dragged, away from Hungary—the separation, which was legalised by the Treaty of Trianon, occurring de facto with the conclusion of the armistices (i.e.,.in November 1918). Among the Magyars

of central Hungary a great wave of social unrest, largely borne of warweariness, swept over the dispossessed classes. Simultaneously, the longrepressed Magyar nationalism broke into revolt against the Habsburg connection, feeling obscurely, and certainly with no more than partial justice, that it was through that connection that Hungary had been dragged into the wat. Mihaly Karolyi, the then leader of the Party of Independence, was able to convince a confused and desperate people that if Hungary, with himself leading her, proclaimed her independence of the Habsburgs, all her ills could

be cured by the one operation. The war would end: the oppressive and reactionary social and political regime associated with the Compromise would be swept away; even the nationalities, no longer fearing oppression and denationalisation, would return to the fold. Karolyi came into office

and did achieve the cutting of the link with the Habsburgs, the frail tie snapping, indeed, almost of itself after nearly all the other peoples of the Monarchy had broken away from it. After this, Karolyi, whose good intentions and his patriotism have been as unfairly belittled by his enemies as his capacities were overrated by’himself and his partisans, found himself completely helpless in face of a situation which would have defeated far abler men than he and the little band of doctrinaires in whom he had chosen

to put his trust. He had come into power easily—indeed, amid almost nation-wide acclamation, for the majority of Hungarians (the nationalities excepted) had accepted his premises when he first propounded them; the convinced Legitimists, who alone opposed them on principle, had been cowed into silence. But the life-nerve of his programme (the appeal of which had

been at least as much national as social) was cut when the nationalities rejected that reconciliation with a democratic Hungary on the conclusion of

22 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH which his whole plan turned, while his second main assumption was falsified, and his programme discredited, when the Entente failed to show his independent, democratic and anti-German Hungary the sympathy on which he had

counted; no one being more responsible for this, and for the failure of Hungarian democracy, than those greedy politicians of the Successor States who for the next twenty-five years never stopped protesting their inability to co-operate with any Hungarian regime other than a democratic one of the

Karolyist type. The Czechs, Serbs and Roumanians, encouraged and supported by France, occupied what they would of Hungarian soil, far beyond the limits of those areas which they could claim on ethnic grounds. At home a violent agitation inspired from Russia and relayed by the Social Democrats kept the population in turmoil. Out of fear of the Soldiers’ Councils, through which a handful of agitators:controlled the mass of clamorous soldiers and

ex-soldiers, and of the Social Democrat leaders, Karolyi dared wot hold elections, and timidity, procrastination and confusion prevented him even from carrying through reforms which might have consolidated his position in the country. Thus after proclaiming for years the necessity of land reform, but neglecting to study how it should be carried out, he got no further in the execution of it than to make a token distribution of one of his own estates. He fell, at last, on a national issue. The French, hoping to get Roumanian

support for the White Russian armies fighting the Bolsheviks in South Russia and wishing to secure Roumania’s rear, ordered the Hungarians to withdraw behind a “‘neutral zone’? which ran through the very heart of Hungary, including both Debrecen and Szeged, while its eastern border, which Roumania was to be allowed to occupy, ran well west of the limits of

Transylvania. The French Colonel Vyx, when presenting the note which couched this demand, indicated that the line was to be regarded also as a ‘“provisional political frontier.” This was on 20th March 1919. At this juncture one person came forward with a new proposal of how Hungary could be saved: the little Bolshevik agent, Béla Kun, who said that if he were

given the power, Russia would join forces with Hungary and drive the Roumanians back. Kun now took over in Karolyi’s place, and the nation approved the change; only to find this second remedy exactly as barren of positive results as the first, and far more fraught with negative ones. The Red Army, itself in difficulties, brought Hungary no help whatever, while the Entente, which feared the spread of Bolshevism, stepped in when the officers

who had supported Kun undertook an offensive against the Czechs. At home, Kun was not inactive, as Karolyi had been; he undertook a series of bizarre and doctrinaire experiments which turned almost the entire population against him, including not only the bourgeoisie and the peasants? but even the great majority of the Social Democrats. Finally he undertook an offensive against the Roumanians, was defeated and fled from the country

, on Ist August 1919.

Kun had met with little more resistance than Karolyi when he took over the power, and for the same reason: that the nation hoped that he would be able to salvage the integrity of Hungary. But when it became obvious that * The Social Democrats repeatedly asserted: ‘‘No matter how the elections go, we mean to have a Red Parliament.” * He nationalised the large estates, but instead of distributing them, left them as kolkhozes

often under the management of their former owners. He had not, by the time of his fall,

nationalised peasant holdings, but had the intention to do so, and, unlike his successors of 1945 lacked the prudence to conceal that intention.

PRELUDE TO TRIANON 23 he could not and did not even care to do so, and also that he seriously intended to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, counter-revolutionary forces had begun to organise abroad, or in those parts of Hungary which were not under Kun’s control. In April 1919 a number of the more prominent politicians of the old regime, having taken refuge in Vienna, had there formed themselves into an Anti-Bolshevist Committee; and on 5th May a

counter-revolutionary Government, under Count Gyula Karolyi (later succeeded by D. Abrahdm), constituted itself in Arad, then under French occupation. On the 29th of the same month fhis group moved to Szeged, where it fused with an Anti-Bolshevik Committee which had been founded there by the local Féispan, B. Kelemen, assisted by General Béla Szombathelyi,

who seized the local barracks. Here it.gave itself substance by recruiting a small “national army’? commanded by Admiral Horthy, who a few months earlier had, as the Commander-in-Chief, presided over the liquidation of the

Austro-Hungarian navy.

After the débacle of Kun’s regime this force moved to West Hungary, but was not allowed to enter Budapest, which Roumanian troops had occupied, the central ““Government of Hungary’ having meanwhile been taken over, first by a short-lived, self-appointed Socialist Government, then by a series of rather similar improvisations presided: over by an Elizabethan figure named

Istvan Friedrich. On 14th November the Roumanians, having looted the capital thoroughly, were induced by the Entente to retire to the line of the

Tisza and two days later Horthy led his little force into Budapest. The , counter-revolution was in place, but not yet in full power, for the Entente, anxious to prevent excesses and to see the basis of Hungarian government broadened, sent to Budapest a mediator in the person of Sir George Clarke, who arranged for the formation as an immediate measure of a coalition Government under M. Huszar which included not only politicians of the old school but also Smallholders, ‘‘National Democrats” (a new party organised to represent liberal opinion) and a Social Democrat. The function of this — Government, which took office on 24th November, was to act as “‘caretaker”’ until the people had been consulted through the medium of elections held as

a general secret suffrage.* |

The hope that these elections would produce a genuinely representative Government had, unfortunately, tq be written off even before they were held. The moderating influence which the Entente could exercise had not reached far down below the top levels. As soon as the field was clear, more or less

unofficial “‘bands” had set out over the country, meting out lynch law to some who, if brought to proper trial, would have incurred judicial punishment and others whose fault had been trivial or non-existent, also to many whose offence was simply that of belonging to the same race as Kun and the bulk of his commissaries. The Government itself had in December authorised the internment of any person who, even if not guilty of an indictable offence,

“might present a danger to the public order,” and under this order many thousands of persons had been interned, including nearly all the more prominent Social Democrats who had not escaped abroad. Taking this action as pretext (although it may be suspected that they were influenced 1 This, although commonly known as the ‘Friedrich Franchise’’ (Friedrich having been Minister President when it was brought in), was based on that devised by Karolyi for the elections which he did not survive long enough, nor feel himself secure enough, to hold. Besides

providing for the secret ballot everywhere, it gave women the vote (for the first time in Hungarian history) and enfranchised 39:2 per cent. of the population.

24 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH also by the very unfavourable reception which their agents were meeting in the villages), the Social Democrats had declared that they would abstain from participation in the elections. When, therefore, the first, and main, elections were held in January 1920,1 no Socialist candidates stood. The largest party to emerge was Nagyatadi Szabo’s “‘United Agrarian Labourers’

and Smallholders’ Party’, which got 71 mandates. This party, with 7 other “‘Smallholders”, 6 Liberals and 3 Independents, represented the Left. The more conservative voters had taken as nucleus the old Christian Party (the only one of the pre-war parties whose programme, not being based on the relationship to the Habsburgs, was still at all relevant to later conditions), which it expanded into the ‘“‘Christian National Union.” This gained 68 seats. 9 sympathisers marching under other flags gave the Right a strength of 77, against the Left’s 87.

On 14th March a coalition Government drawn from both groups and headed by S. Simonyi-Semadam took over from that of Huszar. It was this Government which signed the Treaty of Trianon on 14th June 1920. 1 The January elections were held only in the constituencies at that time under the effective control of the Hungarian authorities and thus did not extend either to the areas subsequently allocated to the Successor States nor to the districts east of the Tisza which were then under Roumanian or Allied military occupation.

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CHAPTER TWO

FLUIDITY Y the summer of 1920 some progress had already been made towards restoring the old order at home. The first legislative act of the Huszar

Government—Law I of 1920—gave a provisional and pragmatic answer to the question of Hungary’s international status by pronouncing the

dissolution of the “indivisible and: indissoluble”’ links which, under the Pragmatic Sanction, had united Hungary with the Austrian provinces, and the consequent abrogation of the laws of 1867, while leaving to the future the determination of the practical consequences to be drawn from the de facto cessation of the exercise of the sovereign power by the King. Pending settle-

ment of this question, the functions of the Head of the State were to be exercised by a Regent (to which office Miklés Horthy was elected on Ist March). For the rest, the law, with great simplicity, pronounced invalid every enactment of any sort or kind taken under the ‘“‘People’s Republic”’ or the “‘Soviet Republic.’ But this was only clearing the field. If it be admitted that the White Terrorist bands also had done their parts in cowing opposition; that Karolyi and Kun had done theirs, perhaps more effectively still—K 4rolyi by his dilettante incompetence and Kun by his doctrinaire stupidity, his own and his associates’ repellent personalities and bloodthirsty methods, and both by their failures, the sum result of which had been to saddle the very names of liberalism and democracy, not to mention socialism and Bolshevism, with a discredit from which sometof them recovered only slowly, others, to the end of our story, not at all; and that the Social Democrats had further helped the

counter-revolution by their unwise policy of abstention—if all this be admitted, yet in June 1920 it hardly seemed possible that anything approximating to the old political and social system could ever be restored. There were only two directions in which the possible opposition to the old regime might seem to have been permanently weakened. Firstly, the

Crown was not in a position to ally itself with other factors against the Hungarian Government; and secondly, the factor of the nationalities had been almost eliminated by the Treaty. As we have said, the only sizeable minority left in the new State was the German, and even this included hardly any of those groups among Hungary’s former German population which had

possessed, or might have been expected to develop, an active national consciousness: the old and proud communities of the Transylvanian Saxons, with their close-knit social structure and their vigorous communal life; the populous and prosperous settlements of the Bacska and the Banat, and the

compact population of the areas immediately adjacent to the Austrian frontier.1 The half-million Germans left in Hungary were scattered throughout the country, nowhere constituting a very large element in the local population (unless quite small areas were taken as the basis of calculation) and constituting, on the whole, what had been the least nationally active element 1 This last group, unlike the others, was under Hungarian rule de facto as well as de jure until the signature of the Treaty,

26 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of Hungary’s former German population, itself among the least nationally active of all her minorities.

Neither of these two factors, however, had disappeared altogether. Legitimist feeling in Hungary was still strong enough to divide the nation from top to bottom—not, it is true, into equal parts; but the Legitimists still formed a considerable party, especially among the upper classes. And even the Swabians had been stirred by the war out of their traditional apathy. Under Karolyi and Kun they had obtained considerable cultural concessions, and although an internal struggle between two rival groups had ended with the defeat of the radicals, who wanted national-cultural autonomy for the whole minority, the victorious moderates themselves were pressing for the preservation of their recent gains and a voice in local self-government in the areas where they were strong, and were toying with the idea of separate

representation in Parliament. The Simonyi-Semadam Cabinet actually included Jakob Bleyer, the leader of the moderate group, as Minister for Nationalities, and passed a Nationalities Act and Education Act which promised further improvements in the status of the minorities.? The Treaty of Trianon had brought no relief at all to the social problem. As to land distribution: if we divide the holdings into the two categories of 100+ hold and 100—, the change brought was not great, although what

change there was was for the worse. The 1920 percentages for Trianon Hungary were 55-8 per cent. and 44-2 per cent. respectively (in absolute figures, 9-01 and 7-14 million hold), against the 1913 figures, for the whole country, of 54-2 per cent. and 45-8 per cent. But the proportion of very large and large estates was increased, since the Treaty left in Hungary 70-1 per cent. of the estates of 1,000+ hold, 57-8 per cent. of these between 500 and 1,000 hold and 51-00 per cent. of those between 200-500, with 29 fidei-commissa, covering 985,060 hold, 401,693 of this being arable. At the other end of the

scale, Trianon Hungary was left, it is true, with only 30 per cent. of the holdings of 0-10 hold and with rather under her proportionate share of the entirely landless, but the numbers of each were still very formidable. The Treaty also left in Hungary most of those centres (among which Greater Budapest stood in a class by itself) which contained the largest factories and the largest industrial proletariat, in the strict sense of the term;

together with the headquarters of the capital which benefited from the proletariat’s labour.

The prospects held out and not fulfilled by Karolyi and Kun had, naturally, only whetted the appetites of these classes for reform. It was, moreover, a very important fact that their reluctance to return to their old condition of economic destitution, social degradation and political impotence enjoyed the full understanding and sympathy of the Entente.

The supplementary elections held in June after the Roumanians had retired to the Trianon frontier suggested that the feeling in favour of radical change was by no means on the wane. Szabd’s Smallholders were by far the biggest gainers in these elections and, after them, constituted substantially the largest single party in Parliament, with 91 seats out of the 203, while the

Christian National Party now commanded only 59. The Smallholders’ position was, indeed, not so strong in reality as it appeared on paper, since a group of 19 Deputies, headed by Count Klebelsberg and composed mainly of dissidents from the Christians, differed from the latter rather on personal + For these measures, see C. A. Macartney, Hungary and her Successors, pp. 445 ff.

FLUIDITY 27 or tactical questions than on issues of principle, as did many of the 17 Deputies who now described themselves as non-party. On the other hand, large numbers of men and women had joined the Smallholders who were

certainly not devoted to the economic interests of the smallholder and agricultural labourer class: some in a timorous endeavour to document their progressive opinions, some because Szab6 was strongly anti-Habsburg while the main Legitimist leaders were in the Christian National Party, so that the Smallholders represented, politically, the 1848 idea; some, possibly, with the deliberate intention of making it a Trojan Horse.! None of these were to be counted on to support radical social measures for their own sake. Nevertheless, a majority, even in Parliament, seemed to favour social and political

change. Further, although the Social Democrats had been silenced inside Hungary, this notoriously did not mean that the workers were pacified. Abroad, the émigré agitation was in full blast, persistently and remorselessly exposing all the many faults committed by the counter-revolution, as well as

some which they had refrained from committing. Under its influence the Amsterdam International proclaimed a boycott against Hungary on 20th June.

No less serious was the deep dissension and unrest in the ranks of the counter-revolutionaries themselves, among whom recent events had at last

shattered the long-preserved unity and brought to the surface those differences which had been developing, but had remained latent, during the Compromise Era.

1918 brought to the Hungarian fixed-income middle and lower middle classes a crisis proportionately even more severe than that suffered by the rest of the population. During the last two years of the war their salaries had completely failed to keep pace with the rising prices; then the inflation wiped out the savings which this class, more than any other, had invested in the now valueless Austro-Hungarian war loan. The hasty disbandment of the Hungarian Army threw most of the ex-officers on the streets and Kun’s commissaries dismissed others as “‘reactionary.’’ Then came the refugees.

It has been mentioned that while quite half the population of Historic Hungary had been non-Magyar, the administration of the whole had been conducted mainly by Magyar or Magyarised elements. Already in 1890, 80 per cent. of the personnel employed in the public administrative services, 83 per cent. of those in the judiciary, 75 per cent. of the public health services and 65 per cent. of the teachers had been persons describing themselves as ‘““Magyar by mother-tongue.” In the following two and a half decades all these figures rose substantially, most of them to over 90 per cent. Many tens of thousands of persons belonging to these classes fled, or were summarily expelled from the peripheral areas by the occupying authorities of the various Successor States, the first expulsions taking place soon after the armistice, and long before those areas had been legally transferred from Hungary.’ 1 Members of the Party at that time included Marquess Gyorgy Pallavacini, Baron Frigyes

Koranyi and Count Gedeon Raday. The genuine peasants elected numbered only about a dozen. The parallel with the history of the Smallholders’ Party of 1945 is striking. 2 The 1930 census showed that of 8,688,319 persons then living in Hungary, 12,768 (0-1 per cent.) had been born in ex-Hungarian territory assigned to Austria; 224,740 (2:6 per cent.) in ex-Hungarian territory of Czechoslovakia; 76 (?) from Poland; 192,933 (2:2 per cent.) from Roumania; 96,613 (1:2 per cent.) from Yugoslavia (excluding Croatia-Slavonia, 74,242—0-9 per cent.); and 2,222 from Italy; a total of 529,352 (6-1 per cent.). Not all of these, however, were

refugees. A substantial proportion of the figure from Czechoslovakia in particular were

28 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH These refugees, who arrived with their families homeless, penniless, embittered, formed a whole big army: a new and separate force in Hungary.

Their experiences had made many of them radical enough, and they supported Karolyi quite willingly in the hope that he would recover their homes for them. Not a few at first followed Kun in the same hope; but when he disappointed them and developed a policy which was avowedly hostile to

their class, imbued with an international ideology which they could not appreciate, and resting largely on Jewish elements, they turned to the counter-

revolution. Szeged was their natural venue. They officered and largely manned! the army which Horthy brought to Siofok in August 1919 and to Budapest in November. They formed the “Order Detachments’’ which thereafter carried through the ill-famed White Terror. In particular, they were the chief vehicles of the anti-Semitism which swept over Hungary with the Restoration. The articulate members of this Richtung were fond afterwards of claiming to be the authors and embodiments of a philosophy which they termed, after the city in which they had first played a coherent part in affairs, the “Szeged Idea’ (a szegedi gondolat). In the years in which such claims seemed safe and meritorious, their speechifiers were wont to boast that Szeged had led the way in the theory and practise of Fascism. In fact, the positive contribution made by the Hungarian Right Radicals? to social or political theory was modest enough. They may perhaps justly be credited with the authorship of what all Hungarian Governments from 1920 onward claimed as their central and essential principle: their counter-revolutionary nature and their eternal opposition to the destructive forces of world Bolshevism—a natural consequence of the historic fact that the counter-revolution had had to overcome a Bolshevik revolution calling itself international. When anti-Semitism again became fashionable in Hungary, its exponents could also invoke the activities of the White Terrorist bands, and thus claim that Szeged had led the way, if not in identifying the forces of world Jewry with those of world revolution, at any rate in drawing the practical conclusion which afterwards became the commonplace of German, Roumanian, etc., Right Radicalism. This, again, was a pragmatic conclusion from the history of the preceding

months, since Jewish radicals had formed almost the whole of Karolyi’s intellectual General Staff, and nearly all Béla Kun’s Commissaries, including

the most notorious perpetrators of the Red Terror which had preceded the White, had been Jews; although, even so, many of the most violent White pre-1918 immigrants. The refugees proper from Transylvania were estimated at about 200,000,

those from Czechoslovakia at about 65,000, and from Yugoslavia, etc., at 35,000. These, however, were only those who came within the purview of the Hungarian Refugee Office. There

are no statistics for the occupational groups of the refugees, but it is agreed that the official classes were much the heaviest sufferers under the expulsions; in those days it was not the fashion to expel peasants, or even workers.

* A few troops were also recruited from the Szeged region, and some were supplied by a Szekel Division which remained in Hungary, but several detachments were composed entirely of ex-officers and N.C.O.s. When the army moved to west Hungary, it was then reinforced by troops raised in the Szombathely district by the Legitimist Colonel Lehar, who by hurriedly drumming this force together saved the area from occupation by the Roumanians.

* The reader is warned that Hungarian political terminology differed from our own. The Szeged politicians repudiated the term “‘Left,’’ since they regarded it as smeared with Socialism, internationalism and Jewry. They therefore called themselves “‘Right-wing” or ‘“‘Right Radicals.”

The Arrow Cross became the “extreme Right.” Thus the ultra-conservative landed and big business interests were left without an appropriate label. Hungarians not infrequently called them ‘‘Left,”” and the English pen, which boggles at following this example, is left at a loss for an alternative,

FLUIDITY 29 Terrorists would have denied that they were attacking Jews as such. They were extirpating Bolshevism, and the conduct of the Jews had been such as to justify the presumption, failing proof to the contrary, that any Jew was also a Bolshevik. The racialist anti-Semitism of the following decade, which remembered 1919 but derived much more directly from economic causes, was no part of the Szeged programme. Nor was perfervid nationalism either their invention, or their monopoly.

But to deny them originality is not to deny them conviction, or force, and

they did represent something which had practically vanished from the Hungarian ruling class during the Compromise Era—a radical wing of that class. Having lost their all, they had little respect for property left, particularly as the apparent wealth of Hungary was almost all in the hands of Jews

or of big landlords. These interests being predominantly Legitimist, the Szeged men tended to join the anti-Habsburg ranks, and this and other considerations brought many of them into close connection with the Smallholders, whose party probably received most of the votes cast by Szeged men in the 1919 elections. Their real strongholds, however, were the patriotic associations, secret or otherwise, which were a power in the land in the early 1920’s.1

Hungary had started on this path comparatively late. Long after the Black Hand and the White Hand had become the real masters of Serbia, Hungary possessed no secret organisation off the Right at all. Only 9

‘patriotic associations” were registered in the whole country in 1917, and of these only one survived into the inter-war period, unless as a ghost; that one

being the Awakening Hungarians (Ebred6 Magyarok), founded in 1917

among the soldiers discharged from the First World War. But in the autumn of 1918, when the old Hungary was in dissolution and Karolyi’s Government seemed unable, or unwilling, to defend the national interests to the satisfaction of all, Right-wing elements among the population, civilian

and military, began to organise themselves in the defence of Hungary’s integrity without and her social stability within. The first such association, the Magyar Orszagos Véder6é Egyestilete or MOVE (Hungarian Association of National Defence), was called into being by a group of officers, originally as an organisation of officers only to replace the old officers’ associations of

the k. und k. army, which had just disintegrated. It was then only half political, and its members were officers serving under Karolyi. But the officers soon grew discontented with Karolyi, and on 19th January 1919 suddenly elected as their President one of the founder-members of the MOVE,

a certain Captain (as he then was) Gyula Gémbés, who had attracted public

attention by making a violent public attack on Karolyi. It now became pronouncedly and actively anti-Legitimist, but also strongly counterrevolutionary and anti-Semitic. Karolyi’s Minister of War, Bohm, ordered it to be dissolved and Gémb6s to be interned; but he escaped to Vienna and thence to Szeged, where meanwhile various analogous bodies had been founded, including an Irredentista Szévetség (Irredentist Association) and a body known as the Tertiletvéd6 Liga (Association for Territorial Defence), 1 The subject of these associations is a difficult one for the outside scribe, precisely because the organisation and activities of many of them were secret. The paragraphs which follow therefore doubtless contain many omissions and errors; but the subject is too important to be left untreated.

30 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH whose President was the Minister President himself and which was designed to act as a supreme co-ordinating body. In Budapest, meanwhile, correspon-

dents of these societies, or similar bodies formed independently of them, worked to prepare the counter-revolution. When the counter-revolution came, there was plenty for ‘“‘patriotic associations” to do. There were the embers of K4arolyi’s and Kun’s revolutions to be stamped out, Communists

to be tracked down and Jews disciplined, the encroachments (officially authorised or otherwise, for the boot was not always on one foot*) of Hungary’s neighbours to be repelled and returned with interest, contact to be established with counter-revolutionaries in other countries and help given them to establish themselves. Most of these were activities with which the Government sympathised from its heart, but could not itself perform without incurring displeasure, probably effectively expressed, from the Entente. It not only tolerated but actively encouraged and, under the rose, subsidised the associations, pleading, if the Entente remonstrated, that the limitation 1m-

posed on its official forces made it impossible for it to control them. The Awakening Hungarians appointed themselves chief executants of the internal

White Terror, although many smaller bodies shared the work with them. The Rongyos Garda, or “‘Ragged Guard,” after beginning as an internal counter-revolutionary movement, was used in 1921 to prevent the Austrians

from taking possession of the Burgenland, the Hungarian Government , primly disclaiming responsibility.» The MOVE, dropping the clause which had limited its membership to officers, and accepting as members any ‘patriotic’ elements, developed quite undisguisedly into a second-line defence force which controlled “‘sport’”’ organisations, shooting clubs, youth movements, etc., organised gliding clubs (to compensate for the ban on military aviation) and so on.° The Entente intervened on various occasions to order the dissolution of certain of these bodies, but when this happened, the organisation in question

simply went underground, or made some nominal change in its title or statutes and carried on unperturbed, while new organisations sprang up like mushrooms. The official statistics (which, of course, take no cognisance of the secret organisations) show 22 “‘patriotic associations’? as having been founded in 1919, no less than 101 in 1920, 40 in 1921, 49 in 1921. By this date the public associations constituted an enormous network, spread over

the whole country and catering for every sort of local, functional, etc., interest: there were women’s organisations, students’ (the Turul, or Falcon), ex-servicemen’s, and so on. The most important of these bodies was still the

MOVE, which had now ceased altogether to permit the participation of serving officers (who now formed an affiliated society of their own), but

embraced many reservists, etc. Other important associations were the Christian National League, founded in 1919 by Dr. Karolyi Wolff to support and promulgate counter-revolutionary and “‘anti-destructive”’ ideas (this was

a relatively small body, composed chiefly of politicians, and not paramilitary), and a body which had been founded in 1921: the Vitézi Rend, or Order of Heroes. Beginning as a small corps d’elite of men who had served 1 It is sufficient to recall the activities of the Yugoslav Cetniks, and for that matter the Austrian

Heimweblr.

? After a long hibernation, the Rongyos Garda acted, as will be seen (pp. 237 ff.), in a similar

capacity in Ruthenia in 1938-39 and on the Roumanian frontier in 1940. .

* The MOVE, incidentally, had by now appropriated the premises of the old Freemasons’

Lodge, which had been dissolved.

FLUIDITY 3] with especial distinction in the First World War (its original membership was only 121), this had soon expanded into something much larger. Members were given grants of land (40 hold for an officer, 8 hold for an O.R.) which were inalienable except for misconduct, and their unspoken function was to

form nuclei of order and patriotism throughout the country. A blanket organisation, the TESz (Tarsadalmi Egyesiiletek Szévetsége— Federation of Social Associations), which had succeeded the Teriiletvédé Liga, existed in theory to co-ordinate the activities of all social organisations of every type, these numbering in all some 10,000. In practice, however, it concerned itself almost entirely with the larger “‘patriotic associations,”’ whose representatives formed its Executive Committee. The most important of the secret societies were two bodies founded by Gémbé6s to act respectively as the civilian and military inner ring of the MOVE.

The civilian society had an official name, the Magyar Tudomdanyos Fajvédd Egyesiilet (Hungarian Scientific Race-protecting Society), and a secret name, the Etelk6zi Szévetség (Etelk6z Association'); for short, EKSz or X. The EKSz was organised on the pattern of primitive Hungarian society, as its epigones conceived it (actually, they did not get all their details entirely right, but that fact is of scientific rather than political relevance). There were seven Leaders (Vezérek) corresponding to the Hetumoger, or Seven Magyar Leaders who, led by ArpAd, conducted the Magyars across the Carpathians

in 896. One of these, corresponding to Arpad, was Supreme Leader (this was Gombés himself). Each Leader had under him a Tribe (t6rzs), corresponding to one of the seven alleged tribes of conquerors. These were on a local basis. Under them, on the same basis, were clans (nemzetiségek), and as subdivisions of the larger clans, “‘families.”’ Each clan and family had a Head (FG), a clerk (jegyz6—this a forced concession to modernity) and a membership of ““brothers,”’ all of whom had equal rights and duties. A member had to be proposed for admission, and could be blackballed. Novices were solemnly inducted in a fearful ceremony in which they took an oath of absolute allegiance to the Leader of the Society, whose orders they swore to carry out implicitly. There was a mysterious ritual with a White Horse (an animal which figured prominently in early Magyar legend) and an invocation of Hadur (the God of War’), believed to have been worshipped

by the early Magyars. There were private disciplinary courts, which had power to pronounce the death sentence, and members swore to submit to the

judgment and sentence of the Court “‘even if it means the ending of our lives.’ I have not, it is true, been able to trace any case in which the death sentence was executed. The general aims of the EKSz, which members swore to make their own,

were defence of ‘“‘the Hungarian cause’’ (sc. in international politics) and 1 Btelk6éz was the region inhabited by the Magyars before they entered Hungary in the ninth century. It is wrongly identified by Hungarian historians with the southern strip of

Moldavia and Bessarabia; it was really the country round the mouth of the Don. 2 Not to be confused with Horthy, the Legfelsobb Hadur, or Supreme War Lord, i.e. Chief of the Army. The mythological Hadur was a pure invention. We are in fact in almost complete

ignorance on the religious beliefs of the early Magyars. .

2 Another informant, a member of the EKSz, informs me that this was not the case; that members only admitted that conduct contrary to the statutes or the spirit of the Society condemned them “‘to moral death.” My original informant, however, records that he heard members swear as above: “‘akkor is, ha az életem végét jelenti.”’

32 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH revisionism. Its most important feature in practice (although this was not

mentioned in the programme) was anti-Semitism: not in the sense of organising pogroms or outrages but in the sense that the membership of the

organisation was supposed to constitute a guarantee of fitness for high employment in the State, and a recommendation for such employment; and the whole “ideology” of the movement assumed that Jews were lacking in the qualities which it demanded and fostered; and Jews were in fact not admitted

to membership. Thus in practice the Society boiled down to a sort of selection committee for Munisterial and, above all, high administrative posts; in its other aspect, a society of mutual aid whose members helped one another into such posts.

The Kett6s-Kereszt Szdvetség (Society of the Double Cross!) was originally the military counterpart of the EKSz (later it took in civilians) with similar names and a similar ritual. Both of these were comparatively small and select bodies. The EKSz, at its peak, had probably some 4,000-5,000 members; its counterpart considerably fewer. But the tentacles of both stretched out wide, and their influence extended to many smaller societies and individuals.

There was another small but important secret society of the more conservative type. This was an inner core of the Christian National League?

which was known as “‘Feltamadas” (Resurrection). It was a secret body organised on the cell system, led by 50 men known as Vezérharcosok (Battle Leaders), each of whom was supposed to have under him 10 Tisztiharcosok (Officer Fighters), these knowing only their own leader, not the other 49, and still less the other groups, while each Tisztiharcos nominally had 10 ordinary

members (harcosok) under him; as, however, the groups were seldom complete, the total membership probably never exceeded 300. The Battle Leaders included many men prominent in political and church life, including Bethlen, Pal Teleki, Kanya, Bardossy, the Bishops Prohaszka, Raffay and Ravasz, and also the chief of Horthy’s Chancellery, Bartha. In its heyday it had considerable influence on policy, for at its intimate meetings, as my informant writes, “political events were discussed, views exchanged, roles apportioned, etc.’ The Feltamadas had a smaller, less important sister society, the Szent Istvan, composed chiefly of judges and University professors. As the foregoing paragraphs will have shown, the para-military organisations and secret societies were not all of one political colouring. The Christian National League was the preserve of the “‘Christian’’ politicians, and thus

relatively conservative. The Vitézi Rend was always intended to be an element of stability. In later years, when it was considerably enlarged,‘ it developed into Horthy’s special unofficial quasi-Pretorian Guard; and as Horthy had by that time moved away from Right Radicalism, the Vitézi Rend 1 From the Cross of Lorraine on the Holy Crown.

* The President of the League was also President of the Feltamadas. Thus Wolff was President until his death. He was then succeeded by Gyula Bieber, President of the Supreme Administrative Court, and he in his turn by Laszlé6 Bardossy, who probably owed his advancement largely to his position in this society. * Another informant gives a less sensational account of the Feltamadas, saying that it was not secret and little more than a club, which was probably its character in its later days. But in 30 years’ reading of the Hungarian Press I never saw it mentioned. 4 First the sons of Vitezek were admitted to membership, then the qualification of “‘distinguished service” lowered. In 1938 service against the Successor States was admitted to qualify for membership, and in 1941, service in the Second World War. In November 1943 the Order had a membership of 4,342 officers and 11,189 O.R.s and there was a waiting list of 8,000.

FLUIDITY 33 came itself to be rather a conservative force. Many of the more public and less militant bodies were always instruments in the hand of the Government of the day, and their members came from all walks of society and held the most varying political opinions. But the MOVE, the EKSz and a considerable number of smaller societies which have not been listed here began as, and remained, the special strongholds of the representatives of the “Szeged Idea.”” This was largely due to the influence of the man who founded many of them, and contrived to get the control of the rest in his single hand: Gyula

Gombobs. )

Gémbés, in the early 1920’s, was still a young man. He had been born on 26th December 1886 of what he himself, with characteristic inconsistency,

since he was always inveighing against snobbery and aristocracy, used to insist with great emphasis to have been an ancient but impoverished family ennobled as long ago as 1658. His enemies, on the other hand, would have it that his predicate of nobility,! Jakfai, was phoney, and that his forebears had

been Swabian peasants bearing the honest but undistinguished name of Knopfie.* However this may be, it is certain that his native village, where his father was schoolmaster, lay in a Swabian district and that his mother, the daughter of a yeoman farmer, did not even speak Magyar. These facts Gombés himself did not deny, and while making much play with his predicate, was also fond of insisting that he was no effete aristocrat, but a man brought up from infancy to a life of honest toil. In any case, the young Gémbés went the way taken by so many Swabians

of his class and so few Magyars, and entered the Army as a professional officer. He was only a Honvéd officer and achieved no higher rank than Captain, but in 1914 he did a course at the k. und k. Staff College at WienerNeustadt and served through the war on the Staff. He entirely failed, however, to imbibe the ‘““Schwarzgelb” loyalty to the monarch which was supposed

to dominate the every thought and instinctive reaction of the k. und k. officer. On the contrary, G6mbés was one of those assimilated recruits to a nation whose nationalism 1s more extreme than that of those born its members. He is said to have scandalised his superiors and instructors by the outspoken and truculent Hungarian nationalism which always dominated his character and opinions and took the form (amongst others) of a fanatical hostility to the institution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and to the dynasty which ruled it. The national revolution was for him the revolution against the Habsburgs, a view which explains his attitude towards Mihaly Karolyi’s Government when it first took office. As we have seen, he did not long remain with the revolutionaries. After his arrival in Szeged, consequent on the adventures described elsewhere, he was appointed by Gyula Karolyi to the post of Secretary of State for Defence in the new Government, and it was he who suggested the name of Horthy to command the Szeged armies, thus rendering Horthy a service which the latter never forgot and initiating the long and intimate connection between the two men. 1 Every Hungarian “noble” above a certain degree possessed an adjectival predicate associating him with some place. Jakfai=‘‘of Jakfa.”” The predicate is, however, not used except on the most formal occasions.

2 Gomb in Hungarian, like Knopf in German, means a button. Gémb means a globe or sphere, but is said by philologists to be a nineteenth-century neologism, so that the name Gémbés could not easily have been born by a long line of ancestors. The military authorities endorsed Gémbés’ claim to nobility, but it was never submitted to the equivalent of our College of Heralds. D

34 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Gombés came back to Hungary with the counter-revolutionary armies, but almost at once went on the retired list, and devoted himself to political activities. At the elections of June 1920 he entered Parliament as a “‘Smallholder’; in reality, to stiffen the anti-Legitimists in Parliament. What was far more important, however, was that he now resumed the Presidency of the MOVE, and succeeded to that of the EKSz, from which stronghold he set about organising the forces of the ‘Szeged Idea’? compactly under his own leadership. Anti-Legitimism was still Gdmbés’ most immediate preoccupation, but he was now beginning to evolve a more complex political philosophy, which

it is necessary to describe, since from his post of advantage he was able to impress it on all his followers. It was complex, indeed, only in the sense that

the original single root of his intense Hungarian nationalism was putting forth shoots in various directions. As early as 1919 he described himself as a

‘“‘Hungarian National Socialist,” and it is fair to say that he took all the components in this phrase, as interpreted by himself, seriously, although by “socialism” he naturally did not mean Marxism, which he regarded as a destructive heresy foisted on simple workers by self-seeking international Jews. One of the essential tasks of national socialism was precisely to destroy this false socialism—not, however, to strengthen the hold of capitalists, landed or financial, over the workers. G6mb6s was against the landlords,

if only because in Hungary they represented the relics of the Habsburg system; and against the financiers, if only because in Hungary they represented the Jews. He was later to create history in Hungary by being the : first Hungarian premier on record (if the Kun period be disregarded) to form

a Cabinet which did not contain a single Count. He was fond of making speeches to working-class audiences in which he inveighed against inherited

privilege and extolled the blessings of honest toil. He told a scandalised Parliament that his generation had no use for Counts unless they worked, “when they would be treated like anyone else.”’ ‘‘People tell me,’ he said on another occasion, “‘that I ought to protect the historic classes. I recognise no difference between classes.” Again: ‘““What matters is not where a man is coming from, but where he is going to.”” And again: ““The hand of the industrious peasant is a hundred times more valuable than the enervated hand of an aristocrat which has grown atrophied in the gambling dens.” He sincerely wanted to give the industrial workers the best possible conditions (while not admitting their claim to establish a class dictatorship) and was also sincerely in favour of a radical“land reform; although such more complex social doctrines as he and his followers later adopted at all were usually borrowed from Italy or Germany. Another aspect of his nationalism was, inevitably, anti-Semitism, since he regarded the Jews as an element not merely alien but positively hostile to the

Hungarian nation; an element which exploited the nation’s true members, sapped its inner strength and then handed it over to foreign elements. Thus he soon became a racial anti-Semite, wrote pamphlets on international J ewry, freemasonry and kindred subjects, which hardly differed in style or content

from Hitler’s own effusions, and edited a paper (the first of its kind in Hungary) along the same lines. This brought him into touch with the embryonic National Socialist group in Germany, and the group of which he was the leader was in close contact, at least as early as 1921, with the likeminded clique in Munich of which Hitler was at the time a hanger-on.

FLUIDITY 35 The purpose of these contacts was, however, at that time principally political, since the object of its members was to overthrow the Peace Treaties.

If Hungary was to get help from anywhere in this field, the source of such help could, at that time, only be Germany, and Gémbés looked with favour on the idea of a resurrected Germany, which should then, incidentally, absorb

Austria and end for ever the danger of a Habsburg restoration. The evolution of his more elaborate foreign political philosophy belongs, however, to a

later period. When first he spun them, his threads ran not to Pan-German circles but to those who were working for a Wittelsbach restoration.

Goémbés’ personal qualities were not all unendearing. The would-be dictator, the Right Radical, the Racialist—these words suggest a violent, pitiless, forbidding man of iron. Gémbés was not such. He was intensely sentimental, and his doctrines were really the outcome of an almost morbid love of his country and its people. He was known to burst into tears on returning to Hungary from abroad, or at the mere sight of some very typical

Hungarian picture: white cattle drinking under a “‘gémkut,’ a peasant in national costume, a field of wheat. It was in genuine affection that he tried to woo workers and peasants to come into his great family, and although he was constantly involved in the most bitter political controversies, he never

succeeded in bearing his opponents lasting malice. Even his philippics against the Jews sprang from love towards Gentiles rather than hatred towards Jews. After his sentimentality, his chief characteristic was probably vanity. He was exceedingly fond of public applause, and very impatient of open opposi-

tion. In private, however, he had a streak of humility. He knew at heart that he was unlettered and inexperienced, and he would listen to private advice sensibly enough. He was no academic intellectual; his speeches had to be largely written

for him. But he possessed a certain peasant slyness, which he used in politics with a complete lack of scruple, of which the following pages will give some astounding examples,* and altogether was not at all a fool: he owed his

rise to power not only to ambition, unscrupulousness and good fortune, but also to single-mindedness, hard work, considerable practical ability and a remarkable, although not infallible, political vision. His friends spoke of him, years after his death, with deep affection, and those who differed from him in politics yet saw him at close quarters, with some derision, but not with dislike.

Such was the new force which now appeared in Hungarian political life, and such the leader of that force. But powerfully as it affected the course of events in 1919 and 1920, it did not, even then, wholly dominate them. The later writers who allowed the name of “‘Szeged”’ to the Right Radicals even then contrasted ‘‘Szeged’’ with “‘Vienna,”’ 1.e. the members of the Anti1 Besides North Germans such as Ludendorf and Colonel Bauer and the Bavarians Kahr, Scheubner-Richter, etc., the members of this circle included Czarist Russians (Biskupsky and Kassim Bek), Ukrainians (Skoropatsky and the Archduke Wilhelm Habsburg), and Turkish and Bulgarian visitors. 2 The characteristic Hungarian well surmounted by a tall pole and crosspiece, one end of which carries the bucket attached to a chain, the other a rope by which the crosspiece can be an Sec in particular his remarkable deals with high finance and with the Jews, described below (pp. 100-1, 117). Occasions have been described to me, with a convincing wealth of detail, on which he associated his private affairs even more closely with those of the nation.

36 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Bolshevik Committee who had gathered in that city.1 It is not even accurate to regard the Szeged Government of 1919 as representing “‘the Szeged Idea”’; it was a random enough collection of such political figures as could be got together locally: Conservatives and Liberals, Christians, Jews and Armenians. It was not in the least anti-Semitic, and in the only important proclamation of 1ts programme which it ever issued, it declared its intention of “reconstructing Hungary in the spirit of the cultured Western democracies.” The Right Radicals were not even the Generals of Szeged; they were its military and para-military forces and its camp-followers. And when Hungary turned

from the negative task of destroying the revolution to the positive one of putting something in its place, ““Vienna”’’ at once claimed its share of power and responsibility. These men were at once less destructive and less constructive than those other regimes which the Hungary of the 1930’s claimed to have anticipated. They were not trying to found a new regime, but to re-establish an old one. They did not represent a new class taking over power, but an old one trying to recover it. Their leading figures were men of the old class and, to no small degree, precisely members of the high-aristocratic, ultra-conservative wing of

it: Count Istvan Bethlen, Count Gyula Karolyi (the representative of this Richtung in Szeged), Count Pal Teleki, Margrave Gyorgy Pallavacini, Count Sigray, Count Vanos Zichy. Theirs was most truly a counter-revolution, nota

revolution: one which looked back, not forward: their one object being to restore, so far as lay in their power, the old Hungary which had broken down

so dismally a year earlier: to restore it socially, politically and, of course, also geographically. The true and lapidary expression of their splendid traditionalism was the superbly negative Law I of 1920. And while they regarded the Szeged men as their own brothers and colleagues, and also as useful instruments, they also looked on them as an element the putting of

construction.

which back into its place must be one of the tasks of the national reGathered in the Christian National Union, these more conservative

elements had contributed their quota to the Huszar and Simonyi-Semadam Governments. But the turning-point which opened for them the road to a true ascendency came after the elections in the Tiszantul. Simonyi-Semadam then resigned, and on 8th July Horthy, on the advice of Teleki and of Counts Gedeon Raday and Gyula Karolyi (the two men on whose councils Horthy at that time chiefly relied), entrusted the task of negotiating the formation of a new Government to Count Istvan Bethlen. It was not without justice that the decade 1921-31 became currently known

in Hungary as the “Bethlen Era,” for he not only presided during all those years over its fortunes: he veritably gave them shape and content. It is to him more than to any other single man that the fact is due that within three

and a half years of Karolyi’s revolution, representative government in Hungary had once more ceased to be. The country was being ruled again on a very slightly modified re-edition of its old system, in the interests of that

system’s old beneficiaries, from whom only the inescapable minimum of social and economic sacrifices had been exacted in the process. * The distinction is drawn by the late G. Gratz in his very acute and interesting book, A forradalmak kora (the Age of the Revolutions). The distinction was not absolute, for some individuals who belonged spiritually to Vienna were geographically in Szeged, and vice-versa; but it is convenient and broadly accurate.

FLUIDITY 37 Bethlen was a Transylvanian, in any case the scion of a great historic family which (although precise documentary evidence is lacking) was presum-

ably a collateral branch of that which produced the great Transylvanian princes of the seventeenth century. His was not a striking personality. He was too reserved and perhaps too void of mannerisms ever to be widely popular as a man, or to acquire close personal friends—or, for that matter,

personal enemies; fundamentally, he had only political adherents or opponents. But he possessed all the inward assurance and the external prestige of the man whose family’s prerogative it has been, for centuries, to be obeyed. With this he united a wide culture derived from sufficient study and extensive travel which made him familiar with the capitals, the cultures and

the personalities of the Continent; a long Parliamentary experience, for he had entered Parliament as early as 1901, when he was only 27 years of age; a great native shrewdness and a skill in handling men which was untrammelled by inhibitions, for his guiding characteristic was a profound cynicism which coloured his every belief save one: the natural right and duty of Hungary to rule the Danube basin through his own class. Bethlen was a conservative in the truest sense of the word. His mind was neither negative nor incapable of recognising the existence of new conditions. He was also far too shrewd not to appreciate when a position had become untenable. When this occurred, he would withdraw to an inner line, as close behind the old one as possible, making his retreat and choosing his new

terrain with an extraordinary tactical skill which reduced the extent of

the ground lost to a minimum. But for him this was retreating, not advancing. There was, indeed, one all-important point on which he was in favour of

the new situation which had evolved since 1918. The Transylvanian aristocracy had never possessed the aulic connections and attachments of the great

West Hungarian families. While never displaying the bruyant antiHabsburgism of a Gémbos, he had, early in his Parliamentary career, joined the Party of Independence, thus declaring himself openly against the Compromise. He was now willing to support the new Hungary sincerely against a

Legitimist restoration. | With this qualification, his political ideal was simply the old Hungary, reinstated within its historic frontiers and ruled at home through his own class, i.e. the aristocratic wing of the old “‘nation.”” Profoundly undemocratic

in soul, he would not willingly have broadened the basis of Hungary’s political structure at all. Even if he recognised that some such process would -

be inescapable in the end, he was convinced that it could not even be attempted without disaster until the old foundations had been firmly relaid. Hungary must begin by standing firmly on the traditional basis of a satisfied propertied class backed by a loyal, contented and conservative Civil Service.

And the principle which must prevail in her affairs must be that of authority. It must be emphasised that authority, in his eyes, had nothing in common

with totalitarianism. We shall describe presently the system which he established to safeguard his rule and to make it permanent. He did not mean opposition ever to be in a position seriously to challenge his own will. But he did not think it any part of the duty of government to pry into and regiment each detail of the subject’s conduct, much less his thoughts. For this he was too large-minded, or too cynical, too little of a perfectionist. In

38 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH a certain sense he was tolerant, at least compared with the generation which succeeded him. He did not even need to use totalitarian methods, for he had a remarkable gift of creating about himself such an atmosphere of authority as to make the forceful exercise of it unnecessary. From the day when he took office, the

country felt that, for good or ill, the period in which some had looked to find freedom and others had seen only anarchy was over. And since he did succeed in saving more for the old Hungary (in its social and inner political aspects) than anyone would have thought possible, history must award him the recognition due to the man who achieves his objectives. It must certainly endorse the verdict of his contemporaries that he was a consummate master of political tactics. Whether he would not have served Hungary better if, instead of seeking how much of the old he could preserve, he had sought how much of the new he could create, is a different question. It 1s assuredly a

legitimate criticism of his work that by making his own rule practically impregnable against constitutional opposition, he forced his opponents into semi-revolutionary paths. Nor, in the present writer’s view, was he so clearsighted as his contemporaries believed. It is hard not to suspect that Istvan Bethlen never quite appreciated how far things had changed since his kinsmen

ruled Transylvania in the seventeenth century. He did see that peasants could no longer be treated as serfs, nor workmen as near-slaves. Human considerations, to which he was not blind, apart, he believed that the stability

and internal cohesion of the State demanded that they should not be given reasonable cause for dissatisfaction. He therefore sincerely favoured an enlightened social policy and a wage-level as high as the State could afford, taking into account the manifold claims on its resources. But he never for a moment considered admitting the workers to partnership in the government of Hungary with his own class, which he regarded as uniquely fitted, by destiny, training and capacity, to determine and carry through national policy. He saw that one has to negotiate with Czechs and Serbs, but found it difficult to treat with them as equals. Although by temperament allergic beyond most of his class to Jews, and given to expressing his distaste for them

to his intimates in free and forceful language, he saw that Jewish capital was a force whose co-operation was essential, in the existing situation, for the realisation of his designs, and he sought it as no Hungarian Minister President had ever done before. But he did not realise how far the great Jewish financiers of the twentieth century had left their timid “tolerated”’ fathers behind, and in the bargains which he drove he sometimes let his country and himself be badly overreached. For all his knowledge of the

world and all his culture there remained in him something of the Transylvanian squire; and Transylvania, which had excited the admiration of Europe in the seventeenth century, had by the twentieth become a pretty backward and remote corner of the earth. His extensive enlistment of the forces of finance in aid of his regime inevitably provoked accusations of corruption against it and against him. So far as these related to his person, they were assuredly unfounded. Accustomed to have all he needed in position, honour and a sufficiency of wealth (he did not ever need, or ever possess, much of this; generations ago he had passed the stage when possession was necessary as a proof of status, and his personal tastes were, except for a passion for shooting, exceptionally simple) presented to him as his right, he did not need to stoop after them in competition with the

FLUIDITY 39 vulgar." But this was by no means the case with all his coadjutors, including

some persons very near to him, and it is a fact that corruption flourished round him and that he watched it cynically enough, perhaps even used it. When he first took office, Bethlen worked extremely hard, spending long hours in his office, and his evenings in studying the problems with which he had to deal. After 1927 he was, it is true, justly accused of neglecting his public duties for other interests, which absorbed his spirit. But if Bethlen sometimes failed to see, or perhaps preferred to overlook, many things which went on under his nose, he possessed in compensation a length and breadth of vision shared by few of his compatriots in those fevered

and unhappy days. He looked on the problem of Hungary as one which local and short-term devices could not solve: only a comprehensive and long-

term plan which took account of the realities of world forces and adapted itself to them. Hungary’s first step must therefore be to carry through a general process of consolidation and reconstruction in every field, political, social, economic and financial. Each of these aspects of the task was equally important, and indeed they were integrally interconnected and mutually interdependent. The governing factor in the situation, as he saw it, was the impoverishment and disorganisation to which the country had been reduced by war, revolution and finally the savage Peace Treaty. Material disaster had spread political unrest, and until some measure of economic well-being had returned, it would be impossible to complete that restoration of the traditional social and political order which was his direct objective in the internal field.

But the converse also held true. Hungary’s crying need at the moment was for capital. To readapt the national economic structure, mutilated and disrupted as it had been by the Peace Treaty, to repair the wastage of the war and make good the depredations inflicted by the Roumanian occupation,

to tide the refugees and the disbanded soldiers over the interval until they could be fitted into productive employment—all these were operations calling for capital expenditure on a large scale. But Hungary’s native capitalists had

exported whatever assets lent themselves to export under the threat of Bolshevism,” and would not return them until that threat, and also the threat of Right Radicalism, had been securely banished. And even when all those assets returned, they would still be insufficient for the tasks to be carried through. For Hungary had never been rich in capital of her own, since many

of her industries had been owned by holding banks outside the country. Further capital would be needed from abroad, and this, a fortiori, would not risk itself in a country in which the threat of revolution still existed.

Thus political and social stability was as necessary for economic and financial reconstruction as the converse, and for both purposes foreign help

was needed. From this it followed that until the reconstruction had been successfully got under way, Hungary would have to adopt a political orientation satisfactory to those circles which would have to supply the help. 1 Much was made by his enemies after his retirement of the fact that he then accepted seats

- on boards of various companies owned by Jewish capital. There is, however, no reason to suppose that he ever misused these connections, which were at the time almost his only source

of According to figures quoted by M. Kovrig (op. cit., p. 38), Hungary’s capital resources in 1921 totalled only £1,824,000 foundation capital and £1,153,000 reserve capital, compared with £51.794.000 and £25,623,000 respectively in 1910 (these figures relating to Historic Hungary) and £40,052,000 and £13,022,000 in 1938. Reserve deposits totalled £4,000,000 in 1921 compared with £143,740,000 in 1910 and £54,329,000 in 1938.

40 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH This applied both to internal and external policy, for it was obvious that international financiers would be only one degree more favourably disposed

towards Right-Radical anti-Semitism than towards Bolshevism. This circumstance was, up to a point, only agreeable to Bethlen, whose political conception had no place in it for radicalism of any form, and his traditions and his personal fastidiousness alike made violence repugnant to him. If, at the other end of the line, the holders of the money-bags required more real Liberalism and democracy than fitted into Bethlen’s picture, he was nevertheless prepared to make such a modicum of concessions as should satisfy any requirements. More difficult were the foreign political implications of the programme, for it was the unescapable fact that the foreign help could come only from the victorious Powers, or from the League of Nations, and the price of it would inevitably be the acceptance of a “‘policy of fulfilment’ of the Treaty of Trianon. Bethlen himself could never have sincerely accepted the Treaty as final, and if he had done so, he could not have carried the other political factors

in the country with him. Yet he was convinced that reconstruction and consolidation were Hungary’s first need, even from the point of a revisionist policy. His realistic assessment of the world power-position had led him to

the conclusion that a policy of adventure would be merely suicidal for Hungary in her existing friendless and defenceless condition. First she must gather sufficient intrinsic strength, political, economic, even military, to make herself again a factor to be reckoned with in world politics. Only then could she hope to secure friends, and only after this had been achieved would she be in a position to advance on her “national objectives.”’ Thus reconstruction and consolidation were not, in his eyes, an alternative to revision, but a necessary precondition thereof, involving, it is true, the

temporary abandonment of any active attempts to overthrow the order established under the Peace Treaties, but only as a step back in preparation for an effective later advance. If, nevertheless, it might prove necessary to undertake obligations involving a permanent renunciation of revision, he was far too cynical to attach to them any moral weight; nor, it must be added, was he, or Hungarian opinion in general, convinced at that date that a League of Nations policy might not lead to revision. Such, in brief, was Bethlen’s assessment of the situation of Hungary and his policy for remedying it. The measure of his political stature is that he was able to conceive this complex and long-sighted policy and to carry it through in the face of all difficulties at home and abroad; and his historical importance lies in the fact that the social, political and economic shape which Hungary took in the following decade was that in which this policy of his moulded her. Bethlen had entered Parliament in the elections of January 1920 on a

non-party ticket, and this fact, together with that of his long political experience, made Horthy’s choice of him as a mediator a very natural one. Yet that decision marked one of the turning-points in the history of modern

Hungary. Szabo, a simple peasant without political experience, was no match for Bethlen, who by appealing to his patriotism—his wish to put country above class—and perhaps to a vanity which made him desire to be

a national leader instead of only a clas leader, persuaded him, and even persuaded him easily, not merely to share the Government with the Christian

FLUIDITY 4] Nationals, but to put his head right into the panther’s mouth! by agreeing that the Smallholders and the Christian Nationals should henceforward “work together as a unified Government Party under a joint leadership.” Szab6 did not even stipulate for the Minister Presidency for himself or his Party, and the only assurances which Bethlen seems to have given were in respect of the Legitimist question and of an agrarian programme which was to be worked out by agreement within the Government.? On 10th July 1920 the unified Party was in fact formed, under the imposing title of the “Christian

(Catholic and Protestant),* Smallholders’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Bourgeois Party.” Bethlen himself proved unacceptable as Minister President, on personal grounds, to some members of the Christian Nationals, and his younger friend, Pal Teleki, became Minister President instead of him. Teleki was a man of more advanced social views than Bethlen, but the conservatives were now firmly in the saddle, and when Szabo pressed for an extensive land reform, he was again over-persuaded by appeals to higher considerations. He was told

that Hungary’s political and economic interests alike—the necessities of avoiding demagogy and social unrest, maintaining the credit structure unshaken and observing continuity of production—made it imperative to proceed gradually and with moderation. He therefore consented to work by instalments, and for the first instalment accepted the truly modest figure of 1-2 million hold to be taken from the largest estates and used to form new

dwarf holdings or to enlarge existing ones. A further distribution was to come later, but only when ‘“‘consolidation”’ had reached a point at which it could be effected without disturbance. Meanwhile, the very existence of the promise was to be kept a close secret lest it should endanger the credit of the present landowners. All that was publicly stated was that the fidei-commis system was to be reformed. This was, indeed, supplemented by a fairly extensive agreement on minor

points, economic and cultural,* and an undertaking that when an Upper House was re-established (Szab6 was by now not against a second chamber) all categories of the agrarian population, including the agricultural labourers,

should be represented in it. | 1921 was another unsettled year. The White Terrorists were still at large

and active; the Socialists still unappeased and unforgiven. But the real test for the “Unified Government Party’’ came when, at Easter, the King suddenly appeared in West Hungary and demanded reinstatement. The Government 1 I use the phrase out of deference to the memories of the owl and the panther. 2 The bargain seemed afterwards so disproportionately unfavourable to the Smallholders that fantastic stories circulated of dark methods by which Bethlen had cajoled, bribed or blackmailed Szab6 into accepting it. But there are many reasons for rejecting all these stories, chief among them the obvious fact that even if Szab6 had been personally got at, his party could have repudiated the bargain at any time in the next twenty-one months, whereas, as we shall see, it was they who during that time kept the Government in power. I have based my brief account of the course of the transactions on information kindly supplied to me by M. T. Zsitvay, who was close in Bethlen’s secrets. The more sensational accounts tend to forget the dominant importance possessed at the time by the Legitimist question, and also to overlook how few real radicals the Smalltholders’ Party itself possessed at the time. Finally, the bargain would not have

been so bad if all the promises had been kept. _ 7

3 Keresztény-Keresztyén. These two forms of the word “Christian” are traditionally used

in Hungary by the Catholics and Protestants respectively. a |

4 Among these points were: modernisation of the local road system; reorganisation of agricultural exports; gradual diminution of the “agrarian scissors’’; extension of agrarian credit; limitation of cartels; extension of co-operatives; rural housing; improved educational facilities, general and technical, for the agrarian population, etc.

42 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH stood by Horthy in his refusal (for which he could also plead force majeure) to allow Charles to resume the functions of sovereign, but Teleki refused to

cover all the circumstances! and resigned. Bethlen, on the other hand, accepted his succession. Tempers were now running extraordinarily high between the Legitimists on the one side and the Szeged group, which saw their natural leader in Horthy, on the other, and although Bethlen had not publicly committed himself to the anti-Legitimist side, he was regarded as favouring it by the mere fact of his having taken office under Horthy. The Christian Nationals reorganised as a separate party, and Bethlen was, in reality, kept in office only by the Smallholders. He had, in fact, been hoping to find a formula on which Legitimists and anti-Legitimists could agree for the time being, and had actually agreed with the Smallholders and (through a middleman) with the King on a form of words.” He was to enunciate this

on a public platform. Unfortunately, he twice postponed doing so, the second time for the truly Hungarian (and personal) reason that the designated day proved to be that preceding the “‘nuit des cerfs,’’ and he had received

an invitation to shoot which he could not resist.2 He duly delivered the speech a week later (on 21st October, at Pécs), only to learn, as he left the platform, that the King, who had deduced from the repeated postponement that he was being tricked, had again arrived in Hungary on the previous afternoon, and this time was advancing on Buda at the head of an armed force. Again Horthy’s henchmen repelled him, this time meeting arms with arms; he was driven back by MOVE detachments hurriedly drummed together by

Gombés. The Entente had him removed, and three weeks later (under pressure from the Little Entente) ordered Hungary to pass a law through Parliament dethroning the Habsburgs. Bethlen did not refuse the commission.*

His unpopularity with the Legitimists was now at its height, and, conversely, his popularity with the other side: for so fixed was the belief held in those days among the Left of Central Europe that the cause of the Habsburg

dynasty was identical with that of reaction and obscurantism in all their forms that they regarded anyone who stood up to the Habsburgs as being on their side. And Bethlen chose that moment for his master-stroke. As we have said, all elections in Compromise Hungary had been under an open franchise; but in 1913 a law had actually passed through Parliament * When invested, as Regent, with the functions of ‘‘Supreme War Lord,” Horthy had required the new Hungarian Army to take the oath of allegiance to him. When the King arrived he had ordered the Army to obey only him (Horthy) and on 30th March had issued an Order of the Day thanking them for their loyalty to him. Teleki, on learning of this, had insisted that the order should be kept secret, but on 12th April it was nevertheless published. Teleki thereupon resigned at once, by telephone (see A. Borovicsény, Der Kénig und sein Reichsverweser, p. 168). * Every word in this statement (which is reproduced in Borovicsény, op. cit., pp. 359-61) was most exactly weighed, and M. Zsitvay, who was closely connected with the affair, tells me that I ought to quote it textually or not at all. This is a counsel of perfection. Bethlen said that the links uniting Hungary under the Pragmatic Sanction with other territories had been dissolved. Hungary’s King was still her King, but the position of King carried with it duties as well as rights, and the nation was entitled to demand that its King fulfil his duties, and if one of the obstacles to this lay in a condition (by this Bethlen apparently meant a condition laid down by the Powers that the King should not attempt to reunite the Crown of Hungary with that of other territories), the King must decide whether he accepted that condition. The implication was that if he did not, he should abdicate. The nation must clear up the situation with the King, but must not dethrone him, which would be a revolutionary act. 3 I owe this piece of information to M. Kovrig, who was working in close association with Bethlen at the time. For the second occasion on which the ‘“‘nuit des cerfs” interrupted the course of Hungarian politics, see below, Pt. II, ‘“‘Cross-Purposes.”’ * He resigned after the law had been enacted, but accepted reappointment.

FLUIDITY 43 which both extended the basis of the earlier franchise and introduced the secret ballot in the larger towns (those possessing “autonomous” rights). The franchise was still a very retrograde one by comparison with that of 1920: not only did it leave the open ballot in the country districts and smaller

towns, but it gave the vote to only 27-3 per cent. of the population against the 39-2 per cent. of the “Friedrich franchise.”! But Bethlen had now so many bargaining counters in his pocket that he ventured to propose its reintroduction not only to the Smallholders but also to the Social Democrats. It was a combined operation conducted practically simultaneously on two fronts. With the Social Democrats, a formal written agreement? was, after negotiations which occupied several meetings, concluded on 22nd December 1921, being signed for the Government by Bethlen and four other

Ministers, and on the other side by the representatives of the ‘Social Democrat Workers.” The Government made the workers twelve concessions, which may be summarised as follows:

I. The Socialists were to enjoy the same right of association and assembly as other parties. 2. The confiscated premises, property, etc., of the Trade Unions were to be released and they were to be free to pursue their legal activities.

Under no circumstances were the Unions to occupy themselves with politics. The unions of public employees, railway and postal employees were not reinstated.

3. The status of the consumers’ co-operatives to be regulated by agreement.

4. Internees to be released, except Communist agitators. 5. Freedom of the Press to be restored. 6. An extensive general amnesty. 7, 8. Cessation of certain emergency judicial procedures. 9. Restoration of the autonomy of the workers’ assurance institutions. 10. Removal of certain emergency restrictions on the miners. The

Social Democrats, however, promised not to extend their agitation, especially among the miners, to fields where it might endanger the continuity and level of production. 11. Collective wage agreements. 12. Supplements 2 and 5.

The Social Democrat leaders in return subscribed to the formula that ‘they regarded the general interests of the country and the nation as identical with their own, and objects for which the workers, also, must fight and make sacrifices.” The Party would frame its conduct accordingly “‘and not only

, abstain from propaganda against Hungary, at home and abroad, but cooperate actively with the Government.” It would break with the émigrés, adopt “‘an expressly Hungarian attitude’ on all foreign political questions and use its influence with the moderate Socialist parties outside Hungary to refute unjustified accusations against the regime. At home, it would cooperate with the bourgeois classes in the economic field, abstain from all political strikes, break with the Liberal bloc (Bourgeois Democrats and 1 In 1925 an amendment to the franchise raised this figure to 29-5 per cent. 2 The main points of the agreement soon became known and have several times been published

(inter alia by myself, Hungary, p. 266). The summary which follows is taken from Nyugati Magyarsdg, October 1950, which published (so far as I know for the first time) the full text of the agreement, including the protocol of the negotiations.

44 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Octobrists), fight the Government with clean weapons and not agitate for a Republic. It would “‘not extend its agitation to the agricultural labourers.”’ Remarkably, the agreement contains no reference to the franchise, but if the workers had any inkling of Bethlen’s intentions, they must have known that the proposed new measure would, even though the secrecy of the bal-

lot even in the towns was to be only partial,’ yet allow them a certain representation. Towards the Smallholders there can be no doubt that Bethlen now pledged

himself not to support the Habsburg restoration.? He also appealed once again to their patriotism and to their conservative interests, representing to Szabo, in particular, the danger which would threaten the “legal order’ (on the maintenance of which the further execution of the land reform and the rest of the agreed programme depended) if Marxist agitators and other subversive elements, including extremists of the Right, were enabled to stir up the proletariat against the existing order. Incomprehensible as their attitude looked afterwards to those viewing it retrospectively, in the light of its effects made manifest and of changed viewpoints, when men had forgotten

not only how huge and horrifying the bogies both of the Habsburgs and of Tibor Szamuély loomed in 1921 to the honest Hungarian villager, the fact remains that the Smallholders agreed without any difficulty to Bethlen’s proposal.

The way was now clear. On 3rd February Bethlen presided over a meeting which “‘laid the foundations” of another fusion between Smallholders and the non-Legitimist members of the Christian Nationals. Then on 11th February the Franchise Bill was introduced. Time was running very short, as the mandate of the Parliament expired on 16th February, and in fact the obstruction—not of democrats but of the Legitimist high aristocrats (it was Count Albert Apponyi, the ‘‘Grand Old Man” of Hungarian public life, who led the obstruction and vainly petitioned the Regent that the new elections should be held on the basis of the ‘‘Friedrich franchise’’)—prevented the legal enactment of the Bill, in spite of certain dubious devices adopted precisely by the Smallholders.? Parliament had to be dissolved with the position still uncertain. But Bethlen, who meanwhile had brought about the definitive constitution of his new party, now known as the “Unitary Party,”’* invoked arguments which, again, might have been regarded by some purists as distinctly dubious, and secured the enactment of the Bill by Order in Council.° * The voting itself was secret, but a candidate had to be nominated by a number of signatories, whose signatures were open. * The Orszdggyiilési Almanach for 1931 (p. 35) records that Bethlen made various declarations on the point which, especially one made on 23rd January 1922, ‘“‘completely satisfied” the Smallholders. * On 15th February the President of the House stopped the clocks in order to give more time

to get the Bill through. The President was Gaston Gaal, a Smallholder, whom we shall meet again; a man greatly praised in subsequent literature as one of the true champions of Hungarian democracy.

* Egységes Part. This was changed soon after to Egység Partja (Party of Unity). * Giving evidence in 1942, in a libel trial brought by Imrédy (see below, Pt. II, p. 103), Bethlen

explained that the Government had argued that Friedrich’s franchise was itself “without legal basis” as the 1913 franchise was really still in force. In any case it was a provisional measure, and its validity would admittedly have expired in January 1922. A conference of high legal authorities had been convened under the presidency of the Regent and had decided that the Government was faced by force majeure and entitled to enact the emergency measure by Order in Council provided that it subsequently obtained retrospective sanction from Parliament (see the Hungarian Press of 8th March 1942),

FLUIDITY 45 The elections were held in May. The Government utilised richly the resources at its disposal, with the natural results, and secured a handsome majority, 144 seats going to the Unitary Party itself and 25 to splinter parties of individuals differing from it only on subsidiary issues. 35 seats went to

Legitimists or other representatives of what Englishmen would call the parties of the Right; 41 to the Left, including 25 Social Democrats. The political consolidation was accomplished.

CHAPTER THREE

CONSTITUTIONAL T is necessary to make clear the real nature and effects of the reintroduc-

Jie of the open franchise, taken in conjunction with the re-establishment B of the “‘Party of Unity.’ This effect was not, as was often stated, to confine the ultimate control of public affairs, as exercised through the franchise, to some small body of privileged or wealthy electors: it was to eliminate the electorate altogether as a real determining factor in public life. It is true that periodical elections were held thereafter, and that these were not even so farcical as they had been in the old Hungary, not to speak of the contemporary and later dictatorships. No serious attempt was ever made to interfere with the voting in the autonomous towns, where it was secret, and even in the country districts it was not impossible for an Opposition candidate to defeat the Government nominee if he held some strong cards of his own: if, for example, he was the local landowning magnate, whose favour was worth as much to his tenants as that of the officials, or even if he was the spokesman

of a tough, prosperous community with an independent tradition. Every Parliament, from that of 1922 onward, in fact contained a number, not always inconsiderable, of such oppositional members, besides a few semi-allies.! It was not even part of the system to exclude the expression of all oppositional opinion. But it was also no part of the calculation that the electorate should

ever return sufficient oppositional members to unseat what the Hungarian people, with a sound pragmatic grasp of realities, ever afterwards persisted in calling (to the exclusion of the numerous variations of title under which

that body was officially known) the “‘Government Party.’ Nor, in fact, did it ever do so, or even come near doing so. Sufficient administrative pressure always could be, and where necessary always was, applied to

ensure this. The Government Party was therefore the permanent vehicle of the Parlia-

mentary majority, and no Hungarian wishing to play an effective part in politics had any real road open to him except that leading through membership of the Government Party (it is true that it was sometimes more effective to take a short cut by starting in the Opposition, acquiring a nuisance value there, and then selling that for a place in the Government queue). And up to a point it might be said that the almost unlimited breadth of the Party’s own principles made the existence of any other road superfluous. In all its history, the Party never committed itself to any principle except only that of

being counter-revolutionary, and even that it interpreted with extreme * The Christian Party (which, however, never aspired to many mandates) was for many years treated as a sort of variant of the Government Party, which did not contest a few seats traditionally

regarded as Christian preserves and allowed the Party the Ministry of Social Welfare. After 1933, when that Ministry was abolished, the Party claimed complete freedom of action, but the Government continued to respect the gentlemen’s agreement in the constituencies. Gémbés made similar concessions to some other parties, notably the Independent Smallholders, in 1935. See below p. 28.

CONSTITUTIONAL 47 elasticity, invoking it sometimes to justify measures of extreme reaction, sometimes of radical change. It habitually regarded itself as completely free to say what type of measures the situation required. It could be Protectionist or Free Trade, more anti-Semitic or less, could allot a larger part of its budget to industry or to agriculture, could encourage free enterprise or extend State control, completely at discretion. Since it was not pledged on any of these points, it had no reason to consult the electorate before acting on them in

one way or the other. Thus a person holding any opinion on any of these points could without violence to his conscience join the Party in the hope of getting it to adopt his favoured policy from inside. In a way, this inclusive-

ness within the Party compensated for the exclusiveness of the system towards any other party; the will of the Government Party was the substitute for the will of the electorate.

: But the Government Party itself was in reality hardly more free to impose its will than the electorate. On paper, it possessed a democratic enough constitution. The Parliamentary Deputies elected the Party President (and other officers), and at periodical meetings the Ministers explained their intentions

and even laid their proposed measures of policy before the Deputies to approve or disapprove. If the approval was lacking, then, again on paper, the Minister either bowed to the Deputies’ will or, if the question was one of principle, resigned. In practice, however, the pyramid stood on its apex, for behind and above the Party President, who was a mere Party hack, stood another and infinitely more important figure, the Party Leader. The Leader’s powers rested rather on convention than on any written paragraph, but they included one which made him the complete master of the Party: to wit, the prerogative of selecting the persons to be elected to Parliament. AJI he needed to do to ensure the complete mastery of his own will was to see to it that his nominees were either

men like-minded with himself, or men utterly subservient, or both. In practice, all that was usually necessary was to pick enough Deputies without independent means. Any of them who proved recalcitrant could either be simply dropped from the list at the next election, or at the worst left to fight their constituencies without the help of the administration—even, occasionally,

against its opposition. The whole function performed by elections was, indeed, not to consult the electorate but to renew, refresh and revise— possibly purge—the Parliamentary membership of the Government Party itself.

It should be added that recalcitrance in a Deputy was a rare phenomenon, in spite of the fact—which should have encouraged independence of thought —that the irrelevance of the electorate was so universally recognised that no Deputy changing his party allegiance felt himself in any way morally bound to submit himself to his constituents for re-election, or even to explain his actions to them. But the Party’s representation in the House’ was, through-

out the whole period 1922-44, composed so largely of men so utterly dependent, directly or indirectly, on the Government for their very existence that it would have been difficult for them to stand up for their principles, had they possessed any; and few of them showed signs of doing so. Their utter subservience to their leaders was well recognised and openly admitted. 1 That is, the single Chamber which alone existed up to 1926, and after that date in the Lower House. The Upper House then brought into being was not composed on party lines, and often showed a refreshing independence. On the other hand, it had little influence on legislation.

48 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The officieux Pester Lloyd once formulated the accepted relationship in the following words, the devastating accuracy of which no outsider’s phraseology could hope to better: “‘This Party [that is, the Government Party] has the

natural calling of showing itself a serviceable and willing instrument of Government.’’! A week later, the same paper wrote: “In Hungary’s Parliamentary life, it

was customary hitherto for the majority Party to subordinate itself in strict, manly discipline to the head of the Government of the day and to support his policy with confidence.’” The history of the period records only two occasions on which anything like a Party revolt against the Minister President took place. The first, in 1932, really brought about the fall of Gyula Karolyi. In 1939 a group of ‘dissidents’? outvoted Imrédy. The Regent refusing to dismiss him, they promptly voted him confidence, in the face of which they docilely accepted his dismissal a few weeks later. In 1942-44 the majority of the Party was certainly opposed to almost every aspect of Kallay’s policy, but never turned against him. They unanimously voted him confidence in March 1944, only

to vote the same confidence, a few days later, to his successor when he announced a policy which in all essential respects was the exact reverse of that of Kallay, then in hiding for his life. For complete efficiency of working, the system was indeed, dependent on close and frictionless co-operation between the Party and the administration, which was not, technically, under direct Party control. It was controlled by

the Minister President, who appointed the Féispans® and certain other political functionaries, and under him by the Minister of the Interior, who was the direct head of the administration, and in particular of the police and the gendarmerie. But it was a keystone of Bethlen’s system that the Party Leader should also be the Minister President; and in any case there could under normal conditions be little danger of friction, for under Bethlen’s system the word “‘party’? should not be held to imply a rigid distinction between politics and administration: the Party was simply the legislative or

Parliamentary aspect of a machine whose other often more important functions were carried out elsewhere: in the Ministry or County office, on the magistrate’s bench* in the landlord’s country house and at the village notary’s

desk, in the parish priest’s vestry and the boardroom of the bank. Except perhaps under the entirely abnormal conditions which prevailed in the 1 Pester Lloyd, 15th September 1932.

2 Id., 22nd September. On the same date the paper recorded with real horror that a Party conference wanted “‘not only to dictate to the Minister President what he should do, but even to prescribe the tempo.”’

3 Each County and autonomous Municipality had at its head a ‘“‘Foispan,’’ appointed by the Government as its representative, under whom was an Alispan, who was an administrative official elected by the County or Municipality. The word Foispan is usually translated as Lord Lieutenant, but although the rendering is the nearest possible, it is misleading, for the powers of the Foispan, although not easy to define, were important. 4 The criminal law of Hungary was, generally speaking, applied impartially, but there was one law (Law III of 1921) which might not unfairly be described as the legal aspect of the political

regime. Its title was: Law on the more effective defence of the State and social order; and it provided heavy penalties for organising or leading a movement which aimed at overthrowing by

violence the legal order of the State and society, especially by the forcible imposition of the exclusive dictatorship of any one social class, and also for the offence of “‘slandering the nation”’

by making or spreading untruthful assertions calculated to injure the honour of the Hungarian State or nation, or to impair its credit. The Courts used to give quite extraordinarily elastic interpretations of both these offences, and any outspoken critic of the regime was liable to find himself in trouble on the latter count.

CONSTITUTIONAL 49 summer of 1944, there is no recorded case of effective opposition by the administration to the orders of the political authorities. The system as established by Bethlen thus amounted to the disguised and indirect, but in the last instance, absolute autocracy of the one man who was Minister President and Party Leader in one. But to this there was one allimportant qualification.

The Parliament of 1920 had, as we saw, entrusted the functions to be exercised, provisionally, by the Head of the State, to a Regent (Kormanyz6).

When framing the law defining the Regent’s powers, the Parliament had certainly no idea of setting up a dictator: rather the contrary. On the other hand, being conscious counter-revolutionaries, they were anxious to adhere as closely as possible to the accustomed position. Certain things fell away automatically in the new situation. A mere Regent could not exercise the Apostolic rights of the wearer of the Holy Crown, nor his power to confer titles of nobility. Furthermore, now that Hungary was no longer constitutionally linked with any other State, there was no reason for the Head of the State to enjoy the virtually unlimited control over foreign policy which the Habsburgs had wielded as a derivative of the Pragmatic Sanction. Foreign policy now fell into line with the rest of governmental business, and declarations of war, treaties with foreign powers, etc., had to be approved by Parliament, whose consent was required also (as indeed it had been in the old days) before troops could be sent out of the country. But in most other respects the Regent was left with nearly all the powers of the crowned King, which had, after all, been very extensive. He was “‘Legfelsébb Hadur’’ (Supreme

War Lord), to whom the troops swore loyalty, and in a very real sense Supreme Chief of the armed forces, for whose command, training and organisation,” he was solely responsible, subject to the limitation that the defence estimates had to be approved by Parliament. His powers in connection with actual legislation were relatively limited: he did not, until 1937, when it was conferred on him, enjoy the prerogative of the “preliminary sanction,” 1.e. the right to have a draft Bill submitted to him for his personal

approval before it came before Parliament at all. His power to influence legislation duly enacted was limited to a suspensory veto?: if he disapproved

of a measure, he could return it to Parliament for reconsideration, but if Parliament persisted, he had to submit and to promulgate the measure, as he did immediately in the case of measures to which he did not object.® The 1 One very valued critic has objected to the above passage as exaggerated. It is true that Bethlen himself insisted that the central administration should be strictly non-party, and that when, as will be described later, GOmb6s tried to make the local administration into the formal agents of the Government Party, successive Ministers of the Interior (Keresztes-Fischer and Kozma) resisted this strongly, and in the long run, successfully. But the fact remains that throughout the inter-war period the administration was always conducted in a general spirit which was exactly that of the Government Party, and at elections, always gave most effective support to the Government candidate, when ordered to do so. 2 These were the rights reserved to the King under Art. XII of the Compromise Law of 1867. 3 This important right was not embodied in any written formula, but had been conceded to Franz Josef, privately and personally, by the first responsible Hungarian Minister President, Count Gyula Andrassy, during the negotiations for the Compromise of 1867. It was afterwards admitted by Andrassy’s successors as binding on themselves. 4 Strangely enough, the King had possessed no right of veto at all; on the other hand, there was no positive obligation on him to promulgate any measure, and until he did so, no measure was legally binding. 5 Strictly speaking, even promulgation, under the Regency, gave a measure only provisional validity, subject to confirmation by the Crown when a wearer thereof was duly installed. E

50 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH period for which the country could be left without a duly constituted Parliament was also reduced, under the original law, from the earlier year to three months, although in 1933 this term was extended to a year, again making his power equal to the King’s.1 He also took an oath, in somewhat general terms, to govern “‘in the sense of the Constitution and in agreement with Parliament, through the Minister President,” this approximating to the King’s obligation. On the other hand he retained the sole right and discretion, which had been the King’s, to convoke, adjourn or dissolve Parliament, quite irrespective of that body’s wishes. What was more important still, he had the sole right of appointing and dismissing the Minister President (on whose proposal the remainder of the Ministry was appointed).? Nothing in law or convention required him to choose the Minister President from the party forming the majority in Parliament, or from Parliament at all; nor was there even any provision that the Minister President must enjoy the confidence of Parliament. The Minister President was “‘responsible”’ to Parliament; but this only meant that Parliament had the right to impeach him for violation of certain fundamental principles of the Constitution, or for personal irregularities.* It was the Head of the State whose “‘confidence’’ he had to possess, and the Head of the State was fully entitled to dismiss any Minister President in whom he lost confidence. The Head of the State himself was, indeed, “‘responsible”’ to Parliament under the original Act, but that “‘responsibility” was only to

keep within the same limits as the same word imposed on the Minister President, and even that proviso was cancelled in 1937. He could, moreover, not be deposed from the Regency without his own consent.* The primary and perhaps the normal effect of this great strength of the Head of the State’s position was to underline the helplessness of the Party vis-a-vis the Minister President. For even if they revolted against him qua Party Leader—even if they deposed him from that office—they could not oust him from the Minister Presidency provided the Head of the State kept

him there and provided he eschewed elementary irregularities. The most which they could do would be to create a deadlock by refusing to vote the Budget, when the position would presumably have been solved—again, if the

Regent took the Minister President’s part—by the method of dissolving Parliament and “‘making’’ a new and more amenable House.® But the very helplessness of the Party left the Minister President himself all the more helpless, in the last instance, vis-a-vis the Head of the State. If + The King’s obligation in this respect had been indirect: he ruled ‘‘through”’ a Parliament, which was obliged to vote the Budget and approve the closed accounts. As the Budget was voted for a year, this meant that the country could not legally be left for more than a year without Parliament.

7 I. Egyed, A Mi Alkotmdnyunk, p. 315, writes that the Regent ‘‘appoints the Minister

not always do so. -

President after consulting the Presidents of the two Houses and the leaders of the political parties,”

and such was Horthy’s usual habit, but he was not constitutionally bound to follow it, and did * This was the definition of Ministerial responsibility, laid down in 1848, when Hungary first possessed a “‘responsible Ministry.” 4 Neither, incidentally, could he abdicate without the consent of Parliament. It was this last provision on which Horthy afterwards rested his case for maintaining that the act of abdication signed by him on 16th October 1944 had no constitutional validity.

. For that matter, they could refuse to vote any Bill put forward by the Government, or, in theory, put forward any measure as a private member’s Bill, and if this was duly passed, promul-

gation of it could not, in the long run, be refused. After 1937, however, even this latter device was made impossible (not that it was ever attempted) by the Regent’s right of “preliminary sanction” described above.

CONSTITUTIONAL 51 the non-confidence of the Party could not compel his dismissal, neither could

its confidence save him from it. Ultimately, therefore, it was the Head of the State who could, if he insisted, lay down policy, not by himself initiating legislation (that he was not empowered to do) but by appointing his own man to the Minister Presidency. He could then use for his own purposes, against the Party, the very machinery which Bethlen had devised to perpetuate the

Party rule. Having appointed the Minister President, who appointed the Minister of the Interior, who controlled the administration, the Head of the State could have Parliament dissolved and new elections “‘made’’ to return a majority ready to carry out his wishes. In time, the Head of the State even acquired a de facto control over the Party itself. This was in 1931-32, when a conflict had really arisen between the various factors. Bethlen, resigning in 1931 from the Minister Presidency, had kept the Party Leadership. Gyula Karolyi was Minister President but not Party Leader for a year. Then Goémbés, appointed by the Regent to be Minister President, stipulated that the post should automatically carry

with it that of Leader of the Party. Thus the Leadership of the Party itself became an advowson of the Regent’s. Whatever the Minister President’s past political affiliations, or absence of them, had been, the Regent’s choice of him automatically gave him control over the Party; he could also choose subordinates from outside the Party who were then similarly received into it.’ In this way the inversion of the pyramid was complete: it rested, in the last instance, on the Regent’s sole will. It was obviously no part of the implicit assumptions on which the whole

system was based that the Regent should enforce his will in dictatorial fashion, altogether ignoring the wishes of Parliament. Just as the electorate itself, if goaded to extremities, could have taken the bit between its teeth and bluntly insisted on returning its own men, so the Parliamentary majority, if it had summoned up enough courage and produced enough unity, could have made the task of a Minister President of whom it disapproved impossibly

difficult. The Regent was, after all, bound to rule “in agreement with Parliament,” and this might be held to imply an obligation of honour not to force on that body a Minister President totally alien to all its wishes. But

short of this, he could be reasonably certain that the Party’s tradition of subservience would obviate any active opposition to his decisions. In point of fact, the Regent Horthy was to the last exceedingly scrupulous to avoid exceeding his constitutional authority, or even pressing it. He never once exercised his power of suspensory veto, nor, so far as the writer knows, that of preliminary sanction, even where a measure was not to his taste. He did not seek to intervene in details of policy at all, except, indeed, in those relating to public defence, which he took as falling within his competence as ‘Supreme War Lord’’—a position which he always took very seriously. Still less did he try to make himself dictator, although often begged to do so. For

many years his role in civilian politics was confined to appointing the Minister President, and in the early stages he limited himself, even here, to finding out what was the “general will’’ of the competent factors, and fulfilling

it. His appointments of Gyula Karolyi, Gdmbés, Daranyi and Imrédy were 1 Exception was made only in the case of a serving soldier, whom military regulations forbade to be an active member of a political party. When a Minister was such an officer (as was usually the case with the Minister of Defence), he spoke in Parliament when the business of his portfolio required (although not otherwise), but did not represent a constituency, nor belong to the Party, whose conclaves he attended as “‘guest.”

52 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH made only after long consultation with Party Leaders and Privy Councillors, and in accordance with the consensus of their opinion. But even then, once Bethlen—and perhaps Gyula Kaérolyi—were gone, he began to exercise his

will in important respects. For two years he refused to allow Gémbés to dissolve Parliament; a year later, he was prepared to dismiss G6mbés, who then had a large Parliamentary majority behind him, only refraining out of personal considerations which, under the circumstances, did not alter the position in substance. Then he went progressively further. All the last five Ministers President appointed by him, with the possible exception of Sztdjay, were his personal choice. Not one of them was, when appointed, a Government Party member, except in name, and not always even that. The pretence

of agreeing with Parliament became a mere shadow. Imrédy, Bardossy, Kallay and Sztdéjay were all in possession of votes of confidence from the House when Horthy dismissed them, that of Bardossy being real. Parliament would probably have voted against Teleki on several occasions, and certainly against Kallay on any day of his two years. Horthy, knowing this, enabled them to retain office by giving them ready-signed rescripts dissolving Parliament, with authorisation to use them at their discretion. It was through no growth in his own spirit of dictatorial ambition that he had arrived at this position which made him the arbiter and ultimate determiner of Hungary’s policy; he had been pushed into it, gradually and almost imperceptibly, by developments and circumstances which were none of his making: the international position, and at home, in large measure, the moral

vacuum which Bethlen had created. But the fact remains that during a number of most crucial years the authority of the Regent was incomparably the most important political factor in Hyngary, and the course of the country

was largely that laid down by him with no other criterion than his own judgment of what was best for the country. This being so, our story cannot do without some description of Miklos Horthy’s qualities, and of his social and political outlook: the less so because the subject is one on which, proportionately, less sense and more rubbish has

been written than on any other, connected with our subject, known to the present writer: the Byzantsne flattery lavished on him during his years of power by the Hungarian Press being only a degree less wide of the mark than the abuse flung at him during the same years by nasty and jealous émigrés in England and America.

History will assuredly end by conceding to Miklés Horthy more than the average of purely human virtues of heart and character. The present writer’s personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest, but he has talked with many men and women who knew Horthy intimately, and has found it to be a general rule that the closer the knowledge, the deeper the personal affection which it engendered; an affection not always coupled with uncritical admiration nor unaccompanied by exasperation, but none the less sincere. He was upright, honourable and courteous, generous, open-hearted and affectionate. He led a family life which the breath of scandal never touched. He was deeply devoted to Mme Horthy (indeed a most gracious, charitable and beautiful lady) and to his children, a fact which enhanced the tragedy of the terrible series of misfortunes which overtook one member of his family after another. His enemies declared that he carried this devotion to a point detrimental to the public interest, but if so, it was in good faith, not of calculation.

CONSTITUTIONAL 53 He was, by all testimony, a kind and considerate landlord and master, and open and friendly towards all with whom life brought him into contact. Nor,

in the writer’s opinion, is there any real foundation for the accusations brought against him of ambition and vanity. He had not elbowed or intrigued his way towards power; it was pressed on him by others, who assured him that it was his duty to accept it, as being the fittest man for it.

If history decides that he believed too easily the assurances of his indispensability which his partisans lavished on him, this was due not to ambition in the strict sense of the term but to simplicity and good faith, and

an overvaluation of the good faith of others. Wishful thinking, of which national weakness he possessed a large measure, perhaps entered into his own estimate of his political judgment; but a fundamental unpretentiousness was probably a larger factor still. To reject a view of his own abilities which was dinned into his ears so unintermittently would have required an intellectual

independence and a power of analytical introspection to which he never pretended. Certainly he never attempted to use his position for personal advantage in the meaner sense. He lived quietly, without ostentation or extravagance, on a smaller civil list than Parliament would gladly have granted him, and made no attempt to enrich himself at the public expense. Almost alone of those whom the political tornado of 1945 swept from high places, Horthy had made no provision at all against such an event, and was left in consequence in a near-destitution which he bore with great dignity. Beyond any question, he regarded his office as a trust and sincerely sought to exercise it for the welfare and happiness, as he saw them, of Hungary and the Hungarian people.

All his serious critics have admitted his purity of purpose. It is less certain whether his personal qualities were in fact the ideal ones for a man who finds a position of supreme responsibility thrust on him in times of exceptional difficulty. His most endearing traits were sometimes those which most fatally betrayed his intentions. Himself always meaning the best, he automatically assumed the same of others; himself devoid of guile or malice, he found it impossible, until convinced by repeated experience or powerful persuasion, to suspect such qualities in others. A plausible adviser could easily lead him into rash decisions, perhaps even into decisions which a more sensitive mind would, on cooler reflection, have regarded as questionable; his gift of wishful thinking then making him sincerely believe that they were in

every respect correct. He was particularly susceptible to the advice of soldiers, for his many years in the Austro-Hungarian Navy had not left him unaffected by the k. und k. tradition to which we have referred, which regarded all civilians as inferior beings. If he did take such a decision, he could be talked out of it again if it was

not already too late. One who had much to do with him and was deeply devoted to him has asked me to emphasise that Horthy never adhered to a bad

decision once he had been brought to see that it was bad. But time for second thoughts was not always given, especially when the question was one which could be represented as falling within his competence as Supreme War Lord. At the best, the method of suggestion and counter-suggestion did not make for stability of policy. , 1 The so-called Horthy Fund transferred to Switzerland during the war was not his personal property and not created by him, although its founder meant it to be used, in certain eventualities, for his benefit. He did not in the event use it,

54 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Another weakness, endearing in itself, was exceptionally detrimental to the conduct of affairs in difficult situations. His friendliness, openness and lack of critical sense, combined with a garrulity above the normal—for he liked talking and was accustomed to hold the floor—led him into a habitual indiscretion which was the nightmare of his advisers. He varied neither the tone nor the substance of his conversation to fit his audience, and was totally incapable of keeping a secret, whether it concerned his own opinions or some affair in which he was engaged. Finally, although never moved by thought of personal advantage, he was not unswayed by personal prejudice in favour of old comrades and supporters, but also against persons whom he believed to have shown antagonism to himself or his family, He probably did not consciously allow such considerations to affect him, but they did, in certain cases, strongly, although subconsciously, affect his decisions.

In the main, however, historians will admit that Horthy did his best according to his lights, and will judge his record as Regent favourably or un-

favourably according to their own degree of sympathy with his objects. Certainly, his illumination was no new-fangled, high-powered neon lamp, but a candle of definitely old-fashioned type and local Hungarian design. He

had no other. Not that he was at all a fool: those who rated his qualities of mind very low must find it difficult to explain away his rapid rise to high

rank in a profession in which both his Hungarian birth and his nonaristocratic (in the sense in which the Viennese Court understood the term aristocracy) antecedents were distinct handicaps.

He possessed a good enough native wit and a considerable stock of practical horse sense, and on more than one occasion proved disconcertingly right where brainier men were wrong. But be was no “‘intellectual’’ and no reader of books (he was quite unread in literature, and still more in history, political science and economics), and his intellect, although robust enough, was neither subtle, critical nor original. Heredity and environment working hand in hand in his early days had imbued his mind with a set of values which he was quite unable thereafter to alter or even to question. A great mass of conscious and unconscious assumptions formed a wall of opaque and deeply coloured glass round his mind, which nothing entered except through that glass, and coloured by it. His values were those of his age, his class and his environment. He had been born in 1868, so that his formative years had been

those in which the Dual Monarchy was still, in appearance, a great and flourishing Power. His class was that of the untitled but “‘nobly” born, comfortably situated but not indecently wealthy “‘gentry’”’ which for centuries

have been regarded, and have regarded themselves, as the backbone of Hungary. The family was, moreover, Calvinist, and their estate, Kenderes, lay near the Tisza in the heart of Hungary’s heart. The world as Horthy knew it in his youth was a happy and prosperous one for him and his kind, and afterwards in retrospect its arrangement and methods seemed to him beyond question to have given better results, not only to his own class but to the whole Hungarian people, and, indeed, to the world at large, than the experiments made on different lines in 1918 and 1919. His life’s objective and his moral duty as Regent were, then, as he saw them, quite simply to work for the liquidation of those experiments and the putting

of things back on their proper and sure foundations. In terms of foreign policy this meant integral revision, including an outlet to the sea—a point

CONSTITUTIONAL 55

6¢ ° . ° °

to which, as a sailor, he attached particular importance.! Talk about ethnic frontiers or new principles seemed to him simply perverse; phrases like national self-determination” just not to apply. He could not understand, or believe, that a Croat or a Slovak could prefer to be separated from Hungary, _ or had any reason to entertain any such wish. Nothing could persuade him, therefore, that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were States possessing any real

justifications or raisons d’étre, rather than artificial creations which would collapse at the first touch of reality. As to the different national elements among Hungary’s neighbours, he shared the views general among his class. The Czechs were puffed-up frogs; the Slovaks, good Hungarians misled. The Croats were a decent people and good sailors. He had a special admiration and liking for the Serbs, whom he regarded as a fine, manly people, but quite different from the Croats. It was just a mistake that the two peoples were joined in one State. This inability to take the existence of Yugoslavia seriously, far more than any greed or cynicism, was what prompted his action in April 1941. Nor could he understand that in so acting he was doing any

wrong to the Serbs; just as he would not have seen that the Czechs would have had any reason to complain if the Slovaks were prized loose from them. As for the Roumanians, they were a race of pimps and cocottes. His solution for the domestic problem was just as simpliste: the Government of Hungary should be put back into the hands of its traditional ruling

class. He probably did not even regard this as class rule; certainly he did not see that such rule need necessarily mean class oppression. For himself, he definitely did not mean that it should do so, and he would never consciously

have sanctioned any measure, or any situation, which seemed to him to involve social injustice or the exploitation of the poor by the rich.? But he also never doubted that there should be rulers and ruled. The two criteria which he kept in mind when choosing a man for an important post were that he should be a good Hungarian and that he should be a gentleman.’ Democracy gua government of the people by the people was not a term which he understood. Socialism was a Jewish heresy, and anyone could see where it led—to putting Hungary under the rule of scoundrels like Béla Kun and Tibor Szamuély. Bolshevism was a power of evil to be rooted out at any cost; if necessary, at the cost of blood. This again was a moral duty from which he would not have shrunk if he thought it necessary, and perhaps did not shrink.* 1 In a memorandum which he addressed to the Powers in 1946, from prison, he argued that the only satisfactory solution for the Danubian problem was to restore Hungary to her 1918 frontiers, including an outlet to the sea at Fiume. The outlet to the sea was one of the baits which Hitler dangled before him (so far as the documents show, without previous consultation with Mussolini) in April 1941 to persuade him to attack Yugoslavia, and it was this prospect which, I am informed, particularly aroused his initial enthusiasm for the plan. 2 There is no record of his objecting to any progressive social measure outside one field, proposed by any of his Ministers, and no reason to suppose that he would have vetoed, or held up, any measure even of a pronounced Left-wing character if duly enacted by Parliament. Indeed, he was a conspicuous friend and staunch supporter of Ferencz Keresztes-Fischer, the most enlightened Minister of the Interior produced by Hungary in the inter-war period. The field in which he was entirely intransigent was, as described below, that of land reform. 3 In his last years, when discussing with an enquirer his past activities, and in particular his reasons for making or terminating certain appointments, he gave with singular regularity one or the other of two reasons for having dismissed a Minister President or a Chief of Staff: ‘‘I came to the conclusion that he was not following a Hungarian policy,” or, “‘I came to the conclusion

that he was not a gentleman.”

4 Whatever the exact truth about his personal responsibility for at least one famous “‘White Terror’ murder, and while he undoubtedly intervened more than once to stop certain excesses,

perpetrators of such outrages. he yet consistently and conspicuously failed to punish or even to dissociate himself from notorious

56- OCTOBER FIFTEENTH In holding these views, Horthy was simply concurring with the entire class which had returned to power after Kun fled, and in seeking to realise them, he was fulfilling the wishes of all that class. It may be remarked in passing that, so far as this went, he was a perfect component part of the interwar Hungarian constitutional machine; and if the moral cowardice of the rank and file of the Government Party was one of the twin pillars which upheld it, Horthy’s orthodoxy was the other. But the counter-revolution itself was, as we have seen, divided: Legitimists versus Free Electors, Szeged versus Vienna; and big political issues were to depend on which of these parties, or of their epigones, got the upper hand. Once Horthy achieved the dominating position which, as we have said, became his in the 1930’s, it was his influence which mainly determined this issue. It is therefore necessary to state in what relation he stood to the two camps. His position on the Legitimist question was, for once, unusual. His social class, his religion, his childhood’s environment, might easily have made of him a dyed-in-the-wool Kuruc; yet some boyhood’s fancy for the sea had taken him into a different world, on to waters more spacious than the Tisza,

and into a different environment: that of the Imperial and Royal Navy. Later, the calculation of others had brought him into the personal service of the King-Emperor himself, as an aide-de-camp to Franz Josef, for whom he conceived a deep and sincere admiration and affection. This happened in the easy days when only a very fanatical and narrow patriot with an exceptionally tetchy conscience needed to regard loyalty to

the Monarch as incompatible with devotion to Hungary, and vice-versa. Horthy was one of those who achieved the synthesis. While in the Imperial

and Royal service he seems to have accepted its ideals and its ideology wholeheartedly enough, and one may well believe, as King Charles himself believed right up to March 1921, that when he accepted the Regency he did so with the sincere intention of holding the fort until his King could return and relieve him. By the spring of 1920 Horthy had already spent nine or ten months in the almost exclusive company of Szeged officers, most of them (and particularly his assistant, G6mb6s, who certainly had acquired great influence over him) fanatical “‘Free Electors.’ They must have felt reasonable confidence in his views on the Habsburg question, or they would not have helped him, as they

did, to the Regency. He had been Regent another long year in the same company and that of Bethlen, who had by then gone a long way to meet the anti-Legitimists, before King Charles made his first attempt to recover his throne; another eight months before the attempt was repeated. How far he required to wrestle with himself before, on the first occasion, he ordered the Army to obey only him, and on the second authorised the giving of a free hand to G6mbés—with the result that the King’s train was met with artillery

fire—we will not enquire.” But inevitably, from that moment on, the Legitimists regarded him as their enemy and adopted towards him an attitude of hostility and froideur which a few of them maintained to the last. Naturally, Horthy was then widely identified in the popular mind with the “Szeged” circles, even by contrast with those of Bethlen. And, in fact, * He had in his study at Kenderes a portrait of Franz Josef painted by himself (incidentally, a surprisingly good piece of work). Montgomery (The Unwilling Satellite, p. 41) has recorded the pathetic fact that in an emergency Horthy would ask himself how his old master would have on The question is discussed fully, in a spirit very hostile to Horthy, in Borovicsény’s work.

CONSTITUTIONAL 57 his special partisans, even his special friends at the time, were drawn almost entirely from the Szeged circle. But what attracted him in these men was

probably—besides the flattery which they lavished on him—the military forthrightness of their attitude towards both Bolshevism and revision. He was never truly a “‘Right Radical’—either for good or for ill; he was a Conservative, with a stake in the country. He differed from the Right Radicals on both the great shibboleths of Hungarian politics, the land question and the Jewish question. On the former, he was a complete diehard. He did not want anyone to starve, and he was not so greatly concerned for his own acres, of which he did not possess so very many (although he would have failed to see what principle of justice could have been invoked to take them away from him); but, as he chose once patiently to explain on the wireless to the people who seemed unable to understand the point, and again,

characteristically, in his interview with the Left-wing leaders a few days before his abdication, the idea of giving everybody enough land to live on was absurd anyway, because there was not enough land to go round (in which, as a matter of fact, he was not so far wrong). Complicated calculations on how to get over this difficulty would have been beyond him.

He was against the Right Radicals also on the Jewish question. The fact was not easily perceived in the early 1920’s, because of his associa-

tion with White Terrorist reprisals. But even if he made the common identification of World Bolshevism and World Jewry, it was Bolshevism, not Jewry, that he wanted to wipe out. He had, it is true, no sympathy with the

type of Jew whom the Hungarian anti-Semitic Press loved to depict: the skulker, the usurer, the racketeer and the black marketeer. But he was no racialist, freely admitting that there could be, and indeed were, many good Jews who were also good Hungarians. These he regarded as entitled to treatment in accordance with their own conduct, and was prepared to protect

them against injustice as vigorously as he had (this was how he saw the counter-revolution) saved Hungary from the evil Jews in 1919. His essential Conservatism was there even in 1919 and it became more strongly marked with every year after 1922. He never, indeed, shook himself wholly free of the personal associations which dated from the turbulent

days, the less so since the Szeged Idea was so strongly represented in the Army, which he regarded with such special trust and affection. But, as time

went on, he moved increasingly away from their ideas, partly no doubt helped by the fact that as Legitimism ceased to be a live issue, the aristocrats, except for a few die-hards, got over their prejudices against him, and instead of combating him, tried to influence him. Advancing years, if nothing else, turned him more conservative just as the class which he had originally been alleged to typify (although if he did, it was the old brand, the real “gentry,”

not their unhappy epigones) was growing more radical. Gdmbés, his personal favourite, disappointed him, and by the time Imredy came he had neither sympathy nor understanding left for either the good or the bad sides

of the younger generation’s programme. Their violent anti-Semitism revolted him, their plans for social reform seemed to him subversive and

dangerous. So he moved over to what in the curious terminology of Hungarian politics was called the Left and did in fact, as we shall show in due course, come to contain, although not to consist exclusively of, what we in England call by that name. It was not, of course, by the quarter where those

tents were pitched that Horthy entered the camp, although the effect in

58 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH practice was not very different. From his point of view what happened was that he became increasingly averse from change, confined himself increasingly to the simple defence of established things. His trusted advisers were by now

mostly aristocrats or near-aristocrats, almost all the men of his own genera-

tion'; this made his policy increasingly an old man’s policy, with all its inherent defects of inelasticity and imperviousness to change, but also its advantages in those cases where the change advocated would have been for the worse. So it came about that not only for Jews but also for Liberals and even Socialists Horthy’s Conservatism became, in the end, their strongest shield and defence, and Horthy’s Hungary, which had perpetrated the first pogroms of modern Europe (to exclude Czarist Russia from that term) and established the first thorough-going counter-revolution against the Left, was from 1940 to 1943 almost the Continent’s last refuge for Jews and the last

country within the orbit of the Axis to allow the existence of a Social Democrat Party; and that precisely in the years when Horthy’s personal power was almost absolute. And it was the Right and not the Left which revolted against him at the last. In one respect, it is true, his Conservatism never assimilated entirely to that of the group of Elder Statesmen who now surrounded him. Personal friendships and memories of past services apart, he never (as we have said) entirely got over the old k. und k. officer’s belief in the superiority of the officer over the civilian; a feeling kept alive in him by the exercise of his duties as ““SSupreme War Lord.’ He took these duties, as has been said, very seriously and was extremely sensitive to resent any trespass on his field even by those civilians whom he trusted most completely. These feelings did not make him into a militarist, for he was anything but a sabre-rattler, yet they did lead him to place particular confidence in the judgment of his officers and to seek and accept their advice far too readily for the taste of the civilians;

keeping the latter, in their turn, in a state of lasting irritation and apprehension, never quite allayed, lest he let the military trespass into the civilian field; particularly in view of the constant advocacy (whieh was no secret from the civilians) on the part of some of the officers that h® should establish a military dictatorship. As we shall see, he never did so, unless we could count as such his last Ministry, established in August 1944, which was in effect a Cabinet of Generals. But the threat always seemed present, and the experiment would have been particularly dangerous because the Army was by no

means so devoted to him as he believed. At the end no single class turned against him so completely as “‘his”’ officers. It was, however, his Conservative set of social and internal political values which most decisively influenced his attitude during the critical years on the foreign political issue. He was enough of an “‘Austrian’”’ and a Danubian to

share the general local dislike of Prussians, but he does not appear, during his first years as Regent, to have suffered from that rather loud-mouthed Germano-phobia which some Hungarians were fond of proclaiming, nor, indeed, then to have had any insuperable spiritual inhibitions against enlisting the help of Germany in the cause of Hungarian revisionism. But in the late

1930’s and early 1940’s there was in all Hungary no stouter opponent of + This became very pronounced in the 1940’s. One gentleman who had held a very important

office in Hungary said to me: “I often had to see Horthy on official business, and he always treated me with the utmost courtesy, but he never took me into his inner circle of advisers, because I was too young.”’

CONSTITUTIONAL 59 Germany’s then leaders than Horthy, and during the war, perhaps not a man within the whole ring of ‘‘Axis-dominated Europe’? who gave them more headaches than he. This was partly due to the obvious fact that the outside pressure being exercised on Hungary at the time was coming from Germany, and from no other quarter, so that defence of Hungary against pressure was automatically equivalent to defence against Germany. But by this time he had also come to dislike what Nazism represented. The flamboyance and excesses which he might have pardoned and even perhaps thought admirable twenty years earlier disgusted him now. Both its extreme anti-Semitism and its social extremism repelled him. He thought that it was not a regime of gentlemen, and if for that reason only was doomed to ultimate failure, his opinion of it being strongly reinforced by his personal judgment of the leading Nazis, towards practically all of whom, notably Hitler and Ribbentrop, he conceived a strong personal dislike.1 They were the worse because they did not even keep their ideas to themselves, but instigated and abetted violent lower-class men in Hungary to agitate against his own regime and the system which he cherished. Worst of all, they sought adherents in his army, tampering with its loyalty; this wounded him in his tenderest spot. Nevertheless, so far as all this was concerned, Horthy might easily have joined the large class of Hungarians who, while disliking Nazism as a system

and quite determined to keep it out of Hungary, yet thought that Hungary should link her fortunes, diplomatically and militarily, to Germany in the interests of her revision. Oddly enough, Horthy was not of this opinion. All his life he had greatly admired and liked England and the English. These feelings were, of course, common among civilian Hungarians of his social class, and so far as the liking went, not rare even among the soldiers. Most of the soldiers, however, mingled it with indulgent contempt. Their

admiration was reserved for the German Army, which they believed invincible. Horthy, on the contrary, believed firmly that if Germany got involved in war with the Western Powers she would end by being beaten, because sea-power would in the long run always defeat land power. It is possible that ruffled self-esteem contributed subconsciously to the tenacity with which he held this opinion. His clever political advisers, even his generals, had been a little too apt for his liking to explain things to him in

words of one syllable, and even if a man does not hold himself to be particularly clever, he does not like to be treated too obviously as a blockhead. Here was one point on which he did feel that as an Admiral he knew more than anyone else in Hungary, or for that matter than Hitler or Musso-

lini, and he made the most of his advantage. At any rate, the opinion became a fixed and overwhelming conviction with him. He always held it, and was never shy of expressing it. He expressed it to Hitler at Kiel in 1938 (to the Fiihrer’s extreme annoyance) and publicly when the war broke out. 1 He once said to an interlocutor: “‘J cannot understand why I should be treated as though I were an accomplice of Hitler’s. No one in Europe has had so many rows with Hitler as I have.”’

Statistics on this interesting point, were they available, might well justify Horthy’s claim. To the same enquirer he expressed most drastic opinions about nearly all the Nazi leaders. He found Hitler particularly antipathetic, with his loud, raucous voice and bad manners. Oddly, as several of the witnesses at Nuremberg testified, Hitler did not reciprocate this hostility. He both liked and respected Horthy and treated him with more patience and consideration than have yet been put to his credit. It may be mentioned here that Horthy did not take the same view of Mussolini. He thought him a vulgar fellow, but approved of the way he had made peace with the Vatican and thought he had made a good job out of Italy and the Italians. Ciano, on the other hand, he despised.

60 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH He held it unwaveringly through the dark days of 1940, when he was one of the very few men in Hungary to be as confident; and with waxing confidence

thereafter. This simple calculation perhaps ultimately decided his policy; and seeing how much turned on what line the Regent took, then it can be said that if it is true that his appointment to the Regency was the outcome of an English suggestion,! that casually flung seed bore most ample fruit. It is at least interesting that the old Regent was right in the end, where so many

in his country were wrong. ,

1 Montgomery, op. cit., p. 39. .

@

CHAPTER FOUR

RECONSTRUCTION N 1922 Horthy was still far from. being the power which he afterwards

[ean The effective ruler of Hungary was Bethlen, and under him, the

men whom he chose to constitute his instruments, and the ruling class of

the new Hungary. It is of some importance to know exactly what these elements were which ruled Hungary for the next ten years, and thereafter formed one of the two armies (the Right Radicals being the other) between whom the real struggle for the political control of Hungary was waged. The Bethlen “‘camp,” especially after the first year or two had elapsed, indubitably represented the “‘haves” against the “have-nots,” and amongst the former, the larger “‘haves”’ against the smaller. But the picture of it as the party of the great ‘“‘feudal” landowning magnates shows only a fraction of the truth and conceals the larger and more important part of it. Actually the real magnates, the spiritual and social descendants of the Old Conservatives of the mid-nineteenth century, were by a big majority Legitimists, and were thus, as we have seen, in sharp opposition to Bethlen in 1921. Afterwards this changed. Some die-hards continued the fight after 1922, when, incidentally, they found the apparatus of the Government Party mobilised against them as ruthlessly as against any peasant tribune. Some others continued to the last to sulk in their tents, refusing to recognise either Bethlen or Horthy. A few took paths of their own, which led some of them into the camp of the extreme Right. But when the Legitimist issue lost much of its immediacy after the King’s death in 1922, most of the magnates moved towards Bethlen, feeling that their economic interests, in so far as these rested on the large estates, were as safe in his hands as they could be in anyone’s, which was true. Bethlen himself was a strong partisan of the big landlords, and, his one land reform accomplished, he set his face like adamant against any further tampering with-the big estates. The rapprochement continued year by year, and when Bethlen was driven into opposition in the 1930’s, the old conflict was almost forgotten, and he and the Legitimists formed a close, if tacit, alliance. Nevertheless, very few representatives of the magnate class played a big part in his system; Gyula Karolyi was perhaps the only important exception. They were conspicuous, but not influential. In so far as his regime was at all one of aristocrats, it was one of aristocratic ghosts. In this respect the galaxy of titled names which sparkled in his cabinets is misleading, since most of the bearers of them, including Bethlen himself, the Telekis and many others, were Transylvanians, and magnates only by family, not at all by financial status, being de facto refugees. The backbone of Bethlen’s party came not from these classes but from the wider classes who wanted a solid regime which should be Conservative without being ultra-montane, national without fanatical excess; a regime, in fact —to use Bethlen’s own word—of consolidation: medium and even smallmedium landowners, solid professional and business men, and above all, the

62 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH established and influential better-paid public officials, who now, since the revolutions, were more gonservative than ever. Many of these, incidentally, far preferred the Regency to the Habsburgs and would have resisted any active infiltration of Legitimism into the regime. This element in Bethlen’s following should neither be overlooked nor

undervalued. It gave him an exceedingly strong backing, both social and administrative; the fund of experience on which it could draw made for a relatively high degree of efficiency in carrying out his decisions; and for all its

excessive conservatism, it did manage to retdin a certain aura of oldfashioned moderation and decency, something of the memory of an age when the government of Hungary was a nobile officium in more senses of the

term than one. Many honourable men saw the faults in Bethlen’s system yet felt it to retain so much of Hungary’s time-hallowed traditions as to render it preferable to alternatives which, if superficially more attractive in certain respects, smacked of foreign influences. But easily the most influential of all its components was, so soon as the

consolidation got under way, drawn from those financial and industrial circles whose support Bethlen sought in order to make his reconstruction possible and under whose direction, and in large part to their advantage, the

reconstruction was carried through. We write “financial and industrial,” but the distinction is hardly a real one. The economic development of Central Europe in the nineteenth century had been somewhat different from that of

the West, and most of the large industry in Central Europe, and most markedly in Hungary, was directly owned or controlled by holding banks, so that the two factors were to a large extent identical. Here again, as in the other field, Bethlen’s natural inclination was to co-operate with the leading figures rather than with the smaller men; the more so, since any sort of largescale development, if it was to be at all speedy, needed to be financed from

abroad, and it was the large men who could obtain such facilities. And conditions, as it happened, made this particularly easy for him, since the structure of Hungarian big business was even more oligarchic than that of the landed interests: it was controlled to an overwhelming degree by a relatively small number of persons, nearly all of them closely related by blood or marriage. Far more, in reality, than on the landowners, Bethlen’s system rested on and was conducted to the benefit of business interests, almost all of which, as it happened, were Jewish—a fact of the greatest importance for the entire history of the next twenty-odd years. The immediate advantages of this were seen in the Reconstruction period

itself, since Hungary could never have achieved the results which she did without the active co-operation of her Jewish citizens. The complications to which it gave rise dominated the history of the fifteen years which followed. By his successful establishment, through the elections of May 1922, of what was in effect a Parliamentary dictatorship under his own complete control, Bethlen had accomplished a considerable part of the internal social and political side of his programme. He had not so far been able to make any progress at all towards securing the financial help from abroad on which the consolidation and further development of his programme depended, since

capital would not come to Hungary, even with the threat of revolution removed, so long as it was liable to seizure under that clause in the Peace Treaty which made reparation charges to be paid (to a total still unspecified)

RECONSTRUCTION 63 by Hungary a first charge on her assets. Hungary’s creditors on reparation account, who were chiefly her neighbours, refused to allow this clause to be abrogated without satisfactory assurances as to the use to which any money would be put. A vicious circle thus existed, and while it remained unbroken,

the financial ground was too quaggy to bear even the foundations of

economic reconstruction. Two whole years more passed before the circle was finally broken. They were filled with laborious negotiations of which only the main stages will be mentioned here. On 18th September 1922 Bethlen scored his first success when Hungary secured admission to the League.* The next spring she applied for a loan, and asked that, to make this possible, the lien on her assets should be raised and a moratorium on her payments conceded. The Little Entente announced that it would waive its rights only if it received “‘serious guarantees” that the loan would not be used by Hungary either to increase her armaments or to

finance irredentist propaganda. More discussions followed, inter alia, between Benes and Bethlen at the League Assembly in 1923, and at last it was possible to sign, on 14th March 1924, two Protocols, by the first of which Britain, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Roumania and Yugoslavia promised to respect Hungary’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence, while Hungary undertook “in accordance with the stipulations of the Treaty of Trianon, strictly and loyally to fulfil the obligations contained

in the said Treaty, and in particular the military clauses, as also the other international engagements” and to abstain from “‘any action which might be contrary to the spirit of the Conventions” to be drawn up. The second Protocol laid down what guarantees Hungary would give for a loan. Next, her total reparations were fixed: she was to pay 200 million gold crowns, in instalments rising (after an interval in which only small deliveries in coal were exacted) from 5 million gold crowns in 1927-28 to an annual maximum, to be reached in 1942, of 14 million.

This settled, the loan (for 250 million gold crowns) was floated. The operation was an immediate success. The reconstruction loan was oversubscribed (as well it might be, considering its terms),* and this proved only the first trickle of what soon turned into a flood of capital: domestic capital

repatriating itself, foreign capital in search of what now appeared to be remarkably favourable opportunities. According to figures quoted by M. Kovrig,’ the capital imported into Hungary between 1920 and 1931 totalled 3-4 milliard pengd or £122,214,232. The currency at once became stable, and when, on Ist January 1927, the new independent Bank of Issue replaced

the old crown with a new unit, based on gold (the peng6), that in its turn remained for years among Europe’s most stable currencies. By July 1924 the

Budget had been brought back into equilibrium, so effectively that every year thereafter showed a surplus of revenue over expenditure. In 1925 Hungary introduced an autonomous tariff which gave her domestic production an average protection of 27 per cent. New factories were founded to replace those lost at Trianon, new sources of raw materials developed or new

foreign sources found, as well as new markets abroad. The number of 1 For fuller details, see the League of Nations Monthly Summary, May 1924, and the Survey of International Affairs, 1924, pp. 423-37. 2 In the previous year she had been refused admission. 3 It was issued at 88, and bore interest at 7} per cent. 4 Op. cit., p. 37.

64 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH establishments ranking as factories rose from 2,124 in 1921 to 3,553 in 1928 and the number of workers employed in them from 136,808 to 236,284, while the index of industrial production rose from 100 to 294. By 1930 23 per cent. of the population of Hungary gained its living from industry or mining. The index figure of foreign trade rose from 125 in 1921 (1920: 100) to 250 in 1928.

The calculated national income increased from 4,631-2 million peng6 in 1924-25 to 5,728-3 in 1928-29. Agriculture was flourishing. The inflation of the post-war years had practically wiped out the farmers’ indebtedness, and the high prices of the mid-twenties had enabled them to make considerable new investments, besides raising their standard of living to gratifying heights. The ‘‘welfare index” of the agricultural population rose from 81 in 1923-24 to 100 in 1928-29. In short, within five years or so Hungary had turned herself back into a not wholly unflourishing state of mixed agriculturalindustrial economy.? 1928-29 found Hungary with a prosperous possessing class, both urban

and rural, the former category including not only the big financiers and industrialists but also many of the shopkeepers and artisans: the latter, not only the big landlords but also the medium and smaller men down to the line separating the smallholder from the dwarf-holder. The well-being of these classes was shared by the State employees of the higher and medium grades. Bethlen had also succeeded in establishing, for the time, a large degree of social and political harmony between these classes and in finding solutions for many of the problems, such as that of the relations between the various Confessions, which had been causes of friction between them at the opening of the era. The vulnerable feature of the whole structure was its dependence on two factors, both of which were at the mercy of forces beyond the power of the

Hungarian Government to control, one being the maintenance of international confidence, not only, or even primarily, in Hungary; the other, the maintenance of a high world price of wheat. Hungary’s trade balance had in fact been passive every single year since the war, beginning with 1920, when her exports had been worth only 190-6 million peng6 and her imports had cost her 484-1 m.p.? From this low level, her exports had climbed steadily, exceeding 800 m.p. in each year after 1924 and topping the 1,000 m.p. mark in 1929. Imports, however, had climbed hardly less rapidly: in 1926 they had been 941-1 m.p.; in 1927, 1,182-2; in 1 The occupational distribution of the population in 1930 was as follows:

Absolute Numbers %

Agriculture, forestry, fisheries . . . . . 4,499,393 51:8

Mines and blast furnaces .1,883,257 . , . , . 115,041 1:3 Industry . . . . . . . . . 21-7 Commerce and finance . , . . . , , 469,059 5°4

Communications . . . . . . , , 338,875 3-9 Public services and professions . . ; , . 434,782 5:0 Defence , . , , ., .., ,. ,, ,, ,72,541 0-8 Casual labourers , 122,338 1-4 Pensioners, rentiers, etc. . . ; ; , , 360,901 4-2 Other occupations . , , . , , . 114,251 1:3 Domestic servants . , . , , . , 197,179 2°3 No occupation or occupation unknown . , , . 80,702 0-9 8,688,319 100-0

* These figures are those calculated by the Hungarian Statistical Office and translated by them into terms of later currency.

RECONSTRUCTION 65 1928, 1,211-4. In each of these last two years they had exceeded exports by fully 40 per cent. The deficit up to 1924 had been covered chiefly by sales of gold and of foreign securities!; after that, by borrowing. In 1924 had come the League Loan of 127-5 m.p., and after this, Hungary had borrowed again extensively, mainly from private sources and largely on short term: 168-7 m.p. in 1926, 294-6 m.p. in 1927, 299-8 m.p. in 1938 and 234-4 m.p. in 1929. So the wheels had been kept turning, but an increasing proportion of the new money had to be devoted each year to paying off old loans or to paying interest on the League Loan (which had been issued at the substantial rate of 7% per cent.) and other obligations, including reparations and the pre-war debt, or Caisse commune, of 540 m.p. It was therefore essential that international confidence should remain unshaken until the trade gap could be closed.

And the prospects of ever converting the passive trading balance into an active one—which, to make service and repayment of the debt possible, would have to be a large one—depended almost entirely on the maintenance of a high world price for agricultural produce, and especially for the key commodity of wheat. Notwithstanding the considerable amount of industrial-

isation carried through, by far the largest part of Hungary’s exports, and a part which showed little tendency to diminish, consisted of agricultural products, raw or manufactured: these accounted for 78-3 per cent. of her exports in 1924, 78-2 per cent. in 1925, 80-4 per cent. in 1926, 77-1 per cent. in 1927, 71-9 per cent. in 1928 and 75-2 per cent. in 1929. Her imports, on the other hand, consisted almost entirely of non-agricultural products, and

although the percentage represented by finished goods had fallen sharply (from 77-8 per cent. in 1924 to 45-8 per cent. in 1926 and only 39-4 per cent. in 1929), this was simply in favour of half-finished goods or industrial raw materials. All her high-grade fuel and (at that time) all her oil was imported,

and her now considerable textile industry imported almost all its raw materials. Her ability to keep her factories working consequently depended in large part on the prices fetched by her agricultural exports. The price of wheat, incidentally, occupied a special place, easier to explain in terms of psychology than of statistics, in the whole economic structure of Hungary. On it depended the agricultural price policy, and even the price and trade policy in general, and a fall in wheat prices at once involved the whole country in difficulties: the farmers directly, industry and trade through the falling-off in the farmers’ purchasing power, the State services through the diminished revenues.’

It is, indeed, difficult to see how these weaknesses could have been eliminated. Given the correctness, which it is difficult to deny, of Bethlen’s premise that Hungary could not recover without the help of foreign capital,

these weaknesses were inherent in her position, and in the nature of the financial machinery operating in the world at that time. And it would be most unjust to deny the magnitude of the work accomplished between 1924

and 1929. The era naturally invites comparison with its predecessor, the Compromise Era, and if the material achievements of the two are compared, the comparison is by no means unfavourable to the latter. Both showed skill 1 Tourist traffic and remittances from America also brought in small sums. 2 See the article by Dr. N. Sigescu, ‘Agricultural Exports from Hungary during 1923-27,” in the International Review of Agriculture, August 1938 (cit. P. de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning and Economic Planning in General, Oxford, 1940, p. 496). F

66 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and achieved success in overcoming difficulties which were not smaller in the

second period than in the first; for if the former had the ready-made advantages of the railways and factories which its predecessor had built, it had not the benefit of an unexhausted and unencumbered soil, nor could it work on the basis of even partial self-sufficiency. It was necessarily dependent

to a large extent on the outer world for both markets and supplies, and had to jostle for both in a fiercely competitive world. It must also be admitted, however, that the Reconstruction Era followed with uncanny accuracy the example of its predecessor in its handling of the problem of those classes of the population which it did not recognise as belonging to the political “‘nation.” Each of these received certain initial concessions, most of them constituting the prices to which Bethlen had found necessary to agree in the course of the bargainings described in a previous chapter. But these concessions were in each case treated as final settlements. Even where the substance of them was not subsequently whittled away as the system found itself strong enough to counter-attack (and this happened not infrequently), they were never extended, while the re-established political machine saw to it, inconspicuously but implacably, that these classes should be reduced to a political impotence which would prevent them from ever again questioning the traditional basis of the Hungarian political and social

system. ,

The political subjugation of the dispossessed agrarian classes, threequarters accomplished when the new franchise was introduced, was soon completed, those few Deputies of genuine small peasant or labourer origin as had survived the Party fusion being, with a handful of exceptions,’ digested and quietly excreted by the simple process of dropping them off the list of Party candidates. Thereafter not even the small peasants, let alone the dwarfholders or agricultural labourers, were able to exercise any influence whatever on national or even on local policies, which were exclusively dictated in rural areas by the larger landlords and the administration working, hand in

hand. Strict watch was kept on the labourers to see that they did not fraternise with the Social Democrats, and they were not even allowed any vocational organisation of their own. Social legislation in their interests was

practically non-existent, and where it existed, often not applied. The promised land reform was duly carried out, but modest in its original concep-

tion (and it will be remembered that Szab6 had accepted it only as a first instalment), it proved more modest still in execution. Of the 1-2 million hold, only 495,000 were in the event distributed to the landless men or dwarfholders, of whom 298,000 beneficiaries received an average of 1-6 hold apiece. Most of the rest was retained by the State as unsuitable for distribution, or

devoted to communal grazing lands,’ model farms, etc.; a proportion was allocated to the Vitézi Rend.* Such distribution as was effected was even less beneficial in practice than it appeared on paper, since the landlords usually parted with their worst or most inaccessible land, of which the * I do not possess the Almanack for the 1926 Parliament, but that for 1931 shows only three Deputies of the Government Party of small peasant or agricultural] labourer origin. It is true that by this time the Independent Smallholders’ Party had been founded. Szabé himself had died in 1924.

* It is true that the land distributed in common pasture was of considerable benefit to many even of the poorest agricultural families. 3 See above, p. 31.

RECONSTRUCTION 67 recipients could often make little profitable use.1 The publicly promised reform of the fidei-commissa was put off year by year, being introduced in the event, as we shall see,” only in 1936,° and it was not until that year that any move was made to implement the secret promise to introduce a further land reform. Meanwhile, the Government’s chief device for helping the remaining dwarf-holders and landless men was a “‘gentleman’s agreement,’ proposed

by Bethlen and accepted by the landlords, to postpone the introduction of labour-saving machinery and to continue harvesting by the old method of using seasonal labour. This arrangement, while increasing the long-term difficulties of Hungarian agriculture by its expensive and cumbersome results, yet afforded for a time a certain sub-livelihood to the landless labourers and dwarf-holders. The position was made worse still by the American Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, which cut off the old outlet of emigration. Fortunately for the rural poor, their birth-rate was now falling rapidly. By 1930 the average annual net increase of the total population was down to 0-49 per cent. and

still falling. Industrialisation was able to take up most of the natural increase. Between 1920 and 1930 the rural areas showed a net surplus of emigration over immigration of 127,000; the towns, a net surplus of immigration of nearly 145,000. The rural population rose in absolute figures by only 49,000 (to 4,999,393), while the proportion of agriculturalists to the total population went down from 55.7 per cent. to 51-8 per cent. Acute congestion, however, still remained, and land distribution was still most unhealthy. By 19354 the situation was that holdings of 100+ hold still occupied 48-1 per cent. of the total and estates of 1,000+, 29-9 per cent. Nearly one-third of the total cultivable area was owned by 0-1 per cent. of the population, and another 18-2 per cent. by 0-7 per cent. Holdings of between 5-100 hold, most of which could be regarded as producing a living for the occupants, covered ‘ 41-7 per cent. of the area; their number was 437,560. But nearly half of these

were in the 5-10 hold group, which provided only the barest minimum subsistence, and below that again there was an agricultural population composed as follows: Persons?

Owners of holdings of 1-5 hold . , . . 1,093,030

Tenants of holdings of 1-5 hold . ; . ; 52,700 Agricultural labourers with holdings of | hold. 271,767 Landless agricultural labourers . , ; . 955,621

Farmhands , ; , , ; . ; 599,622 2,972,740

Even if it be granted that a few—a very few—of the farmhands on this list were men occupying secure and relatively comfortable positions, and a few 1 This was not entirely Bethlen’s fault; he had wanted a colonisation scheme, such as was introduced in 1936; it was Szab6 who had insisted on the individual distribution (Zsitvay to

“ 2 See below, p. 132. 8 To do Bethlen justice again, this had been ready by 1930, but the introduction of it was - postponed owing to the financial crisis (Zsitvay to C. A. M.). 4 It was in 1935 that a detailed agricultural census was taken which gave reliable figures of land distribution, and I have necessarily used these, although they relate to a period shortly after that which this sketch portrays. The occupational figures are those of the 1930 general census. 6 Including dependants.

68 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of the dwarf-holders growers of specialist crops, there must be set against these the holders of the 5-6 hold farms; so that the numeral in the vivid and famous descriptive phrase of Hungary’s “‘three million beggars’’* is hardly an exaggeration. No moreis the noun. Pitiable as were the living conditions of Hungary’s agrarian proletariat before 1914, the general fall in Central European standards of living which followed 1918 brought them, in nearly all respects, lower still. The exceptions were rural health and housing,* in which fields, as in certain others (e.g. the development of technical and general education), genuine efforts were made to honour the promises of 1921. No accurate figures on the standards of diet and clothing are available,* but comparison of the more informed and impartial descriptive writings from the two periods suggests that they were even worse (although that might have seemed impossible) than in the hungry 1890’s. The social status of the class was—although that, too, seemed impossible—even more degraded than in the Compromise Era. The human relationship between rich and poor in the village community, which half a century earlier had still been fairly intimate, was by now fast disappearing. It survived best where some family of the old

stock, comfortably off but not wealthy, had managed to survive the ruin which had overtaken much of that class also; but that class was itself fast dwindling away. In many places the local contingents of the army of “‘three million beggars” were regarded simply as animals to be kept under and exploited; and it was a terrifying thought that that army constituted twothirds of Hungary’s total rural population and a third of her total national

population.

The industrial workers, at any rate those in skilled trades, were appreciably better off in most respects. Their pact with Bethlen, which was concluded at

a moment when they were not quite devoid of all bargaining power, had enabled them to retain a complete system of vocational representation (except in the case of workers employed by the Government, who enjoyed certain

compensating advantages) and a modicum of political representation. Furthermore, the leaders of the counter-revolution were anxious to demonstrate to the Hungarian workers (and still more, perhaps, to the outer world) that their hostility to Marxism did not imply hostility to the workers. As proof of this, they kept in being the institution, first established towards the close of the First World War, of a Ministry of Social Welfare, which by convention was allocated to a member of the Christian Party. Mer. Vass, who held this Ministry for nearly a decade, exercised a considerable influence on Bethlen, who was also strongly influenced by conversations which he held

in 1924 with M. Albert Thomas, Secretary-General of the International Labour Office, and by the reading of the Webbs’ Industrial Democracy, a work which he studied very deeply. He became convinced that it would be necessary to accompany the industrialisation of Hungary which was to result from his reconstruction programme with “‘a preventive labour policy, i.e. a policy calculated to avert further social friction,’* and genuinely tried to + The author of this phrase was a publicist named G. Olah, who, after an uncertain early career, joined the extreme Right.

* In particular, the modern cottages were generally built of the more healthy fire-baked bricks, with the ugly but weatherproof ‘“‘Eternit’’ for roof, instead of thatch. I have, however, myself often seen cottages of sun-dried brick going up, even in the 1930’s. ° According to M. Kovrig (op. cit., p. 202), publication of the statistics on the subject compiled in 1928-29 by the Central Statistical Office was forbidden by the Government—as he writes, ‘‘for understandable reasons.” * Kovrig, op. cit., p. 51.

RECONSTRUCTION 69 introduce such a policy, up to the point which he thought that the State finances could bear. Thus, although the larger advance in Hungarian labour , legislation began only (as will be described) in the 1930’s, yet even under Bethlen not inconsiderable improvements were made in working conditions. The most important advance was the introduction in 1927-28 of an excellent social insurance system both for workers and for salaried employees; but, besides this, the average working day and week were shortened substantially,

and many other less important reforms introduced. It is probable that at the end of the Reconstruction period, during which real wages rose substantially and unemployment fell to a low figure, the average standard of living of a worker in factory industry was up to the general Central European level,

and easily above that prevailing in Eastern Europe. Working conditions, however, still left much to be desired, and politically the industrial workers

were in reality almost as powerless as their brothers on the land, for the secret ballot in the autonomous towns (which were by no means synonymous

with the chief industrial districts)! only allowed them to get a handful of representatives into Parliament. The gains of the minorities, described above,” also proved very shortlived. The Ministry of Nationalities had been discontinued as early as July 1920, and the measures enacted while it was still in existence were never put into force. Two Orders in Council, issued in 1923, re-established the old system for the official use of languages and inaugurated a school system under which instruction was given partly in Magyar, partly in the pupil’s mothertongue. A “compromise” was, however, reached with the Swabians. They were allowed to keep some schools, granted them by Karolyi and Kun, in which all subjects were taught in German, the Magyar language being taught

as a subject, and in 1924 a soporific cultural society, called the Ungarlandisch-deutscher Volksbildungsverein (UDV), was founded and allowed to indulge in certain mild cultural and social activities, including the publication

of a weekly newspaper devoted chiefly to religious edification, household hints and the propagation of Hungarian patriotism. This Society was given

as its Chairman (Geschiftsfiihrer) Professor Jakob Bleyer, of Budapest University, who in 1918-19 had been President of the Deutsch-Ungarischer Volksrat, the more moderate of the two organisations which then competed for the leadership of the Germans of Hungary, and afterwards the Minister of Nationalities: a man who always described himself as “German,” but one whose Hungarian loyalty went so far that he not only stood for the territorial integrity of Hungary to the extent of opposing the cession of the Burgenland, but did not even wish for corporate organisation of the German minority, nor even for so much German education as would impair the cultural unity of Hungary. The President of the Verein was Dr. Gusztav Gratz, a man less radical even than Bleyer, who, while not denying his Germanic origin (he was a “Saxon” from Transylvania), had adopted so fully the political mentality of

his country as twice to hold portfolios in its Government (once that of 1 Some of the autonomous cities (Esztergom is a good example) were overwhelmingly bourgeois and petit-bourgeois in population and political outlook. On the other hand, there were important centres of industry such as the satellite towns of Pest (Ujpest, Kispest, etc.) or mining centres (Tata-Banya, Salgo-Tarjan) which had no autonomous rights and were thus subject to the open ballot. On one occasion in 1924, when the obstruction of the Opposition was particularly violent, Bethlen offered to extend the secret ballot to these towns, but the Opposition allowed itself to be out-maneuvred, and the concession was never made. 2 See above, p. 26.

70 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Foreign Affairs). There was no more question of separate representation, but Bleyer was given a Parliamentary mandate on the Government list, so that he could voice any reasonable desiderata of the German minority in a decent manner from inside the ring and without the implication that the minority constituted any sort of opposition.’ In this case, too, the concessions, slight as they were, were steadily whittled

down afterwards. The UDV was a farce; the number of German schools, and even of mixed schools, was steadily reduced; and the administration was Magyarised more thoroughly than ever.?

It should be conceded that the parallel with the Compromise Era held not only over methods but also over results. Small as the land reform had been, the agrarian unrest abated after it. The steady diminution in the Social Democrat vote was probably not entirely due to Governmental pressure but also suggested that the workers were becoming more “positive” in their attitude towards the State. The minority problem seemed in a fair way to solution. The 1930 census, which was not accompanied by any special pressure, showed large reductions in the numbers of the linguistic minorities: the figure for Germans by mother-tongue was down 75,000 to 479,000, that

for Slovaks down by a third (from 165,000 to 104,000), the others correspondingly. Some of this was due to emigration, which was voluntary,* but most of it to assimilation, which also appeared to be voluntary and quite complete. The flow of Magyarised Swabians into the Army and the Civil Service went on unabated. It seems to be the case that even where subjected to no pressure at all, a high proportion of parents among both the Swabians and the Slovaks voted for the C type of school for their children (i.e. all instruction in Magyar, with the mother-tongue taught as a subject).° And it may be remarked here that when we come to describe more stirring days we shall still have the least to say of these unfortunate classes and groups. Bitter enough struggles went on in Hungary, but the combatants were not the

political and social “haves”? and the “‘have-nots” in the orthodox sense of those terms. The agrarian proletariat remained almost to the last a passive element over whose heads all the hurly-burly which we shall be describing passed without touching them. The industrial workers were much more vocal, and came in time to constitute a perceptible factor in politics, but not a revolutionary one. Communism, unimportant, as we shall see, even in 1943 and 1944, was practically non-existent in Hungary as an organised movement.® During this period a “Hungarian Communist Party,” composed of a handful of refugees who had been compromised under Béla Kun, existed in Moscow, but in Hungary itself the surviving sympathisers with the doctrine did not * The word “representation” is operative, for no limit was imposed on the number of Deputies of Swabian (or, for that matter, other minority) origin, provided that they stood as “Hungarians.” Every Parliament, and Ministry, during the inter-war period contained many

such persons. > He was afterwards allowed a colleague.

* I once won money off a Hungarian Deputy by betting him that under Hungarian law a language other than Magyar could be spoken in a County Diet. It was news to him; and he

had been one of his country’s legislators for several years. ‘ Several of the outlying Serb colonies in Hungary, e.g. that at Szent Endre, north of Budapest, emigrated back en bloc to Serbia. There was also some Roumanian re-emigration. * In the A schools, of which there were only two in the country, instruction was in the mothertongue, with Magyar taught as a subject; in the B schools it was mixed. * Fora fuller account, see the article by G. Schdpflin, “Az illegalis kommunista part Magyarorzsagon”’ (Latéhatdr, January 1954).

RECONSTRUCTION TI dare move. In 1925 Moscow tried to resuscitate the Party, and for that purpose sent to Hungary two agents, Hungarian Jews who had played minor

roles under Kun and had managed to escape: Matyas Rakosi (Roth) and Zoltan Vas (Weinberger). Both were quickly arrested,) and the attempt collapsed. In 1926-27 an attempt was made to found a “‘mass Party” secretly

directed by the Communists. This party, the MSzMP (Magyar szocialista munkaspart—Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party), otherwise known, after its leader, as the ““Vagi Party,’ acquired some hundreds of adherents and organised some strikes and demonstrations; but it took too little account of the justified jealousy of the Social Democrats and the solidarity of the regime.

It was forbidden and dissolved. A small extremist periodical, the “100%,” edited by one, Aladar Tamas, survived a little longer. It is, however, probably true that, as one authority on the subject has written, the “Communist”? move-

ment of the time was largely inspired and directed by the Budapest police, who needed to make an occasional arrest in order to justify the existence of the counter-revolutionary regime in general, and themselves in particular. The official Social Democratic leaders followed a cautious reformist policy which undeniably lent a certain plausibility to some of the accusations

afterwards levelled against them by the Communists. They certainly accepted with an excellent good grace the privileged position which Bethlen _ had allowed to their followers and still more to themselves, and kept their side of the bargain with a high degree of honour. Their forbearance became strained in the crisis of the early 1930’s, but immediately Hitler came into

power in Germany the Social Democrat leaders swung over, as will be described, into a tacit alliance with the most conservative elements in the country.® In later years the most actively oppositional among these three elements was to be that which had been the least active in the 1920’s: the Swabian minority. But the position of the Swabians, as soon as they showed any sign of activity, was unique. From extreme Right to extreme Left, with the single exception of one small party in German pay,’ every class, party or other grouping in Hungary presented a solid and united front against their

every demand, reasonable or unreasonable. Magyars and Jews, Social Democrats and extreme Conservatives, vied with one another in attacking them. They were indeed a factor in Hungarian politics; during the war, Britain had no stronger (although unconscious) ally than this unfortunate group. But they were not an active one, except in the sense that they always moved things in the direction contrary to their wishes.° The real struggle for power which went on in Hungary was between the two great parties, ““Vienna’” and “Szeged,” within the Hungarian “‘political 1 They were tried in 1927, with 53 other defendents. Vas was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment. Rakosi, who defended himself with great courage, got eight and a half years, but when he had served these, was re-arrested and sentenced on a fresh charge to life imprisonment. In 1940

he was allowed to go to Russia (see below, p. 370). .

2 C. Peyer, Latéhatdr, May 1954 (a letter criticising M. Schopfiin’s “attempt” (in the article

quoted above) ‘‘to represent the pre-war Communist Party as a serious Movement’’). . 8 When judging the attitude of the Social Democrats, it should be remembered that all their most experienced leaders, and also all their more radical members, had gone into exile in 1919. Further, the Party later strengthened its own tendency towards moderation, and incidentally lowered its intellectual level, by adopting (for tactical reasons) a policy of never electing Jews to prominent or representative posts.

4 The National Socialist Party.

- 8 The minorities reacquired from 1938 onward, in Ruthenia, Transylvania, etc., again

constituted special cases, to which these remarks do not entirely apply. :

72 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH nation”’ itself; and in many important respects Bethlen’s consolidation was directed fully as much against the Right as against the Left. The extremist excesses dwindled to a trickle after the 1922 elections, and soon ceased altogether. Thereafter the regime set its face strongly against anti-Semitism, even in its non-violent form. The one measure on a “racial” basis which had been enacted since the counter-revolution—the “‘numerus clausus’”’ Act introduced by Teleki, which limited the admission of students of Jewish origin to High Schools—was allowed to fall into disuse. No further legal enactment aimed either directly or indirectly at the Jews was passed during Bethlen’s term of office. He even saw to it that such measures should not be so much as proposed. It is true that persons of Jewish origin were not, except in very exceptional cases, taken into Parliament on the Government list; but active anti-Semites were excluded from it altogether. The bulk of the more active “patriotic associations”’ were pushed into the background, discouraged and even subjected to unfavourable attention from the authorities. Many of them now faded out altogether, or turned in practice into Old Boys’ clubs, whose members, usually a mere handful, met once a year or so to chinwag and clink glasses over old exploits. The TESz itself lapsed into semi-hibernation after 1925.1

Gombés had still been a recognised power in 1922; he had been elected “pnanaging Vice-President” of the new “Unitary Party’ in February, had actually organised the election campaign and had brought a number of his followers into Parliament with him. But he soon got at loggerheads with Bethlen, and in August 1923 left the Government Party, with half a dozen

adherents,” to form an oppositional party known alternatively as the “Hungarian National Independence Party” (Magyar Nemzeti Fiiggetlenségi Part) or, more simply, the “‘Party of Racial Defence” (Fajvéd6 Part). In the autumn the names of Gémbés and of some of his cronies then became coupled in fantastic and scandalous fashion with those of his Munich friends.

These gentlemen were now making the preparations for the operation which erupted on 8th-9th November in the famous Beerhouse Putsch.® It is certain that G6mbés had been in touch with them and had rendered them many services, including the facilitation of their finances,* and it is alleged

that the operation planned was to begin simultaneously in Munich and Budapest: in the former with a Wittelsbach restoration, and in the latter with

the establishment of a Right Radical Government under Gémbés; and in its later stages was to include the overthrow of Bolshevism and either the restoration of Czarism complete or a Czarist restoration in North Russia coupled with the establishment of a German-dominated Ukraine. The story leaked out in Hungary through the carelessness of a courier, whereupon some of the persons concerned were arrested, although they were treated with the indulgence habitually accorded by the regime to offenders of the Right, and soon set at liberty. * Teleki remained President of the TESz until 1925, when he handed over to G. Baross. A year later Baross became implicated in the “forged francs case’’ and retired in favour of the young Archduke Jozsef Ferencz, under whom the TESz became for a time almost non-political and, indeed, almost inactive. 2 E. Bajcsy-Zsilinsky, F. Eckhardt, G. Hir, F. Ulain, B. Szemere, J. Zsirkay. * The fullest surviving account of these events is in J. Lévai, Horogkereszt, Kaszakereszt, Nyilaskereszt (Swastika, Scythe Cross, Arrow Cross) (Budapest, 1945). * The group had partly financed itself through importing horses and cattle from Hungary, on favourable terms arranged by Gémbés (but see also below, p. 456).

RECONSTRUCTION 73 It is fair to say that Gdémbés protested at the time that he had been victimised by agents provocateurs, but this is not to say that the allegations were entirely baseless. In any case, the resources of the regime were now turned on the Right Radicals. The seven racialists were able to voice their views in Parliament until the 1926 elections, but at those the Party of Racial Defence was completely annihilated. Goémbés himself, as Horthy’s special protege, was allowed an unopposed seat; his followers were wiped out. After this, when Gémbés tried to issue a journal expounding his views, he found it impossible to get credit and so difficult to get paper that the journal could only appear monthly (not always so often) and was only rarely printed: most issues consisted of only a few mimeographed copies.! In those days it was more difficult to preach anti-Semitism in Hungary than radical socialism. Yet even if the Government had desired to do so, it could not have applied the methods which it used towards workmen or Swabians to the figures of the Right, who were themselves members of Hungary’s traditional ruling class, differentiated from the official leaders of Bethlen’s own following by neither origin, language nor education, but only by professed outlook, which was not even openly professed, since the Government itself always claimed to

stand on the basis of the counter-revolution. As such, it could not deny merit to the men who had carried the counter-revolution through and had afterwards served the regime in such operations as the guerilla war against Austria in 1921 and (although this was less openly admitted) the defence of the Regency against the King in the same year. It was also conscious that the day might well come when similar services might be required again. To put the calculation at its highest, these men were the very embodiment and lifeblood of the Hungarian nation, and to let them perish would be at once fratricide and suicide; to put it at its lowest, the Szeged men were an indispensable reserve to be kept intact against future contingencies. Add to this the fact that most at least of the more prominent members

of the Right were cousins or school-friends of men connected with the Government; and the further fact that the Regent, himself a man with a Szeged past, strongly sympathised with them; and it will be clear that there could be no question of using harsh measures against them. Even when the authorities decreed that no further extremist outrages were to be perpetrated in the future, they made hardly a pretence of punishing what had been done

in the past. When trials were held at all, the Courts admitted “‘patriotic motives” to count as extenuating circumstances and to justify the passing of

farcically light sentences. Some of the most notorious offenders walked about quite unscathed, boasting openly that “protection from the highest quarters’ rendered them immune from any retribution. The method which the regime adopted to make the Right Radicals innocuous was what was, after all, the most effective one: the removal of the material causes which had made them a factor of unrest. The leaders were given posts commensurate with their services, often in the Regent’s entourage or the Army; the rank and file, if below pensionable age, were somehow or 1 A. Marschalko, Gémbds Gyula, a fajvédé vezér (G. Gombés, the race-protecting Leader)

(Budapest, n.d., p. 39). The periodical was called A Hadak Utjdban (On the Warpath).

Marschalk6é writes that he could only find one copy of this paper on which to work, this being the file number in the newspaper room of the National Museum. It is quite possible that my own

copy of Marschalk6’s pamphlet is the only one to have survived the war and the post-war destruction of Fascist literature in Hungary. What will be the last place to preserve this thirdhand account of GombéGs spiritual pilgrimage?

74 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH other fitted into a State service which was expanded to the utmost limit to receive them.

A similar solution was adopted for the special case of the Army. It was the Army leaders who had been, at first, the most obstinate and the most dangerous of all the domestic opponents of the “‘policy of fulfilment,”’ which they regarded as treachery to the national cause. They were particularly hostile to the League of Nations loan because the conditions on which it was granted included control by the League Commissioner over the Hungarian Budget, and consequently over her military expenditure. It took Bethlen months of patient argument (during which he was challenged to a duel, and his Finance Minister, Tibor K4llay, offered his resignation thirteen times) before he could convince the Generals that—to put the matter at its crudest— Hungary would be unable to buy arms without a stable currency backed by a working economy. He met them by agreeing to give a large number of active officers and long-service N.C.O’s. “‘administrative employment” in various civilian Ministries, in which much of the work which would normally have been performed by the Ministry of Defence was carried out under various disguises.+

This remedy worked well enough, so far as it went. Most of the beneficiaries who got secure places settled down comfortably enough; and sufficient of them were so settled to take the sting out of the Right for several years. But the position was always precarious, and although ultimately the prosperity brought by the reconstruction benefited this class with the others, not all of its immediate effects were in the same direction. The salvaging of the State employees had begun long before the reconstruction loan was received, the Hungarian State simply taking over the payment of the persons ousted from the Successor States; and the settlement had gone on so far that by 1924 the Refugee Office was wound up, which meant that the great bulk

of the expellees had been settled.2 One of the first points on which the League of Nations Commissioner who came to Hungary in 1924 in connection with the loan insisted—although he was eminently well-disposed towards Hungary—was that the Budget must be balanced, and by the end of 1925 no less than 25,000 State employees had been discharged again. This process was repeated all too often. The victims overtaken by such a fate found themselves, each time, back again where they had started, for with their savings wiped out by the inflation they could neither buy their way into business nor into farming, nor even tide themselves over a temporary crisis. They themselves were far from regarding it as just or proper that the burden

of the reconstruction should fall precisely on their shoulders, and their constantly renewed resentment against the powers which, as it seemed to them, wantonly played with their destinies—a resentment which tended to direct itself very particularly against the representatives of that orthodox finance in the name of which the cuts were usually imposed—never lapsed 1 Kovrig, op. cit., pp. 143-4. Kovrig writes that at the same time Bethlen promised the Army leaders to obtain the “‘tacit acquiescence” of the principal Powers, if not their express consent, to various measures which would provide a substitute for general compulsory military ee Tn 1921 the number of active State officials (corresponding to Grade A Civil Servants) in Trianon Hungary was actually higher than it had been in 1913 for the whole of Historic Hungary. The figure of active officials declined gradually from this peak, but that of pensioners increased; by 1930 the total of State pensioners was some 110,000. This meant that the great majority of the expellees had been settled. The victims of the revolutions in Central Hungary had been reinstated earlier still.

RECONSTRUCTION 75 into resignation. They always remained a potential danger to the regime, and although Bethlen’s political machine prevented them from figuring as an open opposition, they succeeded in maintaining a sort of shadow organisation and a leader.

Their organisation consisted of the patriotic associations; for while a proportion of these, as we have said, drew the consequences of the new situation and dissolved themselves, practically if not in name, the more purposeful among them were, on the contrary, stimulated by their relegation to the opposition. Those of them which were frowned on publicly withdrew

into the conspiratorial underworld in which their secret counterparts had always moved, and the fact that their activities had for the time to be confined

to planning and preparation did not mean that they were abandoned. Nor did the Government pursue them too far into that underworld: the MOVE, for example, was still necessary to it, so long as Hungary’s armament was limited by Treaty. The leader of the Right Radicals was still Gdmbés, who kept a tight hold on the MOVE, the EKSz and the Kettéskereszt Szévetség, and before long even recovered an official footing in the Army; for in 1928 the Regent, concerned by conditions in the Ministry of Defence, in which there had been both inefficiency and corruption, suggested Gdmbés as the man to clean out the Augean stables. G6mbds saw his opportunity, dissolved the Racialist Party, and re-entered the Government Party and the Government as Secretary of State for Defence. This, as it happened, was also the moment when Bethlen had decided that it would soon be possible for Hungary to pay rather less strict attention to the limitations imposed on her armed forces by the Treaty of Trianon. He commissioned two persons to work out plans for an expanded army: one of them General K. Sods, a very senior officer who had been Horthy’s Chief of Staff at Szeged and afterwards, in 1920, Minister of Defence; the other, Goémbés. We shall have to return later to the contents of these two plans and the consequences which devolved from the differences between their respective partisans. For the moment we need only say that Horthy opted for G6mb6s’ plan.

In 1929 the Minister, Count Karolyi Csaky, resigned abruptly, and

Gémbés took his place, thus becoming Szeged’s official representative, under Horthy, in the Bethlen system.

In the meantime, Gombés had been developing his ideas on foreign

policy, and since these were afterwards to become of the utmost importance, they must be carefully explained sooner or later. His enemies afterwards accused Gémbés of having delivered over Hungary to the German power. So far as his own intentions were concerned, nothing is more untrue: if that

was the ultimate effect of his policy, it was one which resulted from that dilemma before which Hungary stood during the entire inter-war period: that Germany was the only Power of which it could reasonably be supposed that she would be both able and willing to break the iron ring of the Little Entente and its French padlock; but that the snapping of that ring must place

Germany in a dominant position dangerous to Hungary also. No Hungarian in the inter-war period was more intractably hostile to any hint of danger to Hungary’s independence than was Gémbos, and interference by Germany was no more welcome to him than interference by anyone else.

76 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH It is not even true that he liked Germans—at any rate, not Prussians: he had a full share of the anti-Prussian feeling which is endemic on the Danube. And it may be added that few Hungarians were more intransigent than he in their dealings with the Swabians of Hungary. His policy towards them, his own kinsfolk, was much less liberal even than that of Bethlen, and he was a prime mover in that policy which they so particularly resented, of putting a virtual compulsion on Army officers and Civil Servants with non-Magyar names (including German ones) to Magyarise them.” It is quite true that Gdmbés definitely rejected such a compromise with the Successor States as was advocated by a small fraction of opinion in Hungary which some called liberal or democratic but others called defeatist; also that

he rejected the alternative solution of Habsburg Legitimism, which he believed to be more dangerous to Hungary than Pan-Germanism could ever

become. This was due not to pro-German sympathies but to a plain misestimate (not confined to him) of the real relative strengths of the various political forces. If his first revolutionary connections were almost entirely with the German ‘“‘underground” in Munich, this was because no other collaborators of approximately equal energy were available. Moreover, as we said, many members of that group were working for Bavarian separatism,

possibly involving a Wittelsbach restoration, which would have killed all Go6mbés’ birds with one stone.

These dreams faded out after 1923, but just as the Bavarian star set, a new luminary rose elsewhere in the person of Mussolini. The Duce does not seem to have impressed G6mbd6s deeply at first; he still seems to have shared

the dislike and contempt of Italy which were so common among AustroHungarian officers after 1915. A few earlier remarks of his are recorded to the effect that Germany and Italy were natural allies; but it was only in 1927, under the immediate effect of the Italo-Hungarian Treaty and of Mussolini’s consequent public sponsoring of Hungarian revisionism, that G6mb6s saw,

as it were, a vision. Mussolini supplied the missing link. In spite of its shortage of anti-Semitism, Fascism provided him for the first time with a philosophy of domestic politics fully to his taste (it was only now that he officially adopted the doctrine of “leadership” and the Corporate State), but above all, he suddenly conceived what an admirer® has described as ‘“‘a

peculiar, surprising theory, a new political conception: the Berlin-Rome

Axis.” “If that,’ he said, “can be brought about, Italian and German nationalism” (to which was to be linked “‘the policy of the Hungarian renaissance which leads to the Greater Hungary’’) “will change the map of Europe.” It was a conception in which a measure of perfectly logical and reasonable thought blended with a pathetically large dose of naiveté and patriotic wishful thinking. The basic idea of it was that the three like-minded States should make such small adjustments between themselves as would eliminate all possible causes of friction, and then form a common front to realise their r The writer has received assurances on this point from many Hungarians who knew Gémbés well. 2 It may be remarked in passing that the true Magyars were as a rule far less intransigent in these respects than thcse who, like GOmb6és or Héman, were of Swabian origin; and even where those politicians were prepared to make concessions, their intentions were usually thwarted by

the Roman Catholic Church, in which a very high proportion of the leading figures were of either Swabian or Slovak origin. 3 Marschalk6, op. cit. This work dates to within a month (April 1927) the birth of Gdmb6s’ vision. He first expounded it in A Hadak Utjdban in March 1928.

RECONSTRUCTION 77 respective ambitions against the outer world. This much of realistic calculation must be granted it: that history itself ended by proving that the status

quo camp would not yield except to force, and that of the countries not completely committed to it, Italy alone would make any considerable effort on Hungary’s behalf. Sound enough, too, was the idea which, although not expressed in the article, undoubtedly bulked large in Gémbés’ calculations, of making the alliance safe for Hungary by including a third party, which,

with Hungary, would keep the balance against Germany. And one can certainly not accuse Gdémbis of “Little Hungarianism.” Of all the partners she was to do the least and get the most. Italy’s gains are indicated vaguely

as “along the Adriatic and the Mediterranean”; Germany’s, still more vaguely, as “northward and westward.” But Hungary was not only to get back her historic frontiers complete, including the Burgenland (which is specifically mentioned), but even more. After that restoration: “Our friendship for Germany notwithstanding, we shall dig a deep ditch along the Leitha, not merely to separate us, but to show all concerned that

east of the Leitha we Hungarians mean to be the sole masters, if only because it is here, in the east, within the framework of the independent Hungarian national State, that we can fulfil our historic mission, on the one hand towards the Balkans and on the other towards the Black Sea.” The tragic fallacy in Gémb6s’ ideas is that it never once occurred to him that either Germany or even Italy might have ideas of their own about South-

Eastern Europe. He was quite satisfied that a common sympathy arising (so far as Germany was concerned) out of the old comradeship in arms and a common interest in overthrowing the Peace Treaties was all that was required. There is one more important point regarding the German-Italian relation-

ship. At this time (1928) Gémb6s argues exactly as Hitler does in Mein Kampf. Italy needs the Brenner frontier, and Germany must make this sacrifice to her. He places this point, indeed, in the forefront of his article, saying that the whole ‘‘Axis’”’ turns on the sacrifice. On the other hand, he allows Germany all the Austrian Republic, except the Burgenland. Austria

is to disappear. On this point, as we shall see, he was later to revise his Opinion or at least his policy; but on every other point, both of general philosophy and of detail, he remained true to his vision through all his life, worked indefatigably for it, and contributed in no small degree to bringing it about. Thanks to his energy and his connections, Gémb6s retained much of his influence over his own contemporaries throughout his period of political exile; and—what was vastly more valuable to him—he extended it over much of the rising generation, for it is a fact of cardinal importance for the future of Hungary that, partly of necessity, partly through misplaced calculation, the regime of the Consolidation let the younger generation slip through its hands; particularly, perhaps, through the educational policy conducted by Count Klebelsberg, who became Bethlen’s Minister of Education in June 1922. Klebelsberg seems to have been speculating on an early Treaty revision and incidentally preparing for a Magyarisation of the areas to be recovered which would be far more intensive than anything which the old days had known. The Universities of Pozsony and Kolozsvar were transplanted to Inner Hungary, which continued within its straitened frontiers to turn out as many (in fact, slightly more) University graduates as Historic Hungary had

78 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH produced before its dismemberment.1. These young men got a thorough enough indoctrination of nationalism, but they applied its doctrines to their own cases. Partly in order to fulfil promises made by Bethlen to Szabo, admission to the High Schools was made very easy and a large number of the students were of humble origin enough.? Few of them could regard as their

highest ambition the restoration of a social system which they had hardly seen, whose conditions they, of a far more impoverished generation, could ill

imagine, and about which the chief thing that they knew was that it had suffered bankruptcy in almost.every respect. In any case they could not climb up into a world which had ceased to exist. Inevitably, they—or rather, the great majority of them—went other ways.® In other circumstances

most of them would have gravitated to the Left, as, indeed, a few of them did, but for the majority the shadow of the revolutions of 1918-19 fell too heavily across that path for them to follow it. It was not merely that the Left was a dangerous place to be in, with Communism outlawed and member-

ship of the Communist Party an offence entailing heavy penalties. But the Left bore the stigma of having betrayed the national cause and brought about the ruin of Hungary, and Western democracy that of having imposed the unjust peace. Finally, all shades of the Left—Communism, Socialism and Liberalism alike—were tarred with the Jewish brush; and to the younger generation of the Hungarian middle class and petite bourgeoisie, as to the Szeged generation proper, the Jewish question loomed quite fantastically large.

The limitation must be emphasised, for the anti-Semitism of the period was indeed essentially a middle-class and petit-bourgeois phenomenon. The aristocracy as a class never felt violently anti-Semitic. Even if we do not count those of them who had married Jewish brides, or whose obligations for accommodation generously granted put the luxury beyond their means, the Hungarian aristocrats, for all their faults, had a certain cultural standard which safeguarded them against the more vulgar excesses. It was bad form

to be coarsely anti-Semitic, just as it was to get drunk in public. And if the aristocrats had got beyond anti-Semitism, the really poor men had not got so far. They could see no particular difference between a Jewish master

and a Magyar master, except that the former on the whole paid better, and was often more civil; anyway, they saw that when any new enterprise was established which offered them a chance of better wages and easier conditions than the life of a landless cottager offered, the entrepreneur was nearly

always a Jew. Finally, the Social Democrats, on principle, stuck to their repudiation of national discrimination and their Jewish leadership. But for the penniless middle class the position was different. Not admitted to the discreet accommodation allowed to their social betters, yet psychologically incapable of the patient, unassuming acquiescence in being exploited which 1 In 1914 the total number of students graduating in Historic Hungary was 11,000. From 1925 onward the annual average in Trianon Hungary was 12,000. * A census taken in 1930-31 of the percentage of University students showed the largest single group to be the children of non-commissioned officers. ° This fact was well recognised by the famous historian, Professor Szekfii, who, in a study which made a great sensation on its appearance (it first appeared in a periodical but the substance

of it was incorporated in his Hdrom Nemzedék és ami utdna kévetkezik, published in 1934), wrote that the younger generation had finally broken with the “‘gentry” ideology, with the old

social outlook of the traditional ruling class, with which it was no longer willing to identify itself. These words were quoted and strongly endorsed by F. Rajniss, then still a ‘““Youth Leader,” at an interesting Youth Conference held in 1931. (A Magyar értelmiség vdlsdga, Budapest, 1933, p. 9.)

RECONSTRUCTION 719 centuries of habit had made second nature to their social inferiors, the middle

classes sought for security and economic sufficiency and found their way barred to both by the firmly entrenched camps of the Jews. Obscure racial instincts played their part. Some of them might have borne with relative ease the thought that the position and the income which they coveted should be denied to them for the benefit of a historic Hungarian

family, but their souls revolted when the beneficiary was a Jew. And a curious by-product of this development was that this indignant nationalist anti-Semitism burned most strongly in the breasts of persons who by origin

were not Hungarians at all. Its most violent exponents were Magyarised Swabians,' and where “‘racially pure’? Magyars vied with them in this field, it was usually through mental infection. So truly was this the case that when, in the 1930’s, the Jewish question came absolutely to possess Hungarian

politics, turning them into a pitched battle which was fought under the standards of Jewry and its enemies, that war was largely fought out over the bodies of the Magyars by their non-Magyar fellow-citizens; while they themselves looked on in bewilderment,

, Strangers and afraid In a world they never made.

The Jewish question turned the young graduates against the Left; but it also turned them against Bethlen’s “‘system,’’ which, as we have said, had made its terms with the Jews. This, and also the increasing apparent influence of the aristocracy, made the younger generation, inevitably, Right Radical. And it may be said at once that the curve at the extremes of which there stood those who called themselves respectively Right and Left Radicals came very near full circle. There was much common ground on which the two groups met in their criticism of the existing order; and where an order consists,

as the Hungarian did, of a closely interlocking complex of vested interests

hallowed by every sanction of the law and the constitution, so that any movement to change it must necessarily envisage the use of force in some degree, it is largely a matter of words (and of who uses them) whether any

such proposal should be described as progressive and democratic or as dictatorial and Fascist. Some of the most penetrating and also the most radical works on Hungarian social conditions came from men who were afterwards penalised as war criminals and their books burned as Fascist. They had as much to say, and in much the same terms (even more outspoken, because they could safely allow themselves more licence of language) as the industrial workers or the agricultural labourers, against capitalism, finance domination and feudal landowners. They condemned and sought to destroy the old ‘‘feudal’’ class structure of Hungary (partly as a creature of the foreign and oppressive Habsburg rule), advocating at the same time measures of real advantage to the proletariat, such as drastic land reform and the diminution of many abuses of capital. In the 1920’s this generation had not found its feet nor begun to produce leaders of its own—that development came only ten years later, and when it did, something even further to the Right than Szeged had been born, to which 1 Magyarised Swabians, rather than the non-Magyarised variety. The latter were the peasants who had remained in their villages. As they ran their own shops, co-operatives and savings-banks, they hardly came into contact with the Jews, who avoided the Swabian villages. It was only when they went out into the world (when they at once Magyarised) that they met the force of Jewish competition.

\

80 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH many of the youngest men went straight over. But the Arrow Cross did not yet exist in the Era of Consolidation, and the youths and young men tended to line up behind the surviving figures of Szeged, who were at least young by comparison with most of Bethlen’s team. To these men, now condemned to forced inactivity but awaiting their chance to re-enter the field, the younger

generation provided a spiritual reinforcement and, it may be added, an intellectual inspiration.

CHAPTER FIVE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS JN VACUO T is not intended to give here more than the most summary account of Hungary’s foreign relations during the Bethlen Decade. The salient

feature of that period was, of course, the absence from the scene of Danubian politics of both Germany and Russia. The reinstated Hungarian ruling class would in any case never have stooped to any truck with Moscow,

which now appeared to them as at once terrible and detestable in both its guises, both as fosterer of Pan-Slavism and patron of the small Slav peoples and States which were Hungary’s neighbours, and as the malignant focus of that Bolshevism, the extirpation of which, with all its doings, the Hungarian counter-revolution claimed as its very raison d’étre. It is difficult to find words strong enough to describe the hatred and fear of Bolshevism and of Russia, as its focus, which after 1919 possessed the entire Hungarian ruling class, and indeed, the greater part of the politically conscious population. These fixed feelings were a determinant of Hungarian foreign policy second only in importance (if they did not equal it) to the resentment against the Peace Treaty, and must always be kept in mind when following the course of that story. Meanwhile, Russia’s retreat into near-isolationism after 1923 was for Hungary the one truly bright feature of the international situation. The relationship with Germany, afterwards to bulk so large in Hungary’s

foreign political calculations, also played only a small part of them in the Bethlen Decade. Immediately after the war some plans for overthrowing the entire Treaty System of 1919-20 had, as we have seen,! been discussed between the Hungarian Right and their opposite numbers in Germany and elsewhere. The connections which he then formed proved, as will be seen, of some advantage to Gdmbés when he became Minister President in 1932, but that advantage was only personal. The plans themselves had long since gone to the scrap-heap. Relations between Weimar Germany and Bethlen’s Hungary were correct but unremarkable. This, too, was not regarded by most Hungarians as an unmixed misfortune, for the appearance of a strong Germany would raise problems of its own, by no means all of them agreeable for Hungary. Yet the inactivity of these two States, by far the strongest potential adversaries of the Peace Settle-

ment, left the forces of the status quo, both locally, on the Danube, and in Europe generally, in an overwhelming superiority. France, after her early flirtation with the Hungarian Peace Delegation® and with thoughts of a Habsburg restoration,’? had settled down into the position of pillar-in-chief of the status quo and patron and ally of the Little Entente. She was not generally unfriendly to Hungary, but definitely on the other side of the fence,

especially after the singularly ill-judged enterprise of the “Forged Francs 1 See above, p. 34-5, 72. 2 See the Papers and Documents relating to the Foreign Relations of Hungary, vol. 1 (1919-20) (Budapest, 1939); also F. Deak, Hungary at the Peace Conference (Columbia Univ. Press, 1942,

PP on this, see especially Borovicsény, op. cit., pp. 111 ff. G

82 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Case” had given her direct cause for offence.! Great Britain, although the Bank of England was always sympathetic and helpful in its own important field, was not willing to give any official support to Hungarian revisionism; Lord Rothermere’s campaign for “‘Justice for Hungary” was important in its effects in Hungary, as affording encouragement for the strong appeals for British favour which were so marked a feature of Hungarian policy in later years but of negligible effect on British policy. Poland, a traditional friend of Hungary’s, was always sympathetic to her, but since her conclusion of her

French and Roumanian alliances in 1921 had ceased to give Hungary any active help. Austria, another victim of the Peace Treaties, had been bitterly

estranged from Hungary after 1919 by the Burgenland dispute and by the antagonism between ‘‘Red” Vienna and “‘White’’ Hungary. It is true that Austro-Hungarian relations improved steadily as the Christian Socials pressed the Social Democrats back in Austria. By 1929 political relations

between the two countries had become quite friendly, and commercial relations intimate. Even the Burgenland had ceased to matter much: it was an open secret that the Christian Socials would not object to restoring

it, should occasion arise, while the Hungarians, although unwilling on principle to renounce it, had ceased to resent this small loss very bitterly. But Austria was too small a country to be an effective friend to Hungary unless their association was backed by a third party, and for the time Austria,

bound hand and foot by the undertakings she had had to give in return for financial help, could not stray out of the path of virtue. Her frontier with Austria was nevertheless one across which Hungary could look without seeing an implacable enemy. On all her other frontiers she was, since 1921, gripped in the iron ring of the Little Entente. Before that date, and before Bethlen came into power, some negotiations had taken place which might have led to the cession by Czecho-Slovakia of some of the purely Magyar

areas in Southern Slovakia, combined with an exchange of populations, minority rights for the Slovaks remaining in Hungary after the exchange, and an economic agreement.” But these negotiations, which dragged out

over the question of priorities, were interrupted by Charles’ return to Hungary in March 1921, and when Bethlen took over office, he did not renew

them. His reasons, and his general policy towards the Little Entente, are most accurately described by a Hungarian writer in the following passage:*

‘““Bethlen completely dropped Gratz’ policy of rapprochement, arguing that such a policy would be equivalent to a complete abandon‘ The best account in English of this affair is in the Survey of International Affairs for 1926, but the author of this is, excusably, ignorant of the most intimate details. The original idea was to finance the Slovak autonomist movement by forged Czechoslovak currency, printed in the

Hungarian Cartographical Institute; then the authors, emboldened by success, began forging French currency in support of a general revisionist movement. When the persons concerned began passing these notes, they were caught immediately. The affair caused an immense scandal, since the highest persons in Hungary, including Teleki and Bethlen, were involved as principals or accomplices.

* For these negotiations see Annexe 5 to the Hungarian Documents to the 1946 Peace Conference; Anon., Le Pangermanisme a la Conquéte de la Hongrie (Paris, 1946), p. 146; and I. Borsody, A Magyar-Szlovak Kiegyezés (Budapest, 1946), pp. 33 ff. ° This quotation is taken from an unpublished work by Dr. Gratz, who in 1921 was himself

Hungarian Foreign Minister and in charge of the negotiations which he describes. The quotation perhaps suggests too sharp a contrast between Bethlen’s policy and that of his predecessors: Gratz himself informed the present writer that he would never have accepted BeneS’ terms as a “final settlement,’’ both out of conviction and because he knew the nation would never have agreed to it. But as a summary of Bethlen’s policy, his lines could not be

bettered. fo

FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN VACUO 83 ment of Hungary’s claims, since it could only succeed in the case of a

final acceptance of the Treaty of Trianon. In his view there was no possibility of gaining public opinion for such a policy. On principle, Bethlen was not against an understanding with the neighbouring States. But he held all steps in this direction to be premature so long as Hungary was not in the position to confront those States as an equal partner, or at

least with powerful protectors at her back. The time for such efforts would come, he said, when Hungary also had some trump cards to play.”

The only addition which needs to be made to this admirable summary relates to the differing attitudes adopted by Hungary towards her three neighbours. The very purpose of the interlocked Little Entente Treaties was, of course, to ensure that the three States adopted a common policy towards

Hungary, meaning in practice an equally unrelenting one; and in fact, if during the subsequent fifteen years any one of the three showed any signs of weakening, it was always quickly corrected by its partners. Hungary’s line was naturally just the opposite: to differentiate and to attempt to break the

ring, and her policy was governed not by considerations of immediate advantage but by long-term calculation. Czechoslovakia had been the only one of the three to offer revision after 1919, and indeed offers of a sort were repeated several times (each time, it is true, in rather more nebulous form and with rather more reservations). She was also easily the most civilised of the three in her treatment of the Magyar minority. Yet long before they were specially invited to do by Hitler, the Hungarians pursued Czechoslovakia as a State, and Bene§ as an individual, with an unremitting and venomous hostility. This was partly because they believed (and not wholly without reason) that behind Benes’ comfortable words lay a hostility to themselves equal to their own; and regarded him as the principal author of the post-war settlement in Central Europe. They felt that he had made his country into the keystone of the arch, the removal of which would bring the whole edifice crashing down. And they also thought it the most insecure member of that edifice. They not only realised that it was likely one day to find itself at loggerheads with Germany (not to mention Poland), but were firmly convinced that it was a completely artificial structure into which not only the German, Magyar and Polish minorities but also the Slovaks and Ruthenes had been forced against their will, and from which they would detach themselves as soon as opportunity offered. Bethlen himself took this view in 1921: as Gratz writes, he “‘showed no interest in or desire for co-operation with Czecho-Slovakia.... He declared on more than one occasion that he saw no reason why Hungary should seek to establish closer relations with precisely Czecho-Slovakia, for he regarded that country as the weakest and most jeopardised of all the Successor States.”’

For most of the 1920’s, accordingly, Hungary’s real policy towards Czechoslovakia consisted in an attempt to stimulate discontent not only among its Magyars but, even more, among the Slovaks and Ruthenes—efforts which in fact met with considerable success until the outcome of the Tuka trial imposed a retardation of them, although not their final abandonment. After the breakdown of a few early, rather nebulous negotiations for the 1 In 1928 M. Tuka, a leading figure in the Slovak Popular Party, was tried for high treason (commerce with Hungary). He was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. The Hungarians stopped subsidising Slovak leaders after this, because, as one said to me frankly there were so many of them, and all so unimpovtant, that it was not worth the money.

84 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH establishment of an independent Transylvania as a sort of link between Hungary and Roumania,! Hungary never seriously considered a rapprochement with Roumania: the mutual dislike between the two peoples was too acute, the number of Magyars in Transylvania too large, the possibilities of local revision too nearly non-existent. Hungary might for tactical reasons postpone presenting her bill to Roumania until after she had settled with Czechoslovakia, but she could never seriously consider writing it off, or even writing it down. The only State of the three with which Hungary might have considered

the possibility of a separate composition was Yugoslavia. One school of thought, indeed, regarded Yugoslavia as a creation no less artificial than Czechoslovakia and the Serbs as the alien representatives of Balkan and

Eastern barbarism. This school favoured working for the break-up of Yugoslavia by fostering Croat separatism, as Slovak separatism was being fostered in the north. On the other hand, many Hungarians felt a considerable liking and respect (which were to some extent reciprocated) for the Serb people; saw in them natural allies, and were willing, if Yugoslavia would break away from the Little Entente, to pay for this by renouncing Hungary’s relatively small losses in the Voivodina. Hungary’s policy towards Yugoslavia was therefore largely governed by her estimate of Croat feelings. If the Croats were restive, she could not resist taking advantage of the fact; if the Croats proved obdurate, but Belgrade seemed approachable, Hungary would try Belgrade. The two policies operated alternately (or all too often, simultaneously) during the years covered by our story. Actually, the Croats in the early 1920’s were blindly following Stjepan Radic, who was everything by turns and nothing long, except that he was always anti-Hungarian. On the other hand, after an initial period of very bad feelings owing to the exceptionally crude treatment by the Yugoslavs of their Magyar minority, there came in 1926 a moment when a rapprochement with Belgrade seemed possible. Overtures were made and accepted on both sides, and Hungary even secretly offered Yugoslavia a Treaty of Friendship, non-Aggression and Arbitration.’ This was a long shot: the Hungarians hardly expected it to come off, although, had it done so, they would have followed it up.* It did not come

off, of course: Yugoslavia’s partners in’ the Little Entente saw to that, although even in this respect it served a later purpose, as a precedent to be recalled when the same policy was taken up again.* But the offer to Yugoslavia had also a second purpose, to which its authors perhaps attached more importance:° that of jumping Italy into action. In every respect but one (that one being her weakness and unreliability) Italy seemed Hungary’s predestined friend and ally in chief. There was a very old tradition of mutual co-operation and support in political, religious and other fields, ranging from the donation of the royal Crown to St. Stephen by Pope Sylvester II in A.D. 1000 to close co-operation in the stormy years * There was even some discussion of the possibility of a Personal Union under the King of Roumania, but this was soon found to be impracticable: the King of Roumania was obliged by the Roumanian Constitution to belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, while the wearer of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen must be a Roman Catholic. 2 Sz. I. MS. 5 Apor to C. A. M. * See below, pp. 196-7, and passim.

° An article by G. Gratz written in Magyar Szemile in 1931 suggested that this was the primary

purpose of the move, the authorship of which he ascribed to Bethlen.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN VACUO 85 between 1848 and 1867. The situation created by the Peace Treaties seemed to leave the two countries with a strong common interest against Slavdom

in general and against Yugoslavia in particular, and also, more remotely, against Germany. In the first years, indeed, Italy’s attitude had proved very disappointing to the Hungarians: she had been tied by a war-time alliance with Roumania, had then concluded a Treaty of Friendship with Yugoslavia, and when France played with Monarchist restorations in Hungary, had taken

the side of the Little Entente in opposing this. Moreover, the Left-wing Governments which survived in Italy until October 1922 were unsympathetic

to counter-revolutionary Hungary. Mussolini, however, felt drawn at least to the Szeged element in Hungary, and even before the March on Rome had given a deputation of three Awakening Hungarians who visited him in Milan a written promise that if he came into power, he would support Hungarian revisionism.+

He had been disappointingly inactive during his first years of power, apparently regarding Hungary as in the bag; but the rapprochement between

Budapest and Belgrade duly frightened him into action. In April 1927 Bethlen visited Rome, and on the 5th signed there a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation.

The immediate positive effects of the Treaty were not very large. The material advantages which Italy could offer her client were few: for financial

help, and even for economic advantage, Hungary remained far more dependent on France, Great Britain and the U.S.A. Partly for that reason, and partly because the Treaty was not universally popular in Hungary itself —the Legitimists, still a considerable force, had not yet lost all faith in France, the bankers did not want the City and Wall Street offended, the Left would have preferred a less aggressive attitude towards the Little Entente, while the military still remembered Italy’s conduct in the First World War with deep resentment and contempt—the Hungarians talked much less in the late 1920’s than they were to do a decade later about the immutable nature and inestimable value of their links with Italy. Mussolini, on his side, found Bethlen (who, whatever he might be, was no Fascist) only halfsympathetic, disapproved of his “feudal” ideas, and disliked several aspects of his policy, in particular the great efforts which he was expending at the time (to the neglect of much else) on the particular interests of his own narrower circle in connection with the ““Transylvanian optants” question. It was probably with intent that he put into the wording of his treaty hardly anything that was not in his treaties with Czechoslovakia and Roumania. Mussolini was, however, now launched on his forward policy in South-

Eastern Europe. In the course of the following year his relations with Roumania cooled off perceptibly: his relations with Yugoslavia assumed the character of a cold war; and he had publicly and demonstratively declared in favour of Hungarian revisionism.’ Hungary had now one official friend, and for the time one enemy in chief, in the shape of Yugoslavia. After the murder of Radic the Hungarians were able to come to a privy understanding with Radicé’s successor, Maéek. At a secret meeting between Matéek and a Hungarian diplomat,’ held in 1929, it was agreed that Hungary and Croatia were to co-operate, as occasion arose, 1 Baross to C. A. M. 2 See in particular his speech of 5th June 1928. 8’ Baron Apor, who supplied this information to C. A. M.

86 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH to liberate Croatia—on what terms was not defined. Matek wanted a personal union under one King, but the Hungarians, arguing that it was unwise to base plans on a foundation which, given the widespread opposition (strong also in Hungary) to a Habsburg restoration, might never come into being, said that Hungary would be satisfied if Croatia was free. If the plans came to fruition, Croatia was to keep the disputed Medjumurje (Murak6z),’ while Maéek renounced all claims on the Bacska and promised to influence the Bunyevci in that area to take the Hungarian side.”

For a time nothing active came of this agreement. The Hungarian Consul in Zagreb, through whom the contact was maintained, kept touch with the Croat Peasant Party and reported on feeling among them, but no

more important conversations took place for a considerable period. Hungary’s contacts with the extremist UstaSi were much slighter than Italy’s. They were not maintained in Croatia at all; such secret encouragement and help, in the form of money or arms, as Hungary could supply was given largely in Berlin or Vienna, or, if in Hungary, through such tortuous channels that, if discovered, it could be repudiated as the work of irresponsible minor officials: it was not desired to close the door entirely to the other policy.

The Croats wanted military help from Hungary if they rose.* The Hungarian General Staff objected that they were too weak to attack Yugoslavia unaided, especially as the Yugoslavs would in such case probably turn the bulk of their army against Hungary. The upshot was that the Italians were drawn in and a secret Italo-Hungarian Military Convention, in which

the Croats were ‘“‘consulting parties,’ was concluded. The Hungarians promised to hold the Yugoslavs in the Bacska, and if they had any troops to spare, to move them to the Klagenfurt basin, where Italian forces were to meet them. The whole thing was, however, somewhat in the air, as the Austrian Government of the time was not one with which the project could be discussed.° It was put to them later, but no definite agreement concluded with them, and the Hungarians themselves were not anxious to press the plan, being doubtful whether the Italian Army was capable of carrying out its share

of the bargain when it came to the point. Indeed, they never took the Convention very seriously, regarding it chiefly as a means for keeping Italy’s interest in themselves alive and for getting arms out of her,® since under one of the clauses in the Convention Italy gave Hungary a secret 300 million lire armaments credit. It may in fact be argued that the chief beneficiaries of the whole plot were those tourists who were afterwards able to motor over the excellent strategic

roads built in connection with it: the Fernpassstrasse in Austria and the Szentgotthard-Budapest road in Hungary. Italy had by this time also established a virtual protectorate over Albania and a close friendship with Bulgaria, so that her friendship brought Hungary into a bloc which was already beginning to challenge French supremacy on

the Danube. That bloc was, indeed, far weaker than its rival, so that it 1 See C. A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors, pp. 378-9. The population of this area was overwhelmingly Croat, but it had not formed a recognised part of historic Croatia. * For the Bunyevci, see Macartney, op. cit., pp. 382, 406, and passim. 3 The following from Apor and Nadas. 4 Mr. Montgomery refers to this agreement on p. 81 of his Hungary, the Unwilling Satellite, but dates it too late and does not get the details quite correct. 6 It has been alleged, although not proved, that in 1927 Styria under Rintelen concluded a private treaty with Italy for the case of an Italo-Yugoslav war. ® Apor to C. A. M.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN VACUO 87 seemed clear that Hungary could still whistle for revision unless and until the equation was altered again by the addition of some new factor: the entry into Danubian politics of either Germany or Russia, or both. But the acquisition of these definite friends, together with that of the goodwill of Poland, Austria and, to a certain platonic extent, Great Britain, was an achievement for which Bethlen had cause to feel pride and Hungary satisfaction. In one respect, however, Hungary had made hardly any progress at all. Horthy’s “National Army” had been reduced in 1921 to the figure prescribed by the Treaty of 35,000 men, and its armaments to the prescribed 105 light guns and 140 trench mortars. Even these consisted of stocks from the First

World War, and those not of the best, being mainly the inferior material which the k. und k. authorities had doled out to the Hungarian Honvéd. Like all the ex-enemy states, Hungary had, of course, employed her best power and ingenuity to circumvent the restrictions imposed on her. She had as we have described, applied various devices for keeping on the active list officers and long-service N.C.O.s sufficient for a much larger force, but she could do little to remedy the shortage of material, since the vigilance of the Control Commissions, reinforced in her case by representatives of the Little Entente and aided by the open nature of the country and the concentration of almost the entire national armaments production in three or four centres (notably the great Manfred Weiss works in Csepel), had made illicit production almost impossible. During the first decade she had really produced only the permitted types of small-arms: rifles and S.A.A. After 1927 the control had relaxed, and she had begun to experiment with

new weapons, slightly to expand her munitions industry, to prolong the training period for O.R.s and to perfect the training of the officers.' The infantry and cavalry were reorganised, some heavy batteries added to the artillery, and a few aeroplanes obtained secretly from Italy, while the manu-

facture of aircraft engines was also started on a small scale. The armed forces were now organised in seven ‘“‘mixed brigades” (vegyes dandarok),”

the peace strength of each of which was one three-battalion regiment of infantry and a cyclist battalion; two regiments of cavalry, and a battery of artillery to each battalion of infantry or regiment of cavalry. Each regiment or battery was duplicated on mobilisation. There was also a force of Frontier Guards and a small Danube Flotilla. In spite of the prohibition against conscription, the able-bodied male population was called up on reaching military age and passed through a form of military training, while a thorough

pre-military training was given to all boys through a compulsory Youth Organisation known as the Levente. All these expedients, however, still left Hungary in a state of almost measureless military inferiority, both actual and potential, compared with her neighbours. It is necessary to stress very strongly the importance of the factor—often entirely ignored by historians—of Hungary’s military inferiority in the events to be described. The more one studies the story, the more plainly it emerges

as a great shadow cast over the entire picture. The effects may have been good or bad. If Hungary had possessed an adequate army, she might have been tempted into military action long before she ventured it. On the other 1 See the article “Il risorto esercito ungherese,” by the Hungarian General, A. Naray, in Rassegna d’Ungheria, April 1941.

Depots were: I. Budapest; II. Székesfehérvar; III. Sopron-Komarom; IV. Pécs; V.2 TheDebrecen; VI. Szeged; VII. Miskolcz. .

88 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH hand, she would have been in some position to resist when pressure was applied upon her to take such action against her will. As things were she was, for lack of an army, practically unable ever to follow an independent policy, for better or worse. The historian’s task is complicated by the circumstance that this cardinal factor was hardly ever publicly admitted by any party to the events which it so largely governed.

CHAPTER SIX

CRASH P to 1929 everything went well with the reconstruction. Hungary’s prosperity increased year by year, and, with its increase, Bethlen’s prestige rose to extraordinary heights. It was not possible to discover,

in the Press or even in more serious publications, any reference to the precarious character of the pillars on which the whole structure rested. Then in the autumn of 1929 came the fall in world wheat prices which set one of those two pillars tottering. The second pillar, that of Hungary’s international credit, was still unshaken, and even to all appearances more solid than ever. In the spring of 1930 Bethlen achieved a considerable success when he negotiated a joint settlement of the questions of the Transylvanian Optants and of Hungary’s

reparation debt, which was fixed at a relatively modest figure.t Her full financial sovereignty was re-established and the prospect held out to her that the Powers would support her application for a second, substantial reconstruction loan. In this year she borrowed (again nearly all on short term and from private lenders) no less than 320-3 m.p., which was more than she had borrowed in any single year since that of the League Loan and almost exactly

three times as much as was called in. Of this, the Government borrowed 95-7 m.p. and guaranteed another 159 m.p. The immediate difficulties arose therefore out of the diminished income

of the farmers, which, as we have said before, affected the entire price structure of the country and the prosperity of all classes of its population. The fall was not yet sensational (the average annual price of Tisza wheat in 1930 was still 18-83 gold crowns, against 21-86 in 1929), and the Government did not at first expect it to be lasting. For a time it kept up the internal price, firstly, by a complicated system of speculative Governmental buying’; then, when this proved too expensive, by a new and ingenious system of subsidies, the ‘‘boletta.”? These measures staved off anything like a landslide, but the year was still far less prosperous than its predecessor. Exports fell heavily from 1,038-5 to 911-7 m.p., and in spite of the continued flow of loan money, imports had to be cut (from 1,087-7 m.p. in 1929 to 823-4 m.p.). Among the

imports cut were those of raw materials for industry. Factory industrial production fell from an index figure of 292 in 1929 (1921=100) to 254 and unemployment rose to a figure which was probably not less than 20 per cent.

of all industrial workers, whose position was the more miserable since Hungary had no system of unemployment insurance.* There were strikes and 1 Besides the annual average payment of 10 million gold crowns agreed in 1926, she was to pay an annual average sum of 13-5 million gold crowns from 1944-66. 2 For details, see Hevesy, op. cit., p. 498. 4 Anreed figures are difficult to obtain, but the Sztatisztikai Szemle of 1938 (p. 33) gives the unemployment on the day of the census taken in that year at 224,103 (182,450 men and 41,653 women), of whom 143,077 were from industry; 24,405 from agriculture and forestry; 21,730 from trade and banking, and 12,204 day labourers: 100,020 of the total unemployed were in Greater Budapest. The average annual number of workers in factories that year was 212,340 (1929, 237,291).

90 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH demonstrations, including on Ist September the biggest and most hostile demonstration against the Government which Budapest had seen for a decade. In spite of the subsidies, agricultural prices dropped from an index figure

of 116-1 (1913, 100) to 84-6, the “‘agrarian scissors’’ widening to the enormous angle of 47-3 (1928, 5-6; 1929, 15-8). The weight of agricultural indebtedness began to be felt as a formidable burden, particularly by the smaller men, who were proportionately much more heavily indebted than the large landlords,! and, of course, less well fitted to bear the strain. It was in these circles that the first symptoms of revolt from within against Bethlen’s system made themselves perceptible. The movement was not at first specifically oppositional; the Minister of Agriculture himself presided over one of its meetings. But in October 1930 a group of Deputies, led by M. Gaton Gaal, seceded from the Government Party, after some weeks of open difference with its official policy of strong, and, in their view, inequitable

encouragement of heavy industry to the detriment of other interests, particularly those of agriculture. This group now constituted itself as an ‘Independent Smallholders’ Party.’ This party was definitely oppositional, yet it was not violently hostile to the Government—Gaal himself was a cautious and conciliatory man who had twice been President of the House and once even a vice-President of the Government Party’? and was genuinely concerned not to make political capital but to get the economic grievances of the class for which he spoke remedied. Meanwhile, the world crisis was spreading and the problem extending

from one of getting reasonable prices for agricultural produce to one of finding any market at all for them. Various attempts, with the details of which we need not concern ourselves, to arrange co-operation between the

agrarian countries of East Central Europe all broke down, partly on differences between the countries themselves, partly on the blank refusal of

other countries to give them the concessions for which they asked. The countries whose industry was strong enough to protect their agriculture preferred to take that course. Germany, who throughout the crisis caused by world over-production of wheat steadily increased her own area under wheat, raised her import duty in October 1930 from the high figure of 7°5 R.M.

per quintal to the prohibitive one of 25 R.M. In 1930 she only took 1-3 per cent. of Hungary’s wheat exports. On 15th December 1930 Czechoslovakia denounced her commercial treaty with Hungary—a far heavier blow still, for Czechoslovakia had been one of the biggest buyers from Hungary, especially of agricultural produce.* The only two countries with which Hungary had an appreciable active trading balance in this year were Italy and Austria, each of which concluded a short-term agreement with her. 1931 opened with black prospects everywhere. World agricultural prices ' The average indebtedness per hold was 343 peng6 on the smaller estates and 121 on the larger. This difference is due not only to the greater ease with which the big landlords could get accommodation but also to the fact that the large estates, especially where containing much forest land, required less investment per hold. Further, many of the smallholdings were new,

and had had to equip themselves after the inflation, while the big estates had done their borrowing before that event, which had freed them from the consequences of it.

* It was Gaal who, as President of the House, had stopped the clock in February 1922 in order to get the reintroduction of the open franchise through Parliament (see above, p. 44, n.). He was, incidentally, not a smallholder at all, but a medium landowner. Many of his followers had no connection with the land at all. * Hungary’s exports to Czechoslovakia in 1930 were of the value of 153,237,000 pengé (16-8 per cent. of her total exports) and her imports 172,918,000 (21-0 per cent.). The figures for 1931 were 23,805,000 (4:2 per cent.) and 43,319,000 (9-2 per cent.) respectively.

CRASH 9] were now falling at a rate which reduced any measures which the Government could take in the interests of its own farmers to the level of mere palliatives. In spite of the boletta, the total national income from agriculture fell in the financial year 1930-31 by nearly one-third. Unemployment was rising still further, and with the decline in the yields from both direct taxation (owing to farmers’ defaults') and indirect taxation (owing to decreased expenditure)

revenue was falling further (the financial year showed a total revenue of 1,398-6 m.p. against 1,423-9 for 1929-30 and 1,483-2 for 1928-29). Expendi-

ture, on the other hand, was the highest on record (1,628-1 m.p.). Besides its expenditure on subsidies to the wheat-growers, the Government had given

orders outside the Budget to the tune of 150 m.p., mainly for the relief of unemployment; the total extra-budgetary expenditure during the year, it was afterwards revealed, was no less than 450 m.p. To meet these outgoings, the Government had given the banks acceptances, 50 million of which had been taken by the Credit Bank alone. Meanwhile, the low prices which Hungarian exports were fetching, and the difficulty of marketing them abroad at all, were raising in acute form the problem of Hungary’s foreign indebtedness. This now amounted to about 3,000 m.p., of which the Government was itself the direct debtor for about half, and had made itself responsible, in greater or less degree, for a further considerable fraction borrowed by other public bodies. Its own borrowings from the banks gave it a vital interest in much of the rest. The total service of the debt ran at about 200 m.p. annually; further, 400 m.p. to 500 m.p. was short-term debt.

The debt, although proportionately heavier than that of any other Danubian country,” would not have been crushing given the maintenance of high prices and of continued confidence until the trade gap had been closed; but the fall in the value of Hungary’s exports in 1930 had already driven the Government to use up a large proportion of its reserves in gold and devisen. The Bank of International Settlements helped with a rediscount credit of 21 million dollars and £1,000,000, and the Reichsbank gave a credit of 5 million dollars. But there were quite insufficient reserves left with which to meet any sudden call on the short-term money. On 11th May came the failure of the Austrian Creditanstalt, with which great institution several of the Hungarian banks, and in particular the General Credit Bank (as important in the Hungarian economy as the Creditanstalt in the Austrian), were intimately connected. Thus, although the circumstances which brought about the failure of the Austrian bank were notoriously quite special, the effects of its collapse could not fail to be felt in Hungary, and

were almost certain to be followed by further economic and financial disturbances. These, in their turn, might well lead to a dangerous swing of public opinion against the regime. Bethlen felt that the best way to forestall

this and to secure the continuance of his own system (at the same time providing the world with a demonstration that the country stood solidly behind him) would be to make a fresh Parliament, subservient to himself, while it was still possible to do so without conspicuous pressure on the electorate. Accordingly, although the Parliament had still six months to

were pending.

1 In February 1931 over 10,000 foreclosures on farms had been announced and many more

2 The total debt per head of the population was 432 gold francs. The figures for other East European countries were: Greece, 378; Austria, 361; Roumania, 292; Yugoslavia, 235; Poland, 139; Czechoslovakia, 138; Bulgaria, 118.

92 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH run, and although only a few weeks earlier he had specifically denied the need

for an earlier dissolution, he now, on 6th June, abruptly dissolved it and ordered new elections. These, which took place at the end of the month, duly returned him to power at the head of a very large majority. Of the 245 Deputies entering the new Parliament, 152 belonged to Bethlen’s own party and 30 to the Christian

Party, which was in good relations with it. Several of the 25 non-party Deputies could also be relied on to support the Government. The open and consistent opposition thus consisted of only 38 Deputies—14 members of the newly organised Independent Smallholders’ Party, 14 Social Democrats, 7

Liberals, 2 Christian Opposition and one ‘“‘Hungarian National Radical.’ The gentleman last mentioned, E. Bajcsy-Zsilinsky, was the only professing Right Radical in the whole Parliament. Bethlen’s own followers contained a fairly large ““Agrarian Group’? who were destined to prove an uncertain factor later, but the majority were men who differed little from Bethlen himself in their social and political outlook, if not in their social origin. They were hardly the fine flower of the consolidation, but they were its authentic fruit. Bethlen, who a few weeks earlier had celebrated his ten years’ jubilee as Minister President amid much glorification and adulation from the entire Press, looked set for another ten years. The joke current at the time was that he was waiting for the Holy Trinity to enlarge its numbers to four before moving on. He did not even alter his Cabinet. His action seems, in fact, to have restored confidence, for Hungary did not suffer directly from the Austrian credit crisis. Parliament, after its first formal meeting, adjourned for the summer recess and most of the Ministers went on holiday; Bethlen himself went abroad. But in early July the financial crisis spread to Germany, and thence to Hungary. Immediately afterwards much of the money on short-term loan was called in, including almost all that on loan from Germany. There was a flight from the peng6o estimated at 5,000 million pengd. On 13th July, the day on which the German Danatbank closed its doors, the full force of the hurricane hit Hungary. It is not possible to describe here in detail the expedients by which the

Hungarian ministers on the spot met this whirlwind. In this situation of extreme urgency they took certain emergency steps such as closing the banks

and the bourse, restricting dealings in foreign currency and imposing a partial moratorium on foreign obligations. Parliament was then convoked and asked to grant retrospective sanction for these measures, to grant the Government further powers, for the duration of the crisis, to issue, subject to safeguards which were also provided, such Orders in Council as it deemed necessary for the maintenance of economic and financial stability,? and to * Actually he had taken precautionary measures for this possibility, including the replacement of some Foispans by more reliable men, as early as December 1930 (Kovrig to C. A. M.).

> No two figures for electoral results in Hungary ever quite agree, partly because of the frequent fusions and splits, partly because representatives of one-man parties are described in some lists by the party names, in others, as independents. The above list counts as Liberals the two National Democrats who joined the Liberals after the elections. * The provision now enacted was that emergency Orders in Council had the force of law, but had to be submitted to a Parliamentary Committee of 33 (11 members from the Upper House and 22 from the Lower), whose verdict on them was, however, not binding on the Government. In the event, Hungary never, up to the end of our story, regarded the crisis as having passed, and this provision remained indefinitely in force. The scope of the authorisation was later extended to cover production, and the number of members on the Committee (which after the first stage, when the Opposition refused to participate in it, became in practice an all-party one

CRASH 93 approve an emergency programme which the Government had worked out for balancing the Budget by cuts in expenditure and increases of taxation. The Government then turned to the one large country in Europe which was still financially stable, France, and on 13th August, after feverish negotiations,

a contract was signed for a new international loan of £5,000,000, mainly subscribed in France. With this the worst of the immediate financial crisis was over, and the restrictions on the financial market in Hungary, although not those on dealings with foreign countries, were raised. Then came a political dénouement which electrified Hungary. On 19th

August Bethlen resigned. The next day Horthy entrusted Count Gyula Karolyi with the formation of a new Government. Rumours naturally hummed round this unexpected event. That most popular abroad was that France had made the dismissal of Bethlen a condi-

tion of the granting of the new loan. This, in fact, was almost the exact opposite of the truth.t France had looked askance on Bethlen in earlier days, particularly at the time of the Forged Francs Affair, but had changed her attitude towards him completely in 1930, when he announced Hungary’s neutrality on the question of the proposed Austro-German Customs Union. He was now in high favour with her; indeed, a friend has described the French loan (which Bethlen negotiated personally) as recognition of, if not direct reward for, his attitude over the Customs Union. Actually, she attached no

specific political conditions to the loan, but seems to have assumed that Bethlen would be handling the proceeds of it, and even showed her displeasure at his resignation by replacing her Minister to Budapest. Neither is it the case that his Cabinet rebelled against him, nor that he disapproved of the emergency measures taken in his absence.” But he had been deeply chagrined by the scenes which took place when the Government met Parliament. The revelations which then ensued of the large discrepancy between the realities of the country’s financial position and the picture of it which had previously been presented to the public, coupled with the realisa-

tion that drastic economies, involving grievous hardships, were now inescapable, had sent a wave of bitterness over the country and had generated widespread hostility to the regime which had made these things possible. The Opposition had sharply attacked several Ministers, in particular Count Klebelsberg, for extravagance, and had accused the regime in general of following a policy beneficial to a few individuals but not in the wide national

interest. They had also been favoured by fortune in that the Minister for Social Welfare had recently come across traces of large misappropriations of public funds under his predecessor; enquiries had been initiated, and some details had leaked out. Bethlen was held responsible for a system which had made possible extravagance, misdirection of effort and corruption. So long accustomed to adulation, Bethlen was not the man to confront on which the parties were represented proportionately to their Parliamentary strengths) was raised to 42. The Government’s powers were renewed each June, the debate on this ‘‘Enabling Bill,’ with that on the Budget, becoming the main Parliamentary occasions of the year. From 1939, as we shall see, the Government also took exceptional powers in other fields; these were renewed every four months.

1 The following lines are based on an article written by Baron Moricz Kornfeld, a close

friend of Bethlen’s, in Magyar Szemle, October 1931, summarised in Pester Lloyd, 30th October.

Baron Kornfeld has confirmed and supplemented this to me personally. L. Baranyai, of the National Bank, has also confirmed the absence of political conditions to the loan, further pointing out that Hungarian foreign policy did not change when it was received. 2 Personal, T. Zsitvay to C. A. M.

94 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH with philosophy the “‘wave of hatred’? which now poured over him, in terms which were sometimes less than just and certainly less than generous, coming from the mouths of his former sycophants. The future, when the economies got going, would clearly be less palatable still, and, as he said to a friend,} ‘‘he did not feel himself possessed of sufficient energy to carry through to the end, a second time, the distasteful task of ‘Sanierung.’”? In any case, he was tired of public affairs, and had at the time, as all Hungary knew, one special, absorbing interest for which he was already inclined to neglect his desk. The Regent could, perhaps, still have persuaded him to stay in office, but the Regent had begun to lose, if not confidence in Bethlen, at least patience

with him. He told a friend, with irritation, that he was “‘tired of being a rubber stamp.’ In the autumn of 1930,° notes signed by the then head of Horthy’s civilian Chancellery, S. Vértessy, had begun to reach the Departmental Ministries asking for information on various points. Once Horthy convoked a Crown Council, a measure which ordinarily took place only

when very important decisions were to be taken. He questioned each Minister in detail on the position in his Ministry, taking careful notes. After this, the Ministers were ordered to send in monthly reports to the Palace. Finally, in December 1930, when the Foreign Minister, M. Walk6, who

disapproved of Bethlen’s financial policy, asked leave to resign, Horthy pressed Bethlen to appoint Gyula Karolyi in his place: meaning, it seems, to “groom” Karolyi for the succession to Bethlen (probably without telling Karolyi, who was no man to like being fitted for the shoes of a man not yet dead, nor proposing to die).4 | The change was apparently decided between the two men after the Govern-

ment had met Parliament in July; for having acted outside the law, the Government had decided that even if Parliament voted it confidence—as had been done—it should tender its formal resignation. When Bethlen did this,

Horthy, to his surprise, accepted it, and Bethlen, perhaps in a fit of pique, did not argue against his dismissal. He consented, however, to remain in office until the French loan was through. He said nothing to his colleagues, and when on 19th August he asked them for their resignations, they supposed

that this was another routine gesture. It was not until Bethlen, having walked out of the room with the paper in his pocket, failed to return, that they discovered that they had resigned in earnest.°

Thus remarkably ended Bethlen’s prolonged tenure of office, but the event was not meant by any party to entail a change of system, except in the sense that Puritanic orthodoxy was to replace Cavalier orthodoxy. Bethlen himself did not mean his absence from control to be prolonged, and retained the Leadership of the Government Party. There was no suggestion of new elections, so that the Parliament remained that ‘‘made’’ by Bethlen a few

weeks earlier. Karolyi made only slight Ministerial changes. At the Regent’s request he kept on the following members of Bethlen’s old team: 1 Personal, T. Zsitvay to C. A. M. * Apor to C. A. M. ° Barczy, personal to C. A. M. * Another version, given by M. Kovrig, is that Bethlen himself had suggested the “grooming” of Karolyi for his succession, so that if a moment arose when he himself was violently attacked, he could save his system by sacrificing his person. He must, of course, have been to some extent a consenting party, and there are perhaps no scales in which the exact measure of his acquiescence in the operation could be weighed. But it seems fairly certain that it was not solely of his devising. ® So Goémb6s told Baross, who told C. A. M.

CRASH 95 Gémbés, Zsitvay, Mayer (who now became Minister without Portfolio) and Ernszt (who now coupled the Ministry of Cults with that of Social Welfare). Walko came back to the Foreign Ministry, while Karolyi kept Finance in

his own hands. Thus the only new Ministers were those of Agriculture (B. Ivady) and the Interior (Ferencz Keresztes-Fischer). Of these, Ivady was an orthodox “‘Liberal-Conservative’’; we shall return later to describe more fully the more complex and important character of Keresztes-Fischer. Count Gyula Karolyi himself, a cousin of Mihaly K4rolyi’s but a very different man, was a member of one of Hungary’s wealthiest and most famous

landowning families. He was a man of the most rigid honour, and of a personal unpretentiousness which bordered on the ascetic. Every description of his character includes the word “‘Puritan.”” He also had a strong social sense. To the tenants and employees of his own big estates he was a model landlord. He exacted low rents, paid high wages and spent not only money but time and conscientious thought on providing them with good housing and

up-to-date welfare institutions. He advocated the same course to others. But if paternal, he was also implacably conservative. He thought the system of peasant proprietorship to be neither desirable in itself nor even desired by the peasants, and was thus out of pure and selfless conviction an implacable enemy of land reform. Similarly, he was against the workers’ possessing any political power or even organising. He was, in short, a pillar of the antique world, in the best sense of the term so far as honour and selflessness were concerned; the most unyielding in his attitude towards changing times. He had now to cope with the situation which Bethlen had created, without

the disadvantage of the personal unpopularity under which Bethlen was momentarily suffering, but also without the authority and prestige which he

still enjoyed in wide circles, his long experience and tactical ability, his elasticity and adaptability, and without his persuasive power, for Karolyi was a bad speaker; without even his position of control over the Government Party, to nearly all the members of which he was, into the bargain, a complete stranger. As he did not make friends quickly or easily, this was an important circumstance.

During the next months the Hungarians were implacably taught their lesson. The Government, which ever since July had been pouring out emergency decrees designed to increase revenue and cut expenditure, together

with many measures for the protection of debtors and tenants and the preservation, under these conditions, of credit, invited the Financial Com-

mittee of the League of Nations to carry out an investigation into the economic and financial position of the country. The delegates arrived in October, and after only a few days’ work completed and published their findings. These were simple and, it can hardly be denied, soulless. Ignoring such factors as the high-power salesmanship, the motive behind which was the commission to be pocketed by the issuing houses and underwriters, which had almost forced much of Hungary’s debt on her; the over-production by Western farmers and protective tariff policies of Western countries which accounted for her export difficulties; or the savage treaty which was the real cause of her swollen Civil Service, it simply stated the truths that she had over-borrowed and allowed her Budget to become unbalanced, and proposed a series of exclusively and strictly deflationary measures to repair those sins. 1 He passed this portfolio to Baron F. Koranyi on 16th December.

96 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Imports should be cut to make possible the service of the foreign debt out of a favourable balance of trade (which, given the circumstances, meant reducing them to the bare minimum sufficient to pay for essential raw materials, and would not even then yield the desired result unless the West was willing to

take Hungarian exports); State expenditure should be cut to 830 million peng6, a 50 per cent. reduction which must mean widespread dismissals and drastic cuts in salaries and pensions. For the next months Hungary continued to tread, although not so fast as the League experts had recommended, the painfulroad of financial orthodoxy.

Exports, measured in terms of money values, were still falling, partly in consequence of the continued fall in prices (wheat was now down to 13-18 gold crowns), partly to the difficulty of finding any markets at all; the total for the year was only 570-4 m.p. Thus the beautiful vision of the nation’s creditors of seeing their money flow back to them in an uninterrupted and undiminished stream was clearly unrealisable. Although none of the debts were repudiated, or even funded, a moratorium on all foreign debts except the League Loan was put into operation on Ist January 1932 and standstill agreements with most of Hungary’s foreign creditors were reached in the course of the next few months. Nor could the Budget be balanced. Although fresh taxation was imposed, this soon reached the limit of rentability, and against an increased yield of 33 m.p. from direct taxation and an additional 10 m.p. from a turn-over tax there had to be set heavy falls in the yields of customs, excise, other forms of indirect taxation and receipts from the State railways, so that the total revenue went down by nearly 200 m.p. (1,208-0 against 1,398.7). Miuscellaneous expenditure was cut very heavily (Karolyi used to set a personal example by going to his office every day by bus) and , Civil Service salaries were cut by 20-25 per cent. in the higher grades and 15-20 per cent. in the lower. As, however, there were few or no dismissals (the figures for 1931-32 show a decrease of only 323—42,538 against 42,861—in the number of Civil Servants, and actual increases of 2,000 each in the figures of other State employees and of pensioners), total expenditure fell by only some 150 m.p. (to 1,387-7 m.p.) and the year closed with a heavy budgetary deficit of 180 m.p.

Another of the Government’s main preoccupations was the search for markets, but this met with little success while the financial crisis was at its most acute. Hungary’s trade with almost all countries was lower in 1931 than in 1930, and lower in 1932 than in 1931. Her best customer was Austria, which continued to take a round 30 per cent. of her exports, although 30 per cent. of a declining figure. Only Germany emerged suddenly from her shell in 1931 and concluded a special agreement which enabled Hungary to export to her nearly half of her 1931 wheat surplus (which that year was exceptionally

small), Austria taking most of the rest.1_ The German buy was, however, a special, ad hoc one, not repeated. In the next few months the question of markets became subterraneously linked with that of politics. In September 1931 France had forced Austria

to renounce her projected customs union with Germany, and was now obviously hoping to exploit her power position to consolidate Danubian Europe economically under her own political patronage. Neither Austria ‘ The date of the Hungarian agreement was 18th July 1931. Similar agreements were concluded with Roumania and Bulgaria. The wheat was exported in 1932, but seems to have come from the 1931 harvest.

CRASH 97 nor Hungary wished to buy its economic outlets at the expense of its political

freedom of action, and as early as the autumn of 1931 the two countries exchanged secret Notes “pledging both States to the closest political cooperation.” In January 1932 the Hungarian Government then took the important step of making a very strong appeal to Italy. It said that Hungary’s

economic position was impossibly difficult: she was unable to place her agricultural exports, or not at prices such as would enable her national economy to survive. The only solution for her would be to conclude a customs union with one or more neighbouring States able to take her agricultural produce at rates above world market prices. She suggested that Hungary, Italy and Austria should establish closer economic relations, to be developed gradually into a customs union. The Italians replied expressing a fear that Germany would object, but the Hungarian Government replied that if the Austrian Government made the

proposal, giving private assurances to the Reich, Germany would not object.”

Austria and Hungary had already introduced a system of mutual preferences, the so-called Brocchi Agreements, which were meant as a first step towards eventual de facto customs union,*? and Germany did not object.

The system was now extended to Italy. But if Germany did not object, France did. On Ist March M. Tardieu floated his so-called Plan (the details of which, it is no secret, were inspired from Prague) for organising Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania and Yugoslavia into ‘“‘a_ special economic system with extra mutual preferences, outside the m.f.n. clause, no import or export restrictions, and possibly a common currency.” France, he said,* would support this plan and was willing, if it was accepted, to sub-

scribe to a reconstruction loan.

The implications of the plan were, of course, political, as M. BeneS made clear when, while advocating it, he laid down the conditions of a “political

truce’ and preliminary agreement between the Danubian States themselves before any discussion with outside Powers took place at all; for “political truce,’’ coming from him, meant agreement not to question the status quo. The Hungarians did not raise the political point, confining their objections to the Plan to the economic argument (which was also put forward

by Roumania) that the Plan would not give a large enough outlet for their agricultural surplus and that German and Italian help was essential. They were saved the necessity of choosing whether or not to raise the political issue by the refusal of Germany and Italy to accept the Plan (to which Great Britain

also raised objections), while Britain, the U.S.S.R. and other countries objected to the alternative plan proposed at Stresa in April. But in the meantime, for reasons which the present writer has never been able to elucidate but which were probably connected at least in part with her internal situation, Austria had on 31st March denounced her commercial Treaty with Hungary and opened negotiations for a revision of it which should reduce Hungary’s 1 See the letter from Dollfuss in Sweet’s appendix to Braunthal’s The Tragedy of Austria, p. 191. Dollfuss does not give the date more nearly than “1931,” but it can hardly have becn earlier than the renunciation of the customs union.

2 Sz. I. MS. .

3 Personal, Kallay to C. A. M. 4 He was speaking in the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies. M. Tardieu said that he had been “‘insisting to the Little Entente representatives at Geneva’’ that they should

accept some such arrangement, but it was an open secret that the insistence had been in the other direction. H

98 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH active balance of agricultural exports. No settlement having been reached by Ist July, the Treaty lapsed and a regular tariff war began, to the accompaniment of a vigorous campaign of mutual abuse in the Presses of both countries. Hungary was thus left with the prospect of finding no considerable outlet at all for her 1932 harvest, and the prospect helped to enhance the unpopularity

of the Karolyi Government; for public opinion laid much of the blame on the Minister of Agriculture, M. Purgly.* That unpopularity, although largely undeserved (for the wild oats which

the Government was now reaping were not of its sowing), was humanly speaking inevitable, for the whole country was now passing through a period

of acute hardship. Conditions in the rural areas in 1931 and 1932 were fantastic. The agricultural population practically dropped en b/oc out of the economic equation, relapsing into a pre-monetary economy based on selfdevised and self-sufficient barter. On this the small peasants managed to exist, and the crisis almost passed over the heads of the class whose conditions were traditionally the most miserable, the seasonal labourers; for the system

of paying their wages mainly in kind, and on a percentage of the results achieved by their labour, made them dependent rather on the size of the harvest than on the marketing of it. The wheat harvest of 1931 was only average, and that of 1932 rather poor, but that of 1933 was bumper, and human consumption of wheat per capita rose steadily through the crisis years,” a movement of which the poorest agricultural classes must have been the chief beneficiaries. Much harder hit, proportionately, were the landlords, the large no less than the small. The writer remembers well a journey which he made in that winter from a country estate to Budapest, in the company of a member of one of Hungary’s historic families, himself the owner of some 10,000 acres. We travelled third class and by the slow train (the fast train entailed a supplement) carrying sacks of food from the estate. Our supper, eaten in a lovely

baroque room in his palace, came out of the sacks. The room, and our bedrooms, were unheated for lack of firewood.

In the towns conditions were equally miserable, although in a more familiar way. Factories closed or worked short time for lack both of customers and of raw materials; the value of industrial production, which had been 2,867 m.p. in 1929, was only 2,059 m.p. in 1931 and 1,823 in 1932. The average number of workers in factory employment was down to 191,965

- in 1931 and 173,988 in 1932. Further, wages were being cut: the average annual earnings of a worker in factory industry, which had been 1,483 pengd in 1929, were 1,316 in 1931 and 1,172 in 1932. Civil Servants and pensioners were down to subsistence level; dividends were a memory. The cost of living had, indeed, sunk considerably, from an index figure of 127-1 in 1929 (1917—100) to 105-1 in 1931 and 101-5 in 1932,? but this did not make up for the falls in earnings and incomes. Every class of the population (except the agricultural labourers) was in something of a turmoil. There were strikes and demonstrations among the industrial workers; the Social Democrats also now claimed that their agreement with the Government had lapsed with the resignation of Bethlen,* and ‘ M. Purgly had succeeded Mayer in December 1931. * The figures according to Hevesy, op. cit., p. 770, were: 1928-29, 4-88 bushels; 1929-30, 5:21; 1930-31, 5-41; 1931-32, 5:54; 1932-33 (when only 7-48 million bushels were exported), 5-69. 3 Excluding rent; including it, the figures were 117, 101, 98. * This was admitted by Mme Keéthly in Parliament (Pester Lioyd, 13th February 1932).

CRASH 99 began an active agitation in the country districts.1_ There was a great deal of violent Left-wing talk, and even one or two sporadic terrorist outrages, the most famous of them the blowing up of the Vienna express at Biatorbagy, on 13th September 1931, when 63 persons were killed. The terrorist movement might be dismissed as non-indigenous, for it is a fact that it was inspired and directed from Moscow, where the Hungarian Communist Party had in 1930 decided to “‘return to illegality” and to develop more activity among

the workers. Most of the terrorists and active agitators were agents sent from Moscow, and an interesting feature of the situation is that Moscow was killing two birds with one stone, for it usually sent on these errands Trotskyites, of whom it was anxious to be rid, and then itself got them denounced through Stalinites in Hungary.2 Local Trotskyites and other heretics (of whom there were many in Hungary) were also denounced, so that the increased number of arrests of Communists which these years witnessed was only in part a reflection of increased activity towards the nonCommunist world. The Communists did, however, receive a real reinforcement in the shape of a group of young intellectuals just emerging from the

Universities. Some of these (such as L. Rajk, K. Olt and F. Fejt6) were afterwards to be prominent, and as a body they exercised, even now, some influence on the minds of their generation.*? In general, Left-wing agitation was strong enough to make the Government stretch its emergency powers considerably beyond their original intention and use them to justify special measures such as the use by the police of fire-arms and the application of summary jurisdiction to certain classes of offenders. As, however, is the case throughout our story, the Government was able to meet the agitation of the poorest classes by repression; but the vocal discontent was not confined to those classes. The Independent Smallholders’ Party was now stongly oppositional (in March 1932 Gaal refused an offer

from Karolyi to join a coalition Government) and was campaigning vigorously against the increasing and really almost intolerable weight of agricultural indebtedness, the relatively high prices of industrial articles,* the

Government’s alleged neglect of agriculture and, in general, the sinister domination of “‘finance capital.”” The Party was gaining ground both in the

country, where it won more than one by-election, and in Parliament. In December 1931, when Civil Servants’ pensions were cut for the second time, Ernszt resigned his portfolio and six of his followers went over to the Smallholders. The Government Party itself, which Bethlen made little attempt to

keep in control, dissolved into cliques and coteries, each of which tried to avert from itself the sacrifices which the situation demanded of the nation. The Agrarian Group, whose numbers, not all of them farmers, had been 1 A series of articles written at the time by the Right-wing publicist, S. Milotay, and afterwards

reprinted under the title Népi Vdlsdg, Népi Magyarorszdg (People’s Crisis, People’s Hungary), gives many details of this work, Milotay writes that in the County of Borsod, which he takes as a sample, there were in 1932 Social Democrat “‘circles’ in 149 out of the 202 communes in the

ee me details are given by Schopflin, loc. cit. It seems certain that the ““Communist martyrs,’’ Sallai and Fiirst, executed in 1932, had been deliberately sent to their fates. The man denouncing them was certainly a Communist. The author of the Biatorbagy outrage seems to have been a feeble-minded person who obeyed Communist orders. 3 For the time they remained outside the Communist Party in a youth organisation of their own, the KIMSz(Kommuniszta ifjumunkasok magyarorszagos szovetsége: Hungarian Federation of Communist Youth Workers). 4 The index figure of wholesale prices in industry had fallen only from 134-4 in 1929 to 114-9 in 1931 and 110-8 in 1932, whereas the figures for agriculture were 116-1, 86-3, 83-3.

100 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH brought by recruits up to 80, was particularly noisy. Many of its members coquetted with the Independent Smallholders, others tried to outbid them in the demands which they presented to the Government. The Parliamentary agitation, however, would not have been strong enough

seriously to threaten the position of the Government had not many of the malcontents, both among the Smallholders and in the Government Party itself, been in open sympathy and secret collusion with a much more threatening movement which was developing among the lower-paid Civil Servants, active and retired, the junior Army officers and the unemployed ex-students. Among these, the old Szeged spirit was flaming up in a most radical form. The ideas of very many of them went altogether beyond such mathematical remedies for their troubles as the scaling down of indebtedness, and they did

not look at all to Parliament, at least in its existing form, to provide those remedies. They were out to shatter the chains of finance capital, domestic and international, into fragments, and to place Hungarian society on an entirely new basis; and the man to whom they were looking to lead them

into the new land was Lieutenant-General (as he now was)’ Gyula Goémbés.

The demand for a Fascist regime led by G6mbGs was certainly widespread

as early as the autumn of 1931: he himself said in a later speech that at that period he had “‘been pressed by many people to liquidate the Government Party and place Hungarian politics on an entirely new basis.’ He did indeed not openly place himself at the head of the movement, against his own Minister President, in those months; but there 1s little doubt that by that time he had made up his mind to take over the power at the appropriate moment, and was making his preparations. The patriotic associations, which were the framework within which his chief supporters were brought together and directed, were called into renewed life; hints were dropped in the Press; and it is possible that he fostered the public demand for his appointment by some even more unconventional devices.” Even so, GOmb6s’ adherents might have proved no match for Karolyi’s

but for the extraordinary fact (which, for obvious reasons, was kept the closest of secrets at the time) that the movement in his favour was fomented and financed (and finance had hitherto been his Achilles’ heel) by precisely those circles which should, prima facie, have been its strongest opponents.? But among the Bills which the Government was proposing to introduce were two (one amending the law relating to stocks and shares, the other extending the conditions of “Parliamentary compatibility’’* to the Upper House) which + Although he had not been on the active list since 1919, he had arranged for his own promotion, at one jump, from Captain to Lieutenant-General, in March 1930, on the occasion of the celebration of the Regent’s ten years’ jubilee. He had himself promoted full General in 1936.

* The reference is to the so-called ““Vannay putsch.”’ In November 1931 half a dozen persons were arrested on charges of which all that leaked out was that they had proposed to arrest and hold up to ransom the Governor of the National Bank and a number of private individuals. The plot was attributed to Communists, Legitimists (the senior ranking participant, a certain General Schill, who committed suicide in prison, was a Legitimist) and almost everyone except the then embryonic Arrow Cross. But it was almost certainly patronised by Gémbés, probably not in the hope that it would succeed, but to convince the public of the necessity for a strong hand. The defendants pleaded “patriotic motives” and most of them were sentenced to only a few weeks’ detention.

° I owe the following information to M. Zsitvay, who has supplied me with many names and convincing details which regard for the law of libel compels me to omit. * Ie. the law defining the possession of certain interests as incompatible with membership of Parliament.

CRASH 101 would have proved extremely detrimental to the business interests of some of the most important financial figures in Hungary. Four members of the Upper House, who between them controlled much of Hungary’s financial life, had besieged the Government with requests that these Bills should be withdrawn or at least emasculated. They found Count Karolyi and M. Zsitvay implacable, but there is the strongest evidence (not confined to the ex post facto evidence of Gdmbés’ conduct after he became Minister President) that by the spring of 1932 he had reached agreement with the four gentlemen concerned on the basis that if he did come into office he would drop the two Bills and probably other points in his professed programme; while they would support and finance the agitation against the Government, and use such influence as was open to them in other ways to secure his appointment. The full Fascist programme could not be put forward openly: it is even possible that one of the promises made by Gémbis to his allies was that he would not do so. The strategy adopted by the malcontents was therefore to overthrow Karolyi from within, demonstrating the necessity by organising pressure from without. The first step in the effectual campaign was taken

in May 1932,+ when a group of Government Party Deputies and others worked out a programme which in its initial version consisted of the following

eight points: land reform; reform of taxation; regulation of agricultural indebtedness; credits for agriculture and industry; development of foreign trade, especially with the British, French and Scandinavian markets; a balanced Budget; after this had been achieved, introduction of secret and general franchise; a foreign political orientation based on Italy. A wider meeting adopted this and resolved to initiate a nation-wide propaganda in favour of it. The members of the group who were members of the Government Party then demanded a Party meeting, to which, on 10th June, they presented the demands in the name of the Agrarian Group.” The meeting, convoked at short notice, was sparsely attended except by the malcontents, who put their complaints in tumultuous fashion.* Karolyi lost his temper and walked out, making a drastic comment on the malcontents which was not meant to be, and was not, inaudible. M. Zsitvay prevented a vote of non-confidence by giving an assurance that the Government was on the point of enacting far-reaching measures which would remedy many of the complaints. In fact, the Government, which had been preparing a most comprehensive measure for dealing with the problem of agrarian indebtedness but had kept its plans a close secret for fear of the impact of them on the structure of credit, definitely promised on 24th June to grant immunity for three months from all legal proceedings, above a certain sum, for agricultural

debts, and all pending suits were suspended. The Bank Rate was to be lowered again, and the Government stated that it was not opposed in principle to the secret ballot. But Baron Koranyi, the Minister of Finance, declared that the full demands were impossible of fulfilment, and the next 1 I owe this account to M. Baross, who informs me that the whole programme developed out of a paper read by him to a political-economic society of Right-wing tendencies known as the Magyar Jév6 (Hungarian Future). The meeting decided to set up a Committee to work out a reform plan. Sztranyavszky was elected President and Baross Secretary of the Committee. The plan, as described above, was drafted by Baross and approved by the Committee. . 2 The Press accounts of the demands as presented to Karolyi omit that relating to foreign policy and add ‘‘control over banks and cartels.” For agricultural debts there was to be a moratorium followed by a scaling down. 3 M. Zsitvay has favoured me with a vivid account of this meeting.

102 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH weeks saw no general improvement. The wheat harvest turned out to bea poor one: the tariff negotiations with Austria broke down, and the Financial Committee of the League of Nations issued another report (whicl/ greatly increased Karolyi’s distaste for his job) scolding Hungary for her’failure to

meet her foreign obligations in full. ,

The Oppositional agitation redoubled. On 24th August there was a byelection in the rural constituency of Mezécsat, near Miskolcz, which produced the sensational result (to which the inter-war history of Hungary could show no parallel) that the Government candidate, M. Purgly, who was the sitting Minister of Agriculture and also the Regent’s brother-in-law,. was beaten,

under the open ballot, by an Opposition candidate, M. Tibor Eckhardt, standing on the Independent Smallholder ticket. This provided a further indication of the unpopularity of the Government in the country, but even more of the disaffection within the Government Party’s own ranks: for there were many strong indications that Gémbé6s had contributed to the result. Hitherto Gémbds had refrained from associating himself publicly with the Parliamentary malcontents; indeed, when at the end of May a deputation had waited on him with the request that he should put himself at the head of

the “‘nation-wide propaganda,” he had refused on the ground that as an active Minister he could not identify himself with an opposition programme. Now, however, he sent for Baross and Sztranyavszky and told them that he would, after all, place himself at the head of their movement, although he

would have to consider its programme in detail: he wished to make it a ‘national’? one, covering the widest possible field. A group of persons accordingly set themselves to revise and expand the eight points, the chief work being performed by Baross, F. Krudy and B. Héman, while Antal did the

drafting. By September a comprehensive programme, comprising exactly 100 points, was ready. The malcontents now demanded another Party meeting, which was again attended by few except themselves, for many Deputies were away from Buda-

pest, and even the circulation of the invitations seems to have been incomplete. The tone of the meeting was even more tumultuous than that of its predecessor, and Karolyi walked out of it after a few minutes. No vote of non-confidence was passed, largely because the meeting became too disorderly to pass anything, but it served its purpose. Unwilling to struggle any further against the hostility of so many of his own Party, as well as that of the Opposition, Karolyi made up his mind next day to resign. His intention was kept secret for a few days in view of the summer recess, but made known in mid-September. The political situation thus created was far more openly serious than that of the previous year. This time it was not merely a few individuals who stood

in the pillory, but a whole system. There could be no question of a second Prince Max of Baden. Rumours that Bethlen might come back evoked such opposition from the other party leaders that the idea had to be dropped. Next it was suggested that some universally respected non-party financial * Again according to M. Zsitvay, Gombds had himself persuaded M. Purgly to stand, although he was an obviously unpopular candidate, both for certain very notorious personal reasons which

need not be enumerated here, and because public opinion widely held him responsible for the breakdown of the tariff negotiations with Austria. Afterwards, although going down, with other members of the Government, to Mezocsat during the electoral campaign, he was conspicuously luke-warm in his support of M. Purgly and left the impression that both he and the local Foispan, M. Borbely-Matzky, who was an adherent of his, secretly favoured the cause of.M. Eckhardt.

CRASH 103 expert should take charge, but no such person could be found, or at any rate none willing to sacrifice himself after the discouraging example of Karolyi’s tribulations. The Regent consulted anxiously for several days, taking counsel of all the party leaders and of an unprecedented number of notables. At last he chose Gémbés, whose appointment was announced on Ist October.

It is difficult to see how else Horthy could have acted under the circumstances. The General Will of the Hungarian political forces had undoubtedly pronounced for Gémbds, and if anyone had reason to complain that Horthy failed to act in full accordance with that will, it was neither Bethlen nor

Karolyi (neither of whom opposed the appointment!), but Gémbés. For Horthy tied Gémbés’ hands very closely on appointing him. Firstly, he stipulated that Gémbés was not to dissolve Parliament, which meant that Gomb6s had to work with a body ‘‘made”’ by Bethlen, and thus in large part

composed of his own opponents.? It has also been stated that he made Go6mb6és promise not to introduce either a land reform or anti-Semitic legislation. Finally, he closely supervised Gémbés’ choice of his Ministers. When the names of these were announced, they were found to constitute a

team of all the talents, but not at all a radical one. Puky, the Foreign Minister, was an elderly gentleman with an honourable but unexciting record of public service, whose chief qualification for his new post was that he spoke good Italian. Miklés Kallay (Agriculture) was a constitutional conservative of the old school, who had served as Secretary of State for Commerce under Bethlen and was appointed on Bethlen’s advice, as was Fabinyi (Commerce),

a University Reader and legal adviser to a large industrial concern. Lazar (Justice) had once been friends with Gémbés, but had quarrelled with him: he was rather a Liberal. B. Imrédy (Finance), the young Director of the National Bank, was later to develop Right-wing tendencies, but these had not emerged in 1932; he was appointed precisely on the strength of his excellent connections with the West and with the approval of both the British

and Americans. The most pronouncedly Right-wing of the Ministers, and the only one who had taken any part in the events which led up to the fall of Karolyi, was Homan (Cults and Education), but he was no extremist and was an excellent man for the job, being a first-class administrator as well as a man very distinguished in other fields.* The list was made up by Keresztes-

Fischer, who remained at the Interior, also taking over the agenda of the Ministry of Social Welfare, which was now wound up, and Gémbés himself,

who retained the portfolio of Defence while taking over the Minister Presidency. When, besides all this, GOmbd6s’ own private obligations are recalled, it will be appreciated that his freedom of action was strictly limited, and in fact,

as we shall see, his years of office were very far from justifying either the hopes or the fears (and both ran very high) which the news of his appointment evoked. The new forces which he claimed to represent only forged their way

towards victory very slowly, and never quite completely. The crisis did, however, bring on to the stage a number of new figures, some of whom were 1 Barczy’s account (personal to C. A. M.) is that after long discussions, Horthy said to Bethlen: ‘‘What would you say if I appointed Gomb6s?” Bethlen answered: “One might try the experiment.” The two then asked Karolyi, who, thoroughly irritated, answered: “‘I have nothing to say: your Party threw me out, you name my successor!” 2 Goémbéos himself told Szalasi, who recorded it in his Diary. I have it also from Marton. 3 He was a distinguished mediaeval historian and Director of the National Museum.

104 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH to play important parts during all or part of the remainder of our story; and this will be a convenient point at which to say what is necessary about the personalities of the more important of them. Excluding Kallay, to whom it is easier to return later, in connection with his appointment to the Minister Presidency in 1942, the most important members of the new Government were Keresztes-Fischer and Imrédy; to whose names may be added that of Kanya, who took over from Puky a few weeks later, and of Kozma and Daranyi from Gémbés’ second Cabinet. Ferencz Keresztes-Fischer, when he first obtained Ministerial rank in

1931, was just 50 years of age, and although he had had no previous experience of national politics, already had behind him several years of office as Foispan, first of his native city of Pécs (with the fragmentary County of

Baranya), then of the larger County of Somogy. He had made himself a name as a hard-working, incorruptible and efficient administrator, an excellent conciliator of divergent interests, including those of capital and labour, and, while conciliatory, not afraid of using the strong hand if the situation necessitated. It was particularly the last-named quality which had caused Bethlen to recommend him to Karolyi as a man capable of dealing with the troubled times. He quickly gained a big reputation as Minister, and won, in particular, the especial confidence of the Regent, who kept him in office from 1931 to 1935 and again from 1939 to 1944, and would gladly have made him Minister President had he himself desired it—which he never did, partly out of reasons connected with a somewhat complicated, although in no sense licentious, love-life. During these years at least the application

of his principles went through a certain evolution. He had always had a | strong sense of social justice. It was he who had insisted on the liquidation of the separate Ministry of Social Welfare and the resumption by his own Ministry of the responsibility (which had lain with it up to 1917) for social policy, and thereafter he most vigorously opposed all suggestions—although

these were sometimes very strongly pressed—that the Ministry should be re-established. This was, however, not because he wanted social policy neglected, but, on the contrary, because he was convinced that only the Minister of the Interior, as the head of the entire civilian administration, could ensure that the subordinate officials effectively carried the Govern-

ment’s enactments in this field As Minister, he paid great attention to this side of his duties, and several of Hungary’s best social institutions, such as the Green Cross rural health service and the “‘Oncsa’’ plan for helping large families, were largely inspired by him. He had also always been, and

remained, an enemy of extremism, but in his early years this had chiefly meant hostility to extremism of the Left. He had been a vigorous although not a brutal counter-revolutionary, and a leading figure in the EKSz, of which he was actually a “tribal leader.” He possessed, moreover, connections with the Army through his brother, Lajos, a General who at one time was head

of Horthy’s military Chancery.

In certain personal ways he seems never entirely to have shaken free of these early connections: it seems difficult to explain otherwise his toleration of Endre* and one or two other blots on his otherwise admirable record. But he had never been a radical of any sort at heart, and with the years he became a bulwark of the “Liberal-Conservative” tendency. In spite of his Swabian origin, and although he had no Jewish connections or interests,

1 Kovrig, op. cit., p. 64. 2 See below, p. 186, n. 4.

CRASH 105 business or personal, he was a staunch ‘“‘Westerner” in foreign politics (in the

details of which he did not, indeed, attempt to meddle), and this brought him at the end into the position of defender in chief of the Jews and of the political Left against the Right. He came to be almost the best-hated figure in Hungary to the Germans and the Arrow Cross. It should be added that he retained to the last his competence and his prodigious power of work and that to those whom he truly liked and trusted he was completely loyal. He was a very rock to the Regent, to Teleki and to Kallay.

Miklés Kozma, who succeeded Keresztes-Fischer in March 1935 as Minister of the Interior, was a somewhat controversial figure. Rumour credited his family tree with both a 50 per cent. Jewish strain and a bend sinister. He had begun his career as a professional officer; then been at Szeged, in Horthy’s following and Gémbés’ company, and afterwards served in Horthy’s military Cabinet. Then he had been put in charge of the newly

founded Hungarian Radio and the official news agency, the Magyar Tavirati Iroda (Hungarian Telegraphic Agency), in which capacity he had rendered services to the Bethlen regime, as also to individual members thereof,

which had been highly appreciated. At the same time he had founded a variety of private companies loosely connected with his official position, and through these had not only made himself a very important figure but had also, so rumour said, enriched both himself and others very substantially. He had

thus to some extent a foot in both camps, but in each case a rather uneasy one. The true Right Radicals detested him, partly because of the alleged Jewish strain in him, partly for various purely personal traits in his character,

partly perhaps for more substantial reasons.’ The fact that his private life, even apart from the financial aspects of it, was not above reproach, soon enabled his enemies to oust him from his Ministerial post, although we shall find him, even after his fall, playing a part in various not always very praise-

worthy public activities. His reputation in 1935 was that of Horthy’s representative in the Cabinet. Kalman Daranyi, Minister of Agriculture in 1935 and Minister President in 1936, was, by a coincidence, another man with a stain on his birth, having been born out of wedlock but adopted and given his name by his father, a former Secretary of State for Agriculture.” This circumstance is said to have given Kalman Daranyi a certain lack of confidence in all his career. That career had, however, been distinguished enough. After filling various posts as Féispan, he had attracted the attention of Bethlen, who made him his own Secretary of State and kept him in that position when all the other Secretary-

ships except one were abolished in the interests of economy. It was also, allegedly, to Bethlen’s recommendation that he owed his appointment as Minister in 1935, and he was invariably regarded, both then and after his later appointment to the Minister Presidency, as a typical Bethlen man. The appointment was, incidentally, taken in the same sense in Germany, and among Germany’s enemies.

perhaps be revealing. This is:

1 One sentence in Kozma’s biography in the ‘‘Parliamentary Almanack’”’ for 1940 may

‘‘He was the first to call Bethlen’s attention to the Forged Francs affair, and was a witness for the Crown in the case.”’

2 The family was of Swabian stock; the name Daranyi had been assumed only in the preceding generation. His better-known uncle had been Minister of Agriculture for two periods (1895-1903 and 1901-10), during which he was responsible for the only serious attempts at land settlement carried out during the entire Compromise Era.

106 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH To some extent this was correct. Daranyi was no Nazi: his whole outlook was rather the traditional Hungarian conservative one, quite untinged by any radicalism, or even active anti-Semitism. Yet—and this is the peculiar aspect of the situation—he quickly won the confidence and friendship of Gémbés, and despite all reports to the contrary, also of the entire extreme Right of the Government Party. This was partly due to his personal integrity, partly to his broad and conciliatory nature and his tactfulness in the handling of men; it was only later that that tactfulness was found too often to cover hesitation and weakness. Partly, again, he undoubtedly stood further to the Right in internal politics and was much more pro-German in his international views than was generally believed. Nevertheless, he managed to acquire popularity of a somewhat passive sort (no one would have gone to the stake for him)

with the Right without losing it in the other camp. It is an extraordinary feature of this man’s character that everyone (including Szalasi) believed him to be on his side, and yet no one ever accused him of duplicity.

Béla Imrédy, when he became Gémb6s’ Minister of Finance, was still only 41 years of age. His ancestors on both sides, with one doubtful but allimportant exception, to which we shall return (it was still unsuspected in 1932), were of Swabian stock, the name before Magyarisation having been Heinrich. The family was respectable middle class, but neither aristocratic nor very distinguished; one branch of it was wealthy, but not Béla Imrédy’s own.

Béla Imrédy himself was a man of remarkable qualities. The obvious prototype both of his burning spirit and of his lean figure and face, with its prominent nose and thin mouth and the Satanic intensity of his pale, uncanny eyes, was Savonarola. He was a man of great intellectual and spiritual gifts, of a very fine and keen understanding, a wide reading, a deep knowledge and devoted love of music, a subtle appreciation of art and a quite extraordinarily

deep and absolutely sincere religious devotion; indifferent to wealth or creature comforts, something more than incorruptible, and, withal, possessed

by a devouring personal ambition. Of power, he was insatiable. He certainly meant to use this, when it was his, in the service of his fellow-men

and to their advantage, but his lust for it was so overweening, and his conviction so simple that in his hand it would in fact benefit the world, that personally scrupulous as he was, he sometimes showed a singular dis-

regard of scruple if it stood between him and power. He made his way upward in the early stages of his career by championing the cause of the severest financial orthodoxy. This earned him the warm approval of the representatives of international finance with whom he had to negotiate, and it was largely to the reputation which he then enjoyed of being the particular friend of the West, and especially of the City of London, that he owed his rapid political advancement. The harshness of the Sofortprogramm was largely due to Imrédy’s personal insistence: it was, for example, his single vote, given in the name of orthodox finance, which prevented the Gémbés’ Cabinet from adopting a project of land reform which Kallay had presented

to itt Yet when, as will be told, the Right Radicals offered him further advancement at the price of adopting their political programme, which included anti-Semitic legislation and a Schacht-like manipulation of the national finances, he grasped at the opportunity. It is true that this second Avatar was probably more natural to him than the first: his whole tempera| Kallay to C. A. M,

CRASH 107 ment was of the sort which landed most naturally in Right Radicalism, towards which he was also probably pushed by the influence of his wife, a

lady no less ambitious than he, and grown up, to boot, in a Swabian environment of West Hungary. His tragedy, or one aspect of his most complex tragedy, was that he was never truly at home in public life. He could dissect a situation with masterly logic, but when it came to handling one, he was impulsive, undecided and

changeable. He was too highly strung, and precisely because he was so consumedly anxious both to save his country, and to prove himself its saviour, he was forever haunted by torturing doubts. More than one subordinate has told how he would ring them up at all hours to make some last-minute change in the tenor or the wording of instructions. Yet these doubts in himself did not make him amenable to the voice of others. He was very vain, very impatient of opposition, very dictatorial both in his claims to leadership and in his methods. Both Imrédy’s temperament, and certain of his actions, in particular, his anti-Semitic legislation, were of the sort which makes enemies, and Imrédy had hardly entered high politics before he had accumulated a host of personal ill-wishers besides many envenomed political and financial opponents of his programme. He was in any case of the type which makes personal issues out of differences of principle, but in this his opponents set the example,

seeking to discredit him by gross personal attacks which the most

magnanimous of men would have justly resented. Imrédy was not |

magnanimous, and his resentment festered into a hatred and a thirst for revenge which poisoned his spirit and dominated the last period of his life; although the accusations brought against him at his trial, on the strength of which he was condemned to death, were totally unjustified. The record of his end falls outside the limits of this book, but two episodes from the last weeks of his life may be recorded here. Firstly: he worked out in prison, and had transmitted to his executioners, the plan for stabilising the post-war currency of Hungary for which M. Rakosi subsequently pocketed the credit.! Secondly, before walking to the firing-post he asked the Piarist Father, P.

Zimanyi, who had passed his last hours with him, to see to it that if any record of his life ever appeared, the author should write that before dying he sincerely repented any word or action of his which had offended against the laws and moral postulates of his religion.’ Kalman Kanya, the only Hungarian Foreign Minister of the inter-war period to be the real controller of his country’s foreign policy, of which he was

in charge, not only under G6mbos (after the first four months*) but also under Daranyi and until 28th November 1938 under Imrédy, was a very different type. Like Imrédy and Gémbés himself, he was of middle-class parentage (his father had been a self-made lawyer, allegedly of Italian

parentage); but there the resemblance between the three men ended. Kanya , had passed his whole adult life in the Foreign Service, beginning his career—

since he had been born as long ago as 1869—1in the service of the Dual Monarchy; a circumstance which he never forgot, although it did not make 1 Sulyok, op. cit., p. 558. 2 Kovrig, op. cit., p. 173. As M. Kovrig’s work has not been translated, he has agreed to my suggestion that I should repeat this item from it, in deference to the last wish of an unhappy

me Kanya was appointed only on 4th February 1933. Puky retired on 7th January 1933. Goémbés was himself provisionally in charge during the intervening month.

108 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH him a Legitimist in Hungarian politics. His early employment had been humble: in consular posts in the Balkans and Russia. But after ten years he was transferred to the senior branch of the service, acted as Aerenthal’s Chief of Press, in which capacity he was involved in the scandal of the Friedjung trial, and was then sent as Austro-Hungarian Minister to Mexico, where he

passed the First World War. Here he conducted activities similar to those of von Papen, but with much more discretion than his German colleague. When Hungary set up her own separate Foreign Service he moved over to it and quickly became one of its most influential, as he was also one of its most experienced, members. Even in these years, he was something of a power behind the throne, for

Bethlen, who greatly appreciated his qualities and with whom he had, spiritually and intellectually, much in common, sought his advice frequently—

sometimes daily for weeks at a time, and a large part of Bethlen’s foreign political manoeuvres were the fruit of these intimate consultations.

In 1925 Kanya was made Hungarian Minister in Berlin, holding that post until Gémbés, whose choice he was, called him into his Cabinet. It was chiefly to his acquaintanceship with politics and personalities in Germany, especially those of the Right,’ that Kanya owed his appointment, which was correspondingly unpopular in anti-German circles. The Social Democrats protested against the appointment of a man who, by his known past record and his presumed present sympathies, was thought likely to be a ‘‘friend of reaction’’ and peculiarly hostile to, and antipathetic to, the Little

Entente. The Legitimists had never forgiven him that episode in his past career when in 1921 he had presented to Charles IV the Note demanding his retirement and abdication and the surrender of his troops; it was a token of their animosity that when already Foreign Minister he was, to the great public scandal, blackballed for a fashionable club. It was long before he lived down the reputation of a convinced pro-German; then, by virtue of events to be described in due course, he acquired a reputation which probably belied his feelings as completely in the opposite direction. In reality, he was by this time incapable—if he had ever been capable before—of being pro-anything. In Kalman Kanya, as he surveyed the world in the 1930’s, it would have been hard to discern the traces of a childhood spent in the solidly virtuous atmosphere of a “‘Soproni Ponzichter’* home, or an early manhood spent wrestling with bills of lading in Odessa. To the English visitor privileged to seek him out in his unostentatious yet unmistakably expensive bachelor villa in a quiet, select suburb of Buda, the old gentleman sitting among his bibelots

and chinoiseries bore a singular resemblance to Major Pendennis, the apothecary connection and all. Beautifully brushed, silky-white hair surmounted a clean-shaven face which made one think at once of expensive shaving-creams. Delicately sarcastic lips uttered cautious and courteous propos the effect of which was watched by startlingly intelligent eyes which had observed cities and men for half a century keenly, dispassionately and contemptuously; distilling from experience a deep store of worldly wisdom which was not adulterated by a single illusion. Infinitely circumspect and profoundly cynical, Kanya trusted no man further than he could see him. 1 These connections were, however, within the circle round Hindenburg, to which Kanya had a private line; they were not with the Nazis. * This remarkable Hungarian word, a corruption of the German “‘Bohnenziichter,”’ is a slang term applied to the German bourgeoisie of the West Hungarian towns, Pressburg, Oedenburg,

- CRASH 109

He knew that every man and every nation was out for its own hand, and that politics, including international politics, was a game in which the weakest

went to the wall. He knew that big nations did not care a row of pins for small nations, but only used them as pawns, and he knew that the role of a pawn in a game is, too often, to be taken. On the other hand, in the right position and suitably guarded, it can check a king; or if it reaches the eighth square, itself become a queen. He knew exactly what he wanted for Hungary, which was all the revision he could get for her. In this respect he was certainly not restrained by any inhibitions, feelings of friendship for any of the Successor States or respect for the right of self-determination. Nor, it must be added, by any excess of scruple, of which his public career shows singularly little trace. He would probably have described it as a luxury which the Foreign Minister of a small Power in an exposed situation cannot afford. Ambiguity, sailing near the wind, the simultaneous keeping in the fire of irons which simpler minds would have found mutually incompatible, were to Kanya the common-place necessities of policy and probably also their savour. If he showed more moderation than some of his contemporaries in the revision question, this was due partly to a belief that half a loafis always better than no bread—and does not exclude the later consumption of the other half—partly to a certain realism which

may have doubted the practicability of integral revision,’ which was and remained his ideal.” Still, he meant to have everything that he could safely get: but “‘safely”’ was an operative word. He saw that Hungary would have to depend on allies

to realise her own aims, but before committing himself he proposed to be

quite certain that the alliance in which he set her was going to be the victorious one. His whole policy was that of the “‘free hand’”’—as he liked to describe it (doing so in his very first speech in Parliament, and often there-

after), of sitting on the fence, of keeping doors open and irons in the fire. He would have thought it not merely foolish but actually wrong to stake everything on one card. The private and simultaneous preparation against all eventualities was, in his view, precisely the duty of the professional diplomat, and his expertise lay in his ability to carry it out. Kanya was very shrewd and very able. Gémbdés could not have had a better corrective, nor Hungary, perhaps, a better Foreign Minister in the situation which was hers. During his time, no one was ever quite sure | whether they could trust Hungary or not, and this, after all, was what he wanted, since complete confidence or invincible mistrust would equally have implied commitment. Thanks to his influence, Hungary was still technically as free vis-a-vis Germany in November 1938 as she had been in 1933. He possessed, however, a little complex of weakness, which may have been the product of over-compensation. As a former career diplomat and

Minister of one of Europe’s Great Powers, he chose to regard with deep contempt not only the professional representatives of the smaller States which were now Hungary’s neighbours (for him the Yugoslavs were always

the “Serbs”? on whom Austria-Hungary had trampled) but also the nonprofessionals of the Great Powers, such as Ribbentrop, whom he treated de

tion, God forbid!”’

1 Once asked confidentially whether he would really like to see Hungary recover the Burgenland, with its compact German population, he replied: “Between ourselves and not for publica2 Kanya was a member of the secret revisionist league ‘“‘Feltamadas’’ (Resurrection) which called him ‘‘the old tiger’? precisely because of his revisionist enthusiasms (Baross).

110 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH haut en bas and, on occasions, with astonishing rudeness. He could never resist a sardonic joke, and he had an extraordinarily biting tongue; and the worldly wisdom which suggested to him so many sarcasms often stopped short of that higher sagacity which would have left them unuttered. It was this weakness which brought about his downfall at last, since he allowed himself to indulge it too often at the expense of German Nazis, who did not enjoy being patronised by a Hungarian, and were in a position to show their resentment.

From 1933 to 1938 Kanya was one of the most important figures in Hungary, for he was not the man to content himself with the name of Foreign Minister while letting his Minister President form his own foreign policy. It

is known that he rebuked GémbGs, paternally but strongly, for the latter’s early extratours, including the unaccompanied journeys abroad which he made during his first months of office... Afterwards he controlled Gémb6s’ (as also Daranyi’s) utterances on foreign policy very strictly, even writing those parts of their speeches which dealt with foreign affairs and insisting that his own exposés should constitute the authoritative interpretation of Hungary’s foreign policy.’

Yet in striking contrast to this attitude of his towards his technical superiors, Kanya showed an extraordinary weakness in the opposite direction. In 1935 he appointed as his Chef de Cabinet a still young man, Count Istvan

Csaky. Csaky proved a veritable cuckoo in the nest, whence he ultimately evicted his foster-parent. This was in December 1938; and for a full year before that he seems largely to have dominated K anya, leading him along paths

down which Gémbos and Daranyi could not push him. After this, Csaky held the post of Foreign Minister for over two extremely critical years. Thus his personality and ideas, too, were an important factor in Hungarian history; and this will be a convenient, if somewhat proleptic, place to describe them. During the war Csaky achieved a reputation both in the West and among

pro-Allied circles in Hungary which was in some respects worse than he deserved. As befitted a scion of his ancient and famous family, he was a ‘“‘“sood Hungarian” enough. In fact, all his leanings were towards Italy—not

that he liked or admired the Italians as a people, although he did admire Mussolini,® but he thought the Italian orientation essential for Hungary’: it was the more unfortunate that neither Mussolini nor Ciano could bear him personally. Germany, as many persons have testified who really knew him, and heard him speak in confidence, he absolutely hated®; and he also disliked 1 He is reported to have said to GoOmb6s, when the latter returned from Germany: ‘“‘Fiam, ez hallatlan. Igy nem szabad viselkedni.’’ (‘‘My son, this is unheard of. You must not behave like this.”*) On another occasion he told Gémb6s flatly that he was a liar. * He maintained this attitude throughout. After the Kiel visit he complained to Erdmannsdorff (who reported in this sense to Weiszacker) because Hitler and Goring had discussed foreign policy with Imrédy rather than with himself. 3 Personal, Apor to C. A. M. 4 He left a “political testament’? enjoining Hungary always to follow the Italian line. (Bakach-Bessenyey to C. A. M.) ® See Ciano’s Diary, passim.

® Ample evidence to this effect can be found in Ciano’s Diary, e.g. 16th April, 26th April, 17th August 1939. He used often to add to his official instructions private messages, written in his own hand, for the Heads of Missions; they were often violently anti-German (Géza Teleki to C. A. M.). To Ghyczy he said just before his death: “‘If the Germans only knew how much I hated them!’’ Most remarkable of all is a passage in the Stakié MS. (much of which seems to record the view of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia), which describes him as ‘“‘a great opponent of Nazi Germany”’ and even records him as saying when he visited Belgrade in December 1940:

“If I had to choose between Russian and German domination, I would take the former. The Russians would limit themselves to hanging myself and those like me, but the Germans would break the back of the Hungarian people.”

CRASH 111 Hitler personally. He had much more liking for the British and French, as such: he was, after all, a man of European culture, with an appreciation of Western values. But he knew France only little and England not at all. He had never held a post in England, France or America; his foreign service had been in Madrid, the Vatican and Bucharest. His chief dealings with the Western Powers had been such as to awaken unfortunate memories: he had acted as Secretary to the Hungarian Peace Delegation which had to sign the Treaty of Trianon. More important still were personal memories. In 1914 he had been interned in France and broken stones on the road. Then at the Royal funeral in London he was not treated with the deference which he expected. He may not have liked Germany, but he was convinced that for good or ill Germany would have the decisive voice in the affairs of Central Europe for many years to come, and that the only means of saving Hungarian interests was not to oppose her openly, which would have meant annihilation, but to cling to her and (in concert with Italy) work against her from the inside.

Moreover, while relatively young! and inexperienced, he was vain,’ ambitious and given to intrigue. Pro-Western Hungarian diplomats have complained that when on their visits to Budapest they went to converse privately with Teleki (or even before his time, with Kanya), Csaky was always

in the room to hear what was being said. He was suspected of actually intercepting correspondence; he certainly had no scruples in intriguing against his chiefs and in carrying on a private policy behind their backs. They have complained particularly of his conduct towards Teleki. Here they seem to do him an injustice. He had a very great affection and respect for Teleki, and the records do not prove that he ever definitely went behind his back, though he did advocate, within his own sphere, a policy which he knew not to be Teleki’s. But this was a personal relationship. In general, he certainly tried to conduct an independent policy and to recruit his own supporters for it, and his unhappy tendency to over-compensation led him to look for these especially in military circles, although he himself, owing to his internment in France in 1914-18, had never done any military service.

It must be added that Csaky was an impatient and impulsive man. Further, he was unfortunate in his manner. A small, weak, sickly man, already suffering from the disease of the liver which killed him in 1941 (he made this worse by swallowing enormous doses of medicine against liver trouble and sleeplessness, woke dizzy, and took new medicines to counteract that), he compensated for his physical defects by an abrupt, aggressive tone

which he mistook for an indication of strength. Huis speeches were often bullying and rude, especially towards Roumania, a country which he parti-

cularly hated, affecting (owing to the accident of having been born in Transylvania) to regard himself as a dispossessed Transylvanian. It is possible that but for this personal factor Hungary’s relations with Roumania might have been much better. Running to extremes, he not only thought that those whom he held to be on the winning side must be placated in every way,

but he did not think it worth while even being civil to the rest. This gratuitous rudeness applied not only to Roumania or Slovakia but even to the U.S.S.R.; to some extent even to Britain and the U.S.A.? 1 He was 44 at the time of his appointment. 2 One of his efforts as Foreign Minister was to introduce a special diplomatic uniform (which in the event only he ever wore). 8 This attitude, amongst other things, led him to refuse to seek Britain’s formal recognition of the recovery of the Felvidék (see below, p. 303).

112 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The diplomatic reshuffles of the period resulted soon after in another important appointment; that of Déme Sztdjay to be Hungarian Minister in Berlin. Sztdjay was by origin a Serb from the Military Frontier; he had actually served in the Yugoslav Army for a year or two after 1918, when his name was still Stojakovic, and to the end of his days he spoke bad Hungarian.

After joining the Hungarian service, he had served in Berlin as Military Attaché from 1925 to 1933, then for two years in the Ministry of Defence. In 1935 Kanya sent him to Berlin, and various malicious stories were current: the Germans had asked for the recall of M. Masirevics, so to spite them he sent Masirevics to London and gave the Germans Sztdjay, because he was the

stupidest man available. Poor Sztdjay was in fact no genius, but from one point of view he was a success in Berlin; he was personally extremely popular with the Nazis,! who did things for him which they would not have done for

many another, least of all for Kanya. In return he became more Papistic than the Pope. Although the theory of Nazism was probably above his head and he had no special animosity towards Jews, he became a fanatical admirer of the Third Reich, in which he could see no flaw and in the invincibility of which he believed implicitly. We shall find him invariably championing every

German demand with uncritical zeal, and invariably convinced that Hungary’s salvation lay in the closest possible connection with Germany. Moreover, he regularly corresponded not only with his Foreign Ministry but also with his old colleagues in the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff,

transmitting their wishes and point of view to Germany and acting as the mouthpiece of the General Staff in his own Ministry. He was a kindly man and acted for what he thought was the best; but few men did more to set Hungary on the road that led her to ruin in 1944. Some of the most important contacts between Budapest and Berlin did not go through Sztdjay at all, but through a certain Andras Mecsér. Mecsér was an ex-officer of Hussars, who on leaving the Army had settled down to farming and had produced a new, improved brand of maize. The story ran that while travelling in Germany to market this, in 1921 or 1922, he had dropped in on a meeting addressed by Hitler, then an obscure tub-thumper. He had been fired by Hitler’s words, and when the hat was passed round at the end of the meeting, Mecsér, who had just received a large sum in cash, had given the lot, saying: ““This is how Hungarians behave!”’ Whether this is true or not, Hitler and Mecsér were personal friends, and Mecsér, who was a business man in every sense of the word, certainly got back

many-fold whatever bread he had cast upon the waters. In return, he acted as Hitler’s agent in Hungary in a more downright fashion than any other Hungarian. Of the host of secondary figures, the most really important was Istvan Antal, a young man witha past resembling that of many of G6mb6s’ protégés: a scholarship boy of the most humble parentage imaginable; a camp-follower at Szeged, where he worked under Gémbés; Right Radical student leader (in which capacity he rendered Gémbés invaluable service in 1921, for it was he who mobilised the students, although typically he did not lead them, to attack

the royal train); and thereafter to a large extent the brains of the Right Radical movement, as well as its mouthpiece, for he possessed both a real intellect and a ready pen, as well as a fluent tongue. He was the man who * Goring kept a framed photograph of him on his desk, although he was a conspicuously ugly man (Hennyey to C. A. M.).

CRASH 113 drafted the Hundred Points. Afterwards, besides his official duties as Goémbés’ Chief of Press and leader-writer in chief of his official organ, Antal

used, as everyone knew, to write Gémbés’ speeches for him (except the parts relating to foreign policy, which fell within Kanya’s domain), and behind the scenes expound the Government’s intentions to the secret meetings of the EKSz; himself, naturally, strongly contributing towards the formation

of the policy which he expounded. He served others afterwards in similar capacities: an eternal eminence grise, whose influence was always on the side of evil.

Sandor Sztranyavszky, who had largely organised the Parliamentary revolt

against Karolyi, was not, in mind or at heart, a true Right Radical, for his soul’s ambition was to be regarded as a member of the County aristocracy, and this led him, some years later, to desert the camp of the Right Radicals for that of the Conservative fraction. In 1932, however, he was at any rate against Bethlen and Karolyi, and ready to join forces with any of their enemies. He was a violent and overbearing man, often exceedingly dictatorial and offensive in his manner, and without real intelligence; but an experienced

politician (he had first sat in Parliament in 1912), acquainted with all the

tricks and not inhibited by any scruples from applying them. He had ““managed’”’ the 1931 elections for Bethlen, whose success in them was widely

ascribed to his energy. He had once organised a “‘national workers’ movement’’ among the workers of his native district, on the Slovak frontier, and

had been conspicuous in the 1926-31 Parliament for the frequency and

violence of his clashes with the Social Democrats. Bela Marton, afterwards Secretary-General of G6mb6s’ party, was a more attractive figure. Essentially, he was an Elizabethan type: gallant (he had received a very high decoration for personal courage when serving with his regiment of Hussars in the First World War), reckless, uninhibited, handsome, witty; an adventurer in the gay sense of the word. Totally unacademic, he was shrewd enough, an excellent organiser, and—unexpectedly—capable of intensive work. He was a man of radical convictions, rather than ideas, of the Fascist type, a violent anti-Semite (yet with humour), another patron of

the idea of “‘national labour’’; detested politically by his opponents, yet popular personally. The last to be mentioned of G6mbé6s’ chief helpers, G. Baross, was a

rather older man, of whom we need only say that long experience and organising ability had made him an automatic member of any Right-wing enterprise. He was, for example (as he blithely informed the writer) involved up to the hilt in the Forged Francs enterprise. His connections were not confined to the strict ““Szeged”’ group.

I

CHAPTER SEVEN

FRUSTRATION OMBOS’ Minister Presidency had been awaited with many sanguine

(j= and many anxious fears. Judging by short-term standards—

by G6mbéGs’ record of actual achievement during his years of office—

both hopes and fears were, as we shall see, destined to prove unfounded. It was Gémbés’ humanly tragic destiny never to see the walls of his dreampalace rise; he lived out the rest of his days in the old structure which he had scheduled for demolition, and even spent much of his time underpinning it and prolonging its habitable life. This was in large part due to the obligations and restrictions imposed on or accepted by him before appointment, to the list of which he himself (as we shall see) soon added new ones, even more far-reaching. With these secret obligations pledging him to inactivity in some of the most important fields, with a Cabinet hardly one member of which was whole-heartedly of his way of thinking, a Parliament fully half of which was against him, so that his every move was under the control of Bethlen’s ‘““shadow Government,” exercised downward through Parliament or upward through the Regent, he was in any

case hampered at every turn. But besides this, the “‘economic blizzard’”’ which had swept him into office and had seemed to him and his followers to

call for immediate and near-revolutionary action, turned out to be of a nature to make any such action impossible. For the crisis, as it affected Hungary, both domestically and internationally, was primarily one of credit;

and in those days the belief still obtained—and could not possibly be challenged by a small country—that credit was a thing to be maintained at all

costs and that a creditor was entitled, if he insisted, to have redress of a defaulting debtor.

The credit situation held Gombés in 1932 in as tight a grip as it had Karolyi in 1931: technically, in one respect, even more so, since Karolyi had

had to pay for the emergency aid granted him by accepting a renewal of League control. But with or without such control, no Hungarian Government

could possibly have followed any policy to which its creditors objected strongly: it was the first necessity to find accommodation, temporary and permanent, with the country’s creditors, and, as another aspect of the same problem, to secure such outlets for the national exports as would make the said accommodations possible, while leaving enough foreign currency to pay for essential imports. And the financial powers to be placated were the City of

London and Wall Street, Geneva (since an important part of Hungary’s foreign debt had been raised through the League) and also France, who at that

juncture held the purse-strings of Europe. The pressure exerted by these various factors outside the frontiers not only limited Hungary’s freedom of action abroad but at home also, since Hungary’s creditors were not going to relax any of their claims against a Government which allowed itself the luxury

of imitating Nazism. Nor was it a question of foreign creditors only. Nearly all Hungary, including the Government, was also indebted to the big Hungarian banks, and the banks, which were almost purely Jewish-controlled,

FRUSTRATION 115 were not going to make things easy for anyone who played with anti-Semitism. It was, moreover, an open secret that Gdmbés’ personal position was, mutatis

mutandis, the same as that of his Government and his country. Nevertheless, if Gdmbés could not build, he could plan and lay foundations, and history will probably decide that in spite of his record of immobility on many fronts and actual retreat on others, those were right who afterwards ascribed to him the credit, or discredit, of being not only the prophet but also

the author of the new Hungary, with its links with the Axis, its uncompromising revisionism, its pseudo-Fascism. He achieved this not only by the detailed work of preparation which we shall presently describe, but most effectually by one swift move which he took immediately on appointment. He had hardly himself received the news before he was sending a lyrical

message to Mussolini announcing it, referring to the deep esteem and admiration in which the Duce was held in Hungary and asking for his cooperation. The public speeches of his first days were full of similar utterances,

and a month later he was dashing down to Rome, where he let himself be

féted with the extreme of magnificence. Returning, he gave a glowing account of the achievements of Fascism, which he set before Hungary as an example to be followed. A few days later, another Hungarian deputation, unofficial, but composed of Gémb6s’ cronies and travelling with his blessing, waited on the Duce to bring him further homage from the new Hungary and to remind him of the

old promise, given years before, to support the Hungarian cause. And Mussolini obligingly dotted the 1’s. He repeated to the deputation his earlier pronouncement that treaties were not eternal, adding that this applied most especially to the Treaty of Trianon, which had been “‘inspired by political calculations which time and experience had already condemned,”’ and soon after reaffirming this in another public speech. By these moves G6mb6Gs irrevocably decided, in so far as any Hungarian could decide things so largely ruled by larger forces and predetermined by long historical development, the whole future course of Hungarian policy,

both international and domestic. For it is true that Hungary already possessed her Treaty of Friendship with Italy, five years old. But Mussolini’s

Treaties of Friendship meant exactly what the parties to them cared to put into them, and in the autumn of 1932 a very substantial part of Hungarian opinion was still pleading for a “French orientation”; some arguing that the continued acceptance of the existing situation was necessary until Hungary had recovered more of her strength, while others actually still suggested that,

if courted warmly enough, France would be prepared to change friends in , the Danube basin and base her policy there not on the Little Entente but on Hungary and Austria. These hopes may have been quite unrealistic, but in any case, GOmbés’ and Mussolini’s exchanges of compliments killed them dead. They quenched any inclination that may have existed in France to take up a Hungarian orientation, and gave the Little Entente chapter and verse for proving that Hungary was a hopeless case, while no Hungarian statesman thereafter could, if he wished, throw away this precious possession of the assured friendship of at least one considerable Power, or go back on -

the principle that the friendship of Italy was “the unalterable pole of Hungarian foreign policy.” The long-term internal effects were as decisive. The internal and the inter1 See above, p. 85.

116 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH national aspects of the problem were obviously closely connected: the reason why each party favoured a certain foreign political orientation was largely

because it hoped thereby to get backing for its own cause at home. It was because they hoped thereby to get support against Fascism that the Liberals and the Social Democrats wanted friendship with the democracies, while the Legitimists hoped for realisation of their own dreams from the French connection. Conversely, perhaps the strongest reason which made GémbGés hurry to Rome with such great immediacy was because he calculated that Mussolini’s backing would strengthen his hand against civic liberties, Western democracy, socialist influence and, perhaps most of all, Habsburg Legitimism.

And this calculation proved well founded. Whatever his inner feelings, no Hungarian Minister President, from then onward, dared openly to repudiate the thesis of the inner congruence and mutual sympathy of the Hungarian and Italian systems. The “ideology of the Right’”’ was impregnably ensconced

as the official doctrine of Hungarian government, and its adherents in a commanding position.

| In the meantime certain of GOmb6s’ motions in other fields had been of a nature to gratify his enthusiasts and to alarm his opponents. He had arranged an enormous procession of the patriotic associations, who hailed him with carefully rehearsed and stage-managed shouts of “Long live our Leader!’ when he appeared to address them, in true Mussolini fashion, from a balcony. His maiden speech as Minister President was delivered by wireless, and thus to the nation at large, not to Parliament. In it he said that he wanted “‘to transform the soul of the whole nation” and to be “the constructive worker and leader of the generation which fought the war,” and he appealed to all classes for their co-operation, particularly that of the industrial workers, while telling the Social Democrats that they must revise their tenets, which led to Bolshevism.

Now, however, came the honouring of the promissory notes. On 6th October the Government published its programme,’ now consisting of 95 points (a Ministerial Council had cut out five of the 100). The programme promised change and reform in every possible respect, but in extraordinarily vague and general terms. The brief section on foreign policy said that its

main task would be “to assure to the Hungarian national State the role assigned to that nation by its past, its geographic situation and its historic vocation.”” Hungary would “incessantly endeavour to provoke a revision of the peace treaties by every peaceful means,”’ but was “‘prepared to consider

any reasonable co-operation between the Danubian States.’’ There was no mention of any alliance or orientation, nor was any foreign State mentioned by name. The most specific undertakings related to finance. The programme stated quite clearly that the value of the pengé was to be maintained, the gold standard adhered to “‘so long as the leading European States are guided by this principle,” and the Budget balanced. On most other points it was so hedged about with qualifications and safeguards that people complained not only that it read like one of the longer antiphonic psalms, but that the first and second parts of each verse largely cancelled one another out. Thus: ‘We are of the opinion that a reform of the electoral law, on the basis of secret ballot, is necessary—while at the same time the great national ideals of the Hungarian people must be safeguarded... . * This was issued as a pamphlet in various languages, including English (The National

Programme of the Hungarian Gémboés Government, Budapest, 1932).

FRUSTRATION 117 “The safeguarding of the liberty of the Press is a national asset—so long as the Press faithfully serves the interests of the nation... .” Agriculture was vaguely promised “a satisfactory distribution of the soil”

and industry “encouragement of all branches of industry showing sufficient . vitality.”” It was, moreover, most noticeable, and very widely noted, that among the few words which did not figure in the lengthy document, which

was currently known, even among the Ministers themselves, as the ‘“Almoskényv” (What your Dreams mean), was the ethnic (or religious) appellation “Jew.” Finally, the full programme was accompanied, by an “immediacy programme,’ always described, even by the Ministers themselves, as the “‘Sofortprogramm,”’ consisting almost entirely of emergency economic and financial measures of a severely technical kind. This was to be carried through before any measures of more political character were undertaken at all. The cautious nature of the programme surprised the uninitiated, but the wonder was nothing to that occasioned by Gémb6s’ next move. A day or two after his appointment,! Gémbos had told M. Baross to negotiate, through M. S. Stern, President of the Jewish Neolog Community,” with “any Jewish circles which might seek contact with him,” and a few days later, after secret negotiations, a protocol was signed between M. Baross and M. J. Szdrcsey, respectively President and Vice-President of the TESz, on the one hand, and M. Stern and his Vice-President, M. J. Szant6, on the other, under which the Neolog Jews “‘recognised and approved Gémbés’ progressive policy,”’ while

Goémbés promised to carry that policy through without violence and without , detriment to the Jews’ material interests. After this Gémb6s announced publicly that he had “‘revised his views on the Jewish question.” This placed the whole of Hungary’s internal development on a line quite different from that expected by many of Gdmbés’ followers, some of whom it

probably drove into the extremist camp. It obviously did not kill antiSemitism in Hungary. But it should be recorded that both parties to the agreement honoured it punctually, and to their mutual advantage. Besides dropping M. Zsitvay’s two frightening Bills, GOmbés during his entire tenure of office abstained from any Government measure injuring the Jews directly

or indirectly. Even the Government Press never wrote in an anti-Semitic vein. On the other hand, while it would be unsafe to suggest what, if any, individual Gentiles, from G6mbé6s downward, were the more prosperous for

the arrangement, it was no secret that one very large beneficiary was the Government Party, whose popularity among its members was much enhanced by the relieving of them of the burden of those heavy subscriptions which its elaborate organisation would otherwise have necessitated.

The greater part of the Government’s enactments in the domestic field during 1933 and 1934 were taken in pursuance of the “immediacy programme,” and it is not proposed to catalogue them here. They were first-aid measures against the world blizzard, which in 1933 was blowing harder than 1 Following from M. Baross (personal to C. A. M.).

2 There existed at the time two rival bodies of Jewry, each of which the State equally recog-

nised as representative; the Neologs (who were the richer and more powerful) and the Orthodox; besides the smaller Status Quo Jews, the Sephardim and the Cassidim. These last, according to M. Baross, did not approach him, but the head of the Orthodox Community

offered him the support of his followers in return for the monopoly, to be granted to himself, of the importation of coffee into Hungary. The dignitaries of the Masonic Lodges, which had been officially dissolved in 1919, made a similar offer.

118 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH ever across the Hungarian plains. The price of wheat was down now to 7-76 gold francs per quintal, opening the “‘agrarian scissors’’ to the extraordinary angle of 70-4 per cent., and although the harvest was the bumper one of 26

million quintals and the exports of wheat the reasonable quantity of 4-5 million quintals, the year’s total exports rose only to a value of 391-3 m.p. The national income from agriculture touched a new low level, as did the value of industrial production (1-76 thousand m.p.), the level of wages and earnings, and the total national income (now only 2-45 thousand m.p.). Budget receipts were down to 1,075 m.p. The next year there was a very slight improvement in most respects (except wages, which reached their nadir only at the end of 1935), but the picture was still dismal in the extreme. Of the Government’s handling of the situation it need be said only that it was technically competent and strictly orthodox. Expenditure was cut drastically, the salaries of public servants being reduced for the third time and all possible extravagances avoided, so that in spite of the low yield from taxation, the Budget deficits in each year were only small. Imrédy negotiated a further series of settlements with the foreign creditors which reduced the payments . to them most drastically (only 27-8 m.p. was paid in interest in 1933, and 40-8 m.p. in 1934), but having achieved his settlements he honoured them, earning

thereby golden opinions in the West.t Drastic cuts in imports, which sank * to 312-6 m.p. in 1933 and 344-9 m.p. in 1934, gave Hungary a favourable trade balance, in the two years, of 59 and 49 m.p. respectively, and the total balance of payments was active in the first year and only slightly passive in the second.

All this time Gombés had perforce abstained from controversial legislation of any kind’; but he had been working steadily to free his wrists from at least one of the shackles binding them: his weakness vis-a-vis the Govern-

ment Party itself. He had extracted from Bethlen, on appointment, one concession of absolutely prime importance: the “‘leadership’’ of the Government Party.* This gave him a starting-point. Two months after his appointment, he changed the Party’s name to the “‘Party of National Unity’’* and

introduced important changes in its organisation. It was invested with an Executive Committee and a Secretary General. Some real Conservatives, including Bethlen, were left on the Committee, but representatives of the new

order were added to them, and the key posts of President and Secretary General were given to two special confidants and cronies of Gémbés’ own in the persons of Dr. Sztranyavszky and Béla Marton respectively. At the same time, the Party was endowed with a Press Department, under the charge of Antal. Sztranyavszky’s job was to introduce order and discipline among

the Parliamentary representatives of the Party; Marton’s, to expand its organisation throughout the country; Antal’s to marshal public opinion behind the Government. Finally, while keeping in his own hands the control * Some of his success seems to have been due to a certain mutual cancelling out of the wishes of France on the one hand and the City and Wall Street on the other. ” The only measure which might be described as political—an Act extending the time for which

the Regent could prorogue Parliament from three months to a year—was carefully explained as a sign of consolidation, and met in fact with little opposition from any quarter. * He announced this to a meeting of the Government Party, to which he was expounding the “‘Sofortprogramm”’ on 8th October. The wise old editor of the Pester Lloyd, Vészi, described

the sentence in which Gémb6s announced this concession as containing the most important statement in his whole programme speech (Pester Lloyd, 9th October). * Its full official title was “‘Party of National Unity, Christian, Smallholders’, Farmers’ and Bourgeois Party.”’

* This position had existed in Istvan Tisza’s ‘‘Party of Work,” but not since the war.

FRUSTRATION — 119 of the EKSz and the Kettéskereszt Szévetség, from one or the other of which he drew all his Ministers in both his Cabinets (with the single exception of Winchkler,’ in the second), almost all his military nominees and all his higher Civil Servants, he entrusted Baross with the task of organising the various non-secret patriotic societies and through them creating a ‘““Movement of National Unity” which was to stand behind the Party and form its ‘‘social background.”’ Sztranyavszky, as things turned out, could make little progress within the

Parliamentary Party, largely composed as it was of Bethlen’s adherents. Marton, on the other hand, very quickly created an enormous organisation extending throughout the entire country; within two years the Party had an organisation in every one of Hungary’s 4,000-odd communes, with the appropriate larger centres in the municipalities, Counties, etc., and an unbroken chain of control running from the centre to the remotest commune. Round each local branch was gathered an imposing staff of local “‘champions’”’

or “‘advance guards,” whose numbers had by now reached the figure of 60,000. There were Youth Organisations, sections for propaganda and organisation and the other paraphernalia of a national movement. Politics were most completely identified with administration. The Foispan of each County became ex officio President of the Party’s County branch. State officials in the rural districts were practically compelled to join the Party, and indeed to become executive officers of it. The village notaries and their immediate official superiors, the district magistrates, had to keep card indexes of local Party members. Antal, without introducing a technical censorship, extended the influence of the Government over the Press to a degree far exceeding anything known in Bethlen’s day. One new newspaper, the Fiiggetlenség, was founded as the official mouthpiece of the Government Party and another, the Uj Magyarsdg, to expound

the new ideology, nominally as an independent organ. Both these were heavily subsidised. The oppositional Press, Catholic, Liberal, Socialist and independent, while not suppressed, found it prudent to express any dissentient views only with great caution.

Of Baross’ work it need only be said that the patriotic associations co-ordinated through the TESz, of which Baross was re-elected chairman, developed an extreme activity which was, indeed, rather on national and patriotic than on Party lines and not even always political in the narrower sense. They helped, however, to inculcate the younger generation with the ideas favoured by the regime. To complete the control, the opening of letters and listening in on telephones was introduced, if not on the scale alleged by the Opposition, yet in a measure previously unknown in Hungary, and a vast army of minor spies and informants recruited, whose pay, according to one speaker in Parliament, ranged from one to two pengés a day in Budapest to a third or a quarter of that sum in the provinces. Parallel with this—the process was, of course, a gradual one, extending over the whole time of Gémbés’ period of office, but the tempo was quickest at the period of the Party reorganisation—Gémbés carried through a great 1 Winchkler had been refused admission for personal reasons into which we need not go here. His ministerial career was short. The two organisations were amalgamated in 1933. 2 Elharcosok.

120 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH changing of the guard in all the services of the State. He could not, indeed, make any very drastic changes in the central Ministries, where tenure was fixed and a strict system of grading prevailed, and some, such as that of Foreign Affairs, on which Kanya kept a tight hand, he had to leave completely

untouched, but in several he was able to arrange that the more important work was given to his own confidants, while men known to be antagonistic to him were relegated to routine jobs, and in some of them G6mbés placed special secretaries of his own, whose duty was to represent the requirements

of the Ministry of Defence, i.e. of rearmament, in connection with the

activities of the Ministry concerned. The most important of these **Sofortfiuk’—Immediacy Boys, as they were known—Szakvari and Petehazy

in the Ministry of Industry and Kunder in the Office for Foreign Trade, all

three men of humble and incidentally non-Magyar origin,’ all able and pushing—possessed keys to the most private safes, were entitled to examine

the most secret papers and reported direct to Gdémb6és (qua Minister of Defence), not necessarily in the presence of the Minister concerned. Through this system the Ministry of Defence gradually acquired a far-reaching control over the activities of many branches of the civilian administration, against which Teleki in his day protested in vain. The influence of the military was the more powerful because they in their turn reported direct, on many points, to the Regent as Supreme War Lord, by-passing the Ministerial Council. In the State enterprises and other places where temporary civil servants were

employed on a large scale, similar processes could be, and were, carried through extensively.

In his own special field, Goémbds failed to secure adoption for the plan for which he had been pressing ever since 1929, which was to replace the limited Jong-service army imposed by the Treaty of Trianon by a shortservice national army, based on general conscription, of 21 divisions (kept secret and trained surreptitiously until the restrictions on Hungary’s rearmament were removed). Although Horthy had sympathised with this idea in 1929, when G6mb6s first put it forward, and had allegedly then authorised Gombés to proceed with the preparations for it, he afterwards accepted the argument of the rival school, led by Generals Réder and Sods, that a big force would be useless unless it could be armed, and that it was better to retain the 7-brigade organisation, adding to each regiment a reserve formation to be mobilised in case of war.

Gémbés’ scheme was popular among the younger officers, partly for reasons of patriotism, partly—officers being human—because adoption of it would have meant rapid promotion all round. Part of his hold on them resided in the fact that they were looking to him to put it through, and the abandonment of it was a political defeat for him. Owing, moreover, to the Regent’s jealous refusal to allow any interference with his own control over appointments, Gémbés was unable for some time to make many changes

among the highest ranks of the Army. But he managed to fill the ranks next below the top very largely with his own men and to imbue them with

' Kunder’ Agy’ +

Loeffler until 1934. We shall mect Szakvari later, i the Arteer Cn any and Szakvari's regularly, as an Imreédist. He was a young man of considerable ability and progressive, although authoritarian ideas.

FRUSTRATION 121 the idea that they had a “national” role, to stand behind him and carry through his programme against subversive and “‘unnational’’ forces. It is from G6mbés’ day onward that the Army began to regard itself as possessing a positive political mission, which led it to take the side of Right Radicalism in internal politics, and in foreign politics, that of Germany.

While thus strengthening his hold on the country outside Parliament, | Goémbés was manceuvring for new future backers inside it. He was in his way a genuine Radical and did not mean to remain forever the prisoner of the forces of extreme Conservatism. He would genuinely have liked to get the workers with him; more than once he repeated his initial invitation to them, promising them improved social legislation and hinting at the possibility of establishing a corporate system for the regulation of industrial relations.

The Social Democrat leaders regularly rejected these offers, although a certain modest proportion of their followers would have accepted them.’ But the Smallholders’ Party took up a different attitude. Changes had been taking place in that Party. Its cautious and moderate second founder, Gaszton Gaal, had died suddenly on 26th October 1932; and his somewhat woolly leaderless flock had then looked round them for a new shepherd. At the suggestion of Ulain (who allegedly wanted to “sharpen up the opposition”’ against Bethlen and Conservatism generally),” they offered

the post to Tibor Eckhardt, the victor over M. Purgly at the famous byelection of Mezocsat. Eckhardt was a very different pair of shoes from Gaal. He was a much younger man, born only in 1888, who had begun life as a County official. He had gone to Szeged, where he became a close associate of his contemporary, Gémbés, and a prominent member of the Szeged “Young Guard,” being known not only for his energy and ability but also for his intransigent nationalist and anti-Semitic views. Like Gémbés, again, he entered Bethlen’s first Parliament on the Government list, but seceded with Gémbés and was

co-founder with him of the Party of Racial Defence. He had then spent seven years in close political association with Gémbés, and there existed between the two men a fundamental personal understanding which all their subsequent quarrels (chiefly due to the clash of two overweening ambitions) could never quite destroy. Defeated in the 1926 elections, Eckhardt spent the next five years largely in revisionist propaganda, re-entering Parliament in 1931 as a “Christian Oppositional.’’ When, a few months later, he joined the Independent Smallholders, his energy, intellectual abilities and knowledge of the world made him the outstanding figure in the Party, and after his colleagues had elected him their leader they followed him wherever he led them, which was into pastures very different from those browsed by the mild Gaal. For Eckhardt, although a man of keen intelligence and wide reading was primarily a politician with a devouring ambition which found expression through a particularly sharp tongue—a possession which made him many bitter personal enemies to be added to those which he had collected in the course of his radical and anti-Semitic activities. At this stage in his career Eckhardt always still described himself as a 1 This was shown by the fact that in 1935, as we shall see, Marton was able to establish a workers’ organisation on Fascist lines. This never, indeed, gained any hold in the factories, its

members being drawn exclusively from some groups of State employees, and one special occupational group, the ‘“‘kubikusok” (navvies) of the Tisza region.

2 Baross to C. A. M.

122 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH politician of the Right, and the Independent Smallholders as a party of the Right; and in both cases with justification. He inveighed as vigorously as any other Right Radical against Liberals and Socialists (who returned his hostility with interest!) and against the big financial interests. It should, moreover, be emphasised that even in the English connotation of the word his party was not at the time one of the Left. It represented the rural middle classes against the bigger men, especially against their creditors, but it neither

represented nor cared for the dwarf-holders, still less the agricultural labourers. It was not even genuinely radical on the question of land reform, for although when definitely in opposition Eckhardt produced a fairly farreaching plan for land reform, yet when there was a chance of his wishes carrying weight, he never seriously pressed for anything more than fulfilment of the far less extensive proposals described below.’ It is worth adding that, up to its last days, the Parliamentary representation of the Independent Smallholders consisted almost entirely of middle-class

urban politicians. Of its more prominent figures, after Eckhardt, BajcsyZsilinszky was a firebrand with a past very similar to Eckhardt’s (and Gombés’), Tildy was a Calvinist pastor, Varga a Catholic priest. Only F. Nagy, the Minister President of 1946, was a real smallholder, by calling as well as by birth.

Gombés’ plan was to allow the Smallholders to gain ground at the expense of the Bethlenite wing of the Government Party and then to fuse, or form a coalition between his own followers in the Government Party and the Smallholders, leaving the Bethlenites in a minority. In reality, Eckhardt had been in agreement with Gémbé6s all along, and | Gombés had offered him a post in his first Cabinet. Eckhardt refused to take office so long as the Bethlen Parliament was in being, but agreed with G6dmb6s

that “‘at the right moment, GO6mb6s would liberate himself from Bethlen’s

leadership, hold new elections and then carry out a programme agreed between the two men.’ Although this agreement had been kept secret, the full liberty which the Smallholders (unlike any other party except that of the

Government) were allowed in 1933 and 1934 to organise in the country districts made it obvious that an understanding of some sort existed; while the favour with which Eckhardt was regarded was underlined when, in May 1934, Gémbés appointed him chief Hungarian delegate to the League of Nations, in succession to the deceased Count Albert Apponyi.* At last, after many hints and rumours had appeared in the Press, it was officially announced on Ist September 1934 that negotiations between the two leaders, commenced

‘six months previously,” had resulted in an agreement, satisfactory to both parties, that secret and “‘clean”’ elections were to be held in the course of the year. There would also be certain measures of agrarian reform: a ‘‘Settlement Act” (1.e. a measure providing for the creation of new smallholdings, with the appropriate buildings, equipment, etc.) and a measure reforming the law on fidei-commissa; and, in general, the policy of the future would not allow big financial interests to be protected at the expense of agrarian. In 1 The Social Democrats in Hungary afterwards composed their feud with Eckhardt out of

political necessity, but the Jews abroad remained his enemies to the last. Their hostility contributed largely to the ill-success of his mission in America in 1941-43. 2 See below, pp. 179, 315.

3 Eckhardt to C. A. M. * Gombos had offered the appointment as a permanency (which suggests that he might have

liked Eckhardt out of Hungary), but Eckhardt had insisted that it should be only temporary (Eckhardt to C. A. M.).

FRUSTRATION 123 subsequent statements it emerged that the Smallholders had agreed that the franchise reform should be preceded by certain ‘“safeguards”’ in the shape of a further extension of the powers of the Regent, notably by granting him the right of “‘preliminary sanction,” and of those of the Upper House. What did not emerge from these statements was, firstly, what the proposed electoral law was going to be like, and secondly, what system was expected to

emerge from the application of it. On the latter point Gémbis refrained from committing himself specifically, but he had, after all, never concealed his desire to establish a one-party system. It was commonly believed that the

Smallholders had agreed to form part of that system, Eckhardt himself receiving the Ministry of the Interior. In that case, the new elections might, given a suitable franchise bill, produce a situation in which the Opposition would find it very difficult to survive. Fears on this score were intensified when Eckhardt published in his Party

organ’ his own proposals for the franchise reform. It is true that these

provided for the introduction of the secret ballot in the country districts; but they were at the same time as naked an exhibition of party egotism as could well have been devised. Starting with the explicit admission that precautions must be taken “against two dangers: the advance of rabble demagogy and the one-sided influence of banks and big capital,” they proposed a system of election by County and municipal lists, to which only those parties were to be admitted which had possessed at least ten Deputies in the House before the elections or could muster at least one thousand signed recommendations in

ten districts. Parties which failed to secure five mandates in all lost the mandates which they had obtained, and the party (or parties, in case of an alliance) securing an absolute majority got a premium of twenty-four seats. The residential qualification was raised from two years to six, and all persons who had been in receipt of public assistance in the twelve months before the

election were disfranchised. This measure, it was calculated, would disfranchise roughly one-third of the persons then possessing the vote (although obliged to exercise it in public); practically none of the sufferers, as Eckhardt blandly admitted, being Smallholders. In brief, the draft if adopted would have put the Government Party and

the Smallholders, either separately or still more in conjunction, in an absolutely impregnable position, gained at the expense of the smaller parties and the urban interests. Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists and Independents naturally attacked it vehemently, from their respective angles; and during the autumn Eckhardt was the most heartily abused man in Hungary. This did not disturb either him or G6émb6s, who, while announcing that he was not committed to the draft and would talk it over with Sztranyavszky and

Bethlen and with the leaders of other parties, “especially those standing ideologically close to the Government” (the Wolff-Csilléry fraction of the Christian Party was meant), continued to load Eckhardt with favours. Throughout the autumn, Parliament being in recess, the parties in the two camps which were now mustering preserved a partial armistice; but this phase of relatively latent antagonism passed over in the New Year into one of open hostilities: the signal for action being given by an extraordinarily offensive New Year’s article by Eckhardt? in which, while expressing agree1 Fiiggetlen Kisgazda, 1st September 1934.

2 It is, or was, the custom in Hungary for prominent political personalities to usher in the New Year by long political messages or pronouncements to the Press. We shall meet with this practice again later.

124 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH ment with and admiration for Gdmbés, he abused the Government Party in general and Bethlen in particular in terms more drastic than the latter could stomach. The article threatened Hungary with new elections and challenged Bethlen to face them, the writer declaring that he intended soon to withdraw from his mission to the League and resume a firm opposition to the Government, ‘‘which was controlled by Bethlen and had done nothing to introduce democraticreforms.’’ The lists were now joined in a most complicated struggle

in which the details of the action are less important than the composition of the contending armies. The one army was led by Bethlen, who had behind him all the Conservatives standing to the Right, as that term is understood in England, of the Government Party, the Conservative elements in the Party itself, the Legitimists, the Conservative wing of the Christian Party, besides the Liberals, the Social Democrats and (not specified, but constituting the

reality behind many of the forms) the Jewish influences: the whole, incongruously united in the defence of acquired civic liberties and acquired vested interests. The opposing force, led by Gémb6s, consisted of the Minister President’s personal following in the Government Party and his much more powerful adherents outside it, or only nominally inside it: the EKSz and the

Kettéskereszt, Marton’s “advance guards,” the MOVE, the nationalist students, the “national” workers, Eckhardt’s Smallholders and Wolff’s wing of the “Christians’’: they again being allied, no less unnaturally in the eyes of those accustomed to view things through the spectacles of a different historical and social evolution, by a common antagonism to vested interests and the status quo, national and international, a genuine desire for social reform and a willingness to sacrifice “‘liberty”’ for the achievement thereof; to which admixture of feelings must be added the emotional ingredient of a pure racial anti-Semitism which for many of them was rapidly supplanting the earlier rational anti-capitalism. Up to the New Year Gémbé6s’ nominal followers but real opponents in the Government Party had treated him more in sorrow than in anger, in the hope that he might yet be cajoled into breaking with Eckhardt; but when he made no move to defend them in any way against the offensive attacks on them, it was too much. At the beginning of January there was a landslide out of the Government—although this was started by circumstances which had nothing to do with the political crisis. The aged and highly respected President of the National Bank, M. Popovics, had been ailing and unable to fulfil his duties for a considerable time, and persons who had a right and a duty to express the view were dissatisfied with the way in which his second in command, M. Schober, performed his duties. Under strong pressure from them, Imrédy resigned the Ministry of Finance and returned to the National Bank as its President, leaving G6mb6s with no Minister of Finance whom he could trust as possessing ideas which accorded wholly with his own. Eventually he appointed Fabinyi to provisional charge of the Portfolio of Finance; but Imrédy had stipulated before leaving his post (and secured the passage of a resolution by the Ministerial Council to the effect) that the Minister must accept and follow his advice in matters relating to financial and economic

policy. On this, Kallay (who had long been at variance with Gémbdés’ policy) resigned, saying that the resolution removed essential powers from the control of Parliament (to which the President of the National Bank had not

to answer) and was thus a step towards dictatorship which he could not 1 L. Baranyai to C. A. M.

FRUSTRATION 125 countenance.! Keresztes-Fischer resigned also, in protest against Marton’s encroachments on his field,? but was persuaded to carry on provisionally, while Kallay’s place was filled, on Bethlen’s recommendation and Horthy’s orders, by the Kalman Daranyi mentioned on an earlier page.

A few days later the land slid at another point. In the course of the League’s enquiry into the Marseilles murder,? the Hungarian Government had been requested to report on the antecedents of the murder, so far as they

had taken place in Hungary. The report was due to be presented to the League on 18th January, and was now ready. It contained strictures on certain Hungarian officers, and in protest against these Karpathy, Réder, the latter’s Deputy, General Vogt, and twenty-two other senior officers tendered their resignations. Gémbés seized his opportunity: he accepted the resigna-

tions* and filled the posts with friends of his own: General Shvoy as Commander-in-Chief, with J. Ratz? as his Deputy; General Somkuthy as Chief of Staff (Deputy, General Sipos). This was an event of the first importance, but its consequences cut both ways. On the one hand it made at last possible and in fact proved the prelude to a thorough “‘changing of the guard” in the Army and the Ministry of

Defence, with the result that men of the Gémbés type were in the key military positions in the years of crisis. For G6émb6s personally his success was probably disastrous, for it seems likely that no single act of his turned Horthy’s mind against him so definitively as this cavalier treatment of the

Regent’s old friends and colleagues. For the time, however, he made no move, only safeguarding himself by appointing Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, brother of the Minister of the Interior and a personal adherent of his own,

to be head of his Military Cabinet—an office of somewhat undefined functions, through which, however, the Regent exercised supreme control over questions of promotion.°

Goémbés was in high spirits after these changes. In a long speech at Szolnok on 24th January he was at his most provocative in his references to old men and obstacles to progress and indicated that he was practically ready with his draft of the Suffrage Bill’? and a Land Reform Bill. He made nota single reference, direct or indirect, to Eckhardt’s attacks on his following; instead, he himself attacked ‘“‘the mine-layers who tried to disrupt the unity of the Government Party.’? But now Bethlen felt that things had gone too far. To a friend® he said: ‘“‘Now I am going to put that man under tutelage’’; and he convoked a meeting of the Government Party for 28th January. This went all in Bethlen’s favour. Extremely strong attacks were made on 1 This is the reason given by Kallay in his own book (op. cit., p. 32) for his resignation. 2 So Baross to C. A. M. The reason for the resignation was never made public. 3 See below, p. 146.

4 The retirements were announced as taking place under the age limit. Another version,

given by an anonymous writer in Ur és Cél, vol. vil, No. 3, p. 9, is that the cause of the dispute

was the threat made by the Yugoslavs, during the crisis, to invade Hungary. The dismissed Generals had declared that Hungary, unarmed as she was, must give way, whereas Gdmbés insisted that she must resist at all costs.

5 See below, p. 167.

® Horthy could, of course, have prevented the changes, since appointments were in his hands. He seems, however, to have given way in haste and repented at leisure. 7 In this draft there were to have been 245 Deputies, 66 of whom were to be elected by the

Counties and municipalities. The list system was to be used for Budapest: straight contests elsewhere. The lower age-limit for the franchise was 24 for men, 30 for women. Candidates had to be sponsored by 5 per cent. of the electorate. 8 This was practically identical with the Bill described below (p. 132). ® Apor.

126 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Eckhardt’s handling of Hungary’s case at Geneva, of which it was said that he had allowed Hungary to be unjustly blamed and was in any case the wrong man to represent her, since the Little Entente representatives had been able to quote against Hungary Eckhardt’s own strictures on the Government and its policy. Almost tumultuously the meeting declared that it did not want Eckhardt in the Government and would not have him as a Minister. Eckhardt thereupon resigned his Geneva mandate (of which he had, indeed, already asked to be relieved, in order to devote himself to internal politics), and after issuing a statement that the agreement between himself and Gémbés

related only to secret and clean elections (thus denying by implication that there had been any agreement to fuse or apportion seats), he wrote a public letter to G6mbés asking him ‘‘to consider the agreement terminated, since its existence had created for the Minister President a situation vis-a-vis his own party which made it difficult for him to carry through his reform policy.” With this, the crisis was at first declared to have been resolved: but when, in subsequent utterances, Eckhardt repeated his thesis that Gémbds’ good intentions were being frustrated by his reactionary Party, and Gdmbés made no move to reject either the addresses to himself or the attacks on his Party, Bethlen announced that the situation must be clarified further, and on 8th February he and Gémbds were received by the Regent in joint audience. No statement was issued on this meeting, but the world deduced that Bethlen had won all along the line, for on the 14th Gémbés read out on the

wireless a declaration which was hailed as “‘a veritable Canossa.” He declared that in spite of pressure to adopt a different course, he had previously

refused to dissolve the Party, and would in future base himself only on that body. He confirmed that his agreement with Eckhardt had related only to the holding of secret and clean elections, and that it had become null and void since Eckhardt had resigned his mandate at Geneva. He regarded the Smallholders as a party of the Opposition; he condemned Eckhardt’s attacks on them and would return them if they were repeated. Turning to the subject of certain students’ riots, which he was popularly rumoured to have inspired, he condemned them in forceful and offensive language and dissociated himself from the demands put forward by their leaders, which had included a radical land reform.? He was no revolutionary, and although he wanted a more equitable distribution of wealth and a reduction of taxation, no legitimate interests had cause for uneasiness. He did not even want land reform, but only a “‘land policy,” and would not tolerate agitation in favour of anything beyond this. This speech was naturally taken as the fullness of surrender, and the reactions to it were, as might be expected, violent. Eckhardt replied on the 17th calling Bethlen’s followers ‘‘a group which for fifteen years had assured itself the majority in Parliament not by gaining the confidence of the people, but by corruption, force and fraud.” This group, “to oppose which was an honour,” was now preventing all the reforms which Hungary needed. And his was not the only voice. Wolff, the “‘national’’ Clerical, gave vent to the 1 M. Baross, who was present at the meeting, said that Kanya had reported that Eckhardt had been criticising Hungarian politicians to Roumanians at Geneva. 2 The meeting to which Gé6mbos referred had been organised by the students’ association,

the Turul. It had passed a resolution which, amongst other things, demanded that no single person should hold more than 500 hold of land. Both the main speakers at this meeting (J. Végvary and J. Sallo) afterwards figured in movements associated with, or setting out to rival, the Arrow Cross.

FRUSTRATION 127 most violent anti-Semitism that Hungary had heard for a decade. Inside the Government Party itself, Antal and Sztranyavszky made provocative

speeches; Marton summoned the “Elharcosok” to a conference; the patriotic associations demonstrated. The Turul, which had frightened the Regent and brought Gémbés into more disrepute than he liked, was told to keep quiet, but a new Youth movement known as the “Reform Generation’”!

published a sensational manifesto denouncing “the united front of the lackeys of international capital and of the feudal landowners”’ and demanding the liquidation of “‘the dictatorship of the banks and cartels,” the introduction of the secret suffrage and the inauguration of a systematic policy of land settlement.

After a fortnight of this tumult came the arch-sensation. On 5th March Goémbés allowed Keresztes-Fischer’s resignation to take effect, replacing him

by Miklés Kozma. Fabinyi was formally entrusted with the Portfolio of Finance, and Bornemissza, the leader of the ‘““Reform Generation,” took over

the Ministry of Commerce. The changes were not enormous, but Gémbés adopted the constitutional device of describing them as a reconstruction of the Cabinet. Having secured a vote of confidence from his unsuspecting party, he went to the Regent, tendered the resignation of the Cabinet as a whole, and got Horthy to reappoint him at the head of the new Cabinet. The next day he read out to an astonished Parliament a decree from the Regent dissolving Parliament and authorising new elections. Bethlen afterwards protested passionately” that Goémbés had broken faith with him. At the joint audience, he said, complete agreement had been reached on all “‘actual”’ political questions. He had agreed to G6mbés’ entire programme, and it was a deliberate lie to say that he had opposed either the secret franchise or the land reform. In return for this consent, GOmb6s had promised not to dissolve Parliament before the expiration of its term. ‘The thesis was never agreement and dissolution, but agreement or dissolution,” and agreement had been reached.? Go6mbéos never denied this, nor did he ever accuse Bethlen or his followers of any specific violation of the agreement (although certain hints, which may or may not have been well-founded,* were thrown out). He simply said that his step had been necessary, since he could not carry on as things stood “‘in

the absence of the necessary harmony, the community of world outlook,” and that while the promise had been given, it had been binding only on the Government which gave it. By resigning and getting himself reappointed, 1 The Reform Generation held its inaugural meeting only on 26th February, but the preparations had been going on for some time previously, in admitted understanding with Gombés. The movement had originated among the young men who had gone straight from school into the First World War and on their return had been given free education at the Universities. It was non-party, and produced several able men, not all of whom tended to Right Radicalism, although many did. 2 Bethlen’s fullest statement of his case was made in a speech of 17th March, reported in the Press of the following day. . . 8 The truth of this has been confirmed to me by an independent witness (Baron Radvanszky)

who took the minutes of the meeting. An agreement in the terms stated by Bethlen was reached and typed in three copies only, which were kept by Horthy, Bethlen and Gomb6s respectively. 4 An article entitled ‘“Zwei Fragen’’ in the Pester Lloyd, 6th March, suggested that Bethlen and his supporters had stipulated that the drafts of the Franchise Bill and the two related Bills must be laid before them before being submitted to the House, and had indicated that they would require certain amendments, particularly to the Bill on the powers of the Upper House. If this is the case, the “‘agreement’”’ was clearly not so complete as Bethlen said; but I have not been

able to trace any categorical statement from the Gdmbos side refuting Bethlen. A second

rumour, to which Pester Lloyd referred in the same issue, was that part of the Government Party had been planning to secede suddenly, placing Gémb6s in a minority and forcing him to resign.

128 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH he had freed his hands. By what arguments, or with what devices, he solved the central and all-important problem of obtaining the Regent’s authorisation of the dissolution, was never known; although it may be noted that Bethlen’s

own words imply that Horthy must have raised his absolute veto on dissolution at least by the joint audience. Some details of the circumstances surrounding this most important move

must therefore be left unexplained; but its importance is unquestionable. The programme which Gémb6s announced to the nation three days later was, indeed, familiar and not very radical: he said that he proposed to introduce six main Bills, in the following order: (1) extension of the powers of the Regent and of the Upper House; (2) electoral reform; (3) a new Press law; (4) a land settlement scheme; (5) reform of the entail system; (6) measures to combat the one-child system.” This appears to have been the programme which Bethlen had, however unwillingly, accepted, and G6mbds does not

seem to have altered it after 8th February. Apart from this, he said that general economic and financial policy would remain unchanged, although special attention would be payed to the problem of agrarian indebtedness. The Government aimed, in general, at a more equitable distribution of the national income, a reduction of costs of production and increased purchasing

power. In appealing for a large majority, Gémbés simply said that the Government wished to feel that the nation was behind it in its domestic and foreign policy.

The true importance of the dissolution lay, however, in the fact that it gave G6mb6s a chance to bring into public life new men, his own henchmen, who would help him to carry through his wider policies at a later stage. How far the election would bring this result about depended, of course, mainly on what candidates the Government Party chose to present to the electorate as its own representatives and what arrangements it made with any other parties Or groups.

Bethlen himself left the Government Party at this point, and Miklds Kallay followed him. Many more of his adherents wanted to do the same, and Bethlen was strongly urged to found a new Oppositional party. He refused to do this, and especially requested his less conspicuous adherents to remain in the Party, sitting, as it were, in a wooden horse within the walls to perform the traditional Hungarian task of “saving what could still be saved.’’ Some of the leaders—Keresztes-Fischer, Walk6, Purgly and some others—preferred not to stand, but a fair number of the smaller fry took Bethlen’s advice, and

as Gdmbés could not altogether ignore the Party machine, especially with Kozma not truly on his side, he could not easily evict these men from his list, although he filled all the vacancies with his own adherents. For the rest, he allowed the Reform Generation to put up two candidates whom the Government Party would not oppose, and made the National wing of the Christian Party a similar concession. But the most important of the arrangements of this sort to be made was clearly that with the Smallholders, and here some difficulties arose. * Most elaborate and picturesque stories circulated on the subject, including one that Gomb6s talked Horthy over, obtained his signature and then went into hiding until Parliament met. It seems to be a fact that Horthy repented of his first decision and tried to revoke it, but was told by Gomb6s (untruthfully) that it was too late. * The “‘egyke” or voluntary limitation of families to one child was very prevalent in some parts of Hungary, especially the south-west. Keresztes-Fischer’s special hobby was the prevention of it by giving help of various sorts to large families.

FRUSTRATION 129 Even before dissolving Parliament, Gémbés had gone back to Eckhardt and the two men had agreed to go to the electorate with the same programme and to divide the seats in a proportion to be arranged: i.e. in a certain number of constituencies the Government Party would not only not oppose the Smallholder candidate but would place its organisation at his disposal. Eckhardt was to have a seat in the Cabinet. But the final details, including numbers, were left for later settlement, and when, immediately after the dissolution, the two men, with their lieutenants, met to settle on the figures, differences arose. Godmbds offered the Smallholders 25 mandates, and Eckhardt himself the Ministry of Commerce. Eckhardt, who was very confident in his own popularity and that of his party,

demanded 60 mandates, and for himself the Ministry of the Interior. On Goémbés’ refusing the higher figure, he said that he preferred to fight the election “‘free.”’

Gombés simply stood by the terms of his original offer. When the elections took place, he put up no candidate to oppose Eckhardt,! and in 24 other constituencies the Smallholder candidate was either left unopposed or given as opponent a Bethlen man whom the Party machine in effect sacrificed.

In the numerous other constituencies in which the Smallholders put up candidates, the Government Party treated these like any other Opposition candidates, or perhaps rather more harshly still, which was saying much, for these were the most bitterly fought elections of inter-war Hungary. The fault was not all on the Government’s side, for the Opposition, and especially the Smallholders, were at times provocative and even violent. But the authorities were exceedingly harsh in their retaliation and severe in their restrictive measures (close restrictions were placed on the right of assembly, and on one occasion gendarmes fired on a crowd, killing six persons); the Electoral Committees, which were under the charge of Sztranyavszky, were more than

usually harsh and unfair, and manifold abuses were committed in the counting of votes, etc.

Assisted by these methods, the Government Party was resoundingly successful. When the last electoral results came in (subject, that is, to the result of the appeals, exceptionally numerous this time, against irregularities),

the Government Party had obtained 170 mandates. There were 2 representa- , tives of the Reform Generation, who in all but name were on the Government list, as were some of the 14 “‘Christians.’’ There were exactly 24 Smallholders,

11 Social Democrats, 7 Liberals, 11 independents (including Bethlen), 1 Legitimist, 1 Christian Opposition, 1 National Radical, 2 National Socialists

and 1 National Agrarian Opposition. When these results were announced, Horthy entrusted G6mb6s with the formation of a new administration. He kept his Cabinet unchanged, the only important change made on a high level being that Antal was made Secretary of State for Justice, allegedly to counteract the influence of Lazar. A further change which had been planned—the establishment of a new Ministry of Industry—was left in abeyance pending clarification of the position with the Smallholders.

It was these elections, far more than the original appointment of GdmbGs, which changed the face of Hungarian politics, and it was as the result of them

that Hungarian political life fell into a pattern which was not to change in 1 A similar courtesy was allowed to Bethlen. K

130 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH essentials until the end of our story. As the result of Bethlen’s tactics, the

Government Party itself still contained a fairly substantial number of members—perhaps a third to a quarter of the whole—who were at heart Bethlenites rather than GémbGsites. These were able to put a certain brake on their colleagues, and on one occasion (in 1938), when helped by certain special factors, even to revolt effectively against too much Right Radicalism in a Minister President. But the majority in the Party was now composed either of Gdmbés’ old sympathisers from the “Agrarian Group” or of the new men who now entered politics for the first ttrme. There were some eighty

of these, much younger, on an average, than their predecessors, and of a different social class. There were few titled men among them, and hardly any big landowners or business men. They were mostly ex-Civil Servants or officers of the reserve, with a sprinkling of small-medium landowners.

This majority in the Party was not itself entirely homogeneous. The extreme Right Wing, known as the “Young Turks,” the most prominent of whom were Marton, Baross and Sztranyavszky, numbered only about twenty

Deputies, and were a grouping rather than a group, since none of them recognised any other as leader. The “Agrarian Group”’ in the centre, which acknowledged as its leader an elderly landowner named Ferencz Barcsay, was a somewhat inchoate body which sometimes claimed to represent as many as one hundred Deputies, while at other times it dwindled to a much smaller hard core, known as the “‘Cs Group,” from the presence of that uneuphonious sound in the names of many of its members. This group was by no means always in agreement with the representatives of the fixed-income occupational groups.

But all, in their various ways, represented Szeged, and the result of the elections—as the event proved, an enduring result, for the process could never again be reversed—was, completing in Parliament the work which Gémbés had been carrying through in the Ministries and the Army since his appointment, to place Szeged in control of the official apparatus of the State. Henceforward the spirit of Szeged inspired Hungary’s legislation and—in practice

much more important—its administration. The voice of Szeged claimed to determine decisions of policy, and the representatives of Szeged carried them out.

The forces and interests which had governed Hungary through Bethlen were now definitively in the Opposition, of which they formed, for all practical

purposes, the extreme Conservative wing; for the shift away from the older forces shown by the electoral results had not been confined to the Government side: the Legitimists had practically disappeared, and the Christian Economic Party had lost half its members. The position of the Bethlenites

vis-a-vis the Government was thus now exactly the same as that of the Opposition of the Left, represented by the Liberals and the Social Democrats,

and in this situation that awareness of a common interest and a common danger, which had already come to them in the turbulent weeks before the elections, became much more acute after them. The differences between the various groups were still undiminished, but each of them, from its different

view point, felt the danger threatening it from Gémbés and his foreign friends to be even worse, or at any rate more imminent, than anything which

it need fear from its traditional opponents. Not yet the substance but the fore-thrown shadow of that great Opposition Front which was afterwards 1 Barcsay himself, Jurcsek, Csicsery-RoOnai, etc.

FRUSTRATION 131 to play so important a part in Hungarian politics began to emerge faintly against a background of the future. Before long, another force marched over to join this heterogeneous army. It must be a matter of speculation how far Gémbés’ refusal to meet Eckhardt over the allocation of mandates determined the ultimate failure of his plans to transform Hungary. In any case, it made the breach between the two men

irreparable. The Smallholders were probably unjust in laying the entire blame for their fiasco outside the seats reserved for them on the Government: partly it derived from the falsity of their own position, as it had derived from

their pact with the Government and consequent failure 10 produce an independent programme. For Eckhardt had simply announced that he approved all Gémbés’ programme, and, as the Pester Lloyd wrote, the electors did not see why, if they wanted to approach Gémbés, they should do

so via Eckhardt. But Eckhardt did not like sackcloth as a wear. As soon as the House

reassembled, he read out a passionate declaration accusing the Government of “political abuses reminiscent of the Balkans, which weigh on our nation like a domestic Trianon.” The Smallholders were going “‘to take up the fight with all the means at our disposal.”” He then tendered to Bethlen a written

apology for his attack on him. To Gémbés, on the other hand, he sent a message conveying his “‘complete contempt.’* Soon after, he deliberately provoked a duel with him which was fought out with pistols, with the customary result, indeed, that both principals missed. Goémbé6s, who always retained a certain affection for Eckhardt and did not take his tantrums too seriously, still hoped for a reconciliation, and for some months kept the portfolio of Commerce open in that hope.* But it was not to be realised. On Bethlen’s accepting the apology, the Smallholders’ Party moved over into the Opposition semi-front; and this was an important event, filling as it did a conspicuous gap in that formation. Not all of Eckhardt’s former adherents, even among the Deputies, followed him, just as not all the smallholders

belonged to the Party. There were a good many Government adherents among them, and later a considerable number of Deputies, especially the younger men, zig-zagged uncertainly between the Smallholders and the Arrow Cross; many of these feeling that the more radical ideas of the “Right” more truly represented the interests of the smallholders than Bethlen’s feudal Parliamentarianism. Thus it would be a mistake to imagine the small farmers of Hungary as solidly ranged with the Social Democrats and the Liberals in defence of democracy and hostility to Germany. But the official organisation

bearing the name of Smallholders’ Party was now on that side, so that adherence to it was made easy later for many who, for various reasons, either

could not or would not join the Conservatives and Legitimists on the one hand, nor the Social Democrats on the other. The pity of it was that in joining that alliance the Smallholders brought to

it so little that was constructive or genuinely progressive. It was not until 1943 that the Smallholders developed a programme deserving the name of 1 Pester Lloyd, 5th April. It is true that the total votes which went to the Smallholders constituted a much larger proportion of the whole than their share of mandates. 2 Apor to C. A. M. 3 It was only on Ist August that the new arrangements were made, and the Ministry divided as described below. Eckhardt writes that “his agreement with Bethlen came as a shock to GO6mb6s, who tried to forestall it by tendering tempting offers for a collaboration which he never answered.”’

132 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH democratic; as it was, in general, the weakness of this odd shadow-coalition that the great bulk of the concessions made by one element in it to the others were made by its more progressive elements to its more reactionary.

There remained, for the time, entirely outside either of the two great camps which we have described, various extremist Oppositional movements both of the Left and of the Right, as well as that of the Swabians, which was sui generis; but it will be more convenient to return to these at a later stage, after we have brought to its close the whole narrative of Gémbés’ administration.

In spite of the sobriety of his programme, G6mbés’ success at the polls aroused the same hopes and fears as had his appointment, and again his first words encouraged them. During the electoral campaign he and his followers made many speeches in the old style: notably when G6mbds himself, speaking at Szeged, said openly that he wanted to introduce a “‘unitary Hungarian

nation with no class distinctions and no difference between manual and

intellectual labour’ and a one-party, corporative State, and appealed strongly

to the workers to drop Marxism and come over to him, promising them substantial advantages in return. The Government’s enormous majority seemed to put it in a position to override all opposition, and, most important

of all, the Government announced on reappointment that it “regarded as null and void the political obligations which its predecessor had, for whatever reason, been obliged to undertake under the pressure of the conditions then

prevailing’ and held itself to possess ‘‘a free hand, bound by no sort of obligation.” Gomb6s certainly never gave up his aspiration to create a Fascist State; he spoke of his plans again in detail in the Upper House on 21st June, and as is told elsewhere? actually signed a secret agreement with Goring to realise them within two years.

But say what he might, his hands were not free. The Government’s internal obligations might now have become null and void, but it does not appear from their actions that either party to them regarded the secret agreements with the Jews as having lost their validity, and Hungary’s international obligations could certainly not be repudiated; least of all in the spring and summer of 1935, when Gombés still (as we shall describe) entertained hopes of putting through revision by agreement, with French help. He himself said, in the speech in question, that “‘measures connected with bread’’ must come first, and he carried this so far that he not only did not modify his programme in the direction of introducing Fascist innovations, but he blandly relegated the three constitutional Bills, which admittedly hung together, on the extension of the powers of the Regent and the Upper House and the franchise reform,

to the end of it. The two major Bills which the Government did introduce in 1935*the Entails Reform Bill and the Land Settlement Bill—were both useful measures, but neither of them revolutionary: the effect of the former would be to disentail a total area of 230,000 hold, but on this the heirs were entitled to establish new, smaller entails, so that little land became available for settlement, while the Land Settlement Bill provided for the settlement of

37,000 families on 416,000 hold, to be taken from land still due to be transferred under the 1920 Act, land offered in composition of arrears of taxation, and in the last instance, land compulsorily acquired, within strict

1 See below, p. 148. 2 They passed into law in 1936,

FRUSTRATION 133 limits and subject to elaborate safeguards, from certain categories of large estates; but the whole process was to take twenty-five years. For the rest, the Government worked mainly by Order in Council, and it is fair to say that it accomplished a large amount of useful work in many fields, including rural

housing and health, afforestation and irrigation, etc. In particular, G6mbés really tried to honour his promise to the industrial workers to improve their conditions. Orders were issued authorising the introduction of the eight-hour day and forty-eight hour week and the establishment of a system of minimum

wages in industry, and the first drafts of many measures of social reform enacted under the Daranyi Government were worked out under Gémbés, largely by Bornemissza, and some of them put extensively into practical operation in advance of the legal enactment. The complicated operation of reducing agrarian indebtedness to a tolerable level was completed. Against this, it is true, wages were still sinking: the index figures both of money wages and of real wages in 1935 were the lowest since 1924. On the other hand, the general improvement in the world situation did not pass Hungary by. Employment was better and production improving. Agriculture was definitely more prosperous and the national income rising again. Foreign trade was improving, with a surplus of exports over imports, and the Budget deficit dwindling. These cheering facts gave the Government confidence, and, coupled with the uncontentious nature of the legislation, helped to make the first year after

the elections unexpectedly tranquil. But it was an uneasy tranquillity. The Opposition did not object greatly to the present, but they feared profoundly

for the future. They saw the disquieting figures of Antal, Marton and Sztranyavzsky moving obscurely in the shadow cast by Gémb6s; they watched with unabated anxiety the activities of the provincial Elharcosok; their keen Central European noses whiffed, long before Mussolini’s own, the Duce’s coming surrender to the Fiihrer, which, when it came, must shift the balance

in Central Europe still further in favour of the Fascist system against the democratic; and they argued the worst from Gémb6s’ continued postponement of the Franchise Bill and even of its promised precursors and counterweights. They believed that G6mbés was only playing for time, never meant to introduce the secret suffrage at all, and when the moment came would simply proclaim himself dictator and set up a Fascist State. In his New Year’s article of 1936 Eckhardt even suggested that if the Regent died, G6mbés

would proclaim himself Regent and Premier at once, with unlimited powers.

At this stage the Opposition was not in a state to put much force behind its fears. The differences between its various components were still in no way

composed; Bethlen and Eckhardt explained elaborately and in public that their reconciliation had only been personal and that they continued to differ on principle. Smallholders and Social Democrats were still at loggerheads, not to speak of Social Democrats and Bethlenite Conservatives. Furthermore, not one of these groupings possessed at that juncture that asset which, even then, was all-important, of the Regent’s sympathy. The line of the others to Horthy should have run through Bethlen, and Bethlen was offended

with Horthy for having, as he thought, failed him in the dissolution crisis. But it was not only the Opposition that was dissatisfied. In the winter of

1935-36 Kozma complained to Gémbés that Marton and his Chief of Propaganda, Beldy, were usurping Ministerial functions, and that at their

134 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH orders the FG6ispans were meddling in administration. In the course of further revelations it came out that Marton had been employing a detective to report on the movements of his colleagues,’ and it was alleged that he and his friends had been compiling a “Black List” on which Kozma himself and other Party members figured (just what this involved was never stated). There was a sharp internal conflict, which ended Marton’s being given a committee of ten colleagues with whom to work, and with the divorce of politics and administration to this extent, that the keeping of the Party card indexes was taken out of the hands of the district and village magistrates and given to Party officials who were not active members of the administration. From this moment on, an active feud raged between Kozma on the one hand and the ““Young Turks,” in loose alliance with the ““Cs Group,” on the other. A considerable and influential body of Deputies, led by L. Pechy, constituted

themselves a ‘‘Centre Group” within the Party, which meant, in practice, organised opposition to the Party’s Right wing. The Spring of 1936 was a very uneasy period. In particular, the Jewish question suddenly boiled up. There were anti-Semitic riots at several of the High Schools and manifestations among the unemployed graduates emerging

from those institutions. The Government promised to do something about

the problem of unemployed graduates, and created a scare by circularising industrial undertakings asking the religion of their employees. Then, early in May, came an important event in Hungarian history: G6émbos fell sick of kidney trouble and had to go to hospital for treatment. His illness was not at first thought to be serious, nor his absence expected to be prolonged, and there was a general desire to avoid controversy pending his return. His duties were therefore provisionally assigned, allegedly on Bethlen’s advice, to Daranyi: partly for technical reasons, since the agricultural question lay at the heart of the country’s problems and was bound to occupy a large place in the forthcoming Budget debate, partly because he was likely to be generally acceptable, having, as we saw, a foot in both camps, with an extraordinary gift of inspiring general trust without, so far as can be ascertained, any conscious duplicity.

On the whole, his appointment was generally held to mark a slight but definite return towards the Bethlen tradition, and was welcomed as such by the Opposition, which proclaimed a “Parliamentary Truce’’ for the duration of the Budget debate, and in fact abstained from attacking the Government seriously during that period. What pleased the Opposition must by definition displease the Right Radicals, who were, in fact, thrown into a state of great nervousness by GoOmbé6s’ illness, fearing that the ““backwoodsmen’”’ would

seize the chance to regain the power. As, however, they had themselves a reasonable degree of confidence in Daranyi, and in any case believed that the arrangement would hold only for a few days, they accepted it without much demur. Their nervousness increased when GémbGs had to prolong his sick leave, and in June reports were circulating that the extremists were plotting to seize power by a coup if Gdmbés became seriously ill and the possibility

| of a swing to the Left became real. These reports were, however, un-

1 This came out because Marton omitted to pay the man, who then sued him for his salary. 2 Prager Presse, 5th June 1936. This paper (the German-language daily subsidised by the Czechoslovak Government) specialised in scandal-items about the political “‘underground” of Hungary. Most of its information came from the Hungarian Social Democrat Party. Always malicious, it was often unreliable and should not be used without checking, but sometimes it got hold of an accurate and really juicy bit of backstairs information.

FRUSTRATION 135 doubtedly exaggerated, and the immediate situation was in any case saved by the retirement of Parliament into its customary spacious summer recess from late June to late October and by the advent of the harvest months when, by an iron and immemorial law, no one in Hungary does any work at all except the agricultural labourers, who work twenty hours a day.

In this interval, however, there occurred something of really first-class importance: perhaps, indeed, the most important single event in Hungarian inter-war politics. The Regent’s mind turned definitely against Godmbés. To explain exactly how this came about we must now turn to bring the narrative up to date in other fields, beginning with that of Hungary’s foreign relations since the day of Gémbés’ appointment to office.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AXIS RAINBOW S we have said, G6mb6s’ haste in rushing down to Italy as almost his

At action as Minister President had been due largely to his need to

consolidate his internal political position by depriving the Francophile party—his opponents at home—of the strength which the backing of France might have given them—a result which he achieved completely. As between Italy and Germany—his two chosen partners in his dreamAxis—he would have had in any case to approach Italy first. The Govern-

ment of Germany, at that date, was still not that of his dreams, while, in Italy, Fascism had been established for ten years; Germany had not yet begun her active Danubian policy, while Italy’s was in full swing; Germany, even though she had been secretly rearming far beyond the limits allowed her under the Treaty of Versailles, was still, militarily, far weaker than France, let alone France and her Allies combined, while Italy possessed considerable

armed forces.! It may also be added that the opposition in Hungary to a German course would have been very strong—Horthy and Bethlen might even have vetoed it absolutely—while Bethlen could not object to Gémbé6s’ following a track which he himself had blazed. But the choice also expressed Gombés’ own preferences. Whatever may have been his views during the old, wild Munich days (during which a Left-wing Government was in power

in Italy), he had long since come to put Italy first. This was partly due to the personal factor, for on meeting Mussolini in 1928 he had conceived for the Duce an unbounded personal admiration,” whereas the newer generation of Nazi leaders, G6ring alone excepted, gave him, as he once told a friend, “no sense of personal contact.” Politically, too, he thought it advisable to link Hungary to the Italian end of the Axis, so that the two lighter weights should balance the heavier. The disconcerting practical point for the visionary of the Axis was that at that moment Mussolini’s Danubian policy was in certain respects strongly

opposed to that to be expected of Germany. In particular, Mussolini was determined at all costs to prevent the incorporation of Austria in Germany,® and he demanded Gémb6s’ active help in this respect. Goémbés was not, in fact, entirely averse from revising his original conception of the Axis to meet the Duce’s wishes. The possibilities of a Habsburg

restoration—the real factor which had made him, in the early 1920’s, so anxious to see Austria wiped off the map—had become much more remote. * Szalasi writes in his Diary that, precisely in this connection, Gdmbés had said that ‘“‘any , alliance is worth only the number of Divisions that can be put behind it.” * For the meeting, see Marschalk6, op. cit., p. 63. It was notorious that Gdmbés, who bore

a faint facial resemblance to Mussolini, used to ape the Duce’s personal idiosyncrasies and attitudes, such as his habit of addressing crowds from a balcony. Mussolini, incidentally, did not altogether reciprocate the admiration: he described Gdmbds to Schuschnigg as ‘‘Testa di fumo.” * According to Apor (personal to C. A. M.) it was Bethlen who, in 1927, had really inspired

Mussolini with the belief that an active Austrian policy was possible for Italy. He had found Mussolini resigned, although without pleasure, to the thought that the Anschluss must come one day, and had persuaded him to the contrary. Bethlen himself told C. A. M. that he had concluded the Treaty with Italy ‘‘even more against Germany than against the Slavs.”

AXIS RAINBOW 137 He was not blind now (as most Hungarians of his way of thinking had been

up to 1918) to the danger which might threaten Hungary from a united Germany stretching as far as the Leitha; and personal considerations also were at work. He was at the time strongly under the influence of his wife, while a number of Austrians holding high office were old cronies of his from his Wiener-Neustadt days. In their company he slipped back, willy-nilly, into the old Danubian atmosphere of hearty dislike for Prussia and Prussians. Finally, there was the economic consideration. Hungary urgently needed an outlet for her exports if she was to escape being forced into accepting one or another of the Franco-Little Entente plans. Hungary was already in debt to Germany—not heavily, since she had habitually squared an unfavourable trade balance by borrowing from the West, but still to the tune of some 80 million pengd. Germany could give no further financial accommodation, and as a buyer had, after her single gesture in 1931, turned her back again on the Danube, following, indeed, a policy so unhelpful as to evoke widespread and vocal discontent in Hungary.

Austria, too, had, as we have seen, turned unhelpful in 1932; but immediately after taking office Kallay, the new Minister of Agriculture, had worked a change. On his own initiative he had gone to Vienna, sought out Dollfuss, and put it to him that “the question of the relations between the two countries was not only an economic one but a great political question for both countries, and in that connection it was the supreme interest of each to find a partner in resisting foreign pressure.”*® Whether Dollfuss’ attachment to his protectionist policy, hitherto so rigid, had been loosened from other quarters also, the writer does not know’; but he then suddenly drove over and called on Gémbés, late one night, at his country house at Nagytétény.* The two men, who took a personal liking to one another,° agreed that negotiations should be resumed. These were entrusted, on the Hungarian side, not to the Minister of Commerce but to Kallay, at whose suggestion the system

of contingents, which afterwards became general, was first employed. A revised commercial treaty was concluded in January 1933. This reduced Hungary’s favourable balance, as against the earlier treaty, substantially (from 2:2 : 1 to 1-5 : 1), but was nevertheless very advantageous to her, since on the one hand it secured her a market in the world over-production crisis and on the other entailed the abandonment by Dollfuss of his extreme agricultural protectionism. Italy now took a hand, concluding bilateral treaties on the Brocchi system with both Austria and Hungary. These lines had still to be elaborated into a triangle, the principal obstacle which now remained being Austrian antipathy to Italy. This, too, was overcome. The Heimwehr leader, Prince Starhemberg, is generally credited with having mediated the rapprochement,® for which Rintelen also claims credit,’ but there is evidence that Gémb6s, too, played a part.® At all events, matters were arranged very quickly. Dollfuss visited Italy from 11th to 13th April 1933, and this visit 1 This was his first wife, whom he had divorced but remarried on the death of her successor. 2 Kallay to C. A. M. 3 I have found no explanation in any life of Dollfuss or history of Austria. 4 Winkler, Die Diktatur in Oesterreich, p. 31. 5 According to Baross (personal to C. A. M.) the feeling was not unmixed on the side of Gémbés, who said to Baross: “‘Dollfuss is a weakling, he is more of a danger than a help to us.

We never know when he will let us down.” .

6 Cf. his own story in Between Hitler and Mussolini, p. 90. 7 Erinnerungen an Oesterreichs Weg, p. 214. ® Personal, Fabinyi to C, A. M.

138 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH laid the foundations for the more extensive co-operation, both economic and political, which was to follow. It is important for the understanding of Danubian politics of the day to be clear that neither G6mb6s nor, for that matter, many of the Austrians who followed it thought that an Italian orientation, even if 1t involved temporary renunciation of the Anschluss or even opposition to it, really constituted an

anti-German policy. The immediate and essential point was to break the stranglehold of France and the Little Entente, and if this was done, even at the cost of keeping Austria separate from Germany, the latter State’s interests . were not truly injured.t Certainly, although G6mbdés had now readjusted his vision of the Axis to make it consist of four members instead of three, he by no means regarded himself as following an anti-German policy, and when Hitler had established himself in power, after the elections of 5th March 1933,

Gombos had no more urgent wish than to establish contact with him, to explain the Axis idea (revised version) to him and to enlist his co-operation for it. Out of deference to Hungarian public opinion, and also to the needs of the Immediacy Programme, which imposed discretion, he had remained reticent in his public speeches, but had sent Hitler a telegram of congratulation and a private letter assuring him of his own trustworthiness.” Then, on 16th June 1933, the world was startled—and no small part of it scandalised— to learn that Goémbés had arrived in Berlin on a private visit to the Fiihrer. The arrangements for the journey had in fact been kept entirely secret. The invitation had come from the German end, from the A.P.A.; it had been transmitted not through diplomatic channels (the Hungarian Legation in Berlin and even Kanya having been kept in the dark) but through Mecsér; Gombé6s himself had expected the visit to take place in Munich, and to be absolutely private. Some blabbing in Budapest, or possibly an intentional indiscretion in Berlin, had frustrated the hopes of secrecy, but the visit was kept on an informal footing, and was of the most fleeting character possible:

Gombés had two hours’ téte-a-téte conversation with the Fiihrer in the

morning, watched a military parade with him in the afternoon, and took the night train back to Budapest via Vienna. Yet, short as it was, and little as Goémbés seems to have succeeded in opening his mouth during it, it marked the opening of a new stage in Hungarian foreign politics: one which had to take into account Hitler’s real programme for South-Eastern Europe, which was very different from that which GdmbGs had meant him to entertain, and, up to that date, probably still thought that he did entertain. As the documentary evidence amply proves, Hitler’s South-East European programme was perfectly definite and unambiguous. Nothing should stop him from annexing Austria—priority No. 1. Sooner or later he meant to annexe all of Bohemia and Moravia: not because he wanted Czechs in the Reich—in disclaiming any such desire he was quite sincere—but because he must have the German population of those areas, and, sharing the universal Central European dogma that the areas were indivisible, assumed that the

Czechs would have to follow the Germans. This would entail the dis-

appearance of Czechoslovakia (an end desirable also on strategic grounds), leaving Slovakia-Ruthenia dangling in the air. These he did not want. Anyone who wished—Hungary, if she liked—could have them. But that was all 1 On this see the highly interesting remarks in Rintelen, op. cit., pp. 214, 294. 2 Personal, Szegedi-Maszak to C. A. M. The letter contained the assurance: ‘Hier wird Ungarn mit starker Hand regiert.”’

AXIS RAINBOW 139 Hungary would get out of the Reich. He did not care a fig for old comradeship, and neither liked the Hungarians nor thought them worth bothering about. As von Neurath once told an Austrian diplomat: “It was the view of the Wilhelmstrasse that as soon as the Reich held Austria, Hungary would eat out of its hand.’? He did, on the other hand, propose, for the first stage, to establish friendship with Roumania, whose oil-wells were essential to him for his war against Russia, and with Yugoslavia, whose army he respected and who would be useful for keeping Italy in order: he had, it is true, designated Italy, in Mein Kampf, as his ally in chief, but if she took the wrong

line over Austria, she must be brought to heel, and at the worst, discarded , altogether in favour of Yugoslavia. As regards Yugoslavia and Roumania, his instructions to Hungary were perfectly sithple: hands off! Provided these instructions were obeyed, He was prepared to help Gdmbés

in Hungary, for inner political reasons. He would supply him with arms, within reason and safety,” and, so long as he followed a satisfactory line in internal politics, would not make his position difficult by stirring up the extreme Right Radicals or the Swabian minority against him. It seems to have been with the purpose of making these points clear to Goémbés that Hitler had had him invited to Berlin.2 Here Gémbés seems, it is true, to have scored a considerable pérsonal success with the Fiihrer, who liked him as he liked few Hungarians and was prepared to help him where he could do so without detriment to his own plans. He promised him ‘“‘favourable treatment”’ for Hungarian exports, agreed to help him a little with his rearmament and to collaborate with him in cértain fields, e.g. in a joint policy at Geneva in matters such as armaments and minorities protection, on which

the two countries’ interests were identical.' Hungary’s relations with her neighbours were, on the other hand, to be as Hitler said. He informed GombGs sans phrase, that he was going to annex Austria,* and warned him bluntly to keep his hands off Roumania and Yugoslavia.® She could, indeed, have her cut of Czechoslovakia when Hitler dismembered that country—an event which the Fiihrer seems to have discussed with a coolness which took

Goémbés aback.® Gémbés, on his side, seems to have stuck to his guns over the question of

Austria like a man, maintaining in the face of Hitler’s arguments the congruity

of Austrian independence with the Axis and even declaring his intention of defending that independence to the best of his power,’ although he does appear to have said that he would not conclude any alliance which might involve him in war with Germany.® But his objections made no impression 1 Fuchs, Un Pacte avec Hitler, p. 109. 2 Hitler told Schmidt in November 1936 not only that he was unsympathetic to Hungarian revisionism but that he saw danger in giving them arms, as this would increase their warlike mentality (Doc. G.F.P., D. I, p. 340). 3 See the report by the Director of the A.P.A. in Nazi Consp. and Agg., III, 14 ff., which is, incidentally, the only official document yet published to give any account of the meeting. The rest of my account of it is from private sources (chiefly Apor, Szegedi-Maszak, Baross and E. Gomb6s). 4 Apor.

5 The A.P.A. document writes: ‘Specific conversations were initiated with Hungary to convince her of the futility of her demand for 100 per cent. revision.”’ This leads on to the

account of the meeting. a

6 Apor to C. A. M. Gémbés objected: “Das wird ja ohne Krieg mit Frankreich nicht

gehen’’; to which Hitler replied: ‘‘Nattirlich; ich werde Frankreich zermalmen.” 7

8 oP Ntontgomery’s information, quoted below (p. 144), on Hungary’s reservation to the secret agreement attached to the Rome Protocol.

140 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of any sort on the Fiihrer, and his protests regarding Yugoslavia and Roumania were equally unavailing. The conversation ended in complete and flat disagreement on these points.

The visit was a deep disappointment to G6mb6s: so much so that he kept the course of it a profound secret not only from the general public (this of necessity, for the revelation of the true story would, of course, have been meat and drink to his political opponents) but also in narrower circles. In Parliament, where he was attacked fairly strongly for having made the visit, he replied only that he had done well to make it ““because it was well that Hungary should acquire the conviction that the regime had come to stay and necessary that she should know what Germany thought of her.’’ Even his Cabinet was not given a full account.1. There was, however, no help for it but to face the facts. Nothing of what had been said had, it is true, modified his own views and long-term intentions, but he could not do otherwise than adapt his tactics and his methods to the realities. What lends the position its peculiarity is that, as we have seen, Germany was willing in some respects to co-operate with Hungary, while in others the wishes of the two countries were diametrically opposed; and that Hitler did not allow the one case to alter his attitude on the other. Thus from this point on it becomes possible, and even necessary, to divide our observations of each period of Hungary’s foreign relations into two sections: the one dealing with her general activities,

in which Germany’s attitude was one factor among many—although an

increasingly important one; the other, her bilateral relationship with Germany, the role of Germany in the two being often strikingly different, even when the events concerned were proceeding simultaneously. The political side of the bilateral relationship calls for only very short description here. On the whole, Hitler adhered to the view that the Gombd6s Government suited his purposes better than any prospective alternative, and abstained from intriguing against it with the Hungarian Right Radicals. The

growth of the Right Radical movements, which is described in another chapter,” was largely spontaneous. Hitler did take a different view of the Volksdeutsch question, as his own principle was that every German, whether Reichsdeutscher or Volksdeutscher, owed him allegiance as Leader of the German people, and here he came into flat collision with Gédmbés, who held

that the German-speaking citizen of Hungary owed the Hungarian State exactly the same allegiance as any other of its citizens, and was even far more vigorous in enforcing this view than Bethlen had been; but this story, too, is

best described elsewhere.’ In spite of the frequent clashes to which the Volksdeutsch question gave rise, Hitler always treated Hungary, so long as Gombés was its Minister President, as a “‘friendly State.” The most important development in Hungaro-German bilateral relations was in the economic field, and dates from the initiation of Germany’s new

economic policy towards South-Eastern Europe. This has been so often described* that there is no need to repeat the description here. As early as the summer of 1933 Germany had begun to reorganise her foreign trade on a 1 Fabinyi, although a member of the Cabinet, was never told of its results. 2 See below, p. 155 ff. 3 See below, p. 168 ff.

* See, inter alia, A. Basch, The Danube Basin and the German Economic Sphere (London, 1944), with bibliography.

AXIS RAINBOW 141 system of quotas, and had made one such agreement (22nd July) with Hungary; this, however, “‘had altered little, because Germany refused to take

Hungary’s agricultural exports, and the trade balance remained burdensomely passive for Hungary.’! On 21st February 1934, on the other hand, besides renewing a public trade agreement (described as a “‘second supplementary agreement to the 1931 Treaty’), she concluded a secret agreement _ (necessarily secret because it infringed the rights of other countries under the m.f.n. clause) on an entirely different basis, the essence of which was that Germany waived her demand for repayment of the merchandise debt owed to her by Hungary on condition that (a) Hungarian debtors should use the pengé owed by them to German

creditors for the purchase of approved agricultural goods to be exported to Germany, and (b) the Reichsmark proceeds of the sale of these goods should in turn be applied to the purchase in Germany of approved industrial goods for export to Hungary.”

Compensation for the original German creditor devolved upon the Reichsbank.

This agreement, the first of several of its kind concluded by Germany, ‘admitted Hungarian agricultural exports and enabled German frozen credits to be thawed.’”? Germany’s trade with Hungary now rose rapidly. Germany began to take a high proportion of Hungary’s agricultural produce, especially live-stock and industrial plants, and almost monopolised the exports of the newly developing

bauxite industry. She exported to Hungary chiefly finished products, but also coal, coke, and tar derivatives. The official figures (which omit secret expenditure on armaments) for 1933-37 were as follows:

Imports from Germany % of Total Exports to

(1,000 pengé) Imports Germany %

1933 ,, ,. ,; 61,507 19.7 43,701 11-2 1934 63,025 18-3 89,866 22-2 1935 . . . 91,295 22-7 108,098 23-9 1936 1937 .; ,. .113,393 124,76226-0 26-2 115,198 141,586 22-8 24-1 It was not only quantitatively that Germany thus came to occupy a dominant position in Hungary’s economy. She succeeded in interlocking Hungary’s economy with her own in such fashion that many Hungarian factories would simply have been unable to carry on production without the regular supply from Germany of raw materials or, in other cases, of certain

machines, machine tools or spare parts. In other cases the Hungarian factories were only adapted to carry through parts of certain processes which had to be either begun or finished in Germany. This applied particularly to the armaments industry (the development of which in both countries was one 1 A. Nickl, Pester Lloyd, 3rd January 1936. 2 On this, see the memorandum on German-Hungarian economic relations, prepared for the

visit of the Hungarian Ministers to Berlin in November 1937, which figures as No. 1 in the Documents Secrets. 3 Nickl, loc. cit.

142 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of the objects of the agreements).1_ The hold was strengthened by the fact that from 1934 onward Hungary’s trading balance with Germany, which up to that date had been regularly passive, was now invariably active. Germany’s financial and economic relations with Hungary, as with other countries of South-East Europe, formerly a source of weakness, now added

powerfully to her influence, political as well as economic. Neither the National Bank nor the economic Ministries, then or later, delivered themselves unresistingly into dependence. The National Bank was always anxious

to divert to hard-currency countries at least so much of Hungary’s foreign trade as would enable her to acquire the hard currency to satisfy her foreign creditors, and not even the most pro-German of her Ministers—ReményiSchneller was no exception—wanted Germany to dominate their respective spheres of influence. There was a lot of tough resistance and hard bargaining,

in which the Hungarians were by no means always worsted. But the Hungarians could not reject altogether this opportunity of trading relations which—contrary to the very foolish wishful writing on the subject in which many West European writers indulged—brought them many advantages: a regular and assured market, at remunerative prices, for Hungary’s most important exports, and, in return, cheap goods of reasonable quality adapted

to her needs. Not even the fears that Germany would crush Hungarian industry were justified: no Hungarian industry was put out of action by Germany’s policy, and some branches developed rapidly.” The decrease in unemployment and the revival of industrial production which now set in was directly related to the trade with Germany. Knowledge of this fact gave wide sections of the population, including industrialists, farmers and workmen, an interest in the maintenance of good relations between Hungary aid Germany and contributed largely to increase the popularity of Germany among the non-Jewish members of these classes, many of whom eagerly absorbed the view presented to them that Germany was saving them from the tyranny of the Jewish middleman. Germany was

even more popular among the agricultural labourers, many of whom now began to go to Germany for seasonal labour. They were, in the main, well treated and well paid, and often returned ardent Nazis. It is no coincidence that this class provided the backbone of the Hungarian National Socialist movements described in the next chapter.? It was through her German connection that Hungary was now enabled to remedy a little of her deficiency in armaments, for which purpose Germany opened for her a long-term credit.* Her acquisitions were not, however, very + While Germany was chiefly importing agricultural products from Hungary—these being also necessary for her war larder—she also laid hands on the newly discovered Hungarian bauxite deposits, of the product of which, according to the memorandum, she was taking 96 per cent. in

1937. She was also ‘‘particularly interested in increasing the cultivation of vegetable oil and textile plants.”’

* The annual average, in round figures, of workers employed in factory industry were: 1932, 170,000; 1933, 175,000; 1934, 195,000; 1935, 215,000; 1936, 242,000; 1937, 278,000; 1938, 285,000.

* Travelling in West Hungary in the years before the war I was repeatedly given the Nazi salute by young children and addressed with the greeting ‘Heil Hitler,” these children not being Swabians but Magyars (and those two words being all the German they knew). The villages of this area contained an envied class known as the “‘biciklistak.”” These were exclusively men who had spent a season in Germany and had bought bicycles with part of their savings. Almost all of them were enthusiastic pro-Nazis, and in the villages where they were numerous the entire population, except for the Legitimist landowner and priest and the Jewish innkeeper and general shopkeeper, used to be pro-German in international politics and Arrow Cross in domestic. A great many of these poor Magyars saw nothing to fear from incorporation in Germany. 4 Doc. Sec., loc. cit.

AXIS RAINBOW 143 extensive: the most important of them were a few convertible sports aircraft, and some “Goring” light howitzers, which, however, proved of little value. Hungary’s rearmament had still to be secret, since the official restrictions on it had not been lifted. The Five Power Resolution of 11th December 1932, admitting the right of the ex-enemy states to equality in armaments “‘in a system which would provide security for all nations,” was admitted to apply also to Hungary, who maintained ever after that she now had a legal right to rearm, provided that the framework of security was present, as she also

had a right to revision under Article XIX of the Covenant. The Little Entente States maintained that no “‘system of security”? which did not include

complete and voluntary renunciation by Hungary of all frontier revision would satisfy them. Here, for the time, the matter rested, each side maintaining its point of view in periodical public speeches.

Another factor which the Hungarians now began to bring increasingly into the equation of their relations with the Little Entente States was that of minority protection. The question, of course, possessed a great long-term importance in relation to possible future frontier revision, since it was plain that, if world opinion ever came to consider allowing Hungary revision, it would be influenced far more by ethnical than by historical or analogous considerations. On this account alone it was a vital interest of Hungary’s that the Magyar minorities in the Successor States should continue to exist. Thus the sensational drop shown by the figures for the Magyar populations

in both the Czechoslovak and the Roumanian censuses of 1930-31 (the Czechoslovak showing only 571,988 against 634,827 in 1921 and 893,586 in 1910, and the Roumanian 1,353,675 against 1,704,831 in 1910) was deeply

perturbing to Hungary from the point of view of the future. But even this consideration apart, and even if we also set aside a genuine fellow-feeling for kinsmen whose position was really deteriorating, an obvious way for Hungary

to keep her case alive was to draw attention to the undeniable fact that the Successor States were not observing their obligations towards the minorities (Roumania’s and Yugoslavia’s delinquencies were flagrant, and even in Czechoslovakia, where the position was much: milder, the Magyars were certainly not treated as full citizens), nor was the Council of the League forcing them to doso. The weapon had the advantage that it could be turned against the chosen victim at any moment desired, and that attacks could be easily co-ordinated with those made by other countries. Again, it could be used, as it was used in 1937 and 1938, as a bargaining counter and a device

for extracting concessions in other fields. |

It would take too long were we to describe in detail the activities carried out in this field: enough to say that the Hungarian Government was at pains to keep the question alive at Geneva and in its foreign propaganda, and that Goémbés’ and Kanya’s speeches on foreign policy usually included a satisfactory settlement of the minorities question as one of their terms for agreement either with the Little Entente as a whole or with any individual members of it. At Geneva, the Hungarians normally co-ordinated their speeches with 1 According to the Tombor MS., the Germans promised to deliver to Hungary the plans and specifications, but never did so, so that all spare parts had to be brought from Germany. Moreover, the howitzers proved too heavy for the light Hungarian horses to draw, so that during the war she had to begin manufacturing a lighter type for herself.

144 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH those of the Germans, but fuller co-operation in this field ran up against the

question of rival claims. Each country appointed a representative (the Germans, the ex-Ambassador Solf and the Hungarians Count Pal Teleki) to try to reach agreement, but the differences not only over Hungary’s own Swabians but over the allegiance of the Zipser of Slovakia, the “Szatmar Swabians’ and similar groups proved so deep as to make any agreement impossible.

Two more of Gémbés’ foreign political excursions of 1934 deserve mention. Early in the year he paid a little-publicised visit to Ankara, probably with the idea of enlisting Turkey in his general spacious plans for the New Europe. He came back dejected, saying that ‘‘he had arrived too late: the Turks had bound themselves up with Russia.”! More successful was a visit which he paid to Warsaw on 19th October, the German-Polish Pact of °

January 1934 having made such a visit possible. Gémbés then offered. Pilsudski a full-fledged alliance, which the Marshal rejected, saying that “‘his hands were tied by his existing alliances’; but he promised solemnly never to

make war on Hungary, and to do his best to restrain Roumania.* General as the understanding reached was, and remained until January 1938, it gave Hungary considerable immediate satisfaction and laid the foundations for what was later to prove an important part of her foreign policy. Meanwhile, Goémbés was still bound to Italy over the Austrian question, and through Italy over the Yugoslav, being in each case committed to a policy directly contrary to that of Hitler. Over Austria he had, as we have said, pleaded with Hitler, and there is evidence that after his return he wrote the Fiihrer a letter ‘imploring’? him to change his mind.* He also made outspoken declarations, both in Vienna and in the Hungarian Parliament, emphasising Hungary’s interest in Austrian independence. Later in the year, supplementary economic agreements were concluded between Hungary,

Austria and Italy, and on 15th March 1934 came the so-called Rome Protocols, of which two provided for the increased exportation to Italy of Austrian timber and Hungarian wheat respectively and for the conclusion of arrangements to facilitate trade through the ports of Fiume and Trieste, while

the main Protocol, which asserted the “independence and rights’? of each contracting party as a fundamental hypothesis, pledged the three signatory States to concert together on all problems which particularly interested them, and on problems of a general nature, with the object of developing a concordant policy directed towards promoting effective collaboration between the European States, and particularly between the three signatories. It seems probable that some sort of military understanding was reached at the same time, chiefly or entirely directed against the possibility of attacks on Hungary by the Little Entente.* The foundations once laid, the further work went on ? Personal, E. Gomb6s to C. A. M. * Personal, S. Milotay to C. A. M. Milotay accompanied Goémb6s to Warsaw, and the above constitutes his (1951) recollection of what G6mb6s told him at the time. * Baross to C. A. M. * Italy certainly gave Hungary a promise that if Yugoslavia invaded Hungary, Italy would

immediately take part in the conflict. (Doc. Sec. No. 19, p. 52.) According to Montgomery, op. cit., p. 20, Hungary made at the time a secret reservation that she would not be a party to any alliance, even a defensive one; whereby she appears to have been safeguarding herself against being committed too far against Germany. This information was apparently given by Gémbés and Kanya to Mackensen. The rest of Mr. Montgomery’s information relates to the earlier treaty mentioned above (p. 86).

AXIS RAINBOW 145 quickly and it was only an accident (from the Hungarian point of view) that matters did not go further; for when the murder of Dollfuss, on 25th July 1934, threw Austrian affairs into confusion, semi-secret negotiations for an

Austro-Hungarian customs union had almost reached conclusion.} . The statistics do not suggest that the Rome Protocol agreements altered Hungary’s foreign trading position in any very sensational fashion, but they

did keep her trade in general going, and provide an outlet for the allimportant wheat crop.? And when, in the spring of 1934, the Government’s opponents reproached it for having made more remote the possibility of an agreement based on mutual concessions with France and the Little Entente (which they desired, in order to form a common Danubian front against Germany), Kanya replied, justly enough, that it remained to be proved that Hungary would have been admitted to the camp of France’s followers otherwise than at the price of the unconditional surrender of her own claims, whereas in Italy and Austria she had acquired friends whose friendship at least entailed no political renunciation—he glossed over the tacit renunciation of the Burgenland, about which, indeed, few people really minded—and that with the help of these friendships she had escaped the economic stranglehold and was beginning to see the approach of better days, which she would be able to enjoy unhampered by political conditions. She was thus in every respect in a better bargaining position than in 1932. It was impossible to Imagine any more a “‘compromise”’ consisting entirely of unilateral con-

cessions by Hungary. It should not be denied that Hungary seems to have encouraged Dollfuss

in the policy which led to his crushing of the Austrian Left in February 1934. Against this it must be said that she behaved courageously over the Dollfuss murder, expressing official sympathy with the victims and condemning Nazi 1 Personal, Kallay to C. A. M. Austria and Hungary had reached the stage of formulating the questions still to be settled under three points: (1) Currency union, (2) Equalisation of the cost of social expenditure which Austrian agriculture had to carry, (3) Maintenance of the contingent system for certain articles. 2 Hungary’s trading figures with Austria and Italy in 1932-35 were as follows:

AUSTRIA ITALY

1,000 % total 1,000 % total pengo trade pengo trade 1932 Imports . . 50,875 15-526,179 18,531 7:8 5-6 Exports . . 100,794 30-1

Balance . . +62,417 49,91920-0 + 7,648 1933 Imports. 23,230 7-4 Exports . . 105,697 27:0 33,731 8-6 Balance . ; + 43,280 +10,501 1934 Imports . . 80,556 23-4 41,105 11-9 Exports 33,659 833 Balance .. .. 98,850 + 18,29424:5 — 7,446 1935 Imports... 75,510 18-865,595 32,46713-0 7-4 Exports. . 86,334 19-1 Balance . . + 10,824 +33,128

The percentages taken by her two partners of Hungary’s total exports of wheat and flour were as follows:

AUSTRIA ITALY

1932 Wheat. , 48-61-8 — Flour . , ,. 75-0

1933 Wheat . ,. 71-6 . 267 10-0 Flour , . 7-0 1934 Wheat . . . 42:7 18-6 Flour . . . 91-4 4-8 1935 Wheat . . . 32:1 43-9 Flour , . . 76°8 1-4 L

146 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH terrorism in the strongest terms.! After the murder, Gémbés remade with Schuschnigg the personal ties broken by the death of Dollfuss, and Hungary strengthened rather than weakened her support of Austria. Meanwhile, Gdmbés had been taking little notice of Hitler’s orders about Roumania and Yugoslavia. A new emissary to Croatia had renewed with Maéek the earlier understanding to co-operate if occasion arose. He had, indeed, advised his Government not to encourage the UstaSi, on the ground that their activities would split the Croat movement and bring the Peasant Party into disrepute.” It is rather ironical that Hungary had actually followed this advice and similar counsel given from Belgrade, and had expelled most of the Usta8i refugees on her territory, before the middle of 1934.° But she had not abated her Press campaign, and her own quarrel with Yugoslavia had become acute when the murder of King Alexander and M. Barthou, on

: 9th October, left her in the position of general scapegoat for sins the worst of which were truly Mussolini’s. The relative restraint with which even Hungary’s degree of responsibility

for the murders—let alone Italy’s—was treated was, of course, due to the urgent desire of both France and Italy to establish a common front against Germany on the Danube; and their negotiations to this effect largely dominated Hungarian foreign policy for nearly a year thereafter. It was a very nervous time for G6mb6s and Kanya, for although Mussolini had apparently assured Kanya that he “did not intend to abandon his basic attitude towards the Little Entente, nor his pro-revisionist ideas,’’* and although the existence of the secret military agreements concluded between Mussolini and Laval was not revealed to them, they were justifiably afraid that Mussolini would, after all, sacrifice them to his new friends. Both Goémbés and Kanya made strong public statements” saying that while Hungary would not stand in the way of a Franco-Italian understanding—would even welcome it—she had

her own conditions, which she could not abandon. For the time they confined their public demands to effective protection of the Magyar minorities and recognition of Hungary’s equality of rights in respect of armaments, in return for which she was prepared to negotiate a non-aggression pact. But

they also insisted that Hungary had not given up her revisionist claims, although she wished to realise these peacefully. Certain broad hints were incidentally dropped that if Italy failed her, Hungary might fall back on Germany.

There appears to have been a moment when at least Gémbéds believed that there was a possibility that Hungary might obtain, by negotiation, a

limited measure of revision. One of the reasons adduced by him to justify his dissolution of Parliament in March was the necessity for the Government to obtain a clear majority in view of the imminence of “‘very important foreign political negotiations, in which Hungary would be participating, which might determine the fate of Central Europe, and thus also of * Gomboés must have had some fairly accurate foreknowledge of what was afoot, since according to Starhemberg (op. cit., pp. 114-15) he sent Dollfuss a warning which, had he taken it, might have saved his life. 2 Personal, Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M. * Personal, Hennyey to C. A.M. Hennyey had advised this step from Belgrade, where he was Military Attaché, and Kanya had really given the orders. * See von Papen’s report, N.G. 2416, dated 26th October 1934, recording a conversation between the writer and Kanya, who had returned from a visit to Rome the day before. * Gomb6s in Szolnok on 24th January 1935; Kanya in Parliament on the 29th.

AXIS RAINBOW 147 the Hungarian nation, for centuries to come.’ His optimism seems to have been inspired largely by the invincible and most pathetic belief which he and nearly all Hungarians entertained in the justice of their cause and in the dogma that truth will prevail if only it gets a fair chance. If he was able to state his case publicly, it would be accepted.2. But there seems also reason to

believe that the Italians had agreed to support revision for Hungary on ethnic lines.®

As is well known, both the Little Entente and the newly created Balkan Entente refused to hear any mention of revision, and after the wider negotiations for a European Pact had broken down in the spring—leaving behind them, as first-fruits of their failure, the Franco-Soviet and CzechoslovakSoviet Pacts of Mutual Assistance—those for the Danubian Pact followed

suit in August. Hungary had reduced her conditions for attending a conference to three: final liquidation of the Marseilles dispute, recognition of military equality of rights, and definition of her right to watch over the

interests of the Magyar minorities. The Little Entente, however, at first demanded that both Hungary and Italy should join with them in a Pact of Mutual Assistance; and, although they dropped this fantastic suggestion, they would still not agree even to Hungarian rearmament without “adequate guarantees that territorial revision would not be attempted.” The points of view were obviously too far apart for reconciliation. So ended these long-drawn-out negotiations, which Hungary was afterwards widely accused of having “‘torpedoed.” It may, however, be remarked

that if she sinned, she did not sin alone. What Laval and Mussolini were after was an anti-German front. Schuschnigg had told Mussolini in August 1934 that Austria “would never accept an anti-German combination’ and by the next autumn was already negotiating her Pact with Germany based on Austria’s “‘acknowledging herself to be a German State.’”® King Alexander of Yugoslavia had himself, on the eve of his departure for Marseilles, sent Germany a message that “‘whatever happened, he would not allow himself

to be drawn into an anti-German combination.’ Matters had been taken substantially further by Goring when he visited Belgrade for King Alexander’s funeral, when Goring had, apparently, reached “‘a perfectly clear agreement’’ with Yugoslavia that Germany would herself treat Yugoslavia as a friend and t Speech of 3rd March 1934. * On the occasion described in the next footnote, GOmbds told M. Baross: ‘‘I am going to

the conference table. If I am once admitted there, we have won.” 8 M. Baross writes to C. A. M. that early in 1935 Gomb6os called a small conference, at which Baross attended, and said that Hungarian revisionist policy must aim at three objectives: the unification of all Magyars, the safeguarding of the nation’s economic interests, and strategic security. He showed his auditors a line on a map which roughly took in all the preponderantly Magyar areas adjacent to the Trianon frontier, plus the Szekel districts with a corridor through Central Transylvania. To their disappointed protests, he answered: “‘After my conversations, I can see no other possibility; please make no difficulties, and help me to achieve this.”’ It will be noted that this line (which closely resembled that advocated by Lord Rothermere) was very different from the ‘Hitler line,’’ which would have given Hungary all Slovakia-Ruthenia but nothing at the expense of either Yugoslavia or Roumania. 4 See the article by Signor Gayda, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 26th August 1934. 5 Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, p. 100. ° Schmidt Trial, p. 447. 7, N.G. 2416 (von Papen’s report). According to the German White Book (‘“‘Auswartiges

Amt 1934-41 Mil.’’) the negotiations had begun in the preceding March. Economic questions had been discussed (and had in fact led to the conclusion of a German-Yugoslav Treaty similar to the German-Hungarian); the two countries had also agreed that neither wanted a Habsburg restoration. It is well attested that the Yugoslavs were privy in advance to the Putsch which ended in the murder of Dollfuss, and believed themselves to have reason to expect the cession to themselves of Southern Carinthia.

148 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH would not support Hungary against her—if wished, would formally guarantee

her territorial integrity—in return only for a declaration that Yugoslavia ‘“‘was not bound and would not bind herself to any combination against Germany.”? When Stoyadinovié succeeded Yefti¢é as Yugoslav Premier, the

rapprochement—facilitated by the liking which Stoyadinovic and Goring

took to each other—was carried swiftly further. Yugoslavia’s original motives had been partly economic, partly the wish to prevent Italy and Germany from joining up against her,” partly nervousness at the French flirtation with a Habsburg restoration®; but they ended very quickly in making her a warm friend of Germany’s.

Roumania had, soon after, rejected a similar offer, and the Titulescu Government was consequently being subjected to a barrage of abuse; but within the country, opinion in favour of a pro-German orientation was growing perceptibly stronger, particularly after the conclusion of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty, which also hardened Yugoslavia against France. As for Poland, she would not have fallen in with France’s wishes even before that date; after it, she was bitterly hostile to them.

On 30th September 1935, a month after the Danubian Pact had breathed its last sigh, G6mb6s visited Berlin again, this time in company with Kanya. It appears that no definite agreements were reached, but it would seem that Hitler renewed his warning that Hungary must keep her hands off Yugoslavia

and Roumania, and repeated his offer to her of a free hand in SlovakiaRuthenia.* It would also seem that although Gémbés made no definite promises, he agreed “‘to co-operate more closely with Germany,”’ at least in

the sense of training his batteries first on Czechoslovakia—with the quite clear intention, of course, of going on to Yugoslavia and Roumania later.° At the same time, G6mbGs signed a top-secret personal agreement with Goring, the exact terms of which are uncertain; but it seems to have included at least an undertaking to introduce in Hungary, within two years, a political system closely resembling the German; possibly other engagements were

assumed.® Hitler was to support Gémbés in these moves, and he also promised Gémbos that if Hungary helped Germany in “‘an action directed towards acquiring Austria,’ occupying the Burgenland as soon as Germany moved, she might then keep that area.’ Hitler, however, was not yet ready for action and the autumn of 1935 passed peacefully, except that Hungary committed herself a shade further to the side of Italy by refusing to join the League sanctions voted against Italy. Complex negotiations were going on that winter, under the aegis of France, 1 See N. Comnéne, J Responsabili, p. 233. * Stakic MS.

3 See Schmidt Trial, pp. 393-4. 4 This emerges clearly from the report in Nazi Consp. and Agg., loc. cit. Hitler repeated the

warning, or had it repeated for him, many times after (see, for instance, Ciano Papers, p. 59, Doc. G.F.P., II, 131, Schmidt Trial, p. 546, etc.). * Gomb6s told Milotay, who told C. A. M., that ‘‘although Hitler had only promised him revision against Czechoslovakia, he was confident that Hungary would end by getting everything back with Germany’s help.”’ °* Gombos kept this agreement a very close secret, but after his death, Dardnyi found it in his safe and showed it to Eckhardt, to whom I owe one version of its contents. The second version comes from Barczy, who learned of the agreement when, after Gémb6s’ death, the German Minister asked Daranyi if it was still binding (see Képes Figyeld, April 1945). ’ I first learnt of this agreement through indirect channels which I cannot describe here; its existence was confirmed to me by E. Gémbdés, who heard of it from his father. As will be seen, it did not come into effect, Hungary preferring not to fulfil the preliminary condition.

AXIS RAINBOW 149 for a new “Danubian Plan” which should link Austria more closely with the Little Entente, and M. Bene’, speaking through the mouth of Mr. Compton Mackenzie, would have it that Hungary frustrated this and thus sealed the doom of Austria. As the story belongs rather to Austrian than to Hungarian

politics, we need say only that Hungary would certainly have used her influence against such a plan if she had had the opportunity, and the need: in fact, however, Schuschnigg’s own account shows that ideas such as Benes attributes to him never entered the Austrian’s head. On the contrary, when

Schuschnigg met Bene’, he “took the opportunity to underline Austria’s obligations arising out of the Rome Protocols and her solidarity with Rome and Budapest.’ In fact, on 23rd March 1936, the three Rome Protocol States renewed and extended their connections, now forming a grouping somewhat analogous to the Little Entente as it then stood, with a ‘‘permanent organ of reciprocal consultation,” constituted by the three Foreign Ministers, who were to meet periodically. The obligation of each member not to under-

take any important political negotiations with a third State on a Danubian question without previously consulting its partners was reaffirmed. The revised Rome Agreements were actually signed a few days after, although planned before, that decisive 7th March when Hitler changed the face of Central European politics by occupying the Rhineland. A description of the reactions evoked by this remarkable coup would exceed the bounds of this book. In brief, of course, the tendencies of the two preceding years were accentuated. France, the U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia, feeling themselves the destined victims of German aggression, sought to strengthen their military

and diplomatic defences. Great Britain wavered. Most of the smaller countries of Northern and Western Europe began a more or less open flight

from collective security. Poland took immediate steps to reactivate her

alliances with France and Roumania, but consistently and strongly emphasised that neither instrument had any connection with collective security in general or Czechoslovakia in particular. Roumania followed the same road as Czechoslovakia for some months, but then, on 20th August, King Carol dismissed Titulescu, dropped his ex-Premier’s policy of rapproche-

ment with the U.S.S.R., and made it clear that while the Little Entente held against Hungary, it did not bind Roumania to any action against Germany, with which he desired good relations. Yugoslavia went further and faster along the same path; she was now most actively courting Germany’s favour. Most important of all for Hungary was the attitude of her partners, Italy and Austria. It was not long before both of these had taken up the line that

the safest policy for them was to make the best terms they could with Germany. For Austria, there is no reason to doubt the deeper truth of Schmidt’s assertion that the real day of the conception of the Austro-German ~ Pact of 11th July was 7th March, and that its spiritual father was Schuschnigg.*

When, then, von Papen offered recognition by Germany of “the full sovereignty of Austria’ in return for Austria’s promise always “‘to base her

policy, both in general and towards the German Reich in particular, on 1 C, Mackenzie, Dr. Benes, p. 128. 2 Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, p. 146.

8 Schmidt Trial, p. 30. There had been many earlier negotiations for a Pact along the lines which ultimately resulted, and these were not renewed until the Government had been reconstructed on 13th May with the dropping of the exuberant Starhemberg; but the policy surely became definitive as and when Schmidt says.

150 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH principles which correspond to the fact that Austria has acknowledged her-

self to be a German State”—in essence, exactly the compromise which Goémbés had advocated—the Austrian Government, whatever its doubts of

Germany’s sincerity, was most willing to accept the offer and give the promise. And by this time Italy, too, was anxiously looking for her place on the band-waggon, only delaying in order to get the rapprochement at a seller’s, not a buyer’s price.

All these shiftings went on with little reference to or prompting from Hungary. Whatever her Government’s wishes, it was not given the chance to do much more than sit and watch the new pattern take shape round it. A pawn, not a player, Hungary could not move other pieces and was itself not moved, even where the Rome Protocols would have seemed to allow, or even call for, her participation. The Austrian official report of Austria’s negotiations with Germany does not mention Hungary, whom Austria even informed

only when the matter was settled, then sending the Vice-Chancellor, Baar-Berenfels, down to Budapest to break the news’; nor does Italy seem to have troubled to consult her when preparing to effect her own change of front. As for Hitler, he apparently felt no need to go over the ground again so soon after his meeting with Gdmbés and Kanya in September 1935. He had one conversation on the highest level with a Hungarian when Horthy visited him in Berchtesgaden on 22nd August.? The visit was carefully played down on both sides, various devices being employed to make it seem casual and personal,’ and does not in fact appear to have taken things much further.

Hitler seems to have treated Horthy to an exposé of his views (which the Regent shared) on the dangers of Communism, to have told him of his intention to complete the rapprochement with Italy (this also pleased Horthy) and to have hinted at his determination to wipe Czechoslovakia off the map at the appropriate moment!; but it seems fairly clear that he made no specific proposals to Horthy and reached no agreement. He may noteven have greatly enjoyed all the conversation, for Horthy strongly advised him to make friendship with England the pillar of his policy, on the two grounds that a naval power would certainly beat a land power in war, and that the English were the only people capable of dominating the world, whereas the Germans were so rude and tactless that they made themselves disliked wherever they went.° 1 Schmidt Trial, p. 250. 2 Villani, reporting on the visit to Ciano on 7th September (Ciano Papers, p. 36), said that

this visit was at Horthy’s request; but Horthy told C. A. M. that Hitler had invited him three times and he had refused before, out of consideration for Austria. 3 Horthy arranged the visit in connection with a shooting party in a part of Austria which could only be reached by crossing Germany. He took no Minister or Foreign Ministry official with him. Villani told Ciano that the visit was purely non-political. The only documentary account of it is in Villani’s report to Ciano; but the Regent kindly supplemented it to C. A. M. from recollection: cf. also his own account in, Ein Leben fiir Ungarn, pp. 129-30. 4 Villani’s report on this point is discreet, but pretty revealing, especially when taken in connection with the numerous utterances to the same effect made by other Germans, Goring in particular (so Kanya told Ciano in 1936 that Goring had said to him “‘con la sua irruente sincerita”’

that within two or three years Czechoslovakia must cease to exist—Ciano Papers, p. 66). He had said the same to Sztdjay, as Sztdjay said in evidence when on trial, and doubtless to the Poles, who were all eagerness; GOmb6s told his son in 1934: “‘It would only have needed a few words, and even while I was there, the Polish Generals would have sent their troops into Czechoslovakia

if they had known that Hungary would collaborate.”” On the other hand, there is evidence both

direct (Lubienski to C. A. M.) and ex post facto, that no “‘Pact” for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia existed between Germany and either Poland or Hungary, and the sensational story in Fuchs, op. cit., pp. 112, 122, is certainly erroneous in the form in which given there. It was specifically denied at the Schmidt Trial by Schmidt himself, Schuschnigg and others,

6 Horthy to C. A, M,

, AXIS RAINBOW 151 The only foreign political move made by Hungary during these months which is worth recording is that she now began, very cautiously, to seek a rapprochement with Yugoslavia. She had, as we have seen, been told by Germany that a hostile policy towards Yugoslavia would not be approved, and a whole galaxy of countries were now advising Hungaro-Yugoslav friendship, all from different angles. Germany evidently wanted to weaken still further the link between Czechoslovakia on the one hand and Roumania and Yugoslavia on the other, which link now consisted almost exclusively of their common antagonism to Hungary. Italy was partly following Germany’s advice, but partly beginning to feel that her own security against Germany herself would be strengthened if she could make friends with Yugoslavia. Poland hoped to draw Yugoslavia into a North-South “‘Axis” (again, largely directed, in a defensive sense, against Germany) under her own leadership. Finally, there were the naive exhortations from Great Britain to Hungary to bury her quarrels with her neighbours in face of the greater danger—naive because those who gave them offered her no quid pro quo whatever.

It was not primarily in order to please any of these counsellors that Hungary now began to move slowly in the direction advised by them, but out

of the old consideration that it would be worth while to forget, or at least to renounce indefinitely, her claims against Yugoslavia if Yugoslavia could by that device be detached from the Little Entente. To this was added the consideration that the alternative possibility of Yugoslavia’s disintegration was receding as Hitler was committing himself more openly to friendship with Belgrade, and even Mussolini cooling off his anti-Yugoslav policy. Croat separatism was, moreover, somewhat dying down, its Monarchist pull,

in particular, having lost much of its strength with the death of General Sarkoti¢é in Vienna and with Schuschnigg’s forced abjuration of the Monarchist solution for Austria. Hungary moved slowly, partly owing to Kanya’s lack of enthusiasm (of which Ciano complained so often and so bitterly)! and when a new Consul was appointed to Zagreb in 1935, he had received the same instructions as his predecessor, viz. to report whether the Croat Peasant Party, or any other movement in Croatia, was a “‘serious”’ opposition; and when he reported that Matek’s party was indeed “‘serious,”’ he was told, like his predecessor, to keep in “‘constant friendly touch.” But he was to be discreet, and not to give Croat particularism active help, but only sympathetic encouragement which did not necessarily insist on separa-

tion. Regular contact with the UstaSi was dropped altogether.” In the summer of 1936 Hungary was engaged in “active conversations” with the Yugoslav Government.°®

There were, however, delays also from the Yugoslav side. Stoyadinovic assured the Germans of his goodwill towards Hungary, and when in May 1936 the Permanent Council of the Little Entente discussed what measures it should apply if Hungary rearmed, Stoyadinovi¢ said that he would not apply

coercion unless Germany and Italy remained neutral. But he joined his colleagues in the uncompromising communiqué which they nevertheless issued, and when approached by the Hungarians in the summer, demanded as

price for a rapprochement a declaration that Hungary was disinterested in the Magyar minority in Yugoslavia. This Hungary was obliged to reject on the reasonable ground that Czechoslovakia and Roumania would invoke it 1 Ciano Diary (1938); 11th January; 27th March; 12th July, etc.

2 Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M. 3 Ciano Papers, p. 37.

152 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH as a precedent. The general situation would clearly have to change further

before Hungary and Yugoslavia could meet. |

Naturally, however, this forced immobility did not mean that Hungary was unaffected by the general change in the situation. On the contrary: Hitler’s successful reoccupation of the Rhineland suddenly confronted Hungary with the German problem in all its naked entirety—for, although Germany had so far only reached the Rhine, Hungary already saw her, proleptically, on the Leitha. Thus the dilemma from which Hungary was not to escape until 1944 was already cruelly apparent, even to those from whom Hitler’s real attitude towards Hungarian revisionism in the south and east was still concealed. Even those who still saw in Germany the potential breaker of all the chains of Trianon could not but feel that their potential deliverer was no Perseus, but rather the sea-monster, which might as easily swallow up Andromeda herself, with the uselessly broken chains and all. Dislike and fear of “‘the Germans’ as Hungary’s hereditary enemy and oppressor were widespread and deep-rooted, and a very substantial proportion of the politically conscious population was now genuinely and actively obsessed with the vision of a huge, ruthless Germany trampling Hungary in the dust, perhaps reducing her, with more or less disguise, to the status of a

Gau, perhaps incorporating parts of her territory in the Reich, perhaps both. But the question was inordinately complicated by the fact that this giant was not just Germany: it was Nazi Germany—or to some it appeared rather as German Nazism. Obviously, the ideas of Nazism struck different sections of the Hungarian people in very different ways. To the forces now gathered

within the Opposition Front—the genuine Conservatives, the Legitimists, the convinced clericals, the Liberals, the Social Democrats, and above all the Jews, its Nazism added the final touch of horror to the figure of the monster;

to the opponents of the Front—broadly speaking, the Right Radicals—it powerfully diminished its unattractiveness. The sympathy which this latter group felt for Hitler’s ideas, especially for his anti-Semitism, even affected in many cases their estimate of his dangerousness: they found it hard to believe that so proper-thinking a man could really fail to be pro-Hungarian on the revision question, or could really harbour designs on the liberty or integrity of Hungary. There was, on the other hand, no design which the other camp was not prepared to attribute to this fiend. Furthermore—wishes guiding thoughts—the sympathisers with Germany

tended to rate her military strength as invincible; the other camp at least pretended to put that of the Western Powers far higher. Thus opinions were strongly divided, even when the question was viewed

purely as one of foreign politics: the more blinded pro-Germans even welcomed the obvious growth of her power, denied that it would ever be used against Hungary, and advocated the fullest possible co-operation with her;

the other camp was correspondingly cautious. But what lent the situation its quality of extreme acuteness was the intermingling to inseparability of foreign and domestic considerations. The exponents of the Nazi and Fascist ideologies argued that a Right Radical Hungary would enjoy Germany’s respect and her support over revision, whereas a democratic, Jew-ridden Hungary would arouse Hitler’s just wrath and tempt him to grind it under his heel. ‘Their own victory in internal politics therefore coincided with 1 Ciano Papers, loc. cit,

AXIS RAINBOW 153 Hungary’s foreign political interest. The other camp argued that Nazism in Hungary was, on the contrary, not only abominable in itself but the greatest threat to the nation’s independence, since the Hungarian Right Radicals were Germany’s Fifth Column. The worst of them, including the Nazi-minded Swabians, were actually conspiring to bring Hungary under direct German domination; the others, if allowed the power, would rule Hungary in a way which, even if it preserved her national independence, would make her in practice a mere satellite of Germany, executor of her orders and imitator of her methods. Thus each army fought the battle for its own inner political ideals largely under foreign political slogans, and conversely, of course, each sought foreign support to enable it to realise its inner political objectives. It is, indeed, only

in a very qualified sense that we can henceforward distinguish between Hungary’s domestic and her foreign policies. The “Opposition Front’? was, of course, an exceedingly heterogeneous body, whose various components held very different views on how far the resistance to Germany could or should be carried. Its “‘Liberal-Conservative”’ wing, whose views were in practice far the most important, because they could be (and in practice, thereafter, largely were) expressed in policy, were hardly, if at all, less determined than their allies to oppose either the internal

Nazification of Hungary or any direct assault on her independence by Germany. Moreover, the conviction held by such men as Bethlen, Kanya, Teleki and Horthy himself that Germany’s methods would end by provoking a war (which they anticipated, indeed, much sooner than it actually occurred), in which she would be defeated, made them extremely anxious to avoid any too close link with her. No fate could be worse than to be dropped a second time into war at Germany’s heels and a second time suffer defeat and dismemberment as her “‘jackal.”’ But they could hardly accept the simpliste remedy proscribed by wellmeaning Englishmen, that Hungary should simply “sink her differences with her neighbours.”’ For all the long steps which Yugoslavia and Roumania were taking towards appeasement of Germany, they had not changed their unyielding attitude towards Hungary by one iota. If Hungary approached

them now, the Little Entente would have extorted from her voluntary acceptance of those treaty obligations which she had hitherto recognised only under duress—if willing to accept her friendship at all (and it is fairly certain that BeneS, at least, would have preferred to see her kept where he worked to

keep her in the war, in the enemy camp, to ensure her final and complete destruction). And as reward for thus doubly locking the fetters on her own wrists, she would at once have been abandoned by Italy and would have made the danger from Germany, which was at present only hypothetical, certain and formidable. For if she linked herself to a combination which included Czechoslovakia, she would be identifying herself with Germany’s enemies and inviting her hostility. Was Hungary to invite a risk which hardly

any small State in Europe was willing to incur, in order voluntarily to perpetuate Czech rule at Szob, Roumanian at Nagyvarad, Yugoslav at Szabadka? Moreover, while Germany’s anger was to be dreaded, her friendship, in certain fields, was still necessary. Apart from the Czechoslovak question— and the Hungarians were not, after all, willing to reject completely an offer

of help against Czechoslovakia from any quarter—there were the now

154 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH important economic relations with her, and the chronic question of armaments, which only Germany, besides Italy, had so far been ready to provide. For the time, then, even this school of thought could not envisage more

than minor concessions to the Little Entente. Towards Germany there should be absolute resistance on the internal front, and in foreign affairs a relationship which, while taking advantage of such mutually advantageous co-operation as could be achieved, avoided identifying the cases of the two peoples. The chief pillar of Hungary’s Danubian policy must still be the Rome Triangle, in its setting of the new Austro-German Agreement, which suited Hungary admirably if both parties honoured it; but the Hungarians were clear that if Austria once deviated from her obligation to conduct her

policy “‘on principles which corresponded to the fact that Austria had acknowledged herself to be a German State’ by joining “‘the Paris-PragueMoscow Axis,”’ Italy would at once disavow her and Germany swallow her up.

The desirability of detaching Yugoslavia from the Little Entente, even at the cost of some sacrifice, now seemed clear; and there was one other line which seemed worth vigorous prosecution. Great Britain was not bound by Treaty obligations to any Danubian or Balkan State. She was clearly anxious to find a solution by agreement of the German problem. Her opinion was not unfriendly to Hungary, and alone in Europe she seemed to have some feeling for the applicability in practice of theoretical principles, including that

of justice. Hungary believed passionately in the justice of her cause, and thought that Britain might recognise this, and the Hungarians whose feelings and calculations we have been describing here were the more anxious to get British support because of their belief that the war which they foresaw would end in a German defeat and a British victory.

CHAPTER NINE

PROPHET NE feature of the Gémbés period—a natural concomitant of the

() general European trend towards polarisation which marked the

1930’s—was the growth of extremist movements which remained outside either of the two great political camps which disputed the control of the Hungarian system within its existing framework. Extremist movements, both of the Left and of the Right, were, of course, no new thing in Hungary. 1919 had seen Béla Kun, and 1920 the White Terror. The whole “Szeged Idea’”’ was Right Radical, and even after the liquidation of the extremists by Bethlen, its ideas had lingered on in the “‘patriotic associations,” in G6mb6s’ own Party of Racial Defence, and in a certain number of other, less important, parties. After Gdmb6s returned to the fold in 1928, nearly all of these had fizzled out. The flag had been kept flying chiefly by a ““National Socialist’’

Party, founded by B. Szasz and M. Csomos, which had for emblem the Hungarian Double Cross and Sword, and bequeathed to later movements two further things: the insignia of the green shirt, and the watchword ‘“‘Batorsag.’’? In 1931 another old colleague of G6mbés’, Endre BajcsyZsilinszky, got into Parliament as the single representative of a “‘National Radical Party’? founded by and in effect consisting of himself,? but three other persons who tried similar ventures—Pronay, Budavari, and B. Szemere —failed to achieve even so much. What we have now to describe is rather a new generation of extremism, reflecting less the memories of 1919 than the experiences of the world economic crisis. For the reasons already indicated,? to which may be added the solidarity and discipline of the orthodox Social Democrat Party and Trade Unions, there were few recruits to Left-wing extremism, the open manifestations of which, indeed, diminished during this period, under orders from Moscow. For following the Resolutions of the VIIth World Congress of the Communist

International, the “‘Central Committee of the Hungarian Party of Communists’’, as the little group of Hungarian-born émigrés in Moscow styled itself, had, in January 1936, ‘examined its policy” and then sent a circular to

its adherents in Hungary ordering them to renounce the establishment of socialism in Hungary as an immediate (although not as a long-term) objective

and to work instead for the establishment of a “Popular Front.” The foundation of this was to be ‘“‘working-class unity”, in the interest of which the Communists were to stop trying to form separate organisations within

the Trade Unions and to ‘‘widen’’ the existing organisations towards the Left. They were also to desist from “‘simply identifying with Fascism all

Oppositional Parties of the Counter-revolutionary system.” The new objective was to be “‘the establishment of the democratic dictatorship” [sic]

“of the workers and peasants and the democratic transformation of the 1 Meaning ‘“‘courage”; an adaptation or parody of the Social Democrat greeting ‘“baratsag”’ (friendship). 2 This ‘“‘Party’’ fused with the Smallholders in 1937. 3 See above, p, 78,

156 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH country.” For this purpose the co-operation of any Party or movement in Hungary which was “‘genuinely fighting against Fascism’’ was to be sought. The Communists succeeded in occupying a few useful posts in the Trade Unions, and above all, in the Népszava and other publicistic apparatus of the Social Democratic Party, from which shelter one of them, M. G. K4allai was

able to edit an underground paper (printed in Prague) A Dolgozék Lapja (the Workers’ Paper), which propagated the new doctrine; but this evoked no perceptible response from the Social Democrats, let alone the bourgeoisParties, and the first effect of the change of policy in Moscow was actually to thin the ranks of the Hungarian Communists themselves. The resistance to the “‘new course”’ put up by the less elastically minded revolutionaries, both in Hungary and in Moscow itself, was so stubborn that in the autumn of 1936 the Communist International found it necessary “‘in order to put a stop to the political, organisatory and conspiratorial crisis,’ to change the membership of the Central Committee, place new men in charge of the direction of the Party’s work abroad (1.e., in Hungary), suspend the working of the Party’s organisations and issue direct orders to Party members to enter legal organisations and continue their work (for the Popular Front) from those refuges.’ The recalcitrants who continued to resist were then purged. In Moscow, of course, the authorities executed this operation with their own apparatus (it was now that Béla Kun met his end), while the Hungarian adherents of the new course got the police to carry through their purge for them by denouncing “‘sectarians” to that body. On top of this, when the Spanish civil war broke out, many of the leaders of the younger generation, including the ill-fated Rajk, left the country to enlist in the International Brigade. One movement of the time cannot easily be classified as belonging either to the Left or to the Right. A score or so of young men, most of them sons of landless agricultural labourers or dwarf-holders, who by their talents had won scholarships to secondary schools and universities, with some sympa-

thisers from other circles, founded a little group known as the ‘“‘Village Explorers” (Falukutat6k) with the purpose of making known the conditions

prevailing among the rural poor. With the secret connivance of some influential members of the “‘system’’ they published a series of studies which

were extremely interesting and often exceedingly radical. They did not fit easily into any category, because they tended to be Magyar racialists and to attack impartially both German and Jewish influences. This was a standpoint difficult to maintain for long, and, as time went on, most of them tended

to drift into other camps: some to join various Right Radical movements, some to become crypto-Communists, while a few allowed themselves to be bought off by the Government. In its first shape, however, the movement was the most genuinely native and original of all those described in this chapter, and precisely for that reason was, as we shall see, destined to have a not unimportant future, although mainly as a source of inspiration to others; for it was not until the summer of 1944 that one or two of its survivors turned it into a political party and began recruiting a rank and file for it. Till then, it was purely a head without a body.

All the other movements now to be described were emphatic in claiming

to belong to the Right, and to be, like the Government itself, counterKallai, A Magyar Fiiggetlenségi Mozgalom, 1939-45, pp. 19 ff, * Id., pp. 26-7,

PROPHET 157 revolutionary, and most of them drew much of their inspiration from, and claimed a greater or lesser degree of affiliation with, either German Nazism

or Italian Fascism. Of these two, Nazism was by far the more popular model, partly owing to the anti-Semitic ingredient in its doctrine, which was, it must be admitted, the sole and overwhelming attraction to many of the new

Hungarian “leaders,” some of whose programmes had no discernible programme whatever beyond “intransigent anti-Semitism.” But it should be emphasised that the whole strength and appeal of the new Right Radical extremism did not reside exclusively in this one point. The rank and file of such of the movements as attempted any sort of mass appeal was necessarily drawn partly from the proletariat, urban and (especially) rural, which cared comparatively little about the Jewish question but wanted drastic alteration of the nation’s entire social and political structure; men who would have been Communists had Communism not been taboo in Hungary. Their objection to the Government Party was not that it was insufficiently anti-Semitic but that it was insufficiently radical. It had proclaimed war on the big estates and on big capital, but it had not lived up to its promises; it had ratted on the land reform, on the franchise, on a dozen other points; and, even if it had fulfilled all its pledges, it was still a middle-class party, still the embodiment of the old ruling clique. Even the Social Democrats were tarred with

the same brush. Many of the Right Radical movements were, in their different ways, honestly seeking true social and political reform, genuine remedies for real grievances, and they were attracted to Nazism because, besides its anti-Semitism, it also, as preached in South-Eastern Europe, advocated many such reforms. To ignore these facts, which were systematically concealed by those hostile, in their own interests, both to the bad and the good sides of the Right Radical movements, is not only to do them injustice but to leave their appeal incomprehensible and to distort the whole political picture of the period.

The first of what may be called the modern school of Hungarian Right Radicalism was the so-called “‘Scythe Cross’! or the ‘‘National Socialist Party of Work,” founded in 1931 by a certain Zoltan B6szo6rményi. B6szorményi seems to have been a pure adventurer and fantast. He claimed to have known Hitler personally, and for programme simply translated into Magyar that of the N.S.D.A.P., from which he also took over the Party greeting ‘“Néptars’”’—a literal translation of ““Volksgenosse.”’> His movement was almost purely local, his followers being drawn almost exclusively from the half-starved landless proletariat of the middle Tisza—the same region which had produced the ‘‘agrarian socialism’? of the 1890’s, and the home since immemorial time of strange mystic religious cults—but the movement was of noticeable dimensions, and for five years kept the Tisza region in something of aferment. In June 1932, one, Zoltan Mesk6, founded a rival party, ““The Hungarian National Socialist Agricultural Labourers’ and Workers’ Party.”

Mesk6 was a different pair of shoes from Bészérményi. His personal eccentricities, his transparent good faith and his humour, conscious and unconscious, earned him a certain indulgent popularity in Parliament (to which he had been elected in 1931 as a Smallholder and which, after being defeated in 1935, he re-entered under his own flag in 1939), while at the same time 1 KaszAskereszt: from the second symbol adopted by it of two crossed scythes. The first symbol chosen had been the “‘turul” (the falcon which had been the totem of the early Magyars) and a death’s-head.

158 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH precluding him from ever becoming a leader of the masses, which, indeed, he hardly aspired to be; his “‘movement,”’ unlike B6sz6rményi’s, and despite its title, being essentially a middle-class one. He had, even, certain connections with the Regent, to whom he professed a sincere but sometimes embarrassing

devotion. The Party slogan was ‘‘With God for the Fatherland! Loyalty to the Regent!’’; its uniform, at first a brown shirt’; its greeting, ““Testvér”’ (brother); its emblem, at first the Hungarian Double Cross, and afterwards a green Hakenkreuz on a brown field. The programme included various social and political postulates of democracy, as well as integral revisionism, but the essence of it lay in its Magyar racialism. This involved a few special demands relative to the Jews, but most of the points were directed equally against all non-Magyars, and they included a vigorous condemnation of “any attempt

to relegate Hungarian practices and the Hungarian character to the background by the adoption of foreign slogans and foreign practices.” In practice, too, if Mesk6 himself was usually more vocal on the Jewish question, his principal lieutenant, Szemere, often embarrassed Governments by his violent denunciations of the Germans.

While Bédszérményi, who claimed to be the predestined leader of all Hungary, refused from the first to collaborate with any other “leader,” Mesk6 entered into relations with his rivals, Szasz’ group, a move which ended, in 1933, in the fusion of the two parties under Mesk0o’s leadership.

The party retained as uniform the green shirt, and adopted as badge the crossed arrows thereafter to become so famous and the name “‘Arrow Cross.’” Groups and parties were now multiplying with great rapidity and in 1933 a whole crop of them came into being, including two which were destined to

prove of some importance. The founder of each of these was an aristocrat; one of them no less a personage than Count Sandor Festetics, a nephew of

Prince Tassilo Festetics, the second landowner of Hungary, and thus a member of one of Hungary’s richest as well as its most aristocratic families. He had, however, grown up in relative poverty; it was only on the death of his uncle, in May 1933, that he came into the estate of 30,000 hold which gave him thereafter so powerful a position in the extremist movement, as almost the only member of it who, in its early stages, before the Germans thought it worth financing, was ever able to produce some ready cash. After a varied political career (he had been Minister of Defence in Count Mihaly Karolyi’s

Government of 1918, but had later returned to orthodoxy and joined the Government Party), Festetics became converted to National Socialism in the autumn of 1933. Having failed to reach agreement with Mesk6, he took over

another tiny party hitherto run by one, Aladar Hehs, and styled the ‘““Hungarian National Socialist People’s Party.”’ A programme issued by this group in 1933, after Festetics had taken it over, contained 26 points, chiefly copies from Hitler but adapted to Hungarian conditions; e.g. only members of the ““Turanian and Aryan race,”’ of irreproachable loyalty, could be full citizens of Hungary, and only they could hold public office or own real estate. There was to be integral revision; the Legitimist issue to be left open. 1 When first announcing to Parliament the formation of his Party, Mesk6o appeared in a brown shirt and with his moustache trimmed a la Hitler. It was observed that when he changed his shirt to green he also adapted the cut of his moustache. 2 Nyilaskereszt (nyil=arrow, kereszt=cross). The crossed arrows +h, the Hungarian version of the Hakenkreuz, were based on the arrows used by the old Magyar conquerors of Hungary.

PROPHET 159 In November 1933 another aristocrat, Count Fidél Palffy, founded a ‘National Socialist Party,” with the Hakenkreuz badge and a pure Hitlerite

programme, complete with Storm Troops and SS. (these, however, the Government dissolved) and Youth Organisation. This Party soon acquired a large following, and gained a considerable number of seats in the local administration in parts of West Hungary, especially in Zala County, its stronghold. In January 1934 Meské, Palffy and Festetics formed a joint ‘“Directorium,”’ all three movements adopting the green shirt and the Arrow Cross as common insignia. In June 1934 Meské and Palffy expelled Festetics

for being insufficiently anti-Semitic (amongst other backslidings, he was employing Jewish bailiffs on his estate), and Festetics, after breaking up one of Mesko’s meetings in revenge, joined another local group in Debrecen, led by a certain I. Balogh and calling itself the “Hungarian National Socialist Party.” Although the Government fought the Right-wing extremists as

vigorously as it did its other opponents—for Gémbds, besides being Hungarian enough to dislike any imitations of foreign rivals except those made by himself, also wanted no rivals in his own field?—-yet both Festetics and Balogh succeeded in entering Parliament on this ticket in 1935. Thereafter, however, the working-class elements in this party deposed Festetics,

leaving Balogh sole leader. Festetics, who retained his seat in Parliament until 1939, when he did not stand for re-election, remained thereafter, as it were, a non-party National Socialist. Of Balogh we shall hear again shortly. Palffy and Mesko, calling themselves the National Socialist Party of Hungary,* remained together until September 1935, when Palffy expelled Mesk6. The two groups were now separate again, Palffy retaining the old joint title, while Mesko reverted to that which he had first taken in 1932. Neither group won a mandate in the 1935 elections, and a large number of Palffy’s adherents seceded from him soon after. In 1936 none of these groups succeeded in displaying any coherent activity whatever, while B6szérményi’s movement came to sudden and spectacular disaster.

Bosz6rményi had had the extraordinary idea of organising an armed rising. Huis plan, which was amazingly primitive, was to begin with a rising in Nagyk6ros, one of the “‘village towns” of the Alféld. The revolutionaries were to seize the public buildings here, disarm the police, and with the arms

taken from them to march on Kecskemét and Cegléd. Here they were to repeat the process, thus initiating a snowball movement. When the Alféld had been captured, the army was to march on Budapest, seize it, and proclaim a military dictatorship. For this final stage, a stock of Generals’ and Staff officers’ uniforms had been bought up—the only advance preparation made by the conspirators. The rising duly began in Nagyk6rés on Ist May 1936. The authorities, of course, put it down with the utmost ease. B6észérményi, who pleaded the plausible defence of lunacy, got the absurdly light sentence of two and a half years, and, more absurdly still, was allowed to escape to Germany, whence he did not reappear.* 700 of his misguided followers—nearly all agricultural labourers—were arrested. 113 of them were tried and 87 sentenced to terms of imprisonment. The Party was then dissolved. ‘1 Magyar Nemzeti Szocialista Part. 2 He was particularly hard on Festetics, for personal reasons dating back to 1919. 3 Magyarorszag Nemzeti Szocialista Partja.

4 Except that in 1945 he wrote to Rakosi asking to be admitted into the then triumphant

Communist Party.

160 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH In the meantime there had appeared on the scene a new figure, of whom much will be said in the following pages: Ferencz Szalasi.

Szalasi is one of the strangest and most interesting characters of contemporary Hungarian history. When in 1946 he was tried, condemned and led away to an ignominious death, no words bad enough for him could be

found by the Hungarian Press and public, nor, for that matter, by the “People’s Judge” presiding at his trial. He was called a traitor, a hireling of the Germans, a mass murderer and a half-wit to boot. Among those who at one period or another during his lifetime had become his followers, a very large number had left him, endorsing at least the last of these terms. But among those who did remain true to him he inspired a personal devotion such as no other Hungarian of his age could equal, and after his death they carried on the cult of him, passing his words from hand to hand and speaking of him as the early Christians spoke of the Messiah. Incidentally, they were wont to maintain that by prolonging the resistance to the Soviet troops after October 1944 Szalasi had saved half Europe from Bolshevism.

It is possible to maintain that this claim is ridiculous: seeing that the Allied zones of occupation had been laid down in advance, all that the resistance carried on during his “‘regime”’ effected was futilely to prolong the

agonies of many millions of human beings. There is also a good enough case for saying that Szalasi’s actions at that juncture made no difference to anyone, for good or ill, since the actual resistance to the Russians was carried out by Germans, and by Hungarian officers who were not Arrow Cross men. The reader of the later pages of this work may form his own judgment on the point. But, as for Szalasi’s character, it must be stated plainly that the figure which emerges from the study of his book, his speeches and his diary is that

of an original, for whose mental processes the word eccentric would be a

strong meiosis; but not that of a brute, a traitor or a stupid man. Had he been any of those things he could not have gained the extraordinary affection and respect which he commanded among his devotees. Incidentally,

had he been a brute, and above all had he been a traitor, he could have achieved power before he did. It was precisely his refusal to compromise on matters of principle which kept the Germans from giving him support and led time and again to less scrupulous followers deserting him. His responsibility for the many sins committed under the aegis of his name lies in his unwillingness or inability even to see, much less to guard against, the dangers

of the spirits which he conjured up. For himself, he was a man of the most unyielding principles, on which he insisted with a maddening monotony and a rigidity which rejected the slightest compromise. He was beyond doubt a burning patriot for Hungary as he understood it, and he certainly sincerely desired the welfare of the common man in Hungary. He was neither cruel nor corrupt, and against his personal life, nothing was alleged even at his trial.

He had, indeed, an unbounded ambition, which was founded in a mystic belief that he was “‘called”’ to save Hungary and, through Hungary, the world. “It is my conviction,”’ he said once, “that the whole ordering of Europe can be effected only by that little people, despised of the Germans, the Hungarian

’ people, on the Hungarist basic principles evolved through me. He who does not identify himself with my doctrine, who does not recognise me unreservedly

as leader and will not agree that I have been selected by a higher Divine

PROPHET 161 authority to redeem the Magyar people—he who does not understand me or loses confidence—let him go! At most, I shall remain alone, but even alone I shall Create the Hungarist State with the help of the secret force that is within me.

Szalasi was not the man whom a superficial observer would have guessed

to be the predestined leader of Hungary. His paternal ancestors, who then bore the name of Salosjan, were among the considerable number of Armenian families who migrated to Transylvania in the eighteenth century. SzAlasi’s

grandfather moved to Vienna, where he changed his name, married an Austrian wife and found humble employment on the Austro-Hungarian State railways. His son, again, who was born in Vienna, was a long-service N.C.O.

in the k. und k. army. His service took him to Kassa, then in Northern Hungary, and here Ferencz Szdlasi was born on 6th January 1897, his mother

being a native of that city, and like most of the non-Jewish inhabitants of that neighbourhood, of mixed Magyar and Slovak stock. Asa boy he passed through the Honvéd Military Academy. He served in the First World War in its later stages. Nothing has ever transpired of what he did in 1919 and 1920. In 1921 he entered the Hungarian Army as an infantry subaltern, and in 1925 achieved the distinction of appointment to the General Staff, where he attracted some attention by some early writings on military subjects. He acquired the reputation of being a ‘“‘military revolutionary” and was warned by Goémbés to keep off politics. He passed his Staff College examinations with the highest distinction, but, being already politically suspect, was not given the employment that this achievement would ordinarily have brought,

but assigned instead to somewhat mechanical work in the Ministry of Defence, where, however, he struck up a friendship with his chief, General Ruszkay—another name to figure in our story. In the meantime, as Szalasi tells us, he had been constantly “‘studying.”’ Studying, above all things, besides military science, history and sociology. It is perfectly clear that his real preoccupation was with the place of Hungary in the world. All that he really cared about was to put Hungary back where,

in his faith, she belonged. In this respect his mental development is very similar to that of Hitler, with the national difference that whereas Hitler, coming from a people whose ethnic boundaries were wider than their historical political frontiers, thought in terms of the “‘race,’’ Szalasi—the product of a nation whose ancient State had been dismembered in the name of nationality—always had his eyes fixed on the historic frontiers of his State.

His problem was: by what means could Hungary be restored, and in what form—with what concessions to the “spirit of the age’’? To the latter question, it would appear, he had found the answer (in outline; the details were filled in later) as early as 1931, when he first evolved the Great Idea of ‘“‘Hungarism,”’ to the attempted realisation of which he was to

devote the rest of his life. As a matter of fact, Szalasi’s Hungarism has nothing particularly sensational about it. Any student of Central Europe will recognise in it simply one more of the innumerable plans which innumer-

able Hungarians, from E6dtvés and Kossuth to Jaszi, Mihaly Karolyi, Pal Teleki and many others less distinguished, have excogitated for organising the Danube basin in a way which satisfied their idea of what was due to the past achievements and present virtues of the Magyars. Of these plans Szalasi’s, 1 This last belief may well have been encouraged by his spiritualism. He used to visit a medium and take part in table-turning seances. M

162 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH although his enemies were never tired of decrying it as treasonable, was certainly not the least nationalistic. If it was totally impracticable, that is a weakness which it shared with many others. Szalasi was accused of betraying

his country because he failed to give his dream-State the historic name of Hungary, ““Magyarorszag,” and also that he did not preserve the unitary political character of the historic State; but he included in his scheme the entire territories of Historic Hungary, and the concessions which he would have made to the non-Magyars in it were far smaller than would have proved practical in any real world, while it was precisely his refusal to compromise with the Germans on this point that led to those prolonged difficulties between him and Germany which we shall presently have to describe. Szalasi’s dream-State, then (known alternatively as “‘the CarpathianDanubian Great Fatherland” and as “‘the United Lands and the March of

Hungaria’), was to consist of “the area engirdled by the Carpathians and reaching down to the Adriatic’; i.e. historic Hungary, including CroatiaSlavonia. The ‘‘Lands’’ were to consist of Magyar-Land, Slovak-Land, Ruthene-Land, Croat-Land, Slavonian-Land and the Western March; and it must be added that while in his vague descriptions he allowed the Magyars only the “‘plain,”’ the Slovaks and Ruthenes the “mountains,” the Germans the “hills,” etc., on his maps the non-Magyar “‘Lands”’ are small indeed, and

““Magyar-Land”’ reaches the historic frontier not only in the south but in

Central Slovakia, in the Maramaros and even in the Muravidék. The Magyars get the benefit of the doubt wherever the population is mixed, or wherever a non-Magyar people can be regarded as not possessing any active national consciousness. The Magyars were also to enjoy a dominant position practically as commanding as that assigned to them by E6tv6s in his famous

Nationalities Law. It is true that the non-Magyar “indigenous brother peoples” were, theoretically, only to be required to adhere to the Union if they signified their wish to do so. But this was only a formality, since Szalasi—a true Magyar in this respect—obviously never entertained the slightest doubt about their wishes; holding as he did that the peculiar conditions of living in the Danube basin made of the peoples concerned ‘“‘a different cut of men

from their brothers of the same stock.” This formality once fulfilled, the ‘constructive and indigenous nations’! were to enjoy administrative and cultural autonomy on a territorial basis (special provision being made for the German territorial enclaves outside their nucleus, the Western March, known to the world as the Central Burgenland) and were to participate in the central Government “in the measure laid down in the central constitution.’”? But the

whole was to be “union under Magyar supremacy.” ‘The struggle of the Great Fatherland must be led by the leading people of the Ancestral Soil, the Magyar people, as it led it when 1,000 years ago it welded together the Godgiven unity into a State unity.”” Magyar was to be the official language of “the direction and leadership of the State.”’ The State thus constituted was to be recognised and guaranteed by mutual

treaties by Britain, France, Poland and Russia as inviolable (not to be occupied or crossed by troops) and as “‘free, independent, indivisible territory.”

This point of Magyar leadership in a united State was the kernel of * Honképes és talajgyékeres. Honképes—a word not directly translatable—means “‘capable

of founding a national home’’; it thus excludes Jews, gypsies or mere ethnic fragments.

Talajgyokeres means ‘“‘with roots in the soil.”’

PROPHET 163 Szalasi’s theories. He believed so strongly in the indivisibility of Hungary and in the natural logic of a single national leadership in it that he once said that if the Magyar race had really become incapable of filling this role, it should be cleared out of the Danube basin and another put in its geographical

position. But in his heart he did not for a moment believe his own people

unequal to this great task. On the contrary, he believed, as in a Divine revelation—the word is not too strong to express his mystic conviction— that it was only through the triumph of “Hungarism,” as realised by “‘this little people which the Germans despise, the Hungarian people’ that “‘the whole organisation of Europe will come about.” And he also believed that he himself had been singularly chosen out “‘by that secret force which lies within me”’ to bring it to pass. On this doctrine, therefore, he would allow

no chaffering, no modification, ‘‘not so much as the dotting of an 1.” ‘“Hungarism’”’ was the very essence, the Holy of Holies. “The fall of Hungarism would mean the fall of National Socialism.” ‘Every Party member must accept the ideology of Hungarism and must accept the Arrow Cross Party, as the practical instrument for the realisation of Hungarism.”

This last phrase is revealing. The Party was only the instrument—the flesh, as he said elsewhere; Hungarism was the spirit, the realisation of the Hungarist ideal, the aim. The “‘Hungarist ideal’? was the staatsrechtlich conception described above, outside which Szalasi seems to have had only one fixed principle: that while he was to be the Leader, he would take over the power only “‘by the common will of the nation and of the Head of the State.’ Everything else was only a means to an end. Thus he was first led to appreciate the importance of winning the working classes to his side, not by any sense of social justice—although he possessed that sense in a high degree—but by the purely military conclusion, which he had reached in the course of his studies, that an army would be impotent if at the outbreak of a war the workers were to strike, even only for a few days. Holding, as they did, this key position, it was essential that they should not “‘be led astray, on account of material or ideological questions, into paths dangerous and fatal to the State.”’ They must be made to identify themselves with the State, so that when the hour came they would identify themselves with it and work to realise its objectives as their own. Szalasi rejected Marxism as a one-sided doctrine which was interested only in a single class and not in the nation as a whole; he also objected to the exclusive materialism of Marx and his followers

and to their internationalism, particularly as directed from Moscow. He recognised the importance of Marxism, and the great hold which it possessed over the masses, describing it as one of the three positive ideologies of the

world, the other two being Christianity and Hungarism. But it was barren and an enemy of Hungarism, and a dangerous enemy, precisely because of its strength. It must be destroyed. Liberalism he dismissed more easily. It bred injustice, which would lead to riots; but in any case, it was doomed by its own weakness. He found the solution in National Socialism, through which he did in fact appeal especially to the workers, and with some success;

it was not without justice that he later contrasted his own movement, as a genuinely proletarian one, with the ““drawing-room radicalism” of most of his rivals. In all his activities he aimed at social justice as the only true means of achieving national solidarity—also as a thing which appealed in itself to his genuinely idealistic nature; but primarily as a means. As to the detailed methods by which it was to be achieved, he was vague and not really

164 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH interested; a remark which applies to the rest of his social doctrines. His book Ut Es Céf is much rather a collection of aphorisms than a reasoned exposition of doctrine, and the present writer must confess that he read it through with more interest than comprehension. Occasionally Szalasi commits himself to something definite, that often being of unexpected nature: thus everyone in the Hungarian State must belong to one of the “‘received”’ religions? (although the respective spheres of Church and State are sharply

delimited). But the relations, for instance, of capital and labour are left completely unclear; we learn only that they are to be based on equal justice and mutual respect, which are things only to be achieved through Hungarism. Again, the peasant has his special place in the Hungarist State, but Szalasi

never propounded a definite agrarian programme. There were at one moment at least three Arrow Cross agrarian programmes current simultaneously; one, what was really a Smallholder programme for the gradual extension of viable smallholdings, worked out by a well-known economist, Matyas Matolcsy, who joined the Arrow Cross from the Smallholders, and brought his programme with him; another advocating the kolkhoz method; a third, expounded by a follower of Matolcsy’s named Roosz, which made a considerable stir at the time of its publication because of the targets which it offered to the Party’s enemies, in plan somewhat analogous to that of Darré

in Germany, which provided for the establishment of a medium-holding yeoman farmer class constituting a privileged “‘tribe’’ within the State, to which, however, they owed certain obligations. Szalasi, however, was serenely indifferent to most practical issues and it is doubtful whether he ever seriously devoted himself to any social or economic detail. When his followers absolutely insisted on his presenting a programme to the electorate, he took over, ready made, large parts of a programme which was being worked out by K. Wolff’s group of Right-wing Clericals, who were

evolving a kind of “Christian Fascism.’? These ideas were in the event strongly represented in the ““Programme of National Reconstruction”’ which

he ultimately issued when he at last reached the goal of his ambitions in October 1944. Its central idea consisted of a sort of corporate organisation of the State in fourteen corporations. 1 Road and Goal. * J.e. those religions to which the Hungarian Constitution expressly allowed a certain status. Hungarian law divided confessions into ‘“‘received’’ (bevett) and ‘“‘recognised’’ (elismert). ‘““Reception”’ meant reception into the law or constitutional structure of Hungary, and guaranteed

the adherents of the creed in question free practice of their religion and possession of full civic and political rights; further, the recognition of their internal organisation and its direct relationship to the Wearer of the Crown, who exercised the supreme rights of patronage and supervision. The chief dignitaries of a received religion sat ex officio in the Upper House. The State was legally

bound to meet its requirements in respect of churches and schools. It determined its own financial requirements and the State collected the contributions together with the State taxes and with the same authority. A “recognised’’ religion had to submit its statutes to the Minister of

Justice, whose approval was also necessary for appointments in it. Apart from this, it was autonomous, administered its own funds and could levy contributions from its adherents, but had to proceed in the civilian courts in cases of default. It had no ex officio Parliamentary representation. Any other religion came under the law applicable to any association, and its finances were entirely on a private and non-recoverable basis. The traditional Received Churches in Hungary were the Roman Catholic (Latin, Greek and

Armenian rites) and the Calvinist, Lutheran and Unitarian, for which that status was won largely by the efforts of the seventeenth-century Princes of Transylvania. The Greek Oriental (Serbian and Roumanian rites) acquired the status in the nineteenth century, and last of all, in 1894, the Israelitic (which, as we shall see, was degraded in 1942). The Recognised Confessions were the Baptist and, since 1916 (when it was admitted out of compliment to Austria-Hungary’s then ally, Turkey), the Mahomedan.

PROPHET 165 It is, however, unnecessary to describe his theories in detail, since they were of no influence in attracting followers before Szalasi’s assumption of power and were never put into practice after that event. Only two further items of Szalasi’s political philosophy need mention, one being his attitude to the Jewish question. This was much more moderate than was generally believed. He did not, of course, regard the Jews as one of the “‘constructive and indigenous brother-peoples” on whom the Hungarist State was to be based. He disliked their international character and their role as founders and leaders of Marxism, and his papers contain references to ‘destructive Judeco-Bolshevism”’ of the true Hitlerian type. His final solution for the Jewish problem in Hungary is that of mass emigration. But there is no sign of the pathological Jew-hatred of a Hitler, a Streicher or an Endre. He is prepared to let the Jews take their capital with them. He does not want to torment them, only to be rid of them. His war-time programme even laid down that the Jewish question in Hungary was not to be solved on foreign models; Hungary was not one of the States which could afford itself such luxuries. Contrary to all reports, he was against the Jewish deportations of 1944, most of which occurred, indeed, before he came to office, and the final sufferings of the Jews which took place during his regime were not inflicted on his orders, although there is, it is true, no record of his having tried to stop them, having by this time reached a stage when any considerations except those of world strategy and constitutional refinements had practically ceased to impinge on his consciousness. On this as on many points Szalasi was morally far above many of his followers, and above his reputation. For he undoubtedly owed his rise to importance mainly to the attribution to him by common fame of ideas and plans which were not his own, including extreme anti-Semitism, subservience to the Germans, disloyalty to the Regent or, alternatively, association with the Regent in plots against the Hungarian constitution. The second noteworthy feature in Szalasi’s doctrinal system was his fanatical insistence on constitutionalism, particularly as expressed in his

attitude towards the Regent. He would take over the power only when authorised to do so by “‘the common will of the nation and the Head of the State,’’ whose co-operation was necessary for that purpose: the role of the Head of the State being to allow the will of the nation to find free expression, when, in Szalasi’s view, it would certainly put him in power. Indeed, he regarded the existing Parliamentary parties as exercising their power unconstitutionally, because they did not derive it from the freely expressed will . of the people. He did, however, regard Horthy’s position as constitutional,

and Horthy was for him the Head of the State of the second half of his formula. Nothing was further from his mind than any attempt to work against Horthy. Similarly, when he had obtained the power, he was to exercise it, as “Leader of the Nation,” in partnership with the Head of the

State, the relationship to be similar to that obtaining in Italy between Mussolini and the King. Indeed, in the first months, shortly to be described, of his Party activity, S7Alasi never refers to himself otherwise than as “organising secretary,”’ while the post of Leader is kept open for a person designated only as ‘“His Serene

Highness’! and thus clearly referring to Horthy, to whom Szalasi seems at 1 Fomélté sagos ur. The title was borne in Hungary only by Archdukes, Princes and the Regent.

166 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH that time to have hoped to gain access through a certain Major of the Bodyguard named Taby, an obscure person buta personal protégé of the Regent’s.* How persistently Szalasi endeavoured to the end to gain the Regent’s cooperation, and how regularly his efforts were thwarted by Horthy’s entourage, the following pages will show. Szalasi’s first “‘studies” were theoretical, although he also did his best to appreciate the conditions under which the poor of Hungary were actually living. Having read up the main books, he went the round of the parties. He approached the Social Democrats, and, according to their version, offered them his services; although it seems more likely that he was only trying to satisfy himself whether their organisation could become a suitable instrument for the realisation of Hungarism. In any case, the Socialists thought him an agent provocateur, while he went away as dissatisfied with Marxism in practice

asin theory. He got on better with the extreme Right of the Christian Party, from whom, as has been said, he borrowed certain ideas; but this group again failed to satisfy him entirely. He was thus still free of party affiliations when in 1933 he first got into serious trouble with his superiors by issuing, without permission, a pamphlet entitled “‘Plan for the Construction of the Hungarian State.”* As punishment he was transferred to a serving unit, and in 1934 sent in his papers. G6mbé6s—then Prime Minister—tried to get the rebel to enter his own party as an organiser, but Szalasi refused the offer in terms which, as he himself relates them, were contumelious enough, and he records of the interview that Gémbés showed considerable irritation at his criticisms of Gémb6s himself, and of his party; also warning Szalasi that there was no room in Hungary for more than one politicising General Staff Officer, and that the single vacancy was already filled. Nevertheless, the interviews were of advantage to Szalasi, for he made an impression on G6mb6s, who, when he

had gone out, said to friends: ““That man who has gone out will one day sit in my chair.”” The remark was repeated and brought Szalasi much prestige.

When the 1935 elections were impending, Gdmbos again offered Szalasi

a mandate, but Szalasi put forward totally impossible conditions. Just at this moment (Ist March 1935) his resignation was at last gazetted and only three days later he founded a political party of his own: the Party of National Will. This party appears to have consisted at first of Szalasi himself, of a certain

S. Csia (who was to remain with him throughout his career and finally to share his fate), of a typist and of two other persons. The “programme” approved at the meeting was embodied in a pamphlet entitled ‘“‘Aims and Demands,” of which, unfortunately, the present chronicler possesses no copy.

It appears, however, from extracts preserved elsewhere, to have contained first and foremost an exposition of the Hungarist Idea and of the doctrine of * Taby had taken a considerable part in frustrating King Charles’ attempt to reach Budapest in November 1921. It was rumoured that Horthy had given him a job in the Bodyguard out of gratitude. The friendship between Szalasi and Taby lasted until 1938, when Taby was retired from the Army on account of it. Then, however, Taby went into Parliament, but on the Government Party list. There is no evidence that he had ever really tried to smooth Szalasi’s path to the Regent. * This was originally written for a competition set to the staff officers on ‘“‘What is the form of organisation of the State best from the military point of view?” Szdlasi won the competition with his essay, when the praise of his companions so pleased him that he insisted on publishing it.

Baross, ne had this from an officer—General Solymossy—who was then a comrade of

PROPHET 167 “the Trinity of Soil, Blood and Work,” together with a few more or less practical applications of these doctrines, these latter being Csia’s work.

The elections of 1935 took place a few days later. Szalasi stood in a country constituency without success, although another Deputy—Csoér— got in on the Party’s name, afterwards severing his connections with SzAlasi.” Szalasi was equally unsuccessful at a by-election in the following year. By that time he had, indeed, acquired a few followers—nearly all from the working classes, but the total Party membership, in the spring of 1937, was

only 438. It is true that by this time Szdlasi claimed many more adherents for the new venture which he launched in 1936, the “‘Hungarist Movement.” This claim was, however, as difficult to substantiate as it was to refute, since the ““Movement”’ was, by Szalasi’s own definition of it, something of which

the dimensions could not be assessed. It was the “‘soul” of that entity the body of which was constituted by the Party. It had no organisation, no

membership list. It was simply an attitude of mind, an acceptance of

doctrine.

But what was really important was that he now possessed a foothold in the Army. Here his past career as an officer of the General Staff was invaluable to him, for the brotherhood existing between all members of that compact little close corporation enabled him to approach any of them freely and to talk with them on familiar and equal terms. The pages of Szalasi’s Diary are full cf notes of conversations with various officers more or less sympathetic to him, or in any case interested in his ideas. There can be little

doubt that he had a large number of real sympathisers among the junior officers, and he was in close and friendly touch with the two men who were beginning to emerge as leaders of the politically minded group, now growing strong, among the senior Hungarian officers: Jend Ratz and Jeno Ruszkay.

General Jenéd Ratz had been born in 1882, at Nagybecskerek, in the Banat, of a Roumanian family named Ratiu. He had first trained for the priesthood, but then entered the k. und k. army, in which he secured rapid advancement. He was a graduate of the Wiener-Neustadt Academy and during the First World War held various Staff appointments. He was at Szeged and later became head of the Hungarian Staff College, where he was Szalasi’s instructor and became for a time his friend, although never fully adopting his ideas. In 1935 Gémb6s made him Deputy Chief of the General

Staff, and in May 1936 G.O.C. of the First Mixed Brigade. A man of considerable talent, he was by this time one of the acknowledged hopes of the Right, although he had not yet committed himself to any particular brand of Right-wing politics; but he was in contact with Szalasi, whose Diary records two conversations with him at the end of 1936 (at a time when Ratz was already Chief of the General Staff). At one of these, Ratz said to Szalasi: “You create the new nation,’ and I will create the new Army.” Jend Ruszkay’s original name had been Ranzenberger. His early career had been somewhat similar to that of Ratz, but his service in the k. und k. army had been chiefly in the Intelligence: a brillant linguist, he had done remarkable counter-espionage work in Turkey in the First World War. After ; Ae Pols ony cariosities of Fongacian Parliamentary life that Csoor sat in Parliament until 1944 as representing the ‘Party of National will’ although that party had been dissolved years before. Everybody, however, seemed to recognise that he had usurped the name and had no real connection with the Party, so that he was not required to give it up, 3 Literally ‘“‘stamp the new nation out of the earth,”

168 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH this, he had spent most of his career on the Hungarian General Staff. He had had early and close contacts with Szdlasi, whom he was afterwards to join,

although only for a short time. He was a far more dangerous man than Ratz, partly because he was much more brilliant, partly because of his vindictive and passionate temper. His later career was destined to be one of the least reputable recorded in these pages!; but in 1936 he was known only as the second, with Ratz as the first, of Szalasi’s important military friends. It will be convenient to add here a note on the developments which took ~ place during the period among the Swabians, whom we left on an earlier page neatly “‘consolidated”’ by Bethlen, with a few mild concessions, as compared

with 1918, in the matter of schools, a motherly and innocuous “cultural association,” and a Parliamentary spokesman in the person of Professor Bleyer, admitted to Parliament on the Government Party list, to put forward any legitimate grievances in a gentlemanly way, from the inside of the ring.

As we have said, this settlement genuinely satisfied most of the elder Swabians and some of the younger. But among the latter the tide even in the 1920’s was setting towards a more radical ‘‘V6lkisch”’ nationalism. This

tendency was held in check, longer than it might otherwise have been, by Bleyer, whose great personal authority was always exercised against anything

which he regarded as dangerous to the Hungarian State. But it was greatly and suddenly strengthened by the wave of German nationalism which brought

Hitler into power in Germany and was hailed indiscreetly enough in some German villages in Hungary. This again evoked unbridled attacks from part of the Hungarian Press, especially the Jewish-owned organs, which then, as later, found attacking the unhappy Swabians a convenient way of venting the feelings about Hitler which they dared not express directly. This stirred Professor Bleyer himself into more activity, and especially into pointing out in the Press that the renewed Hungarian campaign for revision, the complaints of oppression of the Magyar minorities in the Successor States, and the agitation at Geneva for more effective minority protection were hardly consistent with a blank refusal to listen to the representations of Hungary’s own minorities. The German Press now began to interest itself in the question. A number

of articles appeared which were by no means friendly to Hungary. Count Bethlen, visiting Berlin on a propaganda tour in the cause of Hungarian revisionism, was subjected to fairly severe heckling; the Deutsche Allgemeine

Zeitung went so far as to write that the treatment of the Swabian minority

was “the only point which disturbed German-Hungarian relations.” In Hungary several well-known politicians and publicists, including Bethlen himself, Eckhardt, Tibor Rakovszky and Milotay, advocated a change in Hungary’s own minority policy, precisely in the interests of her revisionist campaign. But this evoked a reaction in just the opposite sense in other quarters, including both the Jewish-owned Press of the capital on the one hand and the ultra-Magyar local officials and parish priests on the other. Gombos himself was a true Hungarian in this respect, and chose this moment * A person well qualified to judge (Frl. Hacke, Veesenmayer’s secretary) told the writer that

in her opinion only one Hungarian known to her had really set German interests above Hungarian, and that was Ruszkay. This was probably due chiefly to the bitter hatred which he had conceived against Horthy when the Regent dismissed him from his command and from the Vitezi Rend for his connections with Szalasi. -In 1942, as we shall see, he took up with the Archduke Albrecht, broke with Szalasi and was expelled from the Arrow Cross.

PROPHET 169 to restart putting official pressure on public servants and especially on Army

officers to Magyarise their names if these indicated non-Magyar origin. Bleyer, then, after vainly attempting to gain some cultural concessions by

private negotiation, made use of the recognised platform of the annual Budget debate! to set out the grievances and wishes of his followers. This unloosed a storm indeed. Bleyer himself had to fight a duel. There were students’ demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, and rotten eggs were hurled, as well as abusive epithets. In fact, the storm cleared the air a little, for several Hungarians became a trifle frightened of the impression made by these events in Germany, and Goémbés offered to talk things over with Bleyer and see what he could do to meet his wishes. A meeting did take place, and an “improved atmosphere”’ was reported from the German side itself. This, however, was not followed by any concrete concessions, and hopes of a peaceful solution suddenly became more remote when Bleyer died on 5th December 1933. A great restraining influence was herewith removed; for Bleyer was an old hand who was trusted, although not generally liked, by both sides. The Government gave him more than they might have given to a younger man; on the other hand, the Swabians accepted less from him than they would have from another. With his death the question of his successor became extremely important, and moderates and extremists alike intrigued to get one of their own men put in his place. The appointment lay with the Government, which, however, could hardly

put in a man totally unacceptable to the whole organisation. In fact, the Government seemed to recognise that it would have to accept a candidate not entirely agreeable to itself, but hoped to counter-balance this by recalling the ex-President of the UDV, M. Gusztav Gratz, who (partly because he could

not abide Bleyer personally) had taken little part in its affairs for several years and had actually resigned his office shortly before Bleyer’s death. Gratz himself was unwilling to take on the ungrateful task if it merely meant that he was going to spend the remaining years of his respectable life in being ground agonisingly between the upper millstone of the Germans and the nether one of the Hungarian Government. He told the latter that he could not re-enter the field without certain concessions, and was in fact able, some weeks later, when the general settlement was announced, to report that

the Government, while retaining the institution of Parents’ Conferences (promising, indeed, not to influence their decisions), had agreed to transform the C type schools into B and to allow the UDV more freedom of movement.’ Meanwhile the Germans had shown that they themselves were not yet ready to unmask their batteries. Some years later M. Gratz revealed® that on the very day of Bleyer’s funeral he was visited by two gentlemen in succession,

representing the organisations of Germans abroad, both of whom begged him to retain his post. In February 1934 he went to Berlin and discussed the question with the leaders of the German organisations, and in particular with Herr Steinacker, Director of the VDA. All of them agreed that they wished to see him remain at his post. This, as we now know, was in complete accordance with German policy 1 10th May 1933. 2 These promises were redeemed at Christmas 1934. Before that date the Swabians possessed, according to official figures, 49 A type schools, 98 B and 316 C. Another figure gave 40 A, 191

B and 265 C. (Min. of Cults cit., Pester Lloyd 1st July 1933.) Yet another: 47, 187, 263. 3 ‘A Magyarorszagi németség tigye,”” Magyar Szemle, April 1938, pp. 357-67.

170 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH at that date. Herr Rauschning has recorded’ a meeting at which, early in the summer of 1934, Hitler addressed the representatives of the societies in charge of Auslandsdeutschtum. There he explained that: “It was a good idea

to have at least two German societies in every country. One of them can then always call attention to its loyalty to the country and will have the functions of fostering social and economic connections. The other one may be radical and revolutionary.” Thus it suited Germany perfectly well that the UDV should continue along its old lines, provided that a new organisation came into being by its side, or inside it, to carry out the real task of “‘training all Germans, without distinction (viz. between Reichsdeutsche and Auslandsdeutsche), unconditionally to place their loyalty to Deutschtum before their loyalty to the foreign State... to win the leading role in the world for Germany.”

Fortified with these assurances, with GOmb6s’ promises and with his threat that if things did not go right he would not only not grant the new concessions but would refuse those recently made to Bleyer, Gratz carried through the negotiations and at the UDV general meeting on 6th May 1934 secured the appointment as Chairman (the Government having first rejected

a fiery old parson from Sopron called Domherr Johannes Huber) of a relatively neutral person, a lawyer from Zemplén called Dr. Franz Kussbach, who was Bleyer’s son-in-law. To make things safer still, a Catholic Priest

and Parliamentary Deputy called Pintér took the place of Bonitz as

‘*Director.”’ ,

The troubles, however, were in reality only just beginning. The old

squabbles about schools, Magyarisation of names, etc., went on pretty well unabated; the Swabians, it must be said, being completely justified when they

said that the Hungarian Government was the most illiberal on national questions of all in Danubian Europe, and that even if the Government did make a paper concession, this was always sabotaged by the local authorities,

the teachers or the Church. Meanwhile, something like the alternative organisation recommended by Hitler had already come into being and was not clearly distinguished from the UDV. Bleyer himself had formed a little

political committee for the discussion of “‘the most important political questions’’* (with which, incidentally, the UDV was not supposed to deal).

In 1931 this group gave itself a separate organisation under the name of “Deutsche Arbeitsfront.”” It seems then to have extended its membership; precisely under what cover the present writer does not know. Although illegal, it remained relatively innocuous so long as Bleyer lived and retained its presidency. After his death its members appointed no new President, but conducted their affairs through a Committee of Seven, whose leading spirit was one Franz Basch, a boy then in his early twenties who had been Bleyer’s personal secretary. Some time now the title was changed to “‘Volksdeutsche

Kameradschaft.” Then, in the reorganisation of May 1934 Basch was appointed Secretary of the UDV, thus inextricably entangling the two bodies.

Already by this time the Kameradschaft was in touch with the German Auslandsdienst. It is known that the question of the legitimacy or otherwise of accepting foreign money was debated within the Kameradschaft and that Basch maintained and carried acceptance of the point of view that given the dichotomy of Volk and Staat, it was perfectly legitimate for a Volksgruppe to accept money from the Muttervolk for its cultural needs. He did so from 1 Conversations with Hitler, pp. 146 ff. * See Nation und Staat, January 1934, p. 240,

PROPHET 17] the first, applying such money to the uses of the UDV. Monthly subventions

were received out of which a library was maintained and a hostel run for University students of Swabian origin. Revelations also speak of a motorcar. The arrangement was very popular among the honest Swabian peasants, who were not troubled for their subscriptions to the UDV. But the sums so expended were not very large: all Basch’s staff consisted of a handful of young men, who lived modestly enough. Whether or on what scale other secret funds were received, and also who

received them, was another question. One official was prosecuted for malversation of funds and the curious fact emerged that the sums which he had misapplied were larger than any which ought to have been there to misapply. Probably money was already coming in for espionage.

In October 1934 Basch was sentenced by a Court of First Instance to three months’ imprisonment and a year’s loss of political rights for unfavourable comments on the Magyarisation of names which incurred the charge of

“bringing the Hungarian nation into contempt.’ A colleague of his named Franz Rothen was arrested on similar charges. In April 1935 came the elections. The Kameradschaft, after considering and dropping a plan to form a political party of their own, had negotiated with the Smallholders, who agreed to let four Swabians stand on their list in German-speaking districts. In the end only two stood—-Kussbach and Basch. The Government took the enterprise excessively ill. Kozma, then Minister

of the Interior, took the pains to visit both constituencies and to attack the two Swabians in very strong terms. Both were, naturally, defeated according to plan. The incident stirred up great excitement in Budapest, whose Jewish Press for once supported Kozma; and hard upon this came the hearing of Basch’s case in the Court of Appeal, which increased the terms of the earlier sentence to five months and three years respectively. The UDV was accused

—perhaps not unnaturally when it is considered that Kussbach was its President and Basch its Secretary—of having entered politics. In view of the excitement, the UDV held no general meeting that year, but Gratz convoked the Executive Committee and on 15th June secured the adoption by it of a resolution condemning any activity calculated to disturb good feeling between the Hungarian people and the Swabians and a second resolution granting Basch leave from his duties until his case—which was now proceeding to the highest Court of Appeal—was finally settled. These resolutions were adopted with only one dissentient voice—that of a certain Professor Huss, of Debrecen University; but only after a spirited debate in which Huss and his friends demanded that the UDV should, on the contrary, declare its solidarity with Basch (who had refused to facilitate matters by volunteering to go on leave). Kussbach, who inclined to this side, resigned his post. Signs of an open split between the two camps now became apparent. In November a new periodical, the Deutscher Volksbote, began publication under Huss’ auspices, evading official prohibition by limiting its appearances to eleven in the year.1 In June 1936 the Court of Appeal reaffirmed the sentence passed in the Court of Second Instance on Basch. Soon after Rothen was sentenced.2 A complete split now occurred in the UDV. 1 No Government permit was needed for a publication which appeared less than twelve aoa Rothen’s case came up on 22nd August 1936, when he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and two years’ loss of political rights for “derogation of the Hungarian nation” in a speech made in 1933, in which he had criticised the school system and the Magyarisation of names.

172 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The general meeting of the UDV held on 21st August, produced stormy scenes, as the rebels accused Gratz and his followers of packing the meeting

and excluding their own supporters, while Gratz replied that anyone who had paid his subscription to the UDV had been admitted; the exclusion of the radicals was their own fault, since their leaders had been advising them not to pay for the upkeep of the “traitor”? society. In the end, Basch and his following were formally expelled from the UDV, of which Gratz remained President, Pintér Managing Director, Faul-Farkas Secretary General and L. Leber Secretary. The Basch group now set up in all form as a rival institution. This was not technically recognised by the Hungarian Government as possessing any locus standi to represent the Swabian minority, and until 1940 the German Government itself accepted the Hungarian contention that the UDYV represented the Swabians. The underground connections of the VDA, etc., were, however, all with Basch’s group, which flourished accordingly, while the UDV, despite a valiant drive for more subscriptions and activities, gradually withered away from this day onward. All this time there had been a steady increase in the flow of articles in the German Press and speeches by leaders of the VDA attacking Hungary and voicing such sentiments as: ““The German frontier stands on the Plattensee”’

(Lake Balaton). ... We cannot be satisfied only with the Burgenland ...

German Kulturboden must also be German Volksboden.’”! When von Neurath visited Budapest in September 1936, Kanya drew his attention to this material. The negotiations which followed belong, however, to another chapter. 1 Speech by Benno Graf, VDA meeting in Munich, 2nd May 1935.

CHAPTER TEN

HALF LEFT WHEEL ' X Y E wrote a previous page Horthy’s ‘“‘turned definitely againstonGOmbGs during thethat summer recessmind of 1936”; buttheestran gement had probably begun at least a year earlier. The causes of it were obviously manifold and complex, and it would perhaps be a mistake to try to define them very exactly. Horthy himself, characteristically, later

summed them up in the simple phrase: “I came to the conclusion that Gombés was not a gentleman,’ and this feeling may well have been growing on him since the 1935 elections, if not earlier.2 Although never openly disloyal to the Regent, Gémbés had been less subservient than Horthy had expected. He had given himself airs. Horthy certainly disliked and is said to have protested against Gdmbés’ calling himself “‘Leader.”” He had disregarded Horthy’s claim to supreme control of the Army; in particular, he had treated some of the Regent’s old and trusted cronies among the Generals

without respect or even courtesy.2 Both the good and the bad sides of Goémbés’ internal programme—his enthusiasm for land reform and his flamboyant anti-Semitism—were distasteful to Horthy. The simplest way of

putting the position in the internal field is to say that, while Gdmbés had remained a Right Radical, Horthy had reverted to being a traditionalist conservative.

Now came the considerations of foreign policy. Horthy was at least as full-blooded a revisionist as G6mb6s, but, on the issue of tactics, stood in the

opposite camp from him, and that very strongly, owing to his very special

admiration for sea-power and his conviction that Great Britain, as the possessor of that power, would end by winning the war against Germany,

if war came. For all these reasons, Horthy was now in the Opposition Front, in which he was destined to remain until the end of our story, being, of course, in virtue of his position, infinitely the most important member of that body. In August Horthy made up his mind to dismiss Gdmbds, and wrote to tell him so. Although now very sick, Gdmbés came up to G6d6ll6, where he and the Regent had a stormy interview. Godmbds clung obstinately to power,

and convinced that he was a dying man, Horthy had pity on him, and consented that he should remain Minister President in name*; but insisted that he should renounce the Ministry of Defence and should appoint

a regular substitute Minister President fully empowered to act in that capacity. For this interim post, Daranyi, who was already acting Minister President, 1 This was the reason for his decision which he gave to C. A. M. in 1945. 2 Bethlen had reproached Horthy bitterly for allowing G6mbé6s to dissolve Parliament in 1935, saying: “I told you that G6Gmb6s was no gentleman,”’ and ending: “‘You will see, you will go the way of King Charles.’” This may have impressed Horthy, who never seems to have been quite satisfied in his own mind that he had acted rightly towards the King in 1921 (as late as 1947 he sent Otto a message justifying his action and protesting his loyalty). 8 This was the special reason which he gave Eckhardt at the time (Eckhardt to C. A. M.). 4 Personal, Horthy to C. A. M.

174 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and had, as we have said, been accepted in that capacity by the Opposition Front with pleasure, and by the Right without too much disapproval, was the most obvious choice, and on Ist September 1936 he was accordingly formally appointed Acting Minister President and also (an important point) Acting Leader of the Government Party. The next day General Somkuthy, head of

Horthy’s Military Chancellery, was appointed Minister of Defence, his previous post being filled by General Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, brother of the

former, and later, Minister of the Interior. Another General of the old school, Sdényi, became Commander-in-Chief of the Honvéd. Jend Ratz became Chief of the General Staff, an appointment which in the event went a long way towards neutralising the effect of the other changes; but Ratz’ political proclivities were not at that time well known, and had not, indeed, yet attained their full vigour. On 3rd September Gémbés left Hungary to go to a sanatorium in Munich. Before formally handing over, he had had a last reconciliation with Eckhardt, with whom he agreed, the Regent consenting, that the long-promised Electoral

Reform Bill should be taken without further delay once the two measures extending the powers of the Regent and the Upper House respectively were out of the way.! Then, as his last action as Minister President, he wrote out letters to the heads of the various political parties, inviting them to submit their own proposals for electoral reform and to open inter-party discussions on the subject.

Daranyi passed on these invitations to a somewhat mistrustful set of Party leaders; but everyone was now awaiting the real issue, which was that of the definitive succession to Gémbés, whose condition grew rapidly worse. The Right credited the “‘reactionaries’”’ with plotting to jump the Regent into appointing one of their own number, and as September drew towards its close, and reports came from Munich that Gémbés was sinking fast, the Right in their turn were credited by the Prager Presse and by certain foreign journalists, who drew their inspiration from the same sources, with sensational designs. Marton, it was reported, was planning to go to Munich

and to extract from the dying Gémbés a death-bed ukase resigning and appointing a military Cabinet under Generals Ratz and Ruszkay as the sole means of preserving Hungary from Bolshevism.’ Any such document would, of course, have been entirely unconstitutional,

and there is, in fact, no evidence whatever that any such coup was ever seriously contemplated: nor is it at all likely that Gémbés would have resigned in anyone’s favour during his lifetime; he had, moreover, told his followers that he had agreed with Horthy that if he died Daranyi was to be his successor. He had ordered them to accept this arrangement, and while some of the Young Turks would have preferred Sztranyavzsky to Daranyi, they had agreed, as a body, to defer to Gémbé6s’ wishes.? What they might + Personal, Baross to C. A. M. * From among the many indirect allusions to this supposed plot, we may refer particularly to the Prager Presse of 29th November. Here it is suggested that GGmb6s would have had to be brought back to Hungary alive, if only for a few hours, to ‘declare his will” publicly. The paper mentions, as the three alleged conspirators in chief, Marton, Sztranyavszky and Antal. * I have been assured of this by Marton and by Baross, who has described to me in detail his last interview with GOmbos. Baross had suggested the name of Sztranyavszky, whom, however, GOmb6s described as “‘a good fellow, but a complete ass; he could never carry out my foreign policy.” “‘Daranyi,”’ he went on, ‘will do that, he knows everything, and is reliable. ... I have told Horthy so ... tell your friends that these are my orders. Ask them to support him,

as you did me.”’

HALF LEFT WHEEL 175 have done if Horthy had replaced the living Gémbés by a “‘csaklyds’”! is another question, and a hypothetical one, for Horthy made no such move. Gombés died on 6th October 1936, still titular Minister President of Hungary; and, as a matter of historic fact, there followed neither any putsch from the Right nor any of the unrest from the Left which had been prophesied, equally irresponsibly, from the other side.

In the days that followed, the Regent was, indeed, approached with a proposal that he should himself carry through a coup; but the suggestion did not come from any of the persons named in the panic Press. It was a curious story altogether. On 8th October Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, for reasons which must for ever remain unexplained—the two men did not then know one another—sent for

Szalasi and asked him to report on the situation, very urgently, for the Regent’s private benefit. Keresztes-Fischer may have thought that Szalasi,

who notoriously had been wandering about talking to members of the working classes, would prove a reliable source of information for what was

going on in that quarter. He may also have thought that Szalasi would provide information on what was going on among the extreme Right. Most probably, he simply wanted to know what Szalasi himself was driving at.’ The last-named topic was the only one on which he got any enlightenment. Instead of producing an agent’s report on feeling in the country, Szalasi promptly submitted a long and entirely typical screed, in which he dismissed the leaders of all existing political parties, with beautiful impartiality, as incompetents without a hold on the country. Only the Army was “‘the Messiah which can force the country on to the true road”; and the Regent was the man to take charge—nay, must do so for his own sake, since, unless he

assumed the responsibility and took charge, he would himself be overthrown. The only possible solution was: “the Regent at the head of the nation, and with the nation.”” The Regent should carry through a coup d’ état, which, incidentally, although it was “‘to rest on the Army,” was not to install a military regime. The Army’s duty was to preside “‘with arms at the

ready” over new elections, which would bring into power the Party of National Will, headed by Szalasi. He and Horthy would then run Hungary between them. This remarkable effusion had no immediate results whatever. Although,

as later events proved, Keresztes-Fischer must have given it to Horthy sometime, he probably delayed transmission of it until any danger of Horthy’s

adopting it was past. At any rate, Keresztes-Fischer evaded Szalasi’s requests for an audience with the Regent until the constitutional conversations were over. These negotiations proceeded along the orthodox lines, with consultation

of the Party leaders and other notables. Horthy does not seem to have _ regarded himself as bound by any agreement with Gémb6s, for he allegedly proposed, amongst other possible solutions, a coalition with the Smallholders, which Eckhardt himself rejected on the grounds that “‘the time was not ripe

for it,” or even an Eckhardt cabinet, which Eckhardt said would be ‘“‘a 1 Csdklyds means literally a man who wields a fireman’s or similar axe to hack away debris or entanglements. The Hungarian Right used it as a term of abuse for their most reactionary opponents. ‘‘Backwoodsman”’ is a convenient translation. 2 Keresztes-Fischer afterwards told Baross that “he had been ordered by High Quarters’”’ (i.e. the Regent) ‘“‘to enquire into this Hungarist movement and to find out what was behind it”’ (Baross to C. A. M.).

176 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH provocation to Germany which Hungary could not afford.”’! At the other extreme, a small group on the extreme Right pressed for a Sztranyavszky cabinet, which Horthy refused to consider. But, in fact, it was clear from the first that the only candidate acceptable to both the Left and the Right was Daranyi, who was appointed definitive Minister President on 10th October. Horthy had at first wished to make no other changes, except for the dropping of Winchkler, who had offended some

of his friends. There was one last scene before this was achieved, for the Right of the Government Party tried hard to utilise the opportunity to get rid of two Ministers especially disliked by them, Kozma and Lazar, the former in favour of Sztranyavszky. They pressed their attacks against Kozma, on personal grounds, very hard, but Horthy insisted absolutely on retaining him, and the malcontents eventually yielded, specifically stating that they did so only in deference to Horthy’s wishes.

Winchkler was in fact dropped, Bornemissza taking over his portfolio provisionally. Antal lost his Secretaryship of State for Justice. The only other immediate change was that on 12th October R6der came back instead of Somkuthy as Minister of Defence.’ The appointment of Daranyi, therefore, represented a compromise, and one which the Right, even the extreme Right, was as ready to accept as the

Bethlenites; and not without reason, for later events were to show that Daranyi possessed stronger sympathies for the Right Radicals, or at any rate less will to oppose them, than either Horthy or Bethlen seems to have suspected in the autumn of 1936. He was nothing approaching a Liberal or a Democrat in the Western sense of the terms, and so far from being a pronounced anti-German that more than once, in after years, he was sent to smooth down Hitler’s plumage when it had been ruffled by other Hungarians. But he was undoubtedly quite innocent of any personal dictatorial ambitions,

and there seems no reason to doubt that he took office in the knowledge that Horthy expected him to steer Hungary’s course away from the rapids towards which Gémbés had been heading it, and with the sincere intention of doing so. In any case, the impression generally held both inside and outside Hungary of his appointment was that it represented an act of resistance,

not perhaps defiant, but definite, to the increasing pressure now being exercised by Germany in both the foreign and the domestic fields, and the reactions to it, both inside and outside Hungary, were those appropriate to this view. Germany greeted it with open and tempestuous hostility, while inside the country the political forces grouped themselves accordingly, unspokenly and more than half instinctively, into a pattern which was soon to become very familiar. The Right wing of the Government Party itself, without leaving the Party—two more years were to elapse before a public split occurred—constituted themselves, in fact, as the Opposition of the Right. The Parliamentary Opposition of the Left, without joining the Government Party, entered into a tacit alliance with the Government. These foreign and domestic reactions to the appointment of Daranyi took place simultaneously, and, of course, in a hen-and-egg sequence which makes * Eckhardt to C. A. M. * This was unexpected, for although Rdder was an old and trusted friend of the Regent’s Somkuthy had been reputed to be in the same position. It was reported that he was sacrificed to appease Goring, or the Hungarian Corps of Officers itself, over the incident connected with the funeral of Gomb6s described below.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 177 it impossible to classify them precisely into cause and effect. Germany’s attitude towards Hungary, however, was of such enormous importance to Hungary’s political life that it is justifiable to give that aspect of the subject

pride of place in our description of Hungarian history during the period following the death of Gémbés. Furthermore, since the influence of that attitude was, thanks to Hitler’s peculiar method of conducting his foreign relationships, even stronger on Hungary’s internal politics than on her wider foreign policy, it will be logical to follow on with our account of Hungary’s internal political developments, leaving a discussion of her general foreign

policy to the end. In all these fields the first year of Dardnyi’s Minister Presidency forms a distinct chapter of Hungarian history. Germany then, as we observed, greeted the news of Daranyi’s appointment with an outburst of extreme hostility, which is only comprehensible on

the assumption that she had attached a most real and deep importance to the secret agreement between Godmbios and Goring. It is reported! that as soon as he knew that Daranyi had been definitively appointed, the German Minister visited him to ask whether the agreement still held good. Daranyi, who had only just learnt of its existence when going through his predecessor’s

most private papers, replied that it did not. From this refusal, probably followed up by some malicious report from Mecsér or some other Young Turk, the Germans seem to have drawn conclusions as to the extent of the proposed change of Richtung in Hungary which were more far-reaching than the intentions of its authors warranted. The Germans appear to have believed

that a sinister gang of effete aristocrats and rapacious Jews had seized the chance of Gémb6s’ illness to intrigue him out of office,? for purposes which might even include a Habsburg restoration,’ and were now gloating indecently

over their success. The fact that Gdmbés was given a civilian funeral, as Hungarian protocol demanded,* was taken particularly ill by his German friends, including Goring. ‘‘Where is the gun-carriage?’’ he demanded in wrath, and although he was given a beautiful decoration, he remained unappeased, and never visited Hungary again.° On the day that the definitive appointment of Daranyi was announced, the German Press burst into a chorus of denunciations of the new “‘Volksfront” and for many weeks thereafter every weakness of the Hungarian social

. and political system was mercilessly attacked, and her revisionist claims subjected to spiteful derision. The most striking of the last-named attacks

was an article which appeared on 17th November in the V6lkischer Beobachter, under the heading ‘“‘Unterdrtickte V6lker und Revision.” National Socialism, said this article, did not regard revision as a policy “‘to be pursued for its own sake in all places and in every direction,” but only “in relation to definite demands.” Germany was not going “to be towed 1 Barczy.

2 When Mackensen came to express his official condolences on Gomb6s’ death, Apor remarked that GOGmbés had been finished anyway. Mackensen replied: ““You would never have

got the man out of his position alive.”” (Apor to C. A. M.) 3 Nazi Consp. and Agg., V, 868. 4 Under the Hungarian rule, only officers on the active list could have military funerals, and Gémbdés had long since resigned his commission under another rule which forbade officers on the active list to hold posts in political parties. The Party asked for an exception to be made, but Horthy, allegedly, refused consent. 5 The Germans had sent the body back from Munich in great state, and revenged themselves by sending in a bill for 70,000 R.M. for this service. This in its turn annoyed the Hungarians vastly, although the only promise which the Germans had made had been to pay for Gombds’ treatment in the sanatorium, and that they kept. N

178 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH along by other nations which have appealed to us for support without imposing on themselves the restraint which we have had to observe.” The article appeared over the signature of Alfred Rosenberg, which was bad enough; but it was freely rumoured to have been inspired by Hitler himself, for the special benefit of the Roumanians.* The German Government now officially and vigorously took up the cause of the Swabians, sponsoring their demands, as formulated by the Kamerad-

schaft, to the Hungarian Government. And, in general, Germany now initiated a high-power pressure campaign which was not directed only to the Swabians, or the Arrow Cross Parties, but also to the country as a whole.

It is, perhaps, safer to call the widespread allegations that Germans were privy to an alleged plot by the Right to overthrow the Government in March 1937? unproven; but it is certain that they abetted, or themselves carried out, much near-subversive agitation. Innumerable newspapers and

brochures were produced in Germany and distributed in Hungary via newsvendors or through the post. Lecturers, “students,” and commercial travellers overran the country, and an extraordinary number of tourists and Wandervogel suddenly discovered its flat, treeless and dusty roads and its bug-ridden inns to be ideal for walking-tours. All alike

preached the greatness, the vitality, the military power and the ideal social conditions of Nazi Germany, pointing more or less subtle contrasts with Hungary, especially over the Jewish question; and many of them hinted

openly enough that as soon as Austria had been incorporated, the turn of Hungary, or at least of Transdanubia, would follow. In the resultant exchanges the Hungarians gave quite as good as they got. The Government protested whenever Germany overstepped the recognised

bounds. [Illegitimate literature was confiscated and agitators expelled or imprisoned. The Hungarian Press was at least as rude to Germany, and far

more subtly so, as the German to Hungary. There even took place the portentous event—the fullness of which it needed a lifetime of experience of local conditions to appreciate—that the German Government banned the circulation in Germany of the officieux Pester Lloyd.* Inter-Governmental conversations on the Swabian question went on until June, when the Germans declared themselves satisfied with a promise from

the Hungarians to allow the minority improved cultural facilities and to apply existing legislation more conscientiously. The Germans and the

Kameradschaft seem also to have interpreted something said by the Hungarians as a promise that the latter would be allowed to organise as a Volksgruppe.* No such permission came; nor, for that matter, did any perceptible concessions to implement the other assurances.° Consequently Basch’s ‘““Movement”? remained something like Szalasi’s Hungarist Movement, a soul without a body—at least, a body within the meaning of the act. It now, however, possessed an astral body which any fool could see, and it

was obvious that as soon as the ban was lifted, a closely organised and strongly nationalist Volksgruppe would spring into being as fast as the Djinn when Aladdin rubbed the lamp. This would, of course, materialise out of the 1 See Comnéne, op. cit., pp. 251, 259. 2 See below, p. 181. 3 The Pester Lloyd was banned again in December 1939 (see below, p. 374, n. 2). 4 See the article by Goldschmidt in the Deutscher Volksbote, 17th June.

193 : Ae ipree years’ record for 1935-37 inclusive may be found in Nation und Staat, January

HALF LEFT WHEEL 179 Kameradschaft, for meanwhile the UDV had quietly faded out. Germany simply wrote it off as a stooge organisation, not to be counted as Hungarian at all, and the Hungarians themselves no longer pretended anything else. Non-Nazi Swabians just joined up with Hungarian parties or organisations. It should, indeed, be added that many of the German propagandists and of the local Swabians themselves now regarded even the Kameradschaft as a back-number and were frankly contemptuous of Basch’s efforts to carry out a minority policy based on dual loyalty to Staat and Volk. They only looked forward to the day when Hitler would come, take so much of Hungary as he needed for himself, and send the Magyars packing. Plans for this were already hatching in Berlin and Stuttgart. Meanwhile, the chief effect of Germany’s campaign was to spread active anti-German feeling, for the first time for many years, far beyond the, as it were, professionally anti-German circles in Hungary. By the autumn an almost passionate dislike of the new Germany was very widespread in the country.’ It was in-a genuine desire to clear up misunderstandings and

eliminate unnecessary ill-feeling that in the summer the Government suggested that Daranyi should visit Berlin. After some correspondence it was agreed that he should go on 22nd November, taking with him Kanya and experts on the various questions which would benefit by discussion on a high level.

Immediately his Government was constituted, Daranyi had met the Opposition leaders in inter-party talks and reached broad agreement with them. The legislative programme was to open with the two “‘Constitutional”’ Biuls. Then was to come the franchise reform, then a further measure of land

reform and more industrial legislation. The Government promised ‘“‘to combat tendencies which undermine and destroy the national organism— tendencies which are foreign to our race and reject the national idea and the

Christian outlook”—by which, this time, it was understood that not only Marxism was meant but also Nazism.

It was, in truth, no extremist programme, for the Opposition, in their anxiety to keep the Government’s head pointing in the right direction on the main issue, gave their support very cheap; Eckhardt, for example, who had at first asked that the land reform should extend to at least three million hold,

ended by accepting a mere fraction of that figure.” It is perhaps a fair criticism of the Parliamentary Left at this stage that by asking not merely less than they would have done on a free market but even probably less than they might have obtained in the existing situation, they both deprived the classes which they claimed to represent of benefits which might have been theirs, but also played into the hands of the radicals of both wings by leaving to them the advocacy of many overdue reforms. Similarly the Government may fairly be criticised for its failure to see the dangers of striking too good

a bargain. Be this as it may, the understanding was reached, and when Daranyi presented his programme accordingly, he did so amid a rain of blessings from the Opposition benches. Bethlen said that although the programme might have been written by G6mbés (as, indeed, most of it had), 1 It is an interesting detail that when Germany demanded the establishment of a GermanHungarian Society, no one could be found to volunteer for the post of President. Daranyi had to appeal to his friend, Tasnadi-Nagy, to take on the job “‘in the national interest.”

2 Eckhardt to C. A. M.

180 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH a world separated the spirit in which it was delivered from that of his predecessor. Eckhardt said that he accepted it, “wished it success with all his heart,”’ and would support it, subject to the satisfaction of his own party’s

postulates. The Christian Party was prepared to support the Government and even, if need be, enter a coalition with it. Rassay, for the Liberals, was almost as friendly. The Social Democrats, on principle, still declared themselves to be in opposition to the Government, but indicated that they would not make things too difficult for it if 1t met their wishes as far as practicable.

Thus fortified, Daranyi turned on the Young Turks. Marton having refused to ease the position by resigning, a grand reorganisation of the Government Party was carried through over his head. At the end of some agitated weeks it was announced that the Party would retain its name and the Minister President, if a member of it, would remain its Leader. It would be “‘based on the electorate.’ At its head would be a Presidial Committee, consisting of President, Vice-President, twenty-four elected members and all Ministers belonging to the Party; also the President of the Budapest organisation. A wider National Committee was composed of the above members, all Deputies of either House who belonged to the Party, the Féispans and

the Presidents of the County Organisations. The Féispans remained the heads of the local branches, but were to take no active part in party politics except as members of the National Committee. The Party Leader nominated the heads of the County Organisations. All other Party functionaries were elected and unpaid. The Youth, Women, Propaganda and Cultural Sections were abolished. Administration was in future to be separate from politics. The famous card-indexes were handed over to the local Deputies. The post of Secretary-General was abolished. B. Ivady was re-elected President, with two moderates, Zsindely and Szinyei-Merse, as Vice-Presidents. Marton was made a co-President, which

in practice, since Ivady had a strong hand, meant honorific demotion. Sztranyavszky, who in his capacity of Lay President of the Evangelical Synod had just roused the Catholic opinion of the whole country against him by an

extraordinarily offensive speech,? dropped out of the Party organisation altogether: he was kicked upstairs—resisting—into the Presidency of the Lower House, and resigned his Party functions as incompatible with his new office.

A few weeks later, Daranyi, after all, sacrificed Kozma, although less to the Right than to the Smallholders, who still blamed him for their own lack of success in the 1935 elections and had launched against him an extraordinarily vicious personal campaign.* His successor, Jézsef Széll, a con-

nection of Horthy’s, was disliked by the Right Radicals but agreeable to the Opposition, relations with which were further improved by the appointment.* 1 Soon afterwards, he took another post and was succeeded as Party President by A. TasnadiNagy, an old friend of Daranyi’s. 2 Annoyed by his son’s marrying a Catholic and signing the ‘‘Reversal,’”” he had accused the Catholic Church of “conducting an organised campaign against the Evangelical Church with methods reminiscent of the Inquisition.” * Eckhardt took the lead in the campaign and allegedly said that he possessed documents, which if necessary he would produce, which would make Kozma’s resignation inevitable. * Széll was appointed only on 10th April, although Kozma had resigned on 3rd February. In the interval Daranyi took charge of the Ministry of the Interior. There was much political intrigue during this period, and rumours again circulated of a coalition Government (to include the Smallholders and the Christian Party).

HALF LEFT WHEEL 18] This was not the last engagement in the campaign, for the thwarted Right

Radicals did not take their repulse lying down. Encouraged and possibly supported in more substantial fashion by German sympathisers, they burst into a vocal activity which, to those who did not understand that it indicated

frustration rather than triumph, gave the impression that Hungary was nearer installing a dictatorship of the Right under Daranyi than she had been under Gémboés. Dardanyi’s own actions encouraged that impression, for, partly perhaps out of weakness, partly out of a certain sympathy with their ideas, partly under the impression that the extremists would be less dangerous if allowed to blow off steam, and partly no doubt in the hope of increasing Hungary’s defensive potential, still officially limited under the Peace Treaty, he conceived the not very fortunate idea of reviving and further expanding the “national” societies; they were, it is true, to abstain from party political activity. Baross was asked to get the TESz going again, after its two years’ hibernation; the MOVE, now under the Presidency of the Rightwing Deputy, J. Szeder, and the Fascist labour organisation known as the NMK,' which was Marton’s special child, were given the green light. A host of similar but smaller societies were resuscitated and new ones founded, such as Dr. Csilléry’s “Blue Cross,” whose simple programme was ‘“‘to fight against Bolshevism’”*: together, it is true, with a number of societies of more conservative character whose object was to organise opinion behind the Regent against the Right Radicals.® Some of these societies soon got out of hand. The younger men whom Baross allowed to occupy leading positions in the TESz.* started an anti-

Daranyi movement inside it which developed into a vigorous political campaign.” But the worst trouble was with the MOVE, which was alleged to be in possession of 10,000 rifles issued to it by Gdmbdés. It now embarked on a course of open para-military training, with shooting-clubs, gliders, etc. A leaflet of the time said that “the Order Troops of the MOVE would stand behind the Army and the police as a second line of defence against Left Radical Tendencies,”’ and Szeder said that his aim was to make the movement into a body which could “‘act as defence in an emergency.”

Early in March 1937, then, strong rumours began to circulate that the leaders of the MOVE, with certain other associates, of whom those most frequently named were Baross, Marton and Mecsér, who were acting, according to some versions, with the active support of Germany,°® were engaged in some kind of a plot. Warnings were given to the Government, almost simultaneously, by all the leaders of the Opposition parties—Bethlen, Eckhardt, Rassay, Zichy and Peyer—and by certain members of the Government Party itself. The matter was then brought upin Parliament. The entire 1 Nemzeti Munkakozpont (National Labour Centre). * Csilléry had previously belonged to the Christian Economic Party, but afterwards went over to the Government Party in national politics, while in the municipal politics of Budapest he presided over a ‘“‘Christian”’ fraction of the Government Party which reserved its right to act independently of the parent body.

3 The most important of these, after the old-standing Vitézi Rend described previously (p. 32), were the Turani Vadaszok (Turanian Hunters) and the Torzs6k6s Magyarok (True-blue mee these included a Dr. Sallo, Fidél Palffy, the National Socialist, and a certain Szércsey, who had close connections with Szalasi. The later Arrow Cross Deputy, Hubay, at that time working for the Governmental Fiiggetlenség, was their journalistic mouthpiece. 5 Baross to C. A. M. ¢ M. Peyer, the Social Democrat leader, said that Germany had subsidised the plot to the tune of 3 million R.M,

182 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Opposition Front, from the Legitimists and Bethlen to the Smallholders and the Social Democrats, united their protests. Exactly what the “‘plot’” was supposed to be was never made quite clear.

Some speakers talked of a plan for a march on Budapest by the MOVE, which was then to instal a Right Radical Government. Others only alleged that the conspirators were organising “cells”? in the appropriate quarters in

order to influence the next elections and thus bring in the Government desired by them by legal means. Others connected the whole plot with Germany’s designs on Austria, on Czechoslovakia and even on West Hungary.' A great deal of this was quite certainly exaggeration, if not pure invention.

It should not be forgotten that not only the Hungarian Left but also the Little Entente had every interest in discrediting the Hungarian Right and all para-military movements in Hungary. The German Minister in Hungary, von Mackensen, was an entirely correct and even rather passive man, whose unofficial contacts in Hungary were, as it happened, almost entirely with the Smallholders.2, German Party circles were certainly in close touch with various quarters in Hungary, and considerable sums may well have been passing through or sticking to the hands of Mecsér and others in connection with the general propaganda campaign described on a previous page; but I have failed to track down evidence that Germany was financing the MOVE, and it is quite certain that none of the Hungarians mentioned, except Mecsér,

would have considered for one moment ceding Germany an inch of Hungarian territory. Both MM. Baross and Marton have assured the writer solemnly that they had no subversive designs whatever. Yet it is more than probable that many people had been talking big, and had been indulging in dreams of a “‘national’? Hungary in which the MOVE

and other associations would have helped the Army to support a Right Radical Government against both the Hungarian Left and the Little Entente; such a regime enjoying the friendship and favour of Germany. There must have been indiscretions which could not be passed over. At all events, when the Opposition made its protests in Parliament, Daranyi gave assurances of the Government’s intention to preserve order, and Lazar said that appropriate

instructions had been issued to the local authorities. And although both denied that any serious danger had existed, and had strongly rebutted the accusations made against von Mackensen, the Chief of Police of Budapest, Ferenczy, was retired, as were several other police officers and some Army officers. Marton left the inner councils of the Government Party altogether,

not to return to them until 1939, devoting himself in the interval almost entirely to the affairs of the NMK. Rd6der recovered the rifles from the MOVE, whose activities continued, but on less conspicuous lines. Baross resigned from the Presidency of the TESz. in favour of Bishop Zadravec, a Catholic Prelate of strong Right-wing tendencies. The Government stopped its subsidies to the organisation, which reverted to hibernation during the short remainder of its existence.* Finally, the Germans inconspicuously * According to Le Temps, 6th April 1937, Peyer said at a Social Democrat conference on the

4th that Germany’s object was to make Hungary put pressure on Austria to allow German troops to march across her territory against Czechoslovakia. The Smallholder Deputy, M. Petrovac, suggested in Parliament that Germany was doing a deal with the Right Radicals to put them in power in return for their consent to her annexing certain areas of West Hungary. * Michaelis to C. A. M.

° Keresztes-Fischer dissolved it in 1940.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 183 recalled the representative of the DNB, von Hahn, whose name had figured on the charge list. Von Mackensen was replaced, at about the same time,! by von Erdmannsdorff, a correct diplomat of the old school, whose Hungarian contacts never extended to the Right of the Government. After this the Government had, for the rest of the year, no more active difficulties with the Right wing of its own party, whose members were not, indeed, reconciled to the new course but were kept in bounds by the wholesome fear which inspired them of losing the patronage of the Party machine. The noteworthy political developments of the period were those which took place in the Opposition Front and among those extreme groups which stood to the Left of the Social Democrats or to the Right of the Government Party itself.

The Parliamentary Opposition parties maintained throughout the year their benevolent, or at least tolerant, attitude towards the Government. Perhaps for that very reason, little progress was made towards the mutual integration of the various elements within the Opposition itself. In April the

Christian Party (which had itself carried through a small consolidation enabling a dissident fraction and some independents to join the main party) declared its “complete solidarity” with the Smallholders, who at a meeting in May proclaimed their own ‘“‘complete solidarity’? with Bethlen. But in politics all Euclid’s propositions regarding parallel lines do not apply. The Christian Party did not proclaim its complete solidarity with Bethlen, and when Bethlen, after the May meeting, said that he “fully supported”’ the Daranyi Government and called on all bourgeois parties to combine under it, “to prevent the masses of the nation from falling into either extreme,”’ he was not followed by any of the bourgeois Opposition parties; still less, of course, by the Social Democrats, whom his own definition excluded. When he repeated his proposal at the end of the year it was received no better. In the autumn an attempt was made to find a different common basis for the opposition to Hitler. On 10th October 1937 the leaders of the Legitimists organised a rally at K6rmend, in West Hungary. Count Sigray presided. The leaders of all the chief bourgeois Opposition parties attended, and both Eckhardt, whose conversion caused enormous surprise, since he owed everything to Horthy and had been most intimately connected with the leading ‘‘Free Electoral” circles, and Rassay came out openly in favour of Legitimism.

Eckhardt said that he had spoken with the Archduke Otto and had satisfied himself of his merits, and declared in the name of his party that a Habsburg restoration was necessary. Rassay concurred, slightly less explicitly. The Christian Party was already, to general knowledge, in large majority Legitimist. The Social Democrats could hardly participate openly in the rally, but at a meeting of theirs a week later their leader, Peyer, made an unmistakable reference to it when he said that “‘if the Socialists were confronted with the

choice between dictatorship and constitutional freedom, we should unhesitatingly choose the latter, whatever the name which the form of Government guaranteeing it might bear.”’ The meeting could not be, and was not meant to be, an open announce-

ment of an intention to bring about a speedy restoration. Everyone recognised this to be impossible, and no one objected when Daranyi said, a little 1 Rumour, of course, had it that von Mackensen’s recall, too, had been connected with the “conspiracy,” but in fact he had only left Budapest to take up a higher post as Secretary of State.

184 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH later, that the question was not “‘actuel.”’ It was essentialiy an anti-Nazi demonstration, which was imposing enough, not the less so because the messages sent to it included one from the Regent’s brother. It had its significance in facilitating later co-operation between the various fractions of anti-Nazi opinion. But it also helped to seal the tacit alliance between the Right Radicals and Hitler. The Communists were at this time still in the throes of their intestine battle with their own ‘‘sectarians’’ and were in any case now under orders to abstain from illegal activity; but their influence was suspected (and in the case of some, although not all, of the persons concerned, with some Justification), when the Village Explorers, in March 1937, constituted themselves into a socalled ‘‘March Front’! and published a programme which contained many radical demands, especially on the land question. This was too much for the authorities, who dissolved the Front, instituted proceedings against some of the Village Explorers, and also carried through a general witch-hunt against Communists. It does not appear that in most cases much harm was done,* for of the Village Explorers only one, Imre Kovacs, served a sentence of three months for his book A Néma Forradalom.* The proceedings against all the rest were suspended and ultimately cancelled. Some persons received sentences for Communist activities, but the leaders escaped. Most of the crypto-Communists were now in the Social Democrat Party, but some, according to M. Sulyok, were ordered by Moscow to join the Arrow Cross movement and ‘‘take over the direction of it.’

On the other wing of the political line, the restoration of peace between the Government and the Right wing of the Government Party had for the time reduced the active opposition of the Right to the groups collectively known as the Arrow Cross. The feature of the period in this field was the sudden emergence into an extraordinary and unanticipated prominence of a single figure: that of Ferencz Szalasi. In 1935 Szalasi had been a lonely John the Baptist in Hungarian politics, the self-appointed leader of a tiny party, less than 500 strong, advocating an unpopular cause. By the spring of 1937 all Hungary was humming with his name, the fame whereof had penetrated into distant foreign lands. Frustrated revolutionaries were looking to him as their brightest hope; the authorities watching him as their most formidable danger. The Germans, going over the form-records of the various Right Radical groups, were noting his name as that on which they should place their next bet. Jews were coming secretly to him with proposals to finance his movement in return for the status of “‘honorary Aryan’’ for themselves. Mysterious British agents were seeking him out. How to account for the meteoric rise of this man? Of this man, who had no money of his own and refused to accept the help of moneyed backers; 1 The name was chosen to recall March 1848, when a group of young radicals had been prominent in formulating the famous demands afterwards embodied in the ‘“‘April Laws,’’ the charter of Hungary’s then liberties. * Darvas gives a gruesome picture of the persecutions, but Kovacs (who was imprisoned,

whereas Darvas was not) writes that in general, up to 1944, while emissaries from Moscow suffered, “writers, journalists, artists and trade union officials who were known to be Communists were left unmolested” (op. cit., p. 72). 3 The dumb revolution. 4 This was in 1940.

* Sulyok, Op. cit., p. 194. M. Sulyok adds particulars, the accuracy of which, however,

Arrow Cross writers contest,

HALF LEFT WHEEL 185 who was neither a good speaker nor a good organiser; whose ideas no one understood completely, and the few who understood some part of them disliked them; who refused any compromise and neglected the most elementary principles of political and worldly sagacity? Partly, no doubt, the very nebulosity of his ideas and his words, their mystic, misty, rainbow character, attracted a fair number of people tired to death of practical materialism which never seemed to bring any practical results and, above all, entirely disillusioned as to the sincerity of any of the existing political parties! His patent sincerity, his purity of soul, the unpretentiousness of his daily life, his unmistakable sympathy for his suffering fellow-men, gathered round him even in those early days a small band of very devoted and fanatical followers. But these would not have made a political force of him. Szalasi was led to fame, and in due course to power and thence to the gallows, by his enemies, partly through a complete misunderstanding

of his own intentions and partly, there can be little doubt, by a deliberate attempt to victimise him which had immediate results very different from those intended by its authors. We have mentioned Lajos Keresztes-Fischer’s request to Szalasi to report on the situation when Gémbés died. As we have seen, the Regent was most

likely only seeking information, and in any case did not adopt Szalasi’s imposing proposals, but he kept the screed and a few weeks later took it out of his desk and showed it to Daranyi, asking him ‘‘whether he thought there

was anything in it.” Daranyi advised the Regent urgently that he must discuss any such plans with his Minister President, and Horthy seems to have acquiesced docilely enough. He told Daranyi that the memorandum was Lajos Keresztes-Fischer’s work, but the civilian Ministers soon found out its true authorship® and began to regard Szalasi with the utmost fear and

suspicion. It was, of course, the Regent and not Szdlasi who was the real danger. Few of the civilian Ministers were ever quite confident that Horthy was not flirting with ideas of a dictatorship, and they feared that Horthy had selected Szalasi as his collaborator and agent. To this impression, entirely mistaken as it was, Szalasi himself contributed to the full at the New Year by flooding Budapest with leaflets bearing the phrases (all taken from the

famous memorandum): :

Our aim is to take over the power. With the nation for the nation!

Endurance: Szalasi!

Then came the mysterious “‘plot’? of March 1937. Whatever was behind this, one thing seems certain: Szalasi had nothing whatever to do withit. He

was not a member of the great EKSz, to which all the more orthodox Right Radicals belonged. He had never had any connection with Marton; he despised Mecsér as a traitor; he had never even met von Mackensen. In fact, his name was not even mentioned when the “‘revelations”’ first began. But the Left was not satisfied with the retirement of Ferenczy and a dozen officers of the Army or the police. It cried aloud for further victims. The regime decided to kill two birds with one stone. About the end of March the foreign journalists and the Czech wireless began putting out a story (it is 1 I once asked five Arrow Cross men, separately, what led them to Szalasi. All their answers contained the phrase: “I saw that none of the other politicians in Hungary were sincere.”’ 2 According to Szalasi, Daranyi was told by Homan.

186 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH hard not to regard this as having been deliberately spoon-fed to them) that the leaders of the projected putsch had been Szalasi and “‘his three General friends,’ Ratz, Ruszkay and Lajos Keresztes-Fischer.1 Szalasi himself helped by publishing, in April, a periodical entitled “the New Hungarian Worker,”

which contained articles some of which were of an extremely radical

character, while one of them described his ‘““movement”’ as a “‘militant”’ one.

“We expect nothing and ask nothing of the present regime,” it declared. “Brothers,” were not even to think of entering Parliament so long as the existing regime was in being.

On 13th April Eckhardt, in Parliament, brought this literature to the attention of the authorities. On the 15th Szalasi was arrested by the police, and sentenced on the 23rd to three months’ imprisonment and three years’ loss of civil rights for ‘agitation against the political and social order and against religious toleration,” a sentence based exclusively on his newspaper articles and leaflets, with no suggestion of complicity in the putsch. But when he was released a few days later, pending appeal—a usual enough

happening in Hungarian Courts—rumour suggested that “powerful influences” had secured him this favour.” He was reported to have 10,000 armed followers. The police themselves claimed to possess reliable information on this point and to know that he had 50,000 adherents. His few days of imprisonment helped him immensely. One of his own followers speaks of a wave of ‘‘mass hysteria’’ which swept Budapest—as indeed it did, thanks largely to the extremely unwise and veritably hysterical attitude of the Liberal and Jewish Press. Seldom indeed has a man been more generously assisted by his enemies.®

On his release, Szalasi, accompanied by Csia, visited Germany. Their purpose was to study German revolutionary technique, and they appear to have met no one of importance, but they were now credited with possessing the favour of the Germans also. The Party of National Will, meanwhile, had been dissolved, and its funds (amounting to 422 peng6 in all) confiscated, but it carried on “‘illegally’’ under the name of the ““‘Hungarist Movement.” Challenged by the police as to the relationship between “‘Movement”’ and ‘Party,’ Szalasi explained blandly that the one was the soul, the other the body. The movement could not be dissolved, for it had no organisation to dissolve, and no membership. By ingenious exploitation of this fiction he was, in fact, able to keep his followers together and to add greatly to their numbers. Very many people were able, even without leaving some existing

party, to regard themselves as belonging to, or sympathising with, the movement.

Success breeds success. In the summer of 1937 Laszld Endre—a most sinister figure, whom we shall meet againt—who was the leader of one of the 1 It is fairly clear that Keresztes-Fischer owed this distinction to the contact which he had had with Szalasi in the previous October. He was reported by the foreign Press to be ‘‘a close friend

of Szalasi’s,” but according to Szalasi himself in his Diary, Keresztes-Fischer broke off all connection with him after the Czech wireless had begun to couple their names.

C A I" ch Daranyi had arranged this, “in order not to make a martyr of Szalasi.’”’ (Baross to * Nevertheless, in a by-election held in the summer the Arrow Cross candidate polled only 164 votes out of 5,261 cast.

* Endre is, unfortunately, important enough to deserve a footnote. He came of a wealthy family, his father being a landowner in Pest County; his mother was a Swabian from Temesvar. After serving with some distinction in the First World War, he entered the local administration, where he rose rapidly; partly owing to the diligence with which he collected useful contacts—he was a member of every possible ‘‘patriotic’? society and managed also to gain the favour of

HALF LEFT WHEEL 187 rival parties (the Race-protecting Socialist Party), abandoned that position for the administrative post of Alispan of Pest County. His followers fused with Balogh’s National Socialists and the joint party then came to an agreement with Szalasi. The parties were to amalgamate under a joint Committee and the firm reopen under a new name, carrying with it the goodwill of all participants. Endre’s group turned over their premises, the famous Andrassy

ut 60, for the joint headquarters. When the news of this arrangement became known, seven more splinter groups, mostly insignificant but including the leaderless survivors of Bészérményi’s Scythe Cross, a group led by Count

Palffy-Daun, and the Irredentist Camp, adhered to it, the only important group continuing to stand aside being those of Festetics (with such adherents

as had remained loyal to him after Balogh’s seccession) and Palffy, with

Mesko’s one-man show and a party of the same dimensions recently constituted by Rajniss (who had deserted the ‘“‘Reform Generation’’) under

the name of the “‘National Front,” this being rather Right Radical of the Government type than Arrow Cross. All of these, except Mesk6, combined on 10th October into the “United Hungarian National Socialist Movement.”’ The fusion of the remainder was duly proclaimed on 24th October at a mass meeting in the Vigado. The new name was the Hungarian National Socialist

Party. The Executive Committee consisted of Szalasi, Balogh and Count Lajos Széchényi.

It also contained another figure who was soon destined to acquire a sinister prominence: a certain Laszlé Baky. Baky had been an officer of gendarmerie, in which rough milieu this man who was afterwards to have on his conscience the blood of more individuals than any other Hungarian except his partner in guilt, Endre, seems to have been popular: like Gé6ring, he possessed a certain bluff and jovial manner which earned him the affection of some types of men. He was also a man of considerable talent, with a quite fabulous memory for faces, names and records.

In the gendarmerie Baky had risen to the rank of Major, and had been put in charge of the organisation’s Special Branch in the Ministry of the Interior, where he began to accumulate the vast card-index, written and unwritten, on the utilisation of which he based his subsequent career. In 1937 he struck up a friendship with Szalasi, who suggested that he should join the Arrow Cross. Baky accepted the offer, but at the same time arranged with the authorities to use his position to spy on the Arrow Cross. He thus made his transfer with official, although secret, benediction, retaining the confidence of his successor in the Ministry, Colonel Kudar, and the use of the latter’s facilities, including the listening-in service on the telephone. He supplied the Arrow Cross with official information, and the Ministry with information about the Arrow Cross; later it was discovered that he kept a third iron in Horthy, with whom he had to do in connection with the affairs of the G6d6ll6 estate—but partly also by merit, for he was an efficient administrator. But he was a syphilitic, and in time developed a degree of insanity the symptoms of which were, on the one hand, fantastic personal and political eccentricities (he devised a special uniform for himself, kept a bodyguard, etc.) and on the other

a sadistic cruelty. This found expression in an extreme racialism which took the form not of trying to raise the standards of Magyars but of an indescribably cold-blooded persecution of Jews (also of gypsies). The worst testimony which history could offer on the Hungarian “system” is that this man, whose vices and madness were well known, could, by merely expressing the wish, get himself elected to the enormously important administrative post of Alispan of Pest County; and I know of no blacker testimony against Daranyi than that furnished me by his friend and admirer, Baross, who writes that Daranyi said to him: “I could have stopped Endre from being elected, but I wanted to see how he would do as Alispan.”

188 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the fire, and was supplying Himmler’s agents in Hungary with information on Hungarian anti-Nazis, this presumably consisting of the combined records of his two Hungarian employers. Now there followed another extraordinary series of events. A few days after the Vigadé meeting, Balogh and a youthful colleague of his* held a local Arrow Cross rally at Debrecen and there, without having asked leave of anyone, countered the Kérmend rally by proclaiming a National Kingdom with Horthy as King. Szdlasi, who seems honestly to have known nothing of the project, promptly disavowed it and expelled its authors from his party,

enterprises.” .

but the damage was done. ‘“‘From that moment,” writes Szalasi, “‘the Regent regarded with antipathy the person of Szalasi and all his political The Regent was indeed furious. His just wrath was directed against the abuse of his name, the suggestion that he was attempting to turn himself from Regent into King. He repudiated this a few days later in a strong and dignified speech in which he declared that he would not allow his name to be

mentioned in connection with the throne. But Szalasi’s enemies contrived to turn even his expulsion of the authors of the gaffe to his further disadvantage. They persuaded Horthy that Szalasi had done this because he wished to depose the Regent and assassinate his son. From this moment dates the extraordinary and insuperable misunderstanding between the two men. Szalasi—a man singularly tenacious of an idea once conceived—never departed from the conclusion which he had reached when he drew up his

memorandum for Keresztes-Fischer: to wit, that the final responsibility rested on the Regent, on whom the duty thus devolved of calling Szalasi to

power. His unvarying formula, to the last, was that “the assumption of power must take place by the common will of the nation and the Head of the State.”? As we shall see later, he made fantastic sacrifices 1n the interest of this formula, regarding himself as unable to take the decisive step before he had secured the Regent’s consent, and thus allowing himself to be held up

month after month by his opponents’ simple expedient of preventing the Regent from granting him an audience. The Regent, on the other hand, to the end of his career regarded Szalasi as a subversive man and his principal personal opponent. Consequent on Balogh’s and Kémeri’s little extra-tour, Szalasi was again

arrested. The proceedings as reported® read absurdly enough, for it was admitted that the Party had only “‘about a thousand registered members’’ (and that, in reality, was an exaggeration); and that its funds, when confiscated, had amounted to 422 pengé, or about fourteen pounds. Nevertheless, it was stated that the object of the Party was “‘to remove by force the Legislature and Parliament,” and that “‘the activities of the Party constituted a permanent danger for the order of the Government. It awaited only a sign

from the Party leader to resort to open force. Were the seizing of the opportunity permitted, civil war would replace law, justice and spiritual forces as a means of carrying social conviction.” On 30th November Szalasi was condemned to ten months’ imprisonment,

for “seditious conspiracy,’ but in accordance with a common Central 1 This was a certain Kémeri-Nagy, a young Right-wing enthusiast who had served a sentence of imprisonment for entering the offices of the Esti Kurir and assaulting a Jewish journalist of the name of P. Ignotus. 2 See the report in Pester Lloyd, 30th November 1937,

HALF LEFT WHEEL 189 European practice, the sentence was “‘suspended,” i.e. he was not required to serve it immediately and might, if no further trouble occurred, never have to serve it at all. Meanwhile, Szalasi was now possessed of a headquarters and fortified by the presence behind him of a considerable band of followers. These were

nothing like so numerous as the authorities believed, but they were enthusiastic, and their spirits and Szalasi’s were raised, and his mystique in the country enhanced, by another extraordinary circumstance. There was in Budapest at the time a gentleman named Henrik Pechy, who dabbled in astrology and other occult sciences, and was in the habit of issuing prophecies. Some of these had come true? and the prophet had, in consequence, acquired

a considerable reputation. He told Szalasi that there would be a revolution in 1938 “‘and if you organise it, you can be the leader of Hungary.” This , prophecy, in which Szalasi believed devoutly, encouraged him to repeat at the New Year the tactics which had served him so well a year previously, and he sprinkled Budapest with a new set of leaflets bearing the inscription: ‘‘1938— Szalasi’”’ and “1938—ours. Szalasi, Széchényi.’’ Once again he had a roaring success. The Party leaders themselves knew that they had few loyal adherents

although plenty of potential time-servers, and hardly any money. Nevertheless, Budapest again quaked with panic rumours of a putsch, which it connected with the approaching signs of a German absorption of Austria. The putsch never came. But Szalasi did have a hand in a new development which profoundly affected the course of Hungarian politics. This, however, was closely bound up with the foreign political situation and description of it must be left to a later stage.

In the meantime, the Government had proceeded with its agreed legislative programme, and had duly enacted, without too much difficulty, the first two of the three great constitutional Bills of which so much talk had gone on for so many years. The Bill extending the powers of the Regent, which was taken first,” made changes which were more important in theory than in

practice, since he never used most of them. His “legal responsibility’ to Parliament, however, was now abolished, that is, Parliament could not 1mpeach him: he received the right of “‘preliminary sanction,’’* and was now given the power of sending back to Parliament twice, for reconsideration, legislation of which he disapproved, although, if Parliament stood firm both times, he had either to defer or to take the extreme step of dissolving Parliament, after which he was bound to promulgate the law only if the new House sent it up to him again in unchanged form.

More important were the provisions dealing with the future of the Regency, which had to find an answer to a question that had not been at all anticipated when the Regent was originally elected in 1920. It was then supposed that the institution of a Regency would only be a stop-gap, to be replaced very shortly by a permanent settlement, presumably the restoration of the Monarchy. If Horthy himself did not give way in his lifetime to a king, a king would in any case be crowned after his death. The only question 1 Alas, not all. I possess a prophecy by this gentleman covering the years 1945-50 and can only say I wish it had been so. 2 It was brought forward in April 1937 and passed on Ist July of that year as Law XXX of 1937, having been adopted unanimously by both Houses after the Government had accepted various amendments, almost all relative to the succession question. 3 See above, p. 49.

190 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH was whether, as the Legitimists claimed, the crowned King, Charles of Habsburg, or, after his death, his eldest son Otto was automatically entitled to the succession, in virtue of the Hungarian Law of Succession of 1723, the counterpart of the Pragmatic Sanction; or whether, as the “‘Free Electors”

claimed, the right of electing their monarch had now reverted to the Hungarian nation. Thus no term had been set to Horthy’s office, nor any provision made for electing a successor to him in the Regency.

Since 1920, however, the position had been altered by the implacable opposition of the Little Entente to a Habsburg restoration and by the death of the King. Horthy’s own position had grown completely secure, and when the Bill now formally made him Regent for life, it simply gave legal sanction to a situation which no one had questioned. But the problem of what would happen when he died was more difficult. A suggestion launched by Eckhardt in the New Year’s article already mentioned,! at a time when it was feared that Gomb6s coveted the Regency for himself, that a Deputy Regent should be appointed, was not now taken up, GdmbGs being safely dead, although, as we shall see, it was revived in 1941. Provision was, however, made for a Council of Regency, consisting of the Presidents of the two Houses, the Cardinal Primate, the President of the Supreme Court and the Commanderin-Chief of the Army, to act during the period when the Regency was vacant, and arrangements were made to regulate the succession. On this question, which was the real point at issue, particularly since the Regent had been seriously ill a short time before, various debates took place, the Legitimists urging that the Regent must be prevented from “founding a dynasty,” while

other elements in the House were concerned to avert the danger that a demagogic majority in Parliament might elect an unsuitable candidate. Finally, a compromise was reached: the Regent might leave the whole question untouched, or he might (as he did in the event) nominate three candidates—neither more nor less—whose names were then kept in sealed envelopes until after his death, when they would be read out to Parliament, which, if it wished, might also put forward three candidates, the votes of one-quarter of both Houses, meeting in joint session, being required for nomination. The election then proceeded by a complicated procedure which need not be described here. The Law on the powers of the Upper House? placed that body, practically speaking, on an equality with the Lower House, except in the case of measures

affecting the public purse. These the Lower House could submit to the Regent even if the Upper House refused to consent; but on all other Bills, if the two Houses disagreed, and if a prescribed conciliation procedure failed, the two Houses were to meet in joint session and to vote without debate which of their respective drafts should go forward to the Regent. Agreement was reached also on the Electoral Bill, and although that measure was not enacted until 1938,° this is a convenient place to summarise its complicated provisions. The number of Deputies was to be 260, of whom 135 were to be elected by straight contests and 125 on the list system. The franchises for the two kinds of contest were not quite the same. For the straight contest, the lower

age-limit was 26 for males or 30 for females; the voter must also have possessed Hungarian citizenship for ten years, have resided or possessed

*5 ItSee above, p. 33. > Adopted as Law XXVII of 1937. then became Law XIX of 1938.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 19] domicile in the same commune for six years, and fulfil one or more of a variety of other qualifications. There was no lower age limit for persons who

had passed through High Schools. For the list contests, the qualifications were slightly more rigid. In nearly all the country the individual constituencies were duplicated by list constituencies, and a voter qualified under both schedules voted both for the individual candidate and for the list. In Budapest and district the voting was by list only, but both franchises operated.

In the other seven largest towns of Hungary there were only lists, and only

the list franchise operated. Voting was secret and compulsory. For the passive franchise the lower age-limit was 30, and certain other qualifications were required. The system of recommendations was kept; for a “‘national party” (defined as a party which at the last elections had returned four members to Parliament, or had polled 20,000 votes in all), 150 signatures were required in a straight constituency and 750 in a list constituency; for other parties, 500 and 1,500 respectively. Deposits (of 2,000 or of 3,000-5,000 pengd) were required and were forfeited if the candidates failed to poll one-quarter of the votes polled in the constituency, or if no candidate of the party got in on the list. This law, as will be seen, removed from Hungary the reproach of the open vote. On the other hand, its provisions were very unfavourable to persons who had not been for a considerable period in regular employment in the

same locality; and thus, in particular, to casual labour, agrarian and industrial. It also bore very heavily on independent candidates and splinter parties, the latter effects being, however, largely nullified by the freedom which Deputies allowed themselves to change parties after election. Its text betrayed the great care with which almost all the parties sought to avoid a

“leap in the dark’ (only the Liberals and the Social Democrats, it was reported, had favoured a wide suffrage; the Smallholders were among its stoutest opponents) and left the country with what seemed at the time satisfactory guarantees of true stability. The remaining legislation of the period was all relatively non-contentious, a Bill instituting closer control over the Press and another giving the police

further emergency powers providing what would, in other times, have constituted a marked exception; but under the existing conditions they were accepted even by the Social Democrats and the Liberals with only modified

protests, in the expectation that they would be used in the first instance against the Right Radicals. Industrial Labour received real benefits under a blanket law which authorised the introduction of the 48-hour week, Sunday rest, holidays with pay, and minimum wages. Contributory old age, widows’ and orphans’ insurance was extended to agricultural workers. Of the minor laws passed and of the Orders in Council enacted under powers previously possessed by the Government, a proportion which was at least considerably higher than had been usual in Hungary was devoted to improving the position of the poorer classes, industrial and agricultural.

This relatively progressive Governmental policy was facilitated by the fact that 1937 was, economically and financially, the best year which Hungary

had known since 1929. The world slump had passed away, and Hungary enjoyed the benefit of the improved conditions all around her. Of special benefit to her was the fact that world wheat prices had again risen substan-

192 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH tially, practically reattaining the 1929 level in most important buying centres.

As Hungary had had another very good wheat harvest in 1936, she reaped the full benefit of this; the Exchequer and the country at large even more than the farmers, who had been guaranteed minimum prices and, in fact, subsidised since the slump began. They now achieved their price without State aid. Hungary exported, in 1936, 5-7 million quintals of wheat to a value of 80 million pengé, which helped her exports to reach a total of 504.4 m.p. for the year, while in 1937 the figure was 588-6 m.p. Imports were 436-5 and 475-5 m.p. respectively.

The speech with which Fabinyi introduced the 1937-8 Budget on 2nd

April was extraordinarily optimistic. The prices of land had gone up; stocks of animals were larger. Industrial production was 10 per cent. above the figure of the previous year and 65 per cent. above the lowest point reached during the crisis. The number of industrial workers employed was 170,000

more than the minimum. Employment was better and wages rising. The larger yields from indirect taxation and from the State railways showed an increase of general prosperity. The total Budget, including the balance-sheet of the State enterprises, showed a favourable balance for the first time in

, eight years.

We shall not attempt to go here into details on this subject, but two points

need to be noted. One was that this relative, and relatively widespread, prosperity increased the popularity of the Government and helped to consolidate its position. The other is a technical point. Ever since 1930 Hungary had laboriously preserved a favourable balance of trade.1 Although

she had not been able to keep up the full service of the debts so happily contracted during the Roaring Twenties, nor to pay off the capital sums by the direct method, her commercial creditors had contrived to recoup themselves very largely by the device of buying—with or without the consent of the Hungarian National Bank—Hungarian goods with the peng6 obtained from their debtors, exporting those goods and selling them outside for

. convertible currency. Hungarian firms had also exported goods, sold them abroad, and kept the proceeds outside the country.

A position had thus been reached in which Hungary’s commercial creditors had been largely satisfied, while Hungary’s favourable trade balance on paper had only benefited her very partially. In June Fabinyi, as Minister of Finance, and Imrédy, as Governor of the National Bank, concluded the so-called ““London Agreements” with Hungary’s non-commercial creditors” whereby the latter accepted a composition which Hungary agreed to meet. Following this, M. Royall Tyler, the League’s Financial Adviser in Hungary, felt that his mission was ended, and informed the Hungarian Government that he was going to ask that his functions should be terminated.

This would mean much greater freedom of action for that party in Hungary which described itself as favouring an “‘advanced policy” (i.e. one of rearmament), for although Mr. Tyler had, technically, no power to withhold funds or to dictate to Hungary on her Budget, he reported regularly to the League on her finances, and the conservatives could often protect them-

selves against the demands of the “advanced” party by alleging that the For these questions see The League of Nations Reconstruction Scheme in the Inter-War period, written by Mr. Tyler and published by the L. of N., Geneva, 1945, No. C59, M59, 1945, IIA (F.1606 (1)), especially pp. 62-74. 2 The Agreements did not apply to the Caisse Commune.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 193 Adviser had “forbidden” or had “threatened to report” some item of expenditure. At least when Daranyi first took office, Germany’s role in the wider international field—in which she was now easily the most important factor—was no more agreeable to Hungary than her role in the sphere of internal politics. Germany was already on terms of demonstrative friendship with the Yugoslav Government and was also coupling her public encouragement of Roumania

with secret assurances of goodwill and offers to guarantee Roumania’s integrity, including her frontier against Hungary, in return for a simple assurance that she would not “‘play with the U.S.S.R.”! Hitler was even making similar proposals to Czechoslovakia, offering her a Non-Aggression | Pact if she would allow her Treaties with France and the U.S.S.R. to become “Inoperative in practice.’’® Itis true that he seems to have promised Hungary

not to conclude such a Pact without simultaneously concluding a Pact of Friendship with Hungary,* but there is no indication that Hungary would have got anything out of such a Pact. In any case, there was for a time a very real possibility that Hungary would find Germany installed as friend and patron of all three States of the Little Entente. Mussolini had, indeed, announced the forging of the Axis—ironically enough, three weeks after Gémbds, proleptic godfather of that instrument, had closed his eyes.*— But how different was the Axis of reality from that of

his vision! What would it profit Hungary that Germany and Italy joined hands to overthrow the status quo of Versailles if they buttressed the status quo of Trianon? What Hungary wanted of Italy now was support against Germany, and against Germany’s new friends; and in so far as Mussolini

seemed willing to work against Germany at all, it was in every case at Hungary’s expense. It was true that he had accompanied his announcement of the formation of the Axis by another rousing declaration of sympathy for Hungary’s revisionist ambitions.® This was very welcome, the more so as it

was a completely unsolicited gift.° But did it mean anything at all? The words in favour of Hungary were accompanied by friendly allusions to Yugoslavia which clearly exempted her from the scope of the rest of the speech. Italy had never supported Hungary actively against Roumania, and just at that moment both Italy and Austria, like Germany, were trying hard 1 For these important negotiations, see Comneéne, op. cit., pp. 247 ff. They appear to have been opened on 13th November; the offer of a guarantee was made by Goring on 4th December. 2 This story, to which many shorter allusions have previously appeared, is told at length by BeneS in his Memoirs, pp. 14 ff. 3 In March 1938 Sztdjay, in conversation with Ribbentrop, invoked a promise to this effect

made to him by von Neurath, but without mentioning the occasion. I have found no other

reference to it.

4 Gombé6s had died on 6th October 1936; Mussolini announced the formation of the “‘Axis,”’

using the word, on lst November.

5 The most striking passage in the speech was the following: ‘Until justice is done to Hungary, there can be no final co-ordination of interests in the Danubian basin. Hungary is truly the great mutilated nation. Four million Hungarians live outside the present frontiers. In trying to follow the dictates of a justice that was too abstract, another injustice, perhaps greater, was committed. The sentiments of the Italian people towards the Hungarian people are stamped with the clear recognition—which, for that matter, is reciprocated—of its military qualities, its courage and its spirit of sacrifice. There will perhaps come very soon a solemn

occasion on which the sentiments of the Italian people will find public recognition.”’

6 Apor to C. A. M. The Hungarians never knew why Mussolini had made this particular speech, which, indeed, puzzled many people; the Polish Minister in Vienna suggested that the purpose was to get Hungary to agree to the negotiations with Czechoslovakia, described below, without raising the revision question (Schmidt Trial, p. 412). This is too subtle for me. O

194 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH to strengthen their links with Czechoslovakia. Some of the Austrians, it appears, were actually hoping for a military alliance,’ and if the Italians did not go so far as this, they definitely wanted a close rapprochement.? It is true that at least one of Italy’s purposes in all this was to build up a bloc under her own leadership, as a counterweight to German pressure, and in particular to make Austria better able to resist German pressure: the object of the proposed rapprochement with Czechoslovakia was almost certainly to get that country to supply Austria with those arms which Italy, owing to her commitments in Spain and Ethiopia, could no longer provide.* It was

support against Germany that the Austrians, too, wanted from Czechoslovakia. Hungary heartily shared the wish to preserve Austria’s independence, and, in general, to see a check put on Germany’s excessive preponderance; but not precisely by drawing Czechoslovakia into the Rome Triangle. Nor did she want to see Italy achieve her Danubian bloc by the

all too simple process of taking over Roumania and Yugoslavia as her clients and, to please them, sacrificing Hungary. It is certainly true that in these first, most dangerous weeks Kanya did his best to thwart Italy’s rapprochement with Czechoslovakia, extracting something like a recantation from Ciano when the two men met in Budapest in mid-November, and hinting to him very plainly how unpopular his policy would be in Germany.*

The worst of the immediate dangers passed over in a few weeks. It is possible that Hitler never meant his overtures to Czechoslovakia seriously’;

at any rate, he did not renew them after mid-January. Soon after this, Mussolini came round to a policy of hostility to Czechoslovakia which he never afterwards abandoned.® The Austrians had already been called to order, not only by Hungary but also by the Germans, who forced Schmidt to sign a secret Protocol which, while acknowledging Austria’s right to act in

accordance with the Rome Protocols, bound her to “preventive AustroGerman consultation’’ when she wished to act outside their scope.’ In point of fact, both the Austrians and the Czechs made several attempts, even after this, to renew the forbidden contacts. One Austrian idea, broached in the summer, was for an actual “‘defensive front against Germany, to be formed by Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, perhaps with the participation of Poland and Yugoslavia.’’® The witness describing all this said that

some Hungarians, including General Roder, favoured the idea, and that, although Kanya did not like it, he went so far as to name his price in the 1 Schmidt’s evidence, Schmidt Trial, p. 323. 2 Von Papen’s reports from Vienna dated 2nd and 4th:-November 1936 (Ibid., pp. 411, 413); cf. also Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 206, and Ciano Papers, pp. 63 ff.

3 The importance of this factor emerges clearly from the Ciano Papers, loc. cit., and from numerous references in the Schmidt Trial. The Austrians admitted at the meeting of the Rome Triangle States that the slow progress of their rearmament was causing them concern. They seem, however, to have concealed from their partners how much they were buying from Germany. The Austrians were playing quite as disingenuous a game as everyone else. 4 Ciano Papers, pp. 66-7.

5 All the time that the negotiations were in progress, the Germans were still advising the

Hungarians to “concentrate their revisionist aims on Czechoslovakia’; and a passage in Abshagen’s Canaris (p. 160) suggests that the whole thing may have been a deliberate provocation

in order to foster Stalin’s mistrust of his Generals. BeneS admits that he passed on information which led directly to the great purges in Russia. But there is certain evidence on the other side suggesting that Hitler was sincere (see Doc. G.F.P., D. I, 181, 188). 6 Schmidt Trial, p. 44, and corrigenda p. 2. 7 Id., p. 34. Schmidt said at his trial that this Protocol was never invoked, and on his own evidence, he thereafter disregarded it consistently; but it cannot be ignored. § Id., pp. 318 ff. (Baar-Baerenfels’ evidence).

HALF LEFT WHEEL 195 shape of territorial concessions (the Csall6k6z and ‘“‘some frontier villages’’), to which Hodza might have consented but BeneS refused. Considering the repeated assurances given by KAnya in connection with other negotiations that he would in no case conclude a pact with Czechoslovakia, one may well believe that he made this demand only for form’s sake (and one may also doubt whether the Austrians were not over-optimistic in supposing that any Czech would ever have consented to the sacrifice)”; for Kanya must have known very well that if the agreement had ever come about, Germany would at once have taken it for what it was, a gross violation of

Austria’s undertaking under the July Agreement, and would herself immediately have denounced the Agreement. In general, the Hungarians felt that the only hope of prolonging Austria’s life lay in strict observance by her of her part of the Agreement; and it is not surprising that when Schuschnigg brought the matter up again in the autumn, with the alternative suggestion of military co-operation between Austria and Hungary alone, the Hungarians refused, “their every second word being that it must not be capable of interpretation as being directed against Germany.’’® The Italians were now taking the same line, at least as strongly.* On the other hand, so long as Austria did keep to her part of the bargain,

she had no cause to complain of the Hungarians’ conduct. Schuschnigg himself admitted afterwards® that the Hungarians were always ready to cooperate within the limits of the Agreement, “‘for economic negotiations and

corresponding efforts.’’ Except for one indiscretion by the Regent,® the writer has failed to trace any instance where a Hungarian statesman admitted to the Germans, officially or unofficially, directly or indirectly, that Hungary

attached less importance than before to the maintenance of Austria’s independence; on the contrary, both Kanya and Dardanyi tried to intervene with Germany. It need hardly be said that no Hungarian was ever guilty of such studied rudeness to his country’s partner as was perpetrated in April 1937 by the cads Mussolini, Ciano and Gayda. But it was, of course, a discouraging, uphill struggle. Not only had the Hungarians to watch Italy weakening month by month in her support of Austrian independence; they had to see her steadily playing down the Rome Triangle as such, and even her bilateral friendship with Hungary herself. A State visit by Horthy to Italy, which had been previously arranged, duly took place in November 1936’ and was returned by the King and Queen of Italy in the following May. But Mussolini cancelled visits which he had thought of making to Vienna and Budapest, and after November 1936 no further 1 See below, p. 200. ® About this time BeneS told a Hungarian, M. P. Auer, that he could no longer consider the concessions which he had allegedly been ready to make in 1920. M. HodZa also told Auer that the territorial question might be considered “‘after the two countries had lived together in peace and harmony for some years.’’ To the objection that ‘“‘some years’’ might not be available, Hodza replied that “he was not afraid of Germany.”’ See ‘“‘Mitteleuropa,’’ by P. Auer, New Commonwealth Quarterly, December 1938, p. 168.

3 Schuschnigg, Schmidt Trial, p. 440. Baron Apor told C. A. M. that Hungary’s “chief preoccupation during 1937” was, in fact, to keep Austria on the required line. 4 See, inter alia, Ciano Diary, 16th and 25th November. § Schmidt Trial, loc. cit. 6 On Ist December 1937 Horthy told Erdmannsdorff that “it was plain to him that Austria had to become German in the end, which would only please him’”’ (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 152). But even he advised Germany to wait.

7 For a full description of this, see Horthy, op. cit., pp. 181 ff. Horthy writes that no ‘“‘negotiations about alliances’” were conducted; he only discussed deliveries by Italy of some aircraft and arms.

196 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH official meeting of the Rome Protocol States took place for over a year, when they met again, at Kanya’s request. The economic importance of the Rome Protocols was in any case rapidly diminishing with the passing of the world crisis and the development of Germany’s new economic policy. The new Italo-Hungarian Commercial Treaty of 19th November 1936 abandoned the Brocchi system of credits introduced in 1932, and Italy did not take up her option on Hungary’s exportable surplus of wheat. Her economic position in Austria was declining pari passu. Thus, even if Hungary had been able to regard Italy’s goodwill as undimmed, she would have had to reckon with a substantial diminution in her power to back her intentions by effective action.

Meanwhile, Roumania had, up to a point, followed the example of Czechoslovakia in rejecting Germany’s more tempestuous advances. In February a Crown Council had drawn up a restatement of Roumania’s foreign political principles, which included the items of fidelity to the

principles of indivisible peace and of the League of Nations, and to Roumania’s traditional allies and friends, and the improvement of relations with the U.S.S.R. Germany had been informed of these principles on 20th March, and had in consequence dropped her intention of inviting Roumania to adhere to the Anti-Comintern Pact “‘as a prelude to a Treaty against the U.S.S.R.’! The communication did not, however, cause Germany to alter her long-term policy towards Roumania, whose friendship she still meant to acquire, and was confident in her ability to do so, at least to the point of making Roumania unwilling to take Czechoslovakia’s side in a GermanCzech conflict, if only Hungary did not complicate matters. The Germans therefore continued to press Hungary to renounce her revisionist aspirations towards both Roumania and Yugoslavia. Italy, for the different reason described above, was giving Hungary the same advice: indeed, once Ciano found Stoyadinovié prepared to listen to his blandishments, he became angrily impatient with the Hungarians for not instantly withdrawing and letting Italy enjoy the embraces of her new love unembarrassed by any memory of her old—let alone any claim for alimony. The pages of his Diary for this period contain many complaints of Kanya’s obstructionism, his ““Ballhausplatz mentality,” etc.2, Now that he no longer wished to use Hungary for a tool, he found her an undisguised nuisance.

The Hungarians were only too anxious to promote the isolation of Czechoslovakia, the achievement of which was now, in their eyes, a desideratum second to none and the object of their own unremitting endeavours;

their constant opposition, described above, to the attempts at an AustroCzech rapprochement had been motivated no less by this desire than by the wish to prevent Austria from throwing away her own independence. But the

complete and permanent renunciation of all her claims against both Roumania and Yugoslavia was a higher price than she was willing to pay even for this good cause. In 1937, even more than in the preceding years, she drew a clear distinction between how she was prepared to act towards the two States respectively. As we have said before, one party in Hungary had always favoured dropping Hungary’s claims against Yugoslavia and seeking her friendship, provided that, on the one hand, the ideal solution of the disintegration of 1 Comneéne, Responsabili, pp. 260-1.

2 See, for example, Diary, 25th March and 24th August 1938.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 197 Yugoslavia seemed unlikely to materialise, and that on the other it seemed reasonable to hope that the renunciation would be rewarded by Yugoslavia’s

detaching herself, in practice, from the Little Entente. The first of these conditions seemed now to have been fulfilled. The consummation of GermanYugoslav friendship had already reduced the prospects of Yugoslavia’s dis-

integration almost to vanishing-point, particularly as Germany was now taking the same line as Belgrade towards Croat separatism, her general policy of supporting a strong Yugoslavia being reinforced, in this respect, by her hostility to the Habsburg monarchist colouring of much of the Croat movement. The Italo-Yugoslav Treaty of Friendship of 25th March 1937 removed the remaining possibility of seeing Yugoslavia disintegrated by a third party; and even within the country the strength of Croat separatism was diminishing with the forced inactivity of the Usta8i after the scandals of 1934,

the decay of the active Legitimist movement after the death of General _ Sarkoti¢ and the growing tendency of the Peasant Party to seek a modus vivendi with Belgrade. If the Croat card had become inoperative, the relatively

small Magyar minority in the Voivodina was not important enough for Hungary to let it stand in the way of a rapprochement with Yugoslavia, provided that the second condition was fulfilled; and the Hungarians were recelving copious reports from many quarters of extremely contemptuous and hostile references by Stoyadinovic to Czechoslovakia. Hungary had therefore now decided to seek Yugoslavia’s friendship in all sincerity. When Italy started the same policy, Kanya, while warning Ciano that Stoyadinovié was a slippery customer who did not like pinning

, himself down to specific undertakings, yet welcomed the move as being in Hungary’s interest also.t. Indeed, on 23rd March 1937—that is, before Ciano’s visit to Belgrade—Kanya had made Stoyadinovic a far-reaching

offer, consisting, according to the latter, of a unilateral Pact of NonAggression, in connection with which Stoyadinovic was, after an interval, to issue a new statute for the Magyar minority in the Voivodina, not formally as

part of the Pact, but really as payment for it.” The Hungarian Consul in Zagreb was instructed that he was not to break off all contact with the Croats,

nor to let them feel that they had been dropped (‘since you can never tell what will happen’), but to be more cautious than ever in dealing with them, to avoid any ostentation, and to do nothing which might offend the Yugoslav Government.®

But the Hungarians were not willing to go anything like so far towards Roumania. Apart from the permanent considerations of the larger size and

importance, in every respect, of Transylvania as compared with the Voivodina, and of the Magyar minority in it, that minority was, just at this moment, suffering under conditions so genuinely oppressive as to cause a real

and widespread resentment in Hungary. On that ground alone, no Hungarian Government could have accepted any permanent settlement with

Roumania which did not provide and guarantee effectively substantial concessions in favour of the minority in Transylvania, including in particu-

lar cessation of the campaign to denationalise the Szekels. Conversely, the strength of public opinion in Roumania would have made any such 1 Ciano Papers, p. 66. 2 Id., p. 101. 3 Personal, Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M. 4 See C. A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors, pp. 315 ff.; Survey of International Affairs for 1937, Vol. 1, pp. 418-31.

198 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH concessions impossible. It could, of course, also be doubted whether any renunciation by Hungary would have persuaded Roumania to give her a free hand towards Czechoslovakia. Thus Kanya, although agreeing on principle with Ciano that a détente with Roumania was desirable, declined to make any move, and the Italians

were forced to comply; Mussolini showing himself, in this respect, unexpectedly honourable. When von Neurath told him in May that he thought that the time had come “to attract Roumania into the political system of the Rome-Berlin Axis,’ Mussolini replied that “he was unwilling to take any action involving the Roumanians if the Hungarians had not first signified their approval.”” The German, who may have been somewhat disillusioned by his experiences of two months earlier, concurred, and the matter was left

at that.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslav position also had reached a standstill. When

the three Little Entente States met in Belgrade on Ist and 2nd April, Stoyadinovic did refuse the French offer, which was communicated through

the Czechs, and this time backed by Great Britain, to extend the Little Entente alliance,” and also the alternative offer of a bilateral alliance with France. But he had a rough passage over these refusals, which had been immediately communicated by the Czechs to the Yugoslav Opposition,? and also over his Pacts with both Italy and Bulgaria. His colleagues perforce

accepted the Italian Treaty, putting on it the best face they could; but extracted from him a binding assurance that he would conduct no further negotiations with Hungary except in conjunction with Roumania and Yugoslavia, the Little Entente acting as a whole.*’ For some months after this the Serb was notably more cautious, even in the larger field, and he told the Hungarians that he could not accept their offer of a Pact. He introduced a few improvements (long overdue, and not very substantial) in the lot of the Magyar minority in the Voivodina, but he did even this only as an act of grace. The larger negotiations had reached a “dead point’? which Kanya was unable to overcome for the rest of the year.° It was when the solidarity of the Little Entente had thus been (to a relative extent) re-established, that M. HodzZa launched his ‘‘Danubian Plan.’? What he hoped to achieve was, as he has explained,® a close co-operation, built on economic (especially agrarian) foundations but rising on to the political level,

between the Danubian countries, which were then to form a defensive although not unfriendly bloc vis-a-vis Germany and the U.S.S.R. Hungary was to be a member of the bloc, and was to be offered a three-fold reward for

participation: economic concessions, advantages for her minorities (M. Hodza was prepared to introduce the appropriate measures in Slovakia, and to mediate with Roumania) and, finally, a settlement to her advantage of the

question of equality of rights in armaments, on which question there had been a complete deadlock since the breakdown of the 1935 negotiations, with

each side simply restating its position periodically. But it was M. Hodza’s * Ciano Papers, p. 116. Even Ciano had had to take up the same line (id., p. 102). * Survey of International Affairs for 1937, Vol. 1, pp. 407-8 (and private). ° Private (a Yugoslav opposition source to C. A. M.). * There are various versions of the wording of this assurance, but all agree in substance. The effect was undoubtedly as stated above. The matter seems to have been arranged when Tatarescu, then the Roumanian Premier, visited Prague in the previous week. > So Kanya told Hitler in November (Doc. Secr., No. 3). * See his own Federation in Central Europe, especially pp. 130 ff. This account (written from memory) is, however, far from clear.

HALF LEFT WHEEL 199 view (which was not entirely justified)! that Hungary had already rearmed on a considerable scale. The Little Entente was to recognise this rearmament, but in return, Hungary was to be asked to conclude a Non-Aggression Pact with the Little Entente as a whole. Although direct contact was not possible at first, bargaining was soon felt to be in the air, and during the spring each side made various speeches, usually

simply restating its own point of view unchanged, but expressing goodwill if that was accepted by the other side. The Hungarian attitude, which was stated in almost identical terms by DarAnyi on 26th January, 12th April and 2th May, and by Kanya on 26th May, was that Hungary’s right to rearm

was absolute, and not to be used as a bargaining counter. If this was recognised, and satisfactory settlements of the minorities questions also achieved, she was ready, as Kanya said, not to go chasing after Danubian Confederations or other far-reaching combinations, but ‘“‘to normalise her relations with her neighbours on the basis of sensible compromises.” On the basis of this, HodzZa talked to his colleagues and got from both King Carol and M. Tatarescu assurances that they were ready to reach a “‘sensible”’ agreement. The Hungarian Minister in Bucharest, L. Bardossy, was then invited

to attend the Little Entente Conference which opened at Sinaia on 30th August as ‘“‘observer.”? This meeting seems to have produced small results, but the conversations were renewed a fortnight later in Geneva, where, however, they came to a dead stop. Kanya was not willing to negotiate with the Little Entente as a whole. He spoke to the representatives of the three States separately, and the furthest that he offered to go was to make a declaration vis-a-vis each of them that the Kellogg Pact, which Hungary had signed, was applicable to their mutual relations, so that her rearmament was not directed

against the other party; and that only in return both for recognition of Hungary’s right to rearm, and for satisfactory minorities agreements, which would be different in each case. At any rate, from Roumania he would ask more than from Yugoslavia.’ Kanya told a German informant in Switzerland that the Roumanian and the Serb had accepted his Kellogg Pact formula? (he had not then yet spoken to the Czech), and said subsequently* that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia would have met him on the minorities question, but Roumania, where new elections were in the offing, was unable to do so.° Under the Little Entente’s

own decision to negotiate only as a body, the matter could be taken no further until a Roumanian Government capable of negotiating had come into being; in fact, the negotiations were not destined to be renewed until the following year, after the political position in Roumania had not only changed but then changed again. The negotiations had been followed in many quarters with a good deal of rather wishful optimism. Great Britain, in particular, liked to think that Hungary was now following the only advice which she ever got from across 1 M. Hodza writes (loc. cit.) that Hungary had already (i.e. in the spring of 1937) “‘started rearmament on a full scale, just like Germany... . The ‘reality’ was that the ‘military equality’ had already become the fact.” In fact, however, although Hungary had long since introduced compulsory military service, under various disguises, she had, of necessity rather than virtue,

acquired little in the way of armaments. a . 2 The demand had a legal justification, since Roumania’s Minorities Treaty obliged her to

give self-government to “the communities of the Saxons and Szekels in Transylvania.” 8 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 141. 4 In his speech in the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, 9th November,

5 See Doc. G.F.P., D.1, 4; D. V, 143, 145.

200 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the Channel, viz. to “‘make friends with her neighbours’—on their terms.1 The more intimate glimpses which we get into Kanya’s mind, as he revealed it to Ciano and to various German informants, tell a different story: to wit, that while he felt bound to take up offers of negotiation, in order not to put himself in the wrong, he had no intention whatever of ever binding himself by a pact with Czechoslovakia (nor, one must think, although he did not say

so to these informants, with Roumania either). He meant to string the - hegotiations along, getting what he could out of them en route, and waiting for the moment when he could make a settlement with Yugoslavia alone, or a final settlement with Yugoslavia and a provisional one with Roumania,

leaving Czechoslovakia isolated.’ |

At the same time, it should be recalled that the dominant characteristic of Kanya’s mind was not duplicity but multiplicity. If, per impossibile, the Little Entente States had offered Hungary really attractive terms, who shall say that he might not have accepted them? And it was in any case salutary for Germany and Italy to feel that Hungary had a second string to her bow. On one occasion he hinted this to the Germans plainly enough.? As things were, Hungary got certain advantages out of the negotiations, even in 1937. She got a new commercial treaty with Czechoslovakia which ended the tariff war which had so long existed between the two countries. She got certain small concessions for the Magyar minorities in Slovakia, as well as the Voivodina. She won her point in practice over her rearmament, for after all that had been said, the Little Entente countries could hardly raise more than formal objections if Hungary openly announced her intention to rearm. Meanwhile, to spin out the negotiations served another useful purpose:

| as Kanya told Ciano with unwonted frankness, they enabled Hungary to carry through as much or as little rearmament as she liked, and to throw the

blame on the Little Entente for any delays and difficulties: this being advantageous “for internal political purposes.”* The truth behind this | remark was that a certain party in Hungary was in a great hurry to rearm,

: and impatient of all delay; this being, naturally, the same party as favoured all-out collaboration with Germany. That party in Hungary (which included Kanya), which for the reasons described above,® thought too close an association with Germany dangerous, was not sorry to be able to show cause why Hungary could not rearm faster.

This section may conclude with two further remarks: firstly, that it was not only Hungary which did not mean to see HodzZa’s Danubian Plan realised,

but also Czechoslovakia’s own partners. Yugoslavia would never have * Kanya told Ciano in May 1937 that (at the coronation of King George VI) Mr. Eden had “openly advised him to form a breakwater against German pressure along with Austria and Czechoslovakia.”’ While thus kindly advising Hungary to incur great dangers for the sake of ‘propping up her principal enemy against herself, Mr. Eden had intimated that ‘‘English interest in events in Central Europe could not be other than platonic’? (Ciano Papers, p. 117). * See, in particular, Ciano Papers, pp. 66, 118-19 (referring to November 1936 and May 1937);

Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 141 (September 1937); D. II, 59, 60 (the last references are, indeed, to February 1938). But a high official in the Foreign Ministry has told the writer frankly that Hungary’s primary object in conducting the negotiations was always that of “splitting the Little Entente” (Apor to C. A. M.). * Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 141. ‘“‘He was bound to say frankly that if, contrary to expectations, Hungary was ever abandoned by Germany and Italy, she would then reach a very much more comprehensive agreement with the Little Entente than was perhaps held to be possible today.”

» See above, p. 153. :

* Ciano Papers, p. 65. — |

HALF LEFT WHEEL 201 listened to it, and in October V. Antonescu told the German Minister in

Bucharest, Fabricius, that Roumania had ‘“‘no interest in the realisation of | it.’ She wanted to expand, not contract, her economic relations with Germany, and in the political field, while not desiring an alliance, she wanted

an ‘‘increasingly close friendship.” | Secondly, in spite of all discouraging experiences, Hungary continued, | during this period, to follow, quite unabated, her pursuit of the friendship of Great Britain and her appeal to the justice of her cause. Repeated statements on these points were made by Daranyi, Kanya and others, and the Revision

League and a newly founded Anglo-Hungarian Society made strenuous efforts to create in England goodwill towards Hungary and understanding for her cause. This policy should not be dismissed as mere “‘reinsurance,”’

for it was carried on to the extent of annoying both Germany and Italy quite | keenly, and even, at times, of quite alienating Italy’s favour. Ciano, whosaw in this not only “a sentimental leaning determined by two factors: Judaeism and snobbery” but also, what touched him more accurately on the raw, a

secret conviction that Great Britain was still a more important factor in

power-politics than Italy,’ was profoundly irritated by it, and this irritation , certainly contributed to the preference which he showed to Yugoslavia, and even Roumania, over Hungary. Even Germany, although not suffering from so pronounced an inferiority complex as Italy, could not see with pleasure Hungary’s unfeigned conviction that Great Britain was not only more agreeable but also more efficient than she. Hungary was hardly required to put her feelings in this connection to the

test in 1937, although on the one occasion when it was suggested to her that , she should leave the League, she, conjointly with Austria, raised objections which caused the proposal to be deferred.’ This was the situation when, on 20th November, Daranyi and Kanya left for Berlin, on a visit which was destined to open a new chapter in Hungarian history.

-® Ciano Diary, 30th December 1937. 2 See Ciano Papers, p. 64. |

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EYES RIGHT throughout of 1937 had been due mainly to in Hitler’s preoccupation |e slow pace ofmost international developments Eastern Europe

in other fields: but in November he was free to turn again to the

Danube. On Sth November he held the famous “‘Hossbach Conference,”’ which revealed his determination to incorporate both Austria and what he called “‘Czechoslovakia’’ in the Reich at an early date. The next day Italy adhered to the Anti-Comintern Pact and finally abandoned Austria, only stipulating for notice (which in the event was not given) before it was wiped off the map.’ These decisions brought the Hungarians into the picture, and it will be convenient to state at this point what Hitler envisaged Hungary’s role to be

when he moved against Czechoslovakia; for although he may not have worked it out to the last detail, his general plan was certainly already clear to him. As we have said, he assumed that Bohemia-Moravia would come over to him in one piece, but did not want Slovakia-Ruthenia (unless he decided to take Pressburg). Hungary or Poland—he did not care which, but assumed it would be Hungary—might have these areas, and it was even important to him that someone should take them fairly quickly: otherwise the fait accompli with which he proposed to confront the world might remain imperfect and her allies, after all, come to Czechoslovakia’s rescue. From this point of view, Hungary’s co-operation was important for him, which was,

presumably, why he took her into his confidence at all. On the other hand, she must not move too fast, or the Little Entente treaties might become

operative. The problem for him was thus to get Hungary (and, mutatis mutandis, Poland) to move at the right moment; which this would be, would partly depend on Stoyadinovic, but later Hitler fixed it at the fourth day after his own assault had been launched. Although the visit of Daranyi and Kanya had been arranged some time earlier, and for more general reasons, the coincidence of its date falling just a fortnight after the Hossbach Conference, was convenient for Hitler and gave the visit an extraordinary importance. Neither Germany nor Hungary,

however, wished to make too much of it to the outer world; the Press of both countries played it down beforehand, emphasising that no agreements were to be reached, and the preparations made by the Germans to entertain their guests were only moderately splendiferous, especially by comparison with the much greater show put on a fortnight later for Stoyadinovic.? A good deal of the Hungarians’ time was taken up with discussions on 1 Ciano Papers, pp. 145-6.

* See the report by the Austrian Minister in Berlin, Schmidt Trial, p. 505 ff. Among the numerous acts of differentiation adduced by him is that Stoyadinovié was taken to see the “Fledermaus” and ““Tannhaiser,” while the Hungarians were fobbed off with “Ariadne auf Naxos.” Comnene (Responsibili, p. 269) is therefore mistaken in saying that the Hungarians were “‘splendidly received”’ in Berlin. It seems, however, that the original arrangements for both

visits had been similar, but Goring intervened to add some extra distinctions for his Yugoslav

EYES RIGHT 203 economic and minor political questions, including that of the position of the

Swabians, on which satisfactory agreement was allegedly reached.1 An arrangement was made, which proved important in the event, that Horthy should come to Kiel and Berlin as a Visit of State in the following August. There was only one conversation on the highest level, when Hitler, with von Neurath and Meissner, received Daranyi, Kanya and Sztdjay for an hour on the evening of 25th November; references in the documents, however, show that there were other conversations, probably of an informal nature (not less

important for that, since more plain speaking took place at them), with Goring and perhaps some of the senior German Generals. A summary of

the results of the visit must take these into account. The conversations obviously revolved round two main subjects: Austria and Czechoslovakia. On the former, the record does not show Hitler as doing more than warn Kanya not to let Hungary involve herself in a Czech-Austrian rapprochement, to which Kanya replied that Schuschnigg had given him all necessary reassurances. We can, however, reasonably suppose that Goring,

at least, who had recently shown both Schmidt and Mussolini a map on which the frontier between Germany and Austria was erased, was more outspoken.

Much more was said, at any rate at the central interview, about Czecho-

slovakia.” Here, too, the official record is discreet: it suggests that the conversation had been confined to minority protection, with Hitler simply renewing his old advice to the Hungarians to concentrate their claims on Czechoslovakia. But retrospective allusions by Sztdéjay, and other informa-

tion, show that Hitler must have gone much further. The two parties obviously understood that they were discussing the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia—an operation to which the Hungarians raised no objection.? Hitler again told the Hungarians that they could have the Eastern half of the

Republic, including Pressburg*; and the question was then raised, how to avert the intervention of the Little Entente. Kanya described his recent negotiations, making it quite clear that his only purpose in conducting them was to split the Little Entente. He then turned to his particular negotiations with Yugoslavia. These, he said, had reached a dead end, but he would now

offer to recognise the Hungaro-Yugoslav frontier as definite and final, if Yugoslavia would promise neutrality in case of a conflict between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Hitler, as it transpired, misunderstood what Kanya was offering; he believed this to be an undertaking to renounce the realisation by force of arms of Hungary’s claims against Yugoslavia in return for cultural autonomy for 1M. T. Pataky, Head of the Minorities Section of the Hungarian Minister Presidency, was one of the Hungarian delegation; M. F. Marschall, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture was another. 2 The main conversation is recorded in Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 149 (Doc. Secr., No. 3).

3 In February Daranyi told two Sudeten German leaders who were visiting him that at Berlin “che had established [the translation says ‘decided,’ but surely ‘established’ is meant] that the Hungarian Government’s attitude to the fate of the Czechoslovak State was completely in accord with the Fiihrer’s” (Doc. G.F.P., D. I, 580). 4 According to Doc. Secr., No. 12, Sztojay afterwards assured Weizsacker that: “‘The Fihrer told the Hungarian statesmen that all the ex-Hungarian territories now belonging to Czechoslovakia should return to Hungary; even Pressburg did not interest the Fuhrer.” Apor informs me that Kanya told him that Hitler had said to him (Kanya), “Ich bin nicht verriickt, ich habe nichts zu suchen jenseits der Karpathen.’’ Gd6ring, however, warned the Hungarians that there were various views inside the Party about Pressburg; the Hungarians should not be too confident on this point.

204 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the Magyar minority. As such, he warmly approved the offer, as calculated

to split the Little Entente from within, and promised to pass it on to Stoyadinovic, and the Hungarians understood him to offer to guarantee what they supposed, of course, to be their own offer.t The meeting then ended with Kanya’s suddenly asking the Fiihrer to take note that, in spite of rumours to the contrary, Hungary did not propose to realise her revisionist aims by force of arms, which would let war loose in Europe, and Hitler’s replying that he had never credited such rumours. Who was really warning whom, it is difficult to say, but a later document? suggests that Kanya was guarding himself against the “forward party” in his own country. The Hungarians also

raised the question of General Staff talks, but the Germans, while not rejecting the proposal a /imine, made no promises.° So ended this visit, from the course of which the Hungarian statesmen might draw very different conclusions, according to the angle from which

they regarded it. On the one hand, they had been taken some way into

| Hitler’s confidence; had received a clear indication of his intentions, on which, | they must suppose, he would act before many months were up; and had been | invited to co-operate, promised Germany’s help to remove their difficulties,

| and offered their reward—one exceedingly desirable for them. On the other . hand, nothing of this was really new, except the acceleration in the timetable, : which made the problem of squaring Yugoslavia more urgent. The same tactics as before would have to be applied to the handling of the problem of Hungary’s neighbours, and nothing had been said to alter the Hungarians’ belief in the wisdom of differentiating their case from Germany’s as far as

moment. ,

possible, nor, for that matter, of supporting Austria to the last possible It was this latter aspect which they preferred to stress at first. In the

toasts and speeches which concluded the visit, and in Press interviews which

Daranyi and Kanya gave after it, both men emphasised very strongly that Hungary had concluded no new Pacts, that her friendship with Germany rested only on the basis of common interests, and that its great purpose was ‘‘to save the cause of peace.”’ Daranyi even got in a phrase about the Rome Protocols.

Indeed, the Hungarians carried this too far for the Germans’ taste, for on the day of their return to Budapest the Berliner Tageblatt wrote that Hungary would have to choose between Germany, who would “help her to restore a just equilibrium in Central Europe,” and the Little Entente, who would leave her “the eternal mutilé de guerre.”’

The Christmas articles and speeches, to which both Daranyi and Kanya contributed, laid their chief stress on Hungary’s peaceful intentions and her desire to see her claims realised in accordance with justice. Most striking of all was the following passage in a New Year’s Eve broadcast by Dardanyi:

“We carefully foster our existing friendships in the interest of our peaceful aims. But we endeavour simultaneously to develop our connections also with other peoples and nations, in order to draw on ourselves, as successfully as possible, the attention of humanity, much of which already realises the nature of our national grievances. . . . 1 So Sztdjay maintained at a later interview (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 160). He also mainta:ned that Daranyi had made the same offer as Kanya to Géring, “who had been very favourable to it at a certain moment, and had promised to discuss it with Stoyadinovié” (Doc. Secr., No. 11).

, eo ere No. 14.

| EYES RIGHT 205 “One of the most important tasks of our foreign policy is to convince foreign official circles of the sincerity of our peaceful intentions and win them to our side so that they may support us in a settlement of the Central European question along the lines of sobriety and good sense.”

As late as 6th January Hungary was still demonstratively stressing her friendship for Austria. The Pester Lloyd of that date, reviewing Hungary’s international situation, began the list of her friends with Austria, writing that “never were the relations of Hungary and Austria so friendly and so intimate as precisely in these last few years,’ and Hungary gave proof of this, and of her unchanged intention to hold fast to the Western line, when the Rome Triangle States met, for what proved to be the last time, on 10th January. Ciano wanted both Austria and Hungary to leave the League of Nations and join the Anti-Comintern Pact, and he put on Hungary considerable pressure, and even blackmail, but the two smaller countries, having concerted their

action beforehand, opposed him with tenacity and success. All that they could be induced to do was to express their abhorrence of Bolshevism, to “take note” of the reasons which had led Italy to leave the League, and to agree that they would have to reconsider their own attitude towards it if later

it took on the character of an “ideological grouping,” to express their sympathy for the collaboration between Rome and Berlin (“‘as a pledge of peace’’) and to recognise Franco’s Government. And this was a stand which did not cost the Hungarians nothing. Ciano was already annoyed with them over what he called “‘their occasional Anglophile slittamenti.”’> He was more cross than ever when Kanya, far from being frightened into submission by the threat that Italy would take up Roumania instead of Hungary, insisted on a phrase about minority protection and even extracted from the Italians, in return for refraining from stronger words about Roumania, “‘a solemn declaration that Italy would not come to an arrange-

ment with Roumania until the Roumanian Government had first taken positive steps towards better treatment of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania.” On top of all this, Princess Esterhazy was beautifully rude to him at dinner. He writes, on this occasion, with great acerbity of Hungary and Hungarians, and it is from this moment onward that hostile remarks about Hungarian “‘feudalism”’ and “democracy” begin to appear in his pages.

, Kanya’s stand over Roumania was, incidentally, the more annoying to Ciano because it was taken during the brief interval when the Goga Government was in office in Roumania, and Ciano had been all agog to acquire another new friend: he had thought he would be able to blackmail Kanya

at least into leaving the League by threatening to throw him over for Roumania.’?

It is true that the Hungarians had by this time decided that the Anschluss was inevitable, and that they could and would do nothing about it. That they refused, once and for all, to proceed with the idea of an Austro-Hungaro1 There is no record of this meeting in the Ciano Papers, but his Diary (11th January, pp. 10-14) gives a fairly full account, which can be supplemented from the evidence in the Schmidt Trial, especially pp. 33, 69, 125, 188-9. This shows that the Austrians and Hungarians concerted beforehand and presented Ciano with a common front, forcing him to whittle down his original

proposals. That this contradicts what Ciano told Erdmannsdorff (Doc. G.F.P., D.I, 47, 97, 107) is simply too bad for Ciano’s veracity. 2 Ciano Diary, 29th December 1937, 4th January 1938: curiously, the Germans were more cautious (Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 157).

206 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH | Czechoslovak bloc, to which Schuschnigg reverted in February, and for which, according to one narrator, Bene’ was now prepared to offer territorial concessions,! was inevitable: even had the price been a good one (of which there is no evidence?) any combination which involved Czechoslovakia was

now out of the question. But by 25th January we find Csaky admitting privately to Bohle that Hungary would not “‘actively oppose’ the Anschluss as such. None the less, Hungary was at this time going less far in private

than Italy, France or even Great Britain, and in public she continued to emphasise demonstratively her interest in and friendship for Austria. Actually, Kanya himself misjudged the position: as late as 25th February he thought that Austria had gained six months’ breathing-space.*

When Hitler finally invaded Austria, he did so without, apparently, previous notification to the Hungarian Government,’ and without offering them the opportunity, which he had promised to Gémbés, of recovering the Burgenland, although it appears that the Hungarian Government itself had previously decided not to move, as they did not want to take part in the spoliation of a friend. Afterwards some Hungarians reminded the Germans of their promise, to meet with a flat refusal®; a circumstance which enhanced the widespread ill-humour which the coup aroused in Hungary, the innerpolitical effects of which are described elsewhere.’ Officially, the Hungarian Government put a good face on the matter, sending congratulations which were in some cases warmer than dignity demanded as they were certainly warmer than their real feelings justified; and immediately recognised the situation, inter alia, by converting the Hungarian Legation in Vienna into a Consulate-General. Hitler in return gave a solemn

assurance that the new frontier would be respected. Kanya replied by 1 See the references in the Schmidt Trial, pp. 34, 446. Unfortunately the written deposition of the witness Lennkhe, which seems to have given some details, was not reproduced. Cf. also

Keppler’s report to Ribbentrop dated 7th February. oo, 2 All that Bene’ had, apparently, offered was ‘“‘assurances”’ relating to the Csallokoz, 1.e. only a fraction even of the purely Magyar area of Southern Slovakia. a

3 Ne s’éléverait pas contre (Doc. Secr., No. 5, p. 28). Sztdéjay made a rather similar remark to Ribbentrop on 4th March (Id., No. 7, p. 32), but it is not clear whether he was speaking in his own name or in that of his Government. Bohle had come to Budapest to discuss various questions connected with ‘‘Auslandsdeutschtum,”’ including the recognition of the Reichsdeutsch community in Hungary as a ‘“‘Landesgruppe’”’ of the Auslandsorganisation—a request which the

Hungarian Government was steadily refusing to grant, even when the Germans pointed out plaintively that 40 countries, including France and Belgium, had made the concession.

4 Baar-Baerenfels’ report from Budapest (Schmidt Trial, p. 569). A passage in the Sz. I. MS. also shows that the invasion took Kanya by surprise. ® Apor to C. A. M. ® There is some conflict of evidence here. I have personal knowledge that some Hungarian troops had been stationed behind the Burgenland frontier, and one officer told me that they had

been expecting the order to advance. I was also told that the Germans halted for three days on the west frontier of the Burgenland, only occupying the area when the Hungarians failed to move. Kallay told me that Hungary had decided, for the reasons given above, not to march in. But there is some suggestion that Hungary thought herself deceived. On 16th March Mecsér reminded Erdmannsdorff of Hitler’s promise to G6mb6s and asked that it should be honoured, while the Right Radical, Sall6, ‘“‘expressed a similar expectation in a speech”? (Doc. G.F.P., D.V, 182). Another private approach was made by Baron Malcomes to the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (Id., n. 1). But Hitler refused flatly, and Weizsacker even said that there was more room for revision in the other direction (Id., 193). On 21st April Bakach-Bessenyey again recounted the story to Erdmannsdorff, and although he represented the stories as “‘silly twaddle,”’

his words suggest the possibility that he believed them (Id., 195). I myself asked Kanya if he could tell me the truth for my private information (it is breaking no confidence to write this now).

After thought, the old man answered, “‘Ich will nicht sagen, dass der Fiihrer mich betrogen hatte.”” It seems, indeed, to be true that Hitler’s promise had been conditional on Hungary’s participation, which had not been given. 7 See below, pp. 216 ff.

8 Speeches of 16th March and Ist April.

EYES RIGHT 207 strongly emphasising this assurance, which, he said, gave Hungary a new sense of security. For the rest, nothing had changed. This was true, in a sense, of the foreign political situation, for the event had so long been discounted in advance, Austrian ‘“‘independence”’ had in that past year lost so much of its reality, that the change when it came was one of

form rather than reality and called for no readjustment of ideas or plans. In the long run, of course, the Anschluss had further strengthened Germany’s hold on Hungary. It had made the two countries contiguous, thus immensely _ facilitating German penetration of every kind. It had cut Hungary’s direct line of communications to the West, via Austria and Switzerland or Italy. It had put Germany in charge of the Austrian economy, so that Hungary could not escape Germany’s pressure, either as buyer or seller, by playing off

Austria against her. It had even transferred to German hands various Austrian economic and financial interests in Hungary. Developments in relation to Czechoslovakia had, meanwhile, proceeded slowly. The Hungarians appear to have suspended all action for some weeks,

pending the Fihrer’s promised intervention with Stoyadinovi¢. When the interview took place at last! (on 16th January) Stoyadinovi¢é consented to anything Germany asked for herself, intimating clearly that he had no interest in Austria and no sympathy for Czechoslovakia. But ‘‘what he did with respect to Hungary he had to do within the framework of the Little Entente.”’ He would not therefore commit himself to the Fiihrer’s offer, which was to give a binding guarantee (to operate militarily, if necessary) of his frontier with Hungary if Yugoslavia cared to conclude a treaty with Hungary; which result could be brought nearer by concessions to the Magyar minority. This was not even what the Hungarians had offered, let alone what they

had understood Hitler to have promised them in November, and an acrimonious correspondence went on for some weeks, while the Hungarians repeated that they had offered final renunciation of their territorial claims against Yugoslavia in return for a definitive assurance of Yugoslavia’s neutrality in a conflict, which Germany should seal by guaranteeing the frontier in both directions.2, On 7th March Kanya lost patience and said that he could not go beyond his previous offer; on 25th March Hitler answered that “he was not prepared at this moment to undertake a diplomatic action in favour of Hungary.’”* On 3rd March, meanwhile, Sztéjay had raised the question of Staff talks suggested by Blomberg in the preceding June; but Ribbentrop was opposed to discussing with Hungary possible war aims relating to Czechoslovakia “‘as

other parties might get to learn about them.”’ Hitler, when he learned that

no definite promise had been given, ordered that “the issue should be evaded.’ This has taken the story of the Yugoslav negotiations up to the change of government in Hungary which took place, as described in the next section, 1 For the record of this meeting, see Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 163. There is also a report by Osusky, dated 20th January, quoted by Berber, Eur. Politik 1933-38 im Spiegel der prager Akten,

p. 25; another by the Austrian, Wimmer, Schmidt Trial, p. 549. A very hostile description of Stoyadinovi¢’s behaviour is given in Comneéne, op. cit., p. 307. 2 Doc. Secr., Nos. 5-8. 3 Id., 9. 4 Id., 10. 6 Id.. 7; also Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 65, and Nazi Consp. and Agg., V. 2786 P.S.

208 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH on 13th May. While those negotations were going on, the Germans had been trying to co-ordinate the activities of the Germans, Magyars and Slovaks within Czechoslovakia. The German-Slovak negotiations do not concern us

here; contact was established, but no real common programme could be arranged as the Slovaks refused to regard their position as on a par with that of the minority groups; this attitude (as well as a real measure of hostility and fear) prevented them, a fortiori, from reaching agreement with the Magyars.

We have second-hand information that the Hungarian Government was already thinking of starting its operations with Free Corps, which would cooperate with Slovak insurgents; the Hungarian army would march in only if the guerillas were completely successful; but I have been unable to trace any contact made for the purpose between Hungarians and Slovaks or Ruthenes. German-Hungarian co-operation in this field failed to develop. “Loose contact”? was established between the German and Magyar minorities,’ but when the Sudeten German leaders, Kunzel and Frank, visited Budapest in February they reported back to Berlin that ‘““Kanya had been unable to under-

stand racial questions and saw everything from the point of view of the Crown of St. Stephen.’”®

The Hungarians did, however, succeed now in establishing with Poland a close relationship which was destined to last until the disappearance of the latter State. Poland’s goodwill towards Hungary had hitherto been held in check by her need to ménager her friend and ally, Roumania, who, in turn, refused to abandon her friendship with Czechoslovakia. But Poland, as well as Hungary, was now clear that Czechoslovakia was doomed, and the Poles were anxious to strengthen their position in the new Europe which was to emerge after that operation. In that case it was of the first importance to them to enjoy the friendship of Hungary (whom they expected to come into possession of Slovakia-Ruthenia, minus the small areas thereof which Poland might claim for herself).4 For although the Poles, who as the event proved greatly overestimated their own military strength, were confident of being able to hold their frontiers against any attack, they could not be blind to their need to import munitions. But if Germany blocked the mouth of the Baltic, Poland’s only means of communication with the outer world would be southward. As things stood she was dependent on the single railway through Lwow and Cernauti, which was too near the Soviet frontier for comfort;

whereas a friendly Hungary, in possession of Slovakia, or even only of Eastern Slovakia and Ruthenia, could give her the use of the numerous railway lines leading over the Carpathians and thence to the Aegean and the

Adriatic.

Poland was beginning to emerge from her reserve by the autumn of 1937.° Hory, the Hungarian Minister in Warsaw, reported in November that “‘the 1 From a letter from Szalasi (in the Diary) to his friend Szabo, the Military Attaché in Rome. See below, pp. 209-10.

2 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 58, 59. 3 Id., 60. 4 T owe this information on Poland’s strategic considerations to Count Lubiensky. 8 These lines had been constructed in large numbers, far beyond the needs of local traffic, before 1914, at the wish of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, with a view to military operations

against Russia. In the inter-war period they were largely disused. 6 Just at the same time other sources began to note a renewed interest by Beck in the Danube

Basin. See, for example, the report by Volkgruber (Austrian Minister in Paris), on Delbos’ visit (3rd November 1937. Schmidt Trial, pp. 533-9). According to this, Beck had suddenly begun to interest himself south of the Carpathians, even to express a strong interest in the maintenance of Austria’s independence.

EYES RIGHT 209 first and most direct objective of Polish policy was the erection of the direct frontier between Poland and Hungary; Polish foreign policy was devoting all its efforts to achieving this. Connected with this was the effort to disrupt the Little Entente and to reconcile Hungary with Roumania and Yugoslavia.” The relationship between Poland and Hungary might already be described as that of an “unwritten treaty.”

In January 1938 Bethlen, visiting Rome, told the Duce that Hungary “considered it to be a necessary condition that she should carry her frontiers to the Carpathians in order to make a junction with Poland and thus counter German pressure the better.’”” Then it was arranged that the Regent should visit Poland, accompanied by Kanya and Csaky. Csaky told Bohle that the visit ‘“‘would be of great importance for Hungary’s attitude towards Czechoslovakia.’’* It took place in February, being treated as an event of first-class political importance and

much publicised in the Press of both countries. In fact, it produced few concrete results. Horthy, by his own account* advised the leading Poles to

yield to Germany’s wishes in Danzig and the Corridor; but the advice, although politely received, evidently had no effect. The co-operation between the Foreign Ministers made a slow start, owing to misunderstandings deriving from the personalities of Kanya and Beck.® Beck understood that his guests

had come with specific wishes and waited for them to voice them, while Kanya thought it was for Beck, as the host and the representative of the larger State, to speak first. At their first meeting, the two did not get beyond an exchange of polite remarks. Kanya then asked for a second conversation, which passed in exactly the same way. The two men also managed to irritate each other more than a little; Beck thought Kanya patronising, which was probably the case, for when, later, Beck sent Budapest a message warning it of “‘the approaching danger of the Anschluss,” Kanya said: ““Why does this worthy ex-Colonel turned diplomat keep trying to teach me my job?” The subordinate officials who waited attendance on the two principals were, however, able to arrange for closer co-operation on the basis that the two Governs ments should exchange ideas on the Danubian question. After a prolonged and wearisome exchange of messages, Kanya and Beck succeeded in convincing themselves of each other’s good faith, and on 12th February Kanya told a German intermediary that ““Budapest and Warsaw were of the same mind as regards Czechoslovakia.’® This seems to have been a rather optimistic statement, for Beck was still irritated and impatient with Kanya. When he visited Rome on 6th-10th March he and Ciano seemed to have agreed that Czecho-

slovakia must disappear, and that both wanted a strong Hungary’; but according to Szalasi’s friend, Szabé, Beck sent Kanya a letter “of ultimative character,” saying “‘that if we do not intervene, they (i.e. the Poles) will settle 1 Sz. I. MS.

2 Ciano Papers, p. 159. 3 Doc. Secr., No. 5, p. 27.

‘ Horthy, op. cit., p. 191. Horthy writes as though he had been acting here on his own initiative, but Mme. I. Horthy assures me that he never made any move of the kind without previous consultation with the Government. 5 Sz. I. MS.

. ® Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 60.

7 See Giano Diary, 7th March; Beck, Dernier Rapport, pp. 145 ff. Apart from this, Italy and Poland only reached a general and non-binding agreement to co-operate in Eastern Europe (Lubienski to C. A. M.). Beck had not made a good impression on his hosts, and one of the

reasons why no closer agreement could be reached was, almost certainly, the personal antagonism between the vain Ciano and the even vainer Beck. P

210 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the question without us, but in that case they will eat the chestnuts.” In Rome, wrote Szabo, people were asking: “Are we waiting for the roast pigeon

to drop into our mouths, or for the Holy Ghost to help us?’ After the Anschluss Beck asked Kanya what Hungary’s attitude was regarding Slovakia and Ruthenia, if Czechoslovakia disintegrated. Kanya answered that Hungary claimed both areas, although she would give both wide autonomy. Beck does not seem to have accepted this very easily, for, as we shall see, he was, if the report 1s reliable, still entertaining other ideas

as late as May.1 He does not, however, seem to have made any direct objection to Kanya’s claim. Meanwhile, it had been agreed (on 23rd March)

that the two countries should keep in touch on political and military questions.”

When the occupation of Austria left Czechoslovakia top on the list of Hitler’s objectives, the Hungarians again raised the questions of the Staff talks and the squaring of Yugoslavia. Sztdjay, who had been called to Budapest for consultations, was again, on 31st March, attacking Mackensen and Weizsdcker, and saying that Hungary simply must know where she stood.? Advised by Weizsacker to send in a Note through regular channels, he complied on 11th April by handing in a Note which repeated Kanya’s previous offer to regard the Hungaro-Yugoslav frontier as definitive if Berlin

would guarantee “‘that Yugoslavia would preserve complete neutrality in case of a conflict between Hungary and her neighbours.” The Note (on which it is obvious that at least two authors have worked, so that one part of it reflects the “forward”’ policy of the military party, with which Csaky sympathised, the other the cautious attitude of Kanya) goes on to argue the advantages of the proposal in the former spirit, as follows: (1) The simultaneous occupation of all the territory of Czechoslovakia

will make it difficult for that country to mobilise completely and will prevent the transference of Czech troops from Slovakia to the West ” frontier. (2) The dropping of Soviet parachute troops will be rendered impossible from the first. (3) The position will be made unambiguous, to the advantage both of foreign and of domestic policy.

The Note then suddenly swings back to caution. ‘There are rumours,” it says, “that important events are imminent in Czechoslovakia. Hungary’s entirely pacific policy is well known and she hopes that the Czech question can be resolved by peaceful means.” But this might after all prove impossible and in that case the necessity for joint action would presumably arise perforce. For that eventuality exchanges of views are necessary: (a) because the advantages previously enumerated can be assured only by previous consultation; and (4) this will avert any possible misunderstanding about “‘regions, objects and problems.”’

The Germans apparently thought that Stoyadinovié would not consent to the offer; at any rate, they never answered the Hungarian Note at all, although Sztéjay reminded Hitler personally a few days later* and on 29th

1 See below, p. 230. 2 Sz. I. MS.

3 Text in Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 190; Doc. Secr., No. 14. 4 Doc. Secr., No. 16.

EYES RIGHT 211 April reminded Woermann again, asking that the whole question should be studied in Rome, whither the Fiihrer and Ribbentrop were just off, if the Czechoslovak question came up there.! This time the Germans promised to

put Kanya’s offer to Stoyadinovié and von Heeren really passed it on to Stoyadinovié a little later.2 The Serb, however, replied that he was going to

take no steps at all in that field. He could give no promise about the Hungaro-Yugoslav frontier, which he regarded as guaranteed anyway, and could undertake no obligations incompatible with Yugoslavia’s Little Entente Treaties (an attitude which he appears, in fact, to have taken up at the Little Entente meeting at Sinaia on 3rd-4th May).® The position of Hungary never came up at all at the Rome meeting, where Hitler—whether in order to mislead his allies or whether because he was really expecting the Anglo-French

representations in Prague to bear fruit—spoke of Czechoslovakia with a moderation which puzzled Ciano, even saying that “the Czechoslovak question was not actuel and cantonisation might put off the solution for some years.’”*

It may be recalled that the Danubian problem had reverted to comparative

normalcy after King Carol had dismissed Goga on 10th February and on 30th March appointed the Czechophile M. Comneéne as his Foreign Minister, further demonstrating his attachment to the West by arresting large numbers

of the Iron Guard, including M. Codreanu himself. He had not, indeed, re-established Parliamentary democracy, since on 14th April he had dissolved

all existing political parties and associations and instituted what was, in effect, a personal dictatorship. Meanwhile, the Berlin visit, with the revelation which it had brought of

the immediacy of Hitler’s designs, had brought to a head the differences between the two schools of thought in Hungary on the conclusions to be drawn from the fact—equally deplored by both—of her unarmed condition. These differences led inevitably, although by such by-roads that to say that they did so directly would hardly be appropriate, to the fall of Daranyl.

The school to which Kanya belonged (as did also Daranyi’s Minister of Finance, Fabinyi) departed, as we have said, from the basic thesis that in a European conflict Germany would be defeated. It therefore regarded the dissociation of Hungary’s case from that of Germany as essential, and was even not averse from deliberately retarding Hungary’s rearmament if by that means it could save Hungary from being drawn into an armed conflict at the side of Germany.° But the school which held Germany to be invincible thought that the prime

necessity for Hungary was to rearm at all risks and, now that the conflict appeared imminent, with all possible speed. This still, of course, involved the risk of a conflict with the Little Entente, but although the legal position 1 Tbid.

2 Id., No. 24. The date of the conversation is not mentioned. 3 This was the Hungarian information, as transmitted by Apor to Werkmeister (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 198). The Italian information was different (Id., 199), but seems to have been incorrect. 4 Ciano Diary, 6th May. It seems really possible that Hitler was wavering at this moment, and only swung back to his earlier decision after the incident of 19th May (his revised directive which said that it was his unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future was issued the day after that incident). 5 For Kanya’s attitude, see Ciano Papers, p. 65. Several authoritative Hungarians, including M. Fabinyi and Baron Apor, have confirmed to me the existence of the wider consideration.

212 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH had not altered in this respect, the Little Entente had in practice reached a position in which they could hardly impose an effective veto. The second important obstacle had been the attitude of Hungary’s creditors; but a settlement had now been reached in that field in which the deterrent effect of the League Adviser’s reports would soon cease to operate: after at first (in November 1937) resisting Mr. Tyler’s proposal to end his functions, the League Financial Committee had, at a special meeting a month later, accepted his view, and in its January report to the League Council recommended that his appointment should terminate as from 31st March 1938. A relevant factor

in the situation was that after negotiating these agreements, Fabinyi had expressed a wish to retire from the Ministry of Finance, agreeing only, at Daranyi’s request, to stop on until the formal lifting of the control,’ and

, Daranyi was already looking about him for a successor.

It was especially the Army officers who were impatient to get the rearma-

ment programme under way; and among them, in particular, the “Right Radical’? group; for not only did the question raise the old issue of the “‘people’s army” versus the more compact force, but, at any rate in the view of a number of them, the entire inner political problem of Hungary, in its widest form, was involved: for they believed that rearmament was being deliberately prevented by Jewish and other anti-German interests, and also that Jewish, democratic and Socialist influences were trying to undermine the

morale of the Army rank and file, as also of the population at large. Rearmament must therefore be moral as well as physical, and the technical operation must be combined with wide political measures of a nature to curb those interests and influences and at the same time to regain for Hungary that German goodwill which she had lost with the death of G6mb6s. The first move in this campaign seems to have been made by Ratz, now Chief of the General Staff and, as we have said, one of the two men (Ruszkay being the other) whom Right Radical opinion was beginning to regard as its chief representatives in Army circles.

Ratz seems to have got to work immediately after the Hungarian Ministers’ return from Berlin. Already, in the last days of December, a small confidential meeting took place, attended by the Regent, Daranyl, Réder, Fabinyi and one or two Generals. At this, Ratz demanded 1,500 million pengd for immediate rearmament. R6der was not enthusiastic for the proposal, and Fabinyi found financial grounds for opposing it. The meeting voted against Ratz, who wanted to resign; but the Regent asked him to stop, saying that “they would try to find a solution.’” Almost simultaneously with this,* a group of officers requested General Sods, who, as a very senior General, an ex-Minister of Defence and a Privy Councillor, had the ear of the Regent, to bring before him the views of the Corps of Officers. Sods went about this task with conscientious thorough-

ness. He consulted a large number of officers, including both Ratz and Ruszkay, of whom the latter had been his adjutant at Szeged.® He also personal, Fabinyi to C. A. M. : G. Horvath to C. A. M. * The Szalasi Diary contains the text of the memorandum and certain details of its history. The latter have been rectified and supplemented for me by General Sods himself. * According to Szalasi, Sods had consulted Ruszkay on the internal political situation and Ratz on feeling in the Corps of Officers. General Sods informs me that his enquiries were much wider than this, but since these two men were, as has been said, the intellectual leaders of the more active-minded officers, the memorandum is probably strongly influenced by their ideas.

EYES RIGHT 213 arranged to meet Szalasi, whom he already knew slightly,! being anxious to know whether the reports of the P.V.’s hostility to the Regent were wellfounded. Szalasi assured him that this was not the case, and Sods promised to try to get him an audience with the Regent, in order to clear up the misunderstanding. Sods drew up the results of his consultations in a detailed memorandum which he read out to the Regent in two audiences held on the 4th and 7th January 1938. As, while the memorandum was his own individual production, its author yet expressly claims to be voicing the views of the Corps of Officers, and indeed, speaking in their name, it must be regarded as reflecting at least a synthesis of the views of those persons consulted by him, and thus

constitutes a historical document of great interest. It begins with a long complaint against the slackness of the Government and its toleration of Leftwing agitation and Jewish influence, then going on to argue that war may be

expected to break out in 1941.2 Unless Hungary means to stand aside, renouncing the realisation of her national objectives, it is essential that she should be able to carry through a large-scale rearmament programme, to be completed by that date. The memorandum then again maintains the advantages of the smaller, more compact army, after which it passes to the political aspect of the problem. It argues that “‘the making of the nation’s inner life’ can be effected only through ‘‘a Government based on an autocratic foundation.” Hungary’s neighbours were going over successively to such systems, and she could not remain behind. The memorandum therefore begged the Regent, in the name of the Corps of Officers, to initiate “‘a new, determined, uncompromising programme, on national, Christian and popular lines’ —a programme not of words alone but also of deeds, the main lines of which were to be: (1) Reduction of Jewish influence in economic life, chiefly by stronger support of Christian economic activities. (2) Exclusion by legislative measures of Jewish influence from the Press, theatre, cinema and cultural life generally, with general support of Christian activity in those spheres. (3) Progressive taxation and closer control of big firms, with measures against tax evasion. (4) No more unjustifiable mammoth salaries to be paid. (5) Much more energetic measures against accumulation of posts. (6) Most vigorous fight against nepotism; measures to be taken at the Universities themselves to ensure that the most capable students are at once given the employment for which they are best fitted. (7) Persons who have squandered or misappropriated the national wealth to be held up to public contempt. (8) ‘‘Merciless persecution of all Left-wing agitation,” but at the same time the fullest possible social care for the poorer classes, including a juster distribution of land. (9) Finally, once the new Electoral Law is passed, greater liberty for the Right to organise. 1 He had commanded the Tiroler Jager, Szdlasi’s regiment in the First World War. Szalasi represents himself as having approached Soos invoking this old relationship. Sods wrote to C. A. M. that it was he who had sought the contact. 2 This is because of ‘‘England.”’ ‘‘Until England is ready there will probably be no war in Europe. England will be ready about 1941, and by then Germany, and, I think, Italy, too, will be ready—precisely on account of England.”

214 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH These reforms, Sods suggested, were urgent, and could only be carried through in time by “a form of government resting on an autocratic basis.” Constitutional methods were not practicable, because no politician in the country possessed sufficient authority. It would, indeed, be better not to ‘“break the circuit” before the Daranyi Government had carried through the last of the big constitutional reforms, that of the franchise; but after that, the Regent should take matters in hand himself—either without Parliament, or if a Parliament there must be, then resting on “‘a strengthened Right-wing majority.””> To make sure that that majority should be there, the Right should have more freedom to organise; and Sods ended by putting in a word for Szalasi, asking the Regent to receive him, and to allow his party that freedom.

The Regent received all this with only very modified pleasure. He rejected the idea of dispensing with the Constitution and making himself dictator; thought that it would be dangerous to give the Right more freedom, and flatly and even violently refused to have anything to do with Szalasi. He did, however, tell Sods to go and read his memorandum to Daranyli. Sods did so, and having done so, went away; and that was the end of that particular document. But, as we have seen, a large part of its ideas undoubtedly coincided with those of Ratz, who seems almost simultaneously

to have submitted another memorandum, on very similar lines, to Daranyl. At this point someone suggested to Ratz that he should consult Imrédy,

as a skilled financier who might find means of doing what Fabinyi had declared impossible: to raise the money for the rearmament. Ratz sought out Imrédy (whom he had not previously known), with fateful results. It was now something under three years since Imrédy had left the Ministry of Finance, and during that time he had, as President of the National Bank, been carrying out useful activities which had earned him high esteem abroad, particularly in the City of London. But his ideas and his ambitions had been ripening. He was no longer satisfied with his technical and inconspicuous work. He felt himself capable of leading his country along a great, sweeping upward path, which only he could clear of obstruction. For some months previously he had actually been presiding over a small intimate discussion

group which had been debating the problems of Hungary and trying to work out remedies. The measures proposed by this group were purely orthodox and “Liberal-Conservative’’ and contained no suggestion of action

against the Jews; but this sudden prospect of power was too much for Imrédy’s Liberal-Conservative principles. He declared himself willing to adopt the political side of the Ratz programme and to work out the necessary financial arrangements to raise the money for rearmament. So Ratz and Imrédy went to Daranyi, and agreed with him on a secret programme, which may be summarised as the putting into force of the memorandum, minus the dictatorship, and with Imrédy looking after the financial side. In concrete terms: as soon as the Electoral Bill was through, and before the social legislation which was to have followed directly on that measure, Daranyi was to introduce two large-scale Bills: one for rearmament on as large a scale as the national finances and public opinion would allow, the other limiting the participation of the Jews in certain walks of life. In connection therewith, the Cabinet was to be reconstructed. Imrédy was to come in as Minister without Portfolio in charge of “economic reconstruction,”

EYES RIGHT 215 | a new Finance Minister was to replace Fabinyi, and a new Minister of Justice | to come in for Lazar, who was regarded as too “‘Liberal”’ to pilot the Jewish Law through Parliament. This left the Arrow Cross out of the picture altogether, to the great disgust

of its more impatiently ambitious members. And rumours now circulated of a new conspiracy in which Szalasi was allegedly involved with his old patron, Taby, and Baky. Taby was to “‘keep the army quiet” and Baky to mobilise the gendarmerie, while Szalasi mobilised his “‘masses” and proclaimed a Hungarist State under the patronage of the Regent. When this was reported by the police, Szalasi,

with seventy-two of his followers, was, on 19th February, put under, police | supervision, but although Taby was retired from the army, nothing more happened to Szalasi, whose popularity in the Army and among certain Right-wing circles was such as to make the authorities chary of touching him. There was also a strong school which, without being themselves adherents of Szalasi’s, regarded his followers as well-meaning, if misguided and rather un-

practical patriots, who with a little careful handling could be brought into the fold, when their enthusiasm would make a useful contribution to the common cause, and being under control, they would not be dangerous. Daranyi personally shared this view and thought it quite possible to turn Szalasi into a lieutenant of his own; in any case, he did not want him to be made a martyr.* His general scheme was therefore to be rounded off by bringing in the Arrow Cross, not at the head of affairs but in some sub-

ordinate role. This was to take place after the first stages of the new programme had been carried through. Imrédy then set about drafting the two Bills—an operation which was carried out in deep secrecy,’ although certain articles were launched in the Press which in retrospect are recognisable as attempts to make Stimmung for what was to follow.*’ By March preparations were far enough advanced for a more open move, and on the 5th of that month Daranyi tried out his ideas on the general public in a long speech at GyGr. Feeling his way cautiously, he avoided any suggestion of dictatorship. On the contrary, he paid much service to the ideals of the Opposition, appealed for a united National Front against attacks from east and west, defended the Hungarian Constitution (with the Regent as its personification) as the bastion of Hungary’s ancient

Christian traditions, and promised unrelenting warfare against both

Bolshevism and the Arrow Cross. At the same time he indicated that some diminution of Jewish influence would be necessary, “‘as the best guarantee

against anti-Semitism and intolerance,’ and announced the broad lines of a great investment programme, not concealing that a large proportion of it was to be devoted to increased armaments and strategic communications. 1 So Fabinyi; Baross says he had to go because his drafting of the Constitutional legislation had been so incompetent.

2 Szalasi’s Diary contains many expressions of respect for and appreciation of Daranyi, whom he describes as the only Hungarian Minister President who treated him decently. He enjoined his followers always to repay this kindness. When, in the autumn of 1939, the Arrow Cross went into ‘“‘Parliamentary abstention,” they made an exception for the session of Parliament

in which tribute was paid to Daranyi, after his sudden death. 3 At his trial, Imrédy insisted that he had held no communication with any German circles when working out his plan. 4 So, in particular, an article which appeared in February in the Magyarsdg complained, in exactly the tone of the Sods Memorandum, that the leaders of the political parties were under Jewish influence and therefore refusing to grant armaments credits. The officers were restless.

216 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The speech was, on the whole, well received inside Hungary, only the Socialist Press condemning the proposed measures in their entirety as undemocratic. What was, perhaps, more important, the Little Entente, its eyes now fixed on Austria, made no protest against the proposed rearmament.! Daranyi was thus able to proceed with his programme. On 9th March the Cabinet was reconstructed. Imrédy, while retaining control of the National Bank, came in as Minister of Economic Co-ordination, and Fabinyi, who had consented to stay in office until the effects of the Gy6r speech could be judged,

now left it for the Presidency of the Hitel Bank, being succeeded by Lajos Reményi-Schneller. Dr. Mikecz, a relatively young man who had made a name in the “‘Reform Generation,” although he afterwards took lucrative employment with the great Hitel Bank, took over from Lazar, while Daranyi now relinquished the portfolio of agriculture to Marschall.

: The most important of these new men was Reményi-Schneller, a banker : by profession, who had successfully carried through various complicated

operations for the City of Budapest in the early 1930’s and had then managed

} very successfully the affairs of the Savings Institute of the Capital. He was destined to hold the office which he now took over under every subsequent Minister President up to Lakatos inclusive, acquiring as he did so a steadily increasing reputation for technical skill; it was certainly in no small part due to him that Hungary’s finances were soundly and efficiently conducted during the whole war period. Reményi-Schneller was not an Arrow Cross man and did not even follow Imrédy into the various half-way houses which the latter afterwards ran up somewhere between the Government Party and something more flamboyantly Right Radical. He always remained on the Right wing of the centre of his party. Furthermore, even those who disliked him and disapproved of him politically admitted that in his own field he defended his country’s interests faithfully against Germany. But when war broke out he ardently wished

Germany to win it, and this remained his wish to the end. He therefore became increasingly the Germans’ homme de confiance in the Government, and in 1943 and 1944 it was widely believed that he reported to the Germans all State secrets known to him. The current description of him as a “‘spy’”’ was, indeed, unjust, but his connections with certain Germans (especially a certain Kornhuber, who combined the post of correspondent of the Miinchner neueste Nachrichten with other, less publicised activities) were so close that he might as well have been one. The political effects of the ministerial changes were, indeed, slightly offset by the fact that Imrédy’s successor at the National Bank, Lipot Baranyai, belonged to exactly the opposite camp. Like Imrédy, he had had much to

do with the representation of Hungary’s interests vis-a-vis her Western

creditors, and, like him, had acquired many sympathies both in and for the West. But, unlike him, he never changed those sympathies, and at once took an important place in the inner circle of those Hungarians who believed in the Western policy and put their faith in the Western connection.

The new Ministers had hardly taken up their posts when Germany invaded

Austria. The international reactions to this move, so far as Hungary was * Daranyi had left the details of this vague, precisely in order to test the Little Entente’s

reactions,

, EYES RIGHT 217 concerned, have already been described. Its effects on Hungarian internal politics were, of course, to bring about a further polarisation of opinion. The Legitimists were furious, the Jews and Socialists terrified, and even many Hungarians belonging to none of those camps were infuriated by Hitler’s failure to fulfil what many of them had confidently hoped and restore the Burgenland to Hungary, and still more frightened and angered by rumours which went round—fed, apparently, by minor officials across the frontier— that Hitler was soon going to go further and annex parts of West Hungary. , Their resentment was nourished by unfeigned rejoicings among the Swabians,

of whom many now dropped all pretence of loyalty to Hungary at the prospect. On the other hand, besides the Swabians, outbursts of joy came from the Right Radicals, who felt that their domestic position would be strengthened, and from those sections of the middle classes and petite bourgeoisie who were now so besotted with anti-Semitism as to be unable to see any other aspect of the situation. For them Hitler was practically a God, precisely because he was tough with the Jews, and all they saw now was that the influence of the God would penetrate Hungary and deal with the Jews there also. The changes in the domestic pattern went at first, on balance, in favour of

the Right. It is true that the sum of anti-German feeling was probably increased, but the effect was not to produce that stiffening which had followed the occupation of the Rhineland and was to recur when Hitler invaded Poland.

The various elements in the Opposition Front drew perceptibly, if slightly, together, but they also became more cautious. Even their ranks showed a slight but significant thinning in two directions: the one, of certain of the more vocal fighters for democracy, who now left Hungary in considerable numbers to continue their struggle from the more advantageous strategic battlegrounds of England and America: the other, of waverers passing across to the other camp, as when M. Matolcsy and seven Independent Smallholder Deputies seceded and formed a “‘National Peasants’ and Workers’ Party”’ with a radical programme and close connections with the Arrow Cross. The

Right, on the other hand, was correspondingly emboldened by the new situation, as it also found its resources enlarged thereby: since one of the first moves! made by the Germans after the Anschluss was to increase their propagandist activities in South-Eastern Europe and to expand their direct contacts both with the Volksdeutsche in various countries and with the extremist national groups of the Right. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, in Berlin, was expanded, given larger funds and put in charge of work among the Volksdeutsche, the VDA being its ‘“‘camouflaged tool.’? For the national radical groups, a sub-office of the RSHA was established in Vienna, for work in Italy and the South-East European countries, and placed under the direction

of an energetic man named Dr. Willy Hottl, who lost no time in seeking contact with the Hungarian Right Radicals, thus inaugurating a new era, since such contacts had, before this date, been only loose and sporadic; and new in two respects, for from this date onward Germany not only acted as

patron, protector and, under certain conditions, financial backer of her 1 The information in the following paragraphs comes mainly from a private source (A. M.), supplemented from the Szalasi Diary, Press ‘‘revelations’’ (which are, however, to be used with caution) and some private information gathered by the author on various journeys to Hungary. 2 In February 1939 an order from Hess made “the VMS and its camouflaged tool, the VDA”’ solely responsible for work among Volksdeutsche abroad, the Party being forbidden to interfere and ordered to support the VDA in every way (873 P.S. Exh. G.B. 265).

218 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH protégés, but was also seeking to influence and control them, and to direct their activities along the lines congenial to her own wishes. The first developments in Hungarian politics, however, although relating to the Arrow Cross, were not connected with the new German activity, having been planned before the Anschluss. Daranyi, as we said, had decided at least as early as February to take Szalasi into his new team, if only as a very junior member of it, at the appropriate moment; and having floated his kite at Gyor and seen it sail serenely upward, he sent a messenger’ to Szalasi, asking him to co-operate in the Government—exactly in what capacity is not

clear. Szalasi refused, but at this point changed his ideas in one radical respect. In return for a promise that only legal methods should be used against him and his Party, he in his turn issued a public declaration that he would conduct his “‘struggle for power’’ by legal means only. Furthermore,

) he decided to secure Parliamentary representation for his Party; and for this purpose to get a representative who, while his political past guaranteed his

loyalty to the principles of the Party and the Movement, should also be acceptable “‘not only to the Party but to other political factors in Hungary.”

To the fury of his old supporters, he chose not one of them, but a certain Kalman Hubay, a journalist who had begun his career in a Liberal Jewishowned paper in Miskolcz, gone over to the Government Press, and then, in the previous December, had left the Government Party (not of his own volition’) and joined not Szalasi but Palffy. A by-election was pending at Lovasberény, and at this Hubay, supported by the entire Right Radical vote, and also by some Deputies who called themselves Daranyi’s supporters, got in easily on 27th March; whereupon the

Party was immediately reconstituted as “‘National Socialist, Hungarian Party—Hungarist Movement.’’ Hubay became President of the Party, while Szalasi took the title of National Party Leader, and Lajos Széchényi that of Party Leader.

The Franchise Bill had been introduced in the same week and, all the discussions having taken place behind the scenes, passed quickly through Parliament. Almost simultaneously, the League of Nations’ functions in relation to Hungary’s finances were formally ended, the appointment of the League’s Financial Adviser terminating on 3lst March. The new measures could now proceed. On 2nd April Reményi-Schneller made public the details of the new investment programme (known, after the place in which Daranyi

had originally announced it, as the ““Gyér Programme’’). This plan represented a modified version of Ratz’ original proposal. 1,000 million pengé were to be raised, 40 per cent. of the sum by borrowing and 60 per cent. by a special levy on capital. Of this, 600 million pengé were to be spent directly

on armaments, 200 million on communications (mainly of a strategic character) and the remainder on hygiene, agricultural credits and other miscellaneous objects. The whole operation was to take five years. On the same day, simultaneously with its introduction of the Budget, the Government tabled the “First Jewish Law’’—a measure which created what was almost (although not quite) a precedent in Hungarian legislation since 1867 in drawing a legal distinction, based on religion, between one Hungarian 1 The intermediary was Eliassy, the Director of Police of Budapest, who was in charge of keeping Szalasi under police supervision! Szalasi, who tells the story in his Diary, does not date the interview, but it was after the Anschluss and before the by-election described below. Daranyl. * He had been dismissed from the Fiiggetlenség, on whose staff he had been, for attacking

EYES RIGHT 219 citizen and another. This great innovation of principle once admitted, it was moderate in practice. Briefly, it limited the number of persons of Jewish religion to be admitted to the professions of the Press, the Theatre (including Films), the Law, Medicine and Engineering, and to black-coated employments both in these professions and in financial, commercial or industrial enterprises employing more than ten persons to 20 per cent. A “Jew” was defined as a person holding the Jewish faith, or converted therefrom at a date subsequent to 31st July 1919, or born after that date if his father and mother had at that

date been of the Jewish faith. War invalids, persons who had seen active service, etc., were exempted.

These provisions did not touch Jewish capital in any form, and still left the Jews a quota in the employments affected amounting to over three times their numerical proportion in the country, although lower in most cases than the quota occupied by them at the time.’ Unlike its two predecessors, the Jewish Law had an extremely mixed reception in Parliament. Speakers of almost all parties outside the Government—Conservatives, Christians, Liberals, Socialists—opposed it on grounds of principle as being un-Christian and contrary to Hungarian tradition; some also on grounds of expediency. Others described it frankly as an unworthy concession to foreign pressure. Most of the Government spokesmen themselves were almost apologetic, but argued that—whatever the remote causes— Jewish influence had now become so powerful in the national life as to make the measure a pragmatical necessity. The Bill was duly passed. But it was Daranyi’s last act as Minister President. His negotiations with the Arrow Cross had proceeded satisfactorily enough, so far as the negotiating partners were concerned, ending (after Szalasi had assured emissaries sent to him that he had no designs on the Regent, nor treasonable connections with Germany) with agreement that at the next elections the Government was to “‘make”’ a certain number of places—seven or ten*’—for the Arrow

Cross. But the secret had leaked out. It was quite certain that Horthy would never tolerate the presence in the Government of the man whom he believed to be his mortal foe, and on 4th April he had astonished the nation by making a long broadcast which contained strong if obscurely worded warnings to any persons who, even out of idealism, tried to draw the army into politics. According to the Szalasi Diary, he wanted at the time to have 1 The so-called ‘“‘numerus clausus Act’ of 1921 had limited admissions to the Universities of persons holding any one faith to a proportion of the total admissions equal to the proportion of all persons of that faith to the whole population. Most universities and faculties, however,

applied it in a very liberal fashion after the first two or three years.

2 According to a work issued at the time, based on the 1930 census (A. Kovacs, A

Csonkamagyarorszdg Zsiddsdga a Sztatisztika Tiikrében, Budapest, 1940), the percentage of Jewish lawyers in 1930 was 49-2; of articled clerks, 34-9, and of lower-grade clerks, 30-6; of doctors in private practice, 54-5; of chemists (i.e. owners of chemists’ shops), 18-9, and of their employees, 16-0; of journalists, 31-7; of actors, 24-1, and of singers 27-1. The proportion of Jewish salaried

employees (1935 figures) in industry was 43-9; in commerce, 42-0, in agriculture, 27-0 and in

mines 47:6. These figures were on the up-grade. , , , 3 SzAlasi in his Diary says seven; Hubay is reported to have written in memoirs which he

by Szalasi himself.

wrote in prison (alas, lost to the world) that he agreed with Daranyi on ten seats, one to be held

4 The broadcast was a long one, and included general reassuring statements about Hungary’s position after the Anschluss. It was generally believed to have been given with the main purpose of dispelling the fears in the country to which that event had given rise. But if so, it came rather

late. In any case, it contained allusions, very plain to those in a position to understand them, to the Szdlasi question, and also to the suggestions in the Sods memorandum in favour of a dictatorship based on the Army. “The guarantee of our liberty lies in the Constitution, and that Constitution is our

220 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH all the Arrow Cross leaders interned. Daranyi had refused, and had offered his resignation, but neither Imrédy nor Keresztes-Fischer had at the time been willing to form a Government. It is difficult to resist the suspicion that the persons who were determined to frustrate Daranyi’s intentions deliberately held their hands until the Jewish Law was through, finding it less embarrassing to criticise the Bill from the

safe shelter of a certain minority than to have themselves incur one of the two alternative odiums of either themselves sponsoring the Bill or refusing to do so.? At all events, nothing happened until the law was through. Then Daranyi was sought out by a group of his, or rather, Szalasi’s, political opponents and by them given the choice of resigning or of having his negotia-

tions exposed, when the Regent would certainly insist on his dismissal. He chose the former course. By agreement between the Regent, Daranyi and his political opponents, Imrédy was entrusted with his succession, Daranyi’s own party only learning of the proposed change when all arrangements had

been made, and Imrédy’s Cabinet list completed. The resignation of Daranyi, and the appointment of Imrédy, were announced on 13th May.’ In the light of later events, it 1s curious to recollect that Imrédy owed his appointment largely to the belief that he was Liberal and “‘Western’”’ in his

outlook and would act as a barrier against the extreme Right. Yet this is undoubtedly the case; although a second, very important consideration was that Imrédy, unlike most of the leading political figures of the day, was a Catholic, and a sincerely believing one at that; and with the great Eucharistic guarantee that the country’s affairs will be administered only by men of proved ability and aptitude who have the confidence of the constitutional factors. It is not enough for a person to call himself Messiah and mislead the masses, and even certain impressionable groups among

the well-educated, with phrases, catchwords and facile demagogy. ... (Hungary needed complete internal order and tranquillity.) ... And the key to this lies in the Army.... It is a well-known fact that armies should have nothing to do with politics—that if they disregard this rule they become not only useless, but actually harmful. And yet there have lately been

those who thought it possible to draw our soldiers into the political arena and to disrupt their non-political unity. Such endeavours—I say this advisedly—will never succeed. And to those who, disguising their personal ambitions under the mask of idealistic aims, have thought to try their hands in this direction, I say emphatically ‘Hands off the Army!’ Our officers know that the Army must be above factions and parties, serving only the nation as a whole.” * Almost simultaneously with the Regent’s broadcast, Bethlen in Parliament had warned the

Government “to draw a line between their own Right-wing character and the Right-wing

revolution of conspirators against the law and the constitution.”’ ’ I have worded these sentences in slightly general terms, because there are many versions of what happened which differ in details, although they are not mutually incompatible. The reason why his opponents forced Daranyi to go was certainly his negotiations with the Szalasi, and the weight of evidence is that they did not go to Horthy but to Daranyi, whom they blackmailed into offering his resignation. The fullest version is that supplied to me by M. Eckhardt, who writes that he, Bethlen and Ernszt, ‘“‘when it was clear that Daranyi was unable to check the Arrow Cross,” called on him and asked him ‘“‘in a friendly way” to resign. ‘‘Daranyi,” writes M. Eckhardt, “‘seemed quite happy to do so.”’ Barczy writes that Bethlen went to Daranyl; Hubay, that Bethlen went to the Regent, who then called on Daranyi to resign. Szalasi speaks of “a deputation from the Upper House.”’ Daranyi never told what had happened, even to his most intimate friends. Baross called on him in all innocence to fix a date when the Party wanted to pay him ‘a special tribute,” and Daranyi then told him he was going, but would say no more than: “I have been long enough in this building to know when one must go, if one is not to be thrown out.” He refused to answer any further questions on the subject, simply saying that ‘‘it had to be.”” Eckhardt writes that Daranyi asked his interlocutors whom they would Suggest as the new Minister President “‘as he would like to smooth the way for his successor.” All three

suggested Imrédy. Daranyi told Baross that Imrédy was to succeed him, and when he and another went across to the National Bank, Imrédy had his list all ready. The whole thing must have been done with the greatest speed, for such a secret could never have been kept for more than twenty-four hours or so.

EYES RIGHT 221 Congress pending, at which the Hungarian Minister President would have to undertake important official duties, it was extremely desirable to have in that position a man who would fulfil those duties devoutly and sincerely.! But the other consideration was even more important. Imrédy’s case was pushed, on these grounds, by the Regent’s advisers, Bethlen, Count Kaérolyi and others. It is also interesting that according to one witness at Imrédy’s trial? the “Exszist’? group of the Government Party raised objections to Imrédy (although he was himself an Exszist) as being too liberal, anti-German,

too close with certain Jewish bankers and also, as himself being a banker, insufficiently interested in protecting Hungarian agriculture.* The Regent,

however, was influenced in Imrédy’s favour precisely by his English sympathies and convictions.* The Ministerial changes which Imrédy made on appointment were in the

same direction of “‘consolidation.”? True, he took Sztranyavszky into his Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture in place of Marschall, but this was the result of a cunning calculation (which proved partially correct) that while the move would look like a concession to the Right, in fact Sztranyavszky would be so burdened with the technical duties attaching to his office as to have less time for political intrigue.° A more serious concession to the Right was the replacement of the cautious and moderate Réder as Minister of Defence by Ratz, although the effect of this was partially counteracted by the appointment of Lajos Keresztes-Fischer to Ratz’ post of Chief of the General Staff. More important, as a move towards consolidation, was the return of the strong and generally respected Ferencz Keresztes-Fischer to the Ministry of the Interior, while the most active and able representative of the Right—although not the most extreme Right—in the old Cabinet, Héman,° was replaced by Count Pal Teleki, who accepted the post. There thus returned to active politics, after an absence of many years, one of the most important and memorable figures in our story. Count Pal Teleki was a member of the Catholic branch of a famous and historic Transylvanian family, many of whose members had played a large part in Hungarian history.

His mother, many of whose qualities he inherited, was the daughter of a Greek Metropolitan, and of pure Greek origin. His own interests were always primarily academic, and although he had entered Parliament as early as 1905 (when he was only 26 years of age), he had even then devoted most of his time to his special study of geography, and particularly cartography, in

which fields he earned an international reputation. In 1919 he joined the Szeged Government, first as Minister of Cults then as Foreign Minister, but after the triumph of the counter-revolution, devoted himself to preparing Hungary’s case for the peace negotiations, in the form of a series of maps, statistics and treatises which were in a class by themselves, from the point of 1 Barczy’s evidence in the Imrédy Trial, p. 41. It is noteworthy that since 1936 the Regent had begun to include Cardinal Serédi, the Prince Primate, among his political advisers on

important problems. ;

fears in question. , ; og:

2 A lawyer named K. Kelemen (op. cit., p. 65). Daranyi employed the witness to soothe the

3 Baross writes that he had the greatest difficulty in persuading his friends not to outvote Imrédy on the spot, but at least to wait for his programmatic declaration. They agreed only out of loyalty to Daranyi, who had recommended him.

56 It was Personal, Fabinyi to C. A. M. rumoured that Homan had been especially instigating Daranyi’s advances to Szalasi.

4 Barczy.

There is no evidence that this was true.

222 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH view of learning, among all the material submitted to the Peace Conference in any of its phases. In 1920 he was asked to serve again as his country’s Foreign Minister and soon after as Minister President; but resigned in April 1921 to spend the next seventeen years mainly in teaching at the University as Professor of Geography, but in part also in a number of public activities. He was founder and President of the Hungarian Sociographical Institute,

Director of the Cartographical Institute, Rector of the University of Economics, President of a score of societies and—the occupation which lay

perhaps nearest to his heart of all—Chief Scout of Hungary. With all these interests he found time to travel widely in Europe, America and Asia. Amongst other things, he served on the League of Nations Commission for determining the frontier between Turkey and Iraq.

Teleki was a man of very wide and deep culture. An acknowledged

| master of his own profession—geography and cartography—he was also

deeply read in the history and sociography of many lands. He spoke half a dozen languages fluently and was an extremely brilliant lecturer. He was a very devout Catholic. He was quite indifferent to riches, living contentedly on the small family revenues which remained to him after Hungary lost Transylvania and on his professional stipend: he sat on no boards and participated in no politicalfinancial deals. It was when among his students and his Scouts that Teleki was, perhaps, at his happiest and best. In such circles all his most endearing

qualities found full expression: his affection for the young (which was returned in over-flowing measure) his freshness of mind, his gentleness of soul, his extraordinary modesty and unpretentiousness. And it was, perhaps, only here that he found complete spiritual satisfaction; for believing as he did in the powers of reason and of the spirit, and having a strong faith in the efficacy of personal contact and example, he held that the most direct and effective way in which he could serve his country was by communicating his vision of it to the younger generation, and inspiring them with it. Teleki loved his country and his fellow-countrymen with a deep and devouring passion, and lived only for their service; but in his social and political philosophy the crudities of nationalism were tempered and refined by his deep Christianity, while its conclusions were systematised into a coherent doctrine by his political, historical and geographical studies. In a certain sense he was a racialist, in that what he cared for above all

was the Magyar people. Yet he rejected the idea of ethnic frontiers for Hungary, because he held history to teach that no political formation could survive in the Middle Danube Basin unless its frontiers coincided with the natural frontiers of that area. Nature, by creating that area a geographical unity, had imposed on it the necessity of political unity, and any attempt to give it any other form of political organisation, being contrary to nature, carried the seeds of its own destruction within it. He thus regarded integral revision as a postulate both of Nature and of the survival of the Magyar people, and most of his life’s work was devoted to this cause. Yet precisely because he was so confident in the power of natural centripetal forces, he became towards the end of his life (this was perhaps an acquired virtue) very patient in his revisionist policy, holding it preferable even to pass over an opportunity to realise revision in some quarter, than to take it under unfavourable international conditions, or in clear contradiction to the will of the peoples concerned.

EYES RIGHT 223 Although holding the traditional view that Hungary, within any frontiers, must be a politically unitary state, he was absolutely and sincerely opposed to any aggressive or unjust treatment of the non-Magyar population, or any attempt to Magyarise them forcibly; partly because he held oppression and injustice to be contrary to the laws of humanity and Christianity, and partly

because he believed that they would only have the effect of making the national feelings of the non-Magyars centrifugal, whereas with wise handling they would be naturally centripetal. He took great pains to ensure that the treatment of the national minorities should be as he wished it, personally selecting enlightened officials for the minorities areas, instructing them most carefully in their duties, making tours of inspection and even organising a network of independent private observers, most often priests, who had orders to report to him secretly and directly any cases in which the conduct of the authorities, civilian or military, was such as to give the minorities cause for complaint.

More realistic and less unthinkingly sanguine than many of his contemporaries, Teleki saw that the “‘problem of existence’? for Hungary, and for the Magyar people, was not simply one of recovering lost ground but also

of defending what remained against further dangers. Oddly enough, he seems to have been relatively little impressed by the fear which haunted so many Hungarians of the “‘Slav pincers’? and of Pan-Slav imperialism. He abhorred Bolshevism, mainly on account of its Godless character, but he does not seem to have regarded Russia as seriously threatening Hungary’s national

existence, and he was confident that time would bring about the collapse of the Czechoslovak state. But he had an extraordinarily keen appreciation, exceeding that of most Hungarians, of the danger presented to Hungary by the expansive force of Germany. While he saw that only Germany could or would break the Little Entente, he also regarded Germany as a danger to the very existence of the Magyar people which was ultimately more formid-

able than that presented by any other State. He had a peculiar dread, amounting to an obsession, of seeing Hungary encircled by Germany and squeezed to death between the two arms of German expansion, the one running north through the Sudeten Lands, the Zips and the Bukovina into Bessarabia, the other, south through the Baranya, Bacska and Banat into Southern Transylvania. He thought it essential, if Hungary was to live, to cut these lines, or keep them cut. It was largely this consideration which made him press so strongly for a policy of friendship with Poland and Yugoslavia, even at the cost, in the latter case, of sacrificing part of Hungary’s

revisionist claims (friendship with Poland, of course, killed two birds with one stone, as it implied action against Czechoslovakia). It was his hope eventually to link Hungary with these two States, and with Italy, in a NorthSouth “‘Axis’? which should form a barrier at once against Germany and against Russia. He was even prepared to offer Roumania what he regarded as a reasonable compromise, although his idea of what this constituted was, as will be seen in due course, somewhat Hungarian. Teleki’s special fear of Germany caused him to be quite extraordinarily

sensitive to the claims of the German minority, which he regarded as

1 Kovrig, op. cit., p. 177. Iam indebted to M. Kovrig’s work for several details in this sketch of Teleki’s political methods, and of his ideas on social policy. My remarks on his character are based chiefly on personal acquaintance with him, and my analysis of his foreign political creed, partly on personal knowledge and partly on details supplied by members of his family.

224 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH dangerous to the unity of the Hungarian State. Here, too, he was against oppression or injustice, but his attitude to the Volksbund was strongly and somewhat unfairly negative. Besides fearing Germany, Teleki detested Nazism, which he regarded as

only one degree less Satanic than Bolshevism, and far more dangerous to Hungary, since the attraction exerted by it on the politically significant elements in Hungary was so much stronger. Not all aspects of Western culture were to his taste, but he saw in the West

the main repository of that Christian culture of which Hungary also was an heir. He also shared Horthy’s view that in a conflict between Germany and

the West, Germany would be defeated. Both sympathy and calculation therefore made him an ‘‘Anglophile,’’ and he was logical enough to apply his conclusions also to the question of revision. Passionately as he desired

" this, he was convinced that it would be fatal for Hungary to associate herself with Germany for revision’s sake, since any gains which could be represented as acquired by German help would only be taken away a few years later as ‘‘a gift from the Axis,” ‘“‘a bone tossed to a jackal,” etc. In his revisionist campaigns he therefore concentrated on appealing to the West, and when the

| crisis came he sought, in fact, to claim no more than what he thought the West would approve.

The domestic political problem was for Teleki the same problem of national survival, seen from another angle. The task of Government was to

enable the Magyar people to survive by equipping it with the moral, intellectual and material requisites for existence. Inevitably, he looked at the problem with the eyes of the aristocrat born that he was, and in the light of his country’s historical experience. He was rather traditionalist as regards forms, and had little sympathy with doctrinaire theories of democracy, or,

for that matter, of Western Liberalism. He thought that the bulk of the Hungarian people was politically immature and needed guidance and even a certain measure of authority. Yet he was anything but an advocate of class rule. He hated the snobbery and title-worship so lamentably prevalent in Hungary and once said that he would like to kill it by making the title of Count universal. Still less did he admit that authority should mean tyranny or exploitation of the weak by the strong. Heconsidered the social and economic inequality which prevailed in Hungary and permeated its system of government as not only contrary to Christian principles, but also as a dangerous malady which was sapping its national life. The first duty of government, in his view, was to protect the weak against exploitation; the second, to train them in a spirit of self-help and responsibility. He was in favour of every form of social reform calculated to raise the spiritual and material standards of the poorer classes, including extensive land reform and far-reaching labour legislation and he gave strong encouragement and support to all kinds of social and vocational associations. Indeed, he attached far greater value to the work which the people performed

for itself, through such associations, than to legislative enactments; the details of these he was content to leave to Keresztes-Fischer. In many respects Teleki was the best man whom Hungary could have chosen to guide her through the crisis now so fast approaching. While he

was there, the mere fact was an asset to her. The Western Powers, Great Britain in particular, who were usually very quick to suspect the good faith and intentions of a Hungarian, made an exception in the case of Teleki, who

EYES RIGHT 225 was probably the only Hungarian Minister President since 1918 whom they sincerely regarded, and treated, as a friend; and they took much from him

that they would have allowed no one else. The Italians liked him; the _ Germans knew that he was their enemy, but respected him personally. At home, he was immensely well liked and trusted by almost the entire nation, except the Right Radicals, and that although in certain respects, and up to a point, he was on their side against the Liberals: most importantly in his views on the Jewish question. While the brutal anti-Semitism of the extremists was abhorrent to him, he was Magyar racialist enough to regard the Jews, not as an element to be persecuted but as one whose influence must

be kept within bounds, if necessary by State action, in the social and economic interest of the Magyar people, especially its poorer classes.

Yet as a public man, he had certain weaknesses. He found details of Party life and organisation tedious and distasteful, and out of fastidiousness or a grand seigneur indifference left to others the ordering of many things which should have been his own business. He was not always wise in his choice of assistants, and although not easily influenced, and indeed, rather obstinate, shrank, out of super-sensitivity, from conflict, so that he was never

truly master in his own house. Much was done that was contrary to his wishes and still more of what he wanted left undone by subordinates who misunderstood his ideas or thought them unpractical. He was fortunate in having Keresztes-Fischer, who worked with him in complete harmony and mutual confidence, for his Minister of the Interior, but even so, he was never able to secure adoption of more than a small fraction of his wishes regarding

general social policy, or, more notably still, treatment of the national minorities. In foreign policy, he was only able to keep a very loose control over the activities of Csaky (whom he dared not dismiss, for fear of Germany’s

displeasure), and could not even alter the tradition which Kanya had established, that the official exposés of foreign policy were given by the Foreign Minister. All he could do was to supplement these with various devices which often resulted in giving Hungarian foreign policy an ambiguous and inconsistent character. And he himself did not always possess an entirely

sure political instinct. His Transylvanian ancestry and his studies had imbued him with a fixed belief that the only possible policy for Hungary was one of “‘balance’’; a concession to one side must always be balanced by a gesture to the other, or else by a counter-move of reinsurance. He did not always realise how much of substance there was in what he thought a mere gesture of form, nor did he fully appreciate the difficulty of spinning several

threads at once; more than once they got tangled in his hands, and at the end, fatally. There were even times when, strangely enough for a man of such lofty moral character, he let subtlety approach perilously near doubledealing.

Much of this went back to the fact that he was really too highly strung

for the situation in which he found himself. He did not shrink from

responsibility, but it imposed on him an almost intolerable strain. It made him nervous, impatient, sometimes very irritable. When things got very difficult, he sometimes let himself be stung into sudden action of which he did not always foresee the final consequences; sometimes he would relapse into fits of fatalistic pessimism, in which he merely let things drift and watched

them drifting. At times these moods merged into fits of black despair, such as that in which, at last, he took his own life. Q

226 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Although at this stage Teleki entered the Government only as Minister of Cults and Popular Education, yet his prestige was so great (particularly

as he was known to enjoy the special confidence and friendship of the Regent) that he was at once recognised as one of the dominant forces in it. In fact, his influence proved very important during the subsequent months, less in his own field, where he had relatively little to do, than in that of foreign

politics. At home, his presence in the Cabinet was felt to be a further guarantee that the Government would defend the national independence against ““conquest from within.”

The appointment of this Cabinet was greeted by the whole population of

Hungary, except the extreme Right, with a great relief and satisfaction, emotions for which, it must be emphasised, not only the reputations of Imrédy’s new assistants but also his own were responsible. It was equally well received in the West; The Times, for instance, wrote of it on 30th May

that it was one ‘“‘of which nothing but good may be expected.” Anne McCormick in the New York Times was almost lyrical. A Hungarian Jew recently emigrated to Hollywood told a visiting Hungarian official that he meant to go back home and found there a large film industry.» The German Press comments, on the other hand, were reserved where they were not openly unfriendly.

Imrédy made only a very short and general programmatic declaration,

stressing the need for continuity and for the maintenance of order and discipline. He would follow a policy of the Right which would be “Christian and national.’? He would combine freedom with national interests, maintain the principle of honour and frankness “‘free from underground intrigue and

secret lobbying.”’ His programme would be based on “‘two great ideals, social justice and popular (népi), national unity.” A number of bills for social reform were announced (all of these having in fact been in Daranyi’s

programme and most of them in that of Gémbés), together with a third Bill for ‘‘the maintenance of the State and of social order.” These things having been said, Imrédy turned to the task for which he had been appointed, in fulfilment of which he took two very important steps. The first was to issue an Order in Council (No. 3400) forbidding employees of the State to be members of political parties. This Order was confessedly

directed against the Right, which was strong in the Civil Service (not to mention the Army), whereas the few Civil Servants who had Left-wing sympathies were discreet enough not to advertise them. The order was largely copied by private firms, with the result, as Szalasi complained, of “completely excluding the middle classes from the Hungarist Movement”—

which in fact was by it both reduced in volume and changed in character, becoming more than ever a Cave of Adullam for more or less desperate elements.

The second step was directed against Szalasi’s person; for it had now become an ideé fixe in Hungary that his party was the most dangerous party, and he himself the most formidable individual, in all Hungary—as, in fact, his enemies were rapidly making him. He had arranged with Hubay to withdraw from the nominal leadership of the Party, in the hope that his followers (many of whom were now being dismissed from their employment), would

be less virulently persecuted; but this manceuvre had no effect, while he 1 $zéll to C. A. M.

EYES RIGHT 221 himself seems at this point to have refused an attempt to buy him off.) A further attempt to bring about agreement between him and other Right Radical leaders broke down on the unwillingness of others, particularly Rajniss.” The pretext for the new move was the fact that the streets of Pest had been whitened by another shower of leaflets, one of which bore on one side the familiar “‘Long live Szalasi’’ and on the other the text ‘“‘Out with Rebecca from the Palace’’—an allusion to the Regent’s wife, of whom

rumours had it that she had in her veins a strain of Jewish blood. The

latter was in fact what Szalasi himself describes it in his Diary: a “‘filthy forgery,” perpetrated by a quarter whose opposite number in England would, one hopes, not have used such a device,*® with the purpose of discrediting Szalasi: in which it was highly successful, for the effect was to send the Regent, who was devoted to his wife, into an extreme of fury against

Szalasi. A new indictment was prepared against him. In July he was tried again on another charge of issuing subversive leaflets and condemned on the 7th to three years’ hard labour and five years’ loss of civil rights. On 27th August he was arrested and taken to Szeged Prison. This move pleased the Regent, and got Imrédy a good mark among the anti-Nazis in Hungary and abroad. Otherwise its effectiveness seems very disputable. It did temporarily eliminate that figure in the Hungarian Right Radical movement who by now enjoyed the widest popularity, as well as notoriety, and perhaps some Hungarians refused to join the Arrow Cross, and some splinter-groups refused to fuse with it, when Szalasi was not there to lead it. But the imprisonment of its best-known figure did not kill the movement as such, and perhaps rather facilitated the growth of German influence and control over it. Germany’s efforts in this direction had already begun to exercise a strong, and in certain respects a disruptive influence on the Arrow Cross movement. Hottl had begun work very quickly. We have no information whether he approached Festetics or Palffy, but Szalasi’s Diary records that early in April (just after the Anschluss) one of the PV’s confidants was in Vienna and

there met certain SS. men who told him that they did not like Szalasi’s movement so well as that of Festetics or Palffy, but that they recognised it

to be the strongest in Hungary. They therefore handed the Hungarian a questionnaire for Szalasi, which, besides certain points dealing with the organisation of the Movement, included such searching questions as: Was he a Communist? Would he be willing “‘to submit to a certain subordination to Germany for a period of transition?”’ Was “‘Hungarism”’ hostile to Hitlerism or to German National Socialism?

Would he promise to yield Germany Sopron and Pozsony? Szalasi returned the most uncompromising negatives to all these questions; 1 Szalasi records in his Diary that an individual, whom unfortunately he could not identify, offered to get his movement legalised and subsidised with the substantial sum of 9 million pengo. He refused on the ground that he had been offered a much larger sum in the previous October and would not take the smaller sum after refusing the larger. His Diary does not explain the allusion to the earlier offer; a private source (E. G6mb6s) says that it came from a Jewess, “‘if he would stop politics.”

2 At a meeting in May, held under the auspices of General Sods, Szalasi had agreed to

recognise the ‘‘Race-protecting Association”’ (fajvéd6 szoévetség) as a general co-ordinating body

for all Right-wing activities, if other parties would do the same. It was Rajniss who refused to accept this arrangement. 3 The author was Sombor-Schweinitzer, of the Political Police, and it seems possible that Imrédy was party to this manceuvre. (Personal, G. Kiralyi to C. A. M.)

228 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH being, however, suspicious that the interrogators were agents provocateurs, he ordered his emissary not to hand over the answers until he had made sure

whether the questions came from an official source. Meanwhile, he was himself now willing to accept foreign money for an electioneering fund for the long-promised General Election, although he thought this should not be taken from one end of the Axis alone. He approached his friend Szabo in Rome. From the correspondence there emerged the interesting details that Mussolini, although informed of the situation, was not prepared to pay up, but the Vatican was ‘‘marvellously well-informed and volunteered its collaboration,”’ and was sending an emissary to the Eucharistic Congress to discuss

matters. It is probably as the result of these conversations that the ‘‘Hivatasrend” was eventually adopted as the official programme of the Arrow Cross when it achieved nominal power in 1944,* but the Vatican, which had in fact taken the opportunity of the Congress to enquire into the tenets of Hungarism, decided that these were incompatible with the principles of Christianity, and did not thereafter pursue the contact.’ Their experiences with Szalasi showed the Germans that they would be unable to work by the simple method of allying themselves with the strongest Hungarian National Socialist party, and their next move was along a different line. On 27th May the Magyarsdg, a Hungarian daily which had previously represented very different views,? was bought over the heads of its staff by a

person of the curious name of Virtsologi Oliver Rupprecht, who declared himself to possess the general mission of supporting the ““Radical Right” of Hungary, on two broad principles: (a) general support of National Socialist ideas, without partiality for any one form of them, and (5) strengthening of the Right Radical movement by the creation of Right-wing unity. Rupprecht seems to have believed sincerely in these principles, and to have wished to propagate them for their own sakes; but he certainly derived them from the Germans, for the subsequent history shows them to have constituted a sort of general directive, laid down, probably, by very high quarters, for dealing with Hungary (and possibly for other countries also); six years later we shall find the unfortunate Veesenmayer still struggling to lead Hungary along them.

Similarly, although Rupprecht, who was a man of some means, seems to have put up most of the purchase-money himself, while another part was provided, again from Hungarian sources, by Széchényi,* the Germans seem to have helped and facilitated the transaction.® Certainly they afterwards helped the Magyarsdg by advertising in it, and it acted, more or less openly, as their organ.

There followed an internal struggle of some ferocity. Later, the Magyarsdg openly confessed to a programme for the organisation of the population, not only of Hungary but of South-Eastern Europe as a whole, into “Volksgruppen,” each possessing personal-national autonomy and all ' See below, Pt. II, Szdlasi Tyrannus. * Personal, B. Kovrig to C. A.M. The enquiries were made by the Apostolic Delegate to the Conference and Mgr. Mihailovics, Head of the Actio Catholica, who had several discussions with Szalasi himself, and afterwards, with his ‘‘ideological specialist,’’ Malnasi.

* The Magyarsdg, whose managing editor was S. Pethé, had been founded in the 1920's by Count Gyula Andrassy, and had previously represented precisely the constitutional and proWestern (and to some extent, the Legitimist) tradition in Hungary. After the transaction, the entire staff went over to a new organ, the Magyar Nemzet. * In 1942 Széchényi wrote that he had borrowed 50,000 peng6 for the purpose from a Society for the Export of Livestock. * The Society which accommodated Széchényi seems to have been one of the indirect channels used by the Germans for transmitting funds.

EYES RIGHT 229 on a footing of theoretical equality. This programme Szalasi always ascribed afterwards to Franz Rothen, the young Swabian who had once been Secretary of the UDV.* Itis perhaps doing too much honour to Rothen to regard him as the sole intellectual begetter of the ideas outlined above,” but he certainly used to propagate them afterwards from Berlin,? and it is a fact that he was a

member of Szalasi’s party in 1938, and afterwards figured as Hubay’s “specialist for foreign relations and minority questions,” giving offence, even then (although he continued for a time to profess acceptance of the Hungarist ideology) by the Pan-German direction in which he twisted the movement.

Szalasi flatly and vigorously refused to accept the Magyarsdg’s ideas, which he found inconsistent with Hungarism. Hubay, however, became editor of the Magyarsdg a week after the transference of its ownership, and immediately after, he and Rupprecht were joined by the versatile Baky. The triumvirate announced in June that they were placing the Magyarsdg at the disposal of the Hungarist Movement. A couple of years later, after a split to be described, Rupprecht wrote that they had done so although disagreeing with some of the movement’s ideas (the Hungarist dogma is meant) because this was the best way of securing victory of National Socialism in Hungary, since the Party was the largest of its kind, ‘““and had behaved the most bravely and had been subjected to the most brutal treatment.’ The facade was kept up, and on the same basis, Festetics joined Hubay on Ist August, the two parties adopting the joint name of “Hungarian National Socialist Party—Hungarist Movement” and the Hungarist Programme. Hubay was Party President and Széchényi Vice-President. The Arrow Cross and the green shirt were taken over as symbols. Rajniss and Endre (who, on 11th January, had become Alispan of Pest County) had now joined the

Government Party, so the only Arrow Cross dissidents left outside the Grand Alliance were Palffy,® with his followers, and Mesk6, unless one should

so count Matolesy’s ex-Smallholders and one or two tiny splinter-groups which afterwards disappeared from view.®

The unification was consummated just before Szdlasi was taken to prison.’ From the moment of the PV’s disappearance funds seem to have flowed more freely into its coffers,® and the line of the Party propaganda changed noticeably, becoming increasingly a parrot-echo of the language of 1 See above, p. 171.

* Students of the minority question and of the history of the Austrian Empire will recognise many different spiritual ancestors of this conception. * He had to serve his sentence for defamation of the Hungarian State in the spring of 1939. He escaped from prison with German help and fled to Germany, where he was employed in the Abteilung VI. * Festetics personally now retired into private life (28th August). Palffy-Daun, his deputy, an unimportant dilettante, had left his party soon after, because he disapproved of the union with

Szalasi.

* How it was that Hubay, who had been a follower of Palffy’s, was able to reach agreement with Festetics and Szalasi and not with Palffy, throws no small light on the degree to which personal considerations outweighed those of principle in the Arrow Cross. * Balogh, who had seceded from Szalasi in February, joined Matolcsy, as did some members of the Christian Party (Meizler and Beldi). A former friend of Szalasi’s named Szércsey founded a new “‘Race Defence National Socialist Party,’ but soon afterwards Szércsey committed suicide, and his party disappeared with him. ” The agreement was concluded just before the trial was opened but after it had been put down on the lists. ® In June Széchényi had still been obliged to advance money to meet the Magyarsdg’s deficit.

From this time onward, however, Arrow Cross propaganda, printed in Germany, began to enter Hungary on a large scale. Interestingly, some of this took the form of expensively produced portraits of Szalasi.

230 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the Reich. Rothen’s ideas began to overlay Szalasi’s. A host of new figures appeared at the Andrassy-ut, some of them having come over from Festetics’ headquarters, others quite new to the ““Movement,”’ and a considerable proportion of them Swabians. The Arrow Cross movement had no particular recorded history until the following February, when it was dissolved again; but as has been shown, it was by no means crushed by the imprisonment of Szalasi, but rather turned into new channels which were in some respects more dangerous than the old. Apart from his clashes with the Arrow Cross, Imrédy’s first three months as Premier were uneventful as regards internal politics. He was still feeling

his way. He made few pronouncements on his own intentions. Much of the country’s time, however, was occupied with the preparations for, and celebration of, the Eucharistic Congress, which was closely linked with commemorations of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Stephen. The Congress, which opened on 23rd May, was made into a grandiose celebration of Catholic solidarity and of the special traditional links connecting Hungarian Catholicism with the Holy See. Besides the Papal Legate, Cardinal Pacelli, two Polish Cardinals, two French, a British, a Czech, an Italian and American attended the Congress, as well as 72 Archbishops and over 100,000 foreign visitors of lesser rank. Conspicuous by its absence was any contingent from Germany or Austria, the Reich having

vetoed the participation of any pilgrims from the enlarged Reich. The Congress was followed by special celebrations in honour of St. Stephen, the Holy Dexter being brought in solemn procession from the Saint’s tomb at Székesfehérvar to the Primatial Cathedral at Esztergom. A few weeks later came the customary celebrations, in no way abated, of St. Stephen’s Day. Meanwhile, there remained the increasingly urgent problem of the foreign

political situation, now overwhelmingly dominated by the unmistakable imminence of a show-down between Germany and Czechoslovakia. The contacts with Poland, agreed in March, had been maintained, and besides the ordinary diplomatic contacts, exchange of military information seems to have taken place.’ —The Hungarians seem to have had considerable

difficulty with Beck on the territorial issue. Beck was undoubtedly in far closer and more active touch than they with some of the Slovak and Ruthene

malcontents, and as late as 26th May he apparently told the Roumanian Minister in London that he regarded Slovakia and Ruthenia as Poland’s “special interest,” and proposed in case of war “‘to intervene South of the Carpathians and to proceed to a plebiscite to assure the right of selfdetermination for the peoples there.”’ In that case, Hungary would have been left only with the Magyar-inhabited Southern fringe. It is possible that Beck only meant to take this action if the Hungarians failed to move fast enough (although neither the Hungarians nor, it seems, the Germans® were ever quite satisfied of this); but in any case by early July agreement had been reached that Poland would only claim small frontier rectifications in Northern Slovakia; the rest was to go to Hungary with a large measure of autonomy.* * The Polish Colonel Marecki visited Budapest in May and the Hungarian Andorka, head of the Military Intelligence, went to Warsaw in June (Sz. I. MS.). > Commeéne, Preludi, pp. 58 ff.

3 See Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 277. 4 Id., 284.

EYES RIGHT 231 Up to a point the two countries had agreed easily on their line of political co-operation. Beck had decided to claim for Poland, or the Polish minority, any concession made to Germany, or to the German minority.!_ He must in fact have decided on this line as early as March (as his conduct during the Anschluss crisis shows): but it was in May that he informed the Hungarians

of it, and the latter decided to follow the same line. Beck then agreed to keep in touch with Hungary on this point, so that every demand from Germany should be followed by similar demands from Poland and Hungary,

working in real conjunction although without stated reference to each other’s actions. Beyond that point, however, on the question of how to obtain the required

concessions, the two countries’ policies differed sharply. Beck made it a postulate that Poland must owe nothing to anybody and that no country could be allowed the right to say a word in what must be regarded as a bilateral question between Poland and Czechoslovakia. If at any time he informed France, Germany or any other State of what he was doing, this , was merely as an act of courtesy, not because he admitted their right to be informed. Neither did he object to sabre-rattling; on the contrary, he rather preferred that his objectives should be achieved by at least a show of force. On these points the Hungarians took exactly the opposite line. Having no army, they necessarily made it a principle to refrain, if at all possible, from

applying or even threatening to apply armed force.” They aimed at getting a peaceful settlement imposed on Czechoslovakia from outside, which meant that they welcomed influence from third parties. And they were particularly anxious that any settlement should be brought about with the co-operation and consent of the Western Powers, arguing that a settlement brought about by free consent would not later be reversed. When in the summer Britain began more and more to assume the role of mediator between Germans and Czechs, especial importance was attached to impressing Hungary’s point of view on Great Britain. This last rule was, of course, only the application to a particular case of a general principle which, as we have seen, Hungary had long been following wherever possible, and it may be remarked here that during these months Hungary was courting the goodwill of Great Britain at least as vigorously as ever before. This was partly due to the influence of Teleki in the Cabinet, but in hardly smaller measure to what were then Imrédy’s own wishes. We shall shortly see him opposing even Italy on this point; and he also took particular pains to keep in being and expand economic relations with Great Britain. With that object, he took over the Ministry of Commerce from Bornemissza and kept it in his own hands until September. One of his first actions in that capacity was to have a Commercial Attaché appointed to the Hungarian Legation in London, and he made many efforts to awaken the

interest of British buyers in Hungarian goods. A number of unofficial emissaries visited the United Kingdom in the summer to try to obtain for Hungary at least some economic help to relieve the German pressure. The messengers brought back no economic assistance whatever and politically only the stereotyped advice to Hungary to make terms with the Little Entente, without any prospect that Britain would obtain for her any quid pro quo or help to defend her against the Germany between whose jaws she was invited to put her head for the sake of her mortal enemies.

1 See Beck, Dernier Rapport, p. 159. 2 Lajos. |

232 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Meanwhile, of the two partners, the Poles were in a far more favourable

position to press the agreed policy: the only objections to their doing so coming from their French allies; and these they consistently and opprobriously ignored.t_ In May and June they more than once informed Czechoslovakia that they would insist on receiving “‘most favoured nation treatment”

over the national question,” and they received satisfactory assurances in return; on 9th June M. Slavik told Beck that the Polish minority would receive ‘“‘any concessions made to the Germans and their minorities, and perhaps a little more in practice.’’* Britain and France were informed of this

_ commitment at the time and approved of it. BeneS himself, on 11th June, told Newton that “‘it was fundamental that there should be equality of treat-

ment for all nationalities.” (It is true that he turned this argument round ingeniously to prove that one could not give anything to anybody, because “af the Germans were given, for example, a National Diet, one would have to be granted to the Magyars, Roumanians, Ruthenes, Russians and Jews.’”)

But everyone seemed agreed on the point: even Mr. Litvinov told the Hungarian Minister in Moscow “somewhat categorically, as if he could give orders to Czechoslovakia: the minorities will all receive the same treatment.’’®

The Hungarians do not seem to have received, or even asked, for any direct assurances during the spring, for in their case the question was tangled

up with the Little Entente negotiations on her rearmament. The Little Entente States had, as has been mentioned, let the Gydér Programme pass without comment, and at their Sinaia meeting unanimously reaffirmed their desire to continue the negotiations which had come to a standstill in the previous autumn. Both Imrédy and Kanya replied with expressions of goodwill, but, in fact, they were as much concerned to avoid being forced to accept the wrong sort of agreement—1i.e. one which safeguarded Czechoslovakia,

or even Roumania—as to reach the right one. Accordingly they refused a private offer from the Czechs for a mutual Pact of Non-Aggression (with the

Little Entente as a whole) against recognition of Hungarian rearmament.’ Feelers put out by Roumania were warded off.® In his Budget speech of Ist June, then, Kanya (who was obliged to pick his words very carefully, seeing that Roumania was the country in which the Magyar minorities were actually the worst treated, while Czechoslovakia was that with which Hungary had to avoid reaching agreement) said that Hungary was prepared to agree to the issue of declarations on both sides, in the sense of the Kellogg Pact, but only in return not only for recognition of equality of military rights (which he claimed to be Hungary’s unconditional right) but also of minority agreements. He was not going to negotiate with the Little ' For Polish-French relations during the period see Survey of International Affairs, 1938,

vol. II, pp. 131 ff. > Doc. Brit. F.P., II. I, 315; Bonnet, De Washington au Quay D’Orsay, I, 152. > Doc. Brit. F.P., III. I, 395. 4 Bonnet, op. cit., p. 206. 5 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. I, 399. § Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 254.

7 Apor to C. A. M. ® M. Tilea tells me that King Carol sent him to Budapest in the summer to see whether Hungary would be willing to accept a measure of frontier revision in final settlement. M. Tilea went not to official quarters but to Count Bethlen, who told him that Hungary was not asking for frontier revision but for political rights and liberties for the Magyar minority in Transylvania, and only smiled non-committally when Tilea Suggested that the reason why Hungary refused the part was because she wanted the whole. The offer, whatever it was, was thus never defined.

EYES RIGHT 233 Entente as a bloc, nor to make identical agreements with all the three members, because the situation in each of the three was different. He now indicated clearly that Hungary, too, was going to claim “‘most favoured” treatment on national questions in Czechoslovakia, and adopted, incidentally, a very confident tone, hinting very openly that the Anschluss had weakened the position of Hungary’s neighbours, but strengthened her own.

Meanwhile the Hungarians were pursuing their private attempts to promote the isolation of Czechoslovakia. Kanya in his speech had demonstratively concentrated his attacks on the Czechs, and throughout May and June Sztojay was pressing Germany to guarantee the neutrality of Yugoslavia, and also to conclude advance arrangements for military co-operation. His was a disheartening task, which caused him to complain more than once, and with reason, of inconsistencies in the Germans’ replies; for while Goring told him that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia Hungary should join in as quickly as possible, if only to prevent the Poles getting ahead of her—‘‘she ought not to rely on Germany’s pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for her’’! —the Wilhelmstrasse was studiously non-committal: when Sztéjay argued to Weizsacker that a German-Czech conflict could not be localised, and that Hungary would have to act, and act quickly, Weizsacker talked tortuously of ‘the complex possibilities of the political course of a crisis’? which “‘could not be anticipated to the same extent in terms of mobilisation as was perhaps customary at military deliberations in definite and clear-cut cases of war. The political course was such that it needed to be continually readapted to the position of the moment.”? When Keitel visited Budapest in June, he only told Ratz and Horthy that military matters would have to be discussed if Hungary’s political participation was decided, but that was a matter to be decided at Horthy’s visit.* The Hungarians got a little further with the Italians, who had been making them thoroughly nervous by their unconcealed preference for new friends over old. It was mainly in order to get from Italy a clear statement of her intentions* that the Hungarians made to Italy a curious proposal of a secret Pact containing a provision for military assistance in case of aggression by Yugoslavia.® Although the Italians did not like it, they at least agreed on a policy of désinteressement in case of an Hungarian attack on Czechoslovakia concerted with Berlin, and assistance in the “absurd and impossible event’’ of unprovoked attack by Yugoslavia; reassuring Hungary that Italy “would

not leave Hungary in the lurch in the event of an attack by the Little Entente.”® The Hungarians were little satisfied with this, which seemed to them a weakening of Italy’s earlier pledges, but at this point Stoyadinovic did take a step forward: on 21st May he apparently “‘let it be known in Budapest that he was prepared to negotiate with Hungary outside the framework of the Little Entente on the questions of minorities and freedom to 1 This conversation has to be reconstructed from the two accounts of it subsequently given by Sztdjay to Weizsicker (Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 248 and 284). The second contains further details which supplement the first, but it also recounts a second conversation and the preterites and pluperfects do not always make it entirely clear to which conversation a given remark belongs. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 166.

3 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 161; Doc. Secr., No. 24. In evidence at Nuremberg (Nur. Trial, XI, 106) Keitel said that on this occasion “‘no operational General Staff meeting took place: it was

just a shooting party.” ; 4 Apor to C. A. M.

5 Ciano Diary, 16th May. |

§ Id., 17th and 20th May; cf. also id., 12th June, voicing Ciano’s strong objections to the Hungarian proposal.

234 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH rearm”’ (although he did not mention frontier guarantees or neutrality). On 12th June he told Ciano that if Italy would refrain from intervening in a German-Czech crisis he would do the same unless Hungary forced him to

act by taking the initiative in an attack. If, however, she merely “took advantage of a crisis produced by Germany,” Yugoslavia would stand aside.? He said he was ready to conclude a separate pact with Hungary, but repeated that Hungary must not take the initiative against Czechoslovakia; she must profit by the German action.®

In fact, conversations now began between Stoyadinovi¢ and the new Hungarian Minister to Belgrade, Baron Bakach-Bessenyey, and agreement was quickly reached on the recognition of Hungary’s right to rearm in return for an exchange of declarations “in the sense of the Kellogg Pact.”* The negotiations on the minority question, however, dragged on inconclusively. On 18th July Imrédy and Kanya, with Csaky, arrived in Rome on a three days’ visit. This had been announced as one of routine, the purpose of which was to make contact; but in the situation, a large number of subjects were, of course, discussed. The accounts of the visit which have survived® show that the personal contacts proved disappointing: Mussolini took a thorough dislike to Imrédy, whom he called a “‘falso energico,”’ a dangerous man, “the typical example of a ruler thrown up by a moribund regime,”’ and shared

Ciano’s unfavourable view of Kanya as an “‘old Habsburgist.’’ But he advised Imrédy “to defeat his political opponents by announcing and applying programmes of social reform more radical than those proposed by them,” and it seems likely that his advice had considerable effects on Imrédy, whose Kaposvar programme® contained several points to which Mussolini

had drawn his attention in Rome. Against this, the Duce had to consent, contrary to his original intention,’ to announce that the Rome Protocols remained in force, so far as Italy and Hungary were concerned, and to swallow

a definite refusal from Hungary to leave the League, and to adhere to the

Anti-Comintern Pact. Kanya said that Hungary, “‘could not afford to antagonise France, nor especially Britain.’’® But the main subject of discussion was, of course, the Yugoslav question.

The Hungarians duly promised not to take the initiative against Czechoslovakia; they would only intervene “‘shortly after the conflict had been begun

by Germany.” But they still thought that Yugoslavia would attack all the same, unless they had a military guarantee from Italy, and this the Italians refused to give. All they would do was to tell Stoyadinovié that Italy was

‘favourable to an increase in Hungarian power,” and according to one 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. I, 284. ° Ciano Papers, p. 213; cf. also Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 260. * This is not recorded in the Ciano Papers, but Ciano included it in his message to Villani

(Diary, 21st June).

4 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 215. 5 These include the official account in the Ciano Papers (pp. 227-9); the much more lively comments in the Ciano Diary (18th to 20th July); an account sent by Mackensen from Rome

(Doc. Secr., No. 19; Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 296); another report by von Plessen (Doc. G.F.P., D. I, 795) and a telegram from him (Doc. Secr., No. 20; Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 213); yet another account given by Attolico to Weizsacker (Doc. Secr., No. 21); some information screwed by Werkmeister out of Imrédy after the event (id., No. 22; Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 214, 215): a note by Woermann (N.G. 2390); and finally a few remarks made by Imrédy at his trial. 5 See below, p. 306.

* From the Plessen Report. Italy at first thought that the Rome Protocols were dead, but Imrédy said that while he honestly wished to collaborate with Germany, he did not want to come completely under her influence, politically and economically. * Id. Kanya, it is true, told Werkmeister the opposite.

EYES RIGHT 235 version to “use their influence on both Belgrade and Bucharest that they should remain neutral in case of a Hungaro-Czechoslovak conflict.’ The Hungarians were obviously exceedingly disappointed with the Italians, who, they felt, had completely thrown them over for the Yugoslavs.? Kanya repeated that Hungary would not take the initiative against Czecho-

slovakia, but only intervene ‘‘shortly after the conflict had been begun by Germany.” But he still thought that Yugoslavia would attack her all the same, unless someone would give her a military guarantee. Ciano tried to reassure him by reading out the record (so far as it concerned Hungary) of his last conversation with Stoyadinovic, but this still left him unsatisfied. And

after this meeting the whole party went round to the German Ambassador in Rome, von Mackensen, to beg him to find out what Italy really meant to do if Hungary attacked Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, Hungary. Csaky, who did the talking on this occasion, argued vehemently that when the crisis broke out, no Hungarian Government would be able to remain passive, particularly as Poland would intervene at once. Public opinion would force them to move, and the Regent, he hinted, might be difficult to restrain. Again, when the party had returned to Hungary, Imrédy told Werkmeister that Hungary could only enter into war against Czechoslovakia “in agreement with Germany.” In that case, Italy would have to make up her mind, and Yugoslavia would not dare move. The Germans, however, did not take the hint; indeed, neither they nor the Italians—so far as the records show—held any further direct conversations with the Hungarians on the critical issue during the four weeks which followed the Rome visit. The Germans presumably thought it useless to take any more steps before the State visit, which had been fixed for 22nd August and was thus now almost due. All they did during this month was to make certain further enquiries in Belgrade and Budapest. These satisfied them that neither Roumania nor Yugoslavia would intervene in a localised

conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, a Foreign Ministry memorandum, drawn up on 18th August,* in preparation

for the visit, concluded that if Hungary made an unprovoked attack on Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Roumania ‘“‘could hardly evade fulfilling their treaty obligations towards Czechoslovakia.” The memorandum ended:

“One can therefore only give Hungary the same advice which she received in Rome: to await Czechoslovak provocation as pretext for a conflict in case of a German-Czech conflict, and thus smooth the way for the Roumanians and Yugoslavs to evade their treaty obligations. Help on which one could not count, and which only brought us new enemies, would be no advantage to us.” The month was not, however, one of stagnation, for developments were

now taking place in two different fields. On 26th July the impending departure of the Runciman Mission was announced in terms which seemed fairly hopeful for Hungary: Lord Halifax told Parliament that the idea of the Mission had arisen out of the German-Czech dispute, to which its terms 1 The weaker version is Ciano’s direct MS.; the stronger, von Plessen’s report, drawn up after conversation with Ciano. 2 Von Plessen’s comment on the visit was that the Hungarians probably went home feeling that Italy’s interest in Hungary had abated and that for Italy the Rome-Berlin Axis came first, the anti-Comintern Pact and her relations with Yugoslavia next, and Hungary only after that. 3 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 361, and Doc. Secr., No. 24. The two texts do not entirely agree.

236 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH , of reference were therefore limited, but he mentioned also that Czechoslovakia contained not only a German minority but also “‘other populations,

such as the Polish and Hungarians.”+ The Czech reply accepting the Mission referred, incidentally, to “‘nationalities’’ in the plural.’ Both the Poles and the Hungarians moved according to plan, the Poles

on 27th July, the Hungarians on 3rd August, asking that Lord Runciman should consider the case of their minorities when he dealt with that of the Sudeten Germans. Both countries got replies, first verbal and then in writing, that the mission had been undertaken on the invitation of the Czechoslovak Government and with the concurrence of the Sudetendeutsch Party, and an

analogous procedure would presumably have to be followed if the case of other minorities was taken up.? Vansittart, who saw Barcza, told him, how-

ever, that while Runciman’s terms of reference related to the Sudeten Germans, he would naturally also interest himself in the Hungarians, and in the view of H.M. Government ‘“‘all advantages which the Czechoslovak Government conceded to the German minority would be automatically

applicable to the Hungarians also.”* The Polish Ambassador got an analogous reply from Mr. Orme Sargent.?

After this, however, the news got steadily less encouraging. On 5th August Mr. Newton told Count Janos Esterhazy, the leader of the Magyar minority in Slovakia, that ““he was convinced that the German minority would get the territorial autonomy for which they were asking, but was sure that the Magyars would get considerably less.”® A private German report suggested that Lord Runciman “‘attached no real value to negotiating” with

minorities other than the German,’ and although he did see the Magyar leaders, Esterhazy, Jaross and Szill6 twice (on Ilth and 25th August respectively), when they claimed equal treatment, he told them that his terms of reference did not exceed mediation between the Czechs and the Germans

and that he could not negotiate with the Magyars.® (His final published report, in fact, contained no reference to these interviews, nor to the very existence of the non-German minorities.) The Czechoslovak Government had naturally taken advantage of this to forget its former assurances that

any concessions made to the Germans would be extended to the other minorities, and the Germans themselves took the same line: so far as the ample documents show, the Sudeten Party leaders, in all the prolonged negotiations in which they were engaged during August, never once mentioned

anyone but themselves. The Foreign Office even reproached K4nya for his “aggressive tone’’ and asked him not to make such far-reaching demands of Czechoslovakia,’ and when, just before the Kiel visit, he wired to London

1 Press of 26th July. |

2 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. II, 556. * The Poles’ written answer was delivered on 30th July (see Doc. Brit. F.P., II. IL, 612); the Hungarians’ on 10th August. Unfortunately, the British documents do not reproduce either of these important texts. * The British documents, unfortunately, contain no reference to this most important interview. Lajos reproduces the statement from the report sent at the time by Barcza, and M. Barcza has confirmed it to me. Later, as we shall see, the Hungarians invoked it several times, and the British never denied that it had been made. 5 Doc. Brit. F.P., loc. cit. The Pole had called back to explain that Poland was not asking for mediation, although she was insisting on equal treatment. 7 Doc. G.FP., D. II, 336. 8 Lajos.

® Doc. G.F.P., D. I, 395.

EYES RIGHT 237 that although the visit would necessarily have a certain political significance,

his Government did not propose to conclude any treaty or other political agreement, his Legation told him that the Foreign Office did not believe this, but thought that Hungary had ‘“‘more far-reaching hidden designs.’”! Nevertheless, the developments in the Czechoslovak situation brought about by the German demands, and the British endeavours to meet them, were relevant to the remaining series of developments during the month. More constructive than the Germans, the Italians had mediated further talks (initially in Bucharest) between Hungary and Roumania, the object of which was undoubtedly to induce the two countries to agree between themselves on

a formula over the rearmament-non-aggression-minorities complex. As Yugoslavia was already prepared to accept a bilateral formula, if Roumania followed suit, Czechoslovakia would be left isolated. M. Comnéne was not so complaisant as Stoyadinovié but did, on 4th August, publish a ‘“‘Minorities Statute.”” This contained nothing to which Roumania was not already

bound under her Minorities Treaty, and no guarantee that it would be fulfilled better than the Treaty had been, but Kanya now declared himself ready to initial an agreement with both Yugoslavia and Roumania covering the recognition of rearmament and the non-aggression declaration, with a promise that the minority question should be settled later, this to be published

only after the Czech situation has been “‘clarified,’’ or, alternatively, if Czechoslovakia agreed to the more far-reaching demands which Hungary was making of her (privately, of course, the Hungarians were determined not to make proposals which the Czechs could accept). - The Bucharest negotiations were broken off owing to the illness of the Hungarian representative, but the conversations were resumed in Budapest.

It appears that both Roumania and Yugoslavia were prepared, for their own parts, to accept Kanya’s formula, but Roumania, at least, refused to sign the declaration unless Czechoslovakia agreed with Hungary. By midAugust the Hungarians were demanding from Czechoslovakia all “‘constitutional, legislative and administrative” (from the other two she had asked only ““administrative’’) ““measures to permit the Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia the free development of their political, cultural and economic life.” The Czechs were rejecting the latter part of this sentence, or alternatively demanding reciprocity for the Slovak minority in Hungary.® The situation on 19th August was that the matter was to be rediscussed at the Bled meeting of the Little Entente, at which the Italian and Hungarian ministers in Yugoslavia were to be present as “‘observers.”” The meeting was to open on the 21st—the day before the Hungarian visitors were due to arrive at Kiel.

This was the situation when the great State visit opened; but before describing this we must mention one surreptitious move made by Hungary in July. In its early days, the counter-revolution had carried through many of its foreign political operations, notably those conducted against Austria in 1920-21, by means of irregular “‘bands.’’ These had at the time often been almost the only forces which Hungary could muster, but they also had

the advantage that the Government could disavow their activities while declaring itself unable to control them. The old bands had been liquidated in the Bethlen era, but in the spring

13 Doc. Sz. I. MS. * Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 216. G.F.P., D. V, 219 and 220.

238 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of 1938 the idea occurred to certain circles that the method of band warfare could perhaps be used in Slovakia and Ruthenia.1. The idea was dropped at the time, but in July” Ivan Héjjas, a one-time leader of the most famous of the old bands, the “Ragged Guard’? (Rongyos Garda), with a crony of his, Béla Somogyi (who, incidentally, was Mme Horthy’s lawyer), came forward with a proposal to revive it, nominally as a purely unofficial body, which the Government could disavow at pleasure. Actually, of course, the Government financed the enterprise, the link being supplied by Kozma (whose special hobby the Slovak and Ruthene question had always been), who volunteered to take responsibility and to accept disgrace, and even prosecution, if things

went wrong. General Homlok acted as liaison officer with the Honvéd Ministry. Not many of the old members® were available, but a few veterans were got together to form a nucleus, and the personnel was made up chiefly from high school students, particularly from the agricultural college in Magyarovar

and the School of Mines in Sopron; others were younger still, mere boys. But the organisers got to work with a will, and promised to have a serviceable force available within a few weeks. It was to be officered by reserve officers.

Both sides had made great preparations for the Kiel visit. The Hungarian party consisted of the Regent and Mme Horthy, Imrédy and his wife, Kanya,

Ratz, Sztdjay (who had joined them en route) and a large diplomatic and military staff, the former headed by Csaky, the latter by Lajos KeresztesFischer; a host of journalists was, of course, tagging behind. The Germans had prepared for their guests an unparalleled display of ostentation, designed (this was hardly a secret) not so much for their own beautiful eyes as to impress the outer world and especially to over-trump the reception given shortly before by the French Government to the British King and Queen. Everything was deliberately planned to recall, but overshadow, the French arrangements: more flags, more drinks, more tanks, bigger and better elephants in every respect. But ingenious consideration had also been paid to the Regent’s feelings. He was to be allowed once again to feel under his feet the waves which he so dearly loved. The cruiser, the launching of which was to constitute the opening ceremony, was to be christened by the name, famous in Danubian history, of Prince Eugen.* The party arrived at Kiel on the morning of the 22nd. Hitler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and Admiral Raeder were there to welcome them, with others in attendance, and on the first day everything went well. The weather was cloudless, the champagne bottle, dexterously wielded by Mme Horthy,

smashed at the first crack. The party then put to sea to watch a naval review and manceuvres which lasted until evening. But already that evening a cloud was cast over the proceedings. It came * The Szalasi Diary mentions (on the strength of a report from Szabo, in Rome) that the plan, of which, incidentally, Szalasi expressed disapproval, was mentioned on the occasion of Beck’s visit to Rome. * The following paragraphs and later passages on the activities of the Ragged Guard are from private sources connected with that organisation. * The backbone of the old Guard had consisted of the remnants of two Szekel divisions of the old army, who had fought against the Roumanians when they entered Transylvania, and could thus not return to their old homes. * Actually, the name had particularly bitter associations for Hungary, and the Hungarians had tried without success to get it altered. It is believed that the name was chosen, not as an insult to them but as a compliment, by a bad historian. The name originally intended had been Tegethoff; this had been dropped out of deference to Italian feelings.

EYES RIGHT 239 from Bled. Bakach-Bessenyey had at last come to terms with the Foreign Ministers of the Little Entente. After making it clear that Hungary would accept from Czechoslovakia nothing short of the constitution of the Magyar minority there as a Volksgruppe—and being, of course, refused'—he had secured acceptance of a formula which stated*® that the negotiations had: “permis d’arriver a des accords qui comportent une renonciation réciproque 4 tout recours a la force entre la Hongrie et les Etats de la Petite-Entente et

une reconnaissance de la part des trois Etats de l’égalité de droit de la Hongrie en matiere d’armements.”’ “Certaines autres questions en cours de la discussion, en vue de déblayer

le terrain pour permettre le développement de rapports de bon voisinage entre la Hongrie et les trois Etats de la Petite Entente n’ayant pas encore pu étre résolues, la publication des dits accords n’a pu encore avoir lieu.” Nevertheless, the communiqué went on, the four States had agreed to publish simultaneously, at Bled and in Budapest, an identical communiqué on the state reached by the negotiations. The “other questions under discussion’”’ were those of the minorities: the negotiations were to be continued between the Hungarian Government on the one hand, and M. Stoyadinovic¢, acting for the Little Entente, on the other.®

This text, as will be seen, lends itself to two possible interpretations. The one, which was afterwards publicly given by the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry, claiming to speak in the name of the Little Entente, linked the two

obligations in the first paragraph in a sort of inner bracket, as already settled. Under this interpretation the three Little Entente States had now recognised Hungary’s right to rearm, and she had already bound herself to renounce force towards them (and they towards her). The minority agreements were to follow at leisure, but failure to agree over them would not invalidate the other undertakings. The alternative interpretation—the Hungarian—was that the agreements, which were three and not one,* would enter into force, as between Hungary and each of the three other States separately, when Hungary had agreed with

each on all three points. Her title to rearm had been hers since the 1932 Resolution, and was absolute: the internal bracket and the mutual interdependence were between the other two questions. She had, at the moment of signing, declared that she accepted as satisfactory the minorities position in Yugoslavia and Roumania, and therefore regarded the non-aggression obligation as now in force between herself and those two States. She had not agreed with Czechoslovakia and was therefore not bound towards her. It seems that Stoyadinovié had agreed to accept the latter interpretation’:

in fact, he agreed a few days after to a formal request from Hungary to regard the agreement as binding between the two countries.° Even so, 1 This from M. Krofta’s account of the meeting (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. 1, 690). It is, however, difficult to understand how M. Krofta could seriously argue that this was “‘more than the Reich Government has asked on behalf of the Sudeten Germans.”’ 2 The text which follows is that issued in the Little Entente communiqué on the night of the

oe Krofta, Brit. Doc., loc. cit. On 26th Kanya told Ribbentrop that Stoyadinovic had provisionally signed the agreement for Roumania and Yugoslavia, but not for Czechoslovakia. 4 Interestingly, while the official French text writes “‘accords” in the plural, the Pester Lloyd’s German text writes ‘‘ein Abkommen”’ in the singular. 5 He gave Bakach-Bessenyey a private assurance to that effect (Persona], Bakach-Bessenyey and Apor to C. A. M.).

® Sz. I. MS. ,

240 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH he had not, as Ciano gaily boasted! entirely jettisoned his partners, for if M. Krofta is to be believed,” the three Little Entente States had signed a secret protocol reaffirming that the obligation of mutual assistance between them

remained valid if one of them was attacked by Hungary. M. Comnéne refused repeated requests to go as far as Stoyadinovic, and apparently officially accepted the alternative interpretation from the first.* But this mattered little to the Hungarians if they and the Yugoslavs could use their own interpretation. As the text agreed contained two slight modifications of Kanya’s formula, Bakach-Bessenyey had to telephone to Budapest for authorisation to sign, which Apor had to give him, Kanya being out at sea and out of reach. The signature was thus actually given before the yacht returned to harbour. Then, however, it was retrospectively sanctioned by Kanya, with the approval of Imrédy and Horthy.* The Germans had of course received reports of the telephone conversations (and presumably not only those of the Hungarians), and already on that evening were perplexed and sullen’; and the next day the storm burst. The party had gone off on a trip to Heligoland, and the occasion was taken to hold the decisive conversations. They began with Hitler taking Horthy aside, while Ribbentrop at the same time talked to Imrédyand Kanya.°®

| Neither conversation was happy. Ribbentrop seems to have opened by

attacking Kanya, “‘most hotly, in a tone as though Hungary had stabbed Germany in the back’’’ for the Bled Agreement, which he interpreted as “blocking the road to intervention in Czechoslovakia and making it morally more difficult for the Yugoslavs to leave their Czech allies in the lurch... . The unprejudiced reader would say to himself that Hungary was dissociating herself from the German-Czech political conflict® and in effect abandoning revision, since he who did not help went away empty-handed.” 1 Diary, 24th to 25th August. * Doc. Brit. F.P., loc. cit. 8 In his Preludi he not only writes (p. 67) that he accepted the formula with the full consent of Prague, but later (pp. 73-4) gives an interpretation which even outdoes that given above. 4 Personal, Bakach-Bessenyey and Apor. 5 Lajos. 8 The following paragraphs have had to be pieced together from many sources, which differ

on certain, mostly inessential, points of detail, but agree closely enough on the main features, except, indeed, on the central point of what exactly the Germans offered the Hungarians. Here I have simply to state the discrepancy. The only documentary account from the German side

is the memorandum drawn up by Weizsacker on the day of the conversations (Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 383). It is presumably accurate as far as it goes, but confusingly drafted and devotes only a few lines to the Hitler-Horthy conversation, at which Weizsdcker was, of course, not present. A few remarks were also made by Weizsdcker and his friends at the Ministries Trial. Ribbentrop at his trial was pressed so hard by the prosecutor (Sir D. Maxwell-Fyfe) that such information as he might have given was lost forever to history. The surviving fragments are in Nur. Trial, X, 227-8.

From the Hungarian side, Horthy’s main account is given in op. cit., pp. 199-200. He also gave C. A. M. another version (almost identical with that in his memoirs) in 1945. Neither ‘Béla’? nor Lajos gives any detailed account, although they agree that “‘neither the Regent nor the Hungarian statesmen were willing at any time to give Germany armed support in an attack on Czechoslovakia.’” The Sz. I. MS. passes over the visit altogether. Barczy’s account is based partly on what Imrédy told the Ministerial Council on his return, partly on verbal information, some of it probably from the Regent. He does not distinguish between his different sources. The prosecution at the trial of Imrédy passed over the visit quickly and the defence was allowed,

or took, no opportunity to dwell on it. The best recorded of all the interviews is that between Hitler and Ratz, who told his story twice: once in June 1941 to Szalasi, who recorded it in his Diary, and once in what was presumably an official minute which is reproduced by Nagy, Végzetes

Esztendék, p. 23. The two agree very closely. ? Lajos. ° The translation in the Doc. G.F.P. says ‘‘moving away from the German-Czech political orbit,’ which is, of course, complete nonsense.

EYES RIGHT 241 Kanya replied with a long discourse explaining that the Agreements, on the contrary, protected Hungary against Yugoslavia, while leaving her hands

free vis-a-vis Czechoslovakia. When Ribbentrop said that he was ‘‘unconvinced’’ by this interpretation, Kanya, who disliked the German intensely and despised him as an amateur, could not restrain his sarcastic tongue, and said:

“Ich erklare es noch einmal, ganz langsam. ... Vielleicht hat es jetzt sogar der Herr Ribbentrop verstanden.’’! This famous mot, which soon ran round Hungary like wildfire, had far-

reaching and unhappy effects; for Ribbentrop thenceforward not only returned Kanya’s dislike with interest, but extended his antipathy to the whole of Hungary. Intensely for several months, and to a lesser extent up to 1945,

Hungary was fighting against the legacy left by this remark, and in general by the attitude of the Hungarians on the Kiel visit. In any case, said Kanya, it was too late to argue whether the Agreements were “‘opportune”’ or not, since they had been reached and approved, and were to be published that afternoon. The discussion then turned on what Weizsacker calls “‘the Czechoslovak problem,” and here we are faced with a direct conflict of evidence; although either version shows the Germans failing inexplicably to follow the line indicated in their own memorandum. According to Weizsdcker, Ribbentrop only “asked what Hungary’s attitude would be if the Fiihrer were to carry out his decision to answer a new provocation from Czechoslovakia by force

of arms.’ On the other hand, all Hungarian sources, written and oral, including communications made in strict confidence by one Hungarian to another, are unanimous in stating that Germany asked for Hungary’s armed participation, in alliance with Germany, in the attack’; and in face of their unanimous testimony it must be accepted that this was the impression which the Hungarians got, even if the Germans did not mean to give it. And that the German attitude was not so academic as Weizsdcker’s memorandum would suggest is surely brought out by his own evidence that when the Hungarians hesitated, Ribbentrop said that if they wanted revision they must take advantage of the favourable opportunity and participate actively themselves.

The Hungarians, however, hesitated. Their own records of their reply may be summed up in the words that they refused the offer on the grounds of their insufficient armaments. The German record bears this out (according to this, the Hungarians said that their rearmament had only just started, and would take a year or two to complete) and they adduced the danger of their unprotected flanks. They must have a guarantee of Yugoslavia’s neutrality.° Ribbentrop argued that Yugoslavia would not “march straight into the jaws of the Axis,’”? and neither would Roumania, France nor Britain move. 1 Personal, Bakach-Bessenyey and Horthy to C. A. M. In the course of further conversa tion he is alleged also to have said: ‘‘So gescheit wie Sie, janger Mann, bin auch ich.”” (SzegediMaszak to C. A. M.)

2 So Ratz said to Szalasi: ““Imrédy, on Kanya’s advice, refused Ribbentrop’s offer of an alliance. ... Time would show who was right: Imrédy, or his critics, who said that he had missed an unique opportunity to recover Hungary’s historic frontiers.” Guderian, too, writes categorically that Hitler ‘“‘had hoped to get Horthy to consent to a military alliance” (Erinnerungen eines Soldatens, p. 49).

3 The Germans’ phrase here is ‘“‘wenn Ungarn nach Norden und eventuell nach Osten

marschiere.”? This is somewhat elliptical, as there was, apparently, no suggestion that Hungary should attack Roumania. But the Hungarians may well have said that they must also have some protection or guarantee for their eastern flank. R

242 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH At the same time, he evaded the Hungarians’ reasonable question, when they

would be wanted to move, by saying that the moment would depend on Czech provocation and could not be fixed in advance. The Hungarians’ reply thus, according to the Germans, “remained conditional’; the Hungarians themselves believed that it had constituted a definite refusal. ‘‘No definite political basis for this, the exact moment of the Hungarian intervention, was reached.’ Yet on one point, the roles were curiously reversed. When Ribbentrop asked what, in that case, was the purpose of Staff talks, the Hungarians still wanted “‘a mutual inventory of military material and preparedness for the Czechoslovak conflict.” Thus this conversation, which should have been so important, ended in little more than lost tempers and mutual misunderstanding. The conversation between Hitler and Horthy did not go off much better. Weizsacker’s short note on it does not indicate what proposals Hitler made to the Regent; but the accounts given by Horthy, both at the time and long after, are unvarying and categoric. According to these, Hitler opened the conversation, without preliminaries, by explaining his plan for attacking and dismembering Czechoslovakia—‘“‘the whole of Operation Griin”’ (according to Barczy, he even named the approximate date—October) and asked whether

| Hungary would be willing to participate by attacking Slovakia simultaneously —RHorthy definitely says that—“‘leaving it to be tacitly understood that Hungary would keep the territories acquired by her.” Weizsacker’s note of Horthy’s reply says that Horthy ‘‘used much more definite language’ (sc., than Kanya to Ribbentrop). ‘“‘He did not wish to conceal his misgivings about the attitude of England, but he wished to place on record the Hungarian intention of participating.” He was less sceptical than his Ministers, “who realised more clearly the direct danger to Hungary’s unprotected flanks.”

Horthy’s account, however (which all the ex post facto evidence bears out), gives a very different impression: that he returned a regretful but firm refusal, on the grounds that Hungary did not possess the military forces to

undertake the operation.”, He maintained this refusal even when Hitler promised to supply Hungary with arms. Weizsacker’s brief reference to Horthy’s misgivings about the attitude of Great Britain also notably fails to do justice to what really passed. Actually, Horthy warned Hitler not to undertake the operation at all, because in his belief it would lead to a world war, and Germany would be defeated, because

she would find the British Navy against her. Britain would assemble a coalition, and although she often lost battles, she always ended by winning her wars. The Fuhrer took this extraordinarily ill, even interrupting Horthy with the words: “Unsinn! Schweigen Sie!”” Whereupon Horthy broke off the conversation, because “he was, after all, Head of a State, and it was not seemly that he should be spoken to like that.” So this interview ended no more happily than the other. In the afternoon, Hitler tried his own hand with the smaller fry. He left Kanya out of it (to the old man’s annoyance), but talked to Imrédy and Ratz. How far he had altered his own mind since the morning, it is impossible to * “Horthy wollte ... die ungarische Absicht der Beteiligung erklart zu haben.’ The phrase is obscure, but the English translation in the Doc. G.P. ‘“‘made it clear that Hungary intended to co-operate” is certainly too strong. * His ipsissima verba, given to C. A. M. in 1945, were: ‘‘Ja, sehr gerne, aber wir haben leider keine Armee und ohne Armee kann man keinen Krieg fiihren.”’

EYES RIGHT 243 say: but he now told Imrédy that he was not asking Hungary to undertake any definite obligations at that moment; only to be prepared to come in at some later moment, the precise date of which he did not himself know. She was free to act as she pleased; but if she wanted to share in the feast she must help with the cooking of it. If she wanted staff talks, he had no objections.

He took a similar line with Ratz, to whom he said that ‘‘the Reich had no need of direct help from Hungary.”’ All the same, he recommended the Hungarians to take this opportunity of recovering Slovakia-Ruthenia, to none of which did he himself lay claim: although if the Hungarians did not take Pressburg, he would take it himself, since under no circumstances would he leave it in the hands of the Czechs [sic]. To Ratz, too, he argued that the moment was exceptionally favourable: he was sure that neither England, France nor the U.S.S.R. would intervene if he acted now, whereas if he waited, they might do so. He “‘asked that the Hungarian Army should join in settling accounts with Czechoslovakia,’ and even made the remarkable suggestion that Hungary might provide the pretext by picking a quarrel with the Czechs and getting them to attack her. He would then “‘at once mobilise and overrun Bohemia.” “Germany,” he added, “‘would appear in quite a different light before the world if she did not always play the role of the aggressor who takes the initiative.” But he got very little out of the Hungarians. Imrédy expressed his relief that he was not being presented with “‘ultimative demands” and said that he was convinced that Hungary would not be able to intervene until fourteen days after the outbreak of hostilities. Ratz, although he seems himself to have been of another mind, felt that “after Imrédy had refused the offer of an alliance,’ he must back him up, and said that Hungary was militarily so unprepared that she would be unable to march with Germany, much less figure as the kid whose bleating was to attract the tiger.

So the conversations ended in mutual ill-humour; and worse was to follow. The next day the whole party travelled to Berlin. By this time the Bled communiqué had been published. It was obviously in the interest of the Czechs and of their friends to make it appear that their interpretation of the Bled Agreement was the only possible one, and above all, that which was accepted by the Hungarians. The whole inspired Press of Czechoslovakia and Roumania, and of their friends in Western Europe, had that morning been blaring out this interpretation of the Agreements, and hailing Hungary as practically an ally’; and, as crowning move, the Czechoslovak and Roumanian Ministers? now appeared among the group of diplomats meeting the train. It was an ingenious trick. It added to the ill-humour of Hitler, who, like : Ribbentrop, then and ever after believed that the Bled Agreements were an anti-German move?®: and it put Kanya in the awkward position of having either to accept a role which he had never meant to fill, or to disavow it explicitly—also a course much less agreeable to him than the nice ambiguity which he had hoped to preserve. His hand thus forced, he had an exceedingly 1 One English newspaper actually headed its account of the Bled meeting “Little Entente

rie Yugoslav Minister was on leave at the time (Fotitch, op. cit., p. 15). 3 Cf. his interview with Csaky, Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 272. Baron von Erdmannsdorff tells me that Hitler was so angry that he at first wished to have the two Ministers’ invitations to the Opera

that evening withdrawn. But his fury was nothing to Horthy’s when the Czechs proposed to have the boat on which he was returning to Budapest from Vienna escorted by Czech monitors past Pozsony (Bratislava), the ancient Hungarian capital, now in Czech hands.

244 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH rude article about the two Ministers telegraphed to the Pester Lloyd, and spent the following morning in giving his own interpretation of the Agreements, very exactly and with great decision, to a Press Conference. No agreement, he said, had been reached with Czechoslovakia, and although that State had hitherto declared Hungary’s demands as regards minorities to be

unacceptable, Hungary would maintain them “under all circumstances,’” In the afternoon he sought out Ribbentrop again, and the record of this interview,? as of others which took place on that day and the next,° and of the final conversations which took place between Erdmannsdorff and the Hungarians on their way home,* shows the Hungarians making almost

passionate efforts to explain to the Germans that their rejection of the latter’s offer was in no way due to ill-will, or lack of enthusiasm for revision, nor to be taken as meaning that they would repeat it if it was made to them again at some later date, when they were properly prepared. Even now, they would not stand aside if the dangers which they foresaw could be banished. Kanya told Ribbentrop that if the conflict could be localised, Hungary would be ready to act by lst October (which seems to have been the earliest date at

which the Hungarians expected the operation to begin).° Imrédy said that Hungary ‘“‘was definitely determined to take part in a revisionist campaign against Czechoslovakia.” But all the Hungarians consistently maintained their conviction (which was apparently based on their diplomatic reports) that at least France would certainly intervene in a conflict.£ On this point they refused to be shaken.’ The lesser Hungarians did not openly associate themselves with the opinion so unflatteringly expressed by Horthy to Hitler that the result of a world war would be the defeat of Germany; but they dared not themselves risk being involved in such a war, nor move at all, even if the Great Powers stood aside, unless they were quite certain that Yugoslavia would not attack them. Imrédy and Ratz, as well as Kanya, repeated this most firmly and refused to be convinced by the Germans’ assurances that Yugoslavia had already been squared.®

Most of these protestations fell on noticeably unsympathetic ears. Ribbentrop was already furious with Imrédy and Kanya over the Bled Agreements, and Hitler shared his displeasure over this point, especially after 1 This statement, incidentally, evoked an official communiqué from Prague, claiming to speak

in the name of the Little Entente, in the opposite sense. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 390. 3 These included conversations between Imrédy and Weizsacker on the 26th (id., 392) and

between the Regent and Goring, and Goring and Imrédy, on the same day. The interview

between Hitler and Horthy on the 25th ran along different lines, as described below. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 402. This was a personal letter from Erdmannsdorff to Weizsicker. 6 Op. cit., 390. The operative words here are surely “‘a German-Czech conflict,” by contrast with the ‘big war’? which, according to Jodl’s diary (Nur. Trial, I], 15; 1780 P.S.), the Hungarians had arrived expecting, and for which they were not ready.

6 According to Barcza (MS.) he had reported from London that Britain was not ready to fight, but Khuen-Hédervary had reported from Paris that France would do so. The records show Imrédy as regularly mentioning France only.

7 Kordt at the Ministries Trial (7th June 1948) said that Weizsacker had told him that the Hungarians had ‘“‘to some extent retreated and vacillated’’ when Hitler told them that the Western Powers would not come in. But the documents show that they maintained to the verge of rudeness (and beyond it) that Hitler was mistaken. Imrédy told this to the Germans four times.

§ According to Erdmannsdorff (loc. cit.) the Hungarians did not take Mussolini’s promise to prevent a Yugoslav attack on Hungary very seriously, as they thought that the Italian Army would be tied down on the French frontier. They also seem to have had some doubts whether Stoyadinovic’s position in his own country would be secure if he failed to back up Czechoslovakia against Hungary.

EYES RIGHT 245 | the incident of the diplomats on the platform.t Meanwhile, he had his | private grudge against Horthy, and this was intensified when the two men | met again for a further conversation on the 25th. It seems that more than one of the very considerable number of Germans who were intensely anxious that Hitler should be prevented from attacking Czechoslovakia had conceived the idea of asking Horthy to use his influence in support of their view. There is some evidence that Admiral Canaris, and perhaps others also, had spoken to some Hungarians in Budapest in this sense before the visit,” and Weizsacker had certainly raised it when the party arrived in Kiel. According to his story, it was in obedience to his representations that Horthy had spoken so strongly

to Hitler on the Grille.* Brauchitsch belonged to this group, and Horthy had recounted to him the unpromising results of his attempted intervention. Brauchitsch had apparently invoked Horthy’s opinion in a further conversation with Hitler, who, when he met Horthy again alone, took him to task with the utmost rudeness for having talked to his Generals behind his back.

Generals had nothing to say: decisions were for him, the Fuhrer, alone. Horthy replied that in his opinion this was “no happy way” of running a State; and in any case, he, the Regent of Hungary, said what he liked to whom he liked. After this, the rest of the interview had failed to advance understanding.

Hitler and Ribbentrop accordingly made no effort to renew their offer, to find a compromise agreement which the Hungarians could have accepted,

or to smooth away their difficulties. In fact, the only man among the Germans to show himself at all constructive or helpful was Goring, who, although he was convinced that Yugoslavia would not intervene, yet promised

to have another try to get Stoyadinovic’s attitude “‘clarified’’ and to let the Hungarians know the result. At the same interview it was further agreed that Lajos Keresztes-Fischer should, after all, go to Berlin in the near future

for staff talks, and Imrédy consented to allow the Germans to put up a direction-finding station in Hungary, and to give facilities for landing and

first-aid repair to any German aircraft driven down from over Czechoslovakia.4 Géring even showed some understanding for Hungary’s difficulties over armaments, in contrast to the other Germans.° Goring’s friendliness, however, could not alter the fact that the visit, of which the trip to Karinhall had (except for a halt in Nuremberg on the way home) been the last episode, had been thoroughly unsatisfactory for both parties. Since the Germans had, for whatever reason, departed from their previously settled policy so far as to make the Hungarians the offer described above (and it remains a mystery why they did so, particularly since they did 1 Hitler told his chef de protocole, Baron Dornberg, off for having allowed the incident. To prevent the possibility of a repetition, the Hungarians received no diplomatic send-off at all. * Apor to C. A. M. 3 So it would appear from the account in Doc. B.F.P., III. II, App. IV. iv., Horthy does not mention Weizsicker in his memoirs, and told C. A. M. that it was Brauchitsch who had asked him to intervene. But Weizsicker certainly spoke to some Hungarians in the sense in question (Szegedi-Maszak to C. A. M.). « This agreement is also mentioned in the Tombor typescript, which describes it as ““Hungary’s

only military preparation against Czechoslovakia.” It was probably in virtue of this concession that the instructions of 25th August to the German Air Force described Hungary as a “‘benevolent neutral.’’ No document produced by the Army goes so far. 5 In spite of Hitler’s offer, he seems to have been entirely unhelpful to Hungary about armaments. Horthy told C. A. M. that Germany made no effort to remedy Hungary’s weakness by either gift, loan or sale at a reasonable price of arms. Cf. also Imrédy’s complaints, Doc. G.F.P. loc. cit.

246 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH not press it at all hard’), it was obviously galling for them to have it rejected, particularly on the grounds which Horthy, at least, gave. But neither could the Hungarians find any cause for rejoicing. As they explained to Erdmannsdorff on the way home, almost tearfully, it was not that they were against revision, least of all revision at the expense of Czechoslovakia: it was simply that the offer had come when they were not in a position to accept it. And

while genuinely determined not to tie themselves up with Germany (so genuinely that they probably even consciously exaggerated the danger from Yugoslavia, which was their best alibi), they had been far from anxious to lose Germany’s goodwill. Germany was, after all, the only country which had yet offered them any revision at all. They were not prepared to join forces against her with the Little Entente, and were greatly afraid that the Germans might now treat them as having done so. Imrédy, in particular, had been deeply impressed by the might and efficiency of the German Army, as well as by some of Nazism’s domestic achievements, and was only half convinced that he and his colleagues had done the right thing. Actually, some of their fears were exaggerated. Ribbentrop, as we said, never forgave Kanya, nor, indeed, the Hungarians in general, for what had happened; nor, perhaps, did Hitler. But Weizsacker summed up the results of the visit in the perfectly fair words that: ““Although Hungary is at present averse from war, she does not wish to stand aside provided that she can be certain of not having to fight on three fronts. Her readiness for war is thus conditional.’””

Jodi described the Hungarians’ attitude as ‘“‘at least moody” and recorded

that Germany could not count on Hungary’s armed support.? But no Germans treated her as in any way hostile. On the other hand, until Hitler’s volte-face, to be described in due course,

of a month later, the Germans now dropped Hungary right out of their plans. They made further enquiries of Yugoslavia and Roumania, which, although Yugoslavia was as ambiguous as ever, seem to have convinced them that, given their desire to avoid a general war, their old calculation was, after all, correct: it was safer to leave Hungary out of things, at least during the early stages. They also raised in both capitals the question whether the casus foederis would be deemed to have arisen if Hungary allowed

German troops to cross her territory against Czechoslovakia, and receiving answers which, while not definite affirmatives, were also not definite negatives,

dropped the plan (if they had entertained it) of asking Hungary for the permission in question.® Keresztes-Fischer went up to Berlin, as arranged, on 6th September; but the discussions proved totally ineffectual. Halder, who saw him, “‘had been briefed by Jodl on the political attitude of the Fuhrer and especially his order not to give any hint of the exact moment.’”® ’ Barczy records that at the Ministerial Council following his return, Imrédy said that Hungary had been subjected to no sort of pressure, political, military, or diplomatic; and the documents fully bear out this statement.

2 Doc. G.F.P., D. Il, 409. 3 Nur. Trial, XXVIII, 374-6; 1780 P.S.

+ For these, see Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 447, 463: also Doc. B.F.P., III. Il, 795, 774. * Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 412, 442. In face of these records it is hard to regard Krofta’s version, as given to Newton (Doc. B.F.P., III. II, 157), that Yugoslavia and Roumania would “‘regard Hungary as an accomplice and act accordingly” otherwise than as misleading—unless, of course, it was his partners who were misleading him. * F. M. Halder informed Herr Brausch (from whom I have it) that the visit was ‘“‘a purely courtesy one, confined to exchanges of general military experiences.”” Cf. the Germans’ refusal

ial Xo date, in face of a direct request from Mussolini (Doc. G.F.P., D. III, 84; Nur.

EYES RIGHT 247 No significant diplomatic exchanges seem to have taken place at all between Germany and Hungary.

The Germans’ reserve was presumably deepened by the remarkable reception which Hungary accorded to its emissaries on their return. The Hungarian public, which was well aware that Hitler meant soon to “settle accounts” with Czechoslovakia, had waited with bated breath the results of the Kiel conversations. Opinion was, of course, divided, and a certain party had hoped to hear that Hungary had committed herself to Germany’s side

in the coming clash. But much larger, at that particular juncture, was the number of those who hoped the precise opposite. Even many convinced revisionists felt that at that moment, with the Gyér Programme hardly yet more than a plan, anything was better than fighting a war. Moreover, antiGerman feeling had been running very high since the Anschluss and the idea of Hungary’s defying Germany would always be popular. When, therefore,

the country learned what had happened, in the simplified and perhaps technically incorrect but essentially true version that Hungary had been offered a German alliance and had rejected it, a blaze of glory shone out to welcome the returning party which the disappointed rumblings of the malcontents could hardly mar. The personal stock of every member of the party (except, indeed, Ratz, who was thought, not altogether justly, to have been

on the other side) rose with a bound. The Regent acquired a popularity among the working classes which, although it could not be too openly acknowledged at the time and was repudiated retroactively after 1945, lasted

as long as he remained Regent. Kanya had the pleasure of knowing that his witticism at Ribbentrop’s expense was circulating through every café in

Budapest, where delighted coffee-drinkers also pored over a newspaper photograph (which was, indeed, extremely funny) showing him looking at Hitler and Ribbentrop with an expression of puzzled condescension. Imrédy

was, for the moment, the most popular of all, precisely in anti-German circles. Delighted rumours went round of his brushes with the Germans. It was said that he had been treated with studied discourtesy and placed on public occasions after his own Chief of Staff, and even whispered that to show his resentment he had left Germany ahead of the others, only rejoining them in Hungary to arrive with them at Budapest... His enemy, Mecsér, helped him by saying that he had made so bad an impression in Germany that he would be unable to set foot there for thirty years.” As for Kanya, Mecsér said that he was a traitor to Hungary, and he, Mecsér, would attack him openly in Parliament, and, if necessary, “torpedo” him if he did not resign. Another pamphlet, circulated by the Right Radicals, said that the

German Minister had told Horthy that Hungary could not count on

Germany’s support, since her Prime Minister was an English spy.° This adulation was not particularly agreeable to all the recipients of it, who found themselves being féted as national (and international) heroes for something which they had not only not done but been particularly anxious

to avoid being thought to have done: to wit, commit Hungary to an antiGerman combination. And in the case of Imrédy it ended by having the 1 He had in fact gone ahead of the others from Vienna, to transact some business in West

ae had really made a bad impression on Hitler, who called him “the blonde Gandhi,”’ and Csdky, “‘the little Mongol” (Barczy) or Hun (von Erdmannsdorff). Ribbentrop, however, liked mm Baron von Erdmannsdorff tells me that this was complete nonsense.

248 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH | effect opposite to that intended by its authors. This was the outcome of an unfortunate incident, trivial in itself, but fraught with deep consequences. It had been arranged that Imrédy should give an interview to the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who was then touring Central Europe.

At this interview Imrédy seems to have talked rather freely, and he failed to have the record of it checked. The Daily Telegraph published the interview prominently, and the London correspondent of the Budapest Az Est transmitted a summary of it which, as served up by the Az Est on the evening of 2nd September, read like a studied provocation to Germany. Information from “‘the highest official circles’? gave the lie to all reports that any sort of

agreement providing for any kind of co-operation had been concluded between Hungary and Germany. Hungary’s foreign policy was and remained based on peace and justice. Whatever conflict broke out in Europe, her chief aim would be to remain neutral. She sincerely hoped that the problem of the Sudeten Germans would be solved peacefully. Since the Anschluss she had

become “a buffer State against any German ambition to extend German economic influence beyond the Danubian States.’’ She was ‘“‘an obstacle to national socialist expansion,” etc. The German Minister promptly protested, and Imrédy was thrown into

| a state bordering on panic at the thought that he might have spoiled

Hungary’s relations with Germany irremediably. He had the Az Est suspended, and, according to Barczy, wanted to have erased from the

Minutes of the Ministerial Council the record of those remarks which he had made there which were identical with what he had said to the English journalist. As it happened, he was billed to make a big speech at Kaposvar two days later. This was to be mainly concerned with his internal political programme, on which it contained important declarations to which we shall return presently. But he took the occasion to refer also to foreign politics, and to attempt, as far as he could, to redress the balance. The Kiel visit had been “‘a political act the importance of which could not be overemphasised,”’ resting on “mutual confidence, friendship and cordiality.”’ The Bled Agree-

ment had brought Hungary military equality; the world “had now at last understood that Czechoslovakia was not a national State but a multinational one, requiring within its framework quite special regulation of the legal and general position of the different nationalities.”

It may, however, be greatly doubted whether these words allayed Germany’s suspicions of Hungary; and it is certain that throughout the crisis which was now opening Imrédy remained in a state of almost pathological dread of offending the Germans again.

) CHAPTER TWELVE

SPRAT AMONG WHALES TRANGELY enough, in spite of Hitler’s frankness towards Horthy, the

Gime had come back from Berlin still unconvinced that any major

conflict was imminent, and during the next fortnight or so they made

no special preparations for an emergency. The annual manceuvres were due,

as a routine operation, and were being held in the region of, although not directly on, the Slovak frontier. Only four classes (about 40,000 men) had, however, been called up for this purpose, and no additional notices were sent out. Diplomatically, one step forward was taken: on a suggestion made by

Beck on 8th September and accepted next day by Kanya, Hungary and Poland concluded a “‘gentleman’s agreement’? (which was not committed to

paper) “based on the common interest de facto existing at that moment between the two countries, which imposed a need to consult, when either party thought this necessary, with a view to harmonising their respective policies.”? Hungary does not appear to have made any further approaches to Germany, nor even to Italy. The Press naturally gave great prominence to events in Bohemia, and lost no opportunity of reminding the world that Czechoslovakia contained not only a German minority but also a Hungarian one, whose claims would have to be satisfied; but it consistently took the line that once this had been done, Hungary would accept and even welcome the continued existence of Czechoslovakia. And it should be remarked that Imrédy’s Kaposvar speech itself— the only important official statement made during the period—had by no means constituted a complete retractation of the Daily Telegraph interview. While insisting that the normalisation of relations between Hungary and the

Little Entente must depend on the treatment accorded to the Magyar minorities, Imrédy had expressed the hope that the remaining difficulties would be got out of the way and the conditions for normalisation created. Even the famous Times leader of 7th September, which broached the idea of amputation (for the benefit of Germany), was commented in relatively restrained terms, and the next day the Pester Lloyd was still writing that a solution of the Czechoslovak problem could be found on the lines of the Carlsbad Programme, if—as Hungary expected to happen’—the Fourth Plan were enlarged to meet it. On conditions in general in Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Press preserved a moderation which contrasted strikingly with the mud-slinging and Greuelpropaganda in which the Presses of both Germany and Poland were indulging. The Press was still concentrating its courtship on Great Britain, with an exclusiveness which amounted to discourtesy towards Germany, and these appeals reflected what was really still Hungary’s unchanged policy: to secure her objectives, even if these had to be limited ones, through British mediation 1 §z. I. MS. 2 When Kanya read the news of the Fourth Plan, he said to an assistant: ‘Well, we can pack

for Geneva now’ (Szegedi-Maszak to C.A.M.). Beck was equally confident at the time (Lubienski to C. A. M.).

250 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and with British consent. And it was this consideration which caused the Government during this period to confine both the attentions of its Press and its diplomatic representations exclusively to the question of the Magyar minority in Slovakia-Ruthenia, to the entire exclusion of the Slovak and Ruthene questions. It is true that to do otherwise would have been to go further than Germany

herself was going at the time—Hitler himself was still only talking of the Germans; true that the policy was one which could always be dropped later (and was, in part, so dropped) and that many Hungarians never sincerely meant it to be permanent. Nevertheless, it was genuine and deliberate, and the result of a definite decision taken on the initiative of Pal Teleki, who, with Kanya’s support, was able to override the more impulsive wishes of other factors. Teleki would probably have favoured this policy under all circumstances,? on account of his deep-rooted belief in the compulsive power of geographical factors and his scholarly indifference to short-term considerations. He was

quite convinced that the Slovaks were bound to return sooner or later to Hungary, although not on the basis of integral union. But precisely for this reason he thought compulsion unnecessary and even believed that it would be harmful, holding that any attempt to take Slovakia by force would

| generate a national resistance which, in his own words, it would take a , generation to overcome. And in the existing situation he held the limitation

of Hungary’s claims to be imperative. Writings to which he attributed more authority than they could—or did—claim had caused him to believe that public opinion in Great Britain (by which he believed official policy in that

| country to be guided) would accept and even favour the return to Hungary

of the Magyar southern fringe of Slovakia-Ruthenia, and might even accept a clear expression by a non-Magyar people of its desire to return to Hungary, but would strongly oppose a solution by force, open or disguised, and would not easily be convinced that a vote for Hungary by the Slovaks was genuine.

If for this reason alone, Slovakia would have to wait for a later day.

Those writers who, a little later, were so self-righteously branding Hungary with the vulgar and entirely inappropriate name of “‘jackal’’ might in common decency have remembered her repeated appeals to their own country’s sense of justice and the renunciations made by her in that cause of claims which in her own eyes were justified on every score. But at that time not one per cent. of British public opinion had any feeling left for the general applicability of the principles to which the country was nominally pledged and to which it was still paying lip-service. The rest fell only into two schools: the self-approving moralists, who depicted the cause of Czechoslovakia as that of Ormuzd against Ahriman, regarded it as a postulate of

ethics that Czechoslovakia should keep every inch of territory, however acquired and whatever the wishes of its inhabitants, and thought Poland and Hungary moral outcasts for not sinking their own claims in order to make common cause with the Czechs against the Germans; and the “‘realists,’’ who

were only interested in averting a conflict, and were uninterested in any claims not backed by the threat of force. Most members of the Foreign Office itself belonged to one or the other of these two schools; and it should be added that the personal factors in the diplomatic equation of the moment were particularly unfavourable to the success of the Hungarian cause. So slight was the sense of urgency in ’ Following paragraph based on conversations between Teleki and C. A. M.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 251 Hungary itself, that her Minister in London, M. Barcza, had gone on his leave, according to schedule, in mid-August (he only returned to his post, hurriedly, on Kanya’s instructions, on the eve of the Berchtesgaden conversations), leaving in London only a Chargé d’Affaires, who naturally did not possess the easy access to the highest British quarters which a Minister would have commanded. Furthermore, this gentleman, M. Marosy, was a Swabian by origin (he had changed his name from Mengele only a year or two earlier) whose sympathies were inevitably those natural to one of his stock. He did

his duty; but his reports had shown from the first that he did not believe in the possibility of gaining British support,! and this conviction probably undermined his enthusiasm for a task which he considered futile. H.M. Minister in Budapest was Mr. (later Sir Geoffrey) Knox, whose despatches during the crisis leave on the reader the impression that his mind was then chiefly possessed by a lively dislike of Kanya—a feeling which, unfortunately for Hungary, Kanya reciprocated with interest. And he was no more sympathetic towards Hungary, as such, than towards her representa-

tives. While Henderson, in Berlin, was advocating the German cause ad nauseam, and Kennard, in Poland, while hostile enough to Beck as a man, was yet admitting the existence of a Polish case, and even the pragmatic desirability of doing something to meet it, Knox never went further than to write, in chilly terms, that when the crisis was over, and the “‘larger issues”’ out of the way, he would express his views on “‘what support, if any, ought

to be given to the eventual pressure of Hungary’s claims to territorial revision.” At the time (which was the time when the Government had to decide whether those claims were justified or not) he did not propose to ‘“‘weary” the Foreign Office with his views.? Later, as we shall see, he was

active in opposing Hungary’s larger claims, without any corresponding advocacy of her more modest ones.

Marosy’s reports on feeling in England during the opening days of September were consistently pessimistic. Hardly anyone, he wrote, was even mentioning the existence of the Magyar minority in Slovakia. The attitude of the Foreign Office was equally depressing. When Marosy called there on 31st August, he recalled Vansittart’s pronouncement of a month earlier and asked whether it still held good; Mr. Sargent, according to him, “‘said neither

yes nor no, and only remarked that in his view the determination of how much rights were to be granted to the Magyar minority would be a matter for negotiation between the Czech and Hungarian Governments.” When Marosy pressed him, he said that Lord Runciman was an unofficial mediator who had received no instructions from the Foreign Office.® Shortly after, Imrédy allegedly received a letter from a trusted friend in

England, saying that Britain had “‘written Hungary off’ and that “in the - Opinion of the Foreign Office, Hungary would be forced into Germany’s arms by her geographical position.’’* 1 A report by him quoted in the Sz. I. MS. shows that in the summer, when visiting Budapest, he had expressed his pessimism very strongly to Imrédy and Kanya.

2 Doc. Brit. F.P., II. II], 37. Written only on 23rd September and sent by courier, this

despatch was received in London only on the 30th. 3 Sz. I. MS. 4 Before the trial of Imrédy, his lawyer made much play with this letter, which was to be produced as a prime document for the defence. If, however, it was produced at all at the trial,

all mention of it was suppressed. The writer is alleged to have been Mr. Bruce, but if so, it contained only personal impressions, since Mr. Bruce did not call on the Foreign Office during that period.

252 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH These repeated cold douches did not cause the recipients of them to modify

their policy at the time, but obviously weakened their faith in the utility of it when the crisis grew acute and they had to decide whether the hope of obtaining justice from Britain was strong enough to justify them in rejecting positive offers of support from Germany. The period of acute crisis was ushered in on 12th September by Hitler’s truculent Nuremberg speech. Even after this, the Hungarians did not believe

that war would come, for they thought that Britain and France would continue to insist on taking a hand in the settlement, and would eventually force Benes to make Hitler enough concessions for the latter, who, they still thought, would not face a major war, to accept. For that matter, they seem to have thought that Hitler might still content himself with a reorganisation

of Czechoslovakia as a federal State. But now that Hitler was officially claiming “‘self-determination’”? for the Sudeten Germans, and Mussolini backing the demand in terms which did not forget the other nationalities of Czechoslovakia,’ it was essential for the Hungarians to know how they stood

with England. Barcza was cruelly extracted from the Balaton and sent hurrying back to London, while Marosy was sent again to the Foreign Office

| to ask whether Vansittart’s assurance of August still held good, especially

: in view of Sargent’s later hesitations.

He carried out this mission on the afternoon of the 14th, when he

penetrated no further than Mr. Ingram, then head of the Southern Department. Mr. Ingram could not tell him anything officially: his own record of

, the meeting® simply says that he told the Hungarian that he “‘was not

conversant with this aspect of the matter’? but would draw the immediate attention of his superiors to Hungary’s views. According to Marosy, however, he said, “strictly off the record,” that in his view Vansittart’s assurance

. “applied only to the event of autonomy being granted to the Sudeten Germans, not to cession of territory, since Czechoslovakia would be incapable of survival.’’*

Marosy’s telegram reporting this conversation must have reached Budapest almost simultaneously with the announcement that Mr. Chamberlain was flying to Berchtesgaden the next day. The effect of this latter announcement in Hungary was the exact opposite to that alleged by M. Ripka in his interesting work.® As the writer, who was

then in Hungary, can testify, it was received with the deepest relief, and revived all the hopes of a peaceful solution brought about by British mediation. But it made it a matter of the most extreme urgency and importance that Hungary should get satisfactory assurances out of Britain, and the word

went back to Marosy that he was at all costs to get an answer out of the Foreign Office. The British reply “might make the whole difference to Hungary’s attitude in the development of the crisis.” ’ The Hungarian Press of 13th September was still advocating this solution. * The reference is to the communiqué issued on the 13th, at Germany’s request (cf. Ciano Diary, 13th September), which, besides demanding self-determination for the Sudeten Germans, said that in Czechoslovakia the minorities exceeded the Czechs themselves in numbers. > Doc. Brit. F.P., III. I, 1. * Marosy’s telegram has not survived, but a despatch from him, dated the 16th, and referring back to it, 1s in the Sz. I. MS. Kanya passed the remark to Erdmannsdorff on that evening (Doc. G.F.P., D. IJ, 503), on which date he and Imrédy taxed Knox with it, as described below. Marosy says specifically that what Ingram said was “‘off the record ” (fehér asztalon). 5 Ripka, Munich Before and After, p. 116.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 253 It was the more urgent, because the rest of the world was now moving round Hungary. On the 14th Stoyadinovic sent another message to Ciano

that if war broke out Yugoslavia would probably preserve benevolent neutrality towards the Axis and would feel released from all obligations to move against Hungary if only the latter abstained from taking the initiative

against Czechoslovakia, but waited for Germany to move first!; the Hungarians (and the Germans) got the news of this on the 15th, which also

saw the publication of Mussolini’s “Open Letter to Lord Runciman”’ advising him to insist on plebiscites not only for the Sudeten Germans but for all nationalities in Czechoslovakia which asked for them.” Then there were two messages from Beck. In the first he said that he now regarded his ““sentleman’s agreement” with Kanya as formally in force; in the second, he sent word that the British, French and German Governments had all asked

him what Poland’s attitude would be if plebiscites became necessary in Czechoslovakia. He had replied that Poland would strongly insist on a plebiscite in the Polish areas, and he begged Hungary most urgently to take the same line. If she did not “‘step out of her reserve,” she would miss the historic moment. He wanted to know most urgently what Hungary’s attitude was going to be.?®

. Kanya replied that Hungary would certainly demand a plebiscite, and would push her claims to the uttermost. That afternoon, both countries went into action. While Lipski was ringing Weizsacker in Berchtesgaden to say that if the Germans demanded plebiscites for the Sudeten areas, Poland would insist on a plebiscite in the Teschen area, Sztdjay was telling Woermann, also by telephone, and even more strongly, that Hungary would regard any discrimination against her minority as “‘intolerable’’ and would not be

responsible for the consequences, either in Slovakia or in Hungary. The communication was also going to the Western Powers, and was primarily intended for them.* In point of fact, the parallel official démarche could not be made in London

that day, as Barcza was still in the train; he reached London only in the evening, and his telegraphed instructions, supplementing earlier, verbal ones,

caught him up only on the 16th; we shall return later to the story of his démarche. In London, then, all that happened on the 15th was that Marosy sought out Ingram with extreme urgency (he actually caught him in the theatre) and implored him to produce a firm answer, but was again told that he could not have one.® Kanya, however, saw Knox late in the evening, and told him that if Germany demanded a plebiscite, Hungary would make the same demand; questioned, he said that the demand would apply “‘only to regions where there was a Hungarian majority.’’® In reply, he was treated to a dissertation on the difficulties of plebiscites, a subject on which Knox

was anexpert.’ 1 Ciano Papers, p. 232. 2 The letter was unsigned, but the world was given to understand that it emanated from the Duce’s own pen.

_ 3 Both these messages are in the Sz. I. MS. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 477. This is a minute by Woermann, and is dated the 14th, but there is abundant evidence that the time was the afternoon of the 15th, which was certainly when the Poles made their move. The unusual form of a telephonic communication was chosen by Beck to emphasise that Poland was not asking anything, but merely keeping other people informed of what she was doing (Lubienski to C. A. M.). The Poles, also, said that their message was ‘“‘primarily intended for the Western Powers.” 5 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 3.

6 Id., 2. 7 He had been League of Nations Commissioner in the Saar.

254 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH None of these démarches was in time to reach either Chamberlain or Hitler before their meeting, at which, meanwhile, Chamberlain had been behaving in a way which, had the Hungarians been witnesses of it, would have cast them into the profoundest depression. It seems doubtful whether he even really took in the references made by Hitler to those nationalities of Czechoslovakia which were neither Czechs nor Germans, for his speech of

the 28th, on its natural interpretation, must suggest that the non-German minorities were not mentioned at all before Godesberg. His own notes of the Berchtesgaden meeting! show that this was not the case, but they also show that he regarded the question of these peoples as totally unimportant, unless Hitler was backing them. Having drawn to his own satisfaction a line between a demand for self-determination for the Sudeten Germans, which he would not regard as entirely unreasonable, and any further demand, which would mean that Hitler was aiming at the dismemberment of the Czecho-

slovak State, and having got Hitler to say, as he understood him, that he was only interested in the Germans,” he returned to London in innocent triumph to put through, if he could, the amputation of the Sudeten districts; satisfied, apparently, that therewith peace would be saved and justice done. He left behind him, of course, a sorely embarrassed Fuhrer. Considera-

, tion for appearances and international etiquette had compelled Hitler to | concentrate on the Sudeten Germans and on Czechoslovakia’s alliance with

the U.S.S.R. and to disclaim the position of spokesman for the other nationalities. But he had never expected to find himself left in the position of having accepted in final settlement the cession of the Sudeten areas and the remodelling of Czechoslovakia’s alliances. Yet, trapped in his own words, he now had no way of getting out of the deal unless someone else would provide him with an excuse for repudiating it. The only people who could do so—unless the Czechs would provide him with a “‘provocation,”’ which, in view of their extremely cautious behaviour, was unlikely—would be the non-Czech nationalities. If the Slovaks would secede, and/or the Poles and Hungarians overrun Silesia and Slovakia-Ruthenia, Germany could hardly be blamed for picking up the pieces in Bohemia. This meant a complete reversal of his earlier policy towards the two smaller countries; but the old objection to Hungary’s participation may have been somewhat reduced by the better news from Yugoslavia, and in any case that objection was now entirely outweighed by Hitler’s urgent need to have his excuse ready before he and Chamberlain met again. Hitler executed his volte-face very quickly. On the 16th a summary of the Berchtesgaden conversations (including Hitler’s mention of the nonGerman minorities and the statement that autonomy was no longer being

considered for the Sudeten Germans, but only cession) was wired to Germany’s foreign missions. Erdmannsdorff was asked to inform Kanya confidentially that Sztdjay, whose representations of the 15th had been received, was being similarly informed. The same day Goring sent for Sztojay to Karinhall and told him that ‘“‘his impression was that Hungary was not doing enough in the present crisis. The Hungarian Press was keeping

comparatively silent. In the Hungarian minority areas in Czechoslovakia 1 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. II, 895. * See his remarks at the Anglo-French conference: “‘He (Hitler) was not interested in other races... he did not therefore want any Czechs in Germany” (op. cit., p. 375). ‘‘Herr Hitler had said clearly that he himself was not interested in these other minorities” (Id., p. 382). ? Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 500.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 255 complete calm reigned, in contrast to the Sudeten German areas, and the Hungarian Ministers in the various capitals, in contrast to their Czechoslovak

colleagues, were not calling on the Foreign Ministers two and three times daily. Finally, neither the Hungarian Government nor the leaders of the Hungarian minority had clearly demanded the surrender by Czechoslovakia of the Hungarian areas.’”}

Sztojay defended his country against these charges, but admitted them to contain some truth, while presenting reasons for the Hungarian attitude. Thereupon Goring gave him an absolute assurance that a Yugoslav personage had promised him that Yugoslavia would not attack Hungary if she moved only on the third or fourth day.?, Woermann afterwards repeated the latest message on the subject from Rome.

Sztdjay telephoned all this to Csaky, who presumably consulted his superiors. Just at the same time another message had come from Warsaw (which had also received the German circular) that “‘the Polish Government would like to know whether Hungary had decided to make good her claims

against Czechoslovakia, by force of arms if need be. If so, the Polish Government was prepared to conclude with Hungary a political agreement, supplemented by a military convention.’”*

Kanya replied to Beck rather evasively, that Hungary was in favour of concluding a political and military agreement, but the war aims must first be defined. It must also be made clear that hostile action by Yugoslavia would constitute a casus foederis. But to Germany he now committed himself much further than ever before. In the afternoon he rang up Sztdjay and authorised him to make the following communication* both to Géring and to the Wilhelmstrasse:

1. The Hungarian Press and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia would henceforward adopt a more active and aggressive tone.

2. The Hungarian Ministers in Paris and London were being instructed to inform the Governments in those capitals that Hungary was

going to ask for plebiscites in the Hungarian minority areas. Sztdjay was to convey a similar message to Berlin, and to ask “‘whether the Fiihrer could not do something to associate himself publicly with these demands.”’

3. Complete understanding had been reached between Hungary and Poland. In transmitting this message, Sztéjay remarked that Poland was only claiming the Teschen district and some small frontier rectifications

in Slovakia. He supposed that Slovakia would receive “far-reaching autonomy within the framework of the Hungarian State”’ (it is, perhaps, important to realise that this last remark was Sztojay’s own, and based on the earlier understanding between Poland and Hungary which had been reached in July; he does not seem to have known of the subsequent change in Hungarian policy). Sztdjay can hardly have finished delivering this message before Erdmanns-

1 Id., 506. .

dorff telegraphed Kanya’s thanks for the account of the Berchtesgaden 2 The informant has not been identified; on 26th August Goring had been leaving for a place

near Munich to meet an agent of Stoyadinovic.’ He also intended to establish contact with Prince Paul (Id., 402). 3 Sz. I. MS. 4 Doc. G.F.P., loc. cit.

256 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH meeting,’ with a very emphatic assertion of Hungary’s claim to equality of

treatment for the Hungarian minority with the German. If this was not granted, the Hungarian Government would “go to the limit.”” Kanya added confidentially that that morning’s Ministerial Council had decided to call up another 80,000 men, in addition to the 40,000 already under the colours. He had protested sharply against the Czech concentrations on the Hungarian frontier.” He promised far-reaching concessions for the flight of German aircraft over Hungarian territory, landing facilities, etc., in case of war. The Commander of the Luftkreis Vienna was arriving on the 19th for discussions. Kanya also passed on Ingram’s statement. The appropriate military instructions were, in fact, sent out immediately,

with the ultimate effect of bringing the number of Hungarians under the colours to the figure given by Kanya, or perhaps a little over.? They were sent up to the Slovak frontier, where their presence caused an alarm which their numbers hardly justified, if their intentions did. The other wheels, too, were set in motion as promised. On the 17th the Parliamentary Club of the United Hungarian Party, claiming to be the constitutional representative of the Magyars in Czechoslovakia, met in Bratislava and adopted a Resolution that it now proposed to “‘take its fate

| into its own hands’’ and claim the self-determination denied to it in 1918. | It repudiated forceful methods, but claimed that self-determination and a plebiscite were the only means to create a new, honourable life of mutual understanding between the peoples.

| The Hungarian Press of the 18th published this resolution prominently

and endorsed its demands vigorously, writing that the voice of the United Hungarian Party was ‘“‘the voice of all Hungary,” and that Hungary was determined not to tolerate any discrimination against the Magyar minority. The Revision League also issued a fresh “‘appeal to the world” and sent telegrams to Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, Daladier and Skladowski. Of these, incidentally, only the Duce acknowledged receipt; but he responded nobly, obliging on the 18th with another sounding speech in favour of self-

determination all round, for Germans, Poles, Magyars, Slovaks and Ruthenes. It was of some importance that the Hungarian Press now began reporting

with sympathy all indications of unrest among the Slovaks; although not suggesting that Hungary regarded these movements with anything more than fraternal sympathy.*

The appeal to the West had not by any means been dropped. On the evening of the 16th Kanya sent for Knox, taxed him with Ingram’s statement,

and asked him with all earnestness to tell Halifax that if a cession of the Sudeten areas to Germany was proposed, or a plebiscite in them, without granting the same treatment to the Hungarian minority, “Hungary would 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 503. ° For some days Czechoslovakia had been concentrating troops between the March and the Vag (cf. op. cit., 582). * The new calling-up seems to have covered the 1912 class, numbering about 50,000 men,

an 9) technicians of the 1914 class. The 1913 class was warned to stand by (Doc. Brit. F.P., 4 On the 18th, Comneéne was told by his Czech colleague in Geneva, Veverka, ‘“‘that Budapest was preparing an intervention in Czechoslovakia on the German method, that a rising in Slovakia was being prepared, and that the Hungarians were sending up troops to the frontier under cover of night.’’ Having been assured by Veverka, on his honour, that these reports were ‘“‘absolutely certain,’’ Comnene duly spread them (op. cit., pp. 100-1). They were, however, untrue.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 257 never accept such a solution and would struggle against it by every possible means in her power.” Instructions were sent after Barcza to call on Halifax or Cadogan immediately on his arrival and deliver a message similar to that delivered by Sztdjay in Berlin on the previous day. Kanya added for Barcza’s personal information that Hungary could not content herself with autonomy for the Magyars if the Germans got territorial cession; in such case, she, too, would require cession. Barcza was told “‘to get this into his interlocutor’s

head, in suitable form.’ Knox simply reported what Kanya had said, without comment. Barcza delivered his message to Cadogan on the morning of the 17th, in the form of

a politely worded Note.* While delivering it, he earnestly pleaded with Cadogan for a public declaration that H.M. Government acknowledged the principle of equality of rights as between the different minorities. If Hungary

did not get this, she would be driven more and more into the arms of Germany.’

A similar message had been delivered by the Polish Ambassador on the previous day.° In each case the Englishman concerned had managed to return an evasive

answer, but neither had been able to deny that his interlocutor had a case, and Cadogan, after seeing Barcza, noted that: “‘I understand that our position would have to be that we could not in principle deny to the Hungarians what we grant to the Sudetendeutsch. If that is so, I suppose we should have to

tell the Hungarian Government that that is the case.’? But he added that “I do not know whether we should qualify that statement by the comment that the question of opportunity and ways and means is of course another question”; and when, on the 18th, the British and French Governments got down to considering seriously what proposals they should put to the Czechoslovak Government, the Hungarian and Polish cases by no means received the same treatment as the German.

Whatever may be the truth about the disputed question whether the Czechs had indicated, at least to the French, that, rather than fight, they might agree to the cession of certain areas to the Germans, there is no doubt that

they had made quite plain their absolute refusal to allow a plebiscite, and equally no doubt that at least the French fully understood the reason for it, to wit, that if granted freedom of expression, not the Germans alone but certainly the Poles and Magyars also, and very probably the Slovaks and Ruthenes, would promptly vote themselves out of Czechoslovakia; a point which, to judge from the documents, Lord Halifax also appreciated. It was, confessedly, to meet this objection that.the Anglo-French proposals suggested

to the Czechs that they “might prefer to deal with the Sudeten Deutsch problem by the method of direct transfer, and as a case by itself.”

The record of the meeting® shows that none of its participants made even ,

the faintest suggestion that the claims of Poland and Hungary should be treated in the same way as those of Germany. The démarches of the previous day were not even mentioned, and the French specifically argued that they could not ask the Czechs to cede the Sudeten areas unless they offered her an international guarantee of what territory was left to her after that amputation. Towards the end of the conversation, Mr. Chamberlain then remarked

1 Doc. Brit. F.P., II. III, 6. 2 Sz. I. MS.

II, 7 (annexe). 4 Doc. Brit. F.P., HI. II, 7. 53 Doc. Id.,Brit.6.F.P., ® III. Doc. Brit. F.P., UI. II, 928. S

258 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH that: “if the problem were treated on the lines under contemplation, we would only be dealing with Sudeten minorities, and would be leaving the problems of the Polish and Hungarian minorities for future negotiations between the Czecho-Slovakian Government and those minorities.” The French never took up this point at all, nor did the British revert to it, and the Anglo-French proposals mentioned cession only in relation to the Sudeten areas, while speaking of ‘“‘an international guarantee of the new boundaries of the Czechoslovak State against unprovoked aggression.’ As we shall see, the British meant these last three words as an escape valve, although it is hard to see how they could have so deceived themselves; and as we shall also see, their unwillingness to face facts soon met with its inevitable Nemesis.

In any case, the Proposals went off at 2.45 a.m. on the 19th, Newton being instructed to concert immediately with his French colleague, Lacroix, and arrange a joint audience of President Benes to present them.’ Few British writers on Munich have seen in the Proposals anything else than the shameful betrayal of Czechoslovakia by her friends; but then, most such writers have resembled Mr. Chamberlain in their complete inability to

see more than a fraction of the complex problems that were at issue in September 1938. Obviously, the Proposals were a crushing blow to those

| Czechs who had expected integral support from the West, but their vague formulation lent them at least the very substantial merit, as Mr. Newton himself pointed out when he received them, of appearing “to exclude and even provide against subsequent adjustment in favour of other minorities, notably Hungarian and Polish.’” The documents show that the British Government recognised that this would be a misinterpretation of their intentions, and at once agreed to Newton’s suggestion to remove the possibility of misunderstanding by stating,

preferably in writing, that the communication of the Proposals was being made “‘without prejudice to the treatment of the problem of other national minorities.”* But the French, although they promised to associate themselves with this, ended by hedging and leaving the unpleasant task to the British. Newton himself, having (purely owing to the operation of the time factor) missed his chance of making the reservation when first presenting the

proposals, shrank from reopening the subject.4 Thus the Czechs never received the interpretation. The British and French did not even take advantage of the Czechoslovak Government’s reply of the 20th: they rejected this, but only because it would be unacceptable to Hitler.® As late as the 21st the President, when telling Lacroix of his final acceptance of the Proposals, was able not only to urge him that the French Government should “‘oppose Polish and Hungarian claims, which would reduce Czech people to despair

and provoke war,” but to assert that, “having accepted the Proposals, the President considered that the British and French guarantee was already in force as regards reduced Czechoslovak territory.’”® As the Czechs had been making this assumption, proleptically, ever since the 19th, the result was that from that date up to the Godesberg meeting, the interpretations of the position adopted respectively in Prague, London and

Paris remained unco-ordinated. The Czechs maintained, uncontradicted, that they had already been offered, and after their acceptance of the Proposals

had already received, a territorial guarantee, except against Germany. The

1 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. Il, 937. 2 Id., 940. > Id., 946, 947.

‘ Id., 953, 955. 5 Id., 991. ® Id., 1035.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 259 British made no official statement, but maintained, for their own guidance, the view that the words “against unprovoked aggression” allowed even for territorial revision provided that it was not effected by force. The French

wrapped themselves in inscrutability, not contradicting either of their partners, with each of whom they had, in fact, previously agreed. But they had also allowed a version of the Proposals to leak out into the French Press on the morning of the 19th, in the simplified form of cession

for the Sudeten areas and an international guarantee of a neutral Czechoslovakia by Great Britain, France, Italy and the limitrophe States.1 These reports, combined with a patent stiffening of the Czech attitude on the minor

clams—towards which they had been showing themselves relatively conciliatory up to the very morning of the 19th’—were naturally highly disquieting to the Poles and Hungarians, and their feelings were not allayed by the events of the day. The representatives of both countries in London

and Paris had been instructed on the 18th to make further démarches demanding very seriously cession for their respective areas if this were granted to the Germans. The Poles, when they got their moves in on the 19th, adapted their language to the situation of the moment, and referred to the Press reports. All Lukacsiewicz got in Paris was, according to Bonnet

(who disliked him personally),? a snub,* while Sargent, who received Raczinsky, simply said that he could tell him nothing about the reports and could give him no assurances about his demands.°®

Poland had already on that day begun moving troops up towards the frontier and staging demonstrations for the return of Teschen. On the 20th the agitation went on crescendo; the evening papers carried notices calling more men to the colours; and Beck told Noél that if Poland did not receive equal treatment with Germany, also in the case of cession without a plebiscite, she would have to resume liberty of action.®

Barcza, who only got his démarche in on the 20th, was more civilly received, partly, perhaps, in deference to the extremely conciliatory manner

in which he himself pleaded the justice of Hungary’s case’; but except formally, Hungary received little more satisfaction than Poland. He was handed a Note, which was actually a reply to his own Note handed in on the

17th, and thus before the Proposals, which said that H.M. Government ‘fully appreciated the interest shown by the Hungarian Government in the question of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia”; but H.M. Government was at present occupied with “‘the problem of the Sudeten German minority, on the solution of which depended the issue of peace or war in Europe.”’ Hungary was asked “‘to do nothing to extend the scope of the present crisis and to be content that her point of view had been placed on record and would receive consideration at the appropriate time.’ 1 Id., 937, n. 2 On that morning Cermak, the Czechoslovak Minister designate to Budapest, told Wettstein,

the Hungarian Minister in Prague, that his Government ‘‘no longer adopted the principle of absolute negation towards Hungary” (Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 531) and Veverka still told Comneéne that violence on Hungary’s part would be the more unnecessary, because the Magyar minority “would indubitably receive the same treatment as the Germans and Poles’’ (Comnéne, op. cit.,

Pa Pabienski to C. A. M. 4 Bonnet, op. cit., pp. 255-6. Bonnet describes the scene with relish.

5 Doc. Brit. F.P., II. II, 2, and annexe. ® Op. cit., III. II, 997. 7 Op. cit., III. UI, 15. 3 Tbid., annexe.

260 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Verbally, Halifax said that ‘‘he hoped that the Prime Minister and the Government of Hungary would be satisfied with the assurance that had been

: given them. The matter was very much in their mind, but it was one in which many others were concerned besides H.M. Government, and no doubt the Hungarian Government would consider in due course the most appropriate

. method of raising it, should they desire to do so.”’ He suggested that it was a question for the application of Article XIX of the Covenant.

It required, perhaps, a larger experience of reading through Central European spectacles than was possessed by Lord Halifax, or whoever had first put up these ideas, to realise what a desolating effect these suggestions must make. For every country which had suffered under the Peace Treaties, Article XIX had become a byword: the mere hypocritical mask for doing nothing. Although the Hungarians did not suspect the British good faith (although they did that of the French), they could not but feel that to see their claims referred to Article XIX was tantamount to seeing them buried for ever. For the rest: ‘‘one thing at a time” and “‘first things first’? might seem good sense to the English, but the Hungarians knew only too well that to split the forces against him was exactly what BeneS was after. Once he had detached his other opponents, by yielding to them or otherwise buying

| them off, he would not dream of making concessions to the Hungarians.

Their only hope was to get their case taken up simultaneously with that of the other claimants. Even the courtly Barcza objected that “the Geneva procedure was too slow”; and his report of the interview undoubtedly helped to increase the scepticism with which the English sense of justice, or indeed the English intelligence, was coming to be regarded in Budapest. A slightly less negative report which Khuen-Hédervary, surprisingly, sent from Paris next day’ could do little to remedy this. Another embarrassment from which the Hungarians were now suffering was that of reports regarding their designs which did injustice, not, indeed, to the wishes of many of them, but to what they had, as we have said, made

their definite policy: viz. the limitation of their claims to the ethnically Magyar territory and populations. This, as we saw, represented a change from the earlier policy which the Hungarians had agreed with the Poles, and they may not have explained their new position clearly to the Poles, who would certainly not have approved of it, and in any case seem not to have adapted their own policy in accordance with it. On the 16th M. Comneéne had been in Geneva,” where he had previously arranged to meet Beck; but Beck, preferring not to leave Warsaw during the crisis, had sent his chef de

cabinet, Count Lubienski, to convey his apologies. While the two men were talking, Comnéne believed himself to have gathered, from certain “transparent hints” dropped by Lubienski, that plans existed for the annexation of “all Slovakia” to Hungary; he even deduced (quite wrongly) that Beck

had commissioned Lubienski to sound the attitude of Roumania towards the point. Comneéne learnt that the French had got the same information, 1 Massigli had told Khuen-Hédervary that “‘one could quite understand the Hungarian desire, and it was also quite natural that if negotiations developed from the conversations in Godesberg, the settlement of the questions concerning the Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia must follow, within the framework of a general settlement’’ (Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 569). The difference in tone between this and other French communications may have been due to purely personal factors; or the difference in date may have counted for something. * For the following, Comnéne, op. cit., pp. 97 ff. 3 Lubienski had received no such commission (Lubienski to C. A. M.).

: SPRAT AMONG WHALES 261 also from Polish sources,1 and lost no time in spreading the alarming informa-

tion right and left; also initiating an elaborate diplomatic action to thwart these designs.

His diplomatic activities do not seem to have had any great effect on the highest levels at this stage, and their subsequent developments (when they had somehow come to be heading in a rather different direction) belong to a later stage in our own story; but it does seem likely that some of the lack

of sympathy which met Hungary’s efforts to win the support of Western public opinion was due to the misrepresentation of what she was claiming which was set on foot by other parties. Meanwhile, Hitler was taking exactly the opposite line from the British and French. He may have been influenced by a report drawn up on the 19th by Woermann, which argued that Germany ought not, on foreign political grounds, to leave it entirely to other States (Italy, Great Britain) [sic] ‘‘to advocate a fulfilment of the Polish and Hungarian wishes. ... We ought to find a formula to make known our solidarity with the wishes of these two States.”? Butin any case it was, as we have said, essential to him that Poland and Hungary should take vigorous action before his own next meeting with Chamberlain, now imminent, and the action of the Hungarians, at least, had still been far from vigorous. On the evening of the 19th, therefore,* he sent an invitation to Imrédy

and Kanya to visit him next day at Berchtesgaden; at the same time arranging to see Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, and ordering that Kundt should ‘“‘without delay get into touch with the Slovaks to persuade them to raise their demands for autonomy in the course of tomorrow’’ (i.e. the 20th).*

The Hungarians naturally accepted the offer, particularly as they had just received another message from Ciano urging them and the Poles to

“hot up their action: there was no need for Germany to be the only country to get advantage out of the situation.”® On the morning of the 20th Imrédy and Kanya, accompanied by Lajos Keresztes-Fischer and Pataky, set out for Berchtesgaden in an aeroplane sent for them by the Fiihrer.®

Our record of this all-important meeting, which is that produced by the German Foreign Ministry,’ is, unfortunately, neither full nor in all respects

lucid; nor, since it was taken down by long-distance telephone, is the possibility of mistakes to be excluded. It is unavoidable to translate into generally intelligible terms some of the Fiihrer’s short and allusive phrases, and possible that the interpretation may here and there be mistaken; but the general gist is clear enough, particularly if account is taken of some later references by Hitler to the interview,® and of his corresponding conversation with Lipski. 1 Op. cit., p. 98. From Doc. Brit. F.P., III. WI, 67, it appears that M. Komarnicki, the leader of the Polish Delegation in Geneva, had said that Poland was “‘supporting the Hungarian claim to Slovakia and Ruthenia.’’ He had, however, been disavowed by his Government. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 536, annexe 2. 3 According to his Diary, Ciano learned of the invitation on that day. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 536. 5 Ciano Diary, 19th September; cf. id., 20th September. 6 The day happened to be the same on which Horthy set out to visit Goring at Rominten, but this was coincidence. Horthy’s visit had been arranged previously, and, natural rumours to the contrary notwithstanding, politics were not talked on it (Personal, Horthy to C. A. M.). 7 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 554; ef. id., 555. 8 In particular, his conversation with Csaky in January (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 272).

262 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The Fihrer then said that he was determined to settle the Czech question

within three weeks, even at the risk of a world war, which, however, he thought unlikely; he did not believe that either France or England would move. There were two possibilities, and it would depend on the results of the negotiations then in progress, including those between the Western Powers and Czechoslovakia, which would emerge. If the Czechs “‘accepted everything,” of which there was “‘a danger,” he could not then entirely go back on the Berchtesgaden conversations, and would be forced to leave a rump Czech State in existence. This, however, would be unsatisfactory to him. It would leave an “aircraft carrier’ for potential use against Germany, in the heart of Europe—a situation which could not be endured permanently. The best solution would be to destroy the Czechoslovak State altogether, and

preferably by military action, which would make possible the complete destruction of the Czech defences. He would prefer to solve the question in this way, although if possible using some “‘Czech provocation” as a pretext. What was to be hoped therefore was that the proposals to be presented to him by Chamberlain on the 22nd would be such as he could reject; and in

any case he would handle the negotiations in the most “‘brutal’’ fashion possible, if necessary using as pretext any disturbances which might break

, out in Czechoslovakia to march in.

This was where Hungary came in, as she must do for her own sake. If she hesitated still further, he must wash his hands of her, but if she backed him up, he would reward her. The two things which, according to the report, Hitler said that Hungary must do, were to demand a plebiscite in all the areas claimed by her (which at that time he certainly understood to be all Slovakia-Ruthenia), and to say that she would not join in a guarantee until her demands were satisfied. If Imrédy would give him a confidential statement of Hungary’s claims, he would “‘make good use of the document at Godesberg in his conversations with the British.’’ It emerges, however, quite clearly alike from Imrédy’s reply, from at least one other allusion in the conversation itself and from some of the Fiubrer’s later reproaches, that Hitler asked more of Hungary than mere diplomatic action: at least a threat of military action, and probably some kind of para-military action.! Imrédy in reply made various excuses for Hungary’s military passivity up to date: military weakness, the Yugoslav danger. If the crisis had come a year or two later, things would have been different. But he promised “‘to

put in hand immediate preparations for military action,” although these could not be completed within a fortnight. He may also have mentioned the possibilities of operating with irregulars, whose exploits the Government could disavow, while declaring itself unable to restrain them (as we have seen,

the Hungarians were toying with this idea”). According to the document, he promised that the Hungarian Government would support the request for a plebiscite which had already been made by the Magyar minority,’? and promised very definitely that Hungary would not guarantee a new frontier * I refer here to the mention of “‘Freikorps”’ in the German account of the meeting. The account makes Hitler suggest that Hungary might “‘threaten to resign from the League of Nations

and to establish a Freikorps,’’ which is pretty fair nonsense. It is surely much more likely that the Hungarians mooted the suggestion; or if it was Hitler, then he was answering some remark by the Hungarians which has not been preserved (see also Ciano Papers, p. 235). 2 See above, pp. 237-8. ° It seems probable that the German account is wrong here, for Hungary had already gone further than this.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 263 until her own demands had been met. He would send Hitler his statement of claims.

Most of the rest of the conversation seems to have been purely repetitive,

except that the Fihrer made some rather obscure references to Germany’s own interest in the German-speaking areas of Slovakia.1_ Finally, before leaving,” Imrédy handed Hitler a personal letter similar in substance to Hungary’s last communications in London and Paris, but much more forcible

in tone. It said that the Hungarian Government had heard, through the Press and other channels, that the Czechoslovak question was going to be settled ““with the greatest consideration for the Sudeten German population,” but with entire disregard for the claims of the other nationalities. Hungary

would oppose this most energetically, and had so informed France and Britain, in no uncertain terms. For Hitler’s personal information, Imrédy added that Hungary’s “‘opposition’’ would, if necessary, include measures “‘which lay outside the field of diplomatic action.”” ““We know,” he ended, “that we shall not remain alone in this struggle, and are convinced that our point of view will be completely understood by Your Excellency.”

Immediately after this conversation, Hitler saw Lipski, to whom he expressed himself in similar terms.* He apparently received from him satisfactory assurances, presumably followed by a statement of claims; at any rate, Hitler now regarded the preliminaries as fixed up. Woermann told the Italian Minister, Magistrati, that it could be assumed that the question of

the Hungarian (and Polish) claims would “automatically come up at Godesberg,’’* and Hitler sent word to Mussolini that he “intended, according to the formula suggested by Mussolini, to arrive at an integral solution for the other minorities also.’’®

There followed the two days during which, according to Hitler (in the tirade which he launched afterwards at various Hungarians®), Hungary, by the attitude which her Press adopted towards Germany’s claims and by her inactivity in pressing her own (this contrasting sharply with Poland’s energetic attitude), thwarted his plans for ‘‘laughing in Chamberlain’s face” at Godesberg, forced him to accept the Munich settlement, and thus gave the Czechoslovak State a whole new lease of life. It would be difficult for Hungary’s warmest advocates to endorse 100 per cent. this unexpected description of her as the saviour of Czechoslovakia, if only because it omits all reference to the Slovaks, who had responded un-

satisfactorily to Kundt’s efforts to stimulate them into separatism. After debating for two days, they had produced a declaration’ which demanded full recognition of the independent existence® of the Slovak people and

have to be protected. — 5 Ciano Papers, p. 234.

1 This presumably meant that if the area went to Hungary the German minority in it would

2 The document (which is Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 541) is dated the 20th, without indication of

hour, but seems best to fit the situation before the interview. 3 U.S.S.R., Documents et Matériels, 1, 226. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 557.

6 In particular, his interview with Csaky (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 272): but according to the

Sz. I. MS. and private sources, Daranyi got the same lecture, practically verbatim, in November,

and an unprinted message from Weizsdcker to Ciano dated 11th October also puts the blame for the predicament in which the Hungarians then were for their failure to follow the Fihrer’s

advice during the “‘crucial days’’ after 20th September. .

7 The Declaration was adopted on the evening of 19th September and published in the Press of the next day. For details, see Sidor, Slovenska Politika, Il, 25. 8 Samobytnost. The word was a denial of the reality of the term ““Czechoslovak”’ at least as spelt without the hyphen.

264 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH language, and immediate and final settlement of the Slovak question on the basis of the Pittsburgh Agreement and of the proposals of the Hlinka Party, by the grant of a Diet. But the Declaration said that the Slovaks had not and never had had any agreement, either written or oral, concerning collaboration with the non-Slav political parties, and expressed the hope that if the Slovaks’ demands were fulfilled, good relations would be established between

the Czechs and Slovaks, ‘“‘and thus the Czecho-Slovak State would be strengthened within and without.” They then opened negotiations with

Bene’ to obtain acceptance of these demands. | The Ruthenes had not been parties to this declaration, and the Hungarians believed that they would vote for union with Hungary,’ but this was clearly less important than the expressed determination of the Slovaks to stand by Czechoslovakia if their terms were granted; and Kundt himself did not think that he would be able to get them to change their minds.°® But it is true that the respective attitudes of the Poles and Hungarians

, during these two days contrasted sharply. The Poles continued with their troop movements and demonstrations, and with these, their diplomatic

activity. On the 21st their representatives made fresh démarches in London and Paris insisting on the principle of equal treatment and insisting that unless they received satisfaction for their own claims, they would obtain it for them-

: selves by force. This would have to be done quickly; Raczynski received Halifax’s suggestion that Article XIX might be applied even less patiently than

Barcza had done. Incidentally, the Polish Notes did not even confine them-

, selves to Poland’s own claims, but expressed the view that the crisis could not , be finally settled without the solution of ‘‘all the minority problems in Czechoslovakia.” Account would have to be taken of “‘the just claims of all national

, groups, including Polish and Hungarian.’”*

The Hungarian attitude during these days in fact contrasted strikingly with the Polish, and really seemed to have been hardly affected by Hitler’s exhortations. When Imrédy stepped out of the plane which brought him back from Germany, he said only that the Hungarian Government would

| support by all means in its power the demand for self-determination of the Magyars in Slovakia. The two inspired articles which appeared next day in the Pester Lloyd defined Hungary’s claims in the same terms, not mentioning

Slovakia or Ruthenia at all; and this limitation of Hungary’s admitted 1 Some of the delegates had first presented the declaration to Hodza, who expressed full approval of it, and asked them to forward it in writing to BeneS (Pridavoc to C. A. M.). * According to the Sz. I. MS., the Hungarians had received private reports that “‘if there was a plebiscite, the overwhelming majority of the population would vote for return to Hungary; the Governor (Hrabar) and the leading Ukrainophile politician, Révai, themselves admitted this.” > Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 543. * The text of the Polish Note to the Foreign Office is given in Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 20, enclosure 1. The Poles received a written answer (id., enclosure 2) which was in fact an answer to the previous Polish Note of the 19th, but even more out of date than these words would suggest, for it was identical, mutatis mutandis, with the Note handed to Barcza on the 20th, in reply to his démarche of the 17th. It was thus simply an exhortation to the Poles to be patient until the really important matters had been got out of the way. The conversation between Halifax and Raczinsky is summarised in No. 20 itself; even here, Halifax did little more than advise the Poles to raise their demand ‘at the appropriate moment, when it would no doubt receive proper consideration.”’ This conversation contains the exchange over Article XIX. Mr. Chamberlain also referred to the interview in his speech of 28th September, when he said that Raczinsky had expressed “considerable dissatisfaction” and had hinted that Poland might use force. Similar hints were dropped by the Secretary of Embassy, who spoke to Strang on the same afternoon (op. cit., 21). This conversation, and the communications exchanged in Paris, also contained hints of the separate Polish policy described below.

| SPRAT AMONG WHALES 265 interests was maintained throughout that day and the next.1. What Hitler— to judge from his outburst to Csaky—took even more ill, the German claims on Czechoslovakia were also treated by the Hungarian Press as resting on the ethnic basis; thus all the claims against Czechoslovakia could be satisfied by local revision, and without the destruction of the Czechoslovak State, to which the Hungarian Press still continued to refer, without sympathy but without proclaiming the necessity of its disappearance. Further, the Press continued to appeal above all to the sense of justice of the Western Powers, and to the principle that a lasting settlement could be achieved only by the application of justice, not by yielding to “‘States which could throw into the scales overwhelming military force.”’

A meeting of the Supreme Defence Council was held, probably on the evening of the 20th,” and it is possible that if Hungary’s military authorities had spoken with more confidence, her political leaders, too, might have been bolder; but Lajos Keresztes-Fischer said that “‘in case of a German offensive, Czechoslovakia might attack Budapest, and the Hungarian Army was not

even strong enough to resist this.” It appeared that it only possessed ammunition enough for thirty-six hours’ fighting.* It was therefore decided

to take only defensive measures against the possibility of an attack. The authorities disagree on the exact figures, but it is certain that the mobilisation |

(which Hungary denied to constitute a mobilisation at all, but only an “extension of the manceuvres’’) was on a very modest scale. It seems likely that two more classes* (the 1913 and 1914?) were called up, which should have given, with the two which had been in the field since July and the 1912 class called up on the 16th, a total of something under 200,000 men.’ This figure was, however, probably never reached, for only officers and N.C.O.s on the active list were called to their stations by wireless; for the rank and file and the reserve officers the old method of individual notice, sent by post,

was retained, for reasons of secrecy; and as the lists had not been kept properly up to date, many notices were not served.° In any case, the men were required to report only by the 27th.’ 1 The only exception known to the writer, who was in Budapest at the time, was that on the 21st the Revision League staged a demonstration calling for self-determination for all nationalities in Czechoslovakia; and that was not very well attended. The writer had been billed to lecture that evening to the Hungarian Society for Foreign Affairs on the minorities problem. An hour before the lecture was due to start, an official of the society told him that it was cancelled

in view of the demonstration, which everybody would be attending. He learnt afterwards that a full hall had awaited his appearance; he had been about the only absentee. 2 This from the Suhaj MS., which does not date the meeting, but it seems to fit this date. The minutes of meetings of the Supreme Defence Council were taken by a soldier, and kept in the Honvéd Ministry; this explains why there is no record of the meeting in Barczy or the sources which draw on the Foreign Ministry archives.

3 Suhaj.

4 The figures are very conflicting; Nagy, op. cit., p. 25, writes that five new classes were to be called up, which would make eight in all. But there seems good reason to suppose that this is a mistake: it was five in all, i.e. two new ones. Knox reported on the 21st that two classes (1912 and 1913) had been called up (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 16), but, of these, the former had already been called up on the 16th. The Yugoslavs had heard that the 1914 and 1915 classes had also been called up (id., 18). A later report (id., 39) said that the 1905 [sic] class also had been called up, which is surely wrong; and as this came after Kanya’s conversation with Knox on Hungary’s military measures (see below, p. 267), I think that this class was the second of the two which it was

decided, on the 20th, to call up. It is, however, possible that the total was four, not two, plus three.

5 Knox gives, as his own information, derived from sources which were Hungarian but proBritish (Colonel Andorka, then Head of the Hungarian Military Intelligence, who supplied them, was later employed as contact man between Hungary and the West, and retired under Bardossy

® Nagy, loc. cit. | ? Ibid.

for that reason), 160,000; the Yugoslavs thought 230,000. | |

266 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH The idea of utilising the Ragged Guard (whose leaders reported that they

could produce 20 battalions)' was mooted, but not in fact adopted at this time. 4,000 selected volunteers were, however, taken into the Army.’ Diplomatically, the Hungarians made no move corresponding to that of the Poles on the 21st (Khuen-Heédervary’s démarche of that day in Paris was,

as we have seen, a hang-over from the earlier moves); but on that day the Czech (and French) Press was writing openly enough that Britain and France were going to let the Polish and Hungarian claims be treated differently from the German, and a report was received in Budapest that a high official in the

Foreign Ministry in Prague had said that Czechoslovakia was “‘no longer thinking in terms of territorial concessions’ to Hungary.*® Late that evening,

then, Wettstein received instructions to hand in a fresh Note to Prague, which referred to reports which suggested that the principle of equal treatment was not going to be observed, said that Hungary would regard any differentiation against the Magyar minority as an unfriendly act, and suggested that

the best way of arriving at a peaceful solution would be for the Hungarian problem to be solved simultaneously with the German.* The Hungarian

Ministers in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin were asked to convey the substance of this Note to the Governments in those capitals.

, Wettstein handed in his Note on the afternoon of the 22nd, when Krofta simply “‘received”’ it and asked him to call back on the 24th for his answer.°

Of the other addressees, Ciano was encouraging.® The British were the reverse. Sargent lectured Barcza on Hungary’s presumption in making a démarche on the strength of mere Press reports, reproached her for taking military measures (Knox had reported these) and said that Halifax would be painfully surprised at this new move, coming only two days after his personal appeal.’ Barcza, after communicating with Budapest, rang later to say that the information regarding the Czechs’ intentions was well-grounded, and Hungary’s military measures purely defensive, but even he was getting rather

tired of being lectured. He wired bitterly to Budapest that: “‘apart from Halifax himself, all the senior men in the Foreign Office are more or less Francophile and their object is, consequently, that no one should get any concessions beyond the sacrifices enforced by the Germans and the interests

of world peace.... Vansittart and Sargent do nothing but enjoin patience and calm on us, but in reality, do nothing to help us.’’® Meanwhile, at 7.30 p.m., Halifax had wired to Warsaw (where the advice was really needed) and to Budapest identical messages® expressing regret at the military measures taken by the countries concerned, for which measures there was “‘no justification. Their cases had been fully stated in London, and

H.M. Government had them fully in mind. There could be no justification for attempting to compel an immediate settlement by direct action instead of through the processes of normal negotiation. If they preferred to proceed 1 Personal; from a Ragged Guard leader. * Villani spoke of the plan to Ciano on the 22nd, when handing him a copy of the day’s Note

to Prague, and Andorka confirmed on the 24th that the plan was in the air (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 39), but on the 25th an official denial was issued in the Press. Andorka confirmed on the 28th that the idea had been dropped; my private information agrees with this. The Guard was, as we Shall see, used later. 3 Personal (Szegedi-Maszak to C. A. M.). A similar remark had been made by Veverka to Comneéne (op. cit., p. 111).

4 Text in Barcza MS. ® Sz. I. MS.; cf. Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 560, 596. ® Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 577. ? Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 29.

* Barcza MS. ® Doc, Brit, F.P., II. II, 1024.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 267 to direct action, H.M. Government disclaimed responsibility for the consequences.” This guarded message obviously contained hints which, to those who are

able to read, ex post facto, the documents which were then secret, appear broad enough, that while “unprovoked aggression”? would spoil the whole case for Poland and Hungary, patience would bring its reward. These hints, however, do not seem to have been very perceptible at the time, particularly as Knox’s own account! suggests that when he passed on the message to Kanya that evening, there was more of admonition than comfort in his remarks. Knox himself shows Kanya as saying frankly that he was bitterly disappointed with the answer which Barcza had received; that the British cared only for force and not for justice; and that the talk about plebiscites being difficult was only hypocrisy to cover up what Britain well knew, that the application of the principle of self-determination would mean the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. His own minute of the meeting’ repeats these justified home-truths in even blunter language, and also shows him as saying that it was ridiculous to talk about intimidation when Hungary had called up only two classes* and Czechoslovakia had far more men on the frontiers than she.* He appears (contrary to information received by the Germans’) to have refused to promise that no more military measures would be taken. But he had confirmed that Hungary had no aggressive intentions and would not take the military initiative (Beck, it may be mentioned, refused to give any such assurance).° Probably the same afternoon (i.e. the 22nd), Hungary had transmitted to Hitler her statement of claims, or, as it was put, of “‘wishes.’’ These ran:

‘“‘Reincorporation into Hungary of the Magyar-inhabited territories of the present Czechoslovakia. “Practical guarantee of the right of self-determination for the Slovaks and Ruthenians incorporated in the present Czechoslovakia.’’’

This statement constituted, of course, in a sense a retreat from the principle which Hungary had hitherto followed, of confining her claims to the ethnically Magyar areas, but the retreat was only partial. The Hungarians thought it possible that plebiscites might, after all, be ordained for the non-

Czech areas, and wanted to have their claim on record if this happened; particularly as they hoped and believed that the Ruthenes, if allowed to do so, would vote for reincorporation in Hungary. In any case, it was a fixed principle of theirs not to appear to have renounced definitively any lands

which had formed part of Hungary before 1918. But they drew a clear 1 Id., ID. I, 37.

2 $z. I. MS. 8 sic. This confirms the view that only two classes had been called up on the 20th. 4 General Prchala, then commanding the Third Czechoslovak Army, writes to me that: ‘‘In September 1938, before the mobilisation, there were in Slovakia and Ruthenia three Army Corps (seven infantry divisions) and one cavalry division composed of one cavalry and one armoured

brigade and one regiment of aviation. There were also ten battalions of frontier guards, composed of gendarmes, customs officers and selected reservists, which had been mobilised ‘sur place’ some time before.” 5 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 585; the information was said to come from “a well-known confidential

ene For Poland’s answer, see Doc. Brit. F.P., III. If, 34. 7 Doc. G.F.P., D. IL., 586. They were transmitted by Sztojay to Woermann on the 23rd, but had ‘“‘already been transmitted directly to Godesberg.”” But this can hardly have been done before the afternoon of the 22nd, perhaps not before the 23rd; in any case, belatedly enough.

268 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH distinction between their unconditional demand for the return of the Magyar territories and their request—it was little more than that, never being placed before the Western Powers nor, at this stage, supported by a Press agitation— that the Slovaks and Ruthenes should be allowed to state their wishes.’ In any case, although, to Mr. Chamberlain’s quite unjustified surprise

and indignation, Hitler brought up the claims of Hungary with those of Poland at Godesberg, and said that he could not guarantee any settlement which ignored those claims, he felt himself—as he was afterwards so bitterly to complain—unable to adduce the paper statement, unbacked as it was by

| any show of force or even any serious agitation, as sufficient excuse to entitle him to go beyond the ethnic criterion in making his own demands. After Godesberg, as before it, he could only hope that the Poles and Hungarians would by some new activity intervene to make impossible the peaceful settlement which Mr. Chamberlain, by his remorseless simplicity, was driving him to accept. For the British and French Governments, on the other hand, the Godesberg meeting had really changed the situation. They had now received clear notice from Hitler that they would not be allowed to ignore the Polish and Hungarian claims; and the British, at least, had been told unequivocally in

Rome that Italy would not give any guarantee before the Hungarian and

| Polish claims had been settled.’

On the 24th both countries received another message from Halifax assuring them that the fact that H.M. Government was at the moment concentrating its efforts on the problem of the Sudeten minority did not mean that their claims would be neglected. H.M. Government “had the nature of these claims fully in mind.’ There could therefore be no justifica-

| tion for attempting to compel their immediate settlement by direct action, ‘“‘instead of through the process of normal negotiations.’”®

| He also allowed it to be said that a speech by Lord Winterton which suggested that Great Britain would give no support at all to the claims of the countries in question did not represent the official view.* Nevertheless, the days which now followed were no less anxious for the Hungarians than the preceding fortnight had been. Their old objections to the well-meant advice to wait their turn in the queue had lost none of their validity. Half a dozen combinations were in the air, any of which might mean

that the last-comer would come off entirely empty-handed. Benes was obviously in communication with the Russians, who might encourage him to precipitate a general war. Alternatively, Czechoslovakia might cede Germany the Sudeten areas but try to save everything else even at the expense of de facto vassaldom to Germany.’ A third possibility, which was relatively new

but very alarming, concerned Poland. Since at least the 21st, the Czechs, with the strong approval and probably on the initiative of the French, were

trying to set on foot separate negotiations with Poland, who was to be offered a price which at best might bring her right over to the Allied side, and at the worst was calculated to make her forget Hungary. The Polish 1 Both Ciano and Beck, as we shall see, afterwards described Hungary’s claims as extending only to the Magyar areas (Comnéne, pp. 121-2, 152).

2 See Ciano Papers, p. 235. It is worth noting that according to Ciano, Lord Perth ‘“‘fully agreed”’ that it would be ‘“‘childish and dangerous’ to leave these claims unsettled.

3 Doc. Brit. F.P., II. III, 41, 44.

4 Id., 43. 5 For the feelers put out in this direction, see Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 592.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 269 attitude towards Hungary had become very equivocal. On the one hand, the Polish Press was now vigorously and openly demanding the attachment of Slovakia to Hungary, and her Foreign Ministry was, as a member of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry has told the writer, ‘‘pressing Hungary to an active policy, using every means of persuasion and even vague threats that she might disinterest herself in the Hungarian claims.’ On the other hand, as early as the 20th Beck had sent a message to Kanya that things were moving too fast for a military agreement, although he would give Hungary’s claims diplomatic support and exchange information with her. But he did

not, in fact, keep her informed of the negotiations in which he was now

involved.”

The idea of buying off the Poles may very well have originated even quite a long time before the 21st; at any rate, by that date the negotiations were well

under way. By the 23rd Beck had received “‘verbal assurances from the Czechoslovak Government that they were prepared to make territorial concessions to Poland,’ and after Bene’ had, apparently, gone back on this on the 24th,* he again accepted it on the 25th, in a letter worded to differentiate between the status of the Polish and Hungarian claims,® and on the 26th things had reached such a stage that the British and French Governments felt justified in strongly recommending Poland to accept Bene’’ offer.*

Meanwhile, Hungary had been treated very differently. When Wettstein called on the evening of the 24th for the promised answer to his Note of the 22nd, Krofta put him off again, although saying that “‘he did not wish to imply that the Czechoslovak Government rejected the Hungarian demands on principle.”’’” On that day Krofta also told Newton that his Government

would probably end by “yielding to some extent” to the Hungarian demands.® But the Czechs were probably really only playing for time, for on the 26th their Chargé d’Affaires in Bucharest told Comnéne that ‘“‘in Prague they regarded the Hungarian demands as idiotic (pazza) and if they succeeded in liquidating the conflict with Poland and Germany, the Czechoslovak people would be happy to settle accounts finally with ‘the Magyar gentlemen.’’’®

On the 26th they believed that agreement with Poland was in sight; they

had also, that day, at last consented to concessions which satisfied the Slovaks. Accordingly, late that evening Krofta gave Wettstein a Note which repeated that the promise of identical treatment had related only to treatment within the Czechoslovak State and offered negotiations on the basis of the ‘Fourth Plan.’’!°

This answer was a grave disappointment to the Hungarians, and the Germans, to whom it was at once communicated (Wettstein passed it on at once in Prague, and Erdmannsdorff was told next day in Budapest), seized 1 Szegedi-Maszak to C. A. M. 2 Sz. I. MS.

> Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 35. 4 Id., 50, and Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, p.288. In Namier the letter is dated the 22nd; it may represent an early draft, laid aside by Bene when he received the day’s news from Russia. 5 So Krofta told Newton (Doc. Brit. F.P., loc. cit.). © Doc. Brit. F.P., III. II, 1096, 1102. 7 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 924.

® Doc. Brit. F.P., Il. III, 42. ® Comnéne, op. cit., p. 129. oo 10 The text of the written reply, with Krofta’s gloss on it, 1s given in Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 630. The opening is identical with that ef the Note of the 25th to Poland; the end is substantially different.

270 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH their chance. Gdéring saw Sztdjay next day, reproached Hungary for her inactivity in the minority areas, and warned her that if a military action started and she stood aside, she might get left out of the settlement (what he hinted, plainly enough, was that Germany would then divide the spoils with Poland).1 Next day Ribbentrop told Sztdjay that in case of war (on which, Sztdjay thought, he was reckoning), Hungary should move simultaneously

with Germany.” Finally, having heard that Hitler himself shared his lieutenants’ views, Sztéjay got Lammers to put to the Fuhrer Hungary’s reasons for her inactivity and got back a message that “‘Hitler was cognisant

of these arguments, and although he did not want to influence us, yet he expressed the view that we should serve our interests better if more agitation was apparent among the minority in Slovakia-Ruthenia.’’* Kanya had already told Erdmannsdorff that Hungary would not agree to the Czech proposal,* which an official statement, published the next day, described as “‘unsatisfactory and inconclusive.”’ Csaky told both the French

} and the Roumanian representatives in Budapest that if Germany marched into her minority areas, Poland and Hungary would follow suit.” Asked by Knox whether his previous assurances about non-aggression held good,

Kanya refused to commit himself. There is no evidence of any further callings-up, but it looks as though Germany was now allowed to take over

| the airfield outside Buda’ and Imrédy wrote Mussolini a personal letter asking for a loan of eight squadrons of Italian fighter aircraft, to be sent discreetly, perhaps with Hungarian markings, and in any case, to be put under Hungarian command.®

On the 28th Wettstein handed in a Note saying that Hungary was in favour of the practical realisation of the right of all nationalities in the Danube basin to self-determination and would regard any discrimination against Hungarian nationals as an unfriendly act; the best means of ensuring peace was that the Hungarian claims should be settled at the same time as the German.’ Mussolini was asked to explain to Yugoslavia and Roumania that the steps taken by Hungary in Prague were not directed against them.’° Krofta ‘“‘received”’ this Note with the remark that the Hungarian demands would “mean a complete transformation of Central Europe, which would

also affect... Yugoslavia and Roumania. The Czechoslovak Government had no reason to start negotiations of this kind.”’

Once again a deadlock appeared to have been reached. Nevertheless, events, and the policies of the States holding the ring, had meanwhile been working, almost unconsciously, towards a general consensus that Hungary should be denied the “larger revision,’’ but that Czechoslovakia should be forced to grant her ethnic revision. This was, above all, the outcome of the complicated activities in which 1 Sz. I. MS. 2 Id. 3 Id. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 645.

> Doc. Brit. F.P., If. III, 5; Comnéne, p. 135. * Doc. Brit. F.P., loc. cit.

7 Id., I. Il, 1211.

® Ciano Papers (MS.). The development of events made the loan unnecessary at the time, although the request was, as we shall see, repeated later, with disastrous results. Imrédy’s letter refers also to discussions with an Italian military mission in Budapest. On this I have not been able to find any further information. * Doc. Brit. F.P.. IT. Il, 63, and a summary in Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 658. 10 Ciano Papers, loc. cit.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 271 M. Comnéne had been engaged ever since the 16th... He had so much emphasised his objections to Hungary’s acquiring “‘all Slovakia’’—particularly the increase in her size, population and strength which this would involve and the undesirable precedent if Hungary’s historic claims were allowed to possess any validity—that Stoyadinovi¢ soon came over—if, indeed, he had

ever been of any other mind—to agreeing to support him, although not flamboyantly, in opposing the “‘larger revision.” But Stoyadinovi¢ in return

argued that Hungary could not be refused the application of the national principle which the Powers had agreed to apply in the case of the Sudeten Germans, and to this view Comnéne, on his side, had come round—if, indeed, he, too, had ever been so completely opposed to it as his pages would suggest

on a first reading.” By the 23rd, at the latest, Roumania and Yugoslavia were agreed not to oppose ethnic revision for Hungary, subject to two stipulations: that it should not be achieved by force, which would compel them to intervene, and that it should not be regarded as a precedent. Both Italy and Germany were made acquainted with this point of view, and as, to both of them, Yugoslavia and Roumania were far more important than Hungary, both acquiesced in it readily enough. Ciano promised the Roumanian that Hungary would commit “‘no imprudence,”’ and assured him that her claims “‘were limited to the ethnic part and that there could be no question of all Slovakia.”* On the 25th Stoyadinovic¢ told Comnéne that he had received a reassuring reply from a “‘very important German personage”’ (almost certainly G6ring) on the Slovak question.* Hitler, in fact, was now no longer mentioning the Slovaks, nor talking about the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, and as the British were certainly not supporting the return of Slovakia to Hungary, the only State, outside Hungary itself, which had not yet fallen into line against the larger revision was Poland, while only Czechoslovakia was openly resisting the lesser claim (France and the U.S.S.R. wrapping themselves in silence). On the 27th or the 28th (it is impossible to say whether the move occurred

before or after the presentation of the Hungarian Note to Prague’) Stoyadinovié went so far as to let Kanya know that while he was opposed to the return of the Slovak and Ruthene areas to Hungary, if Hungary would give a satisfactory declaration regarding the security of Yugoslavia, and let him know what Magyar areas she was claiming, he would try to mediate in

Prague to get those areas retroceded. The Yugoslav Minister in Berlin appears to have spoken to GGring in the same sense.°®

Kanya on this occasion refused to go back on Hungary’s wish to see “the practical realisation of the right of self-determination for the Ruthenes and Slovaks,’’ but he did ask Germany to state in Belgrade that this “did not 1 M. Comnéne describes in detail in his Preludi nearly all these moves, and all the motives—

always elevated—which inspired them. Some of the impacts are recorded in the various collections of official documents, in Ciano’s papers, and by Beck, op. cit., p. 174. The Survey of International Affairs for 1938, vol. 3, has used this material, but has unfortunately followed the method,

convenient for the writer but unilluminating for the reader, of splitting its narrative into several mutually uncorrelated sections, thus depriving it of most of its value. 2 His very insistence, from the outset, on the monstrous nature of the claim for “all Slovakia” suggests an unwillingness to oppose a smaller claim, and according to Beck (op. cit., p. 174) he was chiefly interested in keeping Roumania’s railway communications with Czechoslovakia in Czech

nan ‘Comnéne, pp. 121-2; cf. Ciano Papers, pp. 236-7, and Ciano Diary, 23rd September. 4 Comneéne, pp. 119-20.

65 This important move is known only from a German memorandum, dated the 28th, summarising a conversation between Sztdjay and Weizsdcker. ®§ Comnéne, pp. 138-9, 148, 155.

272 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH imply an aggressive attitude towards Yugoslavia,” and on the 29th Wettstein went back to Krofta to explain that his Note of the previous day had referred only to Czechoslovak territory... Meanwhile Géring had reassured Stoyadinovi¢ that Hungary would not make any move which would render the

Little Entente treaties operative, and that Germany did not at all want to see Hungary become too powerful, still less would she help her to become

it.2 According to another version of this conversation which reached Budapest, he even said that Germany was willing “to give Roumania and Yugoslavia every guarantee for the future against Hungarian claims against them, on condition that they remained neutral.’’® Yugoslavia and Roumania seem to have considered this satisfactory, and on the 29th even the Poles were being less intransigent about the attribution of Slovakia to Hungary.* On the other hand, Halifax, after wiring on the 28th to ask what reply, if any, Czechoslovakia had given to Hungary’s demand of the 22nd° and receiving a reply which indicated that the Czechs

| still hoped to escape without making Hungary any territorial concessions at all,° had wired out suggesting that Prague be advised to face the fact that some cession of territory to Hungary would have to be made.’ This wire was already sent to Munich, for on the afternoon of the 28th

| the world had learned that the Four Powers would meet in conference on the

| 29th. The announcement had, among other consequences, that of again | driving apart the courses of Poland and Hungary. Beck, on principle, took | up the attitude that Poland’s claims were not a matter for discussion by any : party except herself and the object of them, and after a strong “‘last appeal”’

by Papée to the Czechs to satisfy Poland’s demands before the Conference

| met (in which case Poland would, even at that last hour, have turned round . against Germany)® had met with an “insufficient” reply, pursued his private policy without regard to the Conference. The Hungarians, on the contrary,

. were only too anxious to get their claims satisfied through the Conference: the only question being, what was the most effective method. Sztdjay, who thought that Germany and Italy would be simply dictating the terms, telephoned to Budapest on the 28th “‘absolutely imploring” that the Regent

, should intervene personally with “‘the two leaders of the German Reich”’:

if this were done, he still believed that Hungary might come well out of the conference.’ He must, however, have been told soon after that, for whatever

, reason, the Germans did not intend to make themselves the spokesmen of Hungary’s claims,’ for later in the evening he telephoned again, suggesting 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. II, 672; Brit. F.P., III. II, 73. * Comneéne, pp. 138-9.

* Sz. I. MS. On the 29th Kanya telegraphed this information to Sztdjay, as coming from ‘‘a very confidential source.”’

* Cf. Comneéne, p. 152. Beck made the same distinction as Csaky between Hungary’s claims,

which he said did not extend beyond the Magyar ethnic areas, and her request for selfdetermination for the Slovaks and Ruthenes. Other Poles were being more moderate still (Doc. Brit. F.P., II. III, 67).

5* Lubienski Id., 59. § Id., 61. 7 Id., 69. to C. A. M. ® Sz. I. MS.

*° Both “Béla’’ and Lajos write, certainly from a common source, that Hitler ‘“‘was so enraged at Hungary’s conduct that he refused to put forward her claims,” and if such a refusal was given, it could only have been on the 28th; and surely before Sztdjay sent his second message, which

must have been based on some communication made to him in Berlin. Probably the Germans decided that evening, when Goring, Neurath and Weizsacker were drawing up the draft agenda for the next day, to leave the sponsoring of the non-German claims to Italy. It does not, however, entirely follow that Hitler’s refusal, if he gave one, was due to rage, for he had always maintained that he could not be “‘spokesman’”’ for non-Germans, and he did mention the claims in his opening words at the conference.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 273 that Csaky should be sent to Munich, armed with the necessary data, and a modification of this plan was adopted. Csaky was, in fact, sent to Munich on the 29th, armed with a letter from Horthy accrediting him to Mussolini, and another from Imrédy defining Hungary’s claims; while the Hungarian Ministers in London and Paris were instructed to present Hungary’s claims in those capitals. This last instruction was duly carried out on the afternoon of the 29th,! without, it may be remarked, any noticeable effect, except that it induced Halifax to send to Munich the message already mentioned, suggesting that the Czechs should be advised to face the necessity of making Hungary some territorial concessions. Halifax does not appear to have commented at all on Hungary’s remarks on the Slovak and Ruthene questions. The important interview was obviously that between Csaky and Mussolini.? Csaky had again put forward the full programme, with the interesting variant that he asked for three plebiscites: for Western Slovakia, Eastern Slovakia and Ruthenia respectively.* He first suggested, on Kanya’s instructions, that the plebiscites should be held in a month’s time, but Mussolini, who had copied out the claims in his own hand and promised to put them forward as coming from himself,* turned the conversation on to the areas claimed unconditionally, and suggested that, with luck, the transfer of these could be put through immediately. If this ““maximum programme” did not go through, he would stipulate for settlement, by direct negotiation or otherwise, within a maximum period of a month. Csaky’s report goes on: “If even this minimum programme doesn’t go,” he said to me, raising his voice, ‘“‘attack! Don’t be afraid of the Roumanians, nor of the Yugoslavs, who are now occupied in demonstrating against Italy. Anyway, I will pass on to Bucharest and Belgrade demands corresponding to those in M. Imrédy’s letter. I sincerely hope that they will find them reasonable.”’ Csaky objected that direct negotiation had already been tried, and failed, and Mussolini substituted the formula reproduced below. In his excitement Csaky apparently failed to observe that, whether intentionally or otherwise, Mussolini had passed over the question of the plebiscite areas altogether.

In fact, as the records of the Conference show, the question of the _ plebiscites was never raised at all. The British and French would, apparently, have preferred that the whole question should be excluded from the scope of the Conference, and Hitler was unenthusiastic,® but Mussolini insisted. His first draft for the Polish and Hungarian questions ran as follows: “The heads of the Governments of the four Powers declare that the same principles which have permitted the solution of the problem of the 1 The text of the Note to London is given in the Sz. I. MS. It is summarised in Doc. Brit. F.P., II. Il, 70. It was mildly put: it asked for the Hungarian claims to be dealt with, “if not simultaneously with, as soon as possible after the peaceful settlement of the German-Czech dispute,” and did not actually claim plebiscites in the Slovak-Ruthene areas, but expressed the view that plebiscites would be the soundest solution. Apparently Marosy, who left the letter, stressed the importance of this point and asked for Halifax’s “detailed opinion” on it. 2 Following, except where otherwise stated, is from the Sz. I. MS. 3 This idea seems to have been Csaky’s own. It was based on a not altogether unfounded belief that Eastern Slovakia was more pro-Hungarian than the West. 4 “Réln »

5 Both Ciano’s accounts (Diary, 29th to 30th September, and Papers, loc. cit.) have it that Hitler, as well as Chamberlain and Daladier, “‘tried to avoid discussing the question” but Barczy

recording Csaky’s information, writes that ““Germany and Italy were in favour of Hungary’ claims, France and England against.” T

274 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Sudeten Germans should be adopted also for the analogous problems of the Polish and Hungarian minorities within a maximum delay of one month and according to a procedure which might be fixed through the usual diplomatic channels or by means of another meeting of the heads of the Governments of the four Powers here present.”’

The British objected to this formula on the ground that it might seem to imply sanction of the employment of force, and themselves produced the alternative which the Conference finally adopted. This postponed the entry into effect of the guarantee “‘until the solution of the question of the Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia” and agreed that if that problem

had not been settled by agreement between the Governments concerned within three months,! it should form the subject of another meeting between the heads of the Governments of the Four Powers. This was attached as a “‘declaration’’ to the Agreement proper; signed

| with it at 2.30 a.m. on the 30th and accepted by the Czechs, under protest, twelve hours later.

It will be convenient to mention at this point—although the event took

: place a day or two later—the replacement in the first days of October’? of

: Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, by Henrik Werth as Chief of the Hungarian | General Staff. The reasons for this were actually personal, as Keresztes-

Fischer’s handling of certain personal problems had caused dissatisfaction,” and Werth owed his appointment (which Horthy made of his own choice,

: without consulting either Imrédy or Ratz*) chiefly to his seniority; but the : effects of the change on Hungarian policy during the next three years were | destined to be very deep. Werth was not an Arrow Cross man, nor even a | conscious Right Radical. He was a believer in the doctrine that the Army , should not take sides in internal politics, and had even been out of favour for some years for having, like most of the old k. und k. officers (he was one of these, having passed through the Staff College in Wiener Neustadt), taken

| Réder’s side against G6mbéGs in the great dispute of 1935.° But he was a

| Swabian (from Rezs6éhaza, in the Banat), of German mother-tongue, married to a Reichsdeutsche, and nationally so ““deutschbewusst”’ that in the census of

: 1941 he described himself as ““German”’ by nationality (thereby, technically, | rendering himself liable to service in the Waffen SS.). His sympathies were very strongly with Germany and his belief in her invincibility unshakable, and

although he does not seem ever to have overstepped the bounds which he himself thought proper,® yet during the three critical years of his office he 1 None of the records states why the period was thus extended; but the British had been consulting with the Czechs.

2 I have been unable to trace the exact date, but it was within a day or two either way of

Ist October. 3 Horthy toC. A. M. Nagy, op. cit., p. 259, writes that Keresztes-Fischer had been “‘purging”’ the Army of Arrow Cross sympathisers. 4 Barczy. 5 Tombor in Kossuth Népe, 3rd July 1945.

6 I write this in knowledge of the frequent complaints to the contrary made by Teleki and others; but I have been unable to find anything in the numerous memoranda by Werth which I have read which seemed to me to go beyond what he was entitled to say; whether he was right in saying it is, of course, an entirely different question. Nor have I ever been able to convince myself of the soundness of the evidence brought to substantiate various accusations of disloyal or improper conduct by him. Often his accusers were making him the scapegoat for their own errors. It is true that he used not only to press his views very insistently on the Regent and the Cabinet but also to address his senior officers in the same vein.

SPRAT AMONG WHALES 275 did not cease to use all his influence to press for Hungary to associate herself as closely as possible with Germany, in her own interest. The politicians of the other school repeatedly pressed for his removal (Teleki, in particular, made strong representations to Horthy in June 1940), but by this time it was

hard to dismiss him, as the Germans, with whom Hungary was by then closely associated, valued him. It was even—strange to say—alleged that he was the only senior Hungarian officer who spoke German well enough to deal with them on an equal footing. His influence was all the stronger because he insisted on being master in his own house, and accepted the appointment only on condition that the post of C. in C. of the Army (previously the technical superior of the Chief of the General Staff”) should be abolished. This made him (under Horthy) sole head of the Army in all important respects, and one of the half-dozen most powerful men in Hungary. 1 This was the reason given by Horthy to Bardossy for refusing to dismiss Werth in June 1941 (Bardossy Trial, p. 22; the printed report of the trial incidentally makes nonsense of the Pee pacuth Népe, 3rd August 1947.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FIGHTING FISH HE next days were for Hungary another period of confusion, hesitation

and vacillation. She was still out of step with Poland, who was pressing her own claims ruthlessly. Beck had apparently expected Hungary to follow his example, and there is strong evidence that he was actually pressing her to do so*—a course which some, at least, of the Germans also expected her to take? and, to judge by indirect evidence, would have welcomed.*

, There was undoubtedly a strong party in Hungary which favoured this course, stressing particularly the argument that this moment, when the Czechs were still fully occupied on their frontiers with Germany and Poland, was an uniquely favourable one. The party of moderation and caution was,

| however, still in the ascendant. They argued that all four of the Munich : Powers, including, what was still the most important for many of them, | Great Britain, had accepted the principle of ethnic revision, and would see to it that the Czechs did not evade the obligation. For that matter they did

: not even expect that the Czechs would attempt evasion: when, at the Ministerial Council held on the morrow of Munich, Teleki asked: “‘what

, would happen if the Czechs refused to hand over the areas awarded to us?” Imrédy and Kanya answered: “‘they have already agreed.’ Further, although the Munich decisions had made no mention of the Slovaks and Ruthenes, the Hungarians were not unhopeful that developments might, after all, work out in their favour. It was obvious that both peoples would soon be putting forward demands, in one sense or another,

regarding their own futures. The Hungarians had decided to accept the expressed wishes of both peoples,® and had strong hopes that a Ruthene vote, at least, would go in their favour. The Ministerial Council thus adopted a policy which Kanya afterwards’ described (somewhat virtuously) as based on the following four principles: 1. Not to resort to force so long as there was any possibility of a peaceful settlement. 1 The reader is reminded that after a vigorous exchange of communications on 30th September, Poland, at 11.40 p.m. on that night, sent a near-ultimatum, couched in deliberately

offensive language, demanding immediate evacuation of the territory claimed by her unconditionally, with the other questions to be settled by negotiation. A reply was demanded within twelve hours. Czechoslovakia having accepted the demand next morning, Poland occupied the territory claimed by her on 2nd and 3rd October.

2 See Doc. Brit. F.P., HI. II, 136; Comnene, pp. 205 ff., 214. My private information confirms that Beck was at this time pressing Kanya ‘‘almost hourly” to march into Slovakia. 3 According to the Sz. I. MS., Ribbentrop told Ciano on 28th October that ““Hungary ought to have marched in on the day after the Munich Agreement.” ‘ The Magyarsag, which certainly took its orders from Germany, had a leader on the 30th advocating an attack on Czechoslovakia. 6 Barczy.

* This statement rests on unimpeachable evidence: a report from Csdky to KAnya, reproduced

in the Sz. I. MS., says that “Beck strongly approves of our policy of accepting the Slovaks’ decision, however it may fall out.” 7 In his retrospective survey of the negotiations, 11th November 1938.

FIGHTING FISH 277 2. To insist, in the determination of the frontier, on the same treatment as was accorded to the Germans and Poles. 3. To get the dispute settled as quickly as possible. 4. To set up a new and peaceful order, based on self-determination. The Press was accordingly throttled down and ordered to hail Munich as “a great moral and practical success” and as “‘the first step towards the realisation of Hungary’s claims,’’ with special emphasis laid on the role of Mr. Chamberlain in preserving the peace. On the Ist, Kanya told Wettstein

to hand Krofta, next day, a Note suggesting the early opening of direct

negotiations “in order that the rights of other nationalities to selfdetermination might be realised in complete equality of rights with that of the Sudeten Germans.”? To the Germans he sent a message of reassurance for Stoyadinovic, with a request for diplomatic support,? and to Beck a message that the return of Slovakia and Ruthenia could be brought about only by “internal movement on the part of those concerned and loud demands from them,” of which there was good prospect, as there was of the return of the Magyar-inhabited areas. He added, in a postscript which showed that the irritation had not been all on one side, that he would have appreciated it “had the Polish Government informed us a little earlier, in accordance with our consultative agreement, of the energetic steps which it planned to take towards Czechoslovakia.’’* Finally, Barcza, to whom Halifax had on the 2nd handed him a reply to his Note of the 29th with a strong hope that the parties would agree peaceably and in time, answered next day stressing Hungary’s peaceful intentions and asking for diplomatic support.* All seemed to be going well, since the Czechs had themselves sent Hungary

a Note at midnight on the Ist/2nd suggesting the opening of negotiations with a view to reaching a “‘friendly understanding,” and Krofta, on receiving

the Hungarian Note, had said that his Government “‘wished to form a national State, and was therefore prepared to discuss the cession of the ethnically Magyar districts.”° The Czechs were giving similar assurances elsewhere,® and even explaining semi-officially in their Press that the Hungarians would have to be treated like the Germans and Poles,’ so that for the moment everything promised well. But as early as the 3rd the harmony was disturbed. On the 2nd Krofta had told Wettstein that as his Government was greatly occupied with the German and Polish claims, the discussions could not begin for a week; to the British he had also explained that they needed first to reach

agreement with the Slovaks.’ For the old reason, so often explained, the Hungarians were deeply suspicious of all delaying tactics, and on the 3rd they tapped a telephone conversation between Krofta and his Minister in Budapest, Kobr. Krofta asked “‘whether there was any danger threatening from the Hungarian side?’ and Kobr answered that “‘the Hungarians were 1 $z. I. MS. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 9. The Germans in fact told the Czechs that it would be “calamitous” if they went on putting the Hungarians off, and especially if they tried to bring the Roumanians and Yugoslavs into the negotiations (Id., 14). 2 Sz. I. MS.

4 Barcza MS. According to Barcza, Halifax said that ‘whatever suited BeneS and the Hungarians would suit Great Britain.” 8 Sz. I. MS.; see Doc. G.F.P., III. IT, 113. ® Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 97, 116, 7 Op. cit., 113, 116. § Tbid.

278 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH even more frightened than the Czechs; there was nothing to be feared.’ The Hungarians became completely convinced that the Czechs were only playing for time, and at 9 p.m. that evening sent off a new Note in a much less conciliatory tone. This demanded the immediate initiation of negotia-

tions with the object of realising self-determination for the Magyars of Czechoslovakia on a basis identical with that adopted for the Germans. These conversations might begin at Komarom (Komarn6) on the 6th. The Note further demanded: (a) release of all Magyar political prisoners, hostages, etc.; (b) release from the Army of all Magyar soldiers; (c) local guards, under

mixed command, to be set up for the protection of life, property, etc.; and (d) token occupation by Hungarian troops of two or three frontier localities.” An answer was requested for the next day. The Germans were asked to support this demand.°

The Note did not mention Slovakia or Ruthenia, but on this day the Hungarians also began suddenly to make vigorous preparations for eventual

future action in those areas. Their hopes may have been raised by two messages which had reached them during the day. The first was from a prominent Slovak politician, who slipped across the frontier, saw Pataky, and told him that if Hungary would guarantee Slovakia autonomy (this

, promise was immediately given) he could “‘arrange’’ that when the Slovak | politicians met, as they would soon be doing, to decide on their future, they | would vote for incorporation in Hungary.* Secondly there came a message | from Beck asking for Csaky to come and see him, followed (next day) by an assurance that he meant to continue his collaboration with Hungary and

: would support her claims.°

| The Hungarians now opened a vigorous diplomatic offensive. On the 3rd Villani had hinted to Ciano that “‘the Hungarians were thinking of Slovakia.’’® Next day an individual named Dvofrak, a strongly pro-Hungarian

: Slovak who had often before carried out similar errands, was sent to Rome | to see the Duce and Ciano and plead the cause of Hungaro-Slovak union,’ on which Villani was comparatively open on the Sth.2 A somewhat similar personage, one, Father Jehlitka, was sent to London where, however, as in Paris, the Hungarians were too cautious to raise either the Slovak or the Ruthene question openly. But Beck had instructed his representatives abroad

: to push both claims,’ and they seem to have done so at least in Paris, while

the Polish Press now wrote vociferously demanding the establishment of a Polono-Hungarian frontier across Ruthenia as a Polish interest and pleading hardly less strongly for the attachment of Slovakia to Hungary.'° On the 4th Wettstein told his German colleague in Prague that Hungary favoured the voluntary adhesion to Hungary of both areas. Slovakia would then receive territorial autonomy, but Ruthenia something less (“‘national autonomy’’).*! 1 Personal, Szegedi-Maszak. to C. A. M. ° Summaries of the text are in Doc. Brit. F.P., JII. III, 120, and Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 22. > Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 28. * Private. I cannot identify the politician. ° Sz. I. MS. 8 Ciano Diary, 3rd October. ? Id., 4th October. 8 Id., 5th October. ° Sz. I. MS. ‘° See in particular the two articles of the officieux Gazeta Polska, 5th and 6th October, 4 Doc, G.F.P. .D, IV, 29.

FIGHTING FISH 279 The men called up in September were now mostly with the colours, and a few more special categories had also been called up in the last few days. Further, the Ragged Guard was now at last called on, although only to the tune of 1,000 selected men. They were not put into uniform, but were told that when given the word they were to slip across the frontier disguised as

forestry engineers, when their tasks would be: to make propaganda for Hungary, to promote disintegration in the Czechoslovak Army, and to conduct partisan warfare in co-operation with the Poles. Each of the wretched boys was made to sign a declaration that he would take poison if captured, and would shoot his wounded comrades.! For the time, the volunteers were kept waiting in camps on the Hungarian

side of the frontier (200 opposite Slovakia, 800 opposite Ruthenia). A peripatetic wireless transmitter, misleadingly calling itself the “‘bujdosd Szlovak’’ (Slovak refugee”) began thundering propaganda across the frontier. All these preparations were going on prestissimo on the 4th and 5th, for by that time it was known that the leaders of the Slovak political parties were meeting on the 6th at Zilina, to pronounce their wishes on the future status of Slovakia. Their decision would also determine that of the Ruthenes, who

had found themselves unable to convoke an inter-Party Congress of their own, for the reason that the political party grouping which had existed among them up to that date was recognised even by themselves as entirely irrelevant to the new situation. The political elements among them (the Communists excepted) had therefore hurriedly regrouped themselves into two National

Councils, or Radas, calling themselves the “‘Ruthene’’ (Rusinska) and “Ukrainian” (Ukrainska) respectively. The Ruthene Council (which now included most of those groups which had previously called themselves **“Russian’’—Russinska) numbered among its leaders most of the men who had been most circumstantially suspected of being pro-Hungarian, and was supported by the Magyar minority, while the Ukrainians were Slavophile. The two Radas thus held very different views regarding the best future for Ruthenia; but in the emergency, they had decided to send representatives to

Zilina and to accept whichever decision—separation or autonomy—the Slovaks took for themselves.

With the Zilina decisions still untaken, the Czechoslovak Government could not, had it wished, easily have promised to start negotiations about the frontiers of Slovakia within the three days. Moreover, the 4th was precisely the day when Syrovy was reconstructing his cabinet, replacing Krofta, the Foreign Minister identified with Benes’ policy, by Chvalkovsky, the Czecho-

slovak Minister in Rome, who was reputed to be pro-Axis, or at least prepared to follow a pro-Axis policy—a political gesture towards the Axis

which the resignation of Benes on the next day was to underline. On receiving the Hungarians’ Note the Czechoslovak Government did not there-

fore at first do more than appeal to London, protesting that it fully appreciated the “‘urgent need” for a “stable and working arrangement with 1 Most of this information from a private source: but see also Henderson, Eyewitness in Czechoslovakia, p. 252. Henderson got some details from Czechs, who got them from interrogating prisoners (nobody seems, in fact, to have taken poison). Precisely the fact that the parties did not understand all the information which they obtained testifies to its accuracy. The reason why the Ragged Guard was used only on this reduced scale was that most of the volunteers were hot-heads, and many of them Arrow Cross men, and the authorities feared that they might start a massacre of Jews and/or attempt a putsch against the Government. This was why they were placed under regular officers (personal from a private source). . 2 In fact, the station was run by Antal. It was kept operating until March 1939,

280 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Hungary, involving transfer of territory” and did not intend to procrastinate,

and authorising H.M. Government to assure Budapest that its desire for agreement was “‘sincere and unflinching.’? In the afternoon, when the reconstruction of the Government was complete, Krno called, in Syrovy’s name, on the Hungarian Chargé d’Affaires, Woernle, to say that Czechoslovakia desired direct negotiations, although for technical reasons they could not start before the 10th. The Czechoslovak delegation would be headed by M. Karvas, one of the Slovaks who had been taken into the Government that morning. M. Krno gave as his personal opinion that

agreement could probably be reached on the points mentioned in the Hungarian Note, and transmitted a message from M. HodzZa, who was ill, that he would do his utmost to mediate a direct agreement.’ The Hungarians were naturally against delay, for they believed that the

Czechs were trying to gain time in order to bring back troops from the German and Polish frontiers and deploy them along that with Hungary’; moreover, one of their strongest cards would be lost if Czechoslovakia succeeded in becoming an Axis client. They replied on the 5th with a new and impatient Note demanding an early commencement of the negotiations and guarantees that they would be conducted “‘in a suitable atmosphere.’”* Erdmannsdorff wired the next day that “immediate military intervention” was being seriously considered, and the troops were to be in an “advanced state of readiness”’ as from the 7th.° But they still did not dare move in the face of anything like an international veto, and they seemed likely to encounter this, at any rate as regards Slovakia. Comneéne had intervened again, on the night of the 4th/5th, in Berlin, Belgrade, Paris, London, Rome and Warsaw to say that Roumania would not accept the annexation by Hungary of “‘all Slovakia, including Ruthenia.”® Roumania’s voice now carried some weight in both camps, for the West still believed her to be on their side, whereas she had been besieging the Germans for a week past with almost daily assurances of her strong desire (felt in particular by King Carol) to achieve a close political rapprochement with Germany. For this she had indicated that she would be prepared to pay a substantial price in the form of economic aid, but the quid pro quo

would certainly have to include the discouragement of Hungary.’ This remarkable vo/te-face (to which M. Comnéne does not refer in his memoirs) was clearly something which the Germans were bound to take seriously into consideration, for the Roumanians’ argument, that if the two States were to be political friends and economic partners they should have direct railway communication, was not negligible.

Stoyadinovic told Heeren on the 4th that while Yugoslavia would “reconcile herself’? to Hungary’s obtaining the Magyar areas, an extension of her claims, even subject to plebiscites, to the non-Magyar areas would 1 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 149. A similar message was given to the German Chargé d’ Affaires when he called to support the Hungarian Note (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 28). * From a series of documents which were first read out on the Bratislava wireless by a Slovak Deputy, M. Culen, early in 1945 and reprinted in the Kanadsky Slovak, of Montreal, on 4th May 3 Report by Erdmannsdorff, Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 43. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 35. 5 Id., 43. 6 Comneéne, op. cit., p. 223. ” For evidence in support of this statement see Doc. G,F,P., D. V, 227 (dated 29th September), 228, 230, 231, 234-9, ete.

FIGHTING FISH 281 cause “‘serious uneasiness, especially as regards Slovakia (Ruthenia, somewhat less).’"* Ciano had decided that he did not want to displease Yugoslavia, not to mention Germany and Roumania; further, the Slovaks did not want annexation by Hungary, and it would be absurd to right one injustice in order to commit another. Finally, Hungary with Slovakia might get too strong and break up Yugoslavia as Germany’s satellite, and at the moment,

Ciano was pro-Yugoslav. Therefore, although he now told Imrédy, in answer to his letter of the 27th, that he could have 100 fighter aircraft with Italian pilots, if there was a danger of the Czechs’ attacking Budapest, he was discouraging about Slovakia.? He also told the Germans (on the 4th) that “Italian policy regarding Slovakia did not contemplate handing over that area to Hungary.’” The Germans had not yet finally decided on their new policy, but at that moment both military policy and that of the Wilhelmstrasse were opposed to any further weakening of Germany’s new prospective client, Czechoslovakia, and also to a Polish-Hungarian common frontier, the wish for which, as they saw, was really directed against themselves. Provisionally, therefore, they decided on the 5th to support self-determination for both areas, because they believed that this would in practice give decisions unfavourable to Hungary.’ Incidentally, they took the opportunity themselves to occupy two small areas, Devény, on the left bank of the Danube, upstream from Pozsony, and Pozsonyligetfalu, the bridgehead opposite Pozsony on the right bank; an action against which the Hungarians, on the 6th, made an official démarche in such vigorous terms that it had to be withdrawn.° M. Comnene’s interventions in the West do not seem to have had the

decisive effect which their author appears at times to attribute to them. Indeed, it may be said at this point that throughout the negotiations both the British and French Governments carefully abstained from prejudging the issue, their attitude being that they would accept any settlement reached by

agreement between the parties concerned.® The Foreign Office did not respond to a suggestion by Knox that it should issue an “‘authoritative statement” that Britain would not encourage any claims based on considerations other than the ethnic.’ But they did regard it as their business to discourage the use of force. Sir Thomas Inskip made a statement in the Commons on the 5th that H.M. Government would regard her guarantee as effective in case of unprovoked aggression, and Halifax passed this on to Budapest on

the 6th, with a message that he hoped that Hungary would “refrain from 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 229. The Culen documents show that Stoyadinovié had really been trying to mediate between Budapest and Prague: on the 5th he recommended the Hungarians to accept proposals ‘‘at least half-way between their own and the Czechs’’’ (whatever the latter may have been at that stage). 2 Diary, Sth October. 3 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 26. 4 See id., 39; N.G. 3056 (Woermann’s memorandum of the 5th). 5 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 38, 42. Sztdjay had lost his temper badly on the 6th, and at a lunch had been declaring in a loud voice, to all and sundry, that the Fiihrer had promised Pozsony to Hungary. Pozsonyligetfalu had been given to Czechoslovakia in 1920 under the stipulation (commonly believed to have been disregarded) that it must not be fortified. As it was adjacent to the Burgenland frontier, Germany thus got direct access to Poszony without crossing Hungarian soil. Kanya had already sent Sztéjay to Weizsacker on the 4th to say that he had heard rumours that Germany meant to make this step, and to emphasise what a disastrous effect it would have on Hungarian opinion (ibid.). Hitler got out of his previous promises by saying that ‘“‘they had applied only to the case of a joint military occupation of Czechoslovakia.” 6 M. Barcza has told me that he never got any advice out of the Foreign Office except to agree with the Czechs: “‘what suited Prague and Budapest would suit H.M, Government,” 7 Doc, G.F,P., INI, MI, 169,

282 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH making demands in such a manner or of such a nature’’ as would make a peaceful settlement difficult. It is also true that, while the French were not unappreciative of the advantages to themselves of allowing the common Polish-Hungarian frontier, and were not even certain that Beck might not be right about Slovakia, and the Foreign Office at least saw what Beck was driving at,” the general, although quite erroneous, belief in England was that ethnic considerations supported Czechoslovakia’s case in Ruthenia, as well as Slovakia,? and very few people in England believed that there was any substance in Hungary’s claim to Slovakia. Thus Hungary’s only real supporter, for her larger claims, was Beck, who, when Csaky saw him on the 5th, was already prepared to let the Slovaks go their own way, but was strongly in favour of a coup in Ruthenia. He also said that he feared no difficulties either with Russia or Roumania, but that the decision was such a serious one that he must consult with his colleagues.‘ He asked Csaky to come back next day, and during the interval, incidentally, made the first of his several proposals to Roumania to take the Eastern half of Ruthenia, up to the KGrdésmez6-Tatarhag6 railway line inclusive, for herself and allow Hungary to take the West°®; but after Comnéne had rejected this, he told Csaky (on the 6th) that he had consulted Moscicki and Smygli-

Rydz and was confident of being able to square the Roumanians, and that frontier guards had been ordered to occupy the Ruthene frontier; but ‘in view of the Russian danger, Poland could for the moment do nothing more in the military field.’’®

Then, on the afternoon of the 6th, the Slovak politicians assembled at Zilina pronounced by a considerable majority in favour of full autonomy

within a Czecho-Slovak State.’ The Resolutions were far from finally settling the Slovak question, even for those who supported them, but they enabled Prague to reach a temporary settlement with the Slovaks. Mer. Tiso, Deputy President of the People’s Party, entered the central Government as Minister for Slovak Affairs, and on the 7th an autonomous Slovak Government came into being under his presidency which declared, in accordance with the inter-Party agreement, that it was opposed to any external intervention by Poland or Hungary and looked forward to co-operation with the Czechs and Ruthenes. The world at large seems to have assumed that here-

with the Slovaks had said their say and that any attempt to upset their decision would be tantamount to aggression. On the 8th, largely owing to M. Comnéne’s urgency, the French and Roumanian Ambassadors and the 1 Id., 149. Knox appears to have passed on the message with relish, whereupon Kanya asked

him whether Britain was using the same language towards Germany and Poland, or only threatening the smaller nations (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 47). ? See Doc. Brit. F.P., II. HI, 141. 3 I] well remember speaking myself at Chatham House at the time, and while during the discussion no one was against Hungary’s getting the Magyar areas, several speakers were against my view that Ruthenia also should be returned to her, because, they said, the ethnic argument was against her. When I pointed out that the Ruthenes were neither Czechs nor Slovaks, nor Czechoslovaks, it was argued that they were “‘Slavs.”’

4 Sz. I. MS. According to Beck himself (op. cit., p. 169), the Hungarians at one point (which was probably this occasion) wanted Poland to occupy both Ruthenia and Slovakia and afterwards retrocede them to Hungary. Beck writes, reasonably enough, that it was very difficult to talk to the Hungarians, who “passed from extreme defeatism to the most fantastic plans.” 5 The suggestion was first made through the Polish Ambassador in Rome (Comnéne, p. 237), which supports Comnéne’s idea that Italy was privy to it. I am informed (Lubienski) that the idea originated with the Polish General Staff, and was at first unauthorised, but not withdrawn, and Beck afterwards repeated it. § Sz. I. MS. ’ The text of the resolution is given in Sidor, op. cit., I], 259.

FIGHTING FISH 283 Yugoslav Minister all made representations in Warsaw, the Roumanian very strongly.’ And it is fairly clear that from this time onward France, as well as the two smaller States, and also Great Britain, assumed that the Slovaks

were sticking by the Czechs. On the 7th Ciano had already made up his mind that Hungary was not to have Slovakia, which must either go with Prague or possibly be independent.’?

The Germans took some days to make up their minds finally on the subject, for first Woermann drew up an aide-memoire® (this was on the 7th). Hitler himself annotated it on the 8th* and an instruction based on his notes was sent to the Missions abroad on the 10th®; but then he talked to Ribbentrop (this was after Weizsacker had sent him a cri de coeur that the Hungarians at Komarom were demanding Pressburg and Devény without plebiscites'), and a revised set of instructions’ was sent out on the 12th. But in all these drafts Germany accepted the Zilina resolutions as regards the Slovak areas, with the exception that she was not sure whether she did not want Pressburg for herself; the final draft enjoined “absolute reserve” on the subject. Hungary’s demand for the ethnic frontier was to be supported. International opinion on Ruthenia was less clear-cut, although a Ruthene delegation had arrived at Zilina by air just as the meeting was closing, and had also duly accepted the Slovaks’ resolution as governing Ruthene policy. But no one seemed convinced that the General Will of the Ruthenes had really found unimpeachable expression, and of the countries enumerated above,

only Roumania was strongly for the continued attachment of Ruthenia to Czecho-Slovakia. The French and British did not commit themselves. Ciano favoured the common Hungaro-Polish frontier. The German drafts recorded opposition to the common frontier, but wavered between attach-

ment to Prague and a satellite State under German patronage. Only the final draft said definitely that only Hungary’s ethnic demands were to be

supported: no outright demands for non-Magyar territories and any remaining disputed points were to be settled by plebiscites under international control. This last document ends oddly with the instruction that although Hungary

should be told, if she asked, that Germany’s attitude towards her is “‘in principle sympathetic’? and that she will not “hinder the Hungarians, nor enjoin moderation on them if they mobilise,” yet she will not herself draw the sword, except in defence of German interests (anyway, Hungary’s predicament was her own fault for having remained inactive during the crucial days in the face of the Fiihrer’s exhortations). This instruction, which

was probably inserted parenthetically on Hitler’s orders, was to prove of great importance a little later. Both the Poles and the Hungarians also made a clear distinction, after Zilina, between the cases of the Slovaks and the Ruthenes. The Poles seem to have escaped giving any pledges, but on the 8th Moltke reported that “the

possibility of annexing Slovakia to Hungary was no longer seriously

with Hungary.

considered,’’® and although Polish propaganda into and about Slovakia went on, it thereafter supported rather full independence for Slovakia than union As we shall see, the Hungarians still, for form’s sake, kept up the demand

1 Comnéne, p. 240. * Diary, 7th October. 3 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 45. 4 Id., 46.

5 Id., 50; N.G. 3056. 6 N.G. 5751.

7 _N.G. 3060: Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 53. ® Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 67.

284 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH for a plebiscite among the Slovaks, and did not even quite turn off their agitation in Slovakia itself; but their efforts in this direction grew more and more half-hearted. On the other hand, they were now quite determined to acquire Ruthenia, and although they still hoped to achieve this either through a plebiscite or a Four Power award,! they were prepared to take any steps which seemed feasible to bring about a result in their favour. They were in great haste to get the negotiations started, for two principal reasons: firstly, that as the new policy of Prague took shape, Germany was

likely to grow increasingly friendly towards the Czechs; and secondly because, as they well knew, the Czechs, although they had nominally begun demobilising on the 6th, were in fact keeping the reliable troops under arms,?

and hastily moving them down towards Slovakia and Ruthenia. On the 6th they had reluctantly consented, in view of the Government crisis in Prague, to postpone the opening of the negotiations till the 8th*; receiving fresh demurrals, they grudgingly postponed the date until the 9th, at the latest, while reminding the Czechs that their demands of 3rd October had not yet been fulfilled* and also warning the Germans that they would mobilise

immediately if the Czechs resisted the principle of cession of the ethnically Magyar districts.° On the 9th, accordingly, the two delegations met, at the place designated

by the Hungarians—a boat moored in the Danube at Komarom. The Hungarian delegation was headed by Kanya and Teleki, who were supported by al arge staff of experts, armed to the teeth with maps and statistics. The Slovaks had insisted that the frontiers of Slovakia were their concern, and the

Czechoslovak delegation therefore consisted of a band of Slovaks (the Ruthenes had not managed to send a representative) led by Mgr. Tiso. They had not been initiated into the history of the earlier negotiations, nor even supplied with the material prepared for the use of the Czechoslovak delegation,® and their sole armour was a terrified and stubborn determination not to be over-reached. The atmosphere was made worse by the abrupt tone which the Hungarians, under orders, adopted’ and by Kanya’s insistence that the negotiations should be conducted in French, which the poor Slovaks did not understand, while they all could and would gladly have spoken Hungarian.

The Hungarians opened by demanding fulfilment of the demands contained in their Note of the 3rd; unconditional cession of the Magyar ethnic areas, and an express decision regarding their wishes from the Slovaks and Ruthenes; and on the first two of these points there was little discussion. An amnesty for German, Hungarian and Polish political prisoners had been issued on the 8th, and the soldiers of those nationalities were being released from the Army. The Slovaks agreed to hand over the town of Ipolysag and

the railway station of Satoraljatjhely for token occupation. Conversely, * So Imrédy defined Hungary’s aims at a Ministerial Council on the 7th (Barczy). According to this, he did not mention Slovakia, but this may be Barczy’s slip.

° Personal, from a Czech source. The Third Army, in Slovakia-Ruthenia, had not been

demobilised at all. Kanya told a Press Conference on the 14th that Czechoslovakia had released her German and Magyar citizens with the colours, but had kept 20 out of the 22 classes of Czechs and Slovaks called up. Comnéne mentions ‘“‘the movement of Czech troops towards Ruthenia” as already in progress on the 8th (op. cit., p. 240).

§ Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 148. :

1 Id., 159.

> Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 48. ® Documents et matériels, 1, 276 ff.

” Imrédy had instructed the delegation “‘not to treat, but to demand” (Baross to C, A. M.),

FIGHTING FISH 285 they said that the Slovak and Ruthene questions fell outside the scope of the

Munich decisions and could not be discussed. There remained the | Hungarians’ ethnic claim, the principle of which the Slovaks did not, on this occasion, dispute, but the two parties could not readily agree on the figures. Ethnic conditions in Southern Slovakia are, or were, indeed, such as to make

possible a considerable conflict of claims. While it was indisputable that north of a line which approximately coincided with the geographical line where the foothills of the mountains ended and the plain began, the popula-

tion of the rural areas was by majority Slovak, and south of that line by majority Magyar, the populations of the string of towns which lay precisely in the mouths of the valleys, and thus just on the ethnic line, were extremely mixed, and also included many persons—bilingual and/or of mixed ancestry —who could equally well be described, or might equally well describe themselves, as belonging to either nationality; further, a large number of Jews whom either regime counted on its own side for statistical purposes. The change of regime after 1918 had also brought about a real change in so far as Hungarian officials, etc., had been replaced by Czechs and Slovaks and some of Czech and Slovak colonists had immigrated into the country districts

south of the main ethnic line. |

The Hungarians, who were demanding on principle the same treatment as the Germans, opened by claiming the area shown by their own 1910 census

as Magyar by majority. This included all the valley-mouth towns, and covered an area of 14,106 square miles. The Czechoslovak census of 1930 reckoned barely half of the population of this area (678,000 out of 1,346,010) as Magyar, giving several of the towns non-Magyar majorities; and the Slovaks also maintained, from the first, that in drawing a frontier, account must be taken of ethnic conditions outside the actual border zone. There were Magyars north of the main ethnic line, but much larger numbers of

Slovaks south of it, including some far away in central Hungary. The Hungarians maintained that the existence of these persons was irrelevant. They were the descendants of voluntary immigrants; they were excellent Hungarian citizens who had no desire to join Czechoslovakia; and the rapid Magyarisation which they were admittedly undergoing was automatic and unforced. After a day’s wrangling, the Slovaks asked for a week’s delay to collect material. The Hungarians reluctantly conceded them three days, and the delegations returned to their respective headquarters. The interval which now ensued saw inter alia a sensible intervention from Count Janos Esterhazy, President of the United Hungarian Party of Slovakia, who, having on the 8th proclaimed the wish of the Magyar minority to return to Hungary, said publicly on the 10th that it would be “a complete mistake”’

to try to reattach Slovakia. In making this statement, which there is some reason to believe had been prompted by Kanya in order to strengthen his own hand against the extremists,1 Esterhazy was obviously interpreting, quite correctly, feeling in Slovakia. In Ruthenia, on the contrary, events took a turn in Hungary’s favour. When the Ruthene delegates returned from Zilina, the representatives of the two Radas met to see whether they could agree on a single policy, and incidentally on the allocation of the sweets of office.2 The Ruthene Council then put forward a Resolution declaring 1 Apor to C. A. M. It is known that about this time Esterhazy secretly saw Hitler; but I have been unable to ascertain the date. 2 For an account of events in Ruthenia at this time, see Pester Lloyd, 21st November.

286 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Ruthenia indivisible and demanding a plebiscite for the whole area. The Ukrainian Council, while rightly appreciating that this proposal was designed

to, and even in their own view certain to, produce a vote in favour of Hungary, yet preferred it to the presumptive alternative of ethnic partition, which would have left Ruthenia a tangle of mountains, without its plain or

even the two vital valley-mouth towns of Ungvar and Munkacs. They therefore accepted the proposal and agreed to form a coalition Government on the basis of it. The news reached Hungary on the 9th, and caused great excitement. Imrédy at last consented, in great secrecy,' to the Ragged Guard’s being sent in, and the leaders of that body expected that it would shortly march into Ruthenia and help to carry through a coup.” But the Hungarians moved too slowly. On the morning of the 11th Czech troops arrived in Ungvar in

considerable numbers and re-established the position there. A Ruthene Ministry was, indeed, appointed, and composed, as the Ruthenes themselves had suggested, of representatives of the two Radas, in equal numbers, each

providing two Ministers and an Under-Secretary,* and the Minister Presidency was even given to M. Brody, leader of the Ruthene Council and

a strong pro-Hungarian. But the key job of representing Ruthenia in Komdéarom was given to an “Ukrainian,” M. Ba¢insky*; a Czech Governor, representing the central Government, was retained and General Sviatek, the

local commander of the Czech troops, now exercised the real authority in the country. The Ragged Guardists, when they did flesh their maiden swords on the 12th, could do nothing more spectacular than kidnap three Czech soldiers from Csap railway station. The “‘party of action” in Budapest was already in a fever of impatience. On the 9th its leaders had even threatened Imrédy with revolt within two or three days if matters were allowed to drag on,° and they were absolutely clamouring for Kanya’s blood. The frustration of their hopes in Ruthenia embittered them still more, and now more bad news came in: more Czech troops had arrived in Slovakia, and Chvalkovsky, back from Rome at last, had promptly left for Germany—as the Hungarians supposed, to offer complete homage to Hitler, and probably claim his reward.® The Hungarians were by now genuinely afraid that the Czechoslovaks meant to refuse any concessions whatever—or at best make only token concessions—and might even attack Hungary. On the 12th they begged Mussolini earnestly to put pressure on Prague “immediately to cede the areas

with a clear Magyar majority’ and said that “‘they were going to mobilise the next day if the Czechs continued with their tactics of obstruction.’ It 1 The Poles were told, and Ciano, but not the Germans (Ciano Diary, 10th October). 2 On the 10th one of their leaders, Somogyvari, told Hlatky, then Director of the Budapest wireless, to be ready for “startling news” (a march into Ruthenia) in the near future (Hlatky to

~ The Ruthene Ministers were Brody and Fencsik, and their Under-Secretary, Procsak; the Ukrainians, Révai and Bacinsky, Under-Secretary, VoloSin. 4 Fencsik was to negotiate the Ruthene-Slovak frontier.

’ Personal (Apor, who had it from Kanya). Kanya had warned Knox on the 7th (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. 11, 160): but Knox was never willing to credit Kanya with sincerity. 8 Chvalkovsky saw Ribbentrop in Berlin on the morning of the 13th and left for Munich that

et Chano Diary, 12th October. The “Military Attaché’? mentioned here is certainly the Hungarian Military Attaché, Szabo, who often used to go direct to Mussolini. His message was thus a warning from the military party in Hungary. The Italians tried to intervene (Doc. Brit. F.P., II. III, 196), but without perceptible effect.

FIGHTING FISH 287 , was, therefore, in no conciliatory mood that they went to meet the Slovaks

again on the 13th, and the conversations did not last long. The Slovaks began by offering the Magyar minority autonomy inside Czechoslovakia. Kanya answered that he had come to negotiate, not to joke. The proposal had probably been, in fact, only formal, for the Slovaks thereupon offered the cession of the Csall6k6z (1,840 sq. km., with a population of 105,000, almost entirely Magyar), and when this again was rejected, a larger strip, with an area of 5,400 sq. km. and a population of some 350,000, preponderantly Magyar. Both Kanya and Teleki, although agreeing that this offer was insufficient,

| would have been ready to go on negotiating, since they believed (and it appears, rightly) that this was not meant as the Slovaks’ last word.2 But Imrédy, impatient and nervous, above all of his own more impetuous countrymen, declared that “‘the gulf was too wide to be bridged,”’ and broke

off the negotiations. It is a curiosity of history that if he had waited a few minutes longer he might have come to an advantageous arrangement with the Ruthenes; for in the meantime Brody had insisted on his right to represent

Ruthenia at Komarom and had taken plane thither, meaning to insist on negotiating independently with Hungary. He arrived just in time to see the two delegations parting in anger.*

As his last word to the Slovaks, Imrédy had announced that he had “decided to ask for the earliest possible solution of the question from the four Munich Powers’’; and in justice to him—since one of the excuses thought

up in 1946 for having him executed was that he had “ignored” the Western Powers on this occasion—it should be stated that the orders to appeal to all four Powers were certainly given to the Foreign Ministry,* and there is definite evidence that they were carried out in Paris.° It looks as though the request was not lodged in time in London®; but whatever the reason for this, it was not Imrédy’s wilful desire to leave London out of the reckoning. But it is also true that on that same evening of the 13th the Hungarian Government decided that while it would be sufficient for Hungary simply to lodge her request in London and Paris, more should be done in Rome and in Germany. The special appeal to Italy was almost automatic, and indeed, consultation with Italy was natural under the Italo-Hungarian Treaty; and the envoy to Italy was simply given the mission of enlisting Italy’s support, especially for the claim on Ruthenia, and for the mobilisation which Hungary 1 Ripka, op. cit., and the Czechs to Newton (loc. cit.) put the figure at 400,000, of whom 320,000 would be Magyars, 44,000 Slovaks, the rest “‘Germans and others.’’ Kanya put it at 350,000, and Henderson, whose work is based exclusively on Czech sources, at 345,000 (op. cit., p. 248).

2 Personal (Apor and Szegedi-Maszak). The Czechs in fact told Newton that the offer “had not been submitted as their last word’ (Doc. Brit. F.P., loc. cit.). 3 He tells this in his own autobiography in the Orszdggyiilési Almanach for 1940, p. 142. 4 Personal, Szegedi-Maszak to C. A.M. My informant is quite confident on this point. 5 The Hungarian Press of 15th October reproduced a Havas message from Paris which stated that M. Bonnet had ‘‘received in succession the Hungarian and Czechoslovak Ministers. The representative of the Hungarian Government informed him of the reason for the rupture of the Komaéarom negotiations, and told him that Hungary, in accordance with the Munich Agreement, requested a decision from the Four Powers.”’ 6 According to the British Documents (III. ITI, 213), the first Hungarian Note handed in to the Foreign Office was on the 17th, and in this “‘there had been no mention of an appeal to the Four Powers.”’ Halifax told his interlocutor, the Polish Ambassador, that “‘we had not had an opportunity of examining this possibility before we received information that the negotiations were, in fact, to be renewed.” It thus certainly looks as though M. Barcza, who was not always oppressed by a sense of great urgency in his movements, missed getting his notification in on the 14th.

288 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH now thought inevitable. But Germany was a different matter: Kanya’s policy had aimed for years at avoiding over-close commitments with Germany. What made the Government change its course now was only in part its belief that France and England were uninterested in and, if anything, hostile to Hungary: much rather was it the new relationship now coming into being so rapidly between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Chvalkovsky had declared his intentions of following a pro-Axis policy, and was even then in

Munich; the Slovak separatists were even outbidding him.’ Hungary believed her only hope to lie in raising the bids further still: going right back on her previous policy and seeking Germany’s favour by substantial offers. This did in fact constitute a turning-point in policy, and one after which Hungary could never regain her old path. From this decision derived all the moves towards the Axis taken during the succeeding weeks; and although it was not until Csaky had taken office that most of those moves were actually made, it is probably right to date our turning-point, not when Csaky replaced Kanya in office, which was only another step taken to facilitate the execution of the decision, but on 13th October, when the decision was taken. The emissary to Germany was to make a specific declaration that Hungary wished to improve her relations with Germany, clearing away the misunder-

| standings of the recent past; he was to try to enlist Germany’s support over | the present issue, for a favourable ethnic frontier in the areas claimed un| conditionally and a plebiscite in Ruthenia, and as inducements he was to offer | Hungary’s adhesion to the Anti-Comintern Pact and a two years’ economic | agreement for close co-operation “involving a rational division of labour.’”?

! Imrédy and Kanya were both in such bad odour with Germany that it

would have been worse than useless for either of them to go on this particular errand. Bethlen was suggested, but said that he would not go to Germany, although he would to Italy. But Csaky was thought the best man for Rome

! and finally Daranyi undertook the mission to Munich.®

The excuse for the choices was made that “‘an active Minister could not . be spared.” Two other interim measures had been decided: Poland’s further co-

operation was to be secured, and five more classes were to be called up by individual notice, although no public announcement was to be made until Italy and Germany approved the mobilisation.* Csaky arrived in Rome on the morning of the 14th, as the Italian sources relate’ in a state of high excitement. He saw both Mussolini and Ciano and asked their approval of Hungary’s proposed mobilisation, and support for the convocation of the Four Power Conference, which was especially desirable in view of the fact that Czechoslovakia was now practically a German protectorate. Thus it was necessary to counter-balance Germany’s influence in the question. 1 When Imrédy appealed to Daranyi, as described below, what he said to him was: ‘‘The Germans are intriguing with the Slovaks against us, and we shall get nothing.’’ Imrédy was then

“quite broken down” (Barczy to C. A. M.). * For the diplomatic promises, see Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 244; for the remainder, Barczy and the Sz. I. MS. The Germans say that Hungary offered resignation from the League, but the Hungarian sources show that this was not the case. * Daranyi refused at first, as he felt that Imrédy had treated him badly; but consented when the Regent backed up Imrédy’s appeal. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 59. * There are useful accounts of this visit in the Ciano Diary (14th October), in the report sent by Ciano to Berlin (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 60), and in Danosti, Mussolini e l’Europa, p. 135. Csaky’s report is reproduced in the Sz. I. MS.

FIGHTING FISH 289 The Italians were entirely in favour of the Conference, in which they saw a possibility of redressing the prestige-balance of the Axis, particularly if, as Ciano suggested, the new Conference was held in some city of northern Italy, with the Duce and himself acting as hosts and taking the star roles. Mussolini further gave his approval to Hungary’s partial mobilisation and promised to reassure Yugoslavia and Roumania that the step was not directed against them. Everyone being agreed, the necessary action was taken immediately. Ciano saw the Polish and Yugoslav representatives in Rome, begging the former not to make difficulties about the Conference and assuring the latter that he guaranteed that Hungary would not turn her soldiers against Yugoslavia. He instructed his own Ministers in London, Paris, Berlin, Prague and Budapest to convey his own official proposal for a Four Power Conference to be held the next week; and he himself told Lord Perth that the proposal was to be made, as coming from Italy, and Perth warmly urged the Foreign Office to accept it.1 The Italian Press was ordered to make Stimmung for the idea, and since the orders could not be cancelled in time, articles favouring it appeared (by that time, highly out of place) in the Press of the 15th. On the evening of the 14th Ciano told Csaky that the Yugoslav Minister, when urged not to oppose the common frontier, had answered that: ‘“‘the fate of the Slav area of Slovakia interested the Yugoslav Government more than that of Ruthenia.’” The Hungarians also got the impression that Ciano, at least, believed that at the proposed conference Britain, too, would have consented to Hungary’s recovering Ruthenia.®

But all these plans were brought to naught by what had been happening meanwhile in Munich. Daranyi’s visit to Hitler started inauspiciously.* The Fuhrer was out of temper with the Hungarians again. Daranyi had brought with him, as credentials, a personal letter from Horthy to Hitler. He tried to hand it over, but Hitler simply did not take it, and the embarrassed Daranyi ended by putting it down on the table, where it was still lying un-

opened when he left. Nor did he get a chance at first to produce his captationes benevolentiae. Hitler simply treated him to “a ten or twelve minutes’ scolding’? on Hungary’s sins: the Bled Agreement and her failure to march after the Berchtesgaden interview, or for that matter after Munich,

when she had had another chance. Daranyi said Hungary intended to mobilise now, and that made things no better. Was she ready to fight? If not, it was silly to go to the expense of mobilising. He was not going to support her: he was demobilising his army, and the flying season had passed. Then Daranyi explained that Hungary was appealing to the Four Powers.

Hitler was against that, too. He seems to have used exactly the arguments which he repeated to Francois-Poncet four days later.° Britain and France 1 Doe. Brit. F.P., III. III, 203. 2 Cf. Stoyadinovi¢’s message of 4th October (above, p. 281). Lipski was even more categoric to Ribbentrop on the 21st (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 84). There are certain further indications, too vague and indirect to be enumerated here, that the Serb had decided at this point at least not to oppose the Polish-Hungarian common frontier, if Italy favoured it. 8 A letter from Teleki was quoted at the Imrédy Trial (p. 28), where Teleki wrote: ‘“‘According to Ciano, when he wanted to call off the Four Power Conference, Italy, England and Yugoslavia at once agreed to our recovering Ruthenia.”’

4 The German official account of the interview is reproduced in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 62. Daranyi’s report is in the Sz. I. MS. There are references in other documents and I have supplemented these from private information from MM. S. Milotay and Baross, to whom Dardnyi, on his return, gave less official descriptions of his experiences. 5 See the French Yellow Book, p. 24. U

290 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH would be obliged to take the Czechoslovak side; if Germany and Italy backed Poland and Hungary, it would be two against two, another deadlock and the prospect of another conflict, which he did not propose to face. Anyway, what did Hungary want? Daranyi had brought with him an ethnic map based on the 1910 census and explained that Hungary wanted the unconditional cession of the Magyar areas, as shown on that map, including all the towns and the valley-mouths,

and self-determination for the Slovaks and Ruthenes. Hitler was dis-

couraging about this too. ‘Once I offered you all Slovakia,” he said. ““Why didn’t you take it then?! Now neither the Slovaks nor the Ruthenes wanted

to go to Hungary. It was impossible to force a plebiscite on the Slovaks against their will. ““The new Czech-Hungarian frontier must be based on the ethnic principle.” As for Pressburg, he had received a petition with 70,000 signatures asking

that it should not be given back to Hungary. Daranyi replied that if Hitler wanted, he could produce another petition with 100,000 signatures asking the exact opposite. Hitler began to laugh, and then said that he agreed that the Czechs’ offer had been insufficient. He had told Chvalkovsky so,’ and

| had kept him in Munich when he heard Daranyi was coming. If, now,

| Hungary would make a reasonable offer, he would try to bring Chvalkovsky

| to accept it. He then made a suggestion which—although the German | document is not at all clear at this point—must have been that Hungary should occupy the area which even the Slovaks were willing to cede her, and that a plebiscite should be held, not in the purely Slovak areas but in the zone

: claimed unconditionally by Hungary but refused by Slovakia. He would even,

} if so desired, call in Chvalkovsky and try to reach agreement on the spot. | Daranyi said that he was not empowered to negotiate a direct settlement,

but would see whether his Government would accept mediation. Ribbentrop

' asked him to find out what line Hungary would accept as a basis for mediation. Daranyi rang Budapest and reported progress, and while waiting for the decision from Hungary at last got the chance to say that “‘he had come to clear up the misunderstandings which had arisen in Hungaro-German relations.” He made his suggestion of “‘a declaration by Hungary in favour of the Axis, and perhaps adherence by her to the Anti-Comintern Pact.”” When Hitler asked whether Hungary would not resign from the League, Daranyi said that that was not impossible, although she had remained in it hitherto in order to voice the minority question. The question of the economic agreement, too, was raised and Daranyi accepted in principle Hitler’s suggestion

that this might be a ten years’ contract. Hitler agreed in principle that Hungary should have some arms, by barter or credit. After this the atmosphere “improved remarkably”; but no definitive commitments were undertaken, as Hitler advised deferring these questions until understanding had been reached between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.? The Hungarians, with the two Germans, then went across to a hotel to wait. + According to Milotay, Daranyi said that Slovakia was not worth the price of a war. Hitler said Hungary could have bought up a puppet Slovak Government. Daranyi said that Hungary’s reserves of hard currency would not run to the operation at the moment. * In fact, as Chvalkovsky told Newton, Hitler had described the Czech offer as “‘ridiculously inadequate . . . if the dispute was referred to the Four Powers Germany and Italy would insist on something very different,’ and Britain and France would only end by accepting the Axis line. To the Czechs, too, he had ended by proposing direct settlement (Chvalkovsky to Newton, Doc. Brit. F.P., II. II, 211; for other accounts of the interview, Id., 214, 216). > Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 244.

FIGHTING FISH 291 At 6 p.m. Imrédy’s answer came: Hungary would accept as basis of discussion the 1910 ethnic line, although in practice she would not insist on it rigidly: concessions were possible in Bratislava and Nyitra, a plebiscite on the Jolsva region, and “concessions or plebiscites” east of Kassa, although Kassa itself and the area west of it must remain Hungarian. On that basis

he would accept Hitler’s mediation and withdraw his appeal to the four Powers. Ribbentrop went over to Chvalkovsky and on the latter’s map sketched in a line which he said the Hungarians would take as a basis for negotiations, and which seemed to him to constitute ‘‘a fair frontier delimitation.” It was to prove a highly important point during the subsequent days that by Ribbentrop’s stupidity, or his dishonesty,! this was not in fact in all respects the Hungarians’ own line; it assigned Ungvar and Munkacs to Ruthenia, and left the city of Kassa as disputable; but otherwise it seems to have run fairly near Daranyi’s.2- Chvalkovsky still objected that Hungary’s demands were excessive, and that he was not in a position to discuss details; but he agreed, on Ribbentrop’s strong representations,® to resume direct negotiations. Ribbentrop now rang up Ciano, to whom, according to Ciano’s account,

he said that the French and British would make opposition, and that “‘it would be better to act behind the scenes.””> The Hungarians’ version of the message was “that Germany and Italy should put strong pressure on Prague to make Hungary a new, reasonable offer. If this effort failed, Hungary was

to ask Germany and Italy to mediate, and only if that expedient proved fruitless should recourse be made to a Four Power Conference.” This message, which practically coincided with one from Imrédy to Rome calling off the appeal, was received by Ciano with “‘some consternation.”’ His invitations to the Conference had already gone out, and he felt a fool recalling them. He told the Hungarians, too, that “‘he was afraid they had lost Ruthenia.”’ But there was obviously no help for it, and the messages were cancelled the same evening.* Ciano took leave of Csaky with a final suggestion, coming from Mussolini, that if the direct conversations failed, Germany and Italy should be asked to arbitrate,’ and according to Ciano (who passed the suggestion on to Ribbentrop that night),° Csaky expressed himself in favour of this suggestion. 1 The question was, as we shall see, greatly discussed. Ribbentrop was certainly dishones in maintaining that he had traced the line on his map for the Czechs in the presence of the Hungarians, and in maintaining later, after Erdmannsdorff himself had put him right, that Daranyi had agreed the line. He also must have known that the Hungarians insisted unconditionally on Kassa, and he at least concealed from them the fact that he was not convinced on the point; also lying to them about the extent of his agreement with the Slovaks. He told them that he had been unable to over-persuade the Slovaks, whereas in fact he had told them they were right. How far he deliberately cheated over Ungvar and Munkacs, it is hard to say. He spoke to Daranyi of the two cities as lying “‘directly on the frontier,’ whence Daranyi concluded that he was supporting Hungary’s claim (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 90). Thus he probably did not

support it explicitly, but he also cannot have rejected it explicitly.

2 Chvalkovsky told Newton that “‘no specific suggestions were made then either,’ but he “derived the impression’? that Czechoslovakia might have to give up KoSice (Kassa), but not Pozsony, Nyitra or Ungvar, but Erdmannsdorff is quite specific that the line was traced on the map. The Czechs themselves told Comnéne that a line was indicated which was not an ethnic line, and less favourable to the Czechs than they thought just, but still much better than what

KAanya had demanded at Komdérom (Comnéne, pp. 275-6).

3 According to Comnéne, loc. cit., Ribbentrop told Chvalkovsky that “Czechoslovakia must enter into the zone of influence of the Axis; otherwise it could hope for nothing from the Reich.”’ 4 Perth, who at 9.15 p.m. had wired to hold up action on his previous message, telegraphed

at 11.30 p.m. that Ciano wanted the proposal dropped (Doc. Brit. F.P., II. III, 204).

5 Sz. I. MS. ,

6 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 64.

292 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Such is the true history of this decisive day. It was decisive indeed, not in the immediate sense alleged by Imrédy’s accusers, who represented the Western Powers as having been offended by the calling off of the Four Power Conference. Neither Britain nor France registered any objections to this: on the contrary, they displayed only relief that the negotiations were being resumed without need for their intervention, and did not even find fault with the back seats to which they were being relegated through Hitler’s taking over the mediation.! It is true that the understanding at that stage still was that they would be called in if the negotiations broke down after all: they were not informed of Mussolini’s suggestion that the Axis Powers should

arbitrate on the dispute. But to judge from their later attitude, when the proposal was made to them,” they would have accepted it with as little demur

as they did every other proposal which relieved them of the trouble of intervening in the dispute. What was all-important was the commissioning of Daranyi to offer Hitler the political and economic concessions enumerated above; for even though Hitler had not immediately accepted them, the Hungarian Government could not easily recall them, and in fact, as we shall see, renewed them as soon as occasion offered.?

The day had also brought the Hungarian cause one serious set-back. Whether a Four Power Conference would really have awarded Ruthenia to Hungary is, of course, a question which can never be answered with certainty.

But on the 14th Italy had been prepared to advocate this course if a Conference was held and the general international constellation was, perhaps,

not unfavourable. Yugoslavia, as we have seen, would not have been opposed; the French Press was beginning to advocate the ‘‘common frontier”’

almost with enthusiasm; and there is evidence that even Russia would not have objected.* But on the 15th Mussolini, put off by the very vigour with which the Poles were stressing the anti-German aspect of the idea,° told Ciano

to let Ribbentrop know that Italy did not insist absolutely on the common frontier; and although Ciano regretted the decision, he could do nothing but pass on the message.®

It is not, indeed, quite clear what Hitler’s own attitude towards the

common frontier was at this moment. He had made it clear to the

Hungarians that he did not like their claims to territories beyond the ethnic line, and had said quite definitely that he would not support any such claim, but had not asked that they should be renounced, and the Hungarians had + Fran¢ois-Poncet, so far as his evidence shows, never cavilled in any way at the Fihrer’s boast that he had saved the peace by ‘‘thwarting Hungary’s appeal.”’ (Yellow Book, loc. cit.). Halifax approved the resumption of direct negotiations (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 213). He did, on the 15th, suggest to Henderson that Britain was entitled to be consulted on what was being done (id., 208), but seems to have rested quite content with the explanations of German policy which Henderson supplied him (Id., 210, 215). 2 See below, p. 300. 3 See below, p. 312. * According to the Sz. I. MS., M. Litvinov told the Hungarian Minister in Moscow, in January 1939, that “‘when there was a serious possibility of attaching Ruthenia to Hungary and bringing

about a direct frontier between Hungary and Poland, Roumania, France and another State asked Russia to oppose this, since its purpose was to form a barrier against Soviet Russia. The Soviet Government despite these exhortations had done nothing, and had thereby rendered Hungary a service.”’

° Similarly, it was precisely the indiscreetly warm support given to the idea, on the same grounds, by the French Press which caused Mussolini to decide on the 24th definitively to oppose it (Ciano Diary, 24th October). 8 Diary, 15th October.

FIGHTING FISH 293 not renounced them. When Hitler did impose his veto, on 21st November (as will be described), Kanya (conveniently ignoring the difference between the situation before the award and after it) telegraphed indignantly that when sounded, on previous occasions, the Germans had always answered that they would not oppose Hungary’s actions in advance, but that “if we do anything

to solve the question, we must be clear that we had to rely on our own forces,” and that when talking to Daranyi he had “‘adopted an attitude of désintéressement.’”+

The only thing that the British could get out of the Germans at this stage was that they were following the principle of “‘self-determination,”’ and while

it was obvious enough that Hitler considered the Slovaks already to have expressed their wishes, the British and even the Czechs themselves were not sure how he felt about the Ruthenes.” The Italian decision was probably very important, as tipping the scale; although it is not clear whether the Hungarians were informed of it. Their renunciation of the Four Power Conference brought them one positive gain. As soon as Beck had heard of Hungary’s intention to make the appeal, he had sent word to say that if she did so, he would have to declare his désintéressement, and when the appeal was made, said that Hungary’s step “‘necessarily excluded the possibility of Polish support at this

stage.” But when he heard that the appeal was off, he sent for Hory and told him that Poland could again support Hungary, and was anxious to do so. He would send someone down to Budapest to discuss ways and means.? In fact, he sent Comnéne a message that he would like to come to Roumania for ‘‘a frank, direct conversation to examine outstanding problems.’* He then got in touch with Budapest on the possibility of getting Ruthenia partitioned between Hungary and Roumania, on the lines previously suggested, and when Kanya said that this was “‘possible in principle,’’® told Comnéne that he had made this proposal to Hungary and that there was a chance of its being accepted.® The visit was arranged for the 19th. Lubienski was to go to Budapest on the same day, to co-ordinate action with the Hungarians. Beck also sent word to Weizsacker that he wanted to remain in “friendly consultation’? with Germany on the Hungarian-Slovak question.’ Ribbentrop was now so anxious not to burn his fingers that when Ciano told him, on the 14th, that Mussolini wanted a joint Italo-German démarche

in Prague and Budapest inviting the two Governments to resume their conversations, he refused this on the grounds that “‘such a step might look like pressure, which would be dangerous at the present stage.’’ All that he would ask Mussolini to do was “‘to support in Prague the line for which the Hungarians were now asking [sic].”’ Mussolini having agreed to this, the Germans and Italians sat back. Things were, however, not destined to go so easily. When Chvalkovsky told the Slovaks and Ruthenes how matters now stood, both contested his right to represent them in negotations with Hungary, and clamoured to be allowed to go and put their own case to the Germans; obviously believing that they would be able to get better terms for themselves than Chvalkovsky could get for them. Nearly three days—the 15th, 16th and most of the 17th 1 Kanya to Sztdjay, 21st November (Sz. I. MS.).

2 See Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 204, 210. 3 Sz. I. MS.

Comneéne, op. cit., p. 274. > Sz. I. MS. ‘4 Comnene, p. 276. 7 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 75.

294 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH —passed in this wrangle. Meanwhile, the Czechs continued to move troops into Slovakia and Ruthenia, where they had by now eighteen or nineteen divisions. They also requested Roumania and Yugoslavia to make military demonstrations on their respective frontiers with Hungary,’ and although neither country appears to have done this, Roumania reinforced her garrisons on the frontier,” and Comnéne rejected yet another request from Hungary to regard the Bled Agreement as in force between the two countries.° The Hungarians duly called up (or rather made public the fact that they had been calling up) five more classes (announced in the Press as those of 1908-12 inclusive) bringing their total of men under arms to about 300,000,* and Mussolini, again according to arrangement, issued a communiqué in the Informazione Diplomatica that this measure, which still constituted only a partial mobilisation, was entirely justified, since Czechoslovakia had not demobilised, while the Slovak Government countered with an astonishingly bellicose declaration over the Bratislava wireless that:

“The Slovak Government cannot so easily give away the southern frontier of Slovakia. The Hungarians believe that we have disbanded our Army. They are sorely mistaken. Our Army stands fully ready, with tanks and aircraft.” Parallel with this, again, the Hungarians intensified their efforts to get a declaration in favour of Hungary from the newly appointed Ruthene Govern-

ment. The propaganda campaign was hotted up to the maximum and the guerilla activities of the Ragged Guard prosecuted intensively, if not, perhaps, on quite such a large scale as was reported at the time from the Czech side: or, at any rate, if the figures of guerillas killed, taken prisoner, etc., given by the Czechs were correct, 1t would seem likely that a somewhat larger proportion of them were indigenous, or alternatively sent in from Poland, and a smaller proportion sent in from Hungary, than the Czechs reported.° The Hungarians were still haunted by the feeling that time was against them, and on the 17th told the Germans and Italians that they did not want to resume direct negotiations, which would only enable the Czechs to drag matters out further. They asked that the Czechs should be requested, most urgently, to make a new proposal. If this was satisfactory, Hungary would

1 Comnene, op. cit., p. 272. 2 Id., p. 273. 3 Id., p. 271.

* Henderson, op. cit., p. 249, gives this estimate (presumably that of the Czechs) for the number of Hungarians then with the colours. The British Military Attaché had reported the calling up of the 1912 class in September. Probably, therefore, it was ordered then, but only announced now. The total number of classes with the colours in October seems to have been nine. Sztojay, it is true, talked to Ribbentrop of six new classes (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 65). * For these reports see Henderson, op. cit., pp. 246-55. Later evidence, including in particular that from the Hungarian side when these activities were regarded as a thing to boast of, and the Rongyos Garda consequently produced a self-laudatory history, with roll of honour, suggests that the three-figure numbers which figure in some of these reports were a considerable exaggeration. A former member of the Guard has informed me that his formations were not engaged

in any fighting at the time; another that the Guard fought three engagements at Devcsen,

Koszeg and Salank (this is Henderson’s Slanky) respectively, in the first and third of which they met Czech regular troops. At Salank, which was much the largest engagement, some hundreds were killed and wounded, and 300 (a few dozen of whom were from Czechoslovakia) were taken prisoner. They failed to take poison, and were eventually saved by Italian intervention (Ciano mentions Poland. intervening for 40 of them: Diary, 15th October). Some of the others got across to The Czechs told Comnéne of the biggest battle (op. cit., p. 311) and admit that they identified only two cadets and seventeen men as being of Hungarian origin. In fact a high proportion of the insurgents seems to have been Magyars (and some Ruthenes) from Czechoslovakia, but I have not been able to get any details on this point.

FIGHTING FISH 295 accept it; if not, she would ask Germany and Italy to mediate, or, if they preferred, to arbitrate on the issue of “the frontiers of the Hungarianinhabited areas.” After this the question of “‘the practical realisation of the right of self-determination for the other nationalities in Slovakia’? would still remain to be settled.!

The presentation of this memorandum in Berlin practically coincided with the arrival of a wire from Chvalkovsky asking whether Tiso, Duréansky

and Batinsky (the representative from Ruthenia) might be received by Ribbentrop, and if possible also by Hitler, “‘before submitting new proposals

to Hungary.’ Weizsdacker accordingly told Sztdjay that he must wait for his answer, while the Czechs were asked whether they would accept as a basis for negotiations the line which Ribbentrop had drawn for Chvalkovsky, and no other. He got an affirmative answer, although Chvalkovsky made certain

reservations: he pointed out that Pressburg was outside the line, that Ribbentrop had said that Nyitra “‘could be discussed” and that Kassa was ‘“‘a difficult question,’ and he wanted Munkacs and Ungvar to be “further discussed.’ Ribbentrop now sent word that he expected the three emissaries in Munich on the 19th.°

On that afternoon he in fact received them, and after listening to inordinately long-winded speeches from all of them, to which he replied with equal verbosity,* he cheerfully proposed to them what he described as “‘the line which he had established with Daranyi and later with Chvalkovsky.”’ While admitting that Hungary had not finally accepted this line, he said that there was every possibility that she would resume negotiations on that basis, it being understood that “‘the area which would then be settled must be ceded so that Hungary could occupy it.” If the Czechs would offer this line, he would strongly urge Kanya to accept it. Therewith he had “exhausted his

resources of mediation.’® After listening to further argument, he told Erdmannsdorff ‘‘to inform the Hungarians that they should renounce their claims to Pressburg, Nyitra, Kassa, Munkacs and Ungvar.’’ Negotiations should be resumed on that basis by the Czechs making a private offer.

He also phoned Ciano to say what he had done, and to ask him to persuade the Hungarians to accept. Ciano, incidentally, did not do this, merely passing on to Villani what Ribbentrop had told him.° Meanwhile, Beck’s visit to Galati had proved (from the Hungarian point of view) a complete failure: neither King Carol nor Comnene was willing to agree to the proposed deal.6 As for Lubienski: when he reached Budapest,

he first suggested that a coup might, after all, be tried, but found the Hungarians unwilling to risk it. Both Kanya and Imrédy objected that it would spoil Hungary’s credit with the Western Powers, especially England,

and they could only save themselves from Germany if they enjoyed the sympathy of those powers; Csaky for the opposite reason, that it would be disloyal to Germany.’ Next, the Regent is said to have put his foot down, 1 The text of the memorandum delivered in Berlin is given in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 65. Ciano Diary, 17th October, records the approach to Italy, and the Sz. I. MS. gives Kanya’s own account, as wired to Hory, of his proposed precedure.

2 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 66. 3 Id., 70, 71. 4 These are recorded in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 72.

5 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 75. .

6 Full accounts of this visit are given by both Beck (op. cit., pp. 172 ff.) and Comnene (op. cit., pp. 231 ff.). Differing remarkably in outlook, they agree in substance. 7 Personal, Lubienski to C. A. M.

296 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH saying that “he would not allow Budapest, which would take a hundred years

to rebuild, to be laid waste in war.’’! Finally, the Hungarians said they would march if Poland would provide four Army Corps to protect them against Germany, a condition which Lubienski himself recognised as meant to be impossible. Lubienski then suggested that the Hungarian Government should propose officially that the Czech troops should withdraw from Ruthenia and allow the population to express its will freely. Kanya answered that the request should come from Ruthenia itself, when Hungary would support it: ““We

have already arranged that the above-mentioned Ruthene wish should in fact be voiced.”” The Hungarians promised that the Regent should write a letter to Hitler ‘‘expounding the Ruthene question in all its aspects” and if nothing satisfactory had resulted by Ist November they “‘would then resort to more energetic means to advance the taking up of the question.”’ Thereupon the Poles also decided to take no further action for the present.’ The Hungarians did score one success that day in Ruthenia itself. The Czech Governor resigned, so that Brody had a fairly free hand. On the 20th the Ruthene Government passed (as Kanya had foretold) another resolution insisting on the indivisibility of Ruthenia within its existing frontiers “‘without severance of its northern part from its southern or vice-versa” and demanding

a plebiscite, within the existing frontiers, “of all indigenous elements, to decide the fate of the country’*’—which amounted de facto to another

| declaration in favour of Hungary. | This was, however, temporarily overshadowed by the arrival of

Erdmannsdorff, that same morning of the 20th, with Ribbentrop’s message that Hungary must renounce not only Pressburg and Nyitra, but also Kassa, Ungvar and Munkacs; with the untruthful addendum that Ciano, as well as Ribbentrop himself, strongly advised acceptance. If this was not given,

! Germany would mediate no more.

The Hungarians, who felt themselves betrayed, were furious. Kanya said that he thought there could be no question of Hungary’s accepting the proposal. Teleki backed him up.* The Regent, Kanya and Imrédy expressed themselves in the same sense to Frank, who was in Budapest,°® and Daranyi was called in to confirm that he had insisted on Kassa and that Ribbentrop had not cavilled at his line, which had left both that city, and Ungvar and Munkacs, in Hungary, whence he had concluded that Ribbentrop supported Hungary’s claim to those two cities.° Erdmannsdorff, incidentally, confirmed this and wrote a private letter to the Wilhelmstrasse, saying that not only was Ribbentrop mistaken in thinking that the Hungarians had renounced the two Ruthene cities but that he, Erdmannsdorff, had told him so.’ Villani was sent to Ciano the next morning (the 21st) to say that the Hungarian Government would renounce Pressburg and Nyitra, but not the three eastern cities; Kassa it could not renounce without provoking revolution in Hungary. 1 Rassay at the Imrédy Trial, p. 5. > Sz. I. MS. At the same time, Sidor went up to Poland to persuade the Poles to reduce their claims on Slovakia to the relatively small areas claimed by them in 1919. According to Noél,

p. 208, Sidor took the opportunity to hold a Press Conference at which he expounded to the

journalists the necessity of independence for Slovakia. 3 Pester Lloyd, 20th November, Abendblatt. + Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 75. 5 Id., 76. ®§ Doc. G,.F.P., D. IV, 82, * Ibid,

FIGHTING FISH 297 Since Ribbentrop did not propose to mediate further, it thought of invoking the arbitration of the two Axis Powers for the western zone, and of those two Powers, plus Poland, for the eastern. A similar message was left in Berlin on the impossibility of Hungary’s renouncing the eastern cities, saying that if these were the proposals which Czechoslovakia was going to make, direct negotiation would be useless, and asking whether Germany would consider acting as arbiter, with Italy (this message did not suggest bringing in Poland).” Weizsdcker rang up Ribbentrop, who was in Bavaria, to tell him of this message, and put his superior in a fine fluff. He began by ordering instruc-

tions to be sent to the Czechs to put in their offer (which they had not yet done) so that the discussion should again become one between Hungarians and Slovaks, not Hungarians and Germans.® But although he had already once been told by Erdmannsdorff that this was not the case,* he stuck to it that the proposals which he had passed on to Chvalkovsky and the Slovaks had been agreed by Daranyi and Imrédy, and had an indignant message sent to Erdmannsdorff always thereafter to stress that the Slovak proposals were “based on the Daranyi line’’*—a contention which he was still maintaining the next evening’ to Ciano in spite of the fact that Erdmannsdorff had sent him a long letter assuring him of the contrary. Meanwhile, Ciano had been nervous about the suggestion of Poland, and had consulted Mussolini, who advised him to ‘‘feel Germany’s pulse”’ before passing it on. But it seems likely that he was then privately approached, as so often, by Szab6, for in the afternoon (of the 21st) Kanya told Erdmannsdorff that Mussolini had agreed to the suggestion of bringing Poland in. He added, perhaps in answer to a question by Erdmannsdorff, that “the French Foreign Minister had earlier given the Hungarian Minister [sc. in Paris] to understand that he wished if possible to be left out of the matter. Britain’s attitude was similar.””’ Kanya said that Poland had not yet been consulted, but a message must have been sent in the afternoon, for in the evening the Polish Ambassador

called on Ciano to ask how he would view the proposal. Ciano now said that he personally was in agreement, but the decision rested with Germany.* The next evening, when he rang Ciano, Ribbentrop was still opposed to

the idea of arbitration, on the ground that the arbitrators might have to secure the application of the award by force. “‘Germany did not intend to do this.” He even suggested that Prague might have preferred a Four Power

Conference in Italy; Ciano reminded him that Italy had made that very

3 Id., 78. |

suggestion some days earlier and Germany herself had rejected it.° 1 Ciano Diary, 21st October. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 77. 4 Id., 82.

’ This conversation is recorded by Ciano both in his Papers, p. 238, and his Diary (22nd October). 6 Diary, 21st October.

7 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 79. These words suggest that neither France nor Britain had been consulted afresh regarding the new proposal, nor do either the British or Hungarian sources record any such consultation on the 20th or 21st. But as Kanya was only too anxious for the participation of the Western Powers, he must have believed that the earlier replies which he had received from both quarters made his present statement irrefutable. 8 Diary, loc. cit. ® Diary, 22nd October; Papers, p. 238. Ribbentrop repeated all this, practically verbatim, next evening, as from the Fuhrer.

298 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH There was still a faint hope that the parties might reach direct agreement, for on the 22nd Prague had sent Budapest a formal Note proposing resumption of direct negotiations. The Hungarians were entirely pessimistic about the possibility of agreement, but consented to receive the Czech proposals.* These seem to have arrived on the morning of the 23rd and to have consisted of the “Ribbentrop line’ as understood by the Czechs. They did not, however, put this forward as their last word, and the Hungarians countered on the 24th with an amendment (part of it suggested by a neutral source) that the area now offered by Czechoslovakia (which was, roughly, the plain without the valley-mouth towns) should be regarded as indisputably Hungarian, and occupied immediately by Hungarian troops; the clearly Slovak areas

north of the ethnic line, as shown by the 1910 census, should equally be regarded as non-controversial. The towns which had had a Magyar majority in 1910, but had since acquired a Slovak majority, should be regarded as still in dispute. Pozsony was to be set aside for special treatment; the remaining area was to be divided into eight zones, in each of which a separate plebiscite

was to be held. The Ruthenes were to decide on their own future. If Czechoslovakia did not accept this, the question of the disputed areas (only) should be submitted to arbitration by Germany and Italy in the western zone,

| and by those two Powers, with the addition of Poland, in the eastern.?

The idea of bringing in Poland as an arbitrator inspired the Czechs to get Comnene to put in a claim that if Poland was so nominated, Roumania must be included also.* The Czechs were not objecting to Axis arbitration, which they would now have been ready to invoke; but the position had been further

changed, in the interval, by the intervention of the Poles. On the 22nd Lipski had called on Woermann and insisted very strongly on Poland’s wish to see the common frontier established; and on the next day Weizsacker had drafted a long memorandum in which he suggested, as a possible alternative

| to either arbitration or a Four Power Conference, further proposals by | Germany and Italy which might or might not bring in Poland. The latter

course would mean “‘a definite departure from Munich,” and would be a great gesture to Poland, in return for which, and for acquiescence in her demand for the common frontier, compensation (“‘Danzig, Memel’’) might be asked of her.® On the evening of the 23rd Ribbentrop rang up Ciano and, after repeating

Germany’s objections to arbitration, invited himself to Rome for the end of

the week. He did not mention the possible deal with Poland; and if the 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 83. * Ciano Diary, 23rd October. ° The text of the proposal (summarised) is in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 86. The suggestion for the eight plebiscites was my own, Teleki having sent an emissary to ask my views. My idea was that

the total real populations should be added, and the towns allocated in accordance with the proportion shown by the total (e.g. if the eight towns showed 200,000 Slovaks and 120,000 Magyars, then five towns to Slovakia, three to Hungary). Each country should get those towns which were really most necessary to it; this could easily be arranged by suitable delimitation of the plebiscite zones. The emissary (K. Buday) telephoned this suggestion to Teleki, who then adopted it. * See Comnene, p. 313. Comneéne at first refused the suggestion, but later consented to put it forward as his own. ® For the German account of this conversation, see Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 80. According to Sztdjay, to whom Lipski must have reported, Lipski said that his Government “insisted on the common Polish-Hungarian frontier as the only means of creating a solid line of defence against Bolshevism, putting the demand in such a way that Germany could hardly oppose it without

offending Poland and giving up her anti-Bolshevik principles” (Sz. I, MS.), } ® Doc. G.F.P., D. 1V, 83.

FIGHTING FISH 299 proposals which he made next day to Lipski (which were on the lines of Weizsacker’s memorandum!) had been accepted, it would have made the Duce look rather silly, since precisely on the 24th, tiring of the protracted squabble and made nervous by the anti-German implications which the French Press was reading into the demand for the common frontier, he had

instructed Ciano to “take up a clear attitude against it.”” But Lipski received Ribbentrop’s suggestions coldly, so that the idea of the Great Deal had to be put off, after all, until the following January.’ One of Poland’s many reasons for rejecting the offer was, no doubt, that

just on the 24th-25th they were hoping to get Ruthenia gratis: they were expecting a declaration of independence from the Ruthene Government, and

had decided to ignore the opposition of France, Britain and Roumania (who would soon accept the fait accompli) and move troops in to support it.* The Czechs, in fact, only prevented this just in time. They had all the while

been reinforcing their garrisons in Ruthenia, and these were now fully capable of dealing with the unsupported Hungarians, but as they were too weak to cope with the Poles, they appealed to Roumania, and Comnéne, after arranging matters with the King, on the night of the 25th sent word to Prague

that in case of a rising in Ruthenia, or of aggression by Hungary—this subject to Yugoslavia’s adhesion—Roumania was prepared, if officially invited to do so by the Government of Czechoslovakia, to occupy Ruthenia with her troops.°

The Czechoslovak Government then at once® summoned the four

Ruthene Ministers to Prague. Sirovy asked them what their attitude was, and Brody answered in the terms of the Resolution of the 20th. He was thereupon arrested and imprisoned. Fencsik was also apparently detained, but afterwards got away, with other members of the Ruthene Rada, to

Hungary. All authorities agree that these events were followed by annoyance (which

both sides, indeed, magnify into “‘violent unrest’’) in Ruthenia, although M. Ripka says it was occasioned by Brody’s statement, and the Hungarians, by his arrest. In any case, all the Ministers being out of action, Prague rang up the “Ukrainian” Secretary of State, Volo8in, who, being still under the impression that the vital towns were safe,’ accepted the appointment and took the oath of loyalty by telephone. He then convoked his own Rada and put

through it a resolution (in the terms of which he issued a declaration the next day) acquiescing in the ethnic frontier but rejecting a plebiscite “‘since the political allegiance of Ruthenia had now been definitely settled.” He also dissolved the Ruthene Rada. The Czechs were now ready to answer Hungary’s Note of the 24th.® 1 Id., V, 81: also German White Book, No. 197, and Polish White Book, p. 47. 2 Diary, 24th October. The Poles also omitted to inform the Roumanians, to Comnene’s extreme wrath when he discovered the fact (op. cit., p. 330). 3 The official Polish answer was sent only on 31st October and received on Ist November; but the Germans seem to have been clear from the first that it would be negative. 4 Comnéne, p. 315. Poland was moving troops up to the frontier (id., p. 322). 5

8 Rigks dates the arrest of Brody on the 29th and Brody himself on the 27th, but it was already reported in the Press on the 27th, and Comnene knew about it on the 26th. 7 Vologin afterwards told a Hungarian friend of C. A. M’s. that he would never have accepted partition had he not believed that the towns were safe. He is reported to have fainted when the Award was read out on the wireless. 8 It may be mentioned here in passing that Tiso had written to Ribbentrop on the 25th saying that Slovakia could have agreed to the plebiscite if Jews were excluded (he had told Ribbentrop before that the Jews would vote for Hungary).

300 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH First, however (on the 26th), they consulted London,? and were told categoric-

ally that ““H.M. Government saw no objection to the settlement of the Czech-Hungarian question by means of arbitration by Germany and Italy, if the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Governments agreed to settle their differences in this way. ... If the two parties to the dispute preferred to refer the matter to the four Munich Powers, H.M. Government would be ready to join in any discussions.”* A message to the same effect was sent to Italy. The British Chargé d’Affaires in Berlin pointed out, with reference to the proposed inclusion of Poland, that “the four Great Powers actually had the final say in the matter,’’ but Weizsacker merely answered that it was a Hungarian, not a German proposal.? As to the substance of the dispute, the Foreign Office now committed itself to general approval of an ethnic line in Slovakia, also pointing out the difficulties of agreeing quickly on a basis for plebiscites in areas of such mixed populations. It was obviously quite undecided (and who shall blame it?) on the rights and wrongs of things in Ruthenia, and here its chief anxiety seems to have been to avoid being dragged into supporting Italy against Germany over this question.* The Czechs seem to have got a similar answer from the French*; and now they replied to the Hungarian Note, again refusing to discuss any question

| outside that of the Magyar minority. As to the latter, Czechoslovakia was

prepared to accept the arbitration of Germany and Italy, to whose discretion it should be left to decide whether to call on other arbitrators; but if Poland made a third, Roumania should make a fourth. Hungary replied the next day (the 27th), maintaining her point of view about the “‘other nationalities,”’ but, for the rest, taking note of Czechoslovakia’s acceptance of Germany and Italy as arbitrators and only remarking that the arbitration should relate

only to disputed areas. Hungary wished to occupy areas not in dispute without delay. If Germany declined to arbitrate, Hungary would appeal

. to the four Munich Powers.

| Ribbentrop arrived in Rome that evening. He was still averse to the idea of an arbitral Award by the Axis. But the next day, in the course of a long conversation,’ Ciano reassured him that, as Perth’s message showed, ‘London viewed a direct intervention by the two Axis Powers, as arbiters, not only without misgivings but with satisfaction,” and pleaded strongly that:

‘An affirmation of this kind will confer on Germany and Italy a right to direct the questions of Central Europe and to impress the exclusive influence of the Axis on both the Czechoslovak and the Hungarian peoples.”’

Ribbentrop had not, writes Ciano, understood the political importance of Axis arbitration—a “‘gigantic event,” as important from the prestige point

of view as Munich itself. But he now allowed himself to be seduced by Ciano’s arguments, although making the reservation that he must get the Fuhrer’s consent. Meanwhile Ciano explained the various Hungarian 1 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. Il, 227. 2 Ibid.

3 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 91.

4 Doc. Brit. F.P., If. II, 226. * On the 28th Veverka told Comnene that Czechoslovakia had preferred to appeal to the Axis “in order to please Paris, London and Berlin—the first two, because they had no wish to run up against the Axis again” (Comnéne, p. 335). Bonnet told Comnéne, in reply to a question, that “‘if the Czechoslovak Government had thought the presence of French and British delegates

desirable, it would have asked for, and obtained this’ (Id., p. 336).

® Text in Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 287. “ Ciano Papers, pp. 240-1; see also Diary, 27th-29th October.

| FIGHTING FISH 301 . demands and said that while he admitted that Hungary could not have

| Pozsony or Nyitra, he urged strongly that she should be given Kassa, Ungvar : and Munkacs. In return, she must give up her pretensions towards Slovakia and Ruthenia. Ribbentrop, “who remained hostile to Hungary [again bringing up against her, amongst other complaints, her inactivity after Munich] and defended the Czech cause most stubbornly,”’ objected that the sacrifice of Kassa might provoke a separatist movement in Slovakia, which Germany and Italy as guarantors would have to put down by force of arms. Ciano thought this unlikely, and Ribbentrop appeared satisfied, although no

final decision was taken that day. Ciano then called Villani! and warned him that Hungary would “undoubtedly have to renounce Ruthenia,” and that she would have to give up the idea of bringing in Poland as third arbiter.

Kanya had resigned himself, perforce, to the prospect of not getting Ruthenia awarded to Hungary, but he had still managed to persuade himself

that the Award could be represented as relating only to Hungary’s unconditional claim and that if afterwards the Ruthenes themselves declared

their independence, Germany would continue to observe “‘désintéressement.”’

On the 29th he telephoned to Villani and Sztdéjay authorisation to ask Germany and Italy to arbitrate “in the Hungaro-Czechoslovak question,”’ asking Villani to arrange with Ciano that, “‘if possible, Ruthenia should not be mentioned at all, either in the arbiters’ discussions, or on the Award,” and he informed the Poles, who were again showing great impatience and anger with Hungary (on the 28th Lubienski warned Hory that Polish opinion was swinging dangerously against Hungary, and might give her up altogether), that Hungary’s acceptance of arbitration did not mean that she had given up her designs on Ruthenia—only that she was obliged to adapt her tactics to the situation. Hory answered that Lubienski “‘had been glad to hear that we are maintaining our previous point of view in the Ruthene question and

have not altered our intention of promoting a rising... .’ And on the proposal of Poland it was agreed that “‘In so far as the German-Italian arbitral award did not prove entirely satisfactory, Poland and Hungary would

continue their common action with a view to bringing about the common frontier.” Hungary now, on the 29th, made her formal request for German and Italian arbitration (the first time that she had done so, as distinct from saying

that she was prepared to do it). Ribbentrop, who had been in communication with Hitler, told Ciano he had obtained the Fuhrer’s consent. Just afterwards a Note arrived from the Czechs “‘noting with satisfaction that Hungary had agreed to arbitration by Germany and Italy, with obligation to accept their decision in advance”’ and proposing that the two Governments should make their formal request within twenty-four hours. The arbitrators should decide, if necessary, the question whether there were any “‘agreed

areas.”2 Then the two Governments informed one another that they had made the request.? The official announcement of the date of the arbitration was now made, with the statement that the parties had agreed in advance to accept the award.

On the 30th some final advance bargaining took place. A group of Hungarians, led by Janos Esterhazy, called on Ciano to brief him. Ciano recalls that ‘‘they would be content if they got Kassa, Ungvar and Munkacs,”’ 1 The following paragraphs from the Sz. I. MS. * Doc. Brit. F.P., IIT. HI, 238. 3 Id., 239.

302 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and Mackensen brought Ciano a message that evening that Germany agreed."

According to information emanating from Chvalkovsky, Ribbentrop had consented to this provided Italy renounced pressing for the plebiscite in Ruthenia.2, There seems to have been a little further bargaining round the area south of Nyitra.®

Ciano was, of course, unconcealedly out to get all he could for the Hungarians, while Woermann, who prepared the figures for Ribbentrop, while seeking a just settlement, yet on his own evidence made himself rather the defender of the Czechoslovak case. Thus, when the arbitrators met, they automatically assumed the roles of Counsel for Czechoslovakia and Hungary

respectively, a fact evidenced by their behaviour.* But after the mutual concessions which had been made, there was not much room for differences left, although Ciano managed to do a little monkeying with the map.° The

Award was thus quickly rendered. Czechoslovakia kept Pozsony and Nyitra, Hungary recovered Kassa, Ungvar and Munkacs, and in the central

section, Léva and Losonc. While no agreed figure for the ethnic appurtenance of the population of the area transferred can, for obvious reasons, be given, a fair estimate is that, if its normal population be taken as excluding non-indigenous officials and colonists from outside, but including indigenous

stateless persons, then it consisted of approximately 540,000 indisputable Magyars, 120,000 indisputable Slovaks, 100,000 persons of disputable nationality (bilinguals, etc.), 52,000 Jews (most of them Magyar-speaking and feeling), 9,000 Germans and 27,000 others.® North of the line about 60,000 Magyars were left in Slovakia-Ruthenia; south of it, a number of Slovaks by origin which was substantially larger than this, but was rapidly dwindling by assimilation, and only a minority of whom possessed an active Slovak national consciousness.’ Hungary was to occupy the ceded area between 5th and 10th November,

: and questions such as nationality and option, the protection of minorities and the adjustment of economic difficulties were left to mixed HungaroCzechoslovak commissions to regulate. 1 Ciano Diary, 30th October. 2 Comnéne, p. 367.

| 3 Ciano loc. cit., writes that Nyitra, the city, was “‘lost,’’ but ‘che should be able to save the country round it.’’ Tiso at his trial maintained that he had saved these areas for Slovakia.

4 See Henderson, op. cit., p. 255. ‘‘The German viewpoint was clearly expressed in von Ribbentrop’s attitude at the Conference. While he was all smiles and cordiality towards M. Tiso, the Slovak Premier, he turned an exceedingly cold shoulder on the Hungarian Foreign Minister, de Kanya.”’ Tiso had attended as Slovak representative, but the Award was accepted and signed by Chvalkovsky, who was still the Common Minister for Foreign Affairs; in fact, the Slovaks and Ruthenes present were not allowed to be more than observers. Tiso, Vologin and their entourage sat in an adjacent room, smoking and drinking coffee, while the Award was being discussed. At the end they were called in and the result announced to them. When Tiso reminded Ribbentrop of his promise regarding Kassa, the latter simply answered: ‘‘Die Entscheidung kann nicht geandert werden. Der Aussenminister hat ja seine Zustimmung gegeben.”’ VoloSin was not allowed to open his mouth. Later the Germans told the Slovaks that they could have defended their cause more effectively if the latter had been represented by their own men, not the Czechs. (Personal, Pridavoc to C. A. M.) 5 See his Diary, 3rd November. He afterwards told a Hungarian lady that “che might have monkeyed a bit with the map,” but that was “‘Italy’s thanks to Hungary for not having joined in the sanctions” (Esri Ujsag, 2nd November 1939). One of his tricks was to trace the line with a thick pencil and then insist that the top edge of the line must be used. ° For the figures given by the relevant censuses, see the Survey of International Affairs for

1938, Wil, p. 105.

* The 1910 census had given the number of Slovaks by mother-tongue in Trianon Hungary as 142,000; that of 1930 as 105,000; that of 1941 reduced it to 64,000.

FIGHTING FISH 303 On the attitude of H.M. Government to the Award, M. Barcza writes

| that both Lord Halifax and Mr. Cadogan “received the news of it with satisfaction and even relief. They expressly said to me that they were glad that we had settled this question of a basis of mutual agreement, without

the participation of the British Government.” On the two occasions on which the question was raised in the British Parliament after the Award, Mr. Chamberlain expressed not the slightest objection to the procedure which had been followed. His words on the first occasion! were: “‘Agreement was,

in fact, reached between the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Governments when they agreed to accept as final the arbitral award of the German and Italian Governments, and, in consequence, no question of action by His Majesty’s Government arises.” On the second occasion? he said that since agreement had been reached between the interested parties, “‘the question of the conclusion of a further international instrument regarding these frontiers does not appear to arise.”’ Barcza, by his own account, expressly asked in the Foreign Office whether these declarations of Mr. Chamberlain’s could be taken as implying de jure recognition by the British Government of the Vienna Award; and received a

verbal answer in the affirmative. Later it gave de facto recognition by extending the exequatur of the Consul in Budapest to the recovered area. The Hungarian Government, unfortunately for itself, failed to take the precaution of getting written confirmation that the British Government recognised the Award as valid: M. Barcza urged that this should be done, but Csaky (who

was now Foreign Minister) was completely spell-bound by the Axis and answered that this would be a waste of labour, since Germany’s would be the only voice which would count in Europe for a long time to come.* Neverthe-

less, it is hard for an Englishman not to blush when he reads the Foreign Office’s argument, delivered on 30th January 1941, that Great Britain was not bound by the Vienna Award because it had not been reached in accordance

with the procedure laid down at Munich, but represented the result of a decision by two of the Munich Powers only, who had not consulted the other two.

The French documents on the subject are not available, but Le Temps wrote on 4th November that “By the arbitral award the menace of grave complications between Budapest and France is averted and the situation is clarified in the spirit

of the Munich Agreement.”

Whether Britain and France committed a political error from their own point of view in thus standing aside is a question which need not concern us here. Hitler, when he reviewed the story in his Reichstag speech of 28th April 1939, contented himself with emphasising that the two countries in fact raised no objection when the appeal was not made to them, and accepted the decision. Ciano in his speech of 30th November 1938 was, on the contrary, full of bombast. ‘Only Italy and Germany,” he said, ‘‘owing to the prestige which surrounded their names in Eastern Europe, by the extent of the interests

which both these countries have in those regions, and by their identical determination to secure a just peace, could have undertaken the difficult task of giving an award which would put an end to the dispute.”

1 House of Commons, 14th November. 2 Id., 19th December. 3 Barcza MS.

304 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH But this much is indisputable: that the désintéressement shown by Britain

and France drove another nail into the political coffin of those Central European politicians who had put their trust in those countries and thus helped to prepare the way for the further swing towards an Axis policy which took place thereafter in most of Central Europe, including Hungary. Among the Hungarians who put their faith in the West, Imrédy was now

no longer to be counted. The exact date and occasion of his conversion have been most variously given! and certainty on them is probably unattainable today. But so much is sure, that by the time of the issue of the Vienna Award, Imrédy was, for one reason or another, firmly convinced that the only salvation for Hungary lay in the closest possible attachment to Germany. This faith he retained until the end of his career. 1 Sulyok, op. cit., p. 362, has a sensational story of how Ribbentrop, at Berchtesgaden, took Imrédy aside and showed him ‘‘the confidential letters written by him (Imrédy) to the British Foreign Office and his notes of conversations with it,’? which, Ribbentrop said, the British had handed over to him to prove that they had given Germany a free hand against the Czechs. Sulyok writes that he had this from Imrédy’s own lips, and that Eckhardt confirmed it to him. But apart from the inherent improbability of the story, Eckhardt told Mr. Lukacs (op. cit., p. 743) a different story, also involving an alleged betrayal by the British of Imrédy’s confidences:

to wit, that Sir Nevil Henderson handed the Germans a copy of everything Imrédy had said on

| Ist September to the Daily Telegraph correspondent. I do not believe that either, but it is a fact | that some time during the autumn, Imrédy became a “‘changed man’’ about Great Britain. It was noted that when speaking at Kassa on 11th November (see below, p. 305) he mentioned

: neither Great Britain, nor Lord Rothermere, whom the Revision League had invited to attend , the ceremony. I myself was in Budapest in January 1939, and obtained an interview with Imrédy : by pulling private strings. I was then told that I was the first Briton to whom he had spoken for weeks.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AN AXIS POLICY OLLOWING the Vienna Award, Hungary immediately reoccupied the

ee awarded to her. The process, which began on 3rd November and

ended on the 8th, was carried out in stages, amid scenes of pomp and ceremony which need not be described here. This was capped by the entry into Kassa, on 11th November, of a grand procession, headed by the entire Government and legislature (brought thither by special train), who were followed by the Regent, on his famous white horse, and by a host of notabilities and favoured sightseers. These included Lord Rothermere, present on the invitation of the Revision League. On the 12th the Felvidék was reincorporated in Hungary by formal Act of Parliament. These festivities were followed almost immediately by a violent political

crisis, in both the course and the solution of which foreign and domestic considerations were curiously interlocked.

Domestic policy had been much in the background for some months past, the Eucharistic Congress, the holiday season (which sapped the energies of Imrédy’s colleagues, if not his own) and finally the stress of the foreign political situation having imposed a forced armistice in this field. But little as Imrédy had succeeded in doing, that little had sufficed to make his backers

doubt the wisdom of their action. His Bill for making the production of alcohol a State monopoly had caused consternation in the Upper House, where powerful private interests were represented.1| The Jews in general were angry and apprehensive about the anti-Jewish legislation. Parliament

and the Party disliked his way of handling it. He had held few Party Conferences, discussing matters rather with his personal intimates.

His fellow-Ministers, on the other hand, complained that they were consulted, or at least lectured, too much. In July, after the Parliamentary session was over, Imrédy had inaugurated what he called “‘record Ministerial Councils,”’ huge affairs which started at 9 a.m. and sometimes did not finish

until late evening. Each Minister had to listen to the affairs of the others discussed at interminable length. Once Imrédy rushed across to consult the Regent without even telling his colleagues where he was going and left them waiting several hours for his return. On these occasions tempers got childishly strained. A focal point of the

irritation was Mme. Imrédy. Very determined to have her rights as the Minister President’s lady, and somewhat strident in proclaiming them, very quick to perceive a slight and very insistent that it should not be ignored, she contrived fatally to aggravate all difficulties originating in her husband’s all

too similar temperament. It was customary for a Hungarian Minister President who kept his colleagues late to offer them supper en famille in the private flat which adjoined his official quarters, but Mme. Imrédy complained 1 It is true that the Bill raised a dangerous precedent, being the first instance in Hungary of legislation directed against a single enterprise.

x

306 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH (with reason) that Sztranyavszky had been intolerably rude to her, as his hostess. Imrédy then stopped issuing the invitations. Next time, Kanya brought his own cold supper in a basket, and fed Sztranyavszky bits of it across the table.1 When it is considered what a difference was made by Kanya’s replacement by Csaky, it must be agreed that such small incidents may have changed the course of Hungarian history. A similar tension developed between Mme. Imrédy and the ladies of the Palace, and a very sober and serious observer has expressed to the writer his belief that this was the most potent of all the contributory factors to that mutual hostility between

the Regent and Imrédy which was to become so unsettling a feature of Hungarian politics. It is true that the Regent also alleged solid constitutional grievances against Imrédy, who not only patronised and talked down to him but failed to consult him as often as not merely courtesy but the Regent’s constitutional rights, as amended under the 1937 Act, required. Imrédy had first publicly reverted to domestic politics after the Kiel visit was over, when he had made the long speech at Kaposvar of which mention has already been made. Part of this speech related (as already described) to foreign politics, in close connection with which Imrédy announced the

| introduction of a number of interconnected military measures: universal

compulsory military service, preceded by service in the Levente (which was

| to be suitably reorganised) and followed by service in the reserve; compulsory | labour service for persons exempted from military service; and a Bill giving | the State wide powers to requisition property, direct production, etc., in time of emergency.

The rest of his speech was devoted to an exposition of his domestic programme, the main points of which were: extension of the social services, especially in rural districts; creation of a fund for special assistance to large families; family allowances; increased credits for artisans and small traders;

| more steeply graduated income tax, and other analogous fiscal measures; a new level for minimum wages in industry and the extension of the system to

agricultural labour; a further land reform, which, he indicated, would be extensive, and new rural housing programme; final settlement of agricultural

indebtedness; a dopolavoro system; and a long series of other reforms in various fields.

It was true that Imrédy specifically announced that the existing antiSemitic legislation was sufficient; no more would be introduced. But there was still enough in this programme to alarm the champions of every vested

interest in Hungary, and what was more, to bring them together (since Imrédy had lacked the tactical shrewdness to keep some of his cards up his sleeve, and play one opponent off against another). His enemies were even more frightened by his tone. His Government’s aim, said Imrédy, was “‘to realise the new ideas of the age in Hungarian fashion, on Hungarian soil... . We must,” he said, “‘transform the social structure of this country in many respects.”” His programme was “one of revolutionary significance, although not to be realised through revolutionary methods, a miraculous revolution, in which the rich were to bear the burdens of the poor and the poor restrain

their impatience.” Further, although he did not want to be a dictator, he must and would lead, so long as he remained at his post. And he would not stand “‘destructiveness, the undermining of authority and the stirring up of

nihilistic instincts.”’

1 Barczy.

AN AXIS POLICY 307 Moreover, the public meeting was followed, as is (or perhaps was) customary in Hungary, by a more intimate dinner of Party notables at which toasts were drunk and further speeches made. Here Imrédy appears to have laid aside the relatively conciliatory manner in which he had made his public speech; to have condemned his political opponents in sweeping and utterly

impatient terms, and to have made various allusions which suggested a strong sympathy with both the Nazi and the Fascist systems. At this the Conservatives really got busy, and the Presidents of the two Houses—B. Széchényi and Professor G. Kornis—went to Imrédy to ask him whether he really wanted plenipotentiary powers, and, if so, on what scale.”

Imrédy said that he did want such powers, because the Parliamentary machinery was too slow and cumbersome. He also seems to have expressed

frankly enough the obvious truth that the Hungarian Parliament, as then composed (especially the Upper House with its solid representation of vested

interests), would beyond doubt reject the greater part of his programme, and to have indicated his admiration for various aspects of the methods practised in Germany. But he denied that he wanted to be a dictator, and insisted that it would be possible to carry through his wishes by constitutional . means. So the two elders departed, allegedly “‘reassured,”’ but seem to have reported in an unreassuring sense to Bethlen, who about this time had a long interview with Imrédy, in which the latter tried vainly to convert him to his programme.®

The clash which now looked inevitable was postponed by the intervention of the Munich crisis, followed by the protracted bilateral negotiations with Czechoslovakia; but even before these were concluded, fresh trouble arose. Imrédy had founded a club of his own supporters, known as the “£1938 Club”

and claiming to represent the “‘Right-Wing Intellectuals’? (which, again, was regarded as a slight by the members of other associations). On 20th October a friend of Imrédy’s gave a large dinner to the members of this club and some scores of other persons. Imrédy addressed this gathering in a tone which revived all the old fears and added new resentments. He began by

saying that the revision at which Hungary was aiming was not the old revisionist campaign for restoration of the muillenary frontiers but “adhesion to the principle on which Europe is being organised and which we call ‘ethnic’

(vélkisch),”’ an implicit repudiation of the “larger revision.” He then said that the nation must be more highly organised. The principles of authority and liberty must always be combined, according to circumstances, in different proportions, and “‘today we are living through times in which the ingredient of authority has to be predominant.” He was not going to imitate foreign methods, and he would preserve Hungarian legal continuity; but he proposed to do this by calling into being, not a party dictatorship but a “movement based on firm, exactly defined ideological foundations, on which movement, and on those foundations, the Government shall rest.”’ Before the repercussions of this speech had died away, but also before

those whom it had startled into renewed activity could take action on it, 1 Pester Lloyd (Abendblatt), 5th September 1938. 2 Kornis’ evidence at Imrédy’s trial, p. 87. Kornis had succeeded Sztranyavszky as President when the latter became Minister. He owed this appointment to the patronage of Imrédy, whom

he had taught at school; but had immediately gone over to the Bethlen camp. 3 Personal, Kovrig to C. A.M. M. Kovrig dates the interview at the end of August or beginning of September, and it is possible that it took place before the Kaposvar speech, but Imrédy had very little time between his return from Kiel and the speech.

308 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH there came the Vienna Award and the formal reincorporation of the Felvidék,

which brought with it another change in the internal political situation. It was decided that the Felvidék should be represented in Parliament, provisionally and pending the holding of elections, by those Deputies of the United Magyar Party who had represented the regions concerned in Prague. Twenty-six such men were consequently sworn in as Deputies, and one of their leaders, A. Jaross, the former Secretary of the Party, was taken into the Cabinet as Minister for the Felvidék.* Now, the Hungarians who had passed twenty years in Czechoslovakia had grown up to look on Hungary with different eyes from those who had spent the same period in Trianon Hungary. They naturally repudiated—as

in self-protection they were bound to do—any taint of “Benes shamdemocracy,” but this did not deter them from proclaiming, very loudly, that in their years of Babylonian captivity they had learned ideals of solidarity, mutual help and self-sacrifice which they contrasted all too pointedly with the feudal and reactionary atmosphere in their recovered fatherland. In some respects, as for example land reform, they were even obliged to admit the superiority of Czechoslovakia; but their reluctance to do this oftener than they could help drove them for the most part along the road which so many sympathisers with other social systems had perforce taken: the path of “‘Right Radicalism.”’ They were thus naturally drawn to Imrédy, with whom Jaross

in particular became intimately connected from the first days after the annexation, forming with him an alliance which endured until the end of both their lives.

Jaross was the most unfortunate friend whom an unkindly fate could have devised for Imrédy, for he resembled Imrédy nearly enough in character, mentality and outlook to be able to share closely in all his designs; yet was so decidedly the worse man of the two, in every respect, as always to drag

his associate down. He had a political creed very similar to Imrédy’s, and much of Imrédy’s energy and ambition, without either Imrédy’s idealism or spiritual purity, nor anything approaching his intellectual ability. He was coarse, brutal, self-seeking and corrupt; and he also brought with him, in his general cargo of “‘Right Radical’ ideas, above all, a further stock of unsated anti-Semitism; for the Jewish question was very much on the tapis in the Felvidék, where the Jewish problem was more acute even than in inner Hungary.” His presence at once inflamed Imrédy’s ambitions and lent him

additional confidence that he would be able to carry them through: a confidence which was also heightened by the adulation being poured upon him by the servile Press for his handling of the international negotiations (which automatically represented the Award as a magnificent success and proof of the superhuman sagacity of the Government). Imrédy thus decided that his position was strong enough to allow him to strengthen it a little 1 Of the other two leaders of the Party, Count Esterhazy had remained in Slovakia, and

M. Sziill6 was taken into the Upper House. * In Inner Hungary, according to the 1930 Census, 444,567 persons out of a total population of 8,001,112 had professed the Jewish religion. In the Felvidék there were 81,720 such persons out of a population of 1,041,401. Imrédy argued at his trial that this increase in the proportion

of Hungary’s Jews justified the new action; which the figures hardly bear out. But it can be established that the first references to renewed anti-Semitic legislation were made immediately after the arrival of the Felvidék Deputies. The pressure at Jeast undoubtedly came from this quarter, and for divers reasons; it was notorious that Jaross and his political friends enriched themselves largely out of the spoils of confiscated Jewish wealth or, alternatively, by selling

“‘protection”’ to Jews.

AN AXIS POLICY 309 further; for which his country’s constitutional practice gave him an opening.

For Hungarian Ministers President, being essentially independent of the electorate, not uncommonly resigned, as a sort of gesture, after any important event, usually in the sure expectation of being reappointed; sometimes, but

not always, taking the opportunity to remodel their Cabinets, more or less extensively. So now Imrédy tendered the formal resignation of his Govern-

ment on 15th November, alleging that the reincorporation of the new territories made it proper for him to ask the Head of the State to consider the question of confidence. He was duly asked to form a new Government, and took the opportunity to drop three of his team, Bornemissza and Mikesz, both of whom had by now strong capitalist connections; and Sztranyavszky,

who, jettisoning his Right Radical past, had—from motives of personal jealousy and ambition—allied himself with the Conservative group which was intriguing against Imrédy, nominally in defence of the Constitution, but really

out of dislike of the proposed land reform. In their places he appointed A. Tasnadi-Nagy, as Minister of Justice, and Count Mihaly Teleki as Minister of Agriculture, while Kunder took over Bornemissza’s portfolio while retaining

his own. Jaross came in as an addition to the Cabinet. One further change was made at the same time, Ratz being replaced as Minister of Defence by Bartha. This was a move in the opposite direction from the others, but the reason for it was the purely personal one that Ratz could not agree with the new Chief of Staff, Werth. The differences had begun as soon as Werth succeeded Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, and it was only

to avoid the appearance of scandal that Ratz had not been replaced sooner.!

The choice of Bartha to succeed Ratz was an emergency one. Bartha had been senior Chef de Section in the Ministry of Defence and was thus abreast of current business—an important consideration. Essentially a bureaucrat, Bartha had no close internal political affiliations, although he was as convinced a pro-German as Werth himself, but he was in awe of the generals over whose heads he had been promoted, consequently often advocating their wishes to the Regent and in the Cabinet out of almost automatic esprit de corps. Ratz, meanwhile, remained in close association with Imrédy, as he did to the end of our story; and as he retained his political

influence over the officers of like mind with him, little was altered by the change.

It was later circumstantially alleged that at the Ministerial Council which he convoked immediately on appointing his new Cabinet (thus on the afternoon of 15th November), Imrédy really talked of introducing a reform of the Constitution by a “‘putsch.’’ When certain of his colleagues remonstrated, he drew back and said that he had only been “‘thinking aloud,”’ and when he met the Party leaders the same evening, he once more protested that he meant to govern constitutionally and in accordance with Parliament. But he said that it was necessary to speed up the Parliamentary machinery, and

made two suggestions, both, in themselves, reasonable enough: one to amend the Standing Orders so as to allow an urgent Bill to pass through all its stages in forty-eight hours; the other, that Bills passed by Parliament should lay down general principles only, the detailed application of these being effected by Orders in Council. The further measure which he seems to 1 In a Press statement made at the time, Ratz said that he had wanted to resign before, but had remained in office so long as the international crisis lasted.

310 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH have had in mind was an alteration of the powers of the Upper House and of the Regent, making it obligatory on the Regent to promulgate a Bill passed by the Lower House even if its sister body dissented. He went on to say that the land reform must be speeded up; and finally declared that his previous statement that no more anti-Semitic legislation was required would have to be “revised.” His despicable party voted Imrédy confidence by an overwhelming majority; but this vote reflected rather the Party’s habitual servility and moral cowardice than its true feelings. A considerable proportion of its members was frightened and hostile, especially when they heard that Marton was cheer-

fully spreading the news among his colleagues that the “reform of the Constitution” was a settled thing, for which all plans were ready.! Teleki went and told Bethlen what had happened at the Party meeting, and also, it would

appear, what Imrédy had said at the Ministerial Council. Bethlen at once went to Imrédy, and without naming his informant, taxed him with intending to push through the Land Reform and a Second Jewish Law by securing a preliminary blanket authorisation, but enacting all the detailed application by Order in Council. Imrédy agreed that such was his intention, since “‘he

could not get the laws through that Parliament’ (although he denied that he meant to violate the Constitution, but only to get it amended), and Bethlen went away, to organise the opposition. Not being himself a member of the Government Party, he employed as agent and nominal organiser the

vengeful Sztranyavszky, himself remaining in the background.’ | Just as this was going on there suddenly fell into the situation, with most explosive effect, a spark from Ruthenia. An important element in the growth of feeling against Imrédy in November was the seething discontent which was sweeping Hungary with the country regarded as his backer, Germany. With the illogicality native to it, public opinion at once forgot such ill-will

as the behaviour of Britain and France had evoked during the preceding weeks. Those countries receded into a sort of Olympian distance. Doubtless they would have helped Hungary if she had succeeded in catching their

eye. |

And Germany, officially féted and thanked as the Restorer of the

Felvidék,* appeared to the popular eye, bleared with emotion, as the villain of the whole story. Germany had made herself patron of the Czechs and the

Slovaks. Germany had thwarted the return to Hungary of Pozsony and Nyitra; had even appropriated for herself an area of sacred Hungarian soil.°

Most important of all, Germany had thwarted the return of Ruthenia to Hungary and the establishment of the direct frontier with Poland. Kanya himself, as we have seen, had assured Beck that he would not regard a failure by the arbitrators to award Ruthenia to Hungary as final. ’ Baross to C. A. M. Baross had been sitting with half a dozen Party friends that evening when Marton arrived, happy and excited, to spread the glad news. * He then explained that he feared that the Parliament would, firstly, introduce amendments to the original Bills which altered the meaning of them in essential respects, and secondly, spend so much time in talking about them that they would not get through for years. > Most of this came out when Bethlen gave evidence in a libel action brought by Imrédy against two journalists in 1942. See the Hungarian Press of 7th-8th May of that year. Both M. Sulyok (op. cit., p. 364) and M. Kovrig (op. cit., p. 123) write that the malcontents under Sztranyavszky’s leadership had taken the decision to overthrow Imrédy in the train back from Kassa. But the sequel of events was given as I describe it in the libel action and at the trial of Imrédy, and the vote of confidence of the 15th is recorded in the Press. ‘ Daranyi had written Hitler an effusive letter of thanks (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 245). * Germany officially incorporated Devény and Pozsonyligetfalu, in the face of vigorous protests from Hungary, on 10th November.

AN AXIS POLICY 311 During the first days of November Hungary took no recorded diplomatic steps on this question, and her Press abstained from criticising the Ruthenian settlement openly. The Polish Press, on the contrary, declaimed openly and vociferously against the Award, writing that the frontiers of Czechoslovakia

could not be guaranteed unless there was a ‘“‘positive settlement’? of the question in the near future. Germany replied on the 4th with an official communiqué which stated that the new frontier was definitive and final, and she seems to have repeated this statement, categorically, in the various

capitals on numerous occasions. This had little effect. On the 9th the Polish Ambassador in Bucharest was again sounding Comnéne to see whether

Roumania had not changed her mind.t On the 11th Villani suggested to Ciano that possibly “‘disorder might break out in Ruthenia necessitating its union with Hungary.’”*

It was easy enough to guess what that hint meant. In fact, by this time the propaganda agitation (largely directed by Brody, who had been released from prison and had established himself in Ungvar) to get the Government of Ruthenia to declare for Hungary, or alternatively to raise a revolt against it, was in full swing, and troops were beginning to move up towards the frontier.* The Germans thought that there was an ‘‘acute danger” of a putsch, and Woermann suggested to Ribbentrop that it might be well for Italy and Germany, if Italy was willing (he regarded her attitude as “‘uncertain’), to make a joint démarche in Budapest.* Actually, Ciano had warned Villani to leave things alone, since Germany would certainly oppose a coup and Italy would have to associate herself with her. But this did not deter the Hungarians, where the military party was pressing vehemently for

action and attacking the Government, and Kanya in particular, for their cowardice.°

On the 15th (the day that Imrédy reconstructed his Government), Kozma

(who, it will be remembered, had undertaken the post of liaison officer between the Government and the Ragged Guard) came to Kanya and pressed

him once again to allow the coup to be carried out, on the lines so often discussed. Kanya said that “‘he did not like it, but he could not always be saying no.’® Werth, who was in the room, was asked his opinion, the assumption being that Roumania would almost certainly mobilise, but that no other country would interfere. Werth replied that he could handle the operation and would guarantee success, provided he was given aircraft. It was arranged to consult Germany and Italy, and if their answers were favour-

able, to ask Italy for the aircraft which Mussolini had promised a month earlier if trouble with Czechoslovakia threatened.’ Troops were set immediately moving towards the Roumanian frontier, and the Ragged Guard, in so far as it was still under arms (for many of its members had been sent home after the Award), was told that it would have

to start into Ruthenia, ahead of the regulars, on the 18th. As immediate measures, Horthy spoke to Erdmannsdorff, whom he told that Hungary was

being besieged with requests from Ruthenia to put an end to intolerable conditions there, and that there was a possibility that “in the event of an 1 Comnéne, op. cit., p. 368. * Ciano Diary, 11th November.

3 Comneéne, p. 376. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 100. 5 Comnéne, loc. cit. § Personal (Apor to C. A. M.). 7 See above, p. 281.

8 This order was afterwards countermanded, the Guard being instead told to hold itself

ready for instant action, but not to move independently.

312 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH explosion (in Ruthenia) Hungarian troops might march in and remain there

until the population was guaranteed the right of self-determination.”* Simultaneously, Kanya sent a letter to Berlin in which he said (most untruthfully) that the Vienna Award had pleased Hungarian public opinion and greatly

enhanced the prestige and popularity of the Axis Powers in Hungary. Hungary’s policy had always been one of adherence to the Axis, and was more so than ever now. He suggested the initiation of political and economic conversations with both States. Asa political gesture, Hungary might adhere

to the Anti-Comintern Pact. Economically she wished to expand and intensify her trade, in both directions, with both States.” According to Lajos, the Fiihrer said next day to representatives of the German Press that ‘““Hungary had simply got to toe the line” (Ungarn habe

iiberhaupt nur zu parieren). Horthy had said things to him (sc. at Kiel) “‘which, if he repeated them, would make Hungary look foolish in the eyes of the whole world.”” Hungary’s demands “‘were exaggerated, and had to be rejected.”’ He does not, however, seem to have answered Horthy directly. On the 18th Villani sounded Ciano, telling him that unrest was growing

in Ruthenia, which ‘“‘could not live torn off from Hungary.” Ciano was doubtful, and told Villani that he disapproved; if Germany asked Italy to join her in a démarche, enjoining respect for the Award, he would do so, and in no case would he let the Germans think he was going behind their back.? But next day Villani told him that the Hungarians had “‘put Berlin au courant with the situation,’* the implication being that Berlin approved; the same day a request for intervention was actually received from Huszt, although probably not from the most authoritative quarters.° In fact, Hungary had made two approaches to Germany: Kanya talked

to Erdmannsdorff in Budapest, and Sztdéjay to the Wilhelmstrasse. The Hungarians certainly got no encouragement from either quarter: Erdmannsdorff said afterwards that he had made “‘strong representations” to Hungary not to disregard the Vienna Award, an action which Germany would view with “‘grave displeasure.’’® But he also used the formula given him some

weeks earlier, that “if Hungary marched into Ruthenia, she would do so entirely at her own risk, without any assistance from Germany’” (the formula had, of course, been given out before the Award, but not apparently revised after it), and this the Hungarians somehow interpreted into a declaration of

désintéressement. Similarly, Sztdjay was told that “‘the Fiihrer has demobilised,”® which Hungary interpreted in the same sense. Accordingly, Szabo went direct to Mussolini and repeated what Germany had said, fairly enough, but said that Hungary interpreted this as meaning “‘that Germany did not in principle disapprove of our action but was only apprehensive for 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 118. * Text in Sz.I. MS. Erdmannsdorff had reminded Csaky of the offers on 3rd November (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 245). 3 Ciano Diary, 18th November. 4 Id., 19th November. ® The Sz. I. MS. describes the authors of the appeal as the ‘‘Ruthene Council,’ a body which, however, VoloSin had dissolved.

® Doc. Brit. F.P., II. II, 268; Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 127. 7 Id.; and Kanya in his message of the next day to Sztdjay quotes the same words. The instructions sent by Woermann (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 122) use the words: ‘‘Germany objects to the action apparently envisaged. . . . If Hungarian action gave rise to difficulties Germany could not support Hungary. . . . Hungarian action therefore, on the lines apparently contemplated, appears to the German Government to be inappropriate,” ’ Kanya to Sztdéjay (Sz, I, MS,).

AN AXIS POLICY 313 Hungary.”* Hungary was, accordingly, going to march in within twenty-four hours, and he asked for the aeroplanes. Mussolini, sending his good wishes for the operation,” authorised the planes to be sent,® and they would actually have been started immediately, but the weather was bad, and they remained grounded. Meanwhile, Anfuso rang up Ciano, who was away shooting near Turin, and Ciano in his turn rang up Ribbentrop.’ Attolico also telephoned to him.®

The case is not a unique one® and it was largely the Germans’ own fault for first drafting silly and obscure instructions to their representatives and then failing to bring them up to date. Nevertheless, when Ribbentrop heard how his words had been translated, he was furious and sent Mussolini a message expressing the strongest condemnation of Hungary’s conduct.’ The

Duce had to display equal indignation. The aeroplanes—fortunately or unfortunately—had not started, and their orders were cancelled. Italy explained madly to Germany? and sent a hurried warning to Budapest that trouble (which in Ciano’s view was well deserved) was coming. It was now Kanya’s turn to be both frightened and indignant. He wired to Berlin (on the 21st) to say that he now understood that Germany meant to veto the Ruthenian coup. Germany, he said, had never told Hungary anything more than that if she marched into Ruthenia she would do so at her own risk. A veto was something which the Wilhelmstrasse’s answer to Sztojay, and Erdmannsdorff’s to Kanya himself, had given Hungary no cause to expect. The Ruthene question was ‘‘a heart’s desire of the Hungarian

nations”; it would deeply exasperate Hungarian popular opinion against Germany and would bring about a Government crisis.

It was of no avail. The same evening an exceedingly stiff joint ItaloGerman Note was presented to Hungary enjoining her to respect the Vienna Award.

The Note expressed great surprise at Hungary’s action, said that she had misinterpreted Germany’s and Italy’s language, reminded her that she had explicitly recognised the Vienna Award as final, and said that Germany and

Italy “‘felt justified in expecting Hungary to abide by the Award.” If Hungary nevertheless acted and got into difficulties, she could expect no help, and must take the blame for any unfortunate consequences.!® The Polish Government was informed, pointedly, of what had been done." 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 128. 2 So Horthy told Erdmannsdorff (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 139). 3 It was said that Italy authorised sending 200 machines, or according to another version, 120, but Hungary only accepted 96, because of lack of airfield accommodation. ‘ Ciano Diary, 20th November. 5 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 128. ® So Beck had interpreted the anxiety of London and Paris not to burn their fingers over Czechoslovakia, as approval of his own designs, and see also Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatischer Biihne, and Kordt, op. cit., p. 138, for the interpretation placed by Ribbentrop on a remark made to him by Bonnet on 6th December that ‘‘at Munich France had shown herself disinterested in Eastern Europe.”” Bonnet meant the statement to refer to the past only, but Ribbentrop took it as applying to the future. 7 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 128. 8 Officially he registered great wrath, but this was probably feigned, for when he broke the news to Szabo, as he did personally, he clapped him on the shoulder, saying, ‘‘Well, another time!’

(Szabo to Baross; Baross, personal to C. A. M.). ® Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 129. 10 Text in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 132. The Italian Minister confined himself to presenting the

Note. Erdmannsdorff got into an argument with Kanya, but this merely ended in a slanging match. As Erdmannsdorff wrote (id,, 133), Kanya was “‘far too excited for an objective talk,” Hu Jd,, D, V, 104,

314 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Sztdjay, who had called the same day on Weizsicker with the suggestion

that Hungary should adhere to the Anti-Comintern Pact and pay her economic bill, came back later to ask whether Germany’s refusal constituted

her last word. The Fiibrer had told Daranyi in October that Ruthenia did not interest him. Germany’s answer “‘might have a decisive and far-reaching

influence on Hungarian public opinion.”? But he got no change out of Woermann, nor out of Ribbentrop, whom he insisted on seeing.’ There was nothing to be done. Werth and Bartha were actually in the Foreign Ministry when the Note arrived, and Bartha objected that the Army

would revolt; but Werth replied: “I am not afraid of the Army.” But he said that he could not handle the operation against Germany’s opposition’— to which, perhaps, the disapproval of other Powers might be added.* Thus Hungary had no course but to obey. She did not give up hope of getting Ruthenia sooner or later,> but the troops were withdrawn from the frontier and about half of them demobilised. The bulk of the Ragged Guard was sent home and disbanded.®

But Kanya’s prophecy of the consequences of this humiliation proved

correct also. The Government, in fury, resigned; but, having done so, decided that it could not admit the truth. It would be scandalous and humiliating for Hungary, and would dangerously exacerbate anti-German feeling in the country, to admit that military orders issued by the Regent had been cancelled at Germany’s command. They debated. Keresztes-Fischer said: ‘“We must find another pretext.’ It was there to hand in the internal situation.

Sztranyavszky had been collecting signatures for a memorandum of protest to Imrédy, but Daranyi, as acting Party President, had discouraged his

activities, precisely in view of the delicate international situation, and a number of persons had refused to sign in order not to disturb that situation by raising domestic issues. But now the position was reversed: imternal differences provided the ideal screen behind which to hide the foreign political

débacle. Daranyi gave Sztranyavszky a free hand, and before Parliament opened on the 23rd, he handed Daranyi a letter notifying his own secession,

and that of 62 co-signatories of the letter, from the Party. Five more dissidents followed soon after, and next day, amid most disorderly scenes, the Government was defeated by 114 votes to 95 on a point of procedure. All the dissidents from the Government Party, the Smallholders, Socialists, 1 Id., 134. 2 For the German account of this interview, see op. cit., D. V, 252.

5 Apor to C. A. M. 4 M. Comnéne was also making representations to the Powers. It appears that he threatened to mobilise and to attack Hungary if she went on with her action and if Germany did not support her (Comnéne, p. 405, cf. Doc. Brit. F.P., III. III, 276). Comnéne also records (p. 381) that Britain and France had “‘used their influence in Budapest to oblige Hungary to stay quiet,’’ but probably rather as a general injunction than in connection with that particular proposed coup, of which they seem not to have been aware until long after the date. 5 On the 22nd the British Legation in Budapest was told the operation was off (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. If, 272), but on the 24th Kanya told the French Minister in Budapest that the Ruthene question had been put for the moment into cold storage; he hoped for an eventual settlement in Hungary’s favour by means of a bargain to be struck between Poland and Germany on Danzig and other matters (Doc. Brit. F.P., II. II], 278). The Regent, to Erdmannsdorff, said that “‘he thought the inviability of the remainder of Carpatho-Ukraine would become more and more evident as time went on” (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 139). 6 At this date the large-scale organisation of the Guard was liquidated and the professional officers who had been with it recalled. A few persons were allowed to remain on as volunteers. The dissolution affected the 19 formations behind the line as well as the ‘‘active’’ battalion. 7 Apor to C. A. M.

AN AXIS POLICY 315 and Liberals, and some of the Christian Party, voted against the Government; the rump of the Party of Unity and the rest of the Christian Party voted for it. Imrédy now again tendered his resignation to the Regent. The crisis lasted for four days, during which its repercussions extended

far outside Parliament. Indeed, the country was split from top to bottom on a line very confusing to the observer not acquainted with the niceties of the situation, including the German-Italian démarche, which, for that matter, had been successfully kept a secret from the whole country!; so that most people were totally unaware that anything was involved beyond the obvious and time-honoured conflict between the Conservative and the Right Radical members of Parliament. Even so, it was bizarre enough to see Small-

holders, Liberals and Socialists voting in the same lobby with the most reactionary landowners and clericals to overthrow a man whose programme, so far as the actual measures which it envisaged were concerned, differed only in detail from that of the Smallholders, embodied many of the desiderata of the Social Democrats and so far as its substance went, was certainly, from the point of view of the Left, far better than anything which any Hungarian Government had offered for twenty years. But the Left, in its terror of Imrédy’s dictatorial designs, and of his now

openly avowed sympathies with Fascism and Nazism, preferred to reject even material benefits from a-source which, if allowed its way, might pave the road for Hitler. To avoid this they were prepared to go to any length; and there was at the time quite serious talk of grand party readjustments whereby the Smallholders would fuse with the Dissidents under the patronage of Bethlen and form a Government in alliance with the Liberals and Clericals and with the tacit support of the Social Democrats. But both Teleki and Keresztes-Fischer, each of whom was asked whether he would preside over this grouping as Minister President, refused to do so, and advised the Regent to reappoint Imrédy,” on the grounds that any other course would provoke dangerous disorder from the Right® (or alternatively, drive Imrédy into alliance with the extremists); and, in fact, Budapest was in turmoil at the time. Bands of students and other demonstrators were parading the streets with shouts of ““Horthy! Jaross! Imrédy!’’; and it is probably true that a substantially larger proportion of articulate public opinion was on Imrédy’s side than on that of the ““Csaklyasok.”’ Moreover, it was practically impossible for Hungary to answer a strong Note expressing high German displeasure by changing her Government to one far less pro-German. Imrédy, it is true, had been the Minister President of the Government which had called down Germany’s wrath on Hungary; but he seems to have succeeded in persuading both Germany and Italy that the fault was not his but only Kanya’s, and that as soon as he got a chance, he would get rid of Kanya and appoint Csaky in his stead.* At all events, it was clear that Germany, and Italy too, were prepared to accept, and even 1 Not one of the numerous witnesses interrogated on these events at the trial of Imrédy mentioned the German-Italian Note. It was almost universally believed that the crisis was an internal one; and yet, as we shall see, the only Minister to fall as a result of it was Kanya. _ 2% This was stated categorically by Kornis (Trial, p. 87) and also by Barczy. 3 See the Imrédy Trial, pp. 42, 64, 66-7, 72. 4 One witness at his trial testified that Imrédy wrote a private letter to Ribbentrop promising this; but no such letter has (yet) emerged from the German archives. Another informant (Apor) tells me that the promise was given, but verbally. According to Erdmannsdorff, Daranyi had told him on or just before 7th December that the retention of Kanya was out of the question after the strong criticism which the Fuhrer had levelled against him (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 244).

316 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH favoured, a new Imrédy Government, provided only that Kanya was dropped in favour of Csaky. Daranyi also favoured this course, which was made the easier by the personal unpopularity and ill repute of Sztranyavszky. Thus the end of the matter was that—to the great shock of many, particularly as Horthy was believed to have given the Dissidents a definite promise that if Imrédy did fall, he would not reappoint him—the Regent, after all, closed the crisis, after four days of turbulence, by refusing to accept Imrédy’s resignation. He called the leaders of the Dissidents to him and personally begged them, in view of the international situation, not to persist in making clear

to the world that they, with their friends, constituted a Parliamentary majority; and since they could have governed only with the support of the

explicitly anti-German factors—a more than hazardous venture at the moment—they agreed fluently enough, and abstained from voting when the motion of confidence was put in Parliament. Then the essential sacrifice was brought. Parliament voted Imrédy confidence; but on the 28th Kanya gave up the active conduct of foreign affairs, nominally on grounds of ill-health, Imrédy taking over his portfolio provisionally. The motions of drawing up a short list for the succession to Kanya were

gone through; the names of both Apor, then Permanent Deputy to the Foreign Minister, and Bardossy, who happened to be in Budapest on leave from the Legation in Bucharest, with that of Csaky, were considered. But Apor was not sympathetic to the new line: he had, indeed, actually resigned in October, after a quarrel with Csaky, only stopping on provisionally at Kanya’s

request. With his old friend leaving, he preferred to retire to the post of Minister to the Vatican. Bardossy did not like Hungary’s overclose commitments to the Axis, and although Imrédy made him the offer, pro forma, he

refused it. Csaky was the obvious man. He had been working for the position for a long time past, ingratiating himself both with the Germans (it was said that he had explained away the Bled incident as an unauthorised action of Apor’s) and with Imrédy, with whom he had beyond doubt established a most intimate understanding. Kanya himself, although certainly not unaware that he himself had been as frequent a victim of Csaky’s intrigues as any man, yet recommended him for the post as qualified to put through the policy which he himself thought necessary. On 10th December the definitive resignation of Kanya and the appointment of Csaky were gazetted. The dropping of Kanya cannot be regarded as a “turning point of history”

from the Hungarian point of view, because, as we have seen, the essential decisions had been taken weeks earlier, while Kanya was still Foreign Minister. But the fact that Csaky was not saddled with the odium which Kanya had accumulated did make an enormous difference to Hungary’s ability to carry out her new policy, and the fact stands that the few weeks of Csaky’s Ministerial partnership with Imrédy were singularly fraught with action, and many would say with disaster. During them, Hungary took steps which she was never again able to retrace, assumed commitments from which she was never again able to free herself. One concomitant of the change is worth recording. On taking office, Csaky put a friend and former associate of his own, M. A. Ullein-Reviczky, in charge of the Press Bureau of the Foreign Ministry. An able, energetic and very ambitious man, Ullein-Reviczky utilised his position to make the

AN AXIS POLICY 317 Press into an extremely important vehicle for the expression of Hungarian policy, and his control over it an instrument for advancing his own power: for the last two years before he left his post, in mid-1943, it was probably more

important than that of the nominal second in command of the Foreign Ministry—the “‘Permanent Deputy’—or the head of the Political Section who by tradition was the Deputy’s deputy. It is relevant to our history that Ullein, whose wife was British born, tried to keep a lane open to the West, but it is also relevant that he appears to have shared Teleki’s view that it did not matter much what was said about the democracies so long as actions did not conform with words. The reconstituted Government lost no time in making its advances to the

Axis. In the first days of December Sztdjay renewed in Berlin the offers made by Kanya a fortnight earlier,t and on again receiving the advice to leave the League, promised that Hungary would consider the request carefully.2, Sztdjay also promised, in general terms, that Hungary would ‘‘continue

to follow a Germanophile policy’? and it was arranged that Csaky should come to Germany soon after his appointment for detailed conversations. Germany appears to have on this occasion made one of her regular interventions in favour of the Swabian minority, but the documents—contrary to many Press reports at the time—do not show Ribbentrop as expressing any other opinions or wishes regarding Hungarian internal affairs; but further anti-Jewish Legislation, at least, would be an almost automatic derivative of closer German-Hungarian co-operation, and we find Imrédy broaching the subject at a Ministerial Council on 12th December.® On 18th December the new policy was publicly proclaimed. On that day Csaky made his inaugural speech in Parliament, replying to the speeches in the Foreign Ministry Vote on the Budget debate. He described Munich as “a turning-point in Hungarian history’ and devoted much of his speech to a simple paean of the Axis Powers. The next day Ciano arrived in Hungary for a four-day “shoot”? as Horthy’s guest. We possess full accounts of this visit from both sides.® Ciano, although he disliked both Imrédy and Csaky personally, was flattered by his welcome® and approved of the “‘new atmosphere’’ that he found in Budapest. The only doubt he seems to have entertained was whether, after all, Szalasi was not the truer representative of the “new spirit.””> But when he told the Hungarians that their policy must be ‘open, certain unequivocal adhesion to the Axis,”’ he found them in complete

agreement both in general and, on the whole, in particular. They were perfectly prepared to adhere to the Anti-Comintern Pact (after Csaky had talked the subject over in Berlin) and to leave the League, although they insisted that they must have a pretext: they would present an unacceptable 1 The Sz. I. MS. contains two reports from Sztdjay, dated 2nd and 6th December respectively ;

but these also refer back to a communication made by him by telephone on 21st November, which appears to be that recorded at the end of Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 252. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 258, 259. 3 Barczy.

4 The invitation had first been given on 11th November, for January or February (Ciano Diary, loc. cit.). It was advanced to December on 6th December. 5 Ciano Diary, 19th-20th December, and Sz. I. MS. (Csaky’s minute). A German account appears in Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 265.

6 As well he might be! It had been organised with extreme care, to gratify all his tastes. The items ranged from shouts of welcome from massed crowds (recorded in advance, and transmitted from the disc through amplifiers) to personal attentions of the most exquisite and individual nature.

318 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH memorandum on minority protection in May, and withdraw in protest when it was rejected. Csaky then asked whether, if the Anti-Comintern Pact was transformed into a military alliance, Hungary would be allowed to join it, and Ciano said that the permission would follow automatically if Hungary had adhered to the Pact. According to the German version, the Hungarians again promised to “guarantee’”’ their frontier with Yugoslavia if Stoyadinovié would make a declaration in favour of the Magyar minority and would not insist on a parallel step in Roumania. Characteristically, both Imrédy and Csaky were unconcealedly afraid of Germany and begged Italy to protect them (to which Ciano gave a bombastic consent, saying that if Germany attacked Hungary, Italy would break the Axis and then “the whole world would instantly fall upon the universally hated German Reich’’). For the rest, the conversations were exactly on the old lines. The Hungarians were ‘‘very hostile to Roumania,” which Horthy talked of attacking, saying that “‘Mussolini had approved” in Rome. Ciano “poured water into the wine.”’ But there was agreement on strengthening the rapprochement with Yugoslavia. ‘Nothing,’ writes Ciano, “‘is to be done

to give an anti-German flavour, but it is well in any case to consolidate

the Italo-Hungaro-Yugoslav bloc.’’ Ciano promised to mediate with Stoyadinovic.

Little concealment was made about the results of the meeting. In his ceremonial speech of 20th December Csaky made a friendly reference to Yugoslavia, and the Press was mobilised to underline it. Otherwise, all States except Germany and Italy were simply ignored. Csaky not only gave exclusive thanks to Italy and Germany for the Vienna Award, but went on: ‘“*Hungarian foreign policy . . . adheres with unshakable fidelity to the

Axis Powers. ... The experience of the recent past has shown that the co-operation of the Axis Powers is a firm foundation for world peace based on justice.”

Next day he gave an interview to the correspondent of the Popolo d’Italia and described his policy as: “Quite simply the policy of the Rome-Berlin Axis all along the line.”’

The secret negotations regarding Hungary’s adhesion to the AntiComintern Pact were already going on. Japan was consulted on the 21st, and approved.’ For safety’s sake, Csaky on the 27th asked the Legations in London, Paris and Washington what the reaction in these capitals would be, but he did not wait for the answers. He began making Stimmung for the

| move (hinting that it would be followed by resignation from the League) in a New Year’s article in the Press, which included the words: ‘“‘He who places himself at the side of the Axis Powers does not necessarily [our italics] take up an attitude against the Western Powers.’”?

The replies which came in from the Western capitals were not so unfavourable as to turn a determined man from his course; their general trend 1 A report from Budapest to the Vreme after the visit said that Hungaro-Yugoslav relations were now expected to “improve more rapidly.”” There was even talk of the possibility of a treaty. The Zagreb Novosti wrote that Ciano’s visit to Yugoslavia would probably bring about “‘a close

bloc of collaboration between Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia.” Cf. also Gayda’s article in the Voce a’Italia, 18th December.

2 Sz. I. MS.; see also Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 265-271. 3 Pester Lloyd, 1st January 1939.

AN AXIS POLICY 319 was that if Hungary concluded an alliance with Germany which dragged her into the war which was bound to break out between Germany and the West, she would have to take the consequences: but it was not the West’s business, nor was she particularly interested if Hungary wanted to cock a snook at the

Soviet Union. Moscow objected more vigorously: M. Litvinov, on 9th January, called the Hungarian Chargé d’Affaires and said that the Pact was nothing to do with ideology, but a political agreement serving aggressive

ends, and if Hungary adhered to it the U.S.S.R. would regard this as an unfriendly act. Csaky wired back that the Pact was purely defensive and, in any case, nothing to do with the Government of the U.S.S.R., which had repeatedly emphasised that it had no connection with the Comintern: moreover, Hungary “‘did not allow herself to be intimidated,” to which Litvinov answered (on the 13th) that “‘the Soviet Government was not concerned with the Comintern, but it was concerned with the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was an aggressive instrument.” But meanwhile the Germans and Italians had been pressing Hungary again. Csaky pointed out that they had omitted to give the formal invitation. On 11th January he said in Parliament that Hungary would accept such an invitation, if given: the formal invitation came next day. By now Csaky’s visit to Berlin had been fixed for the 15th. One more Ministerial Council took place on the 14th, at which Csaky explained the history of the Anti-Comintern Pact negotiations and said that the Legal Division of the Foreign Ministry had ruled that Hungary’s adhesion need

not be brought before Parliament, since it entailed the country in no obligations.» The Regent had consented to Hungary’s withdrawing from the League if she got “‘adequate reward for it,’ but Csaky himself thought that

Hungary had already got her reward, at Vienna. Imrédy said that these measures would bind Hungary closer to the Axis, and “‘it had already been decided that only the Axis could come into consideration,” and although Keresztes-Fischer was nervous, the Cabinet agreed that Csaky, when he saw Hitler, should report Hungary’s adherence to the Pact which, “in general, might go a long way in the interest of strengthening our friendly relationship.’’?

Csaky then went off to Berlin, where Hitler received him on 16th January.

The all-important interview* opened highly inauspiciously. Hitler had been reading a long New Year’s article by Bethlen in the Pesti Naplo, which

was, in fact, of a nature to irritate any sensitive dictator. Bethlen had enumerated all Hungary’s grievances, real or imaginary, against Germany in extraordinarily plain language, saying that these “‘had filled Hungary’s cup to overflowing.”” Germany could count on Hungary’s friendship, but only if, like Bismarck, she respected Hungary’s historic rights. “‘We must hold fast to the State idea of St. Stephen.” This article had set Hitler’s own cup over-brimming, and when Csaky 1 Sz. I. MS.

2 It was stated at the Ministries Trial, p. 7410, that the Pact contained a secret Protocol providing that if one of the signatories went to war with the U.S.S.R., the others would do nothing which in any way alleviated the position of the U.S.S.R. It is, however, not certain whether the minor signatories were informed of this clause. 3 Sz. I. MS. 4 The main source for this conversation is the German minute of it, which is reprinted both

in Doc. Secr., No. 25, and in Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 272. Both these translations are, however, faulty, and the reader should consult the German text. The Hungarian sources (Sz. I. MS. and Barczy) add only a few points.

320 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH opened by conveying to Hitler the Regent’s greeting and his assurance that ‘“‘so long as he remained at the head of affairs in Hungary, Germany could rely on Hungary as on her most sincere friend,’ Hitler brushed these civilities aside and treated Csaky in return to a recital of Germany’s grievances against

Hungary: Kanya’s behaviour over a long period of time, especially in connection with the Bled Agreements; Hungary’s hesitant behaviour during the Munich crisis and her refusal to treat the Czechoslovak question on the broader, “‘territorial” basis (this was the occasion on which Hitler made Hungary responsible for saving Czechoslovakia’s existence); the misunderstanding with Daranyi; the foolish and disloyal attempt to overthrow the

Vienna Award by a putsch; the graceless tone of the Hungarian Press, culminating in Bethlen’s article. He “‘would be glad to see the end of these mendacious attacks in the Hungarian Press; otherwise he would be obliged to put her in her place one day. He would counter the claims of the millenary Kingdom of St. Stephen by raising those of the mediaeval German Reich.””! Csaky poured out his assurances. Henceforward Germany’s fundamental demands would be met 100 per cent. Hungary saw that she was helpless

without Germany. The September decisions had brought a real spiritual revolution in Hungary. She now felt free from the oppression of the Little Entente. This was a historical turning-point for her. She had definitely decided to withdraw from the League in May, and would in the future cooperate in every way with the Axis.

The Fiihrer was so mollified that he now began to discuss his plans for finishing off Czecho-Slovakia. In hardly veiled language? he gave Csaky to understand that he proposed to march into Bohemia-Moravia in March. For this, however, he needed the co-operation of Poland and Hungary. The three countries would have to work together, like a football team. The

operation must be prepared beforehand, down to the smallest detail, and when the moment came, carried through at lightning speed. In that case, war could be avoided, since Mussolini would stand behind Germany; Yugoslavia and Roumania would do nothing against Hungary if Germany was backing her; and the Western Powers would not dare to interfere. The one point not quite clear about this proposal is exactly what Hungary was to get out of it. Hitler only said that each (member of the team) had its own interests, and ““Germany was too wise and too generous not to wish to give each his share.”’ It is quite obvious that, if not in so many words, he promised Hungary Ruthenia, and as late as April Csaky was, apparently, convinced that Hitler meant to let Hungary have Slovakia some time.? But

all the documents of the succeeding weeks refer only to Ruthenia, and it seems fairly clear that Hitler was not now offering Slovakia to Hungary. It is probable, however, that both parties glossed the point over; Csaky would not want to court a definite refusal, and Hitler wanted to keep the 1 On this Csaky asked Hitler (this is not in the record) whether he was aware that Hungary had never formed part of the Empire. This was news to Hitler; but ever after, Csaky was careful

to emphasise the point by using the same word (birodalom) for the German Reich and the Hungarian State (personal, Csaky to C. A. M.). According to Ullein (op. cit., p. 47) it was in

the same spirit that Csaky chose Sopron (Oedenburg), a city on the Austrian frontier and claimed by Austria, and later, Germany, on ethnic grounds, for his own constituency.

2 The conversation is somewhat allusive, and must be read in conjunction with Hitler’s conversation with Beck of a week earlier (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 119; Polish White Book, pp. 48-9) and other utterances of the Fihrer’s of the same period. 3 Ciano Diary, 17th April 1939.

AN AXIS POLICY 321] Hungarian card in reserve in case the Slovaks after all failed to play up at the crucial moment. Csaky, in any case, indicated, with the utmost warmth, Hungary’s willing-

ness to come in on the deal, and after some conversation on minor topics, the conversation ended, after all, on a note of great cordiality, with Hitler sending Horthy his greetings and his congratulations on what had been achieved in 1938. Next day Csaky saw Ribbentrop? and repeated all his assurances, besides giving ‘“‘a solemn assurance that the Regent would never

tolerate a Government in office which was inimical to or even aloof from Germany.” Further, when Ribbentrop insisted on the necessity for the closest co-operation, he promised that Hungary would not start an isolated action in Ruthenia; the clear implication being that Germany would allow

her to recover the area at the proper moment as part of the combined operation. Ribbentrop in return said that Germany was willing to forget the past and “to turn over a new leaf in the book of German-Hungarian relations.” He desired no territorial rectifications at Hungary’s expense, and

would welcome closer trade relations. There was some discussion of Hungary’s relations with Yugoslavia, on which point Csaky said that he wanted to conclude a treaty similar to the Yugoslav-Bulgarian, recognising the existing frontier; and with Roumania, where Csaky said that his present

idea was that if Roumania broke up, an independent, tri-national State should be formed in Transylvania. Hungary did not want to annex this state, since the elements in it opposed to this would be too large for her to

assimilate.’

There was some further discussion on the problem of the Swabians and on the attitude of the Czechs, who on 6th January had retaliated against the activities of the Hungarian guerillas by a fairly large-scale attack on the town of Munkacs, which they shelled and then raided with armoured cars. Finally, Csaky indicated that “if Hungary associated herself so closely with Germany’”’ she would have to be armed, and Ribbentrop answered that Germany wanted as strong a Hungary as possible, and this, of course, implied that she must be armed.

Csaky returned home well pleased with himself, as, on his own premises, he could well be. Reporting to Parliament on 27th January, he repeated his view that the Axis would dominate Europe for a quarter of a century. The Western Powers had shown little interest in Central Europe since Munich, and Hungary “‘could do no more than take note of that attitude.”” Germany had accepted Hungary’s existing frontiers and would not interfere in her internal affairs. She wanted peace, but there could be no changes without

her will (a veiled renunciation of independent action in Ruthenia). She wanted friendship with Yugoslavia and would come to an understanding with Roumania in return for a minorities pact. Hungary’s proposed adhesion

to the Anti-Comintern Pact was directed against no one, and involved no military obligations.

On this last point it should be said that the U.S.S.R. naturally took a 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 273. 2 This throws light on Csaky’s curious remark to Hitler that since Munich Hungary had learnt to renounce “the romantic idea of an expansion in all directions”? and to content herself with recovering “‘her own racial community.”’ Probably a reference to Transylvania has dropped out of the record here, for Csaky was certainly not renouncing the Ruthenes, and probably not the Slovaks. Y

322 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH different view. M. Litvinov reproached the Hungarian Minister in Moscow, M. Arnothy-Jungerth, very strongly for Hungary’s proposed action, insisting that he had indisputable proofs that the Pact was an aggressive instrument, and that the U.S.S.R.’s attitude towards Hungary had given her no cause to choose “‘precisely this way of demonstrating her friendship with the Axis.’” On 2nd February, while not breaking off diplomatic relations with Hungary, they withdrew their Minister in Budapest, giving (via a Tass communiqué) the scathing explanation that they did not regard Hungary as an independent

State and would therefore not trouble to keep a Minister in her capital; although A.-Jungerth on his return said that he thought that Russia was less interested in getting at Hungary than in warning off Czecho-Slovakia and Roumania from following her example. Csaky tried to get the Axis Powers to demonstrate their solidarity by a counter-demonstration, which they refused, partly because, as Sztéjay reported, Germany was engaged in buying

important raw materials for her own rearmament from Russia. The Pact was finally signed on 26th February.

Apart from this small reminder to Hungary of her unimportance, the Germans now played up. Hitler could not resist one last outburst against Bethlen in the form of a communiqué issued on 27th January in the deutsche diplomatisch-politische Korrespondenz (and clearly of the Fiihrer’s own composition) which complained of the ingratitude of “‘a heterogeneous opposition

consisting of adherents of a Popular Front, Jews, reactionaries and other malcontents,” described Bethlen’s words as “‘limitless impertinence and ingratitude” and threatened “‘these dreamers and chatterers from cloud-cuckoo land” with the power of “‘the ancient German Imperial Crown, a symbol no less august than the Crown of St. Stephen.” But fortunately, said the article,

Count Csaky had now seen better. Germany hoped that Hungary would

now turn over a new leaf.

Apart from this, the tone of the German Press now became warmly friendly towards the Hungarian regime, the agitation among the Swabian minority and the Arrow Cross was turned off again, and the commercial negotiations were taken up. Thus encouraged, the Hungarians resumed their preparations to move into Ruthenia when the word was given them. One writes ‘“‘Ruthenia,” for

after the question had been rediscussed in the inner circles governing Hungarian policy, Teleki had secured adoption of his own point of view that nothing was to be done in Slovakia without the express consent and invitation of the Slovaks.’ On the other hand, it was decided to take advantage of the fact that the boundary between Slovakia and Ruthenia within the Czechoslovak Republic had never been legally defined or agreed between the Slovaks

and the Ruthenes,* and to count as “‘Ruthenia” the area claimed by the Ruthenes themselves, as far west as the Dukla Pass, which would have the special advantage of giving an additional railway line between Hungary and Poland.

The Hungarians had promised not to act without permission from ’ Following paragraph from the Sz. I. MS. * It was on this occasion that Litvinov said that Russia had not opposed the common

frontier a couple of months before (see above, p. 292, n. 4). 3 Personal, P. Teleki to C. A. M. * See C. A. Macartney, Hungary and her Successors, p. 216. The issue was by no means dead: it had been reopened when Czecho-Slovakia was federalised after Munich, and acrimonious negotiations had been going on since between the Slovak and Ruthene Governments.

AN AXIS POLICY 323 Germany, but it must be conceded that the promise was not an easy one to keep. Their difficulties lay, not in Ruthenia itself, which was now in such an advanced state of disorder, from natural causes, that little foreign assistance

would have been needed to provide a pretext for invasion, but in the uncertain attitude of Poland. After the November fiasco, Beck had lost his temper again with Hungary for her ‘“‘cowardice,” which had got him into trouble with his own public opinion! and had broken off communications with her. On the other hand, he had repeatedly and emphatically expressed his opinion in various quarters that the Ruthene question would have to be ‘‘settled.”* The Hungarians were therefore seriously alarmed that he proposed to occupy Ruthenia himself, and this fear largely explains the fact that in early February, after Mgr. VoloSin had announced his intention of

’ holding elections, they twice approached the Germans for permission to march in.* This was decisively refused them, and they fell back perforce on

waiting, keeping the pot simmering by filling the Press with hair-raising accounts of the disorder in Ruthenia and by making their own contribution to the said disorder by some sporadic guerilla activity; although this was not,

at this stage, very extensive.* Then, on 12th February, Csaky sent Beck a message assuring him of Hungary’s continued determination to achieve the

common frontier, and he began to calm down. On the 17th Lubienski explained to a Parliamentary Group how difficult Hungary’s position had been, and the breach was healed.°®

At this point the smooth course of Hungarian foreign policy was interrupted by another domestic political crisis. 1 Sz. I. MS. Hory reported in January that all Polish public opinion, outside the N.D. Party itself, “‘from the orthodox Pilsudskists to the Social Democrats,’’ had been blaming Beck for sacrificing Poland’s former friends in favour of such worthless substitutes. 2 See, for example, Doc. Brit. F.P., III. II, 381. 3 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 165, 167. The dates are 9th and 12th February respectively. _ 4 The Rongyos Garda now consisted only of three detachments, stationed respectively at Ujlak, Ungvar and Munkacs, and numbering in all only 60 men (private information). It should in fairness be stated that the Si¢ Guards organised by VoloSin were at least as tough and disorderly as the Ragged Guard. ® Sz. I. MS.

, CHAPTER FIFTEEN GREAT-GRANDMOTHER FTER his reappointment, Imrédy publicly recapitulated his internal

A ait programme; and in view of the suggestion that when re-

constructing his Cabinet he had offered or been asked to accept, either

by Germany or Italy, or by factors inside Hungary, any internal political conditions, it is worth remarking that this programme did not differ by a hair’s breadth from that which he had put forward a week earlier. In substance it was the Kaposvar programme, with the single change of a promise of further anti-Jewish legislation; and all-important as this change was, it had, as we have seen, been decided before the crisis. As regards modalities, it contained the proposals for an amended Parliamentary procedure which, again, had been broached when the Cabinet was first reconstructed; possibly modified in deference to the wishes of his more Conservative colleagues.*

Secure in his possession of his new vote of confidence, Imrédy first introduced the Bill for obligatory military service, which was laid before Parliament on 4th December. This measure, which had been drafted by the military authorities themselves, introduced, officially, compulsory military service for the age-groups between 18 and 60, the obligation of service with the colours being, in theory, three years, with an annual training period of 20 weeks. After doing their service with the colours, men served with the reserve until reaching the age of 42; with the second reserve from 42-48 and the third from 48-60. In emergency they could be called up for special service up to the age of 70. The Levente was made compulsory in theory, as it had always been in practice. The Bill also entitled the Government to proclaim a state of emergency, and if it did so, to assume certain emergency powers, the most important of which were the following: to restrict the right of assembly and combination; to place under police supervision, or to intern,

any person whose conduct rendered such measures desirable; to suspend provisionally the application of certain laws, in particular those restricting the output of labour; to control wages, profits and prices, and to block stocks of commodities.

Imrédy then put through his Budget, a task which occupied most of the

remainder of the month. As soon as this was out of the way, and immediately before Parliament adjourned for the Christmas recess, he tabled the draft of his second Jewish Law. This went considerably further than its predecessor, particularly in the matter of definition. Broadly speaking,’ it counted as a Jew any person of two Jewish, or of one Jewish and one Christian parent (the term ‘“‘Jewish”’ being used throughout in the sense of a person of Jewish religion), except 1 There is an obscure point in the evidence of one witness (J. Széll) at Imrédy’s trial (p. 66) suggesting that Imrédy’s first proposals for Governmental powers to rule by Order in Council had in fact been wider than those which he ended by putting through. * The phrase is necessary, for the definitions, especially in connection with mixed marriages, were so complicated that the Minister of Justice was once proved in Parliament to have given a wrong account of them.

GREAT-GRANDMOTHER 325 children of mixed marriages whose parents had married according to the Christian rite before Ist January 1919. The general exemptions for persons converted before Ist August 1919 and for ex-servicemen were made less generous, further conditions being added in each case, and there were certain

other conditions restricting the other categories of exempted persons. Jewish calculations put the total number of persons affected (heads of families and dependants) at 320,000." Jews could not acquire Hungarian citizenship by marriage or naturalisa-

tion, and naturalisation acquired since Ist July 1914 could be withdrawn from persons not obliged to live in Hungary. Jews retained their parliamentary and municipal franchise only if they (and their relevant ancestors) had been born in Hungary and had lived continuously in Hungarian territory —

since lst July 1867. There were to be no Jewish ex officio members of municipalities, and no Jews allowed to sit in Parliament at all except as representatives of the religious bodies. No Jew was to be appointed to public offices, although those already in employment were not dismissed. The proportion of Jews in the free professions was to be gradually reduced to 6 per cent. Jews must not be editors or publishers of newspapers (except Jewish periodicals), nor directors, etc., of theatres. In business, the proportion of Jews, and of salaries paid to Jews, was to be reduced to 12 per cent.,

plus another 3 per cent. for ex-servicemen. The proportion of public contracts given to Jewish firms was to be progressively reduced to 6 per cent., and no licences issued to Jews to practise a trade or industry until the local proportion was reduced to 6 per cent. Jews were not to receive licences to sell commodities subject to Government monopoly. Finally, in connection with the land legislation, provision was made for the expropriation of Jewish , agricultural estates. The timetable was to be rather slower for the “‘recovered areas” in the north. The passing of this measure was followed a few days later by the announce-

ment (at an inter-Party conference on 6th January) of what were to be the provisions of the new Land Reform Bill. This was much more modest than had been anticipated; allegedly the Roman Catholic Church had put pressure

on Imrédy.2 The draft provided that 1,200,000 hold of land should be distributed at a rate of 100,000 Ao/d annually, in the form of small freehold or lease-hold farms. The land was to be acquired by expropriation, against payment, of certain categories of land; firstly, land not being cultivated by its proprietors; secondly, land owned by Jews, whatever the size of the holding,

and thirdly, a progressively rising proportion of other medium and large estates. Payment was to be made by the recipient to the State, half in cash down, half in annual payments. The State paid the expropriated landowners in bonds. Next followed certain concessions to the Swabian minority. The Government had indeed refused in November a request by Erdmannsdorff that

Hungary appoint a special German Secretary of State,* or to allow the 1 This was for the enlarged Hungary of 1941. 2 Imrédy had had long discussions with Cardinal Serédi, who had asked that Church lands should be treated on the same footing as lands owned by individuals. Imrédy, arguing that a social tension existed between landlord and tenant of rural properties which was absent in the towns, wanted the Church to sell its lands voluntarily and reinvest the proceeds in urban real property (personal, Kovrig to C. A. M.). 3 Barczy; Imrédy personally had been for acceptance.

326 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Swabians to form their own political party. But the ““Kameradschaft” was allowed to transform itself into a “‘Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn,” which (since the UDV now disintegrated, and was officially wound up on Ist

November 1940) became the sole recognised representative body of the German minority, which now constituted a relatively coherent political force. The new VDU did not get its statutes approved until the following April, after Teleki’s visit to Berlin'; but meanwhile it received permission to issue a weekly paper, the Deutscher Volksbote, and under its leader, Dr. Basch, developed a vigorous activity in the fields of self-education, sport, etc.” Finally, before Parliament could reassemble, the misguided Imrédy made

yet another move. Acting, as he said afterwards, in concert with Ratz and Jaross, he announced at the general Party Conference that he was, after all, going to inaugurate his ““movement’’—the “‘“Movement of Hungarian Life’’’;

and on the following evening he imparted the news to a public meeting in

the Vigad6. Népios! There was nothing in the words with which he explained his inspiration that was not noble; but as has been remarked, poor Béla Imrédy was not a practical man and he lacked a sense of humour. In the first place, the uniform which he had devised for the members of his Movement—a dark braided tunic and trousers and tall boots—although becoming and Hungarian, was far too expensive for any ordinary man; and, in fact, no one ever bought it, except the three sponsors of the movement, who looked very funny in it at the Vigad6, Imrédy very thin, Héman very fat, and Ratz betwixt and between: But worse was the symbol which Imrédy had chosen, and which was presented to the Vigado audience at the end of the

meeting, when a curtain was drawn dramatically aside to reveal a vast embroidered representation, stitched by the needles of diligent virgins, of the famous Csodaszarvas (miraculous doe).

A mediaeval Hungarian tradition, commonly (although erroneously) believed in Hungary to be the original national legend, represents the two mythological ancestors of the Hungarian people, Hunor and Magor, as having been led westward across the Maeotid marshes by a miraculous doe which vanished from sight after it had guided them to dry land. Late in the nineteenth century a store of gold objects was dug up at Nagyszentmiklés.

These included a very beautiful gold figure of a wounded doe; and the popular genius at once—although, again, certainly in error*—identified this figure with that of the Csodaszarvas. It was a popular and romantic national possession, rightly admired by many thousands in the National Museum of Fine Arts at Budapest. But this figure represents the wounded animal as sinking to its knees and

looking back over its shoulder with an expression of mild and innocent surprise. Thus, to begin with, as critics were not slow to point out, it was looking not forward, but backwards. Secondly, the animal’s handsome profile is, as it happens, of a pronouncedly Jewish cast. This circumstance was, of course, meat and drink to the caricaturists of Budapest. A storm of mirth shook the city, particularly after some students captured a donkey, tied some antlers to the head and left it outside the Piarist Church on the day 1 See below, p. 348. * For the VDU’s programme, as expounded by Dr. Basch on 26th November, see Nation und Staat, January 1939, pp. 204-11. 3 Magyar Elet Mozgalma: MEM. 4 In fact, the treasure of Nagyszentmiklos is probably Petcheneg.

GREAT-GRANDMOTHER 327 when all Catholic Budapest went there to Mass. Imrédy’s movement was killed by ridicule. This, however, did not satisfy his opponents, whose numbers, and their

determination to overthrow him, were growing snow-ball fashion.! They

now gathered their forces for a decisive blow. This they succeeded in inflicting in a way which vividly illuminated the extraordinary conditions then prevailing in Hungary. As has been said, Imrédy came, at least in the main, of honest Swabian stock. His maternal great-grandfather was named Zenger (Magyarised in 1848 to Vajkay), while his mother’s grandfather had been a German Bohemian. In the summer of 1938 the Liberal politician, Rassay, and the Legitimist leader, Count Antal Sigray* had been inspired—by what afflatus who shall say ?—to conduct a minute research into Imrédy’s family tree. After painful

enquiries which took them as far afield as Bohemia, they discovered a document showing that a little girl, who afterwards grew up to be one of Imrédy’s great-grandmothers, had been baptised into the Catholic faith with her putative parents; her age being then seven, and the date 1814. It is not even quite certain that this unfortunate little girl was a Jewess after all: there is a possibility that she was not the daughter of the Jewish couple who, on the other theory, were Imrédy’s great-great-grandparents, but

their adopted daughter by a non-Jewish mother and an unknown father. Today no one knows the truth for certain, and probably never will. May she

rest in peace, whoever she was! There can be few people personally so obscure as that little girl of a century and a half ago, who exercised such an atomic influence on the politics of a country foreign to herself so long after

her unnoted death. In 1939 she brought the fall of a ministry and a large change in the policy of a State; and for five more years her faded little ghost haunted Hungarian politics, affecting the whole course of them profoundly. Rassay and Sigray, in any case, were satisfied, but were unwilling to spring

their mine so long as the acute international crisis lasted, so sat on the

document throughout the summer and autumn. But the place being Hungary, people talked, and rumours reached the ears of Imrédy, who in

November sent his brother, Kalman, to make investigations. Kalman

Imrédy may have looked up the wrong great-grandmother, or who knows what; at any rate, he returned satisfied that the allegation was false, and even armed with a certificate to that effect from the German authorities. It appears that about this time the conspirators went to Imrédy and told him

that if he resigned quietly, nothing more would be heard of the matter; according to another version, he was offered the choice between withdrawing the Second Jewish Law, and exposure.* He was certainly given some more or less friendly warnings, but replied confidently that he had proof that the story was false. His enemies now (in January) began issuing leaflets bearing 1 Barcza, who had gone to London on leave at Christmas, had been charged by Sir William Goode to convey to Imrédy, on behalf of those financial interests in the City which had previously

supported him, the Treasury and the Bank of England, that they no longer had confidence in him and withdrew their support from him since, in defiance of his pledges, he was introducing further anti-Jewish legislation (Barcza MS.). ‘“‘Imrédy,” writes Barcza, “was at first unpleasantly affected by this message, since he had been extremely proud of his English connections, but then said, with a motion of his hand, that ‘he had been prepared for that.’ ”’ 2 Rassay himself, giving evidence at the trial of Imrédy, claimed to be the spiritual father of this unsavoury intrigue, and named Sigray as his chief collaborator. 3 Both these stories were given at the trial of Imrédy. 4 Personal, Kovrig to C. A. M.

328 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the accusation; in reply, he devoted much of a long speech which he made at Baja on 16th January to expounding the details of his family tree to a titillated audience. Rassay and Sigray, however, now handed their document to Bethlen, who took it to Horthy, and Keresztes-Fischer sent a senior police officer to Germany, who returned with confirmation of the Rassay-Sigray version. On 13th February Horthy sent for Imrédy. As Horthy himself, and Barczy, who was present at the interview, tell it, the Regent was anxious to be rid of Imrédy, not because his ancestry was fractionally Jewish, but out of dislike for his anti-Semitic policy. At the audience, Horthy accused Imrédy of acting unconstitutionally in tabling the two important Bills on the Jewish Law and the Land Reform without first submitting them to the Regent for his “‘preliminary sanction.”” When Imrédy received the reproach without drawing the consequences, “‘the Regent,”

writes Barczy, “‘then showed Imrédy the papers relating to his Jewish ancestry, and asked ‘Please, what is this?’ Imrédy fainted when he saw the papers; I had to bring him to on a sofa. When he had recovered, Horthy said to him: ‘“T am not saying this: the papers have been brought to me. If you tell me they are false, I will put them in the waste-paper basket.’”’ The documents must have been convincing, for Imrédy replied: “I think it is true.”

The next day Imrédy convoked a Ministerial Council, told the whole story, and announced his intention of resigning. He had, he said, talked the matter over with his wife, at great length, had taken the decision and could not alter it; but he was not going to retire from politics, but to occupy himself with them more extensively than before.1 He produced his resignation, written on a half sheet of paper and simply giving as reason the discovery of

the Jewish strain in his ancestry. Barczy pleaded that ‘“‘no Hungarian Minister President had ever resigned in such fashion; he should not give that reason, but at least give some political reason for his step.”” Imrédy consented to motivate his resignation technically with the Regent’s loss of confidence in him, but he promptly announced the facts in a public speech. He was, of course, again subjected to immense ridicule; but there were some who felt that his attitude was more dignified than that of his persecutors. This time the Regent insisted on Pal Teleki’s becoming Minister President; and reluctantly, out of a sense of duty, he consented; assuming office on 16th February. * There is some reason to believe that he himself had at first wanted to withdraw altogether into private life; it was his wife who dissuaded him. She was heard not long after to say in a gathering which included several politicians: “‘If the Hungarians don’t want my husband, Hitler will bring him back’’ (Baross to C. A. M.).

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

RUTHENIA HE replacement of Imrédy by Teleki of course meant that Hungarian

) policy, both foreign and domestic, was going to alter its course, but

it would be a mistake to think that any party to the transaction thought it possible for the change to be very radical, at any rate at first, or even wished

that it should be so. Even if he had been entirely out of sympathy with Imrédy’s domestic legislative programme, Teleki could hardly have carried the existing Parliament with him in jettisoning any important part of it, for

many who had turned against Imrédy sympathised with much of his programme, and Teleki’s own standing in the Government Party was not particularly secure. Popular as he was in many circles of the country, those circles did not include the hard-bitten politicians of the Government Party, who mistrusted him for a heretic and were inclined to laugh at him for a weltfremd Professor. These feelings were not mollified by Teleki’s unconcealed contempt and dislike for nearly all of them, which were often expressed in a brusque over-riding of their objections to his policy and a still more galling repudiation of their professions of adulation. Indeed, had it not been for the general belief that he was destined to be the next Regent, and consequently not a safe person to offend, they might well have refused to accept his leadership at all. Teleki could have adopted the traditional resort open to a Hungarian Minister President placed in such a situation, of dissolving Parliament and ‘making’? new elections. The Regent had authorised him to do this whenever he thought fit. But even this prescription was no longer so safe as in Bethlen’s day. The new elections would be held under the secret ballot throughout the country, and although the administration would doubtless still be able to exercise a powerful influence over the electors, that influence could no longer be near-absolute. Perhaps more important still, it would not necessarily be exercised altogether in accordance with Teleki’s wishes, for the Féispans and their subordinates were themselves, with few exceptions, men of the Right, owing their appointments to their membership of the EKSz.

and soaked in its ideology. Any move which looked to be a preliminary to dropping the Jewish Law would have evoked very strong opposition. It must, moreover, be emphasised that Teleki himself was no csdklyas, and had much more sympathy with many of Imrédy’s objectives (although not with all of them, and hardly at all with his methods) than he had with those of the clique who had made themselves the General Staff and Commissariat of the csdklyds camp. In particular, he was not against imposing appreciable restrictions on the Jews in so far as these constituted, in his eyes, a measure of protection for non-Jews (and he was prepared to regard the Second Jewish

Law in that light), although not to the point where they developed into persecution of Jews.

Finally, he had disapproved of the Rassay-Sigray intrigue, and was anxious, out of sheer delicacy, not to rub salt into Imrédy’s wounds.

330 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Teleki differed more fundamentally from Imrédy over foreign policy, not having lost his faith (and hope) that in a conflict, the West would have the last word. But he was not blind to the momentary weakness of the West,

nor to its indifference towards Hungary. He saw that for the moment, German influence was uppermost in Central Europe and agreed on the impossibility of reversing the policy of placating Germany inaugurated in the previous October (a policy to which he had himself been a consenting party); least of all at that juncture, when the liquidation of the rump CzechoSlovak State was clearly imminent and the fate of Ruthenia at stake. Teleki attached the utmost importance to the recovery of Ruthenia, partly on the geographic-economic grounds which to him, as a geographer, carried exceptional weight, that it was vital for the economy of the Alfdld that the headwaters of the Tisza should be in Hungarian hands, and partly because Ruthenia was an essential link in his guiding political concept of a “‘NorthSouth Axis’? consisting of Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy. And although he was no less anxious now than he had been during the Munich crisis to keep the good will of the Western Powers and to give them no excuse to brand Hungary as Germany’s accomplice and “‘jackal,”’ yet not even for the sake of their smiles was he prepared to renounce Ruthenia. Conversely,

anxious as he was to avoid over-close commitments to Germany, he was not prepared to provoke Hitler into retracting his half-promise to Csaky and reverting to his idea of an “Ukrainian Piedmont”; and that this was no

: imaginary danger was proved by the exceedingly unfavourable reception given to his appointment in the German Press, which had registered it with conspicuous coldness and suddenly recommenced all the old attacks on

Hungary’s feudal institutions, her oppressive treatment of her German minority and her absurd and unjustifiable revisionist pretensions. In the last resort, Teleki was resolved to defy even a German veto, but this was a risk only to be undertaken in the final extremity. For the time, he put his trust in the old Transylvanian recipe of keeping in with both sides. Germany must be flattered into continued complaisance, but the West reassured, and when the moment came, Hungary must act with as much both of the reality and—no less important—the appearance of independence as could be compassed.

These considerations guided Teleki’s opening moves. Instead of reconstructing his Cabinet, as some had expected, to bring in a quota of Dissidents, he left it as it was, including the three men whom Imrédy had brought in to fill the Dissidents’ places. To fill his own portfolio of Education he brought in Homan, a man of the Right, although a much better Hungarian,

and much less extreme, than his repute. He took for his own political Secretary of State an Imrédist, Baron Laszl6 Vay. He announced, both in public and in private,’ that he was taking over Imrédy’s legislative programme unchanged, and in fact spent most of his early weeks in Parliament steering through Imrédy’s Second Jewish Law, which he did not modify, followed by the Military Service Law. It is true that he took two immediate steps to bring Hungarian public life

back into its traditional paths. On 22nd February he quietly liquidated Imrédy’s unfortunate “‘movement’” by “‘fusing” it with the Government Party, which then changed its name for the umpteenth time, now to the “‘Party 1 At his first Ministerial Council he made a nice speech about Imrédy, whose policy, he said, the Government must carry on (Horvath to C. A, M.).

RUTHENIA 33] of Hungarian Life” (Magyar Elet Partja: MEP). The next day he turned on

the Arrow Cross, whose premises, under the incompetent leadership of Hubay and Széchényi, had become a sort of ant-heap in which there swarmed

every kind of desperado—honest fanatics, pure adventurers, common criminals, political extremists of all brands, including Communists; and taking advantage of the discovery by the police in the previous November of

a complicated plot hatched by a gang of these men (known as the “Black Front” and the “Section for Party Defence’’) to release Szalasi, set him in the Regent’s place at the head of the State, and as a by-product blow up the synagogues in the Dohanyi Utca and in Ujpest, Teleki again dissolved the Party, broke up its organisations, sealed its premises, took possession of its papers and confiscated its funds, besides arresting a large number of its rank

and file.

But while thus turning sharply against the extremists, Teleki continued to

treat the Right wing of his own party indulgently. When the Party reorganised on 7th March, a broad hint was given to the Dissidents that they were not wanted back, whereas some radical elements from the so-called Christian Communal Party were admitted, and the new Party Bureau, which consisted of Baron Vay as President and Barczay, Csilléry, J. Mayer and Marton as Vice-Presidents, was pronouncedly Right Radical in character. Teleki also announced that Hungary’s foreign policy would remain unaltered, and in token of this, he retained Cs4ky at the Foreign Ministry: a step which he took not unwillingly, for he regarded Csaky as a useful instrument for throwing dust in Germany’s eyes, and had considerable respect for his capacity to do so. Whether the calculation was sound as a long-term one may be queried, and in that light it must be judged, for Csaky was destined to remain Foreign Minister for another two years. Teleki himself seems to have come to doubt its soundness, for while he never replaced Csaky and did not even alter the tradition which Kanya had established that the official exposes of foreign policy were given by the Foreign Minister, he took to supplementing these by increasingly frequent pronouncements of his own; insisted on always seeing his Ministers to foreign Courts when they came home to report; corresponded with some of them behind Csaky’s back (thus he regularly communicated with Barcza through the British diplomatic bag) and set up, under a transparent pseudonym, a private Foreign Ministry of his own whose young men acted as his agents. As Csaky in return more than once undertook “actions” of his own which did not accord with Teleki’s wishes, Hungarian foreign policy during those two years often displayed a curious, and sometimes very unfortunate, ambiguity. In February 1939, it

would, however, have been really impossible to dismiss Csdky without offending Germany irremediably, and Teleki did little in the foreign political field which Imrédy would not have done. Immediately on taking office, he

sent Barcza a telegram charging him to assure the Foreign Office that “although Hungary’s geographical and political situation compelled her to co-operate loyally with Germany up to a point, he was absolutely determined that such co-operation should never go so far as to impair, much less sacrifice, Hungary’s sovereignty, independence or honour. The Government attached

great importance to the understanding and support of the British Government, and would never do anything to injure the interests of Great Britain.’”! The only suggestion, however, which he made anywhere during his first weeks ! Barcza MS.

332 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH of office of going back on any of Csaky’s promises was when Berlin was told,

on 27th February, that Hungary might, after all, be unable to leave the League (owing, it was suggested, to “internal difficulties’? for which the failure of Germany, Italy and Japan to back her up in her tiff with Moscow

was to blame). This, as we shall see, was retracted later. The rest of Hungary’s foreign political activities consisted of “diplomatic preparations’”’

for the recovery of Ruthenia—preparations which were, it is true, more extensive than Csaky, if left to his own devices, would have thought necessary

or, perhaps, even desirable. Csaky would almost certainly have omitted even to consult any State except Germany, Italy and Poland, and would have made a virtue of this: Teleki cast his net as wide as possible. Addressing Parliament after the event, on March 25th, Csaky gave an account of his “‘diplomatic preparations’’ for the coup which, besides being magniloquent, was not entirely ingenuous, particularly when he said: ‘““Knowing how highly independence is valued elsewhere, the Government was at particular pains to ask nothing from anyone and to promise nothing to anyone in connection with the action in Ruthenia, but to realise it exclusively with our resources and on our national expansive urge.’”®

These words were clearly meant to suggest that Hungary had not been working in collusion with Germany, and this was not the case. Teleki did, it is true, send a message to say that her communications of 9th and 12th February (surely requests if there ever were requests) were not to be taken as “‘political pushfulness’’ (politisches Aufdrangen); Hungary’s interest in Ruthenia was purely economic.* But on 4th March Sztdjay proposed that Germany and Italy should issue a statement that Hungary had the first claim on Ruthenia, or alternatively, that it would be awarded to her in any new settlement,* and on 11th March exact agreement was reached between the German and Hungarian Governments that “‘in case certain Hungarian actions in the territory of the Carpatho-Ukraine became necessary,’ Hungary should:

(a) Take into account Germany’s requirements as regard transportation, both during and after any occupation of Ruthenia. (b) Safeguard the economic interests of the Reich and of its citizens, in particular, recognising as valid any economic agreements concluded by

Ruthenia with the Government of the Reich, and with any German citizens.

(c) Recognise the duly acquired rights of the Volksdeutsche in

Ruthenia. (d) Guarantee not to persecute members of the Ruthene Government

and other individuals, including leaders of the Sitch Guard, for their political conduct.°

Finally, it is impossible to describe Hitler’s message of 12th March, described below, as permission granted in the most definite form. All these things Csaky passed over, his only reference to Germany being that “‘good relations had to be established with her,’’ which clearly referred to his visit

to Hitler in January. The rest of his speech contained somewhat less suppression of the truth. 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 305. * Italics as in Pester Lloyd, 25th March 1939 (Abendblatt).

> Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 305. 4 Id., IV, 179. 6 Id., VIII, 62, annexe; cf. id., 185.

RUTHENIA 333 Of Italy Csaky said that “ther interest had to be kept alive,’ which was probably not difficult; up to the end of February Ciano made the motions of insisting on the intangibility of the Vienna Award, but his heart was certainly with the Hungarians. Of Yugoslavia, Csaky said that ‘“‘an atmosphere had

to be created in which the Government of that country would accept our occupation of Ruthenia with comparative calm’’: details of this are lacking. The Slovaks “‘had to be reassured that the action of the Hungarian Government would not go beyond certain limits”; such assurances seem to have been given to the Slovaks themselves (through the Poles) on 7th March? and in

Prague at about the same time.? The “difficult position of the Magyar minority in Ruthenia and the impossible geographical and economic effects

for both Hungary and Ruthenia” were explained to London, Paris and Washington, all of which allegedly showed “‘understanding,” and Hungarian documents cite utterances from the Foreign Office which fully support this statement so far as London is concerned.*’ The Hungarian documents record

no information on the reactions of the Americans and the French to

whatever soundings they received, but their attitudes after the event suggest that they took the warnings of it placidly enough. Hungary’s only real difficulties were with Roumania, and strangely enough,

with Poland. It seems to be the case that after his acceptance of Csaky’s message of mid-February, Beck had really given up the idea of taking Ruthenia for himself (although the Hungarians were uneasy up to the last lest

his virtue should break down); but he gave the Hungarians considerable cause for uneasiness by the attitude which he adopted towards the claims raised by Roumania. On 10th February M. Comnéne’s more realistic successor, M. Gafencu, had told Fabricius that since the railway line to the west was gone anyway, Roumania’s interest in preserving Ruthenia was no longer so great, but he asked to be kept informed of Germany’s intentions, in order that Roumania

might work together with Germany when the moment came.’ Some time after this, he let Hungary know® that he would not object to her taking the western half of Ruthenia, if Roumania was allowed to pick up discreetly’ the eastern half of the area, i.e. everything east of the line Fels6-Bisztra1 For the variations in Ciano’s attitude, see his Diary, 10th January; Papers, p. 264; Doc. Brit. F.P. III. IV, 177, 186, 187, 295; Diary, 11th March. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 183. 3 Id., 182. I can find no explanation for the extraordinary penultimate sentence. Still less can I unravel the conversation recorded, id. 181; someone had misunderstood somebody here.

4 These are quotations from despatches by Barcza. One says that on 17th February Mr. Butler, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said that in his view England and France had committed ‘“‘great diplomatic errors,’ in their own interest, in not supporting the common Polish-Hungarian frontier, which would have cut Germany off from the Ukraine and the Roumanian oil-fields. On 17th February Cadogan said that he had been studying the question and recognised now that the attachment of the Ruthenes to Hungary would not only be in their own interest but also in that of England and France. The question was not finally settled, and might come up again. He spoke in the same sense to Barcza when the crisis broke out.

® Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 289.

Unfortunately, the editors of the British Documents have not included any of these conversations.

® Csdky’s speech suggests that he took the initiative, telling Roumania that Hungary meant to occupy the whole area. The result was a “strong objection,” to which Csaky replied that Hungary “‘was determined to occupy Ruthenia under all circumstances, in the face of any objection.”” Then came the two offers described. The Sz. I. MS. writes that Roumania took the

initiative in suggesting the partition. . 7 The formula used by the Roumanians, both according to Csaky and to Doc. Brit. F.P., III. IV,

294, was that Hungary should leave the area unoccupied. Doubtless an appeal from the local population would have followed.

334 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Huszt; and when this not very modest proposal was rejected, went up to Warsaw, where he was conferring with Beck on Sth-6th March. Beck apparently thought the Roumanian’s first claim excessive, but agreed to support, and to press the Hungarians to accept, a more modest proposal for the area from the K6rdésmezé-Lonka line, inclusive, eastward (which Beck himself would have liked to see in Roumanian hands so as to possess a second

direct railway connection with Roumania, in case the Hungarians went too

pro-German after all) plus the four Roumanian communes north of Maramaros-Sziget.+

The situation when the crisis broke out was that the Poles were, in their own words,” ‘‘making every effort” to persuade the Hungarians to accept this

compromise. The Hungarians were determined not to accept it unless absolutely compelled, but had not liked to reject it outright,* for fear lest the Poles themselves might march into the area in question, not in order to keep it for themselves, but to hand it over later to the Roumanians, calculating

that the Hungarians would not attack Poles. This vivid fear was one of the reasons why, when the Hungarians finally moved, they did so with such extreme haste.* Up to 10th March the Hungarians had made no preparations outside the

diplomatic field. They had, of course, the regular annual intake with the colours, but these men had only been called up five weeks before.® No reservists had yet been called up. But it was fairly clear that Hitler was about

to pounce, and that day Csaky passed to Barcza for transmission to the Foreign Office a forecast accurate to the day of the occupation of Bohemia.® On the same day, itappears that a Ministerial Council met and took a definitive decision that if Germany marched into Bohemia and/or Slovakia proclaimed

her independence, Hungary should march into Ruthenia under the pretext of “frontier incidents” which made the move one of self-defence. The move was to be taken even if Germany disapproved; in that case she was to be confronted with a fait accompli.’ 1 There are, or were, four such communes opposite Maramaros-Sziget and west of the road and railway. The railway here crosses and recrosses the river Tisza many times. 2 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. IV, 269. 3 Csaky’s speech suggests that he had refused absolutely; but Csaky was swanking. He thought it a fine thing to be as rude as possible to, and about, Roumanians. The Sz. I. MS. writes that Csaky did not reject the offer outright, ‘‘but the Roumanians shilly-shallied and then it was too late, for meanwhile the German-Czech crisis had broken out.”’ 4 Several Hungarians (Apor, Bakach-Bessenyey and others) have told me that this was the real reason for Hungary’s extreme haste; and passages in Csaky’s own speech hint at this broadly enough.

5 Both the Regent in his reply to Hitler (below) and Csdky in his speech stress this point. 6 Barcza MS. According to Barcza, this was the first intimation which the Foreign Office

had received of the coming coup (which neither Henderson nor Newton had reported) and caused great excitement in the Foreign Office. The British documents do not mention it. The dating must have been an inspired guess. Barcza had been told to ask what the British Government’s attitude would be—apparently, to the general situation, not specifically to a Hungarian occupation of Ruthenia. He got no answer. 7 A source who got his own information only at second hand (one of Kozma’s lieutenants, who was informed by Kozma, who had it from ‘“‘a Minister’’) says that the ‘“‘pro-Germans”’ in the Cabinet (Bartha and Reményi-Schneller: Csaky was away sick) wanted to make the action

conditional on Germany’s approval, but Teleki forced the decision through, saying that he accepted the entire political responsibility, and when Horthy hesitated, got Bethlen to talk him over. That the decision was taken to confront Germany with a fait accompli if necessary, is quite indubitable. This immediately got about, and since the permission afterwards sent by Germany was kept a strict secret, and even the papers relating to it were kept in the Regent’s archives, and thus never filed in any Ministry, the fixed general impression after the event was that

Germany had in fact disapproved and Hungary had defied her. Mr. G. Moss’s interesting book, which even bears the title Standing up to Hitler, testifies to the widespread nature of this belief,

RUTHENIA 335 Italy and Poland, although no other Powers, were told of the decision! and some reservists were now called up; although, for discretion’s sake, this was done by the method of individual notice, sent through the post, so that very few persons had yet reached their depots when the storm broke.

The Hungarians’ apprehensions notwithstanding, there is no evidence that Hitler had ever thought of going back on his decision to let them have Ruthenia. The disfavour with which he regarded the substitution of Teleki for Imrédy did not make him alter this decision, for the good reason that the friendly gesture was, on his own evidence, not being made to Hungary but to Poland, with which he was still hoping to do a deal. The open question with him had been what to do with the Slovaks, but Hitler—unique among Furopean statesmen—held the view that there was no reason why the Slovaks should not have what they wanted,* and when, at his interview with Tuka on 16th February, he gathered that their wishes were for independence,* he decided in favour of that solution. In March, then, the sudden eruption of trouble between the Czechs and the Slovaks gave him the idea that a declaration of independence by the Slovaks, which, he was told, could be had for the asking, would serve as a good pretext for his action. He must have made up his mind, and fixed his timetable, on the 11th°; only Sidor’s unexpected hesitations made it unsafe, after all, to count on the Slovaks for his pretext. But in the various interviews which now took place between Germans and Slovaks,® the latter were repeatedly warned that they

had now no chance of drawing back altogether. If they declared their independence by 1 p.m. on the 14th (the invasion of Bohemia was to start at which was also held by persons very near the innermost secrets. On the 14th Andorka and Apor

both told Knox that Germany had not been consulted (Doc. Brit. F.P., II. V, 27) and both Barcza and Khuen-Hédervary told London and Paris respectively that Hungary had moved in the face of Germany’s veto (Barcza MS.). But long after the event, G. Teleki, Bakach-Bessenyey and Kallay himself told me the same thing, and J had to convince M. Kallay painfully by reference to the Nuremberg documents.

The impression may well have been officially fostered, although Teleki told the truth to Admiral Usborne, of the British Council. The fact that the permission was given later does not, in any case, affect the other fact that Hungary had made up her mind to act in face of a veto, if need be, nor that the bulk of the persons involved believed that that was what they were doing, when the time came. 1 For Italy, Ciano Diary, 11th March. Poland ‘‘was kept informed of all movements” (Apor

to C. A. M.).* a

2 Hitler described his motives in general terms in his Reichstag speech of 28th April. Ribbentrop, speaking to Lipski on 21st March (Polish White Book, p. 61), and the German memorandum

to Poland of 21st April (id., pp. 80 ff.), both describe the settlement as a concession to Poland’s

wishes, as did Erdmannsdorff to Knox (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. V, 27). .

3 Hitler explained his sympathy for the Slovaks to Tiso on 13th March as being due to his affectionate memories of a Slovak servant-girl employed in his parents’ house when he was a child—“‘‘the only person whom he had ever loved” (Tiso told Sidor, who told C. A. M.). 4 See Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 168. Hitler then asked Tuka why he was now so anti-Hungarian, when in earlier years he had been imprisoned precisely for his attachment to Hungary. Tuka answered that when he was in prison, Bethlen had stopped the subsidies to his family, which was left destitute. Hitler said: “These are personal considerations, into which I cannot go” (Source:

Hitler—Daranyi—Baross—C. A. M.). . 5 Hitler afterwards told Hacha that it was only on the 12th that “‘the die was cast”’ for him; but it was on the 11th that he sent Keitel instructions to draft the military orders for an ultimatum

(Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 188), that Keitel issued his final orders to the Wehrmacht and that the first military preparations were noticed near Berlin (French Yellow Book, pp. 63, 85); it was also

the day that Ribbentrop and Weizsacker went into hiding (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 460). Also, the barrage of abuse which descended on the Czechs on the morning of the 12th must have been

arranged the night before.

® The highest-level interview was that to which Tiso was haled on the evening of the 13th (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 202) but the Slovaks were also visited in their homes by Birkel and Keppler.

The story of this is given by Newton, Doc. Brit. F.P., III. IV, 473.

336 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH 6 a.m. on the 15th), Germany would support this. If not, Slovakia would be divided: the western half, up to the river Vag (or possibly the Nyitra) would be taken into the Protectorate; the rest would be given to Poland or Hungary. Germany would take Bratislava. No warning of any sort was given to the Ruthenes (nor, incidentally, to the Germans’ own Consul in Huszt). Up to this point, the Germans had not revealed their intentions to any other State; the Hungarians had fared no better than anyone else, but in the late afternoon of the 12th? Hitler called Sztéjay and told him to go down by plane to Budapest with a message that “‘the break-up of Czecho-Slovakia was imminent.’ He had decided to recognise the independence of Slovakia, but out of friendship would hold up for twenty-four hours his decision whether

to grant similar recognition to VoloSin in Ruthenia. Hungary thus had twenty-four hours in which it could solve the Ruthene question.°* The message appears actually to have been delivered (on the morning of the 13th) by Altenburg, Head of Division 48 in the Wilhelmstrasse, who had

also been sent down by special plane and, with Erdmannsdorff, called on Horthy, Teleki, Werth and Csaky’s deputy. A Crown Council was hurriedly convoked,* at which Csaky, who had risen in haste from his sick-bed, appeared. Werth had told the Germans that as he must reckon with Czech resistance, he would need a week for his preparations. The Germans had told him that that would be much too long,°® and the Crown Council told him to be ready to move within twelve hours.® This time he asked for three days,

but Csaky answered that he would gladly resign if he could be appointed Chief of Staff, when he would move within six hours. The Council then broke up; Horthy to write an extraordinarily effusive letter of thanks to Hitler’ and Werth and Csaky to make their respective arrangements. In the event, the twenty-four-hour limit was not altogether observed, as

Teleki was determined to make no official move before the Slovaks had declared their independence, and the Slovak Diet was convoked only for 10 a.m. on the 14th. Even this delay left Werth no time to increase the small number of troops which had been got together as a result of the arrangements

made in accordance with the decisions taken on the 10th. The force now 1 The evidence for this is partly contained in the interviews, partly in some jottings preserved elsewhere. According to Newton, Tiso told him that he would have to go to Berlin, for if not, Birkel had told him that the Germans would occupy Bratislava, “‘and the Hungarians would be authorised to seize not only Ruthenia, as had already been agreed to by Berlin, but also Eastern Slovakia.”” Hitler told Tiso that most of Slovakia would go to Hungary; bits in the north to Poland, Bratislava to Germany, and the west, up to the Vag, to the Czechs. 2 The date is given as the 12th by both Hitler and “‘Béla,’’ but it must have been late, since Sztdjay only reached Budapest the next day (Sz. I. MS.). Weizsacker’s interview with Attolico, which is marked 9 p.m. (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 205, erroneously dated the 13th by the editors), was at ‘“‘almost the same time”’ (id., 214).

’ This is the version given by the Sz. I. MS. Hitler’s version was that he was “‘going to withdraw his protecting hand from (Czecho-Slovakia).”” The Italians were told that Germany had ‘“‘released the Hungarians from their undertaking to do nothing”’ in Ruthenia. 4 Sz. I. MS. 6 Altenburg had telephoned this to Ribbentrop, who had answered furiously: ‘“‘Sagen Sie den Ungarn, dass ihnen die Felle wegschwimmen, wenn sie nicht in kiirzester Zeit einmarschieren”’

(Erdmannsdorff to C. A. M.). ° The Sz. I. MS. says that this was sprung on Werth, who only heard about the whole thing

at the Crown Council. But Erdmannsdorff’s report (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 198) says that the Germans called on him first.

” Reproduced at the Nuremberg Trial as Doc. 2816 P.S., Exhibit U.S.A. 115 (tr. II. 94), and in Survey of Int. Aff., 1938, III, p. 253. This letter may, as the Survey writes, be ‘“‘fulsome,”’

but it is at least on a higher level than the cheaply facetious and illiterate comments made on it by the American prosecutor at Nuremberg.

RUTHENIA 337 stationed opposite the Ruthene frontier (with which active operations were to be conducted) consisted of the “Carpathian Group’”—the VIII Corps,} consisting of three brigades, and the Mobile Corps, consisting of two brigades of cavalry and one of motorised troops, the whole numbering some 40,000 men and frankly described by one of Hungary’s own writers? as “hurriedly scratched-up formations, hussars, cyclists, frontier guards, with some gunners and the armoured cars bought from England in 1938 [sic].”> Some Ragged

Guard volunteers had been drafted into these formations. Opposite the Slovak frontier were four more brigades, one of them only at peace-time strength.°

The timetable had by now been speeded up, for whereas Horthy had written to Hitler that the “big blow” could come only on the 18th, preceded by the first “frontier incident’? on the 16th, the Germans were told later that

frontier incidents could begin on the 14th.* Mer. Volosin helped the Hungarians here by staging a coup of his own at midnight on the 13th-14th, when, on the pretext that he had heard that the Poles were on the point of invading Ruthenia, he ordered the commander of the Sié Guards in Huszt, who was also his own son-in-law, to hand out arms to the Guards. At the same time he sent Germany a request to take Ruthenia under her protection.”

Instead of lining up against the Poles, the Sié Guards attempted to seize Huszt, disarm the Czech garrison, and murder, amongst others, General Prchala. The Czechs were engaged in combating this assault when the first Hungarian troops crossed the frontier and began moving up the western border of Ruthenia with the object of preventing Czech troops from coming to the rescue of VoloSin from Slovakia. The Czechs and the Si¢ Guards in Ruthenia promptly composed their differences in face of this third party, before whom they were gradually retreating as the morning passed. At 10.30 a.m., then, the Slovak Diet duly proclaimed Slovakia a “free and independent State,’’ and now Csaky went into action. At 3 p.m. he handed Kobr a twelve-hour ultimatum, the text of which he had previously agreed with Erdmannsdorff,® which, adducing the absurd excuse that the freedom of Slovakia’s decision was endangered by the possibility of an attack on Slovakia

from Ruthenia, called on the Prague Government to fulfil the following demands, all of which related to Ruthenia:

(a) to free the Hungarian internees in Ruthenia; , (b) to stop the persecution of the Hungarians in Ruthenia, and allow them to organise freely; (c) to give arms to the Hungarian Home Guards;

(d) to arrange that the “‘Czech-Moravian’’ troops should evacuate Ruthenia within twenty-four hours; (e) to guarantee complete protection of life and liberty to Hungarians in Ruthenia. No Note was sent to VoloSin, but loudspeakers blared summons to him across the frontier ‘‘to hand over the power de facto exercised by him” and to Prchala to lay down his arms, with assurances to the Si¢ Guards that they 1 This Corps had been established, with its H.Q. in Kassa, on the recovery of the Felvidék.

D0 CEP. D. IV, 222. 4 Ibid. In this report, dated the 14th, the main operation was still timed for the 18th. 6 A tranclation of this document is given in Doc. Brit. F.P., III. IV, 253. Csaky had shown the text to Erdmannsdorff in the morning (Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 217). Z

338 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH would be allowed to go in peace if they laid down their arms. Simultaneously the Hungarian Press published a proclamation from a body styling itself the ‘“‘Ruthene Central Rada,”’ and in fact consisting of ex-members of the old

Ruthene Rada, dissolved by Volosin, who had afterwards taken refuge in Budapest,’ begging Hungary to free Ruthenia from Volosin and to occupy the country. Volosin replied that afternoon® by reading out a proclamation which

declared ‘‘Carpatho-Ukraine’ ‘“‘an independent State under German protection,’ and appointing a new, exclusively “Ukrainian” Ministry. But the protector was no longer willing to protect. That afternoon, a spokesman of the Wilhelmstrasse said that Ruthenia “‘had interested Germany only in connection with the Vienna Award, which, now that Czecho-Slovakia had ceased to exist, had become merely an historic document.”” Révai, who held the office of Foreign Minister for just twenty-four hours (after which he

fled precipitately to Pozsonyligetfalu and placed at least his person under German protection), tried the remarkable channel of the French Embassy in Berlin, to which he wired asking the French Government to intervene in Budapest “‘to have the fate of his country settled diplomatically, not by force

of arms.’’? He, too, got no reply. At 11 p.m. Prague replied, accepting all the Hungarian demands except (c). Had it not made this reservation, Csaky would have had to find some other excuse; as it was, the reply suited him admirably, for when giving it, Prague had sent down orders to the Czech troops in Ruthenia to break off the resistance and evacuate the country, and they had already begun to do

so.4. Csaky therefore declared the reply to be “‘insufficient’? and the Hungarian troops were ordered to advance at dawn on the 15th, this time on Huszt. Unopposed, except by a few Sié Guards, they advanced rapidly. Seeing his position hopeless, Volosin hurriedly called three emissaries and

told them to go to Budapest with a letter addressed by him to M. J. Illes, a Hungarian University Professor of Ruthene origin (who was asked to act as intermediary), and running as follows: “In consequence of Slovakia’s proclamation of independence, our little country also has declared itself independent. As an independent country we are now able to turn freely to Hungary with the question whether it is possible to attach our country to Hungary as an autonomous area, retaining our elected Diet and with a Governor appointed by the Regent. ‘In the past we were loyal citizens of Hungary, and today, now that we can again dispose freely of our destinies, we turn again to you first in

the interest of a close, understanding union. If this is possible, our

| delegates can begin the negotiations at once.’”®

He wirelessed to Budapest that the emissaries were on the way, repeating the substance of the offer and asking for military operations to be suspended * The signatories were J. Kamninsky, G. Féldessy, G. Marina, M. Demko, J. Hajkovics and Lepak: They were about as representative of half Ruthene opinion as Volosin was of the other * The Press said 4 p.m. Winch (Republic for a Day, p. 281), who listened to the proclamation, put it at “about 6.30 p.m.” * French Yellow Book, p. 84. * Most of the troops crossed into Slovakia and a few into Roumania, whence they eventually

returned to the Protectorate via Yugoslavia. Some of the frontier guards, gendarmerie, etc., and a few Sic Guardists, made their way into Galicia. * This letter was published in the Hungarian Press of 20th March.

RUTHENIA 339 pending the outcome of the negotiations.1_ But the Hungarians were in a

desperate hurry to be ahead of the Roumanians and the Poles. Csaky rejected VoloSin’s request as ‘“‘technically impossible,” while expressing the hope that he would “‘use all his influence to prevent bloodshed.” VoloS’in

invited the local Roumanian troops to enter Ruthenia and “‘keep order’”; but the commander hesitated. Instead, it was Volo&in, with his ‘‘Government,” who crossed the Tisza bridge, eastward. The Hungarian troops pressed forward at top speed (one cyclist battalion covered 110 km. in a single day) and duly reached the frontier on the 17th. Here they met Polish troops, whom they embraced with tears of joy, which were probably due chiefly to seeing their friends on the frontier and not south of it. A few hours later they had completed the occupation of Ruthenia, within its 1938 frontiers.

“Fighting” had been confined to rounding up a few Sié Guards, some of whom were shot out of hand, although the lives of others were saved by the intervention of German authorities in Vienna. The Hungarian Army’s losses during the operation were 72 dead, 144 wounded, 2 prisoners and 3 missing.*

This did not, however, entirely conclude the story. The Roumanians’ failure to act had been simply due to the Hungarians’ rare expeditiousness. On the 14th they had applied to Berlin to be allowed “‘to take part, with all other interested States, in the creation of a new, permanent settlement in Carpatho-Ukraine.’® At the same time they had again consulted the Poles, and according to their own version® had been advised by Beck to occupy the area from the railway line eastward. They had been unwilling to do this unless the Poles would themselves occupy the strip westward of this (up to Huszt), in order to form a cushion between their troops and the Hungarians’. The Poles having refused to do this, the Roumanians themselves had, on the 15th, asked the Hungarians not to occupy the area east of Huszt, and when Csaky refused this, as “technically impossible,”’ had reduced the request to the smaller strip, which Csaky had also refused. He apparently said that Hungary might consent to ceding the eastern tip of Ruthenia, but only in return for a quid pro quo, and only after the completion of the occupation, which then proceeded as described. It seems possible that the Hungarians now tried to activate the situation along the lower Hungaro-Roumanian frontier in such manner as to lend obvious substance to their claims for compensation there against concessions in Ruthenia.?’ The Roumanians replied by themselves carrying through a 1 The emissaries reached Budapest safely, but too late to do anything. 2 It was afterwards widely stated that VoloSin had asked the Roumanians to take over the

country. Gafencu himself said on the 16th that VoloSin had ‘‘invited Roumanian troops to occupy Ruthenia”’ (Doc. Brit. F.P., IV. IV, 294). But VoloSin himself, in a letter written from Zagreb and published in facsimile in the Pester Lloyd, 4th April, said that he had asked local Roumanian troops to come in and keep order, but had approached no country except Hungary regarding the future of Ruthenia.

3 Volosin went from Roumania to Zagreb; thence to Prague; thence to a monastery at

Olmiitz, where he died. 4 Suhaj. The Ragged Guard had now lost 31 dead (including scouts caught across the frontier

and shot) since the beginning of its operations. . .

5 Doc. G.F.P., D. IV, 240. The Germans managed to avoid receiving this communication

till the 15th, and there is no record that they ever answered it. 6 As given to Knox after the event (Doc. Brit. F.P., III. V, 28).* 7 The Press published many very provocative articles on the 15th and 16th. The Roumanians said that messages had gone out on the Hungarian wireless telling Temesvar and Arad that they would soon be recovered, as Ruthenia had been. The M.T.I. replied that anyone could convince himself by looking up the records that no such speeches had been made; but this does not exclude the possibility that “‘rogue’’ stations had been at work.*

340 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH partial mobilisation! and spreading enormously exaggerated accounts of Hungary’s military preparations.” As it was not easy to represent Hungary alone as constituting a serious threat to Roumania, a greater danger had to

be adduced: and on 16th March M. Tilea, the Roumanian Minister in London, told the Foreign Office that his Government had “from secret and other sources, good reason to believe that within the next few months the German Government would reduce Hungary to vassaldom and then proceed to disintegrate Roumania in the same way as they had disintegrated CzechoSlovakia, with the ultimate object of establishing a German protectorate over the whole country.”® The next day he told Halifax that he understood that Germany (which at the time had an economic mission in Roumania) had made of Roumania a demand which was “‘in the nature of an ultimatum”

for a monopoly of Roumanian exports and industrial restriction inside Roumania in Germany’s interests. On this basis Germany would guarantee Roumania’s frontiers.* Similar messages of a German ultimatum were given to The Times and the Daily Telegraph.

At the same time, the Press was flooded with reports of huge German troop concentrations massed on the Hungarian frontiers in readiness to spring on Roumania, and it was explained that the Hungarians were plotting their alleged attack on Roumania in connivance with the Germans, with the intention of dismembering Roumania. The story of the ultimatum had to be dropped, M. Gafencu admitting to Hoare that the economic negotiations were “‘proceeding normally, as between equals,’ and ordering Tileato retractit. But King Carol stuck to the equally fictitious story of the hostile troop movements. On the 21st he sent Hoare a message that “‘the Hungarian mobilisation was assuming threatening proportions and Roumanians had almost certain knowledge that twenty-five German divisions were on the Hungarian frontier.’’ Bulgarian troops, too, were moving towards the Dobruja, and “in the opinion of the Roumanian Government, attack might be expected in the near future.’”® The Roumanians themselves were now mobilising on a very considerable scale; the calling-up of ten classes was announced on the 21st. The Roumanians had been interlarding their messages announcing an imminent attack on themselves with suggestions that the West should come to their rescue, e.g. by “stating in precise terms that they would not allow any further changes of frontiers and would support any State that defended

its interests with all the military forces at their disposal.’ We are not concerned here with the story of how this seed presently sprouted into the

Anglo-French system of guarantees, but it is relevant to the history of Hungary to say that both Britain and France took the danger of an armed clash between Hungary and Roumania very seriously. They urged moderation on both sides, and advised Roumania not to press her claim in Ruthenia 1 They had called up three classes on the 15th (Doc. G.F.P., loc. cit.). * The Manchester Guardian wrote at the time that Hungary had 300,000 men under arms (actually it was 70,000). Roumanian reports spoke of five corps. Mr. A. L. Easterman (King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu, p. 172) speaks of 200,000 men, with ‘“‘heavy artillery, tanks and antitank weapons,’ none of which Hungary then possessed in more than negligible quantities, if Ms Doe. Brit. F.P., III. IV, 298: cf. 297. 4 Id., 389, 390. 5 Id., 399. “ Id., 428. 7 Id., 457.

RUTHENIA 34] to the point of creating strained relations between herself and Hungary.! As

late as the 19th the Hungarians had still told the Poles that they were ‘prepared to consider how far they could satisfy the reasonable Roumanian

aspirations in Ruthenia,’* but they did not envisage a purely unilateral concession, and now that the Roumanians had made it clear that no compensation would be given, the end was inevitable. Hungary kept Ruthenia undivided, while Roumania’s frontier further south remained intact, and officially unquestioned.

, Both parties made virtuous declarations that their respective mobilisations were purely defensive, necessitated by the movements of the other, and that they would demobilise as soon as the other led the way. The Hungarians also stated categorically that they were not making arrangements to let German troops cross their territory.? Eventually, it was arranged—the Germans contributing to the result—for both parties to begin demobilising on 27th March.* The settlement of the western frontier was difficult. Hitler had agreed on

the 16th to take over the protection of the Slovak State, and on the night of the 18th-19th the German negotiator, Dr. Veesenmayer, had agreed with the Slovak delegates who met him in Vienna on draft proposals for the form of the Protectorate and the German military zones.’ Tuka, however, objected to the draft as differing from what Hitler had promised him, and Hitler himself was in no hurry to make the agreement definitive, since he still hoped to do a general deal with the Poles, as part of which (as he told Lipski on the 21st) he would have considered meeting their wishes over Slovakia.® The Slovaks, however, pressed for a definitive agreement, precisely because they were suspicious of the Hungarians’ designs, and on the 23rd Ribbentrop signed a treaty with Slovakia, formally undertaking “‘to protect the political independence and territorial indivisibility of the Slovak State,” with the special purpose of stopping Hungary from realising those designs.° While these negotiations were going on, the Hungarians, hoping to get their wishes fulfilled by agreement, had kept their troops west of the provisional Slovak-Ruthene frontier,* but on receiving the news that the Agreement had been signed, they decided to make a dash for what they could get, and after giving the Germans half an hour’s notice,’ pushed their troops up the western slopes of the Ung valley. They apparently expected the Slovaks not to object,® but this was quite anerror. There was a German mission in Zilina, and the Slovaks applied to its commanding officer for arms. The German refused this, but offered to have German troops moved against the Hungarians, which the Slovaks refused in their turn, fearing that German protection might all too easily lead to permanent German military occupation. The Slovak and Hungarian forces accordingly faced one another a deux, and some small-scale fighting took place. A German document of the 24th® says frankly that the Fuhrer might well 1 Id., 503; for further counsels of moderation, see id., 427, 437, 467, 502-4, 514. 2 Id., 460. 3 Id., 514. 4 Tiso, Die Wahrheit iiber die Slovakei, pp. 160-1; Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 40. 5 Polish White Book, pp. 62-3. 6 Ribbentrop said at Nuremberg (Trial, X, 175) that the guarantee was “‘merely a measure to

. point out to Hungary that the territorial question was now settled.” 7 Personal, G. Teleki to C. A. M. 8 Personal, Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M. ® Doc, G.F.P., D. VI, 99. Nazi Consp. and Agg.

342 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH not feel himself bound by his guarantee if he could do a deal with Poland and Hungary at the expense of Slovakia. For the time, however, ‘“‘brakes were to be put on Hungary.”” The Hungarians were allowed to believe that German troops had, after all, moved to PreSov, and this threat, reinforced by strong diplomatic representations in Budapest, proved effective. The Hungarians, after reaching the watershed a few miles west of the Ung, halted there and pretended that they had not meant to go any further. On the 26th

Ribbentrop renewed his offer to Lipski, but by the 27th or the 28th it was obvious that no deal was forthcoming. The Slovaks and Hungarians were told abruptly to agree. On the 3lst agreement was reached to take as the frontier the line then held by the Hungarian troops, and on 4th April a treaty to this effect was signed. The Hungarian Government made the motions of accepting this as satisfactory; but the Slovak Government declared on the wireless that it would never recognise either Slovakia’s eastern or her southern frontier.

Csaky, when reviewing the history of the occupation of Ruthenia, said with some justice that it was received friendlily enough everywhere, except in

Slovakia and Roumania. H.M. Government never gave the acquisition specific recognition, either de jure or de facto, but did not state that it would refuse recognition. Barcza writes that he went to the Foreign Office in some trepidation, fearing that Hungary’s action would be described as an act of ageression similar to that of the Germans. When, however, he said that the occupation had been effected, not merely independently of Germany but against her will, and that if Hungary had not moved in Germany would have done so (a presentation which, as we have seen, although incorrect, was not known to be so by Barcza and reflected at least Hungary’s intentions), he was “‘agreeably surprised.”’ “‘“Cadogan saw the point, and although he condemned

it on principle as violence, neither he, nor Halifax, nor Chamberiain ever protested againstit.... Later, Cadogan said to me with genuine satisfaction that, anyway, it was better for us to be in Ruthenia than the Germans.... Bonnet, on the parallel occasion, directly congratulated my Paris colleague and said that so far as France was concerned, Hungary might have gone into Prague, so long as the Germans didn’t.” The Western Press of the time was interested almost exclusively in the Czech question and did not, on the whole, treat Hungary as an accomplice. The general tone was one of rather contemptuous pity. Germany had, of course, raised no objection to the original occupation. Hungary’s westward advance was a different question, but Ribbentrop ended by sending written recognition of the frontier of 4th April. This was received

in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry with “a sigh of relief.” The sanguine Sztojay even wrote in a later despatch that the occupation of Ruthenia had ‘“brought about another improvement in Hungaro-German relations.’ This was not apparent at the time, for the tone of the German Press towards Teleki did not change until after his visit to Berlin a month later. Teleki promised that Ruthenia* should receive an appropriate measure of * Barcza MS.

* Personal, Apor to C. A. M. ° Sz. I. MS. This despatch, dated 6th September 1941, was a retrospective review of GermanHungarian relations. * The area to which this promise, and the subsequent measures of organisation were applied, was the strictly Ruthene area reoccupied in March 1939. The strip recovered in November 1938

nan egal porated in the Hungarian County administration, and ranked as part of the

RUTHENIA 343 autonomy. Provisionally, the administration was placed under a Government Commissioner in the person of Baron Perényi, an aristocrat whose family had been connected with the region for some six centuries. He was assisted by an Advisory Council of local Ruthenes, and ten Deputies were nominated to the Parliament in Budapest. One was a Magyar priest, one an ex-Ukrainian; the other eight were either members of the old Hungarophile Kurtyak Party or non-party men.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DILEMMA T needed very little time to show Hungary that the international effects of

Je break-up of Czecho-Slovakia were 1n many respects more apparent than real, and where real, not always to her advantage. She had got Ruthenia and the common frontier with Poland, and an implacable enemy had been declared dead, with the subsidiary advantage that the Little Entente now also ceased legally to exist. But the ghost of Czechoslovakia still walked: its former politicians were

ensconced in London and Paris, busily planning how to recover their old positions in a State extending to its pre-Munich frontiers, and their efforts were obviously meeting with much sympathy. For Hungary, the prevention of the restoration of the new Czecho-Slovakia in posse was a task almost identical with and not much easier than compassing the destruction of the old Czecho-Slovakia in esse had been. Incidentally, the new Slovakia proved ©

a child quite as disagreeable as its parent had been, if in a rather different way. Slovak nationalism was less dangerous to Hungary than Czechoslovak nationalism, in so far as it had smaller international prestige and persuasive power, but within the limits of its abilities it was even more aggressive. The Slovak Press and wireless poured out an unremitting stream of abuse and incitement against Hungary. In June Voernle complained that the Slovaks were claiming, as national irredentas, Vac, Esztergom and even Veszprém.’ What made this agitation important was that it was notoriously sponsored and fostered from Germany. Meanwhile, even the technical disappearance of the Little Entente did little to clear Hungary’s path for the realisation of her further ambitions, with Roumania now closer friends than ever with Germany and also the happy possessor, after 13th April, of an Anglo-French guarantee. It is true that, thanks largely to the efforts made by Colonel Beck precisely in the interests of Hungary,® this did not extend to her territorial integrity, but Roumania managed to get out of H.M. Government an official interpretation that an attack on her by Hungary (or Bulgaria) would count as an indirect attack by Germany,’ which was almost as good.

In February, after the fall of Stoyadinovic, Ciano had again taken up with vigour his intrigues with the separatist elements in Yugoslavia,°® and in

March Germany, too, had begun flirting with the Croats.® But precisely Germany’s action had frightened the Italians, who were even more afraid of

Germany on the Adriatic than of Yugoslavia, back to support of Yugoslav. unity. By early April Italy and Germany had already agreed in principle on * Yugoslavia and Roumania definitely agreed to admit this at the end of February (Doc.

G.F.P., D. V, 304). 2 Sz. I. MS.

* Beck, op. cit., p. 195. He told the Hungarians the same (Sz. I. MS.). Cf. also Doc, Brit. F.P., III. V, 1, 2, ete. 4 Id., III. IV, 484, 538, 599, 603. ® See Ciano Diary for February and March 1939, passim. ° Diary, 19th-20th March, and Papers, pp. 276-9,

DILEMMA 345 the formula definitively laid down on 6th-7th May that neither would try to destroy the internal unity of Yugoslavia, while if the country fell a victim to its own centrifugal forces, Italy’s interests were paramount. When Cincar Markovic visited Italy on 22nd-23rd April, he promised everything that Italy

and Germany wanted of him: a “‘near-Axis policy, refusal of a British guarantee, absolute neutrality in an eventual conflict,” and the rest. * Furthermore, if the Little Entente had ceased to exist, the Balkan Entente

had not, and Yugoslavia still regarded herself as bound to Roumania by bilateral treaty. In the wider field, such increased power of resistance against Germany as Hungary’s gains had brought her was a feather in the scales compared to the increased weight which Germany had acquired through her acquisition of Bohemia and Moravia and establishment of a virtual protectorate over

Slovakia. Strategically, Germany had Hungary at her mercy, and economically she was now in a class by herself as a trading partner. In particular, she was now easily the chief practicable foreign source of supply

for that commodity which—with a European conflict now an imminent probability—Hungary needed with desperate urgency, to wit, arms and munitions. She was struggling to get her home production under way, in accordance with the Gy6r programme, but devoid alike of factories and of many raw materials, and hampered in her efforts to acquire the latter by currency difficulties, she hardly yet got beyond the building of barracks and

the production of uniforms. In the spring a certain Major Nadas, as he then was (we shall meet him again as Colonel) had sent in a reasoned memorandum to his superiors arguing that the first essential was at least to see that

such weapons as Hungary possessed should be adequately supplied with ammunition, and had asked that a credit of 500 million peng6 (over and above the sums provided in the Gyér programme) should be set aside for the single purpose of financing the production of munitions. But Bartha, when the proposal was put before him, had simply dismissed it as absurd. On

Csaky’s insistence, Reményi-Schneller had been told to examine the possibilities of raising the money, but the plan had then disappeared again into the Ministerial warrens.* For immediate purposes, only Germany, who.

now controlled the Skoda works, besides Hirtenberg and the German factories, could help, for Italy could give little, and that of poor quality; Poland was a buyer herself; Britain and France were occupied with their own needs, the U.S.S.R. impenetrable and the U.S.A. too expensive.* One other factor in the situation needs to be mentioned: the steadily increasing subservience of Italy to Germany, both in general and particularly in the Danubevalley. Italy’s last explicit assertion of a specialinterest in Hungary had been when, in July 1938, she had, on Hungary’s insistence, reaffirmed the continued validity of the Rome Protocols as between Italy and Hungary after

the Anschluss. But thereafter she had steadily withdrawn the frontiers of her real interest to the Adriatic. When, in March and April 1939, Mussolini and Ciano got Germany to admit Italy’s paramount interest in Yugoslavia and the Adriatic, they certainly did not put in writing, and probably did not

2 Nadas to C. A. M. |

1 Ciano Papers, p. 285; Cf. Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 45, 55. 2 Ciano Diary, 23rd April.*

4 In the summer Hungary bought from the U.S.A. a single consignment of scrap-iron, but this was the only important item connected with munitions that she acquired in 1939 elsewhere than from Germany or German-controlled territories.

346 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH admit, the corollary that Germany’s interests should be paramount on the Danube: but the corollary was an obvious one, and, in fact, from this time onward Italy showed ever less interest in Danubian affairs, and Germany consulted her on them ever more rarely.

Hungaro-Italian co-operation was further hampered by the strong personal dislike which both Mussolini and Ciano took to Csaky, and the possibility of a clash of rival ambitions in Croatia was always a latent source of trouble between the two countries. Italy’s true feelings towards Hungary in 1939 are well summed up in Mussolini’s contemptuous phrase: “In this we can count, as in a chess game, on two pawns on our side: Hungary and Bulgaria.” These considerations, reinforcing those previously listed, explain why, in spite of Teleki’s indubitable goodwill towards the Western Powers, his next foreign political moves were rather toward even closer association with the Axis than away from it. He even reversed an earlier half-decision, for after

Weizsacker had promised Germany’s diplomatic support, he agreed that Hungary’s resignation from the League of Nations should take place, as first arranged, in May. Then it was actually speeded up: Csaky had arranged for Teleki and himself to visit first Rome and then Berlin, in April, and urged that the resignation should be announced first, as a personal “‘present”’ to the two dictators (announcing, cynically, that he would make the same present to each).” He accordingly gave in Hungary’s notice on the 11th, announcing this in Parliament on the 13th with the explanation that the League had not

secured either the protection of minorities or the application of Treaty revision. Hungary proposed to keep her freedom of action in the fullest measure and in all directions, and if she did this vis-a-vis her friends, she could not be bound by “‘the rump League or the Powers that stand behind it.” The move did not imply aggressive intentions towards Roumania.

Next came the Rome visit, which lasted from 18th-21st April. Ciano records? that Teleki hardly opened his mouth, while Csaky, of whom Ciano had no good word to say, “‘tried to give his words an anti-German flavour.”’ Mussolini’s summary of the conversations, as recorded by Ciano,* contained only four points:

(1) Italy and Germany desire some years of peace, and are doing all they can to preserve it. (2) Hungary is carrying on, and will continue to carry on, an Axis policy. (3) No one wants the partition of Yugoslavia; everyone is working to

maintain the status quo. If, however, partition should come about, Italian interests are paramount. (4) As to the Slovak problem, Hungary will adopt a waiting attitude and will do nothing contrary to German wishes.

Point 3 is the formula which Ribbentrop was to accept officially a few days later, and it may be doubted whether the Hungarians really agreed that

Italy’s interests should take precedence over their own; although they certainly concurred that no one wanted the partition of Yugoslavia: such 1 Weizsdcker at the Ministries Trial, 16th June 1948 (p. 8893). * Sz. J. MS. 3 Diary, 18th and 20th April. 4 Id., 20th April.

DILEMMA 347 was, at the time, their own policy. Point 4 presumably reproduces what Csaky told the Italians, although Ciano noted that he “‘kept harping on Slovakia” and “seemed to delude himself into thinking that Germany might

present it to Hungary.’ Points 1 and 2 are central, and there is no record that the Hungarians made 2 contingent on 1; yet even while they were in Rome the first warnings had reached that capital of the emergence of that situation which was to place them during the next months in so frightful a dilemma.

It seems fair to say for Csaky that when, on 16th January, he had so light-heartedly talked of co-operation with Germany, he had done so under the impression that Poland would be acting in the same sense; even Hitler seems, at that moment, to have believed that Poland would end by accepting his “magnanimous offer.’? Beck’s rejection of Germany’s demands of 21st and 26th March and subsequent acceptance of the Anglo-French guarantee entirely changed this position. When Mussolini was assuring the Hungarians that Germany desired peace, it was a couple of hours after he had received from Attolico “ta very serious report which announced imminent German action against Poland’’— a report which, as Ciano noted, “‘meant war.’! Then on the 22nd Hitler, a man not renowned for his manners, asked not Teleki but Daranyi and Imrédy to his birthday party in Berlin “‘in recognition of their merits in bringing in the First and Second Jewish Laws respectively.” Daranyi here received straight and authoritative intimations, similar to those reported by Attolico; and returning to Budapest, met the returning Teleki and Csaky and imparted the news. It also derives from what followed that someone (not necessarily Hitler) must have suggested that if Hungary would allow Germany transit facilities for her campaign, she could have Slovakia as reward.°

Anxious consultations in which, as the texts show, the Regent was involved, now took place. The matter was pressing since the Hungarian Ministers were due in Berlin on the 30th. The Hungarians seem not even to

have considered going back on their general pledge to follow “fan Axis policy”; but on the 27th Csaky sent Villani a most urgent telegram, begging him to get conveyed to Ribbentrop, if possible before the meeting of the 30th, a message* to the following effect:

There was every indication that Germany meant to employ force against Poland in the near future. She might try to use Ruthenia as a basis for disruptive Ukrainian propaganda; this would be refused. Or she might make an armed attack, and might then ask Hungary what her attitude would be. Hungary would answer that painful as it would be to her, in view of her sympathies for Poland, she would naturally take up her position by the side of the Reich; 1 Ciano Diary, 20th April. 2 Barczy. The Roumanian birthday guests were official, and were headed by Gafencu. 3 This paragraph is deduction, but Daranyi’s visit is fact, and Csaky’s long memorandum, to be described, which is dated the 27th, can hardly have had any other basis than a communication from Daranyi. If Csaky had been in possession of the information in Rome, he must have raised the question there. When Csaky visited Rome in August, it was widely stated (by, amongst others, the wellinformed correspondent of The Times) that the offer had been made, and refused, in Berlin. The documents suggest that the subject was not even mentioned during Teleki’s and Csaky’s visit,

which was, moreover, posterior to the despatch of Csaky’s Note; but the Daranyi visit immediately preceded the composition of the Note. 4 Text in Sz. I. MS.

348 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH but the Note went on: ‘“‘We shall not consent to participate, either directly or indirectly, in an attack on Poland. By ‘indirect participation’ I mean that any demand for German troops to cross Hungarian territory on foot, by road transport or by rail will be rejected. If the Germans suggest using force, I shall declare categorically that we shall meet arms by arms. Anyone who sets foot on Hungarian territory without permission, we regard as an enemy.” Csaky then went on to sketch out an ingenious plan for turning even catastrophe to advantage. Hungary would mobilise simultaneously with the

Germans, concentrating her troops in Ruthenia and on the Roumanian frontier. She would call on Roumania to demobilise, and if Roumania refused, “‘draw the consequences.” Thus she would not be fighting against

the Poles and yet would be helping Germany, because Roumania was Poland’s ally. Meanwhile, her own mobilisation would be fully occupying her railways, so as to make it technically impossible for her to accede to Germany’s request. To this, Csaky appended a long, very high-flown exposé proving again that it was morally impossible for Hungary to join in an attack on Poland. It was in this difficult situation that Teleki and Csaky arrived in Berlin on 30th April. The records of the meeting! show with dismal clarity that even now Hungary was limiting the reservations with which she was prepared to qualify her promise to “‘follow an Axis policy’”’ only to her single refusal to participate, directly or indirectly, in an attack on Poland. The Germans must have received the message, for they made no suggestion that Hungary should help them against Poland, either gratis or for a price. Their burthen when the Polish question was being discussed (as it was at some length) was that as peace-loving men they did not want war, but they meant to have their way and Poland would do well to swallow the pill. If she tried to resist, she would be over-run blitzschnell and no one would or could stop the Axis. In particular, “South-Eastern Europe belonged to the German sphere of interest. The Roumanian and Yugoslav Foreign Ministers had stated (in Berlin) that they would never align themselves with any combination against the anti-Comintern Powers, which would be madness, in view of their relative strengths.” If, however, trouble were to come about, Ribbentrop said that ‘“‘he had no

doubt that in such a case Hungary would take up her position by the side of the Axis Powers.’’ And the record has it that “‘the Hungarian Ministers” (the plural brings Teleki into the record for practically the first time, for, as in Rome, he seems to have sat in morose silence, while Csaky did all the talking which the Germans allowed) “‘signified assent.”’ The Germans must have taken this for a definite and important pledge, for they conducted the rest of the conversations in the tone which they were accustomed to use towards friendly States. In a long discussion of Slovak affairs (which mainly took the form of the relation of mutual grievances) Ribbentrop, representing the State which was Slovakia’s protector, acted as its advocate, but with moderation. The Germans listened to Csaky when he complained of support and encouragement being given by certain organs in Vienna both to irredentist propagandists and to Arrow Cross agitators, * The German minute of this visit was quoted at Nuremberg as Exhibits G.G. 289, 290, Docs.

D 737, 738.* Ribbentrop gave some evidence concerning it (Nur. Trial, X, 239-240). The Hungarian sources add nothing.

DILEMMA 349 and promised remedy. They asked for certain further concessions for the

Swabians, but withdrew (according to one source) a demand for more radical anti-Jewish legislation when Teleki explained that the complete paralysis of Hungary’s economic life which a wholesale and immediate eviction of the Jews from it would involve, would not be in Germany’s own interest; and as the event proved, must have instructed their Press accordingly,

for from the day of the interview onward, the tone of the German Press towards the Teleki Government changed from its previous hostility to one of warm benevolence.

It remains to add that, owing perhaps to Ribbentrop’s failure to ask for

the use of Hungary’s railways against Poland, Csaky got no chance to produce his ingenious plan for utilising them for an attack on Roumania— or possibly Ribbentrop’s statement that Roumania was on the Axis side

froze the words on his lips. Neither the Roumanian nor the Yugoslav question, apparently, came up at all during the visit. Carefully cordial toasts were exchanged at the ceremonial dinner which, according to custom, rounded off the visit. They underlined Hungary’s new position in unambiguous fashion. Ribbentrop spoke of Germany’s “‘true friendship and warm sympathy for the chivalrous Hungarian nation” and Teleki answered that “‘Hungary returned, most firmly, the confidence which Germany reposed in her.”” He told the journalists that no new agreement or convention had been concluded (this would have been unnecessary in view of the relationship between the two States), but that Hungary “‘was resolved to continue her policy of close alignment with the Axis.’ It is remarkable how little attention was paid, in Hungary or abroad, to these plain warnings, for although no “‘agreement”’ had, in fact, been concluded, yet Hungary had bound herself by one chain more to the Axis. It is true that the obligations entailed by Hungary’s pledge were entirely undefined, and that she had not bound herself to obey unconditionally any particular order or request made either by Germany or by the Axis Powers jointly. But the indefinite nature of the obligations did not necessarily make them any lighter, and Csaky’s insistence (in the speech summarised above, in which he announced Hungary’s resignation from the League) that Hungary

“was keeping her freedom of action in all directions,’ and “could not promise anyone in advance what she would or would not do,” was thus at best only a half truth. Hungary had, after all, placed herself in a position in which her every action was subjected to control, question and complaint if it seemed to the vigilant Germans not to accord with their ideas of what an “Axis policy” should be; the answering of which questions and complaints henceforward occupied a large and increasing proportion of the time of her public men. It is in the light of this consideration that her policy has to be considered up to the moment, eighteen months later, when the vague under-

standing of 1939 was replaced by the more stringent obligations of the Tripartite Pact.

On 4th May, immediately on his return from Berlin, Teleki dissolved Parliament and ordered elections for the coming Whitsun, 28th-29th May. These were held under the new secret ballot throughout the country, with

results which proved with disconcerting unambiguity that democracy, as interpreted to it by its professional exponents, had lost its appeal to the Hungarian people. It is true that the Foispans, who were still able to exercise

350 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH a considerable influence over the electorate and were still, as we have said, mainly men of the Right, exercised that influence most strongly against the traditional Parties of the Opposition, and were often conspicuously tender towards the Right Radicals; true also that certain special factors of their own making contributed towards the débfcle of the Smallholders, who had entered

on the elections with particularly high hopes. But these factors did not operate in the cases of the Christians, who did not complain of unfair treat-

ment at the polls, nor of the Liberals and Social Democrats, whose constituencies were exclusively urban. Yet not only did the Smallholder representation go down from 23 to 14: that of the Christian Party sank from 14 to 8, of the Liberals from 7 to 5, of the Social Democrats from 11 to 5, giving a total “‘Left-wing Opposition”? of only 32. Very different was the showing made by the extreme Right. Quite unperturbed by its dissolution, the Arrow Cross had promptly reconstituted itself under the leadership of Hubay and K. Ratz and the name of the Arrow Cross Party. The imprisonment of Szalasi was a blessing to it. He enjoyed the aura of a martyr, which brought the movement immense popularity among the poorer classes, while his inconvenient scruples were out of the way. The control of the Party was now in the hands of persons who had no objection to taking money from Germany, and this was richly forthcoming. German agents bought up the

entire stock of Hungarian currency, amounting to between five and six million pengd, which was available in Ziirich; German banks in Hungary gave substantial loans and German firms gave help in money and kind. The Arrow Cross was further assisted by the attitude of the authorities in some areas, and by the tactics of the Communists, who ordered their followers to

vote for it.2. The various groups concluded a working agreement not to compete against one another at the elections. One or another of them put up a candidate in most constituencies, and all alike unfolded an agitation of the most extreme kind, the weight of which, it is important to emphasise, lay in its radical social programme. Particularly was this the case in the rural areas, where many of the candidates promised a most complete and immediate land reform—often telling impoverished electors exactly what plots of the local land they would be given after the Arrow Cross victory. In the event, Hubay’s Arrow Cross Party secured no less than 31 mandates; Baky’s group (the United Hungarian National Socialist Party, Arrow Cross Front), 11; Mesk6o’s (the Hungarian National Socialist Agricultural

Labourers’ and. Workers’ Party, Arrow Cross Hungarian Party), 3, and Marothy’s (Christian National Socialist Front), 2. Szalasi’s oldest lieutenant,

Csoor, got in as the sole representative of the Party of National Will, and another very old Szalasi man, Sz6llési, as an independent, giving in all 49 members of the Arrow Cross Front. 1 They had put up no less than 161 candidates. Sulyok, op. cit., pp. 427, 433, writes that the Protestant and Free Elector elements of the Party were offended by Eckhardt’s declaration in favour of Legitimism, while Roman Catholic priests were adverse on account of circumstances connected with M. Eckhardt’s marriage. The débacle of the Party was worse even than the electoral figures suggest, for 13 out of their 14 successful candidates got in only on the list vote. Nevertheless, their failure provided a particularly striking instance of Teleki’s inability to control his Foispans, for he himself had said openly that he preferred the Smallholders’ policy to that of the MEP on many points and had ordered posters to be put up which, while nominally nonparty, actually implied official approval of the Smallholders’ programme. Many of the Fdispans refused outright to put up the posters, and almost all of them used their influence strongly against the Smallholder candidates. 2 Sulyok, op. cit., p. 194. The Volksbund this time divided their candidates, most of them standing on the Smallholder list.

DILEMMA 351 This presented no danger to the Government Party, which had secured for itself 179 mandates, an increase of 9 on the 1935 figures, and also enjoyed the support of the 26 Deputies from the Felvidék and the 10 from Ruthenia

(no elections were held in either of these areas) except in so far as they occasionally pressed their local interests against those of Inner Hungary.

It was more important for the future that the centre of gravity of the Government Party representation had itself moved perhaps even further to the Right than before. M. Sulyok writes that the ‘‘Dissidents”’ offered Teleki their support, and that he refused it.1 In any case, hardly any of them figured on the list. Teleki allowed Imrédy to pick 25-30 candidates with safe seats.” The rest were picked by Keresztes-Fischer, but they included many sitting members, old G6mbés men, who could not easily be dropped. Teleki now

had, indeed, a band of loyal adherents, mostly men brought in to fill the Dissidents’ places, but these numbered hardly more than a third of the 179. The Parliament which emerged from these elections was thus pronouncedly

a body of the Right, this description applying also to a substantial majority of the Government Party itself; and this was a circumstance which was powerfully to affect the whole of Hungarian political life up to the end of our story (since the event proved these to be the last elections ever held in “‘predemocratic’? Hungary), being one which no executive was able in practice, or

would constitutionally have been entitled, to ignore completely. It might, indeed, well have been argued that strict obedience to the popular will would

have involved Teleki’s giving way again to Imrédy, whose line, if not his person, the electorate seemed clearly to have endorsed. Fortunately for Teleki, he not only had behind him the Regent and almost the entire ““Opposition Front,” but the Hungarian “‘political nation”’ itself was passing through an acute attack of anti-Hitlerism. For what counts in untutored opinion is not the memory of the past but the expectation of the future, and Hitler’s appeal to Hungary was now suffering under the law of diminishing returns. By the very act of destroying Czecho-Slovakia and disintegrating the Little Entente, Hitler had removed the one international

factor which had rivalled Germany herself as a threat to Hungarian independence. Hungary saw Hitler not as the past deliverer but as the present menace, and she could no longer look to him for any future services, since

his assumption of a protectorate over Slovakia and his unconcealed preference for both Roumania and Yugoslavia over Hungary made it impossible for the most sanguine to see in him a partner in any further enterprises. His support of the Arrow Cross and of the Volksdeutsche was highly unpopular,* except to the recipients of it, while even the appeal of pure anti-Semitism was losing a good deal of its force as the effects of the two Jewish Laws began to make themselves felt. They were, indeed, being operated for the most part in a highly Hungarian fashion: the businesses went on as before, all the real work being done by the Jews, while the requisite

changes in the proportions of Jewish and non-Jewish employees, etc., were effected by simply taking on extra non-Jewish stafis, many of whom did little more than draw their salaries. These were not large, but large enough to 1 Sulyok, op. cit., p. 368. 2 Kunder at the trial of Imrédy (p. 55) said that Imrédy had been allowed to pick the entire list, but the smaller figure has been given me by two excellent sources. At his libel action Imrédy

called several witnesses to attest that he and Teleki had at this period worked in complete harmony.

352 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH stop the mouths of the ‘‘Aladars” and ‘““Héman-boys’’!; and, when a young man did want something more, he could find it in the era, now in full swing, of full employment and good wages; the cry that only Hitler could find a Gentile bread in Hungary was obviously inapplicable. In any case, the Hungarian political machine, as we have seen, did not automatically react in accordance with changes of opinion expressed by the

electorate, and on this occasion it did not so react at all, unless in the opposite direction. Horthy simply reappointed Teleki, and Teleki reappointed his previous Cabinet unchanged. In the course of the electoral campaign he had already promised to introduce no more anti-Jewish legislation, and the Governmental programme, as presented to the House on 14th June, was in brief, one of modest social reform within the framework of

existing institutions, which kept the less controversial points of Imrédy’s Kaposvar programme, including his Land Reform Bill, improved social legislation for industry, and more steeply graduated taxation, but quietly dropped all its more radical proposals, good or ill. For the rest, the speech promised special attention to the Felvidék “‘to heal the wounds inflicted by foreign occupation,” “‘a suitable form of self-government”’ for Ruthenia and acceleration of the rearmament programme. Most of the rest of the speech

was devoted to the international situation. It included the remarkable

suggestion, to be described later,’ of a general settlement under the auspices of the Holy See, and the following key-sentence: “The guiding principle of this Parliament must be unity, work, consolidation at home, freedom and independence? abroad.” The speech amounted to a discreet intimation of the Hungarian Government’s determination to resist any undue pressure from Germany, and it was in this spirit that the Government faced, during the next weeks, the problem of its bilateral relations with Germany in a struggle the issue of which, as everyone realised, would also determine Hungary’s entire political evolution. The determination was sincere; but it should in fairness be stated that the struggle called for few acts of extreme heroism, for the Germans appeared quite

prepared to content themselves, for the time, with the assurances given them in Berlin and the advantageous position (for any future action) in which the

elections had placed them. They made no motions to support the Arrow Cross, whose barrage of noisy complaints the Government was thus able to

treat with contemptuous indifference, and even the unfortunate Swabian minority found its position little improved in practice. On 13th April Teleki had, indeed, officially sanctioned the Statutes of the new Volksbund, but the

new organisation enjoyed little more freedom than the old, and nothing essential changed in its cultural position. The Jews were, as Teleki had promised, spared further molestation, although they were, of course, now suffering from the enforcement of the earlier laws. Economically, the period saw a slight strengthening of Germany’s general 1 “Aladar” was a term invented by Milotay to describe the senior “‘guinea-pigs’’ who received

directorships, etc., under the Jewish laws. The ““Héman-boys” (sic: Hungarian slang has its own quaint turns) were the ex-students given employment as junior clerks, etc. 2 See below, p. 356.

3 The English language is unfortunately inadequate here, as the normal translation of both words would be “‘independence.”’ The one (fiiggetlenség) means, quite literally, ‘“‘absence of dependence”? (German, Unabhiangigkeit), the other (Ondllés4g) means “standing on one’s own feet”? (German, Selbststandigkeit).

‘ ‘When making this concession, Teleki incidentally gave orders for the creation of a “spontaneous loyalty movement’”’ among the anti-Volksbund Swabians.

DILEMMA 353 | position. She was not yet exerting any great pressure on Hungary for further : advantages in this field (indeed, she had not even taken up the overtures made by Hungary in the preceding autumn and winter!), and the Hungarians were also anxious to avoid any tightening of the stranglehold. They made various

efforts to conclude economic and commercial agreements with other countries: so they offered Great Britain Hungary’s entire wheat surplus, which

promised to be exceptionally large, for the year. All these efforts were unsuccessful. Britain refused to buy any of the harvest, and Germany secured the promise of the entire wheat surplus, which in the event amounted to 10 million quintals, together with a promise of a graduated proportion of the maize crop (25 per cent. of the first million quintals above 25, 50 per cent. of the next million, and all the crop over 27). More important still, Germany secured a leading position in the companies being formed to exploit the Hungarian deposits of oil and bauxite.

The field in which Germany pressed her wishes most strongly, and Hungary yielded most completely, was that of the Press. The Right-wing Press, which Germany was now supporting lavishly, was allowed, and even the officieux Press instructed, to give extensive backing to Germany’s case, not only on the specific issue of the German-Polish dispute but in regard to the thesis which Germany herself expounded most emphatically: which was not so much that the Germans were lovable (in its then frame of mind, the Hungarian public would not easily have been convinced of this) but that they were invincible.

Certain limits were, indeed, set. The Government Press did not openly revile the Western Powers. There were occasional little revolts, as when a lecturer at Pécs University, Dr. Ivan Lajos, was allowed to publish a book questioning Germany’s chances of success in a Blitzkreig,* and Teleki managed

to fend off Germany’s protests, ending by forbidding its sale, but only two

months after its publication, when half Hungary had bought it. But the limits were wide, the revolts rare; broadly speaking, the Hungarian Press dropped during the summer of 1938 to a low level from which it never made more than a partial recovery, and that only in 1943. This deplorable phenomenon was at least partly due to a personal error of judgment on the part of Teleki himself. He believed that the democracies were grown-up, sensible people who understood the workings of a free Press, whereas the dictators were “‘childishly sensitive to criticism,” and being themselves accustomed to a controlled Press, regarded any criticism as a studied insult from the Government. He therefore adopted the rule “‘to say everything the dictators wanted, and do nothing.’’* He was only too right about the dictators, as the case of Lajos proved’; but he did not realise that precisely 1 Daranyi’s offer had been passed to the Economic-Political Section of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, the head of which had, on 30th November, written a rather lukewarm report saying that there was nothing that particularly needed doing at the time, although Hungary might develop her agricultural production, particularly of industrial plants, and dismantle some of her industries. It was not possible to give further non-secret preferences, owing to the operation of the m.f.n. clause, and a full customs union would involve the unification of the currencies and a diminution of Hungary’s independence which she was unlikely to accept (Doc. G.F.P., D. V, 256). 2 This particular enterprise was initiated and financed by the Legitimist leader, Count Sigray.

3 I am here quoting Teleki’s own words to myself. 4 The Germans not only protested most vigorously against Lajos’ book at the time, but Hitler and Ribbentrop several times afterwards brought it up as one of Hungary’s sins. Its publication

had thus an undoubted political effect on Hungaro-German relations. In 1944 the Germans seized Lajos and imprisoned him in Mauthausen. He survived this, but after a brief period of ' freedom was rearrested by the Russians. He is reported to have died in prison in 1950.

2A

354 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH because the Western countries were accustomed to a free Press they could not understand that when a nominally independent organ attacked them, it was

to help the Government to hoodwink Hitler and Mussolini. Inevitably, the Western Powers found their view of Hungary and of her policy affected by her own words. Nor were they entirely wrong, for by allowing a free rein to German propaganda, Teleki willy-nilly fostered a public opinion which made it more difficult for him to follow an anti-German policy of action. Teleki made, indeed, considerable efforts to counteract by secret means the

effects of this and other aspects of his official policy. He established in the Minister Presidency a service which was nominally concerned with the “spiritual education” of the nation along non-controversial lines, but was in reality the cover for a secret ‘“‘national-political service’? devoted to the propagation of Teleki’s real policy. This worked partly through the medium of a secret printing-press, which was conducted so discreetly that not only the editorial work (the directives for which Teleki used personally to lay down) but the composition, even the wrapping, stamping and office cleaning

were carried out only by men of senior status and proved fidelity. Its products were posted inconspicuously, in small quantities at a time, the postage stamps (since advantage could not be taken of the Government’s privilege of free use of the mails) having been bought in similar fashion. They included leaflets, pamphlets and a “newsletter’? which contained analyses of the situation, national and international, advance information (supplied by Teleki) of coming internal developments and revelations of the activities of Germany and her partisans; occasionally, some highly ingenious propaganda “‘stunts.’’ Often the same material would be issued in various forms, adapted to the mental levels and special interests of the different social groups to which it was addressed. The service worked in close co-operation with the Churches (Cardinal Serédi, Bishop Apor of Gyér and some other leading members of both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches were in the secret of it) and made a special appeal to the big Confessional organisations such as the Catholic and Protestant Peasants’ and Workers’ associations. It possessed a network of local representatives, many of whom were members of the Clergy, and often persons connected with these organisations; among

these were Mer. Varga, Vice-President of the Smallholders’ Party, Béla Kovacs, Secretary-General of the same Party after the war (and abducted by the Russians) and Mgr. J6zsef Pehm, the later Cardinal Mindszenthy. These acted not only as distributors for the literature from Headquarters but also as collectors of information, and some of them were instructed to report, not only on German and Arrow Cross activities but on the conduct of the local administrative officials; those living in minority districts being especially

charged to report failures to carry out conscientiously the Government’s policy towards the national minorities. During its two years of existence the Service carried through an enormous amount of work, and undoubtedly did much to fortify spiritual resistance in

the nation to the Government’s official policy. That so tortuous a device was necessary illustrates the peculiar and difficult situation in which Hungary was placed.

The obligations which she had undertaken towards the Axis necessarily affected Hungary’s conduct of all her international relationships, but she still

DILEMMA 355 maintained a certain freedom of action as regards her relations with her immediate neighbours, in the conduct of which she might have to pay some deference to the wishes of others but where her objectives would always

remain her own. It will therefore be convenient to take at this point the development of her relationships with Slovakia, Yugoslavia and Roumania; bearing in mind that towards Roumania she was, as we shall see, privily also following the second line the initiation of which has already been described.

There is nothing to be said of the relationship with Slovakia, except that | it remained one of mutual exasperation; and little of that with Yugoslavia. , There is no evidence that Hungary had followed Italy more than, at most, a small part of the way when she was working for the break-up of Yugoslavia in the spring, and she accepted the reversal of that policy with relief, and followed the resumed line loyally enough. Intimate documents reveal that Hungary’s surreptitious connections with Croat and Macedonian émigrés were not entirely broken off, but no adventures were undertaken. In April Csaky told Ribbentrop that Maéek had asked him for propaganda support, but he had told the Press not to intervene in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs,} as, indeed, it did not do. On 6th June Csaky again offered Belgrade a nonageression pact, but Cincar Markovié let Csaky know that he could only make an agreement with Hungary if she offered Roumania terms at least equally favourable.” There, then, matters remained.* When Beck returned from London in April he told the Hungarians that he had got the Roumanian guarantee put in a form which omitted reference to frontiers because he hoped to mediate an agreement which would allow Hungary to join the defensive bloc which he wanted to organise. He said that if Hungary would offer a non-aggression pact, he would try to mediate some counter-concession.? He spoke to M. Gafencu on the 17th. Csaky then made a couple of conciliatory speeches in Parliament.* It does appear that in May Roumania secretly offered Hungary a strip of territory in final settlement, the cession to be combined with an exchange of populations’; but the offer, whatever it was, was not extensive enough for

Hungary to accept. Then, on 9th June, Gafencu, who had not hitherto replied to Csaky, said that Roumania insisted on the integrity of her frontiers, and was not prepared to undertake further obligations towards her minorities ; whereupon the accustomed Press warfare broke out again. On 14th June the

Hungarian Government drew the attention of H.M. Government to the Transylvanian problem, hinting that the solution of it lay in territorial revision mediated by the Powers; M. Barcza, when handing in this Note, complained

that the position of the Magyar minority in Transylvania had deteriorated since the Anglo-French guarantee to Roumania®—a complaint repeated by the Hungarian Minister in Berlin on the 29th.° The Roumanians’ only reply

was to complain of Hungarian irredentism, which, they said, was being fostered by the Axis.’ In April the Foreign Office had written Hungary off as “now definitely within the German orbit and to a large extent a vassal of Germany’s,”” on 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 295. 2

3 Beck, op. cit., pp. 195 f. The Sz. I. MS. has the same story. 4 There are references to this in the Barcza MS., confirmed to me by M. Tilea. 5 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. VI, 58. ® Id., 191.

7 Id., 242, 266, 534.

356 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH whom any concessions would be wasted.! By early August Halifax had changed his mind and told Beck that “‘it was worth while trying to keep Hungary out of the war.’ He did now try to mediate, and was even prepared to tell the Hungarians that H.M. Government knew that a territorial issue existed, although it felt that it could not be discussed at that juncture. But the Roumanians insisted on the deletion of even this mild recognition of the

existence of a million and a half persons, and declared with the utmost

| vehemence that there could be no question of territorial revision of any sort. What the pro-Western Hungarians so ardently desired, and what would so greatly have helped their cause—even a glimmer of recognition of the justice of their case by the West, even an admission that a case existed—was thus again denied to them. It is—perhaps unfortunately—necessary to mention Hungary’s attitude towards the German-Polish dispute. Although the sympathies of 95 per cent. of the population were almost hysterically on the Polish side, yet a mixture of fear of offending Germany and of a wish to see the principle of “‘peaceful”’ revision further asserted made the Government advocate, both privately and (by implication) publicly, that Poland should yield to Germany’s demands. Horthy, as we saw, had suggested this in Warsaw over a year previously; Csaky seems to have offered Germany his services as “‘mediator’’ in March.* Then, when the Regent opened Parliament on 14th June, after deploring the

failure of the League of Nations to take the initiative for the removal of injustice and the limitation of armaments, and asserting that “there was no problem which could not be solved, more or less, by peaceful methods,”’ he boldly suggested that the Pope should take the initiative in calling a conference of the Powers to settle the disputes between themselves, and after hearing the views of others, work out a new and peaceful settlement and if necessary impose it.° Part of this suggestion was obviously made with an eye on Hungary’s own objectives, but it was clearly also applicable to the Polish-German dispute, and if adopted would presumably have led to sacrifices being imposed on Poland. But it appealed to the principle of justice, and invoked the highest and most disinterested moral authority in the world. After, however, this

proposal had fallen flat, the Hungarian Press quite unashamedly played Germany’s game. Csaky and Ullein-Reviczky, whose directives on foreign policy the Press had to follow, apparently thought that they were doing enough for the national honour if they abstained from Greuelpropaganda against Poland or from directly exacerbating the conflict. But Germany’s aim was, after all, to isolate Poland—what did it matter to her if Hungary sympathised with the Poles, provided that no one fought for them—and a 1 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. [1V, App. 4. * Beck, op. cit., p. 196. 3 Doc. Brit. F.P., III. VI, 590-1, 603, 617, 619, 656; VII, 57. 4 A German document (N.G. 2003) says that Sztdjay transmitted the suggestion to Weizsacker who “turned the suggestion aside.’’ The document is undated, but Weizsicker in the Ministries Trial (p. 7877) put the occasion in March. He explained his refusal by saying that Hitler would never have accepted the offer because he had an Austrian prejudice against everything Hungarian,

particularly against the Hungarian ruling classes. At the Berlin meeting Goring suggested to Csaky that he might tell Poland that Germany had no aggressive intentions against her, but now Ribbentrop vetoed the proposal, ‘‘as it might give rise to the impression that Hungary had been put up to this by Germany.”’ ° The suggestion was first adumbrated by Bethlen in the Pesti Napldé, 11th April, and there is reason to believe that Teleki consulted the Pope (who gave him an audience) when visiting Rome a week later.

DILEMMA 357 whole string of Government-inspired articles in the Hungarian Press furthered this object to the utmost of their fortunately negligible power. The line which they took was that war might well come about if outside Powers intervened

in the dispute, but that peace would be preserved if Germany were left to settle her differences with Poland 4 deux. Thus not only the Anglo-French guarantee to Roumania was lamentable but also the guarantee to Poland, since by stiffening Poland’s resistance it increased the likelihood of a clash (the attempts of the Western Powers to reach an understanding with Russia were, of course, still more deplorable). The idea that the elimination of the West, and the continued exclusion of Russia, from the Middle Zone might result in the political and economic domination of that area by Germany was laughed off with catch-words about German benevolence. It is hard not to

smile when one reads of Hungary’s protesting resentfully when after the Berlin meeting the Polish Press attacked her for her subservience to the Axis.

These effusions did not, it is true, imply any weakening in Hungary’s resolve not herself to participate in the attack on Poland, and the rest of her foreign policy between April and August consisted mainly of a rather tortuous series of attempts to keep the Germans aware of this fact while at the same time preserving that amount of German goodwill which she had acquired

by promising to follow “fan Axis policy,’ and exploiting it for her own purposes: primarily, the acquisition of armaments and, if possible, the utilisation of the Polish-German dispute for the realisation of her own objectives in Roumania. The first move was made when Italy and Germany, on 22nd May, signed the “Pact of Steel,’ which included, inter alia, provision for a Permanent Commission, under the control of the two Foreign Ministers, to be set up to intensify military co-operation for the case of war. It was supposed in Hungary that this Commission would be dealing largely with the economic preparations for war, and messages reached Budapest, probably from Rome,

that Germany proposed in case of war simply to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe and to co-ordinate their economies compulsorily in the service of the Axis war machine. Whether there was any foundation for these rumours, the writer does not know’; but it is certain that Hungary took them very seriously. The Government—again, it appears, unanimously—argued that their safest course would

be to get representation on the Commission. Sitting there as equals, they would be able to secure armaments for themselves and to arrange such coordination, by agreement, of Germany’s and Hungary’s economies as would remove from Germany the temptation to occupy Hungary. Finally, they would get an insight into the Axis’ plans and find out what Germany’s attitude would be if Hungary attacked Roumania.? Nadas’ plan was thus shelved again, and on 28th June a message was sent to Berlin asking that Hungary might “‘join the Axis” in their preparatory war economic efforts.‘

Ribbentrop may have seen through some of these designs; in any case, 1 In the Sz. I. MS. 2 On 28th May Mussolini produced a memorandum for Hitler on “the necessity of immediate occupation by the Axis of Central Europe and the Balkans in case of war” (Ciano Diary, loc. cit., Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 459). We possess no documents dating from June or July in which this threat is mentioned, but from September onward Sztodjay often refers to it, and the Government’s actions in July and August show that they must have seriously believed in the danger at that time. 3 These three motives are given in the Sz. J. MS. 4 Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 578 (report by Weizsacker of his conversation with Sztdjay on 29th June).

358 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH he preferred not to admit Hungary as a partner to the planned GermanItalian arrangements, but he agreed that she might be contacted separately.

Werth went to Germany for three days (4th-6th July). He arranged for certain deliveries of arms to Hungary and it was agreed that GermanHungarian collaboration in the field of war economy should begin shortly. A couple of exploratory talks were in fact held'; but it seems necessary to deduce that the Hungarian military were not satisfied with these, and decided

: to utilise the special line to high places which they possessed through the personal friendship between Szabo, the Hungarian Military Attaché in Rome, and Mussolini. Mussolini had even earlier favoured “‘getting Hungary and Spain into the military alliance,” and on 17th July, after a conversation with Szabo, sent through him the following remarkable message to Teleki and Csaky:

““Hungary cannot remain neutral in a general war. If the military leaders of the two armies (Italian and Hungarian) are to be able to discuss

concrete questions of military character, in peace-time, as though a military alliance existed, a written declaration must be issued in the following spirit: ***In case of a war in which the Axis Powers are involved in a general war with the group of anti-Axis Powers, Hungary will follow the policy of the Axis Powers.”’”®

The message had a strange and disastrous sequel. Csaky reported to Rome and Berlin that the Hungarian Government, “‘guided by the intention of further expanding the question of Hungaro-German-Italian co-operation,” had decided that Teleki should write to Hitler and Mussolini. On the 22nd he duly sent out two letters addressed to each of those gentlemen, to be handed

to them on the 24th, with copies to the Foreign Ministries. In the first of each of these pairs of letters the Hungarian Government stated that in the case of a general conflict it would align its policy to that of the Axis Powers.

This alignment could under no circumstances entail Hungary’s admitting any infringement of her sovereignty, as embodied in her constitution, nor prevent her from realising her national objectives. Teleki asked accordingly that a Hungarian representative should be added to the German-Italian Commission provided for under Article 4 of the Pact of Steel, within which an organ should be created “‘for the tripartite discussion of all problems which might arise out of the intimate collaboration of the three Powers.’”4

The second letter said that in case of a German-Polish war, Hungary would, out of moral considerations, be unable “‘in so far as no serious changes occur in the existing circumstances” to carry out an attack on Poland.®

The letters were duly handed over, and as, apparently, Mussolini had omitted to inform even Ciano, much less the Germans, of his part in the affair, they were ill received. Weizsacker asked Sztdjay various pertinent questions.

What was the collaboration which the Government wanted—was it to be military only, or general? What was meant by the phrase “existing circumstances”? How could letter 2 be made to agree with letter 1? Sztdjay was ! Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 641, 706. 2 See Ciano Diary, 31st May, where Mussolini “‘sets down directives” to this effect (amongst

others); also Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 341. ’ Sz. I. MS. ' Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 712, enclosure 1. 5 Id., enclosure 2.

DILEMMA 359 unable to answer any of these questions, and Weizsacker noted his own belief that only the second letter was meant seriously... The same conclusions were drawn in Italy, where Ciano records that he ‘“‘vaguely suspected that the first letter was written in order to launch the second,’ and that the move

“made a bad impression on the Duce and on the Germans.’ Accordingly, neither Axis State replied to the letters at all—in writing, that is; but Germany showed her displeasure plainly, and effectively; the proposed conversations on armaments were called off* and even the promised

deliveries stopped.° Csaky tried to smooth things over by making a speech at Sopron on 31st July in which he said that “‘there was no Hungarian interest

which conflicted with the interests of the Axis Powers, to which Hungary remained sincerely attached’’; but this was not enough. On 10th August, when Csaky was spending a holiday (combining business with pleasure) near

Salzburg staying with Frick, Ribbentrop sent for him, and asked him urgently to tell Sztéjay he must instruct the Wilhelmstrasse that the two letters were to be regarded as “‘not having been written.’’® The Fiihrer had been extraordinary displeased by the letters, because he had acquired the impression “that Hungary was moving away from the Axis, under the influence of certain foreign intrigues.”’ But what was really worrying him was whether the whole thing had not been instigated by Poland (presumably in order to find out Germany’s plans). He had proofs that not only the Polish but also the British and French Governments knew what was in the letters. Csaky denied this hotly, but agreed to withdraw the letters, which he said

had only been written to show how determined Hungary was to stick to the Reich through thick and thin. Ribbentrop now relented and took Csaky up to the Fuhrer, where all the excuses had to be gone through again.’ Hitler, who harangued Csaky for three hours, seems to have forgiven him, but said

with great emphasis that Hungary need not think there was “a separate Hungarian problem.” Hungary could not hope to retain her existing frontiers, much less enlarge them, if Germany was defeated; that defeat would bring about “‘the restoration of a still larger Czechoslovakia.’ For the rest, he did not, as was so widely rumoured at the time in the Press, offer Hungary Slovakia in return for her co-operation against Poland—indeed, he did not even say that he was going to attack Poland at all, although he complained bitterly of the Polish attacks on the German minority, and said that he would not be able to hold the Army back if they went on.® But he did say that: ‘““He did not care about Slovakia. Anyone who looked at the

map could see that the Reich had no need for such an appendix, but he needed it as a transit area until the German-Polish dispute was settled.”’ Csaky duly wired to have the letters withdrawn, the news of which, when 1 Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 712, 2 Diary, 24th July. 3 Id.,24th July. Even then the Duce seems not to have confessed; cf. Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 739.

* Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 712. 5 Csdky to Ciano, 21st August, ap. Lajos. “On 21st August Csaky sent a message to Ciano that Weizsacker had made the Hungarian Government reproaches, on obviously artificial pretexts, saying that although it had taken up a position on the side of the Axis, it was showing an uncertain attitude towards Germany. The military authorities had accordingly been ordered to stop the delivery to Hungary of certain materials of war.” 6 The Sz. I. MS. gives the full text of Csaky’s report. 7 Baron Erdmannsdorff, who was present at the interview, has kindly given me some details which supplement the meagre account given by the Hungarian sources.” 8 Erdmannsdorff to C. A. M.

360 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH it reached him, annoyed Teleki greatly. He sent a message to Rome and Berlin holding up the cancellation, and called Csaky to return immediately.

It looks, however, as though Teleki then gave way, since the documents record the cancellation, but no cancellation of the cancellation. Csaky did not put to Hitler his ingenious plan for “helping’’ Germany by invading Transylvania. But he must have perceived that at that particular juncture Hitler was very nervous about the “‘pseudo-neutrals”’ (on the 11th

| and 12th he and Ribbentrop gave Italy open enough permission to gobble up Yugoslavia). He would certainly never have let Roumania be attacked so long as she toed the line, but on the same occasion he and Ribbentrop expressed doubts about Roumania’s attitude, and both said, in much the same words, that if she gave trouble she was to be liquidated by Hungary and Bulgaria.’ At all events, Hungary did begin to make military preparations against Roumania, choosing as pretext an outbreak of “incidents” on the Upper Tisza (now become, in places, the Hungaro-Roumanian frontier) on which the modalities for floating down the timber had not been regulated,

a Mixed Commission appointed to settle the matter having parted with mutual recriminations. The first drafts of a plan for an attack on Roumania

were worked out, the troops which were to take part in it (the II Army) designated and a G.O.C. appointed, who got as far as beginning to organise his Staff.? A few days later, when the Roumanians had already moved some troops to the frontier, Hungary ordered the mobilisation of two Corps (the V and VI) and the Mobile Brigade.® Another decision, taken on Csaky’s intervention, was to carry through the

“mobilisation of Hungarian industry’ on the lines suggested by Nadas. The credit for which Nadas had asked was granted, and he himself was put in charge of the operation, and the next day orders went out to 120 Hungarian factories to adapt their plants to the manufacture of munitions.* Meanwhile, the news grew ever more alarming and the Germans ever less communicative. In despair, Csaky flew down to Rome on the 18th to consult

the Italians. He achieved the feat of frightening Ribbentrop, who wired to Rome on the 19th complaining of “ridiculous rumours which had been circulating on Csaky’s alleged differences with the Reich, these rumours ranging from reports that Hungary was joining the Axis to rumours, at the other end, of the complete subjugation of Hungary by Germany.” Ribbentrop wanted these rumours denied, but he also wanted to know what Csaky was up to, as he feared that he was talking against Germany.®

This was about all that the visit did achieve, although Ribbentrop was right in one respect. Csaky inveighed vigorously against the Germans, saying that “95 per cent. of the Hungarian people hated the Germans. The Regent himself called them buffoons and brigands, and Mme Horthy had said that * See the Ciano Diary, 11th and 12th August, and Papers, pp. 298, 302. Barczy’s notes on csaky's report also say: “Germany’s enemies in the Balkans are Roumania, Yugoslavia and * Nagy, op. cit., pp. 34 ff. Nagy’s story is quite alarmingly confused, and in places he seems to confuse the events of 1939 with those of 1940. But he can hardly be mistaken in his recollection that he was to command the II Army, which was to carry out the attack. * Barczy (whose dating is uncertain). A chronology in the (unprinted) Ciano papers records that Ciano was told on 23rd August that Hungary was taking “provisional precautions in view

of the concentration of Russian troops on the Hungarian frontier.” As Russia had then no direct frontier with Hungary, ‘“‘Roumanian” is presumably meant.

4 Nadas to C. A. M. 6 N.G. 2642.

DILEMMA 361 she would take up arms herself if it came to fighting them.’? But he got no comfort out of the Italians, having had the bad luck to arrive just on one of the days when the Duce “‘still thought it possible that the democracies would not march, and that Germany might do good business cheaply, from which business he did not want to be excluded.’ Both he and Ciano told him that they were “‘supporting Germany to the limit.”* Csaky raised once more the idea of Hungary’s allying herself with the Axis in the hope of thus saving herself from a German invasion or “friendly occupation,’’ but Ciano was discouraging, and the Duce, who even now did not confess to the paternity of the idea, “very reserved.”® And now, when the Hungarians for the first time officially suggested putting the Duke of Aosta on the throne, saying that “the Regent was favourable,”’ the Italians refused, for fear of a German veto. Csaky may have been acting without authorisation in suggesting the alliance, for Teleki had just received a report from Barczy, who had been spending his holidays in England, which had deeply impressed him with the conviction that it would be most fatal for Hungary to become a belligerent.

Indeed, when at this time an unofficial British person passed through Budapest en route for Bucharest, and suggested mediating fresh informal discussions, Teleki gave him an affirmative answer to pass on to Roumania.° The news of the German-Soviet agreement, which reached Hungary on 24th August, came as a complete surprise to her; the Italians had told Csaky

that the negotiations were economic.® The news also had a profound psychological effect on many Hungarians, among them Teleki, whose mind now became entirely dominated by something that was at once a calculation

and a creed. He was still profoundly convinced that the Western Powers would end by winning the war, and to that intellectual conviction, which might prompt a policy out of expediency, was added now an increasingly passionate feeling that, morally, all would be lost if they did not win the war.

He had always seen in the great expansive force of Germany the gravest threat, except one, to Hungary’s national existence, and in Nazism a thing both evil in itself and also the gravest threat, except one, to Hungary’s tradi-

tional institutions and ways of life. Only one State and one system had seemed to him more dangerous still: the U.S.S.R. and Bolshevism; and when Hitler committed the ultimate sin of allying himself with Bolshevik Russia, Teleki felt more strongly than ever that on moral grounds the victory of the West was as necessary as it was certain on military grounds. Culturally and morally, Hungary was the natural ally of the Western Powers, and it would be as wrong for her to join their opponents as it would be politically fatal.

He did not, indeed, want Germany utterly destroyed; that would upset the natural balance of Europe. And for Hungary’s own part, he felt that her situation made it practically impossible for her to refuse Germany a certain amount of co-operation and assistance. He thought that the Allies ought to 1 See Ciano Diary, 18th August. 2 Barczy reports Csaky as saying this on his return. 3 Ciano does not reveal whether Csaky coupled this suggestion with his plan for attacking Roumania, but Roumania must have been discussed: Barczy records Csaky as saying that “the Italians hate the Roumanians worse than the Germans do.”

4 Horthy, op. cit., p. 227, mentions this report, and he is the authority for saying that it impressed Teleki quite particularly; but his quotations show that he takes the contents of the report from Barczy, who in his MS. makes himself the author; Countess Bissingen was only present when Barczy was talking to Teleki. 5 From Mr. A. Henderson, K.C., M.P. (the person in question). 6 Barczy.

362 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH understand the necessity and condone the licence, taking his assurance that it would not be more extensive than he found necessary, nor go beyond certain limits. But he made it an absolute postulate of his policy that Hungary must

in no circumstances whatever be drawn into war against the West, nor take

any action which would produce that result. This involved more than a simple refusal to commit any action to which the West must take official exception: it meant preserving, or winning, its active goodwill, so that when

| the reckoning came the victors should have neither legal excuse nor psychological temptation to treat Hungary again as they had after 1918, but would, on the contrary, give her claims that fair-minded consideration which, in his view, could lead only to a favourable verdict on them. Teleki’s belief (and not his alone) had already, as we have seen, caused Hungary to follow (with certain lapses) a cautious policy over revision at the expense of Czechoslovakia. Now that war seemed almost certain, he became more cautious than ever: revisionist to the core, he was even anxious not to realise any claim with the help of Germany, since he saw sadly (and, as the event proved, rightly) that any such gains would only be taken away at the end of the war as “‘a gift from the Axis,” “‘a bone tossed to a jackal,” etc. And in the question of Roumania, he felt also, and most powerfully, that Hungary must refrain at all costs from breaching the dyke which might let the Russian flood through. We shall see later that this did not involve for him any renunciation of claims; we shall even become acquainted with the elaborate schedule which he worked out of the conditions which would allow him to realise those claims. But the situation created by the German-Soviet Pact did not seem to him to constitute such a moment, and from the hour of its publication, Hungarian policy became marked by an extreme caution and a great moderation. No official statements of policy were made, not even an officieux intimation in the Pester Lloyd, but Miss McCormick was allowed to telegraph that ‘““Hungary wants to remain neutral in any conflict, diplomatic or other,”’ and “‘does not want to complicate the situation by pressing her

neighbours; in particular, she is not undertaking any move against Roumania.’ Privately, Teleki sent a message to London that Hungary had decided to remain neutral, in fact if not in name, if a German-Polish conflict broke out, and would resist if German troops attempted to enter Hungary. This was accompanied by a warning of Hitler’s intentions, which was received with appreciation.” Csaky sent Beck a personal message, in the name of his

Government, that Hungary would not allow German troops to cross her territory to move against Poland; this she would regard as ‘“‘a moral impossibility.’’*

To Yugoslavia, Teleki again offered a non-aggression pact, although to Roumania (when the answer arrived) he replied that conversations were impossible so long as Roumania remained mobilised, and a non-aggression pact possible only “‘within the framework of a wider settlement.’’* He did, however, assure Roumania that Hungary’s mobilisation was “‘‘only defensive.’”® Hungary’s display of independence and moderation greatly surprised both the British Government and British public opinion—each of which had so 1 New York Times, 26th August. 2 Barcza MS. For the British version of the message as received, see Doc. Brit. F.P., III. VII,

So. 1. MS. 4 Henderson to C. A. M. 5 Barczy, Lajos.

DILEMMA 363 long been assiduously fed the jackal story. It also delighted at least the Government, which from this moment on treated Teleki, personally, with real appreciation and confidence. It had, of course, the opposite effect on Germany, who had not yet decided what she wanted Hungary to do but in no case wanted her to make a declaration of neutrality, with the implications

which that would have brought in international law. On 3lst August Weizsacker lectured Sztdjay on Hungary’s excess of zeal towards both Poland and the Western Powers, and said that “‘in view of all this, Keitel had been

ordered to suspend deliveries of certain materials of war for so long as

Hungary’s attitude remains ambiguous.’ Sztdjay even thought that Germany might undertake hostile operations against Hungary. He bombarded Budapest with suggestions: the Regent should make a “‘personal gesture’ to Hitler; Hungary should offer spontaneously to deliver more agricultural produce than her treaty laid down, etc.? Csaky protested indignantly to Ciano, asking him to intervene and assure the Germans of Hungary’s complete loyalty to the Axis; but Ciano had no time just now for Csaky.®

But, for once, events played into Teleki’s hands. Once he had concluded his pact with the U.S.S.R. Hitler felt rapturously confident that, as he wrote to Mussolini, the possibility of Roumania’s entering the conflict against the Axis no longer existed. He was also now feeling more confident about Yugoslavia (and less pleased with Italy). In the secret instructions which he now drew up,* Roumania was to preserve “‘strictest neutrality” (which safeguarded her oil-supplies and was worth much more to him than belligerency on his side). Yugoslavia, too, was to be neutral for the time, the offer to Italy being tacitly suspended. Slovakia was to participate in the campaign, sending a

contingent and, what was far more important for Germany, allowing Germany the use of her territory. In return, her request for restoration of those formerly Slovak (strictly speaking, formerly Hungarian) areas which Poland had occupied after 1918 was to receive ““benevolent consideration”’ and Germany’s guarantee of her integrity (sc., against Hungary) should be formally renewed.

As for Hungary, she was to receive a friendly intimation of Germany’s attitude, ‘“coupled with a warning not to make the events in her neighbourhood the occasion for ill-considered demonstrations, but to keep in closest contact with us in regard to all questions connected with the conflict.” Then, on Ist September, Erdmannsdorff brought Csaky the following

invaded Poland): ,

message from Ribbentrop (accompanying the news that Germany had “Germany is not at this moment asking Hungary for military assis-

tance. It is in the interests of both Germany and Hungary that the Hungarian Government should do nothing to anticipate events. It is therefore desirable that the Hungarian Government should keep every possibility open, and not make a declaration of neutrality.’”

Id. 31 Sz. Id. I.4 MS. N.G.>2392.

6 Footnote 3, appended by the editors to Doc. G.F.P., D. VI, 739, shows that at the end

of July Germany’s intention had been not to ask Hungary to intervene in ‘‘a localised GermanPolish clash,” but she was to be required to take a more active part if the conflagration became general, even though Germany and Poland were ‘crossing swords.” Jt seems, however, that the Germans decided not to notify her of this.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PHONEY WAR N the news that hostilities had broken out between Germany and () Poland, the Hungarian Government proclaimed a state of emergency

and announced that it was assuming the powers vested in it, in such a situation, by Law 2 of 1939,1 although beyond provisionally freezing prices

at the level of 24th August and blocking stocks of tea and coffee it made no immediate exercise of any of those powers. For the rest, Teleki ingeniously evaded the delicate question of Hungary’s official attitude to the conflict by announcing that since no declaration of war

had been issued—and it was a fact that both parties had omitted that formality—Hungary was not cognisant of any state of war. She regretted the dispute which had arisen, since both disputants were her friends, but did not need to take up any official attitude towardsit. A Government proclamation urged the people, in very strong terms, to keep calm, preserve national unity and rally behind the Government. The majority of the people had, at that moment, no need of any such bidding. The whole of that great camp for whom Nazi Germany was the enemy and danger par excellence would, in that situation, have forgiven any Hungarian Government any shortcomings in other directions, provided only that it was willing and able to keep Hungary out of Hitler’s clutches. And not only had they no doubts regarding Teleki’s wishes—for his general ideas and sympathies were well known—but they regarded him as singularly well fitted to carry them out, by virtue of his personal qualities, his widespread

international connections and European reputation as a savant, even his ancestry: for as a Transylvanian of historic stock he must, it was felt, possess a special inherent aptitude for dealing with a situation which called for careful

balancing between great opposing forces. Moreover, the country at large felt a vast confidence in his personal integrity, and although the Left knew that he did not share their views on internal politics, they were not afraid that he would take unfair advantage if they left him a free hand. Horthy’s sympathies for the West—where he was justly believed to be

popular—and his dislike of Hitler were equally notorious, and even his former victims, so far as they were still in Hungary, were prepared to forget his ““Szeged”’ past in view of his anti-Nazi present. Everyone admitted that

he was “100 per cent. Magyar,” and that, for the moment, was all that

mattered. The third recognised member of the trinity, Keresztes-Fischer, was less in the public eye, but his record strengthened the confidence of the Left that the regime would not overstep the limits of moderation in domestic politics. And public confidence in each of these three men was strengthened by the

knowledge of the great mutual confidence and affection which prevailed

between them.

And at that juncture it was not only the “Left” that was dominated by 1 See above, p. 324.

PHONEY WAR 365 fear and a dislike amounting to hatred of Germany. Had the Fiihrer looked round him for two actions which would alienate most bitterly Hungarian opinion, he could hardly have chosen better than to ally himself with the U.S.S.R. and to attack Poland. And it was precisely his former conservative and nationalist admirers who resented these actions most bitterly. The great slogan common to the Nazi regime and the “‘Szeged Idea’’ had been the hostility of both towards international Bolshevism. For the sake of this one merit, many conservative Hungarians had endured from the Germans much that they found strange, radical and even subversive, comforting themselves with the thought that, repellent as all this was, it was nevertheless a sword and shield against a worse evil still. Now they regarded Hitler’s actions as unforgivable treachery, and saw in his movement only its radicalism, little less evil or revolutionary than Bolshevism itself. The attack on Poland, again, brought many Hungarian nationalists to a realisation of Hitler’s power and of his ruthlessness which, just because the Left had maintained it, they had been inclined to pooh-pooh. Some of the most vociferous and sincere antiGermans were now to be found among those who a year or two before had insisted that Hungarian nationalism need never fear anything from German nationalism.

Thus in September 1939 a large proportion of the Hungarian Right was prepared to support Teleki as wholeheartedly as the Left. While, however, the Left could be trusted to continue supporting him almost indefinitely, the Right was less safe. Teleki’s policy of balancing between the belligerents, which meant in practice—since the pressure from the two sides was not even—

discreetly resisting Germany, was based both on his sympathies and on his calculations that the Allies would win the war. Many of those who shared his sympathies doubted the correctness of his calculations and especially his logical deduction from those calculations that Hungary must not take, nor seek, any revision except with the approval of the Allies. Some of those who

disliked Germany most bitterly nevertheless thought that hers was the stronger military combination and argued that, precisely because she was both disagreeable and dangerous, Hungary ought to seize every chance of revision, even if this had to be achieved with German help, and bought by concessions to her, made for the purpose of acquiring her goodwill. The enlarged and strengthened State could afterwards retract those concessions and defy Germany with an effectiveness to which the small and unarmed

country which Hungary was in 1939 could never aspire. This school of thought had many influential adherents; in the Government itself it was powerfully represented by Csaky. Naturally, those who wanted Germany to win, as well as expecting it, pressed the desirability of a pro-German policy, in the national interest, even more strongly. Even some of those who shared all Teleki’s sympathies and agreed with his calculations, did not draw the same last deductions. The Regent himself disliked the Germans as heartily as Teleki did, and believed as firmly in their

defeat. He was also quite uncompromisingly opposed to a policy of preliminary concessions in domestic politics; least of all would he hear of replacing Teleki by a Minister President more agreeable to the Germans. But his sanguine and uncomplex intellect saw the revision question in the simple terms of “‘justice for Hungary.’ He could not believe that the Allies, among whom he was convinced that Hungary as a State, and himself as its Head, enjoyed real sympathies, would be so wrong-minded as to take away from

366 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH her a second time any part of her former territories, through whatever instrumentality she re-acquired them. If revision, with Germany in the ascendant, became a practical issue or even a tangible prospect, Teleki’s position would certainly become difficult and perhaps even impossible. But on Ist September 1939 this complication did not arise. Ribbentrop’s request to Hungary “‘to keep every possibility open’? suggests that on that day Germany was still not quite certain whether Roumania might not come in on Poland’s side, or whether, perhaps, Russia might not attack her. But

, neither Russia nor Roumania moved and Hungary could clearly not “help”

Germany against a passive Roumania. The conflict in Eastern Europe remained for the moment, confined to that between Germany and Poland, and in relation to this, the Hungarian Government followed exactly the course which it had announced. It demonstrated that it was standing “‘by the side of the Axis” by having the Press treat the situation in a way which was as degrading to the good name of Hungarian journalism as it was untrue to the real feelings of the Hungarian people. Germany was praised fulsomely for her “‘moderation”’ and Poland castigated for her “‘provocation,”’ and when

Mussolini put forward his proposals for mediation—which Hungary supported passionately—Poland was urged to submit to the last sacrifices.

The declarations of war by Britain and France were also described as ‘“provocations.”’

But the Government also stood by its promise not to help Germany against Poland, directly or indirectly, and that in the face of some pressure. Once the West had declared war, Germany became in a hurry to finish

the Eastern campaign. On 5th September Sztdjay reported that “the Germans were enquiring whether we would not like to take possession of that

part of the Polish territory which abuts on Ruthenia, namely, the northern slopes of the Carpathians. In Germany’s opinion it would be preferable for Hungary, rather than Russia, to occupy the northern glacis of the Carpathians.”” We do not possess the full text of this despatch, but only a retrospective allusion to it,’ which contains no mention of any price to be paid for the acquisition; but Csaky must have drawn his inferences, for next day he sent Villani to Ciano with a message that “there was a danger of a

German request for the passage of German troops through Hungary. Hungary would oppose the passage by force of arms, although she would allow troops through against Roumania.’’? Ciano did not take the matter seriously, and when Ribbentrop saw Csaky on the 7th, on the occasion to be described, he did not in fact make any such request, although he did ask Csaky whether Hungary had any territorial aspirations against Poland; to which Csaky replied by stating emphatically that Hungary had neither claims against Poland nor territorial aspirations in that area.® But at 4 p.m. on the 9th Ribbentrop rang Csaky at his private address and asked him whether Hungary would let German troops pass along the Hernad-

Szentistvan-Kassa-Velejte line from Slovakia into Poland. He wanted an answer within an hour. In return he offered Hungary for herself the oilwells of the Sambor region. * Sz. I. MS. It appears from Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 8, that on the 4th September Ribbentrop had called Sztojay to him, principally in order to impress on him the importance of Hungary’s

not attacking Roumania. To do Sztdjay justice, he answered at once that Hungary did not

want anything outside her historic frontier. * Ciano Diary, 6th September. 3 Sz. I. MS.

PHONEY WAR 367 | Csaky, by his own account, told Ribbentrop that he was “exceedingly

surprised, but would forward the request.” Since the Regent was away ' shooting, he could not answer before the next day. The next morning Teleki, Csaky, Bartha and Werth discussed the request and agreed unanimously—tTeleki said later, “in two minutes’—to reject it. Horthy added a rider that the Germans should be told that he was having the railways mined and would have them blown up if the Germans tried to use them.* A Ministerial Council endorsed the refusal, again unanimously.

Meanwhile, the Hungarians had also consulted the Italians, who, having themselves decided for the moment to be virtuous, did not want cakes and

ale to be served to anyone else. They thought that if Hungary did as Germany asked, Britain and France might declare war, and the conflict thus

be extended. The Duce himself advised the Hungarians to refuse ‘‘as courteously as they could.’ Csaky accordingly sent a message refusing, and adding that the Hungarian

Government had repeatedly declared that it regarded any contribution by itself to this action as incompatible with Hungary’s honour.* On the 11th the Slovaks made a similar request for their own troops.°® This was very curtly refused, the Hungarians saying that they would regard

any attempt by the Slovaks to use their railways as an act of military aggression “‘and would meet it as such,’® and Csaky told Berlin that ‘‘after

this the Hungarian Government will hardly have any other resort but to declare neutrality.’””

This threat seems to have been disagreeable to the Germans, who enquired rather anxiously on the 12th whether Hungary had yet decided to carry it out. This Hungary did not do, and the Germans now tried to smooth things over: on the 14th Ribbentrop sent a message through Erdmannsdorff that his telephone message of the 9th was in no way to be regarded as an ultimative demand, but only as a request for a friendly favour.® In any case, the opportunity soon passed, for on the 17th the Russian armies moved, and a few days later met those of Germany along the demarcation line which partitioned what had once been Poland. The effects of Hungary’s refusal, however, survived the episode: both at the time and long after, Germany held it against her.?®

It may be mentioned that during the brief campaign Hungary had given Poland all active assistance that the laws of neutrality allowed.!° In particular,

Td. * Horthy to C. A. M. * Ciano Diary, 9th September.

4 Text in Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 45. It is true that Csdky said that Hungary would allow German war material to be transported over the lines in question (id., 49). 5 Id., 49. ® Td., 59.

* Sz. I. MS. ® Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 51. ® On the 22nd, according to Barczy, Csaky said in a Ministerial Council that Mecsér “was

agitating against the Government, whose conduct had cost Germany much delay and 60,000 casualties.””> When Teleki met Ribbentrop at Vienna in August 1940, he had to hear further reproaches in the same vein (Lajos). Another of Mecsér’s reproaches against the Government was that “thereby Hungary had prevented the Germans from occupying more territory before the Russians got there. Consequently we shall have a frontier with the Russians and not the Germans.” This raises not the least curious point of the story, which is that the Sambor oil-fields, and, of course, the Carpathian slopes beyond the frontier of Ruthenia, lie east of the river San, whereas the original secret agreement between Germany and Russia had fixed the German-Soviet demarcation line as that of the Narew, Vistula and San rivers. 10 In fact, a trifle more, for a legion of the Ragged Guard, some 6,000 strong, had fought on the Polish side.

368 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH she had thrown her frontiers wide open to Polish refugees, whom she treated on their arrival with the greatest kindness and hospitality. By the time operations ended, Hungary’s last hope of snatching immediate

private advantage out of the conflict had passed. Roumania had still not moved when Britain and France declared war, and it seems a fair deduction

that she had sent Germany some message of reassurance, for on the 7th Ribbentrop telephoned to Csaky to come urgently to the German G.H.Q. at Neustettin. The real purpose of this summons, as Csaky afterwards

: reported,! was to beg Hungary urgently not to attack Roumania “‘because the Germans did not want any conflict to break out in Central or South-Eastern Europe during the German-Polish conflict.” Csaky gave the promise, and even asked whether Hungary should not conclude a non-aggression pact with Roumania “‘when there would be a basis on which the two States could discuss their differences and settle them between

themselves.’’ To this question, unexpected for the historian, Germany gave an equally unexpected negative’; but the idea of immediate operations was obviously off and became even more obviously so after Russia halted on Roumania’s frontiers on the 17th and sent Roumania assurances of friendship, to which Roumania replied in kind.? After an interval during which Yugoslavia took a hand at mediating, Hungary and Roumania agreed to reduce their effectives under arms and to move them away from the common frontier.*

Since Italy had by this time reluctantly bowed to Hitler’s veto on her designs against Yugoslavia, all Eastern Europe was now “‘at peace’ again.

In fact, the situation for Hungary was back at the status quo ante \st September, of course, with the important differences that Poland had disappeared off the map; that the U.S.S.R. had become a direct neighbour; and that war was in progress between Germany and the Western Powers.

The adjustments which the first two of these points required from Hungarian policy can be briefly described. The conduct of the Hungarian Government and people towards Poland and the Poles continued to be admir-

able throughout the war. She refused to recognise the partition officially, and, although not officially recognising the Polish Government when it reconstituted itself in London, allowed a Polish Legation to exist in Budapest until November 1940. Under strong pressure from Germany, she then asked the Legation to close its doors, but continued to recognise Poland as a State. The soldiers who had taken refuge across her frontiers were disarmed pro forma, but those of them who wished to do so were allowed to pass on freely to Western Europe, there to take service again with the French and British Armies. Of the 140,000 refugees, nearly all soldiers, who entered Hungary when Poland collapsed, over 100,000 had, by June 1940, passed along this remarkable route—which led not only across Hungary but also across Yugoslavia, Italy and Switzerland.’ Some thousands of agricultural workers had by that time also been sent to Germany, on Hungary’s sugges* Barczy.

* Csaky reported this question and answer to the German and Italian Ministers in Budapest in June 1940; perhaps he had made some condition to which he did not allude when recalling the offer. The German version is given in the Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 30. * Gafencu, op. cit., pp. 257-9. 4 The agreement was announced on 9th October. * Figures from official sources. I myself travelled from Hungary to London in February 1940, via Trieste, Milan, the Simplon and Paris. I was the only non-Pole, and almost the only civilian, on the train.

PHONEY WAR 369 tion, but only if they volunteered to do so.1 Some 20,000 were evacuated later still, but new arrivals made up a figure of 15,000 or so, who were kindly and generously treated. After screening, they were as a rule placed in employ-

ment on the land or in munitions factories, the educated classes in the Ministries or even in the Army. In all cases they were granted full liberty of movement and national treatment in respect of employment, social services,

etc. A special commissioner looked after their welfare. Schools were established for their children, including a secondary school which at the time was the only establishment of its kind on the Continent of Europe.? Oddly enough, the Germans let the military transportation pass at the time with only formal protests, but they chalked Hungary’s behaviour up against her, and during the Kallay period, when they were anxious to register grievances against Hungary, this was always one of them. Yet it should not be thought that only professionally anti-German circles of the Left behaved thus. The

Swabians were hostile to the Poles, as were a few of the German-paid members of the Arrow Cross; but the rest of the nation, including many members of the extreme Right, regarded the championship of the Poles as a postulate of the national honour. Bardossy protected them quite as manfully as did Teleki before him or KaAllay after him.

Relations with the U.S.S.R. proved unexpectedly easy. Hungary had watched the advance of the Soviet armies with an unfeigned disgust and alarm which in the first days were sharpened by her ignorance of what Germany might have agreed secretly with Russia; she might, for all the Hungarians knew, have made her a present not only of Poland’s Galicia but also of Hungary’s Ruthenia, where, moreover, the arrival of the Russians on the Carpathians evoked a remarkable and alarming outbreak of unrest, fomented by the ex-Si¢ Guardists and the Orthodox priests whom the Czech authorities had brought into Ruthenia.2 There were demonstrations which in places amounted to serious riots. Hungarian officials and gendarmes, and even pro-Hungarian Ruthenes, were molested, and a considerable number of local enthusiasts flocked across the passes to welcome the Russian soldiers and invite them to continue their march.

The Soviets, however, behaved most correctly. They halted on the frontier, which they made no attempt to cross,* and sent a message to Hungary, similar to that conveyed at the same time to Roumania, that they “desired to live at peace with all their neighbours.”” The unfortunates who had gone out to welcome them were rounded up and returned to the mercies of the Hungarian gendarmes. Telekisent Arnéthy-Jungerth to Paris, where he talked to the Russian, Suvitch, and the resumption of diplomatic relations was arranged in a matter of days. It was announced on 24th September and the new Hungarian Minister, Kristdoffy, presented his credentials in Moscow only three days later. President Kalinin received him most cordially, saying that ‘“‘the past should be forgotten. There was not and could not be any

conflict of interests between the two countries. On the contrary, the 1 An unnumbered document referring to this was produced at the Nuremberg Trial. 2 In 1943-44 there were about 7,000 soldiers and 3,000 civilians living in camps, 2,000 living privately and 3,000 Jews under Jewish protection. 3 For these see C. A. Macartney, Hungary and her Successors, pp. 231 f. The priests were Russians who had come to Serbia with Wrangel’s army and had been sent up from there into

ae except that, according to Baross, it was not uncommon for the ill-fed Russian soldiers to _ sneak across to beg dinners from the Hungarian frontier guards, or even at times to carry out organised raids in pursuit of the same objective.

2B

370 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Russians wanted political, economic and cultural connections. They saw in Hungary a companion in arms.’’? It may be said at once that Russia maintained this attitude scrupulously during this period. She seems to have ordered all subversive activity in Hungary

to be suspended” and to have done nothing even indirectly incompatible with good neighbourliness; setting, indeed, an example to Hungary herself,

where Csaky showed bare civility when announcing the resumption of diplomatic relations, on which occasion he went out of his way to say that

: this implied no approval of the Soviet system, while on various subsequent occasions, such as the Russo-Finnish war, she sailed as near non-neutrality as was well possible.®

It is true that Hungary made Russia one precious gift. In the autumn of 1940 Mm. Rakosi and Vas were amnestied and allowed to go to Russia. They crossed the Soviet frontier (which they were so soon to recross) on 2nd November.

Meanwhile, Germany’s power-position vis-a-vis Hungary, strong as it had been before the Polish campaign, now looked absolutely overwhelming. Hungary’s only friend which had also been her neighbour had been wiped clean off the map, leaving her entirely surrounded by territory belonging either to Germany herself, to one of Germany’s allies or satellites or to a State which for twenty years had been hostile to herself. The West was far

away—the other side of Germany—and Italy, her one surviving official friend, a reed more hopelessly broken than ever. During the following months, the Hungarian Press habitually represented Italy and Hungary as working hand in hand, in mutual trust and harmony, and for the same objects, and Italy as watchfully guarding Hungary’s interests. All this was totally untrue. Since, up to the spring of 1940, Italy was following roughly the same line towards the Allies as Hungary, Teleki could sometimes justify

a given action, or failure to act, by appealing to the Italian example. Secondary officials or unofficial persons in Italy often co-operated usefully

with their Hungarian opposite numbers. It is even possible that higher circles may occasionally have put in a good word for Hungary, which has not been preserved, with Germany, or one that Hungary could twist to her

advantage. But, in general, Hungary had little for which to thank the Italians, who continued to treat her as a mere “pawn.” The conspicuous feature of the references to Hungary in the Ciano Diary

, and Papers, and in the Hitler-Mussolini correspondence of the period, is their paucity, and next to their paucity, their unfriendliness.4 When the Hungarians did appeal to Italy, she almost always let them down, giving them 1 Sz. I. MS.

* M. Kallai in his narrative (op. cit. pp. 72 ff) does not record any such order, but the fact emerges clearly enough exjus silentio on the activities of himself and his friends during the period. Indeed, in the summer of 1940 some Communists from Northern Transylvania came to Budapest,

after their homes had been reassigned to Hungary, in search of a Communist Party H.Q., but were unable to find one. They then made their way, with difficulty, to Moscow, to offer their services there, but were told that the U.S.S.R. was in friendly relations with Hungary and was not conducting any underground campaign against her Government. 5 On that occasion not only did the Press show the most demonstrative sympathy for Finland, but a legion comprising 350 men of the Ragged Guard actually volunteered to join the Finnish Army. They were allowed to pass through the United Kingdom, but Germany refused them abting After a long detour they eventually reached Finland just too late to take part in the * The Sz. I. MS., too, has only one document of the period relating to Italo-Hungarian relations beyond its record of Teleki’s visit: a letter from Csaky to Ciano complaining of

Germany’s economic exigencies. There is no record of any reply. ,

PHONEY WAR 371 ' nothing but affirmations of the solidarity of the Italo-German alliance, prophecies of German victories and advice to follow Germany’s instructions.

_ She refused, as we shall see, to give Hungary the smallest support against Roumania, instead, simply identifying herself with Germany and followed her own designs in Yugoslavia in complete disregard of Hungary’s wishes. Rather than commit herself to any identification of her own interests with Hungary’s, she even let go by the opportunity of securing the Crown of Hungary for her own Royal House. There thus seemed little possibility for the Hungarian Government to refuse any demands made of it by Germany for assistance or co-operation: nor, on its own showing, any reason to do so, since the one reservation which it had itself made to its promise to follow an Axis policy had ceased to be applicable when the fighting in Poland ended.

If, in spite of all this, the record of the next six months is not one of progress towards either closer friendly partnership with Germany or deeper subjection to her, but rather one of manceuvrings and evasions which at the end left Hungary very much where she had stood at the beginning, this is, of course, partly due to Teleki’s courage, tenacity, and ingenuity and to the loyal

support given him by his assistants. Yet truth compels its servant to say that this might have availed little had the demands made by Germany not been strictly limited. But German policy in South-East Europe still hinged on the undisturbed maintenance of the oil-supplies from Roumania, who was

far the most important to her of all the South-East European countries. Yugoslavia came second, Hungary a bad third. Therefore Germany would not

only not back nor even show sympathy for Hungarian revisionist claims against either of those countries (nor, lest the precedent prove disquieting, against Slovakia); she would not show her any pronounced friendship or favour, lest this arouse jealousy and resentment among her more important

neighbours. , The same consideration, reinforced perhaps by awareness of the weakness,

at that juncture, of her partisans in Hungary, restrained her even from

intervening in Hungary’s internal affairs, since a too flamboyant pro-German Government in Hungary would inevitably have been regarded elsewhere as dangerous. Thus, throughout the whole period now under review, she asked Hungary to do nothing with international implications which her neighbours could resent or the Allies twist into an excuse for disturbing the ‘“‘peace,”’ and

neither pressed the Government for action in the spirit of the New Order (during this period she does not seem to have raised the Jewish question at all) nor fomented opposition to it. Her support of the Arrow Cross was confined to patronising the Magyarsdag and to keeping a few ill-paid agents hanging about the coffee-houses of Vienna; her contacts with the more moderate Right were purely social. The only two fields in which she pressed demands with any vigour were the old ones of economics, and the Press; and even here she asked no more than Hungary could grant without violating a technical neutrality.

The contemptuous moderation of Germany’s demands clearly greatly facilitated Teleki’s task in several directions, including that of his relations with his own Right; for when they clamoured for such and such a course, as presumably pleasing to Germany, he could always answer truthfully that

Germany had not asked for it. On the main point of a quiescent foreign 1 See below, p. 393.

372 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH policy, he was in the agreeable position of knowing that in following the policy which he himself wished, he was actually obeying Germany’s orders, and remarkably, but even more gratifyingly, also pleasing the Allies. For it was a singular fact, but a fortunate one for Teleki, that the Allies’ South-East European policy at that time was an exact mirror-reflection of Germany’s. They, too, had decided—whether sensibly or not, in their own interest, was

none of Teleki’s business—that they did not want hostilities extended to South-Eastern Europe. They, too, regarded Roumania and Yugoslavia as more important than Hungary. Thus they were in exact agreement with Germany in disapproving of Hungarian irredentism. Perhaps if they had ever imagined the possibility of an outspokenly pro-Allied Government in Hungary, they, too, would have found the prospect embarrassing. In any case, their ambitions did not soar so high. They thankfully recognised that Teleki was doing his best for them, and even less than the Germans did they

dream of sponsoring any political action of a nature to embarrass him or weaken his position. Thus they, too, abstained from pressing Hungary

politically, and broadly confined their activities to trying to counter Germany’s efforts to secure economic advantage and a favourable presentation of her case in the Press.

In both these fields Germany started with a big advantage. The dominating position in Hungary’s trade relations which she had begun to acquire in 1934, subsequently reinforced by the Anschluss and the establishment of the Protectorate, had become stronger still with the elimination of Poland and the severance by the war of other of Hungary’s sources of supply and markets; this factor operating indirectly as well as directly through the similar difficulties which it imposed on Italy. It was also an undeniable fact that while it was Germany’s interest that the milch-cow should be fat, it was the Allies’ that it should be lean. Finally, Germany could more easily apply pressure by withholding the munitions, or the raw materials for their production, of which Hungary’s need was now greater than ever, and her dependence on Germany more complete. As soon as the war broke out, Germany in fact intimated that the time was come for “‘a closer integration of the two economic systems,” the first step towards which should be to abolish exchange subsidies and to increase the value of commercial exchanges. It was also time to alter the system under which the premium of the peng6 in relation to the R.M. was lower than the

premium for free currencies. In connection with this demand, she began immediately to raise the prices of the commodities delivered by her to Hungary.

The Hungarians began by resisting vigorously. Lipdét Baranyai, the Governor of the National Bank, let the pengé follow the downward course of the £ sterling, which he quoted at an unaltered rate, increasing the quotation for the dollar, but treating the R.M. as depreciating at the same rate as the £ and thus leaving its quotation also unaltered.t When Clodius came to Budapest at the end of September, Baranyai refused to alter his quotations, in spite of the German’s strong protests,” and Teleki also refused to grant

the Germans a right of control of exploration and exploitation of oil in Ruthenia to which they claimed to be entitled under the March agreement.’ The Germans had, however, the whip hand; they simply maintained the veto 1 Personal, L. Baranyai to C. A. M. * Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 185; cf. id., 62. 3 See above, p. 332.

PHONEY WAR 373 imposed in the previous July! on fulfilment of the armaments contracts which Hungary had placed in Germany, rejecting repeated requests to lift the ban’;

it was only lifted partially in mid-October.? In December the Hungarians put in a long list of military requirements which they regarded as essential, and on 16th January an agreement was reached. Baranyai modified his exchange policy, although not very greatly—the net result was that freely convertible exchange remained at a basic premium of 50 per cent. plus an additional premium of 10 per cent., while the R.M. remained at a premium of 10 per cent.——and Hungary promised “in the future to aid Germany economically with all her resources.”* In return, Germany would fulfil all the armaments orders already placed, and perhaps take on more orders in the future.

Even after this, however, Hungarian economic co-operation with Germany was very half-hearted.

The Office for Foreign Trade invented a large number of devices for keeping up trade with countries other than Germany.® They were supported, in different fields, by many other Ministries and Offices and by a large proportion of Hungary’s traders and industrialists, whose hearts were usually, for obvious reasons, against Germany, and even by much of the population

at large. If the farmers sometimes resented the restrictions which forbade them to sell their produce at good prices to eager customers, and a regrettably large amount of smuggling, especially of fat livestock, went on across the Austrian frontier, yet the urban population preferred to see Hungary’s foodstuffs lying on their plates at dinner-time than exchanged for foreign currency

of doubtful validity. The extremely lenient rationing system—practically non-existent during the opening months of the war—was a popular concession to this sentiment.

The Ministries concerned, too, fought resourcefully against demands which were often put forward in unscrupulous fashion’; thus, one way and another, despite the extraordinary weakness of the British counter-moves,’ Hungary succeeded during these months in avoiding almost entirely any integration of her economic system into that of Germany, outside the armaments industry, where she was faced with force majeure. She also kept her trading figures with Germany within creditably modest limits. Her exports to Germany in 1937 had been valued at 141-3 million pengé, while 99-0 m.p. had gone to Austria. In 1939 the exports to the enlarged Germany totalled 1 See above, p. 359. 2 Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 9, 238. 3 Id., 253. 4 Id., 469, 545. 5 For details, see the booklet ‘‘Hungarian Economic Resistance against German Penetration”’ (Budapest, 1946). Among these devices were those called by the booklet “Export Scoops,”’ i.e. when Germany paid a higher price than the home market, the National Bank “‘scooped off” the

difference, which was used for promoting exports to other countries, by means of bounties; export premiums, in favour of other countries, conditional exports, whereby some articles were licensed for export to Germany only on condition that the exporter sold a definite quantity of the same goods to free-currency countries, technical obstruction of various kinds, etc. ® Once, when M. Teleki was invited to Germany to discuss agricultural exports, there was a wrangle which lasted during his whole visit over an agreement providing for increased exports, which Darré put forward and Teleki refused to sign. On the last evening, when Teleki was to

possibilities.

be guest of honour at a reception, he was suddenly told that Darré would not appear at the

reception unless Teleki signed. Teleki refused to do so, and the party was almost over, without either him or Darré, before they had agreed that experts should be sent to Germany to study the 7 The British Commercial Corporation, which was supposed to buy against Germany, only came into existence in April 1940, too late to do anything whatever.

374 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH only 304-2 m.p., and in 1940 actually only 251-0 m.p.; whereby it must be remembered not only that the index of wholesale prices was 14 per cent. higher in 1940 than it had been in 1937 but that the area to which the later figures related was substantially larger: the figures for 1939 included the Felvidék and Ruthenia, and those for 1940 Northern Transylvania also. In 1940 Hungary had a passive trade balance with Germany of over 50 m.p., and while Germany’s share in her foreign trade, both imports and exports, inevitably rose, the increase in both cases was much smaller than might have

! been expected: in 1937 her exports to Germany had been 23-9 per cent. and to Austria, 16-9 per cent. of her total exports; in 1939, the percentage for Greater Germany was 50 per cent. and in 1940, 48-9 per cent. The figures for imports were: 1937, 25-9 per cent. and 18-9 per cent.; 1939, 48-1 per cent.; 1940, 51-2 per cent. The propaganda battle went differently. It was, as we have said, Teleki’s

policy to favour the dictators in this field, but even if he had tried to hold the ring fairly, the Germans—numerous, well-equipped, experienced and intelligent—would have wiped the floor with their British antagonists, to whom not one of these adjectives applied, least of all the last. The contrast

between the skilful and intensive German propaganda and the feeble blundering of the British is poignant even to recall. Let a veil be drawn over the subject, and also over the grovellings and caperings of the Hungarian Press, of which the official organs of the MEP—the Fiiggetlenség and the Esti Ujsd4g—made even more nauseating reading than the Press of the Rightwing ‘“‘opposition,’’ while the Pester Lloyd? and Magyarorszdg were little better; nor, for that matter, were most of the nominally independent organs.

Alone among them all, the Magyar Nemzet and the Social Democrat Népszava preserved a semblance of dignity and decency.

In spite of the lengths to which Hungary went to placate and flatter Germany in the Press, and without prejudice to what has been said of the relatively restrained scope of Germany’s demands and policy, it remains true

that Germany was far from satisfied with Hungary’s attitude during these six months. Sztdjay sent repeated warnings of this dissatisfaction, which in his opinion was dangerous and might even lead to Germany’s occupying Hungary—there is no evidence whatever that Germany had any such intention, but the Germans may well purposely have fed the guileless Minister with rumours—and suggesting remedies ranging from a personal letter of flattery from Horthy to Hitler to “a spontaneous offer of our agricultural surplus.’’?

In the West, on the other hand, Hungary’s policy during these months 1 The total trading figures (in millions of pengds) were:

1937 1938 1939 1940

Imports . . 483-6 410-6 489-9 602-5 Exports . . 588-0 522°4 603-7 514-9 2 Since 15th January 1939, the Pester Lloyd had been an official organ of the Hungarian Government, although possessing a constitution (modelled on that of The Times) which left its

editor a limited amount of freedom. In December 1939 it was again banned in Germany, presumably because its Editor-in-chief, M. G. Ottlik, had refused to dismiss certain Jewish members of its staff; it is difficult to see what fault Goebbels himself could have found with its foreign political line, which was dictated to it by the Government. 3 Selections of these messages are given by Lajos and in the Sz. I. MS. Horthy’s present to Hitler of apples and grapes accompanied by a flattering letter (Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 328) presumably represents his attempt to give effect to Sztdjay’s recommendation.

PHONEY WAR 375 met with very generous appreciation. The efforts to drive Hungary into the arms of Germany by inciting the West against her which were afterwards made so vigorously, and ultimately with such success, by her foreign political enemies, headed by the émigré Czechs and by those émigré Hungarians whose

war aim No. 1 it was to overthrow the Hungarian Government at whatever cost to the country whose hospitality they were enjoying, had not yet fully developed, and the British journalists and officials who afterwards became their conscious or unconscious abettors were still few and obscure. Moreover, the jackal legend had been circulated so widely in previous months that when Hungary did not after all join the war at Germany’s side there was a revulsion which possibly even went too far, based as it was in part on a misapprehension of the situation—for it was generally believed that Germany was pressing Hungary to declare war.t On 12th September, according to Lajos, Sargent told Barcza that “‘both the Government and public opinion warmly appreciated Hungary’s policy, which was regarded as cautious and unexceptionable.”” Great Britain fully understood Hungary’s difficult position and did not object to her having failed to declare formal neutrality. ““The important point was whether a country was de facto neutral, not whether it made a public declaration of neutrality.” Barcza’s despatches also acknowledge with satisfaction the “impartial and even benevolent’ attitude of the British Press. In January 1940 Teleki sent Barcza a set of written instructions which the Minister embodied in an aide memoire which he handed to Halifax on 9th February.” The aide memoire was compiled with special relation to Hungary’s claims on Roumania, the elaboration of which is described below? and it is

weighted by the special considerations arising in that connection. But the general tenor of the document, which consisted, in sum, of a plea for the satisfaction by peaceful means of Hungary’s just claims, was also of wider

application. Barcza was also authorised to assure H.M. Government, “sneaking for the highest authorities of his country” that the Hungarian Government:

“1. Had no aggressive intentions towards anyone. “2. Was ready to defend, if need be by force of arms, the independence

and honour of the country against any foreign aggression.

‘3. Would never, in any circumstances whatever, make common cause or undertake common action with the Government of the U.S.S.R.”

Barcza was further authorised to give a verbal interpretation that point 2

applied also to the case of aggression from Germany, and that point 3, although primarily referring to Hungary’s intentions regarding Transylvania, also meant that if the German-Soviet Treaty led to joint action by those two Powers against Great Britain, Hungary would not participate in it.* Lord Halifax, Barcza writes, received this communication “‘with manifest

satisfaction,” and said that Britain recognised and understood Hungary’s difficulties and on that account did not wish to make too much of such points as the Germanophile tone of her Press. She was willing to be “indul1 So on 19th August the News Chronicle had written of the “‘terrific pressure that was being brought to bear on Hungary.” 2 The text of this is in the Sz. 1. MS. Similar instructions were, apparently, given to KhuenHédervary in Paris. 3 See below, pp. 386 ff. 4 Barcza MS.

376 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH gent and lenient,” although she could not stretch leniency infinitely. Mr. Butler used much the same words a few days later (on 15th February). On 8th March Cadogan told Barcza that Horthy “‘was today one of the most popular and most respected of Europe’s leading figures, who was especially

sympathetic to the British because they honoured in him the chivalrous sailor and gentleman.”’ When Mr. Eden took over the Foreign Office from Lord Halifax, Barcza

, reports him as less basically sympathetic than his predecessor had been, and as less confident that, when a crisis came, Teleki would be able to stop short of the line which he had indicated. He seems, too, to have assessed rather higher than Halifax had done the economic and other concessions which Hungary was making to Germany. But he, too, expressed complete faith in Teleki’s intentions, and on another vital point he expressed himself, according

to Barceza, as satisfactorily as his predecessor. The general tone of the Foreign Office, as indeed of the bulk of the Press, had been hitherto that, without prejudice to details, Britain wished to create equitable conditions in South-Eastern Europe at the end of the war and that the Treaty of Trianon

had not been equitable. When, during the first of his two conversations recorded by him with Mr. Eden, Barcza said that the chief propaganda weapon in Germany’s arsenal was the assertion that if the Western Powers

won the war, “they would impose on Hungary another unjust dictated peace,” ““Mr. Eden,” according to Barcza, “‘protested vigorously, saying that

he was well aware that the Treaty of Trianon was a bad and unreasonable one, and I should tell Budapest that if England won the war she would never approve or wish for another Trianon. If we abstained from intervening till the end of the war, we should get our reward; if the contrary, we should not count on understanding from the victors.’’+ The second conversation ran, according to Barcza, on much the same lines; Mr. Eden said that the Treaty of Trianon was mistaken and unjust, and would never be repeated—Hungary need have no fear. It is true that the counsel which he gave to Barcza was the hardly practicable one that Hungary should ally herself with Yugoslavia and Roumania against the common danger, and, although he promised to use Britain’s influence in Belgrade and Bucharest to induce her neighbours to meet Hungary half-way,

he does not seem to have put this in terms tantamount to a serious offer of mediation on a basis which Hungary could be expected to accept. The important practical proof of its goodwill which the British Govern-

ment gave was that it showed great caution in its attitude towards the Czecho-Slovak question. It did not even recognise the Czecho-Slovak Committee until 6th January 1940. On 24th February Mr. Chamberlain spoke of restoring Czech independence. The Hungarian Press reacted violently, and on 7th March Csaky, speaking in the Hungarian Parliament, protested in his usual unmannerly tones. The London correspondent of the Pester Lloyd was then authorised to telegraph the following message: “British war aims in fact

include the restoration of the independence of Czechs and Slovaks. The British Government has, however, in no way committed itself with regard to

the constitutional form, the extent and the frontiers of the new State. As regards Slovakia Britain leaves entirely open the question whether the Slovak State shall enjoy its independence in union with a Czech State, or in

another form. This question is to be decided by the Slovaks themselves. 1 Barcza MS.

PHONEY WAR 377 Beyond the declaration in principle of this war aim, the British Government

has entered into no obligations which might give grounds for complaint (sc. to Hungary).”’ The Czecho-Slovak Committee, it was explained, was a war-time organisa-

State.t |

tion carrying out certain pragmatically necessary duties, and the recognition of it, in that capacity, carried no implication about a future Czecho-Slovak It was worth quoting this statement in full, for the Czech question played a very important part in the struggle between the pro-Allied and pro-German parties in Hungary, each of which magnified every indication, however minute, into proof that the West was or was not, as the case might be, committing itself to the restoration of Czecho-Slovakia. At this time nothing helped the British cause in Hungary more, or more powerfully fortified Teleki’s position, than Britain’s cautious attitude on this point, just as nothing had a stronger — effect in the opposite direction than her change of policy, when it came.

France was usually a step ahead of Britain in her approaches to the Czechs, but kept reasonably well in time on the general question of war aims,

and in one respect even anticipated by more than a year the similar move later made by the British.” Early in 1940 M. de Vienne, who had spent some years in Hungary as French Minister, and was well known and liked there, came to Budapest on a general mission of goodwill and expressed the opinion that if, should a crisis arise, Teleki could persuade the Regent to leave the country and establish an émigré Government in the West, he hoped that this action would be recognised as a sufficient demonstration that Hungary was against Nazism and the Fiihrer, whatever happened afterwards in the country

and whatever Government was set up there. Teleki then asked Lipot Baranyai to get transferred to America a fund sufficient to support a Government in that country; the sum of $1,000,000 was agreed. It was a complicated matter, as a scheme had to be worked out under which the Regent, if he went abroad, could really dispose of the money. After Baranyai had held various conversations, chiefly with Mr. Royall Tyler, whom he met in Trieste, it was arranged to build up a trusteeship under the laws of Panama, and a lawyer

in Paris prepared the necessary documents.* The next phase of this story belongs, however, to a later stage of our history. The internal political history of the period calls for no long description. The Hungarian Parliamentary system of the time did not easily lend itself to the form of a coalition Government, but the considerations which cause

many countries to adopt that form in times of acute crisis operated in Hungary also, and led to the adoption of something not wholly dissimilar in

its working. On 7th September Teleki called together the leaders of the political parties and proposed to them a ““Treuga Dei,” i.e. an arrangement under which the Government undertook not to introduce any controversial legislation, while all proposed measures would be submitted to discussion in Committee, or at inter-Party Conferences, before coming before the House. All the Parties, at this stage, accepted the proposal, and the Government then 1 Pester Lloyd, 8th March 1940. A similar message was given in Pesti Hirlap, with the addition that ‘‘Britain opposed the formation of the Czecho-Slovak Government precisely because

it considered the Hungarian point of view.” 2 A somewhat similar suggestion was, as we shall see, made by H.M. Government in May 1940. To this, however, Teleki was at that time unwilling to accede. 3 Personal, L. Baranyai to C. A. M.

378 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH proceeded quietly with its peace-time programme. The main measure passed

in the autumn was the new Land Reform Act first promised by Imrédy, which now at last reached the Statute Book in approximately the form described above,' although by agreement between the parties concerned (the Smallholders consenting) promulgation of the measure was postponed and in the event, as we shall see, never effected so far as the main body of the Act

was concerned. Some of the ground thus lost was, however, made up in

, another way, for Parliament also gave its blessing to Keresztes-Fischer’s pet baby, the ONCSA,” an organisation for affording help of the most various kinds to large and needy agricultural families, which was remarkable both for the variety and utility of the services rendered, and the effective (largely non-bureaucratic) machinery through which they were supplied.* The other measures enacted in the autumn provided for a statutory, although locally variable, minimum wage in agriculture, pensions for the widows of agricultural labourers and holidays with pay for industrial workers and salaried employees.

Thus labour conditions, which in any case were now beginning to feel the benefit of the legislation enacted in 1937 and 1938, actually improved slightly, for, although the Government was no longer bound to apply the eight-hour day and Sunday rest, it left them untouched in practice, except in munition works, where overtime rates were paid if more than the normal hours were worked. Wages and salaries were fixed by decree, changes being made periodically in connection with the readjustments of prices, which were also fixed legally. Industrial wages on the whole rose faster than the higher salaries, and at first kept pace with the cost of living; agricultural wages, after the enactment of the new law, and as agricultural labour began to grow short under competition from the factories, rose substantially. Since unem-

ployment had almost vanished, the condition of the workers was not unsatisfactory. This was all part of the tacit but effective understanding which had prevailed between the Government and the “‘Left’’ since the outbreak of war—

an understanding which extended also into the political field, since the Government scrupulously respected the rights of the Trade Unions and other ~ Socialist organisations, and never, or practically never, employed its powers of police supervision and internment against Socialist workers, but almost exclusively against the Arrow Cross. The Socialists in return enjoined strict labour discipline on their members, who obeyed the injunction in exemplary fashion: officers and officials in charge of the Government enterprises seldom had any complaints against the workers, and the only large-scale strike of the war—one in the Pécs coal-mines—was an Arrow Cross enterprise.

In Parliament, the Social Democrat Deputies usually maintained the fiction of being an Oppositional party by voting against or abstaining on Government measures, even those of which they approved. But this was only shadow-boxing, since these half-dozen adverse votes could not possibly endanger the Government’s majority, and they did not always even pretend to spar. On 20th January 1940 one of their spokesmen expressly approved Teleki’s foreign policy, and on 24th January the equivalent of the Trades Union Council actually published a manifesto repudiating the suggestion 1 See above, p. 325.

2 Orszagos Nép- és csaladvédelmi Alapot: National Foundation for the protection of the people and the family. 5 A full description of the ONCSA is given in Kovrig, op. cit., pp. 73 ff.

PHONEY WAR 379 that they wanted class domination, declaring their fidelity to constitutionalism

and to the “national objectives of millenary Hungary,”’ to the liberty and independence of which they were devoted, and declaring that in their service

they were willing to co-operate with every honest Magyar. In particular, they recognised the necessity of rearmament.

The Smallholders went further. They did not always even vote against the Government; their spokesman in the Budget debate expressly approved its foreign policy, and the decision to postpone the entry into force of the Land Reform Act was taken with their consent, given privately after negotiation with the Government on the one hand, and Bethlen and his followers on the other. The parties of the Left even largely allowed their own organisations to

lapse. The Social Democrats limited their extra-Parliamentary activities strictly to Budapest and one or two other large industrial centres. It is true, indeed, that they possessed in the Trade Unions an organisation which could always be geared for political action if the occasion arose. The Smallholders and Liberals dropped all activity outside Parliament altogether, so that their parties became mere shadow organisations. In brief, the policy adopted by all the “democratic” and ‘“‘Left-wing”’ leaders alike was to shelter behind the Government, support it unobtrusively, and let it play their game for them; and it should not be concealed that they followed this policy, unmodified, not only under Teleki and KaAllay,’ both

of whom notoriously wanted an Allied victory, but also under Bardossy and even Sztdjay. The stories spread abroad of heroic resistance by these elements to the German Fascists and their Hungarian abettors were pure fiction. Hungarian resistance to Germany throughout the war was directed from the top; its key figures were the Regent, Teleki, Kallay and KeresztesFischer. There was never any internal resistance to Hungarian “‘Fascism,”’ except, to a partial extent, from the handful of Communists, after Moscow had ordered it. This is a statement of historical fact, not an accusation, for up to a point the attitude described was wise and realistic. By this means, and only so, the persons concerned were able to preserve for their followers a substantial

amount of freedom throughout the war, not to mention that their own persons remained available for the task of building up democracy for the new Hungary. It is another question whether some of them did not carry it too far, especially at the end, and it is certain that their passivity during the war years left them estranged from the masses and sadly disorganised. This, together with the habit of shrinking from responsibility ingrained in them by

centuries when all participation in public affairs was denied them and enhanced by their present policy, contributed largely to the lamentable showing which they made in 1945 and after. What that showing would have been like had not Kallay allowed them a year’s freedom in 1942-43 is a picture

at which the imagination boggles. But had they not ducked into their dugouts in 1939-44 they would not even have lived to run away in 1945-47. A fortiori, none of the parties or groups of the Left seem, at this period, even to have considered combining with the others, even in a shadow organisation. The “Independence Front,” of which we shall have so much to say 1 Their loud-mouthed activity under K4allay was really no more oppositional than their silence under his predecessors, since it was done by arrangement with and even under orders from Kallay himself.

380 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH in describing developments under Kallay, was not yet even a conception in

the minds of its later participants. It was dimly adumbrated only in one quarter: a little circle organised by S. Peths, editor-in-chief of the Magyar Nemzet and himself member of a group which derived its money from Baron

Moritz Kornfeld, its protection from Count Bethlen, and its intellectual prestige from Professor Szekfii, Hungary’s foremost modern historian. Peth6 worked through the Magyar Nemzet with a courage and ingenuity

| which should have put the professed oppositional politicians to shame, to keep alive in Hungary faith in an Allied victory, and also to keep alive, inside

the country, those moral and political values in which he saw the nation’s only sure and ultimate defence against totalitarianism. Exactly like Kossuth before him, Peth6 argued that the existing ruling classes constituted too narrow a basis for this defence. It was necessary to enlist the co-operation of the non-privileged classes, even at the cost of sacrifice of their advantages by the privileged. He preached this doctrine in his columns, which he also threw open to writers from the non-privileged classes, including, notably, some of the “‘Village Explorers.’ In January 1940 he even attended a Social Democrat meeting and told it that the historic classes had “‘sinned grievously”’ against the Hungarian workers in leaving them to fight their battles alone.

Petho’s doctrine that class interests should be sacrificed to national interest found few disciples at the time. Then he was killed in a motor

accident, and, for a while, no one more preached it. Later, as we shall see, it was revived, and when it became popular, there were many claimants for the honour of its spiritual fatherhood. Pethd could have shown a better title than any of these, although he would assuredly have repudiated the forms into which the “Independence Front’? was, under foreign pressure, ultimately twisted, and, although his work was cut short, it did not altogether perish with him. He had founded a tradition, and it was once again in the Magyar Nemzet that the doctrine was first repopularised in 1942. The “‘Dissidents’”’ had withdrawn altogether from political life. Bethlen contented himself with patronising a newspaper, the 8-Orai Ujsdg, which maintained a discreetly anti-German attitude. The only political “‘tendency,” the objects of which differed from the avowed principles of the Government, now to develop increased activity was that of the Legitimists, among whose circles a greater boldness of utterance and an increased optimism were clearly perceptible. But their activities, such as they were, were carried out chiefly

in the international field: in the U.S.A., in France, perhaps even in Great Britain. The writer knows of no serious move made by them in Hungary during this period to widen the circle of their adherents. Neither was any spontaneous flow of recruits into the Legitimist camp perceptible. Naturally, with things in the melting-pot and the prospect of another reorganisation of Central Europe in view at the end of the war, more people than before were talking in terms of a “‘larger unit,”’ and one theoretically possible form which

this might take would be that of a Habsburg Monarchy. But while the negative advantages of this—that it would exclude Pan-Germanism or Little Entente domination—were appreciated, the number of Hungarians who saw in it something desirable in itself did not increase noticeably. On the other side, the ‘‘Cs Group” in the MEP gave Teleki some trouble

over his domestic programme, notably the Agricultural Wages Bill, over * Those Village Explorers against whom prosecutions had been started in 1937 were amnestied in February 1940.

PHONEY WAR 381 which they threatened to leave the Party unless the first draft was revised; but allowed themselves to be pacified by concessions. What they wanted was high prices and low wages, not political innovations. Imrédy, deeply mortified over the revelations about his origin, the laughter over which had still not died away, spoke rarely and uncontroversially, mainly on financial topics, and made no apparent bid for power. Teleki was thus able to retain his hold over his own Party and even to eliminate two of Imrédy’s special nominees

from the Government: as early as 25th July Kunder had relinquished the portfolio of Industry to S. Varga, one of Teleki’s own followers, who on the 27th October also took over Trade and Communications. Another Teleki man, Radocsay, succeeded Tasnadi-Nagy as Minister of Justice on 9th November. The genuine and active opposition was thus reduced to the Arrow Cross

Front, or rather to the survivors of that formation, which had crumbled at the edges with the outbreak of war: Mesko, for example, went pure antiGerman nationalist and his chief lieutenant, Szemere, joined the Smallholders. The Palffy-Baky Nationalist Socialists accepted the Treuga Dei, and voted for the Government on the Budget, as did some other smaller groups. This left Szalasi’s followers, under the uneasy regency of Hubay, as the sole party in Hungary which was both professedly and genuinely oppositional. They, too, began by accepting the Truce, but when Teleki refused to

release Szalasi and to repeal Order 3400, and interned a number of their members, they denounced it and went into vociferous opposition. The Government, however, turned its heaviest artillery on them, aided in this operation by their own indiscipline and indiscretions, since a number of the smaller fry and even one or two leaders chose to engage in a series of fantastic plots on which the police easily pounced. One Deputy (Gruber) was deprived

of his mandate and sentenced to imprisonment for treasonable utterances, blackmail, and assault and battery. Five other Deputies left the Party; four more, while nominally remaining in it, in practice formed an “opposition group” to Hubay within it. Its own organ admitted that enthusiasm for the Cause was dying away in the country: no new members were enrolling and old ones were dropping off, partly because of the ineffectiveness of the Deputies’ Parliamentary activity, partly because “‘the masses suspected the Arrow Cross of serving foreign interests and of betraying Hungary to them.” Another operative factor was the full employment and the Government’s policy of calling up subversive elements for military service, where they were under strict control. Even the Volksdeutsch movement was feeling the draught. The honest Swabians lost much of their enthusiasm for the Cause when a rumour ran round that they were to be “repatriated” to Germany and sent to fight for the Fatherland. Many of them joined Teleki’s “spontaneous loyalty’”’ move-

ment. Others were re-Magyarising their names or even trying to prove French descent. There was one problem which did not fit entirely into this general picture: that of the newly recovered areas. In the Felvidék, the greater number of the local Slovaks, while not actually rebellious, were sullen and discontented. More serious, in view of their larger numbers, was the discontent felt, and actively expressed, by the local Magyars, who were still inclined to represent 1 The ancestors of some of the ‘‘Swabian’’ colonists had originally come from Lorraine, although their descendants had Germanised in a couple of generations.

382 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH themselves as the bringers of a new cleansing spirit into the stuffy, if not charnel, atmosphere of Hungarian social and political life. Their criticisms reflected a genuine distaste for many of the conditions in Trianon Hungary, and it was unfortunate that the aspects of Hungarian life attacked by them were precisely those which formed the favourite targets of Czech critics; nor were the comments of the Felvidékiek always very tactfully expressed, so that they caused considerable irritation to the Trianon Magyars, who had expected their liberated brothers to want only a complete return to the old days and ways. There was no question of danger; both sides agreed that the quarrel, such as it was, was “‘one between brothers.’ But there was enough oppositional feeling in the district to make the Government nervous, especially as elections in the area had been promised. At present, the Felvidék Deputies who had entered Parliament in 1938 were still holding together as a party which was

nominally allied with the MEP; but many of its members notoriously sympathised more with the Christians or the Smallholders, while Jaross and some others were in close friendship with Imrédy. It was rumoured that the party might fight the elections on an independent, oppositional programme. To avert this danger, the Government entered into complex negotiations with Jaross, which ended on Ist February 1940 by the Party’s fusing with the MEP, which on 14th March took over its local organisations. Jaross’s office was now closed, and an Order in Council, authorising the elections for an unspecified but near date, was issued. This did not, indeed, entirely solve the problem of the Felvidék spirit, for many even of the Deputies were discontented with the agreement—which had been concluded over their heads—

and remained a turbulent element inside the MEP; but it averted the immediate crisis.

In Ruthenia matters were more delicate still, although the Hungarian authorities behaved with more leniency and sagacity towards the population than many had expected. They took more of the local intelligentsia into their

service than the Czechs had ever done, and drew a generous sponge over many dubious pasts. Considerable sums of money were devoted to economic improvements; it was unfortunate that large-scale investment was impossible

at that juncture, so that the one economic blessing of which the Ruthenes could be sure—and that was one which they did not particularly appreciate— was that of full employment.

But there was a shortage of competent administrators for the area, and

Ukrainian and even Russian nationalism proved stronger than the Hungarians themselves had expected. Although the promise of autonomy was not revoked but even repeated on 20th October, the Government did not

dare honour it... The area remained under martial law, tempered by Perényi’s regime in Ungvar. The maintenance of internal peace was greatly facilitated by the prevalence

of favourable economic conditions. What with orders from abroad and the 1 The Autonomy Bill was actually introduced in Parliament on 25th July 1940, but then allowed to drop. This was strongly against the wishes of Teleki, who had hoped through the Bill

to show that Hungary could set an example in her treatment of national minorities, and also against the advice of Perényi; but the local Magyar leaders succeeded in influencing ‘“‘competent quarters” against it by invoking considerations of military security, and Teleki, who, as will be described, was at that point at loggerheads with the military over several questions, was obliged to yield on this.

PHONEY WAR 383 domestic rearmament programme, something like full employment prevailed,

although a few factories, notably in the textile industry, suffered from the shortage of imported raw materials. The cost of living had risen only 2 per cent. by the end of the year. Wages had kept pace with this, and the farmers were getting good prices. The maize crop was below average, in consequence

of which some cattle had to be slaughtered. Nevertheless, the only commodities in really short supply were tea, coffee and a few similar imports: the only rationing measure introduced in 1939 was the establishment of two ‘“‘meatless days’? weekly, but, as only butcher’s meat was banned, this measure

was not unduly painful. A standard loaf, with an extraction rate of 75 per cent., was introduced in the spring, followed by sugar and fat cards, giving, however, generous allowances. The winter was, indeed, exceptionally severe

and was followed by devastating floods, the worst within living memory. Nevertheless, Hungary even in the spring of 1940 was an island of plenty and well aware of the fact.

By this time a considerable proportion of the male adult population had received some military instruction, although, owing to shortage of officers and N.C.O.s and lack of time, men had been kept with the colours only for two years, that is, two twenty-week periods instead of the three provided by the Military Service Law. The compulsory Levente service provided a useful preliminary. The old “‘mixed brigades,’ now eight in number had been expanded into as many “‘corps,”’ each containing three brigades (dandar). The theoretical “‘war strength’? of each brigade was two three-battalion

regiments, with a battery of artillery to each battalion; in fact, until the summer of 1944, no attempt was ever made to achieve this, and “‘mobilisa-

tion” of a unit constituted bringing it up to “‘enlarged peace-strength”’ (felemelt békelétszam) of one regiment per brigade. The cavalry brigade now formed part of a mobile corps, which was completed by two motorised brigades. The two mountain regiments had similarly become brigades, and the list was completed by two brigades of Frontier Chasseurs, for mobile frontier defence, the Danube Flotilla, the Air Force and the Anti-Aircraft services.

The man-power position was thus now relatively satisfactory, for full mobilisation even at “‘enlarged peace strength’? would produce a force of some 450,000 men. The position as regards material was much weaker. Strenuous efforts had been made to catch up for lost time, and, above all, to free Hungary from dependence on foreign sources of supply, but much of this

programme of necessity still remained unfulfilled and must remain so, in some respects for long years, in others for ever, for lack of certain essential raw materials and of the plant to produce heavy equipment and even certain

essential components of relatively light articles. Hungary possessed an efficient chemical industry and a number of steel and engineering works which could be and already had been adapted to war purposes; a reasonable supply of brown coal and a rapidly developing oil production. She had, however,

little hard coal, no plant to produce fine oil or aircraft spirit, little home

production of raw iron, lead or copper, and none whatever of nickel, chromium, wolfram, molybdenum, etc. She was now producing sufficient explosives for her needs, an adequate number of rifles and other small arms, and a few light guns and howitzers, and light armoured-cars; but even for the 1 There was, for example, no factory capable of producing ball-bearings.

384 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH continuance of production of most of these articles, and for the great bulk of ready made arms of any but the lightest character, she was still dependent on purchase. Political difficulties had, as we have seen, delayed fulfilment of the orders which she had placed in Germany—necessarily her chief, and best, source of supply," and what she was getting from other quarters was either meagre in quantity or poor in quality. Her existing stocks would carry her through a short campaign against an enemy in the same position, but no more. The “motorised brigades,” for example, were composed mainly of cyclists stiffened by a few armoured cars.

After the imposition of the joint Axis-Allied veto on disturbance of the peace in South-Eastern Europe, the Hungarian Government could do little towards realising the “‘national objectives’ except clear the ground and manceuvre for position. Even this, however, involved extensive activity in all three directions, although the nature and object of the activity differed in each case. The nature of the Czecho-Slovak problem, and of Hungary’s approach to it, had been defined by the events of March 1939, and was to remain unaltered until the end of the war. If Slovakia was ever to be reincorporated, this could

only be with the consent of Germany, and although both Csaky and Werth seem to have clung to the belief that Germany might, under certain circumstances, lift her protecting hand from Slovakia, the documents do not show any attempts to induce her to do so, nor any intrigues with pro-Hungarian

elements in Slovakia. Hungary continued to make to the Slovak State persistent and not altogether insincere protestations of her wish to live on amicable terms with it; the Slovaks continued to reject these overtures, consistently and contumeliously. There was no mollifying them, and relations between the two States accordingly consisted (and this holds true up to 1944) almost exclusively of a series of dismal bickerings, which varied only in their

intensity; normally rising to a fortissimo when Germany’s attention was occupied elsewhere and sinking to a muted grumble when she intervened to shut the combatants up. The peak period during the first six months occurred in March 1940. On 3rd April, after the Slovaks had been more than usually provocative both in word and in their treatment of the Magyar minority, M.

Szull6, now a member of the Hungarian Upper House, delivered a prearranged “‘interpellation,” to which Csaky replied in a forceful and even threatening tone. The Slovaks now became less vocally hostile, but not less hostile in their hearts.

The second and still more important object of Hungary’s ‘“CzechoSlovak”’ policy was to prevent the rebirth, in any form, of a Czechoslovak or Czecho-Slovak State. This was a problem the answer to which, at that time, lay only in London and Paris. Hungary could do little here beyond making known as cogently as possible her absolute hostility to any resuscitation of her old enemy, even within the post-Munich frontiers. Csaky expressed the Government’s point of view on various occasions in his usual offensive terms, and the Press reinforced these official statements with a flow of articles of great virulence and vulgarity, attacking the Czech politicians and dilating on * In December Hungary asked Germany to accept contracts for more than 127 million R.M. (Doc. G.F.P., D. VIII, 469). According to Csaky, of 450 million pengé made available to the hake in January, 170 m.p. were earmarked for orders to Germany and 150 m.p. for orders to

PHONEY WAR , 385 the obnoxious and artificial nature of their ambitions. That feeling on this point was genuinely nation-wide was shown by the fact that even the Magyar Nemzet joined in the campaign; only the Népszava showed, ex silentio, that it did not endorse the official policy.

It has already been noted that the attitude of the British and French Governments during the period was not unsympathetic to Hungary’s views on this question, and that this sign of grace greatly enhanced the popularity of the Allies and of Teleki’s policy of courting their favour.

Since Teleki’s influence had become the dominant one in Hungarian foreign policy, the previous rather half-hearted and doubtfully sincere readiness to cut the country’s losses in Yugoslavia in return for that country’s abandonment of its former allies had been giving way to an active, and, at least in Teleki’s own case, wholly sincere search for its friendship: partly for the old purpose of isolating Roumania but partly because, as we have said, Teleki saw in Yugoslavia’s friendship an invaluable support against Germany.

The increased pressure from Germany and the disappearance of Poland sharpened this wish in his mind, and the national policy was directed accordingly. There was no longer even any mention of terms. On 14th September Csaky said that Hungary was prepared to leave it to Yugoslavia whether she wished to conclude a minorities pact with Hungary. On 17th November he said that he “‘could not suggest any conflict of interests between Hungary and Yugoslavia which time could not resolve. A strong Yugoslavia was a direct Hungarian interest.”’ Many later speeches by him and by other Ministers were in the same vein, and flattering articles on the country and its

rulers were launched in the Press whenever the most far-fetched excuses could be manufactured, or even in their absence. It is true that the Hungarians were, as usual, keeping a second iron in the fire. In the summer of 1939 the new Consul-General in Zagreb, Bartok, had renewed the contacts with the Croat leaders, which for a time had been allowed to lapse. His reports! show Macek and Krnyevic expressing to him their doubts whether Yugoslav unity would survive the world crisis; on 27th January 1940 Krnyevié said that neither he nor Macek saw any other reason-

able solution for Yugoslavia’s future than federation with an independent

Hungary “without any German or Italian protectorate, and including Dalmatia as a sine qua non.” On New Year’s Eve 1939 Ullein-Reviczky visited Maéek, celebrated with him a revival of their old friendship, and discussed the situation which would arise if Yugoslavia broke up. They then renewed their old agreement that in such case the frontier between the two

countries should be the historic one, except that Croatia should have the Murakéz.2 Probably some even less reputable contacts were maintained elsewhere.

A more fastidious diplomacy would have eschewed these contacts altogether, but it must in fairness be emphasised that the purpose of them was not to weaken Yugoslavia but to ensure that, if Yugoslavia did break up,

the beneficiary in Croatia should be Hungary and not Italy. The opposite view held by Italy on this point gave rise, incidentally, to a sharp exchange between Csdky and Ciano when they met in Rome in January 1940.° Italy was really anxious to grab Croatia and Dalmatia, and was doing all she 1 A series of these is reproduced in the Sz. I. MS. 2 Personal, Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M. 8 Ciano Papers, p. 331.

2C

386 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH dared, in view of Germany’s veto, to promote the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Hungary was not doing this, and even sent the Yugoslav Government various warnings of, and information about, Italy’s intentions.* As for Yugoslavia: she returned flattery with politeness, made a few concessions to the Magyar minority in the Voivodina, and signed a spate of cultural agreements and some economic ones.” Further than that she would

not go, partly out of consideration for Roumania but partly for other

| reasons. The more chauvinistic elements, who felt a new confidence since the increased consolidation which the Sporazum had brought Yugoslavia,

saw no particular reason to seek Hungary’s friendship. They regarded Hungary simply as a pawn of the enemy colour and, confident that the war would end in the defeat of Germany, even thought that this would give them a chance of extending their frontiers still further at Hungary’s expense.* It

was not until the collapse of France that these circles began to think in soberer terms, and until they did so, the rapprochement with Hungary could make no serious progress. The question which bulked much the largest of all was the Roumanian. Although in September Hungary had perforce renounced her plan of a swift ‘dash to the Carpathians,” this had only meant postponing the realisation of her ambitions; not abandoning them. The Government had now definitely decided that no solution short of territorial revision on a large scale could be acceptable,* and there were only two questions on which opinion was divided:

whether anything less than the integral restoration of all territory lost in 1919-20 could be accepted, and what situation should be taken as allowing, or indeed compelling, the presentation of the claim. Hungary obviously could not single-handed defy a ban jointly imposed

by all five major European Powers and also by Yugoslavia. But it was generally assumed that Russia would before long make demands of some sort on Roumania, and the forward party in Hungary argued that when this moment came, Hungary, too, must act. The situation when Roumania’s armies were occupied on her eastern front would be Hungary’s opportunity, and it would even be fatal to let it slip, since, once satisfied, Russia might well conclude a non-aggression pact with Roumania which would allow her to

concentrate all her armies against Hungary; or even, conceivably, might

guarantee her. The Hungarian General Staff even advocated making advance arrangements with Russia for co-ordinated action®; in any case they

insisted that Hungary must move at once, if Russia did so. As early as 1 Personal, Yuki¢ to C. A. M. Some of these warnings were sent personally by the Regent (using Kozma as his messenger) to Prince Paul.

* The results were not particularly far-reaching. Hungary’s exports to Yugoslavia in 1940 were valued at only 22-5 million pengo, and her imports from Yugoslavia at 33:3 m.p. Both figures were, however, substantially above those for 1938. 3 Several reports from Bakach-Bessenyey in the Sz. I. MS. stress the extent to which Francophile and chauvinist influences had gained ground in Belgrade since the outbreak of war. One even says that some Serbs thought of seizing Csepel and its works at the end of the war. * In February 1940 the present writer quoted to both Teleki and Kanya statements made by each of them to him on previous occasions that the true solution of the Transylvanian problem was autonomy. Each replied, in almost identical words, that this was out of date: Hungary was asking for more now, and meant to have it. Csaky, too, told him that Hungary ‘“‘had lost faith in minority protection and would no longer be content with it.” * According to Suhaj, Werth even instructed General Faraghé, who was appointed Military Attaché to Moscow in the autumn, to open conversations with the Russian General Staff. But Faragho’s departure was delayed, and he arrived too late. . It may be remarked that, as we shall see, the General Staff steadily upheld this point of

view.

PHONEY WAR 387 September Csaky seems to have consulted Rome on the point, for on Sth October he told a Ministerial Council that the Italians’ advice was that Hungary should remain inactive, even if Russia moved. Bartha then said “that was impossible: he would resign,” and Werth said that ‘““Germany

would not want to see Russia at the mouth of the Danube. If Russia

attacked Roumania, Hungary should join in and occupy all Transylvania.’””} Teleki himself well saw the danger of missing the golden opportunity, nor

was he sure that he could carry the Government with him on a policy of abstinence. On the other hand, he detested the idea of co-operating with Russia and still believed that no gain for Hungary would be permanent unless

sanctioned by the West. He, therefore, now sent an unofficial emissary to England to sound opinion there. The agent’s report was that the position would be delicate. Some circles would inevitably attack Hungary if she moved at all, and, in any case, it was essential that she should make her demands moderate, not such as would make the continued existence of Roumania impossible, for Britain regarded the existence of the Roumanian

State as a European necessity and a postulate of the principle of selfdetermination. If, however, she kept her claims to what opinion must recognise as reasonable, and if she presented her case on its own merits and avoided any suspicion of complicity with either Russia or Germany, she might get away with it, particularly if it seemed likely that the alternative to her occupying any area would be its occupation by the U.S.S.R. On receiving this report, Teleki mobilised his historical, geographical and demographic experts to work out a statement of claims, or rather a series of claims, ranging from a maximum which Hungary would hope to obtain to a minimum which she would declare irreducible.?. The difference between these, however, was only one of degree, for all alike, boldly grasping the nettle, started from the postulate that Hungary insisted on possession of the

Szekel area, in the extreme south-east of Transylvania, and of a broad corridor running from that area, through Kolozsvar, to the historic frontier of Transylvania. West of the Bihar mountains the north and centre of the ‘‘Crisana’”’ were claimed as a matter of right, but not the Banat. In this way, although, according to Hungarian statistics, some 350,000 Magyars would have been left in Roumania, the bulk of them would have been restored to

Hungary, and although, admittedly, “‘some hundreds of thousands” of Roumanians would have accompanied them, it could be claimed that retrocession of this area would satisfy ethnic justice as completely as the entangled

local conditions allowed. But it left the northern tip of Transylvania and the Maramaros, which were admittedly mainly non-Magyar, hanging in the air in an impossible geographical position, and the areas immediately south of the corridor (which also contained a considerable Magyar population) in one which was almost as difficult. The maximum claim therefore included

all the northern area—although some minor concessions were thought possible—while the maximum line in the south ran along the Maros and as far as Teius, thence eastward, passing south of Medias and Sighisoara and south-eastward to take in the plain of Brasov. The minimum line ran somewhat further north. The total maximum claim would have restored Hungary 78,000 sq. km. of the 103,000 which she had lost in 1919, with a population, 1 Barczy.

2 The vagueness of the description which follows is regretted, but it is written from an old memory, the original document having passed out of my possession years ago.

388 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH according to Hungarian statistics, of 4,200,000, 50 per cent. of them Roumanians, 37 per cent. Magyars and 10 per cent. Germans. The minimum claim was for 50,000 sq. km. with a population of 2,700,000, about equally divided between Magyars and Roumanians. A long accompanying memorandum, Teleki’s own work, presented the

usual historical, geographical and other arguments. It said that Hungary regarded herself as legally entitled to all Transylvania,’ but renounced part of her rights in the interests of peace, and in order not to include more Roumanians than necessary. Special stress was laid on strategic considerations. The memorandum pointed out that the Szekel settlements guarded the main passes from Russia into Central Europe, including in particular the Focsani Gap. It was essential that those passes should be in the hands of a State willing and able to defend them, and Hungary was the only State on which Europe could depend to fulfil this role. It was for that reason that the Brasov plain, which guarded the Predeal Pass, was claimed. It would be otiose to describe in detail the official exchanges which had

been taking place meanwhile between Hungary and Roumania. On 2\st November, and again on Ist December, Csaky had said that Hungary desired

peace with Roumania; but on both occasions he had intimated clearly enough that this must be bought at Hungary’s price. The Roumanian reply had been simply that no concession of any kind was thinkable. Now, towards the end of November, certain articles in the Soviet Press gave rise to rumours that Russia was on the point of presenting her claims. As M. Gafencu has explained in his memoirs,” the answers returned to his enquiries in Britain and France convinced him that the British guarantee would not operate effectively against the U.S.S.R. Germany, although she does not seem to have gone much further than Britain, might at least, by its good offices, “‘limit and restrain, if it could not halt, the danger of a Soviet

thrust.”’ In this hope, Roumania made further very large political and economic concessions to Germany, and on 22nd December King Carol sent V. Antonescu to Rome, partly in the hope of enlisting the Italians’ support

against Russia, but primarily—this seems clear—in order to get them to restrain Hungary; for he told Ciano that any threat to her rear from Hungary would oblige Roumania to come to terms with Russia. Ciano refused to commit Italy to anything definite, but, while recom-

mending Antonescu to show goodwill, promised “to talk to Budapest recommending moderation and a spirit of conciliation.”’* On 26th December

Mussolini agreed to Ciano’s “transmitting the Roumanian demand to Hungary,’ which could be done when Csaky, who had just been invited to come to Italy for consultations,° arrived.

The rumours about Russia had, of course, reached Hungary also. On 12th December Werth had submitted a fresh memorandum, arguing that in 1 The memorandum claimed that the Treaty of Trianon was invalid, owing to the conditions under which it had been imposed; the last legally valid instrument affecting the HungaroRoumanian frontier was therefore the armistice of Belgrade, if not that of Padua (the Belgrade armistice of 13th November 1918 had laid down a demarcation line running across Transylvania;

tD. of Padua, of 3rd November 1918, had not mentioned the Hungaro-Roumanian frontier at ° 2 Op. cit., pp. 257 ff. 3 Ciano Diary, 23rd December 1939. 4 Jd., 26th December; cf. also Papers, pp. 329-30. Mussolini also promised Roumania, /e cas eeueant weary support (sc. against Russia) of the kind Italy had given Franco in Spain.

PHONEY WAR 389 such circumstance Hungary ‘“‘could in no case remain passive,’ but must attack Roumania simultaneously and recover “‘the whole of Transylvania.”’ The Supreme Defence Council considered the position at two meetings, on 19th December and 22nd December respectively. Both Keresztes-Fischer and Teleki had qualms, Teleki saying that the less and the later Hungary intervened, the less bad the after-effects would be. But even he no longer stood out for complete passivity. The Government accordingly worked out a memorandum defining the conditions under which Hungary would insist on intervening. These were: 1. If there was a massacre of minorities. 2. If there was a Bolshevik revolution in Roumania. 3. If Roumania ceded minority districts without fighting to either Russia or Bulgaria.

On 6th January 1940, Csaky went to Venice, and spent that day and the next with Ciano.? Although other questions were touched on, including that of Yugoslavia,

over which the two men had a fairly sharp difference, the important topic was that of Roumania. Cuiano, apparently, said that he had pressed conciliation on Roumania and asked Hungary in her turn not to intervene until the end of the war, even if Russia entered Bessarabia.* In return, he promised to intercede in Hungary’s favour when the time for a settlement came.* To this Csaky replied by exhibiting Hungary’s statement of claims, as outlined above (apparently the maximum statement), and saying categorically that ‘“‘any agreement with Roumania which did not bring with it these territorial concessions would produce a revolt in Hungary, and no Government would be able to impose it on the country.” He did, however, make the following statement: “The Hungarian Government appreciated the needs of the moment and was prepared to postpone settling of accounts with Roumania to a more

propitious moment. It would do nothing at the moment to weaken Roumania’s resistance to Russia. He asked Ciano to inform the Roumanian Government that if Russia attacked Roumania, and Roumania offered armed resistance, Hungary would observe benevolent neutrality towards Roumania.

She would however, intervene immediately if any one of three conditions were fulfilled,” (these being those given above). If Ciano ever tried at all to intervene in Roumania, his recommendations did not produce the slightest effect. Each fresh speech from Bucharest was

only more intransigent than the last. The deadlock remained unbroken throughout the winter months. The only apparent change in the situation was that Roumania’s relations with Germany grew even more cordial and 1 Summary in Barczy. 2 This interview is fully recorded by Ciano (Papers, pp. 330-2). The Hungarian documents do not cover it. 3 This is not stated in so many words in Ciano’s account, but emerges from allusions.

4 This also is not stated in the Papers, nor by Mussolini to Ribbentrop at their meeting of 11th March (Ciano Papers, p. 351), but the writer was informed of the fact at the time (L. Béri to C. A. M.) and Italy’s further policy is in accordance. Cf. also Hitler to Mussolini, 6th March 1940; Hitler ‘“‘was glad to hear that Ciano had exercised his good efforts in Hungary to induce her to postpone [sic] her revisionist claims, just or unjust [sic].” 5 Cjano’s summary of the Hungarian claims shows that it was the maximum demand which, as was to be expected, Csaky laid before him.

390 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH intimate: so intimate that even the Western Allies began to boggle at them,

while Hungary, naturally, grew nervous in the extreme. The Balkan Conference met at the beginning of February. It caused Hungary acute nervousness owing to the rumours that Bulgaria was being squared and a Balkan bloc, under Turkish patronage, brought into being; she only breathed again when Bulgaria’s demands proved too high and Yugoslavia and Turkey decided not to burn their fingers for Roumania’s sake. At the Conference, M. Gafencu, apparently, even boasted to his colleagues that “‘Roumania could have a German guarantee against Hungary whenever she wanted one,” and one version that reached Hungary was that the guarantee had already been given. In reply to a direct enquiry, Germany denied very strongly that she had guaranteed Roumania, or proposed to guarantee her, or even to

| conclude a political agreement with her,’ so that this particular fear was removed. On the other hand, the first shadows of a fresh complication—one which was destined to develop into a problem of the first magnitude—now fell over the scene. Early in February Teleki wrote to Sztdjay,” drawing attention to reports which had reached him that the Germans were preparing quarters for two divisions of their own in Eperjes (PreSov), in Eastern Slovakia.? Sztdjay was asked to enquire discreetly ‘“‘whether there was not a danger that German

troops would sooner or later cross our territory, or, if Russia attacked Roumania, whether German troops would not try to get into Roumania before the Russians, crossing Hungarian territory.’’ In a detailed reply, dated 9th February, Sztéjay answered that although he had no definite information, he thought such a German move quite possible in three cases: (1) If Russia entered Roumania and did not stop on the Pruth, but advanced towards the oil-fields. (2) If the Entente landed in the Balkans, thus endangering the oilsupplies from that side. (3) If Roumania herself ““spontaneously and malevolently’’ stopped the supplies. In short, if the oil-wells were endangered, it was probable—as his despatch went on, Sztojay grew more and more certain—that German Panzer divisions “would rush to the oil-wells by the quickest and shortest route, sparing no territories or interests.’”*

This raised the problem of what Hungary should do if Germany asked for, or enforced, passage of her troops to Roumania. It appears that Teleki had a conversation on the subject with the new British Minister, O’Malley, either in February or early March,° in the course of which he only said that he could not commit himself on the subject; speaking, indeed, in somewhat irritated tones.°®

It does, however, appear that the Hungarians, either at the Csaky-Ciano 2 The letter has not survived, but its contents can be deduced from Sztdjay’s reply to it. 3 The source of the reports was the Greek Catholic Bishop of Ungvar, who passed them, inter alios, to C. A. M. I do not know whether there was any foundation for them. * Sz. I. MS. The German General Staff was in fact working out plans to occupy Roumania in the events listed by Sztojay, and originally thought of enlisting Hungary’s co-operation; although

the Hungarians should not have known this. ° It was certainly before Teleki’s visit to Rome, for in reporting on that visit he said that “the had told Mussolini the same as he had told O’Malley about the German transit.” ® In reporting on his later interview (22nd April) with O’Malley, which is described below, Teleki said that he “‘had told him as he had before.”

PHONEY WAR 391 meeting or as a result of it, made the important concession that they would

not consider the simple cession of Bessarabia to Russia as grounds for inter- | vention, and in the following weeks Teleki further modified the statement of conditions, partly as the result of consultation with an English friend of his

who was in Budapest at the time. As now modified, it ran that Hungary would not regard the cession of Bessarabia to the U.S.S.R. as justifying action on her part, “‘since she considered Bessarabia to be no concern of hers’’; the

Russian stimulus would operate only “if Russia should attack Roumania

successfully and thus threaten to overrun the Balkans.’ Alternatively, Hungary would act if Roumania offered the Dobruja to Bulgaria. In the former case she would immediately advance to the Carpathians, there to stop the advance of the Russians’; in the latter, she “‘would insist on the justice of a similar settlement of the Transylvanian question and would do all in her power to bring it about.”’ She would remain inactive if the Allied armies in the Near East came to Roumania’s aid. Finally: “even in the event of a Hungarian dash to the Carpathians . . . the occupation of Transylvania made necessary by this move would not be considered as a final settlement; the question would, at the end of the war, be submitted to the Peace Conference for a further decision.’”*

The “‘statement of claims,’ with the maps and statistics and the long supporting argument, was now handed to a number of Governments, including those of the Western Powers (who had, incidentally, already been informed by Ciano of the Venice conversations and had expressed “‘satisfaction” with them)* and the U.S.A., as well as Germany. It seems to have been on this occasion that Barcza and Khuen-Hédervary were given the further aide-mémoire and authorised to make the declarations described above.® In Berlin, Sztéjay was instructed to state with emphasis that:

“It is in our view an absolute sine qua non that the settlement of the Roumanian (Transylvanian) question should follow within the framework of the present European conflict.’”® Finally, a statement of Hungary’s ‘“‘conditions of action” was given to the

Budapest correspondent of The Times and printed in that journal on 22nd February.

As the Russian scare now died down, the question ceased, in any case, to be quite actue/, but this did not mean that the Hungarians had permanently 1 Ciano does not show Csaky as agreeing to any modification of his conditions, but the explicit

renunciation of interest in the Bessarabian question was an important concession, and the Italians appear to have claimed credit from the Germans for having persuaded Hungary “to

postpone her revisionist claims, just or unjust.” 2 In explanation (not in excuse) of the overweening self-confidence reflected in these words

it must be recalled that all Europe was at that moment deeply influenced by the success of the Finnish resistance to Russia and consequently rated the Soviet’s military capacities very low. Csaky told Ciano that Hungary was confident of being able to contain a Russian attack, if made

on Ruthenia, “if helped with arms and a few specialists.” 7

Werth, who got his information from the Germans, always rated the Soviet military power

extraordinarily low. According to Barczy, he told the Supreme Defence Council on 22nd December 1939 that Russia did not possess a single General capable of commanding three

divisions. This was because Stalin had liquidated all the trained soldiers. . .

3 This last phrase is practically verbatim the work of the friend in question, to whom Teleki showed the draft statement. The Englishman also strongly advised stressing everywhere the appeal to justice. Teleki listened to this with great understanding and made alterations in his own hand to the draft before him. 4 Ciano Diary, 9th January. 5 See above, p. 375. 5 Sz. I. MS.

392 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH renounced any of their claims; nor was Roumania’s attention during the next weeks calculated to induce them to do so. Meanwhile, a German request, or demand, of this nature would, of course, vastly complicate the whole position and place Hungary in a most difficult dilemma. If she acceded to it she would, under conditions (2) and (3), be, at the least, sailing near a breach of neutrality against the Allies; yet how could she be asked to defy Germany for Roumania’s sake? Teleki had found no answer to this problem by the time February had merged into March.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED Y March 1940 the air was full of rumours that the ‘“‘phoney war’ was

Bewen to its close, and, amongst other ominous symptoms, the tone

of the Italian Press was growing daily more bellicose. It appears to have been partly the necessity of learning what had been said between the Germans and Italians at the various meetings of March 1940; partly the hope of influencing Italy to follow a policy of peace, at the very least, towards Yugoslavia; and partly a faint hope that the Vatican might after all mediate a compromise peace, that took Teleki to Rome, unaccompanied by Csaky, on 23rd March. Nothing was revealed of the long conversations which he had with the Holy Father, but what passed between him and Mussolini and Ciano has been recorded fully enough.* Teleki arrived at a bad moment for his principal hope, for Mussolini had just made up his mind to enter the war. Teleki, who, Ciano notes, “‘desired only to keep his country out of the war’ and “‘did not hide his sympathy for the Western Powers and feared a complete German victory like the plague,” received this declaration with very limited enthusiasm. It was some consolation that Mussolini did not want Hungary to follow Italy’s example: “It was still the interest of the Axis Powers that South-East Europe should remain

quiet and produce.” Teleki wanted nothing better, and even as regards Roumania, repeated that he would not take any initiative which might open the door to the Russians,” and declared his readiness to reach a reasonable

compromise. But the visit brought no solution to the difficulties of the Roumanian problem. The Italians offered to mediate, but had no answer when Teleki replied that mediation had so far produced exactly no result. Mussolini had ‘“‘nothing particular to say’’ when Teleki raised the question of a possible German demand for transit, telling him “the same as he had told O’ Malley.”

For the rest, Mussolini’s general attitude confirmed Teleki’s fears of the hopelessness of looking to Italy for any staunch support. During the visit, the question of offering the Hungarian Crown to a member of the House of Savoy was touched on again,° rather, it is true, as a ballon d’essai to test Italy’s feelings towards Hungary than in any expectation that it would be accepted,* although the offer was in so far firm that the Regent’s approval had been obtained for it.° It was not taken up. Teleki returned to Budapest in a state of nervous depression, which was deepened by the change now visibly setting in in the internal situation. The German propaganda was beginning to bear its fruits in the shape of a widespread belief in the imminence of a German victory and consequent revolt 1 Besides Ciano’s notes in his Diary, 23rd-28th March 1940, there is a Hungarian account of the visit in the Sz. I. MS. 2 This is clearly the meaning of the rather obscure phrase attributed to him by Ciano. 3 Ciano Diary, 24th March. 4 Apor to C. A. M. 5’ Kallay to C. A. M.

394 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH against Teleki’s policy of wait and see. On 15th March Imrédy had broken his self-imposed silence with a speech in which, while endorsing the Govern-

ment’s foreign policy, he argued that the trend of world ideas was “‘away from Liberalism and the Jewish spirit”? and towards the ideals known to be his own. He followed this up on the 24th with a long article in Milotay’s “Uj Magyarsdg,” pleading for closer German-Hungarian co-operation, in the interest of which each country must renounce certain activities unacceptable to the other: Germany her support of a “‘vélkisch”’ treatment of the

minority question in Hungary and her excessive economic demands; Hungary her flirtation with the idea of a Habsburg restoration, her oversevere minority policy, and her hostile attitude towards ideas and trends which were alleged to be foreign importations but really represented “‘the spirit of the age.’ This article, although to democratic eyes it appeared a legitimate enough expression of the writer’s views, and not even excessively pro-German (indeed, some of Imrédy’s German friends reproached him for it), was widely interpreted as a personal bid for power by Imrédy at his party leader’s expense, and even as an overture to the Arrow Cross; and there were further rumours that Imrédy was proposing to put up candidates of his own at the forthcoming Felvidék elections, and negotiating with Palffy’s and Matolcsy’s Right-wing groups, with the malcontent Felvidék Deputies and even with the Ruthenes. The ‘“‘Cs’? Group, too, was restive: Jurcsek drafted a memorandum protesting against the attitude of the “‘Left-wing Press,” especially Bethlen’s “8-Orai Ujsdg,” and over a hundred Deputies signed it. Teleki weathered the immediate storm by a series of swift countermoves. He averted the Felvidék danger by postponing the date for the elections indefinitely (in the event they were never held). He quashed his opponents’ hopes that he might resign by denying strongly that he had any such intention and by letting it be known that the Regent—who was understood to have said that he would not under any circumstances ever re-appoint Imrédy—had given him a ready signed authorisation, to be used at will, to dissolve Parlia-

ment. Then on 5th April he bought off the malcontents in the MEP by consenting to a reorganisation of the Party which added to the existing officers a new Executive Committee and to which a large number of the “‘Cs”’ Group and of Imrédy’s sympathisers were elected, while Barcsay, leader of the ‘Cs’? Group, became Party Vice-Leader and Baron L. Vay President.

On 8th April the “Cs’”’ Group issued a declaration that they ‘“‘had not been conspiring” and “stood solid behind Teleki.”” Imrédy’s only hope would now have been a coalition stretching from himself right-ward, and conversa-

tions seem to have taken place; but Hubay refused to subordinate his party to anyone else; Imrédy would not accept the leadership of the very men he had outlawed; and the Magyarsag Group made its collaboration conditional on the acceptance by its partners of the “‘v6lkisch”’ solution of the nationalities question.

Thanks to these moves, and, above all, to the Regent’s support, Teleki was now safely back in the saddle. But he had got there only at the price of concessions which had substantially weakened his position for the future. Germany, too, had stopped being unexacting. Her economic demands were now constant and multiple, and from the Press she asked complete subservience. The pro-British Hungarian Press, unhappily, presented her with 1 Baron Vay’s evidence in the Imrédy libel trial, 9th May 1942,

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED 395 an excuse, round 10th-11th April, by publishing uncontrolled reports, which

proved to be mistaken, of British successes in Scandinavia. The German Legation seized the opportunity to make a very strong démarche, as a result of which the editors-in-chief of all newspapers were called to the Minister President’s office and warned to be more careful, lest they call down reprisals; they must cease to hedge and take a definitely pro-German line.

For the first time there now seemed real reason to believe that

Germany wanted a Right Radical Government in Hungary. Sztdjay came to Budapest on 13th April, probably in connection with the German demand for transit described below; but the rumour ran round that he brought a message that Germany wanted Teleki replaced by ‘“‘a pronouncedly proGerman politician.”” The rumour was equally effective whether it was founded or not. He did report on 3rd May that a memorandum on GermanHungarian relations was being prepared in the Wilhelmstrasse. ‘Those relations left much to be desired, both from the political and the economic points of view.” The report, wrote Sztdjay, recommended a large-scale Parliamentary campaign against the Government, by utilisation, partly of the Arrow Cross Deputies, but chiefly of the Imrédy group. This Parliamentary campaign was to demand from the Government the cessation of all influencing of public opinion in the anti-German sense and a definite attitude

in favour of the Axis. Economically, it was to raise the help given to the British blockade by the Office of Foreign Trade and the increase of Hungary’s

exports to Britain, which went almost exclusively through Jewish firms... . The report advocated in particular mobilising the Imrédy group, headed by Imrédy himself, who was regarded as ‘“‘a particularly suitable instrument.’”?

German mouthpieces in Hungary were now openly advising surrender to all her demands. On 3rd April Milotay wrote in the Uj Magyarsdg that “‘a small nation must give itself up to the friendship of a party stronger than itself and must pay any price therefore, even at the cost of its national pride, in the hope that it will get through the difficult times and recover on another occasion what it has lost or abandoned under restraint.”” It must be conceded that this was too much for many Hungarians who described themselves as of the “‘Right,” and the Deputy Béla Szemere accused Milotay and Imrédy, in open Parliament, of being in German pay. He apologised subsequently to Imrédy, but not to Milotay, and the incident had the further effect, convenient

to the Government but unfortunate for the historian, that it was now arranged that Parliamentary questions relating to foreign policy should be asked only in the Foreign Affairs Committees, whose proceedings were private. Meanwhile, M. Molotov had, on 24th March, given another broad public

hint that Russia was likely soon to raise her claims in Roumania, and five days later Sztéjay sent an alarming despatch from Berlin, clearly passing on a very authoritative statement, that if she felt the necessity, Germany would undoubtedly effect a military occupation of the Roumanian oil-fields. She would ask Hungary for transit for her troops, but if Hungary refused, this might mean war between her and Germany.° A day or two later, the Hungarian Government got further ‘“‘absolutely 1 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., p. 58; Szig. Biz., p. 104. 2 Lajos. 2 Sz. I. MS.

396 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH reliable information” that Germany meant to occupy the oil-fields if Russia moved into Bessarabia. The German troops would in such case move across Hungary into the Roumanian Banat (Temesvar).* About the same time, Fabricius hinted to the Roumanian Government that they would do well to ask Germany for “‘protection.’” The Government itself was divided on how to meet the situation. Ata Ministerial Council on Ist April, Csaky, who was angry at not having been taken to Rome, wanted ‘‘a show-down with the Germans on the Roumanian question.’* Teleki refused this, saying that it was unnecessary for Hungary

to show her hand to Germany, and that she must not risk her national existence for the sake of Transylvania. Instead, he adopted one of those complicated manceuvres to which he sometimes resorted. Ata meeting held on 6th April between himself, Werth and Bartha, it was decided that if the request for transit was made,’ then, when the technical conversations opened,

Werth “should take the initiative and himself propose a plan for a joint German-Hungarian action against Roumania. It was, however, to be made plain at the opening of the conversations that the agreement to be concluded would enter into force only in case of a Russian advance and would follow as a natural effect of the Anti-Comintern Pact.’ At the same time, a very confidential Note was sent to the British Government telling them of this intention, but adding that Hungary was in no way bound to any party, by conversations or promises. Hungary thought that Britain might prefer as little as possible of Roumania to come under German occupation, and therefore asked whether H.M. Government was willing to

give a binding undertaking that at the end of the war, or on some other suitable occasion:

(1) It would show itself as disinterested as the German Government towards an occupation of Transylvania by Hungarian troops. (2) It would not further question the justification of this occupation.

“The Hungarian Government,” said the Note, “does not wish to conceal the fact that H.M. Government’s answer will decisively influence its decision.” At the same time again, Lipo6t Baranyai was sent to Rome, on the pretext of conducting conversations with the Banca Nazionale, to ask whether Italy would support Hungary if she resisted the German passage, if necessary by force of arms.® None of the documents show any immediate reaction to the questions in London. As for Baranyai, the day on which he arrived in Rome—the 8th—

was, as it happened, about the worst imaginable for putting such a request. The German invasion of Norway had just become known, and Mussolini was entirely convinced that the war was going to end very shortly in a resounding 1 Td.

2 Tilea to C. A. M. 3 Barczy. Csaky also wanted an ultimatum to Germany over Slovakia, which Teleki refused, saying that “‘the Germans would not give away Slovakia gratis.”

4 Nearly all accounts, including that of Ciano, state that the request had actually been put. This seems not to have been the case. On 7th April a German Staff Officer was sent to Hungary to discuss the question with his Hungarian opposite numbers, but the discussions were to be informal and unofficial. 5 Sz. I. MS. § The incident is mentioned in Ciano Diary, 8th and 9th April; M. Baranyai has also given me his personal reminiscences.

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED 397 victory for the Axis. His principal preoccupation was how to get his own cut before it was too late.? At first he did not believe that the request had been made, and asked Baranyai to wait for a day while he telephoned to

Berlin. He got the answer “that Germany had not the faintest idea of invading Roumania,”’ on the strength of which he at first tried to take refuge in a vague formula, but when Baranyai pressed him for a firm answer, ended by giving a point-blank refusal, although Villani joined Baranyai in begging for his support. ‘“‘Mussolini smiled,” writes Ciano. ‘“How could that ever be’, he said, ‘since I am Hitler’s ally, and intend to remain so.’’” It looks as though the Germans (at least the German General Staff) had really received Werth’s proposals favourably; for on the 15th he submitted

a memorandum’ to Teleki, Bartha, Csaky and the Regent, which, after arguing at some length that Germany was invincible, culminated in the conclusion:

“Germany has now offered us military co-operation against Roumania. Military co-operation by itself is, however, not sufficient. The precondition of it now is the conclusion of a political treaty. “To sum up, it is my conviction that with Germany’s appeal to us for military co-operation the time has come for us to abandon neutrality, take up our stand by Germany’s side and with her help to realise our great national aim, the recovery of Transylvania.”

He added that: “If we take our stand openly we can reckon on the restoration of Slovakia also.’’ Thereby Hungary would so strengthen herself as to be able to defend herself even in the extreme and improbable event of the defeat of Germany. Teleki studded the margin of this production with sarcastic comments and wrote the Regent a vigorous letter® affirming his complete uncertainty whether Germany would win. “I think,” he said, “‘that the political line we have followed hitherto has been good and we should not abandon it.”” He asked the Regent ‘“‘to tell the soldiers not to make politics.” He did, however, on the 17th write Hitler a letter® suggesting a tripartite meeting between Hungary, Germany and Italy. The conversations were to be ‘“‘economic-military,”’ i.e. of the type for which Hungary had asked a year * According to Baranyai (personal to C. A. M.), Mussolini made to him the following four prophecies, all of which proved incorrect:

(a) Germany and Russia would never quarrel. After Germany had defeated Britain, she and Russia ‘“‘would march eastward, hand in hand.” (b) Britain would collapse under the bombing, which would start with ports, railways and industrial plant. If that did not succeed, the cities would be bombed—“‘and then,”’ said the Duce, dropping his voice melodramatically, “‘it will be terror.”

(c) France, although conquered in the end, would put up a long and tough resistance. (France’s quick collapse, in the event, caught him unawares and he had to rush in unprepared.)

(d) The U.S.A., whose population consisted almost entirely of pro-Axis Germans and

6 Id. _

Italians, or of ‘“‘useless negroes and Jews, with a handful of decadent Yankees,”’ would never intervene.

hands fairly itch.” _

2 “When we are alone,” writes Ciano (9th April), “the Duce talked about Croatia. His

3 Baranyai’s version is: “alors, voulez-vous nous aider, ou non?’ Mussolini: ‘Contre nos

alliés, jamais.” 4 Text in Barczy.

6 The text of this letter has not survived, but there are several allusions to it in the Sz. I. MS.; some embodying Sz. J.’s own remarks, others where he reproduces various despatches from Sztojay.

398 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH previously; but the letter also definitely expressed Hungary’s wish “‘to adhere more closely, both militarily and politically, to the Axis Powers.” The condition which Teleki had laid down (and which he would presum-

ably have made clear to the Germans) that Hungary was not going to cooperate with Germany against Roumania except in the case of a Russian advance was, of course, most important, since it meant that she would be standing aside in either of the two other situations which, according to

Sztéjay, would provoke a German attack on Roumania. Had Hitler answered this letter favourably, Hungary would therefore still not have been committed to action against the Western Powers. Nevertheless, it is hard not

to feel that Teleki was asking those Powers to take a good deal on trust, particularly as he was at that moment negotiating with the British, not only over navicerts and industrial raw materials, but also for the purchase of arms. And a few days later, a Roumanian Crown Council decided that in the event of German aggression (the U.S.S.R. not intervening), either suddenly or following an ultimatum to allow passage of troops, or in combination with an act of aggression by Hungary, Roumania would fight. The Army was mobilised and preparations made to set fire to installations and oil-wells, “should that be necessary.’ The Foreign Office should have learnt by now how unrealistic was the picture of Roumania stripping her sleeve to resist a combined attack from the German tiger and the Hungarian jackal. It might even have suggested

to the Roumanians that the way to help the Allies was not to prepare to wreck the oil-fields later but to stop sending their produce to Germany now. But Britain’s picture of Roumania as an ally both nominal and real was a fixation with it, and on the 22nd O’Malley was sent to ask Teleki “‘whether Hungary would resist the Germans if they tried to pass through Hungary” (as it appears, in any circumstances). He pressed the question very strongly, adding that Britain was now supplying Hungary with certain munitions of

war, and must know whether they were going to a country which would resist Germany or one which would let her troops through. It was very important to Britain to get an answer. Teleki, who was perhaps in one of his not infrequent rather impatient moods (he told O’Malley that Lord Halifax and the British Government in general were showing no sort of understanding for Hungary’s case and could not expect Hungary to be perpetually bothering about them unless they did

something for her in return), apparently made no attempt to explain his policy, and did not even ask what had become of his Note to London. He simply answered—and by his own account, with a nervous vigour which probably covered his own deeper inner disquiet, that Hungary might or might not resist, but that was her own affair, and it was no use pressing him: he absolutely refused to be jockeyed into making any promises. He then said: “If anyone were to ask Hungary not to allow troops to assemble on or pass through her territory against Yugoslavia, Bulgaria or Turkey, she would understand that: it could be discussed. But to ask of her to prevent

troops—anyone’s troops, Germany’s, Mexico’s or Sweden’s—from ’ Gafencu, p. 281. According to M. Gafencu, Roumania also proposed to resist Soviet aggression under certain conditions. But he does not quote the whole document—he does not,

for example, give Roumania’s decision in the event of German aggression, the U.S.S.R.

intervening.

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED 399 : passing through against Roumania was impossible. There was no Hungarian who would defend Roumania against anyone.’”!

In the end, the Hungarians got the worst of both worlds. The British cut off the supplies, the head of their military commission saying that ‘“‘it would be useless sentimentality to arm the Hungarian Army, which could not resist the Germans anyway, and it was not a British interest, from another point of view, that the Hungarian Army should get strong.’” Sztdjay said afterwards that Teleki’s letter had made ‘“‘a decisively favourable impression”’—badly needed, in his eyes.* But it brought no immediate effect. Hitler kept Teleki waiting a fortnight, during which he consulted the Italians, who were contemptuous.* He may also have satisfied himself that it would be superfluous to attack Roumania. Then, on 9th May, Ribbentrop told Sztdjay that “the meeting would not be desirable, as it might provoke an intervention in the Balkans by the Entente and would create nervousness

and reluctance among the Balkan States, with which Germany has at the moment economic relations which work smoothly and are advantageous to her.’”®

This communication came on the eve of Germany’s Western offensive, and coincided with a message telegraphed from Rome by the Pester Lloyd’s correspondent there (the first of a string in the same vein) that “‘should war break out in the Mediterranean, Italy and Germany would wish, even in such a case, to keep the peace in South-Eastern Europe.” Hitler’s official reply to Teleki came on the 19th, to the effect that Germany would do nothing in

the Balkans, without Italy: Germany’s chief aim was the preservation of peace in the Balkans and on the Danube. On the 20th Teleki answered that Hungary’s aim was also the maintenance of peace in the Danube basin; she was accordingly putting off the realisation of her revisionist aims to a more peaceable moment. On the 25th, for the benefit of his critics at home, he had printed in the Pester Lloyd the following message—for the communication of which the extraordinarily indirect method was chosen of quoting the Budapest correspondent of the Popolo di Roma: *“Neither Hungary nor Germany means to disturb the peace in South-

Eastern Europe. It is not in Germany’s interest that confusion should be provoked in this part of Europe, which is Germany’s economic taproot. The conclusion of a Hungaro-German military convention would have produced immediate alarm in Yugoslavia in particular, and would have troubled the good relations between Budapest and Belgrade.”

The Germans now finally dropped the idea of a combined operation with Hungary against Roumania, because they believed that the Hungarian Intelligence Service would pass the information on tothe Allies. They had presumably not given up the idea of sending their own troops across Hungary without Hungarian participation, if need arose, but about this, for the same 1 This quotation from Lajos. There is a fuller account (which, however, gives this particular phrase less fully) in the Sz. I. MS. 2 Suhaj.

3 This from a despatch by Sztdjay, dated 6th September (Sz. I. MS). Sztdjay attributes much importance to the letter, which, he says, changed the whole German-Hungarian relationship for the better. 4 Ciano Diary, 24th April. 5 Sz. I. MS.

400 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH reason, they probably preferred not to talk too much in advance.’ Meanwhile, by her two offers, Werth’s and Teleki’s own, Hungary had obviously made it more difficult for herself to refuse a request to this effect from Germany, if it were made, and Teleki seems to have realised this, and perhaps to have told the British as much. On 14th May Sargent told Barcza that he understood Teleki to have told O’Malley some days earlier that if Germany asked permission for

the transit it would be given her. The Foreign Office now made Hungary an offer of considerable importance: Sargent said that if Germany forced a passage and Hungary at least protested, this would put her in the same position as Denmark. Cadogan repeated the advice three days later, and further suggested that if the Hungarian Government (the existing one, or another nominated by the Regent) would go abroad, H.M. Government would recognise it as the legitimate Government of Hungary.? Teleki, however, does not seem to have taken up the suggestion. Meanwhile, as May followed April, success after success came to the German arms, spectacular enough in reality, and still more so as represented to the Hungarian public by its incredible Press. By the third week of May the German Press and its Italian and Hungarian echoes were confidently promising that before many weeks had passed the

war would be over, or as good as over. Even if Britain held on without admitting defeat, she would be unable to exercise the slightest influence over conditions on the Continent. “‘It is to be assumed,”’ wrote Pester Lloyd in its leading article of 25th May, “‘that within a fairly short time, in a few weeks, we shall be able to be thinking about the end of the war and about revenge for Versailles and the other Diktats.”’ Even Teleki behaved at this time as though he doubted the possibility of an Allied victory. His secret convictions seem to have been unaltered, for on the day of the invasion of the Netherlands he told two friends that he called them to witness that in his belief, Hitler had now lost the war; indeed, he had lost it on the day that he started it. His (Teleki’s) duty was to keep Hungary out of the war, so that she should be intact at the end, when everything round

her collapsed.* He also sent the present writer a private message of faith. Yet on 31st May he said, in a speech which was described by his own organ, Magyarorszdg, as “for the first time drawing conclusions from the German successes”’ that till the previous month a long war had been generally feared

and expected; but now “the definite and great successes by which many, friends and enemies alike, had been surprised, make it seem more probable that the war will not last so long—indeed, it may be unexpectedly short.” The vision of an imminent German victory naturally stirred the Right into renewed activity. The Arrow Cross clamoured vociferously, in its Press and even in Parliament, that Teleki must go if Hungary was not to come off quite empty-handed in the post-war division of spoils. Imrédy’s following in the MEP swelled rapidly, and it was reported that the malcontents were going to demand that even if Teleki himself stayed, the “‘Conservative”’ 1 Cf.N.G.2978, 29th May 1940, where Weizsdcker tells Heeren not to discuss with the Yugoslav

Government “‘the possibility of an eventual march through to the East’? on the grounds that it

is too early and that there is no guarantee that the Yugoslavs will preserve secrecy. If they distrusted the Yugoslavs’ discretion, the Germans were always still more dubious of that of the Hungarians (see below, pp. 46 and passim). ° Barcza MS.

> Kovrig, op. cit., p. 174. At that moment Teleki did not even anticipate the defeat of France, for he prophesied that the war would end with an Anglo-French invasion of the Balkans, which would give Hungary her chance.

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED 401 members of the Government—notably Keresztes-Fischer, Varga and Radocsay—should be replaced by ‘‘dynamic personalities,’ who should then initiate a new line in internal policy. This time Teleki really tendered his resignation, but the Regent refused

to accept itt But the clamour could not be simply ignored. A Party meeting of the MEP was held on 3rd June, and at this Imrédy put forward his demands. On a later occasion? he said that he had asked for a more real application of the Jewish Laws, ‘‘a quicker tempo in social questions,’’® “scrutiny of the positions occupied by Party members in economic life,’’* and in the foreign field, a stricter direction of the Press, “especially in respect of

the support of the Government’s proper foreign political policy.’ He must also have insisted, as a matter of urgency, that Teleki make some gesture of attachment to the Axis, and Teleki have agreed to do so, for on

the 5th he gave the following written answer, which the Pester Lloyd emphasised next day in a short leader, to a Parliamentary question: ““The Government’s foreign policy has for years past been directed on a line of friendship for the Axis Powers and the Government will follow this decided and consistent line in the future also.” Imrédy now called off his campaign, whilst almost at the same moment, Hubay, with typical clumsiness, accelerated his own downfall and presented the Government with a gratis accession of popularity by tabling, in his own name and that of a fellow-Deputy, Vago, a draft “nationalities Bill,”’ patently of German origin, for conferring corporate personality and self-government

on the Yugoslav, German, Roumanian, Ruthene and Slovak minorities of Hungary. The entire national Press was mobilised to cry ““Treason.”’ On

13th June Teleki set in motion the machinery for depriving the errant Deputies of their Parliamentary immunity, so that they might be called to justice for having treasonably attempted to disintegrate the unitary form of

the millenary Hungarian State, endangered its immemorial unity, and exposed it to the danger of separatism. Under the accompanying cries of execration, the stock of the Arrow Cross fell lower than ever. Thus, thanks to Imrédy’s moderation, Hubay’s folly and, once again, thanks most of all to the Regent’s support, the Government had survived another storm without capsizing, but again at the cost of concessions, or

the war. , at least of the promise of them. And now, on 10th June, Italy entered

In one respect this did not immediately worsen Hungary’s position. Hitler

was still insisting that South-Eastern Europe must be kept out of the war. He had even made Mussolini promise to leave the area alone; a fortiori, Hungary was not to move, so that when Teleki sent word to London and Paris that Hungary was not following Italy’s example, but remaining nonbelligerent, he was still in the fortunate position of pleasing both parties. Nevertheless, Italy’s action obviously made it harder still for Hungary to

show any real independence, and as each day brought its tale of fresh German victories, those who listened to Hungary’s words must have thought 1 Barczy.

2 In his libel action, 7th May 1942.

8 I.e., especially, implementation of the Land Reform Act. .

4 An allusion to the notorious fact that members of the Party were bought off by being given

guinea-pig directorships in Jewish firms. 6 Imrédy said that he had raised a fourth point of purely personal nature, which had ceased to be relevant by the time he gave evidence (probably some case of corruption which had been cleared up between 1940 and 1942).

2D

402 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH that she had now only one thought left: to make up for past omissions by recapturing Germany’s goodwill. The phrase “‘listened to Hungary’s words’’ is operative, for her Govern-

ment deserves to have it recorded that it did not move one inch to buy Germany’s favour by internal concessions. Imrédy said afterwards? that “‘his proposals were discussed once or twice and then the whole thing got buried.” While Roumania and Slovakia raced down a Gadara slope of anti-Semitic and Fascist legislation, the Hungarian Government continued to persecute the Arrow Cross, and its Parliament to discuss a peacetime programme untouched by any breath of the new spirit. But no flattery was too gross to be lavished on the Axis, and the obeisances were not even confined to the Press. When France surrendered, Teleki made the deepest abasement of his career to Germany. When Parliament met on 17th June, he referred to the fact that, while he spoke, German soldiers were mounting guard in front of Versailles and Trianon, where, twenty years earlier, Hungary had signed a humiliating

peace. The events of the time were of the deepest significance to the Hungarian people and proved that acts born of hatred and lies contained the seeds of their own destruction. He recalled with bitterness Hungary’s unavailing efforts to present her case at Trianon. Now the Europe of Versailles

and Trianon had ceased to be. The Hungarian Parliament which twenty years earlier had witnessed the reading of the humiliating peace terms could not now pass over an occasion to greet with all solemnity the German army and its commander. A message of congratulation was duly sent, in the name of the Hungarian

Government and Parliament. A deputation from the MEP waited on the German and Italian Embassies, assuring both countries of Hungary’s devo-

tion and loyalty. During the next few days the memory of Gémbés was hurriedly disinterred. On the 18th the President of the MEP, in a birthday speech to Horthy, recalled “‘the unforgettable figure of the late General Goémbés, whose political testament was being confirmed by recent events.”’ On the 20th Teleki deposited a wreath on the General’s tomb and said that his dream of a new Europe had come true. Meanwhile it was not to be expected that Russia would wait much longer before presenting her promissory note for Bessarabia; and if the conditions

which they had described were fulfilled, the Hungarians meant to move, whatever Germany’s or Italy’s wishes. In the course of May and June, five mixed Corps and the Mobile Corps were inconspicuously mobilised.? The VIII Mixed Corps, the Mobile Corps and the Mountain Chasseurs, forming the Second Army, were stationed in Ruthenia and the Kassa area, in case Russia attacked across the Carpathians. The First Army (the I, II, IV and VI Corps, under General V. Nagy) was to enter Transylvania; in order not to alarm the Roumanians, or perhaps, still worse, the Germans, these units were provisionally left in their peace-time stations. In early June the Government took incidental advantage of the periodical renewal of its emergency powers to extend those powers considerably. Heavy penalties were now laid down for a number of offences, including recruiting

for illegal military formations, profiteering, helping prisoners (including ' At his libel trial. * As we have said (above p. 383), mobilisation meant bringing each unit up to its ‘“‘full peace-

time strength.” A corps thus consisted of three brigades, each of one three-battalion regiment, etc. The strength of a brigade was about 10,000 men.

FURTHER OUTLOOK UNSETTLED 403 internees) to escape and committing acts of a nature to endanger Hungary’s foreign political interests. On 22nd June an Order was issued freezing stocks of a wide range of materials, principally those useful for military purposes, as iron and metal articles, petroleum products, chemical and pharmaceutical goods, articles made of leather, rubber or wood, paper, textile goods and building materials.

Everything was now ready for action. Of the remaining activities of these fevered weeks it is worth mentioning only the redoubled efforts to reassure Yugoslavia, which might, of course, still have made things difficult for Hungary if she had given Roumania military support. But the Yugoslavs, who after the fall of France had been retiring unobtrusively but swiftly into

their shells, showed no disposition to make trouble. When Varga, who visited Belgrade on 22nd June, said there that “‘the community of interests between the two countries was particularly important now that the States of South-Eastern Europe were obliged to rely so much on one another,” his opposite number replied that, if no Pact of Friendship had been concluded between the two countries, it was because there was no need of one.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD! N 23rd June 1940 France signed armistice terms with Germany. The same evening Molotov told Schulenburg that Russia was going to demand of Roumania the cession of Bessarabia and the Bukovina.

The Germans persuaded the Russians to renounce claiming the southern Bukovina, but the demand for the northern half of the province, and all Bessarabia, was handed in at 11 p.m. on the 26th. Urged by both Germany and Italy to yield, Roumania had no course but to do so. At noon on the 28th Russia, having given Roumania four days to evacuate the provinces,

sent her own advance guards into them. ,

Molotov had told Schulenburg on the 26th that “‘the Soviet Government simply wished to pursue its own interests and had no intention of encouraging other States (Hungary, Bulgaria) to make demands of Roumania.’’ But he had also remarked that he found some Hungarian claims reasonable, and the previous day he seems to have told the Italian Ambassador, Rosso, amongst other things that ‘‘Russia fully recognised Hungary’s historic rights and vital interests in Transylvania’; and it appears that the message was meant to be

P y oP _Messae

assed on.® It is not clear whether this or any other diplomatic message reached Hungary during these opening days of the crisis,* but it is well attested that as soon as the Soviet troops started advancing, local wireless transmitters began blaring out invitations to the Hungarian troops to meet them on the Carpathian crests and to occupy the whole of Transylvania’; and, in any case, Molotov called Kristéffy to him on 4th July. According to one source® he asked him whether Rosso had passed on to him what he had said on 25th June, and, on being answered in the negative, repeated that communication, and the Hungarian documents at least agree that he told Kristdffy that “he regarded Hungary’s claims as well founded and the Soviet Government would support them at the Peace Conference.’”’ 1 For the Roumanian end of the story told in this chapter the reader is referred to A. Hillgruber, Hitler, Kénig Carol und Antonescu, pp. 70 ff. 2 Nazi-Soviet Relations, p. 152. 3 A leaflet circulated in Hungary in August, containing the substance of a lecture given by

Werth to Army and Corps Commanders (reproduced in Szig. Biz., pp. 225-6), says that this communication was made to Rosso “but not made public at the time.’’ The leaflet says that when Molotov saw KristOffy on 4th July he asked him whether the message had been passed on to him. 4 G. Teleki (personal to C. A. M.) says that there were several messages, including at least one

when the Soviets first began advancing. One of these said that ‘‘Hungary could now advance safely, since the Roumanian armies were fully occupied in the East,” another (or part of the same) that ‘““Hungary had better march, for if she did not, Roumania would be much larger than Hungary and would be a German economic colony which Germany would always protect.” These sound rather like propaganda messages on the wireless, but Montgomery (op. cit., p. 158) writes that an invitation “given before Stalin attacked Roumania’’ was given to Kristéffy by Stalin personally. 6 Count B. Teleki tells C. A. M. that he remembers the exact wording of one message. Translated, this runs: “Transylvania belongs rightfully to Hungary, and we hope that we shall meet the gallant Hungarian hussars on the Carpathians.” ° Werth leaflet. 7 Sz. I. MS.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 405 Whatever the exact wording of Russia’s messages to Hungary, the Hungarians certainly interpreted them to include an invitation to co-operate in a joint operation against Roumania. The Hungarian diplomatic writers say that Hungary ‘“‘refused the Russian offer,’’! and although no details of the refusal are available, it is certain that no such co-operation took place. In the negotiations which followed, Teleki, as will be seen, addressed himself exclusively to the Axis Powers, and throughout treated Russia’s moves as those of a potentially hostile Power, the value of his own proposed action lying in the defence which it provided against those moves. But, in direct contradiction to Germany’s and Italy’s point of view, he felt that Russia’s activity made a counter-move by Hungary essential, for it was not safe to assume that Russia would content herself with the acquisition of the two

provinces. If Hungary did not move, the Soviet troops might cross the Carpathians and themselves occupy Transylvania; or, alternatively, might foment a revolution, resulting in Roumania’s turning herself into a Soviet Republic and placing herself under the protection of the U.S.S.R. Rumours to both effects were, in fact, reaching Hungary, and seem genuinely to have impressed and frightened him.”

In any case Hungary had, as we have seen, long since decided that if Russia moved, and Rou nania did not resist, she would insist on her own

claims. On the 27th, when the Russian advance started, the Press was muzzled to allow no reference to the Transylvanian question, and no orders were given to the waiting troops. But a Ministerial Council met and decided that: ““Hungary’s standpoint must be, ‘no discrimination’; Italy to be informed.”’? Csaky then invited first Erdmannsdorff and then Talamo to call on him‘ and in Teleki’s presence took them through the history of Hungary’s claims against Roumania, including that of the occasions when Hungary had defined the conditions under which she would feel forced to act. At least one of these conditions—Roumania’s ceding territory to a third Power without resistance—looked like being fulfilled, and in that case public opinion would not permit the Hungarian Government to stand idly by. He asked the two

Axis diplomats to let him know urgently: (1) Did they still want Hungary to stand by without intervening with arms? (2) If so, would they give her guarantees that they would support her claims?

(3) If she did intervene (e.g. if trouble broke out in Transylvania), what would be their attitude?

Teleki then again demonstrated to his interlocutors what Hungary’s claims were. At the same time Csaky wired to Sztdjay and Villani to inform the German and Italian Governments respectively that Hungary wished to 1 So “Béla”? and Lajos. It must be remarked that the diplomatic messages quoted were, at least, ambiguous and do not at all necessarily read, at any rate to the present writer, as invitations to co-operation in immediate action. All Hungarians seem, however, to attribute this meaning to them, and there was certainly no ambiguity about the wireless proclamations. 2 For the reports, see Szig. Biz., pp. 214-15. Géza Teleki informs C. A. M. that what really determined his father to act was the belief that if he did not do so “‘he would find the Russians on the Tisza.’ The scare of a Soviet Republic may sound fantastic, but when, in 1942, a monster

trial of some 140 Transylvanian Communists took place, nearly all of them Magyar-speaking Jews, many of the defendants stated that they had been ordered to organise the proclamation of a Soviet Republic in Transylvania simultaneously with the Russian advance into Bessarabia. 4 Callers report on those interviews is reproduced in the Sz, I. MS.

406 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH realise her rightful claims only by, or in, agreement with the Axis Powers; but that she would not tolerate discrimination against herself, and if Roumania proposed to cede territory to another Power, she must simultaneously open negotiations with Hungary. The next day Csaky sent another message to Ribbentrop via Clodius,

who happened to be in Budapest at the time. To him he suggested that Germany might find “‘a quick action by Hungary”’ to her own advantage, as, when she had pulled it off, Hungary would be able to ensure the uninterrupted

continuance of supplies to Germany. Hungary would then be able, and willing, to increase her own deliveries to Germany, and would also be prepared to allow free passage for a certain number of German trains, along certain lines, for the duration of the war. She would, in addition, “‘relegate her further claims for revision to the background for a generation if she got satisfaction of her present claims in Transylvania and perhaps also the Darda Triangle from Yugoslavia.’’®

The same evening the Press was given the green light, so that on the morning of the 29th it carried an inspired statement that “‘Roumania will be fatally mistaken if she thinks that by satisfying Russian demands she can escape Hungarian claims. When the time is ripe, Hungary will get the fulfilment of her claims.”’ The statement went on to claim that “‘Hungary is matching her policy with that of the Axis,” and copious messages were relayed from Rome and

Berlin in support of this thesis; of which it may be remarked that while, presumably owing to bad staff work, the Italian Press of the 28th had really talked about Hungary’s and Bulgaria’s claims, the DNB’s utterances were such as to require all the MTI’s ingenuity to twist them into a favourable sense. Meanwhile, on the evening of the 28th, the official replies from Berlin

and Rome had arrived. , Of these “‘Béla’’ writes:

‘In their replies, which were couched in identical terms, the German and Italian Governments asked the Hungarian Government not to insist on a step which would incur serious consequences. If Hungary never-

theless chose a solution by force of arms, she must do it on her own responsibility and could not count on armed support from the Axis. The two Governments were, however, convinced that the time would come when it would be possible to satisfy Hungary’s revisionist claims by peaceful means, and in that case the Hungarian Government could count on Germany’s (Italy’s) support.’”?

Villani sent an account of his interview with Ciano* which boiled down to

the same thing. The Yugoslav Government, too, sent a message urging Hungary to be patient and hoping “‘that in the future, also, all possibilities will be utilised between Hungary and Roumania to the end of reaching a pacific agreement on all questions which Hungary desires to regulate.”’ The Yugoslav Government had informed the Roumanian Government ‘“‘of its wish to see it establish friendly contact with the Hungarian Government.’”® Hungary was, however, now committed to something more than waiting. On the 29th Csaky instructed his Ministers in Rome, Berlin and Belgrade to

Sz. I. 1.MS. MS. * * “Bela” MS. 4>Sz. Sz. I. MS. ' Csaky’s report on those interviews is reproduced in the Sz. I. MS.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 407 state that “‘in view of the Roumanian mobilisation, the Hungarian Government found itself obliged to take military defensive measures without delay.’ On the 30th M. Crutescu, the Roumanian Minister in Budapest, called on Voernle to state that “the Roumanian mobilisation was not directed against anyone, and consequently also not against Hungary, but the completion of an existing state. The Roumanian Government desired peaceful and correct relations with allits neighbours.’ But as he did not deny that the Roumanian troops were being moved to the Hungarian frontier, nor that Roumania had not reacted to what Voernle described as ‘“‘Yugoslavia’s spontaneous offer to mediate,” the conversation got no further, except that both men expressed their personal opinions that a peaceful solution was desirable.2. Nagy began to move his troops up to the frontier on Ist July?; and, although the troop movements got under way slowly enough,* the situation on the frontier became inflammable. The Roumanians, while continuing to move their own troops across with all speed, appealed to Berlin, Rome and Belgrade, complaining that on the night of 30th June/Ist July Hungarian troops had crossed the frontier in several places, causing casualties, some of them fatal. On Ist July Roumania completed, or rather, avowed completion of her own volte face. Her new Minister President, M. Gigurtu, renounced the Anglo-French Guarantee and hurtled himself into the arms of the Axis. Warnings showered down on Hungary. Cincar Markovié called Bessenyey to emphasise the great importance attached by him to peace in the Balkans, which had induced him to proffer his good offices in both Bucharest and Budapest.2 Erdmannsdorff came round to Csaky at 2 a.m. on the 2nd with a very severe message indeed calling Hungary to task for her mobilisation and for the incidents. Germany, he went on, was in principle disinterested in the

Balkans, but wished, in everyone’s interest, that they should not become a

theatre of war. ‘“‘Germany had understanding for justified Hungarian revisionist claims,’’ but Hungary must not expect Germany to draw the sword on her account, and if Hungary tried to realise them by force she did so entirely on her own responsibility. ... Germany would not be responsible for the consequences, and Germany would not help her out of any difficulties in which she involved herself. Ribbentrop wished to add “‘that he thought that revision could be carried through without violence at a more appropriate moment, and that the Government of the Reich would then support such

claims for revision.’”® : This message, with its ominous repetition of the formulae over which

Hungary had got into such trouble in the autumn of 1938,’ seems to have irritated Csaky more than a little, and he replied tartly enough that Hungary

was not asking Germany for help and was perfectly prepared to take the consequences of whatever she did. Incidentally, the alleged frontier incidents

were either invented or at any rate grossly exaggerated. But Hungary was not making war for war’s sake, and she attached great importance to the concluding sentences of Ribbentrop’s message. These were, however, so 1 Id.

Id. 3 Nagy, op. cit., p. 37. 4 It was only on the 4th that Radio Budapest announced certain restrictions on passenger traffic on the railways. Further restrictions were announced on the 6th, There can therefore have been no large-scale troop movements before the 4th. 5 Sz. I. MS.

' Jd.

* See above, pp. 312 f.

408 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH important that he must consult the Cabinet before giving a considered reply

to them.

So the 2nd passed, bringing with it a sheaf of further warnings. Sztdjay telegraphed that Weizsacker had read out to him the same message as had been conveyed by Erdmannsdorff, and had furthermore commented unfavourably on Csaky’s reply. ‘“‘My impression is,’ Sztdjay wired, “that

Germany wishes to preserve peace at all costs.... They would certainly never forget it, and we should have to reckon with Hitler’s deep resentment and bear all the consequences if it were proved that we had set south-eastern Europe in flames without cause admitted by them to be sufficient.’” The echoes came from Rome: Tamano called to deliver a Note identical

mutatis mutandis with Erdmannsdorff’s, and a verbal warning that if Roumania collapsed under an attack from Hungary, the Soviets would at once advance into the Balkans,* with consequences which might prove disastrous for the whole outcome of the war. This might be a British interest,

but it was certainly not in the interests of the Axis, nor of their associate Hungary.*

Simultaneously, incidentally, Barcza was wiring that according to Cadogan, England hoped that no armed conflict would break out between Hungary and Roumania, but “‘would be delighted to see a peaceful settle-

ment of territorial claims. . . . He said not one word in defence of Roumania.’”? Meanwhile Csaky had consulted the Cabinet, whose decisions he conveyed that evening to Erdmannsdorff in the following terms: ““Hungary wished, as

she always had, to settle the question in understanding with the Axis. She warned Berlin (and Rome®) that there were four urgent cases in which she _ would be forced, if only by public opinion in her own country, to move instantly, these being: (a) Atrocities against the Magyar minority in Transylvania. (6) Social revolution. (c) A further advance towards the Carpathians by the Russians. (7d) Settlement of Roumanians from the Bukovina and Bessarabia in Transylvania.’ But she was most interested in Ribbentrop’s suggestion of supporting her

claims, and wished to know definitely whether Germany recognised as ‘justified claims” the return of the Szekel area and a corridor leading to it, in which exchange of populations might be applied. Csaky begged Erdmannsdorff to extract from his Government a definite promise to which the Hungarian Government could appeal, in order to calm its public opinion, and to induce Roumania to take the initiative in opening direct discussions.® 1 Sz. I. MS. 2 Td.

> Erdmannsdorff must have used the same arguments: it is not in Csaky’s account, as given in the Sz. J. MS., but Barczy quotes Csaky as having said on the Sth that Ribbentrop “‘has asked Hungary to take no precipitate steps, as otherwise Roumania would collapse and Russia would march to Constantinople.” 4 Lajos. 5 Sz. I. MS. § The same message appears to have gone to Italy.

§ Sz. J. MS. ’ There had been reports that this was planned,

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 409 Erdmannsdorff came back on the 4th with the answer to this. He brought

Hungary another very strong warning that Germany desired peace most strongly and that if Hungary started trouble she would not only get no help but be left alone to bear all the consequences. But provided Hungary did not attempt violence, “‘the Government of the Reich would take the occasion now to submit the problem of revision in the Balkans, in every direction, to a detailed examination, in consultation with the Italian Government, and would reserve the right to inform the Hungarian Government of the result of this examination.’”+

This very non-committally worded message was hardly likely to satisfy Hungary, particularly as she was getting very active encouragement from other quarters. On the 4th Kristoffy reported Molotov’s friendly communi-

cation to him. The previous day Radio Budapest had announced, uncontradicted and thus certainly not without authorisation, that “‘It is learned from Yugoslavia that the Yugoslav Government will raise no objection to any territorial adjustments concerning Roumania and her neighbours.” Radocsay, who visited Belgrade on the 5th, was given a royal reception, and the Hungarian Military Attaché in Belgrade reported that the Yugoslav

General Staff was not only determined not to support Roumania against Hungary but now favoured Yugoslavia’s herself making concessions to Hungary: they were willing to renounce the Baranya (Darda) Triangle and

Szabadka (Subotica).? : Even Britain was friendly. Barcza writes that: ““‘When I informed London

that we were not guided by greed to enlarge our territory but by desire to recover the lost Magyars, the Foreign Office understood and appreciated this.”? On the 11th he reported that: ““Roumania’s policy towards England is described as disloyal; and this relieves England of any moral obligation towards her; while the renunciation of the guarantee* releases her from any legal obligation. Hungary’s policy, on the other hand, is considered straight-

forward and sincere. The British Government understands that the

Hungarian Government is now pressing energetically for the realisation of its territorial claims, but hopes that it will achieve this peacefully.’”

The Hungarian Government had throttled down the Press again,® but was careful to keep the pot boiling. It arranged for a question to be asked in Parliament on the position of the Magyar minority in Transylvania. The speaker produced many reasons for fearing that danger threatened the minority,’ and Csaky replied that the Government shared his apprehensions, was watching the situation closely and would take all necessary measures. In fact, the country was now seething with excitement. It was obvious enough that the Government would quite certainly take action of some sort, if necessary by a repetition of the tactics used by it in Ruthenia.* The most 1 Td.

2 Sz. I. MS. It is interesting (melancholily so) that precisely these areas were those claimed by the Yugoslav General Staff in 1919 as necessary to Yugoslav security on strategic grounds, which were approved by the Allied experts. * Barcza MS. 4 Roumania had, as remarked, renounced the Anglo-French Guarantee on Ist July; she left the League on 10th July. 5 Sz. I. MS. 6 Szig. Biz., p. 219. On5th July the Press was ordered ‘“‘to avoid any polemic with Roumania.”’

7 Hungarian Parliamentary procedure allowed a question in Parliament to be preceded by a ‘“‘motivation,’’ which sometimes amounted to a very long speech. 8 A despatch by Sztdjay, dated the 6th, in the Sz. I. MS., contains allusions which can only be answers to a question from Csaky how Germany would take a guerilla operation.

410 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH serious warnings came from Berlin; on the 6th Sztdjay wired that if Hungary broke the peace, Hitler would most likely regard his recognition of Hungary’s

western frontier as null and void and draw an ethnic frontier in that area, i.e. annex Sopron and other places in west Hungary.’ Similar threats came through other channels.? But it seemed only too likely that they would be disregarded, and something further seemed necessary. Ciano was in any case going to Germany, and Mussolini now suggested that it would be a good thing to let the Hungarians come to a meeting a trois between themselves, the Germans and the Italians.* Hitler sent the invitation on the 7th; Teleki and Csaky left Budapest on the 9th and arrived next day at Munich. The only full report of this meeting so far made available is Csaky’s*: but this is very detailed, and numerous other fragmentary accounts or allusions? make it possible to reconstruct the course of it accurately enough. Hitler began by asking what were Hungary’s claims on Roumania, and Teleki said that legally Hungary must claim the entire area lost by her in 1918 as she could not regard the dictated Treaty of Trianon as binding on herself. He was, however, willing to make a “‘reasonable compromise”’ by leaving Roumania 30,000 sq. km. of the 102,000 sq. km. at issue—in other words, by taking the Maros line and its continuation, described above’ as constituting Hungary’s maximum de facto claim. Hitler seems to have admitted Teleki’s legal argument to be valid, so long as no attempt was made to found a policy on it.” He agreed that Hungary had just claims against Roumania, but went straight on to ask whether this was an appropriate time to try to enforce them; reiterating, almost without a variant, his old formula. If Hungary wanted to march, that was of course her own business, but Germany would not help her; she would declare her désintéressement and in no circumstances help her if she got into trouble. A long argument followed in which the Hungarians said haughtily that

they wanted no help and feared no consequences: they could lick the Roumanians any day. Hitler tried vainly to make them realise that the Roumanian Army was much stronger and much better armed than their own; they simply replied that they possessed so much moral superiority that nothing else mattered. Ciano in his turn tried to persuade the Hungarians to postpone action to a ‘“‘more suitable moment,”’ but Teleki replied that it was quite impossible to

put the matter off indefinitely. He “gave Germany an ultimatum”’ that Hungary proposed to have her revision at once; if possible with the consent 1 §z. I. MS. * Thus M. Teleki was sent to Berlin with a specially prepared volume on the Transylvanian

question. He was told that if Hungary attacked Roumania, Germany would occupy her (M. Teleki to C. A. M.). 3 Ciano Papers, p. 378.

4 Sz. I. MS. Se

° The German archives and the Ciano Papers give no account of this meeting; the Ciano Diary only a few lines. But both “‘Béla’’ and Lajos have notes on it, and there exists also in the possession of Baron Apor (who showed it to the author) a private letter from Teleki to Apor, in which Teleki quotes verbatim some of the conversation between Hitler and himself. ‘There are also some references in the Army leaflet quoted above, allusions in the Hungarian Press, etc. ; and retrospective allusions in Hitler’s correspondence with Carol, etc. ® See above, p. 387. * The Army leaflet writes specifically that ‘At Munich both the Fiihrer and Count Ciano... admitted quite unequivocally Hungary’s claim to the entire territory of Transylvania,’’ and Hitler wrote to Ciano that “‘he was glad to be able to assure Roumania that Hungary did not insist on a purely juridical definition of her claims.’’ Csaky’s account does not represent Hitler as saying more than that “‘every German would agree that Hungary had justified claims against Roumania.”’

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 411 and benediction of the Axis, but if need be, without it. The troops were on

the frontier and could not be restrained. Hitler and Ciano begged the Hungarians to enter into direct negotiations with Roumania, assuring them that Roumania realised that she would have to make territorial concessions. Teleki replied that he was willing to negotiate, but he was convinced that negotiations a deux would never lead to any result; and if they broke down, what then? He could not undertake in advance not to use the ultima ratio of force if Roumania proved quite unreasonable. Neither the Italians nor the Germans seemed inclined to put themselves in the position into which the Hungarians were trying to manceuvre them, viz. of joining in a conference a quatre in which the three other parties should impose Hungary’s claims on Roumania; but Hitler now said that he had been in correspondence with King Carol, who in his last communication had offered him the closest possible co-operation in return for a guarantee.2 He had not yet answered, as he had wanted to see the Hungarians first. Now he would write and tell Carol that it was circumstances, not Roumania’s own

strength, that had brought her her big acquisitions of 1919. She should throw this “ballast”? overboard if she wanted to survive at all. He would even tell Roumania that she could not enter into closer relations with the Axis until she had reached agreement with Hungary on the latter’s territorial claims. Otherwise he would leave Roumania to her fate. Before sending the letter he would get in touch with Mussolini and get

his approval, for he would like to be able to tell Carol that Germany and Italy were of one mind on this point. Ciano, however, declared at once that he could already say in the Duce’s name that he associated himself with the letter as Hitler described its proposed contents. Ciano notes that the Hungarians “‘left dissatisfied,” and Csaky’s own record shows that Teleki said that he could not demobilise, and that he indicated pretty openly that if any trouble broke out in Transylvania, or if any other of the cases arose which Hungary had described as casus interventionis, she would in fact intervene. The Army leaflet even says that he said that he reserved his right to act in such case, and that both Hitler and Ciano admitted the justice of his reservation.* But both the Germans and the Italians gave them soft words: both insisted that “‘the road to Bucharest led over Budapest,” i.e. Hungary came first. Hitler said, for the only time on record, that Hungary, as a comrade of the World War, stood nearer to him 1 Private, Géza Teleki to C. A. M. * I have phrased this rather vaguely, as the facts are not clear. What Csaky quotes Hitler as saying is: ““Some time ago, I told Carol that he would have to reconcile himself to the idea of making territorial concessions to Hungary. Thereupon Carol wrote offering me an offensive and defensive treaty, and in general so behaving that I am finding it difficult to ward off his out-

stretched arms.”’

According to Fabricius (Hillgruber, op. cit., p. 75), soon after the Crown Council which agreed to cede Bessarabia without fighting, Carol had sent for Fabricius and asked Hitler to guarantee his frontiers, and to send a military mission to Roumania. Weizsdcker, too, at the Ministries Trial (p. 8035) said ‘‘After the Soviet occupation Roumania asked Germany to guarantee her. Hitler said he could not, unless the Hungarian claims were settled.””> We may thus take it for granted that these requests were made, but according to the same source, the Germans had not yet answered, nor does the communication agree with Hitler’s words, “Carol wrote.”? Csdky may have misreported Hitler, or it may be that there was an answer from Hitler to Carol’s first message, and subsequently a letter by Carol, of both of which Fabricius was unaware. The point is not very important, for it is certain in any case that Carol had made

both requests, and Hitler certainly kept his answer open. . —

3 The Csaky version does not go so far as this, but does write that “‘Teleki said that under existing circumstances it would be difficult to demobilise, to which both Hitler and Ciano said in agreement that they would not advise us to disarm; on the contrary.”

412 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH than Roumania—how often had he not told Roumanians and others that this consideration meant nothing to him—and spoke of King Carol in “‘extraordinarily derogatory terms.” So the Hungarians expressed themselves, perforce, satisfied with Hitler’s offer. Teleki, although he had said only a few non-committal words to the journalists who met his train when it returned from Munich, made a most optimistic speech to the MEP on the evening of the 11th, emphasising, as glad news, that a substantial proportion of the men who had been called to the colours would be home in time to help with the harvest. The Pester Lloyd in an inspired article of 11th July, wrote that: ‘“‘Hungary will undertake with joyful satisfaction the role assigned to us by Hitler and Mussolini when the moment arrives for the Hungarian nation to carry out its historic task. Our thanks are due to the statesmen who,”’ etc., etc.

This assumption of agreement between Germany, Italy and Hungary could invoke the fact that Csaky had got out of the Germans consent to a communiqué speaking of “‘the three Powers.’’ Csaky was immensely proud of this achievement, of which he boasted in a circular which he sent round to Heads of Missions, saying that the equality implied in the words was “particularly valuable,’! and the Press thereafter, in its harangues to the Roumanians, ran the phrase for all and much more than it was worth, even talking of the ““Three-Power Agreement of Munich.”’ Actually, the country was neither joyful nor satisfied, nor did it believe that Germany, Italy and Hungary had agreed on anything. The almost universal opinion was that Hungary had got another raspberry, and that this was due mainly to Teleki’s personal unpopularity in Germany.” There was, however, nothing to be done, and the next few days passed quietly again. Although Hungary did not demobilise, a number of men were allowed to go home on harvest leave*® and the traffic restrictions on the railways were lifted on the 14th.

A Note was sent to Roumania inviting her to open direct negotiations, and for some days the tone of the Press was, in expectation of an early and favourable reply, kept studiously moderate. Even Csaky, when he addressed the Foreign Affairs Committee on 16th July, while emphasising in his usual ‘‘strong’’ manner that Hungary meant to get satisfaction, yet said that “‘she had no intention of inflicting mortal wounds on Roumania”’ and “‘hoped to reach a stage at which friendship might replace hostility.” Meanwhile, on the 15th Hitler had in fact, after getting approval of the text from Mussolini,* sent Carol a letter? from the allusions in which it may be deduced that Carol’s own letter had intimated readiness to make some concessions to Bulgaria before the entry into force of the guarantee, but had been completely uncompromising as regards Hungary. Hitler, in his reply, kept his word to the Hungarians, and wrote that

revision was inevitable, sooner or later. He urged Carol not to adopt “tactical methods,”’ which could only gain a little breathing space, after which 1 §z. I. MS. 2 Szig. Biz., p. 221 (12th July 1940).

3 On 14th November Teleki said that 250,000 men had been given harvest leave ‘‘and later 150,000 men, not counting Frontier Guards.” 4 Lettres Secrétes, p. 75 (Mussolini to Hitler, 17th July). ‘“Your Ambassador in Rome must have communicated to you my complete approval of your letter to King Carol. If he is intelligent he will reach a compromise, such as Teleki himself desires.” 5 A copy is in the Ciano Papers (MS.).

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 413 trouble would break out again, but facing simultaneously the Hungarian and Bulgarian problems (since it was impossible to make concessions to the one country and not to the other) to reach, on both issues, a ‘“‘definitive solution,” “even at the price of sacrifices.” He was glad to be able to assure Carol that Hungary “did not insist on a purely juridical definition of her claims, but was ready to negotiate on the basis of a just compromise.’”’ Germany, he

went on, had no territorial interests of her own in South-Eastern Europe beyond her ethnic frontiers, but was interested in “‘the creation of a friendly collaboration” between the countries of that area. He was willing to mediate for an amicable settlement, and had told the Hungarian Government so; if Carol would agree, he would inform Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy; and might be willing to consider the possibility of a closer collaboration, “‘and also to assume, in consequence, further obligations.”’ If Carol refused to negotiate, he could only inform the three States of this, and ““Germany might conceivably declare her complete désintéressement in the future development of

S.E. Europe.” But he hoped that this would not be the case, and that the matter could be settled once and for all.

On first receiving this letter the Roumanians simply acknowledged receipt! and said that they would be replying shortly; while to Hungary’s invitation to them to open up direct negotiations they sent no answer at all?—

which obvious failure to comply with Hitler’s known wishes gave the Hungarians a chance, of which their Press took full advantage during the ensuing weeks, to spread the version that “‘the Axis was fully supporting Hungary’s case’’ and that by delaying to reach a quick settlement Roumania was “endangering peace’”’ and was opposing and thwarting the wishes of the Axis and of the new Europe. Roumania was in fact playing for time in which

to regroup her political and military forces (and incidentally, to place an order with the Skoda works for a large quantity of small arms and ammunition, to be delivered urgently).2 Further, almost every day now brought some new obeisance from her to the Axis, putting the Hungarians in an awkward position, since they themselves had already long since kow-towed in

every conceivable way. All they could think up now was to get Horthy to write another personal letter to Hitler,* and all Horthy could think of saying to the Fiihrer was to congratulate him for “having spoken for 100 minutes without once stumbling.’

Meanwhile the Bulgarians had communicated their claims (for the restoration of the 1913 frontier in the Dobrudja). Hitler told Ciano on the 20th that he considered these “‘moderate and easily acceptable.” At the same

meeting he said that he thought it the Axis’ task to induce Hungary and Roumania to negotiate directly, and to enjoin moderation and prudence on both parties; but, he said most prudently, “‘he did not intend to intervene even indirectly in the course of the negotiations, because he wished to avoid giving

any opinion on the subject.’’® And it is in fact to be noted that both Hitler himself and the German Press during this period, while always insisting that an equitable settlement must be reached, rigidly abstained from committing 1 Ciano Papers, p. 381. 2 The German and Italian Press, hoping no doubt to calm the Hungarians, announced daily

that the reply was “imminent” or even that it had been despatched, but this does not seem to have been the case. 3 Bardossy reported this from Bucharest (Sz. I. MS.). 4 Sz. I. MS. 6 T.e. in his Reichstag speech of the 19th July. § Ciano Papers, loc cit.

414 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH themselves to any view of what line would give such a settlement. This was prudent on their part, but it contributed towards the later misunderstandings. King Carol had now composed his answer to Hitler, and on or about the

22nd! the Roumanians asked for Gigurtu and Manoilescu to be allowed to

, present this letter to Hitler personally. Accompanied by Fabricius, they travelled to Salzburg on the night of the 25th and saw Hitler the next day. Carol, it appears,” had written to suggest that Hitler should impose and

afterwards guarantee a general settlement in the Balkans. As between Roumania and Bulgaria, Carol now, it would seem, had accepted all or most of the Bulgarians’ demands, but as regards Hungary, he made an offer of 14,000 sq. km.; the record does not say in what areas, but presumably in the Szatmar-Nagy-Karolyi region of the Crisana.

Hitler, after getting off his chest a lecture to the Roumanians on their country’s past sins, then said that he was willing to forgive and forget the past and to offer, for the future, a friendship buttressed by economic collabor-

ation, deliveries of arms and ‘“‘a solution of the Jewish question within a European framework.’ He might even give the guarantee, but only after Roumania had reached agreement with Hungary and Bulgaria. He was not

prepared to arbitrate “‘in view of the unhappy experiences which the arbitrating Powers had suffered on the occasion of the Vienna Award with

Hungary. In the present case, Germany and Italy wanted to act only as advisers.” But in that capacity he pressed the Roumanians strongly to meet

Hungary half way. He saw the psychological difficulties of territorial concessions, but Roumania must be generous and consider psychological conditions in Hungary also. He had exercised his influence on Hungary and had got her to moderate her demands; on the other hand, the Roumanian offer of 14,000 sq. km. was “‘totally insufficient.”” What he wanted was an ethnic solution, combined with exchange of populations. The German areas could remain with Roumania. Finally, Hitler employed the same formula which he had used to the Hungarians, and to King Carol, and was to use later on the same day to the Bulgarians: if Roumania could not make possible

a psychological détente between herself and her neighbours, “Germany must disinterest herself.’ He thought he could say that Mussolini concurred.

The Roumanians made various rather feeble objections, to which Hitler does not appear to have said much more than that they would have to take the consequences if they were unreasonable. He then sent them packing, and then saw the Bulgarians, to whom he said that he had decided that their claims were justified and he thought that Roumania would accept them. If Roumania, Bulgaria and Hungary would agree, “‘the Fiihrer would in that case guarantee that bloc of States against intervention from outside.” If not, he would disinterest himself. The Roumanians, meanwhile, had gone to Rome, whither the minute of

their interview with Hitler had preceded them. Mussolini, accordingly, 1 Weizsacker passed on the news to Sztdjay on the 23rd. * The only surviving record of the meeting is a copy of the German minute, preserved in the

Ciano Papers (MS.). It begins with the Fihrer’s remarks, which include his opposition to a general settlement, his refusal to arbitrate and his objections to the Roumanian offer as insufficient. Presumably, then, these things were contained in Carol’s letter. All Hungarian sources insist that the request for arbitration came from Roumania, and Montgomery writes (p. 139) that it was made personally by Carol to Hitler.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 415 echoed Hitler faithfully... He, too, began by scolding the Roumanians for their country’s past, but let it be apparent that there was grace for a repentant

sinner. He assured them that Teleki was ‘‘ready to make a compromise solution” and argued the advantages of ethnically homogeneous States— since the territorial concessions would have to be accompanied by exchange

of populations. After the Hungarian, and Bulgarian, questions had been settled, “it would be possible to make a Hungaro-Roumanian policy, which was indispensible for the life and future of both countries,’’ both of which

were threatened by Slav encirclement. After Roumania had made the necessary adjustment, internal and external, “‘she would be able to turn to

the Axis, which would take into consideration the situation which had arisen.”

It is certainly not irrelevant to note at this point that while both Hitler and Mussolini had assured the Roumanians that Teleki was willing to conclude a “reasonable compromise,”’ neither of them dropped any hint of what he, or they, understood under the term. The concealment may have been intentional, to prevent Roumania’s being frightened into the arms of Russia. At any rate, MM. Gigurtu and Manoilescu returned to Roumania under the impression that if an Axis decision were given, it would be relatively

favourable to Roumania. According to Mr. Easterman,? they even represented their tour as having been “‘in the nature of a triumph for themselves and a fine success for Roumania,”’ and actually said that Hitler had ‘“‘declared that the best way out of the crisis was by large exchanges of population with-

out territorial readjustment” and that Hitler had promised to impose this solution on Hungary if Roumania would adopt it. It is hardly possible to suppose that the speakers really gathered this impression from their interviews: possibly the reporters of their words misunderstood them. They seem, however, genuinely to have acquired the impression that the Axis Powers would require of them little more than their offer of a strip of the Crisana,

and possibly not even so much.* The Hungarians, on the other hand, still believed Germany and Italy to be sympathetic, if not to their maximum claim then at least to something not very far short of it. The inspired Axis Press now poured out a flood of exhortations to both countries, urging them to negotiate in a spirit of moderation and incidentally denying reports that the Axis would mediate. The Hungarian Press relayed these, arguing, correctly enough, that in offering direct negotiation Hungary was herself “‘following Axis policy in the spirit of the Three Power Agreement’’ (of 9th July). It cannot, however, be said that the tone of either Press 1 There is a full account of this meeting in the Ciano Papers, pp. 382-4, and a note in the Diary, 27th July 1940. In the latter Ciano writes with great distaste of his visitors. ‘““They are simply disgusting. They open their mouths only to exude honeyed compliments. They have become anti-French, anti-British and anti-League of Nations.” 2 Op. cit., p. 211.

3 A Magyar Transylvanian journalist named S. Kovacs wrote in the Amerikai Magyar Népszava, 1st June 1943, that when Gigurtu and Manoilescu were leaving for Vienna, he called on Maniu to ask what were his plans if Transylvania was partitioned. Maniu answered that there was no question of partition. Kovacs: ‘“‘But I know that the Government itself is reckoning with having to give up 20,000 sq. km., while the Hungarians reckon on more.”

Maniu: “Don’t swallow what the Government says. They talk of 20,000 sq. km. in order to be able, when they come back, to say that they have saved Transylvania. There is no question of anything so large as that, only of insignificant frontier rectifications.”’ This agrees with Easterman’s story (p. 216) that Manoilescu told Maniu and others that they need expect nothing worse than “‘small frontier rectifications.”’

416 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH gave very fair promise of “‘moderation.”” The Roumanians raised a cry of

“not an inch”—this cry reflecting a strong and widespread agitation in the country—while the Hungarians denied the legal basis of the Treaty of Trianon.

On 30th July the Roumanian Press published a declaration which suggested that in fact Roumania proposed to exchange the Roumanians in Hungary (who numbered some 40,000) for an equivalent number of Magyars

in Roumania, and leave things at that. The Hungarian Government then delivered a stiff Note saying that the question was “‘a territorial one, not one of minority protection.’”*

The next positive move recorded was the arrival in Budapest on 7th August of M. Bossy, formerly the Roumanian Minister in Budapest and later in Rome.2 According to one source,*® Bossy began by suggesting postponement of the question until “‘an opportune moment”—a suggestion which was, naturally, refused, after renewed intervention by Germany.* Other sources write simply that Bossy declared his purpose to be that of ‘“‘sounding whether the Hungarian Government would agree to enter into direct negotiations.” If so, he suggested as venue a place in the Prahova valley.° Csaky tried to get Bossy to accept an immediate statement of Hungary’s claims. When he refused, Hungary delivered a Note on the 11th® suggesting that immediate negotiations for a new frontier line should be opened at Sinaia. On the 13th

Roumania definitely agreed to negotiate, the venue finally selected being Turnu Severin, while the opening date was fixed for the 16th. The Hungarian delegation, a small one consisting of M. A. Hory, Col. Ujszaszy, Bardossy (come from Bucharest) and some secretaries, left on the

14th, travelling to Turnu Severin by boat, on which, as a gesture of unfriendliness, it lived while the negotiations proceeded. Before the negotiations had opened Hungary had, on the 14th August, published in the Pester Lloyd an important inspired article’ entitled ‘Hungary and Roumania in the New Europe,” which, while insisting on Hungary’s claims, contained a very positive offer of subsequent collaboration. It argued that the two countries were natural friends who had been artificially kept apart by the authors of the Peace Treaties. Frontier revision was indispensable, but would be to the advantage of Roumania herself, and when it had been achieved, ‘‘the military power of a Hungary territorially satisfied would give Roumania solid guarantees (in connection with her foreign position).”’ Hungary was ready, when satisfied, “‘to make a positive contribution to Roumania’s security and to support her actively if foreign elements tried in

the future to upset the balance brought about by the Central Powers. A territorially satisfied Hungary would regard the internal consolidation of Roumania as a primary interest of her own.” 1 Sz. I. MS. 2 He had come up from Rome, reaching Bucharest only the day before, so presumably his mission was arranged through some Italian intervention; but the available papers contain no

information on the point. : 3 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., p. 63.

4 It appears in fact that some days passed in wrangling over what was the exact purpose of Bossy’s mission, what his powers, etc., and this was accompanied by angry complaints in the Hungarian Press that Roumania was playing for time while trying to enlist diplomatic sympathy elsewhere, and perhaps to buy off Bulgaria. Ullein’s story is thus plausible enough. ®° The Sz. I. MS. reproduces a Note, dated 7th August, containing this suggestion. It was probably that delivered by Bossy. ® Text in Sz. I. MS. 7 It was quoted at length in Teleki’s paper Magyarorszdg, and also on the Budapest wireless

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 417 Nevertheless, when on the 16th the negotiations opened, they were marked by the complete absence, on both sides equally, of conciliation, moderation,

or even of relevance to the discussions which the Governments of both countries had had with the Axis Powers. First of all a day was lost while

the Roumanians questioned the authenticity of the Hungarian delegation’s credentials. Then the Roumanians suggested that the first point to be settled was “‘the modalities of the transfer of populations” (which was to be complete and compulsory), after which would come the question of the areas from and

to which the populations were to be transferred. On principle, when it was known how many people were to be moved, sufficient land to accommodate the balance could be ceded; this land being in the Crisana.! The Hungarian delegation maintained that the first point to be settled was the territorial, the exchange of populations, which should be voluntary, although they admitted the principle, coming after. They began, therefore, by presenting their territorial demands, and that, it appears, a near-maximum demand of 69,000 sq. km.; having come down from the original 72,000 only by renouncing 3,000 sq. km. of the Burzenland.? Naturally, no sort of agreement could be reached on this basis. After two futile meetings—the second

lasting only half an hour—the negotiations were broken off, and Hory returned to Budapest on the 19th for instructions. There appears to have followed some German and Italian mediation, although not on the highest level, since neither the Ciano Papers nor the available German archives describe it, but it almost certainly consisted of an injunction to both parties to resume direct negotiations, and to exercise moderation.® At any rate Hory returned to Turnu Severin on the 23rd, and both sides made new offers. The Hungarians appear now to have come down to 60,000 sq. km., while the Roumanians agreed to offer immediate territorial con-

cessions, without, however apparently enlarging the area offered, which remained that previously described by Hitler as “‘‘totally inadequate.’’* At 1 p.m. on the 24th the Hungarian delegation again broke off the conversations, which had achieved precisely nothing.° The impasse threw Teleki into one of his fits of nervous depression. He wrote to a friend® a curious and bitter screed, entitled “‘report and indictment,” accusing himself of having brought the country into an impossible position by accepting Hitler’s offer to put pressure on Carol without making sure that the pressure would be decisive. Now, he said, a favourable agreement with Roumania would never be reached; an unfavourable one would 1 A Reuter message from Bucharest dated 19th August (published in The Times of the 20th) stated that the area which Roumania expected to cede, on this basis, would have consisted of the

Departments of Satu Mare (Szatmar), Salaj (Szilagy), Bihor (Bihar) and northern Arad (excluding the city); i.e. the greater part of the Crisana, but nothing of Transylvania. Whether Szilagy belonged to Transylvania or the Partium was never quite certain. 2 See a statement by M. P. V. Pop on Radio Bucharest, Ist September 1940, 8 p.m. Teleki, in his Parliamentary speech of 4th September said that Hungary had offered “a serious compromise, involving the renunciation of over 30,000 sq. km.” This seems to mean the claim of 72,000 (102,000 —30,000). To this offer, said Teleki, Hungary did not get even a reply. 3 Csaky said in this connection (Parliamentary speech of 4th September) that “the German and Italian Governments were able to learn from the minutes of the negotiations very much which had previously been artificially hidden from them.” 4 R.G. Waldeck, Athene Palace, p. 111, writes that when the Roumanian delegates telephoned to Bucharest about the nature of the negotiations, “‘they got hell from the King and were told that the negotiations had to be resumed at any price.’’ This looks as though Carol had been in direct communication with Hitler and bears out Lajos’ statement that Carol asked Hitler three times for arbitration. 5 Hory simply reported that the Roumanians were ‘‘all obstinate donkeys.” 8 Baron Apor.

2E

418 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH lead to revolution. The only solution now was the ultima ratio of force, which could hardly be avoided, and “‘if the Germans take this ill and turn against us, that means a catastrophe.”

| Nevertheless, he said, it would be impossible simply to accept Roumania’s refusal and go away, saying: “I beg your pardon, we made a mistake.”

There seemed, in fact, to be no resort left except force. The soldiers released on harvest leave were recalled, and the remaining three corps (III, V and VII) were mobilised as the Third Army and stationed on the right of the Second. All Hungary’s available manpower was now under arms to the

not inconsiderable figure of some 400,000 men. The First and Second Armies were warned to be ready to march on the 28th, unless Roumania had accepted Hungary’s demands before that date.1_ Demonstrative A.R.P.

preparations were made in Budapest, largely in order to impress the Roumanians. Meanwhile, after Csaky had held a long conversation with Erdmannsdorff on the 25th, the Hungarian Government on the following day notified Germany and Italy that the Roumanians were not trying to negotiate seriously. The Hungarian Government was therefore forced to consider whether it would not be preferable for if, instead of waiting for the moment militarily most favourable to Roumania, itself to choose its own moment for military action. It asked the two Governments whether they

would observe friendly neutrality towards Hungary, and what sort of neutrality they proposed to observe towards Roumania.? But now the situation was once again suddenly and completely transformed by the renewed intervention of Russia. On the 25th Kristdéffy tele-

graphed again that M. Molotov had that day repeated to him that his Government “‘regarded Hungary’s territorial claims as well-founded. ... The attitude of the Soviets on this question will be favourable to Hungary.... The Hungarian Government may rest assured that the Soviet Government never regarded the Roumania of Versailles and Trianon as realistic, and that it was equally objectionable to Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary.’’* From the Roumanian end, M. Gafencu, who had been sent to Moscow on 7th August with the express purpose of getting out of Russia—to use his own words*— ‘‘a guarantee of peace which would allow Roumania to live quietly”’ (really, a guarantee at least of neutrality, perhaps of support in case of a RoumanoHungarian conflict, to be paid by closer Roumanian co-operation with the U.S.S.R.), had at first been civilly received. But on the 24th the Roumanian Government received reports—which Dekanasov, indeed, denied—of con-

centrations of Soviet troops on the Roumanian frontier.6 Other reports would have it that Russia said outright that if Roumania went to war with Hungary, the U.S.S.R. would invade Moldavia.

Oddly enough, even two years later M. Gafencu thought that Russia might have been adopting this threatening attitude in order to do a service 1 Nagy, p. 38. According to The Times of 29th August, Bucharest claimed that Hungarian aircraft bombed Satu Mare (Szatmar) and dropped leaflets on Brasov on the 26th. The Szatmar incident certainly took place, but it was unauthorised. 3 Quoted by Lajos. 1 Prelude, p. 300. *> According to himself, M. Molotov had told him categorically on the 15th that “‘the Soviet Union had no further claims on Roumania and that she wished to develop peaceful relations and good neighbourliness with Roumania”’ (op. cit., p. 51). ° Prelude, p. 56.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 419 to Germany.t The Germans thought quite otherwise, and, so it appeared, did King Carol’s Government. Both believed that Russia was deliberately fomenting the Hungaro-Roumanian dispute with the intention of then marching into Moldavia and Wallachia, perhaps wiping out the Roumanian State altogether; at any rate, seizing the all-important oil-wells and possibly marching on Istanbul.” On the 25th Carol sent another most urgent message to Hitler saying that there was a danger that Russia would invade and appealing to him to impose a settlement with Hungary. He was not asking for arbitration, but for Hitler to use his influence to make Hungary and Bulgaria keep their claims “‘within the limits of well-established principles.’’* Hitler was already so seriously alarmed at the news of the Soviet troop movements that he had given orders for ten divisions to be moved eastward, and for two armoured divisions to be sent down to the extreme south-eastern corner of Slovakia, whence they could, in case of necessity, make a swift dash into Roumania.* On the 26th Ribbentrop telephoned several times to Rome, saying that Germany wanted at all costs to avoid a crisis in the Balkans. He was thinking, not of arbitrating —to which the Fiihrer was still opposed—but of calling the two Foreign Ministers to Vienna for “‘friendly advice,” which was, of course, “to be a

threat: whoever does not take the advice will take upon himself all re-

sponsibility for future consequences.’ Ciano agreed and Mussolini approved.°

The invitations were sent out immediately. Ciano and Ribbentrop were

to meet in Salzburg and to go on to Vienna, arriving on the 28th, the Hungarians and Roumanians arriving on the following day. Ciano® has interesting and important notes on the views of the Axis representatives. Mussolini had no views, and gave Ciano full liberty of action. The Fuhrer, on whom Ciano was required to call en route, also laid down no detailed instructions of any sort. He did not discuss the question at length, and left the solution to Ciano and Ribbentrop. “The only thing he has at heart,” writes Ciano, “‘is that peace be preserved in these parts and that Roumanian oil continue to flow into his reservoirs.’’ According to the Ciano Papers, however, he regarded the Hungarian demands as “‘exaggerated and illogical” 1 Id., p. 304. 2 So, according to Lajos and the Sz. I. MS., Hitler told Bardossy on 21st March 1941, that

‘She had not liked assuming the role of arbitrator but . . . when the Roumanians asked for his swift intervention, on the ground that the Soviet Army had made all preparations to cross the Danube [sic], and the Hungaro-Roumanian position also grew acute... he could do nothing else but himself impose a solution which averted a complete collapse of the whole Roumanian State system.” In November 1941 Ribbentrop told Bardossy: “It would have been a terrible danger if Hungary had then gone to war with Roumania, for the Germans possessed absolute documentary proof that then the Russians, too, would have marched and then Hungary would in the end have clashed with Russia. Not to mention that the Russians, after occupying Roumania, would have become masters of the Roumanian oil-wells. Could he [Bardossy] conceive what it would have meant from the point of view of the striking power of the German Army if he [Ribbentrop] had had to negotiate with Molotov to get anything of the Roumanian oil production’’? (Sz. I. MS.).

Montgomery (p. 138) heard from Csaky that “he thought the Germans were much worried. He said that they could not attack England for fear that Russia might take advantage of the opportunity and seize parts of Eastern Europe, including all of Roumania.” 8 J have this from a Roumanian diplomatic source. 4 Hillgruber, op. cit., p. 89. It is interesting that this was exactly what Sztojay had, in the previous February, warned Teleki that Germany would do if the Roumanian oil-wells were endangered (see above, p. 390). § Ciano Diary, 26th August 1940. 5 Ciano Papers (MS.). 7 Ciano Diary, 28th August 1940.

420 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and ‘“‘pronounced severe words on them.” He thought that a reasonable settlement would be to give Hungary about two-thirds of what she was asking; or, as Ribbentrop told Ciano on the phone, 40,000 sq. km. instead of the 60,000 for which she had asked.* Ciano and Ribbentrop cannot have had much time for preliminary conversations, for Ciano only reached Vienna in the evening of the 28th, after

what must have been a long and tiring day. Indeed, his Diary records no meeting with Ribbentrop on that evening. The next day the Hungarians were already arriving at 10 a.m. and meeting Ribbentrop and Ciano at 11, so that then, too, there can have been no time for detailed discussion and the two men probably did no more than take the decision recorded by Ciano: “Ribbentrop and I decide to solve the question by arbitration. If we once started a discussion we should never be able to end it.’” This decision was a very sudden one, a reversal of what the Axis had repeatedly and emphatically declared to be its fixed policy; it was taken so abruptly that the Hungarians and Roumanians themselves had been given no notice of it, and arrived expecting that they were to be invited to continue their negotiations, perhaps in the presence of Axis mediators. The first step was therefore to persuade both to accept an arbitral award and the condition on which Ribbentrop and Ciano agreed to deliver it, which was that both parties undertook in advance to accept its findings as binding.* Teleki and Csdky* had, as said, arrived accompanied by their usual staff of experts at 10 a.m. and were conducted to Ribbentrop’s H.Q. in the Hotel Imperial an hour later. There followed a two-hours’ conversation, of which Ciano notes that “‘Csaky is reasonable, Teleki hostile.”’® He was, in fact, most unwilling to accept arbitration, for two main reasons: firstly, he foresaw that the result would be interpreted as ‘‘taking a gift from the Axis,” and secondly, he foresaw that Ribbentrop, always hostile to Hungary, would award her less than she could have secured for herself. In the circumstances, he could not refuse directly, but what he and Csaky did was to make it clear in practice, even if

the point was not put in so many words, that they agreed—subject to the consent of the Regent and the Cabinet—to accept an Award provided they were assured that this would give them the Szekel area and a corridor linking

it to Inner Hungary.’ Ribbentrop assailed them, according to Ciano, in conspicuously discourteous and even “‘rather threatening” terms,® but failed to move the Hungarians, and was at last forced to give way. When they had 1 Diary, loc. cit. 2 Ciano Diary, 29th August 1940.

3 Csaky in the Hungarian Parliament, 4th September 1940. 1 The invitation had been addressed to the Foreign Ministers only, but Teleki refused to let

Csaky go alone. He described himself, however, as attending only as an “observer.” 6 Ciano Diary, loc. cit. Erdmannsdorff actually writes to C. A. M.: “Csaky voted for, Teleki against, accepting the Award.” 6 In the complaint against the General Staff which Teleki indited a day or two later to Horthy (see below, p. 432), one of the main charges which he made against Werth was that the latter had told the German Military Attaché that Hungary wanted arbitration, thereby, said Teleki, going directly contrary to the Government’s policy. * The documents relating to this episode are discreet but transparent. Ciano writes only that the Hungarians ‘“‘took the opportunity to recapitulate their point of view in very decided terms.” Csaky, when he gave the details to the Hungarian Parliament, said that ‘“‘while not wishing to influence the arbitral award in advance, and while expressing the greatest respect for the endeavours of the German and Italian Governments, we held it our duty, precisely for that reason, to state that the restoration of the Szekel areas was a vital question for Hungary.” Teleki put it on 3rd December: “‘We accepted in advance the Award which we could at the most guess at but could not know.”’ 8 Diary, 29th August 1940.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 421 got their assurance, the Hungarians retired and rang up Budapest.' A hurriedly convened Ministerial Council approved their actions unanimously’; the Regent also consented, making two further stipulations: that the award

should be rendered by Italy and Germany jointly, and that Roumania also should accept it as binding.° By 3 p.m. Hungary had given her answer, in these terms, to the arbitrators, although the official written consent was deposited with the German

Legation in Budapest only half an hour before the rendering of the Award.! The Roumanians reached Vienna only at 1 p.m., and their interview with

the two big-wigs began at 3.30 and was not over until 5.45. It was, said Ciano, “less violent’? than the conversation with the Hungarians, M. Manoilescu being terrified and bewildered.» The Roumanians were reminded that they, or at least Carol, had asked for arbitration, and were

imperiously summoned to accept it, being told again that once their differences with their neighbours were settled, Germany would guarantee what was left of their territory.

M. Manoilescu did not deny the advantages of the guarantee, but “thought the price was high.”’ In one very important respect the Roumanians came off much worse than the Hungarians. According to M. Pop,® they were not even allowed to state their case, nor were they given any hint of what would be the nature of the Award. Had the arbitrators revealed that they had committed themselves (at least by tacit consent) to the NW.-SE. line, Roumania might have refused to accept in advance a binding award; but Ribbentrop and Ciano prudently hid this from them. The Roumanians in their turn telephoned for instructions, Manoilescu warning his Government that the situation was most serious. Fabricius had

warned him several times that if war broke out between Roumania and Hungary as a result of Roumania’s rejecting the Award, it was highly probable that the Axis would support Hungary. If Roumania did not accept the Award, Hungary and Russia would immediately attack her simultaneously,

‘and that would be the end of Roumania.’’ Ribbentrop had told him that “we should not consider the arbitration as a bluff, for Hitler never bluffs.”’ Both Ribbentrop and Ciano had spoken of “‘concomitant Russian and Hungarian action as a thing that had been agreed between those countries.’’’ A delay ensued, which was probably due to another move suddenly made by

the U.S.S.R.; for that same afternoon, M. Dekanasov, in Moscow, had invited M. Gafencu to call on him at midnight. When M. Gafencu arrived,

M. Dekanasov suddenly and urgently raised the question of certain ‘Sincidents” on the Moldavian frontier, presenting a threatening note, which was published the next day by Tass.° The Roumanian Government seems to have waited for M. Gafencu’s 1 According to Ullein-Reviczky (personal to C. A. M.), as a German was listening in to the conversation, Csaky did not speak of conditions or promises, but said, ‘““Of course, it is understood that we get the Szekel area.” 2 Csaky, loc. cit., also Barczy. 3 Horthy (personal to C. A. M.). “ Kertész, Diplomacy in a Whirlpool, p. 51. 5 Ciano Diary, 29th August 1940. _ §& Pop, loc. cit. 7 Markham, op. cit., p. 124. 8 Gafencu, op. cit., pp. 57-8, 304.

422 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH report on his interview before answering Vienna; the more so as it had still not given up hope that the U.S.S.R. would after all help Roumania to resist

Hungary. When it became clear that the Soviet’s attitude was the exact opposite of this—the Germans and Italians, indeed, maintained that the U.S.S.R. and Hungary were working together—the Government, after debating the matter in a prolonged Crown Council, gave way and telephoned

Manoilescu authorisation to accept the Award.1 The message arrived at 4 a.m.

It appears to have been given with the less hesitation because, as said above, the Roumanians still harboured extraordinarily sanguine delusions as to how the arbitration would fall out. Even before the answer came, Ribbentrop and Ciano, assisted, it appears, only by their experts (German and Italian) had “traced the new frontier and dictated the terms of arbitration.’’ They had performed the former task by the simple method of taking the Hungarian statement of claims and cutting it down, according to Hitler’s general instruction, to about two-thirds of the maximum claim.” Certain special considerations were taken into account in determining details. The Kis-Sarmas area east of Kolozsvar, which was linked industrially through its deposits of methane gas with the Hermann Goring Works further south, was left to Roumania, forcing the line here to make a big salient, afterwards known to the Hungarians, partly from its shape and partly from the notorious reason for its existence, as “‘the Goring Belly.”* For similar reasons—so at least the Hungarians believed—Arad, with its iron-works, remained south of the line,* as did the Burzenland, this in accordance with a ruling by Hitler that all German-speaking areas should,

where possible, be left with Roumania. A few small points may, as Roumanians have asserted, have been settled favourably to Hungary for analogousreasons. Theresultantline started from a point near Nagyszalonta, whence it ran north-eastward, then eastward, to pass just south of Kolozsvar, which was assigned to Hungary, although its water supply and electricity works remained in Roumania. After the salient of the Goring Belly, the line ran south-east, giving Marosvasarhely to Hungary but leaving Segesvar in Roumania, and thereafter skirting the south-western edge of the Szekel area.

The Burzenland, as has been said, was left with Roumania. In the north the line followed the historic frontier of Hungary, which thus received all Northern Transylvania and the Maramaros, giving her in all some 43,591 1 According to Pavel, op. cit., pp. 204-5, Maniu, C. Bratianu, V. Antonescu, Cuza, Dr. Anghelescu, M. Popovic, General Vaitoianu, I. Diamandi, S. Dragonin and the Metropolitan Balan of Transylvania were for rejecting the arbitration and making war on Hungary. The rest of the Council were for acceptance. For another account of this: Easterman, op. cit., pp. 213 ff.

2 Hillgruber, op. cit., p. 91, gives a different account. According to him, Fabricius and Erdmannsdorff were asked in Fuschl to propose settlements. Fabricius suggested a N.-S. line west of the Bihar Mountains. To this Ribbentrop added Kolozsvar. Clodius, who knew the Hungarian wishes, said that they would insist on the Szekel area, and as an alternative plan a corridor broadening out into the Szekel area was suggested. Hitler, instead of taking these as alternatives, combined the two. Although this version comes from Fabricius, it is incompatible with Ciano’s own account, and while I have no doubt that the earlier proposals were made as Fabricius describes, I do not think it possible to avoid concluding that they were only drafts which Ciano and Ribbentrop at the most had on the table while taking their real decisions as I have described.

* Lajos asserts that the Roumanians made certain of this by selling Germany, at the last moment, the gold-mines, valued at 20 million dollars, of the M.I.C.A. Company (of which,

incidentally, Gigurtu was chairman).

* So a report in the Sz. I. MS. states. Another reason given was that King Carol had a

hunting-box in the neighbourhood.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 423 sq. km.* of the 102,000 sq. km. at issue; Roumania retained 60,000. The population figures for the area re-ceded to Hungary were:

1910 census 1930 census 1941 census (Hungarian, (Roumanian, (Hungarian)

by mother-tongue) by nationality)

Magyar . . 1,125,732 911,550 1,347,012

Roumanian . 926,268 1,176,433 1,066,353 German ) 90.195 German . 68,694 German . 47,501 Yiddish { ? Jews. , 138,885 Yiddish . 45,593

Ruthene 16,284 Ruthene . 20,609 Slovak . . 12,807 Others ; 99,585 Slovak . 20,908

Romany . 24,729 Other. ; 22,968 Others , 4,586

2,194,254 2,395,147 2,577,291 The figures for the area left with Roumania are:

1910 census 1930 census

Magyar. , , 533,004 441,720 Roumanian , . 1,895,505 2,031,447

German . ; . 475,158 Yiddish { *| »Germans 465,814 Others. . . 150,934 Other , ; , 152,820

3,047,143 3,099,259 Roumania had to vacate the territory ceded within fourteen days, leaving it in good order. Roumanian citizens domiciled in the areas ceded automatically acquired Hungarian citizenship, but had the right to opt for Roumanian citizenship within six months, when they had to move to Roumania within a year. Ethnic Magyars left in Roumania might similarly opt for Hungary. Both countries undertook solemnly to grant their citizens of the other’s ethnic nationality full equality of rights. Besides this, both countries were required to sign with the Reich agreements regarding their German “‘Volksgruppen.’’ The Roumanian was short and general, and did little more than guarantee all members of the German Volksgruppe in Roumania equal treatment and national rights in accordance with the Alba Julia Resolutions.2 It thus imposed on Roumania few new theoretical burdens and not many fresh ones in practice; for although the Roumanian Government had never admitted the Alba Julia Resolutions as binding on itself, it had been forced in the preceding year or two into giving its Volksgruppe extremely extensive corporate rights. The agreement with Hungary, on the other hand, went into much detail. All members of the German Volksgruppe in Hungary were guaranteed the right to preserve their German way of life, without restriction, and to suffer no disadvantage on account of their professing adherence to the National 1 This seems the best authenticated figure, although many variants have been given. 2 Under these resolutions the Roumanians of Transylvania, when proclaiming the union of

Transylvania with Roumania on Ist November 1918, had promised the other nationalities of Transylvania full cultural liberty and autonomy in their internal affairs,

424 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Socialist ideology. ‘Member of the Volksgruppe”’ was any person declaring himself a member of the German Volk and accepted as such by the “‘leadership” of the ‘““Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn.’’ They were guaranteed equality of treatment with other Hungarian citizens, free use of their language

in private intercourse, public meetings and the Press, equal admission to professions, a number of posts in the public services proportionate to their numbers, education in their own tongue on an equal footing with Magyars, the right to use German in intercourse with the authorities where Germans constituted one-third of the local population, the right to organise and to create their own associations for purposes of education, sport, culture, etc., as also for economic self-help, the unrestricted right to cultural intercourse with the ‘‘Muttervolk.””> The Government promised to abstain from any measures calculated to promote Magyarisation, and, in particular, to allow members of the Volksgruppe to resume original German names which had been Magyarised by themselves or their ancestors. The Government further

made a verbal promise to allow no other German organisation than the Volksbund.! These stipulations applied not only to the German inhabitants of the re-ceded areas but to all the German citizens of Hungary. Some of them again (e.g. the right to equality of treatment and to free use of language) went no further than Hungary’s existing Minorities Treaty, or, indeed, her own legislation of 1868, although these had never been honoured in practice;

but the corporate rights and powers vested in the Volksbund were, for Hungary, an innovation which, if put into practice, placed that body in a very powerful position and one which not only ran counter to the entire Hungarian political tradition but might really prove dangerous to the Hungarian State. Working all this out took Ribbentrop and Ciano all the evening of the 29th and the morning of the 30th. The Roumanian and Hungarian delegations waited in their respective hotels, without personal contact, either with the arbitrators or with one another. Messengers, however, went to and fro between the three hotels. At half-past two the delegations were called to the

Belvedere. Ribbentrop said a few introductory words. The Award was then read out, in German and Italian. As the description of the frontier ended, there was ‘“‘a dull thud.’’ Manoilescu had fainted over the table. He was brought to. At 3.7 he and Csaky signed the Award and accompanying documents. As soon as this was done, Hitler notified the Roumanians that he had guaranteed their new frontiers. So ended this complex chapter of history, concerning which remarkable legends promptly sprang up in England, and defied all uprooting. According to these, Germany, angry with Roumania for her pro-Allied policy and determined to put a stop to it, had egged on Hungary to produce the crisis. She had then imposed a line which was grossly favourable to Hungary—the legend

persistently maintained that the Award had given “‘two-thirds of Transylvania” to Hungary, and had been devised with the special purpose of leaving Roumania strategically at the mercy of the accomplices, Germany and Hungary. As our narrative will have shown, this version almost exactly reversed the truth in every essential respect. Roumania’s heart was doubtless with the Allies, but her policy had been 99 per cent. favourable to Germany long ! Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., p. 67.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 425 ' before the crisis. The Germans were throughout on her side, against : Hungary. They feared that any interruption of the services which Roumania | was rendering might have fatal consequences for them, and did their utmost

| to prevent Hungary from moving. The whole initiative was taken by the Hungarians, who held a pistol’s point to the Germans’ heads. Strategic considerations played some part in the drafting of the line, but only indirectly, in as much as the Hungarians used them to sweeten their demands; and the

State visé was not Roumania, but Russia. The arbitrators were not being Macchiavellian; both of them claimed!—and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity—that they had tried to draw a just line. And in fact, the Award did not favour Hungary inordinately. It gave her not two thirds but two-fifths of the area in dispute, and if it put some million Roumanians under Hungarian rule, it freed as many Magyars from Roumanian rule, under which

it still left a substantial number. It was far less one-sided than the frontier imposed by the Allies in 1920 and reimposed in 1946. It is true that the arbitrators took the Hungarian side on the all-important question, from which

nearly everything else followed, on whether to have a NW.-SE. partition taking in the Szekel areas, or a N.-S. line further west. But this was because the Hungarians, in practice, made this a conditio sine qua non of their not fighting, and also because they had got in first with their statement of claims, which assumed that a NW.-SE. line constituted the only basis even theoretic-

ally conceivable for solving the Transylvanian problem. Ribbentrop and Ciano were not well enough up in the complexities of the problem to question

this assumption.2 The Roumanians would have had a better chance of getting a N.-S. line seriously considered if their own proposals, besides coming late, had not been so obviously inadequate.

Neither is it true that the line was deliberately so drawn as to satisfy neither party, and thus to make it easier for Germany to play one off against the other. It had, indeed, that effect, but by no wish of Hitler’s, whose earnest desire it was to create pacification and solidarity in South-Eastern Europe

and who hoped that the settlement would bring this about, although he plainly foresaw that he would get no sincere thanks for it from either side (which was one reason why he tried so hard, to the limits of possibility, to induce the disputants to settle the affair between themselves). That both parties remained dissatisfied was due to the nature of the problem, and of their national psychologies.

Finally, it may be remarked here that Hungary neither received any reward from Germany for abetting her, nor paid any secret price for forcing her own wishes through. Many Hungarians would have regarded a closer formal association with the Axis as a reward. Hungary, as we saw, ran the Munich communiqué hard, and at the end of the crisis, some papers went

even further. On Ist September the Magyarorszdag itself wrote of “‘the German-Hungarian-Italian alliance,” and of “‘the three Powers which now constitute the Axis,’ and Pest wrote that “‘at Munich Hungary became an 1 Ciano Diary, 29th August 1940; Nazi-Soviet Relations, p. 179 (Ribbentrop to Molotov). 2 The only person who seems to have had different ideas was Woermann, who said at the Ministries Trial (6th July 1948, p. 11,110) that he had tried to get an equal line with a minimum of minorities, but Hitler and Ribbentrop “simply scratched this through with a pencil and ignored it altogether.’ We do not, unfortunately, know what Woermann’s ideas were. 3 Hitler had another reason, besides his sensitiveness to ingratitude and abuse, of which he had got his bellyful from Hungary after the First Vienna Award. Ciano writes that “he wanted to abstain from any judgment on the merits of the case.” How much wiser he than many politicians and journalists who have accused Hitler of being opinionated!

426 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH organic constituent part of the Axis.” There was not a word of truth in these claims, which were then not repeated—possibly the Germans had remonstrated.

On her side, Germany made no conditions or demands during the negotiations, except the Volksgruppe agreement. She did not even formally accept Csaky’s offer of 28th June. That offer, however, remained on record,

and it would naturally be very difficult for Hungary to go back on it, if

the Germans reverted to it. The official reception of the Award in London was reasonable. Some time earlier, Mr. Churchill had promised Barcza that he would try to take some opportunity, of saying an encouraging word to Hungary.’ Speaking now in the House of Commons, he said: **... The House had no doubt observed . . . that Roumania has undergone severe territorial mutilation. Personally, I have always thought that the southern part of the Dobrudja ought to be restored to Bulgaria, and I have never been happy about the way in which Hungary was treated after the last war. We have not at any time adopted, since this war broke out, the line that nothing could be changed in the territorial structure of various countries. On the other hand, we do not propose to recognise any territorial changes which take place during the war, unless they take place with the free consent and goodwill of the parties concerned.’”

Lord Halifax repeated the unfortunate misstatement that Hungary had recovered “‘two-thirds of Transylvania,” said, like Mr. Churchill, that H.M. Government would recognise no territorial changes not reached by free agreement, and drew a distinction between the Roumano-Bulgarian settlement, which Britain accepted as “‘agreed,”’ and the Hungaro-Roumanian, which was “the result of a dictation by the Axis Powers, imposed on Roumania under duress.’”* But he, too, said that Britain had “‘never supported a policy based on a rigid adherence to the status quo,’’ and ended his statement with the following important promise, broken by his successors: ‘T have no doubt that all of us in this House hope that at the end of the war there may be a general settlement on lines so just and equitable as to give hope of its durability, and to that end His Majesty’s Government will

use all their influence.’

Privately, the Foreign Office told Barcza that ‘‘Great Britain could not recognise any territorial changes which took place after Ist September 1939. Hungary should take note of this fact, which was important.’ Unfortunately for Teleki, these reasonable words were drowned in the torrent of inaccurate and unfair comment which poured out from most of the Press, and from the B.B.C., whose Roumanian speaker was allowed freely

to incite Roumania against Hungary in inflammatory terms, while his counterpart on the Hungarian service had a battle before he was allowed to quote Halifax’s official statement. Moreover, while the negotiations were

1 Barcza MS. '

* Hansard, H. of C., vol. 365, col. 40. ’ The F.O. had decided to draw this distinction, which, Jesuitical as it was, had this much justification that the Roumanian Minister in London had entered an official protest against the

Hungarian award, but not against the Bulgarian. 4 Hansard, H. of L., vol. 117, col. 366. 5 Barcza MS.

THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD 427 still proceeding, Britain had supplied the enemies of Teleki’s policy with further ammunition by announcing, on 23rd July, its recognition of the Czecho-Slovak National Committee as a Provisional Government. According to Barcza,! when this was announced, Bruce Lockhart called on him, and “obviously conveying a message from the Foreign Office, informed me that this step of the British Government’s was in no way directed against Hungary; it did not apply to territorial questions, and only meant that England reserved her right in principle, as one of her war aims, to restore positions which had been destroyed by aggression.” The public announce-

ment in fact made no reference to frontiers, and on 2nd August Barcza reported that Cadogan had assured him that “‘Bene’ had been given definitely

to understand that the recognition of the Czecho-Slovak Government was only a question of principle, which did not prejudge frontier questions. He understood that the recognition had made a bad impression in Hungary, but hoped that the explanation had removed this, since the British Government attached as much importance as we did to the maintenance of good relations between us.”’ O’Malley had been charged to make a similar communication in Budapest.” It was, however, inevitable that the impression in Hungary should be bad.

Barcza described the step to Bruce Lockhart as “‘superfluous, untimely and calculated to shake faith in England’s justice.”” Csaky considered officially designating the step as an “‘unfriendly act’’ and sending Barcza on furlough. Teleki was depressed, and the Hungarian Right exultant. The internal politics of the period (to close the story of it) had been peace-

ful. Imrédy had announced that he would “hold his hand until the crisis passed,” and the authorities had facilitated this policy of abnegation for him

by calling him up for service and keeping his nose glued to papers in an orderly room. The Arrow Cross was cowering under the opprobrium brought on them by the indiscretion of Hubay and Vago, who, their Parliamentary immunity having been suspended, were duly arrested on 23rd July. This was followed by what to the unsophisticated would seem a more serious scandal still, although the Hungarians took it much more lightly: in August, two other Deputies—Wirth and Kovarcs*—were discovered to have hatched

a remarkable plot. They had provided themselves and a group of their followers with rifles, revolvers and ammunition. Wirth was to ambush the Regent when he drove out to his country seat at Kenderes, kidnap him and keep him prisoner, having killed his escort. Kovarcs was to occupy the Ministries, wireless studios and other public buildings in Budapest, assassinate Keresztes-

Fischer, and have the railway-lines blown up “‘to prevent a foreign Power from coming to the help of the Government.” Another group was to free Szalasi and take him to the Regent, who was then to be compelled to appoint him Minister President, when the Hungarist State would be proclaimed. 1 Sz. I. MS. * Id. 3 We shall meet both these gentlemen again. Kovarcs was a professional thug and gangster. As a young man he had been chauffeur to the famous White Terrorist, Ostenburg, and had also had a hand in the assassination of two editors of the Népszava, Somogyi and Bacso, and in the

bomb outrage on the synagogue in the Dohany-utca. In September 1944 Szalasi made him, as will be described, his ‘“‘technical expert.”” He was a man of great courage, ruthlessness and ability in his own line. Both Szdlasi and the Germans had a rightly high opinion of his efficiency. Wirth, who was actually the youngest Deputy (he had been born in 1910), was another desperado, rather less interesting. He was killed by a shell during the siege of Budapest.

428 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH As Wirth and Kovarcs were Deputies, and had not been apprehended in flagrante delicto, Hungarian law required the grotesque situation that after all these plans had been brought to light, the two men could walk about Budapest unmolested, pending the suspension of their Parliamentary immunity. Kovarcs prudently took advantage of this privilege to take train to Berlin.

The Palffy-Baky group drew a somewhat unfair advantage from the Hubay-Vag6o scandal (for it was they who had always accepted the Volksgruppe idea, which Szalasi rejected as incompatible with Hungarism) and from the fact that, apart from the annulment of Palffy’s own mandate, they had not been involved in any major scandals, to announce, on 24th July, the formation of a new “‘Hungarian National Socialist Party,’ composed of the 11 original Deputies of their group, Sz6ll6si and three dissidents from Szalasi’s party. In August they were joined by an important recruit, General Ruszkay,}

who was at once elected Party Leader; this involving fresh trouble, for Ruszkay had omitted to ask leave of the Ministry of Defence, and was consequently forced to resign his rank and title of Vitéz. The new party promptly came to terms with the Germans, formally accepted the Volksgruppe idea and received in return the backing of the Magyarsdg, which afterwards wrote frankly that it would have preferred the Szalasi Party, but as that party would not accept its terms, had to make do with those who would do so. From this date on they constituted the Germans’ chief, and

indeed, apart from isolated individuals, their only contractual agents in Hungary. They now put out some feelers to their brother party and to Imrédy, but were unable to reach agreement with either. During this period the Government had, for the first time, been obliged to consider seriously the possibility of the nation’s food supplies running short.

As the harvest months approached, it had become clear that the combined effects of the hard winter and the floods were going to produce an exceptionally small harvest, while stocks were being depleted by quick sales, legitimate and other. Further, hoarding was already setting in on a large scale. The Government was obliged to ask Germany to accept a reduction on the 10 million quintals of the 1939 harvest which she had contracted to buy in the previous year; in the event Germany took only 2 m.q., ceding 4 m.q. to Italy, and allowing smaller quantities to go to Greece and Switzerland. The rest was reserved against a shortage of crops, including fodder crops, in

Hungary. In July the milling ratio was drastically reduced, and an order was issued that all stocks of wheat exceeding 5 q., and stocks of hay and straw, had to be declared, and the military was empowered to requisition them. Emergency measures were taken to get in the 1940 harvest; agricultural labourers were exempted from the call-up, or sent on special leave, and the compulsory national labour service was called on. The new agreement with

Germany, which was signed on 11th July, provided only that Germany should receive 20 per cent. of Hungary’s surplus in bread-grains. ! See above, p. 167.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE TRIPARTITE PACT N the morning of 5th September 1940 an Order from the Regent, () countersigned by the Minister of Defence, bade the Hungarian Army enter the re-ceded territory. The advance-guards crossed the 1920 frontier at 7 a.m. on the same day. The advance was stage-managed to be as pictorial as possible, almost the entire Army participating in it. The Regent, mounted on his white horse, and accompanied by Teleki, Bartha, Werth and others, entered Szatmar-Németi in state at 11 a.m. on the first morning. Koloszvar was reached on the 11th, and the easternmost strip of the new frontier on the 13th. The Roumanian troops had retired before the Hungarians advanced, so that there were no armed clashes between regulars, and the senior representatives of the Roumanian people who had remained behind met the oncoming Hungarians with dignity, which the Hungarians reciprocated. Unfortunately, this did not mean that either party showed due self-restraint in all respects.

It seems well authenticated that the retiring Roumanian troops, and some civilians, including especially those rough elements whose past records gave them reason to flee from the wrath of their former victims, had before retiring

committed fairly serious atrocities against the local Magyars.1 On their heels then came the Hungarian troops and gendarmerie, who “restored order” in this respect, but certainly committed or watched approvingly the commission of similar acts on the other side, and then rounded up and despatched, at a few hours’ notice, a large number of Roumanian officials and others. These expulsions were not only brutal but also stupid: they included some persons with Roumanian names who in everything except ancestry were complete and even enthusiastic Magyars. There were anti-Magyar demonstrations, and—if Hungarian Press reports spoke the truth—excesses on the Roumanian side of the new frontier. The rumour spread, encouraged by Roumanian local authorities, that the entire

Magyar population of South Transylvania was to be exchanged against Roumanians from the north. The Hungarian Government denied this and, over the wireless, told the Magyars to stay in their homes, but a certain number nevertheless fled, under more or less of compulsion. At the beginning of October the Roumanians began expelling Magyar State employees on a

large scale. Teleki threatened reprisals, and the work of the Mixed Commissions was suspended, leaving unsettled many questions of option, liquida-

tion of property, mutual amnesty, economic adjustment, etc. The minority leaders on each side undertook to mediate, but with little success. On 11th October both sides appealed to the Axis. A German-Italian Commission was sent to mediate. The expulsions, the exact scale of which it is impossible 1 Admissions to this effect were made by the Roumanian leader, Professor Hategianu, in a very reasonable statement made on the wireless on 12th October.

430 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH to determine,' now stopped, at least for the time, and things quietened down

a little. The law incorporating Northern Transylvania in Hungary was enacted on 2nd October, and the civilian administration introduced. Teleki had been anxious to introduce a civilised and conciliatory regime, and had to that end, some weeks previously, appointed a man of high character and a

personal friend of his own, A. Hlatky, who was himself a native of the recovered areas—his father had been Féispan of Bihar County, where he had

spent his own youth—to become the new FOispan of Bihar with general

charge of civilian administration in the whole recovered areas. Under Hlatky’s direction, a cadre of civilian administrators had been put through a hurried course of instruction in Pécs. The civilians were an improvement on the military; the Roumanians themselves admitted that what followed was

only a “cold terror,’ that is, no positive atrocities.2, But Hlatky himself found that many of his administrators were inspired by “‘a spirit of pure PanMagyar revanche,”’ which spirit certainly burned in the breasts of many of the

Transylvanian Magyars; as did the corresponding feelings among the Roumanians on the other side of the frontier. The administrative regime introduced by the Hungarians was simply that which had been in force before 1919, the personnel consisting almost entirely of Magyars, most of them local,

with a few Germans in the Saxon districts. Few Roumanians were left in administrative posts; it must be said that it would have been difficult, with the best will, to leave many, since nearly all had fled after the issue of the Award. In the educational system, the former disproportion in favour of Roumania

was reversed.

For Parliamentary representation, it was decided not to hold elections so long as the emergency lasted. 63 Deputies were allotted to Transylvania in the Lower House, and a proportionate number in the Upper House. Of the 63 seats, 12 were reserved for Roumanians, but it was stated that the places would not be filled until Roumania allowed her Magyar minority equivalent representation. 48 Magyars and 3 Germans were designated, the candidates being nominated by the local organisations themselves.

The Orthodox Bishop of Kolozsvar was given a seat in the Upper House.

It need hardly be said that the very last effect which the Award had produced had been that of appeasement on either side. The Hungarians made some motions of putting a decent face on things officially. Horthy wrote Ciano a polite letter in which he described the Award as ‘“‘an act of justice which guarantees a durable peace in the Danube and in the Balkans.’ Both Teleki and Csaky, when speaking of the Award in Parliament on 4th

September, had warm words of thanks for both Germany and Italy, and of acknowledgement for their friendship towards Hungary, Csaky saying that: “It will not be our fault if Hungaro-Roumanian relations fail to reach 1 Reliable figures on these points are impossible to ascertain. The Roumanians claimed that Hungary had expelled 60,000 Roumanians. According to Transocean, 25th November 1940, Hungary said that the true figure between 5th September and 24th November was 2,113 expelled, 9,390 left voluntarily and 7,277 opted. Hungary claimed that Roumania had expelled 30,000 Magyars, but no doubt not all of these were expelled in the strict sense of the word. It was afterwards stated that 11,000 Hungarian workmen from Bucharest and the oil-fields had returned to Hungary. Another report said that by the end of September there was 54,000 refugees—few, however, indigenous to S. Transylvania. * I take this statement from a war pamphlet now no longer available to me. 3 Ciano Papers, p. 357.

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 431 the degree of friendship which natural conditions demand from the two countries.”

After the Axis intervention, both Csdky and Teleki again announced officially that they were willing to be friends with Roumania when that State

carried out her obligations to the minorities and respected the Award as loyally as Hungary had done. Declarations to this effect, official and officieux, were repeated on many occasions. But, in reality, a great part of Hungarian opinion was thoroughly dissatisfied with the Award, and, in any case, all offers of friendship were made dependent on Roumania’s at least acquiescing in the new situation with a good grace. The Roumanians did

not make so much as a pretence of so doing. Even in September they organised a great demonstration in Alba Julia against the Award, and, thereafter, officials, politicians, and the Press were untiring in their assertions that the territories filched from Roumanians were to be recovered at the earliest

opportunity. More than this, the whole tone of all utterances, spoken or written, did not even reflect a wish to reach a reasonable compromise, but rather a most virulent hostility towards Hungary and a determination not merely to recover the Trianon Frontier but to go beyond it, over the carcases of the Hungarians, as far at least as the frontier promised Roumania in the Treaty of Bucharest of 1916. Roumania’s virulent and vocal hostility would alone have been sufficient

and compelling cause, at that juncture, to force Hungary into an active pursuit of Germany’s goodwill. To put the problem at its crudest, she had to expect armed attack from Roumania as soonas the world situation allowed, and the only source which could supply her with the means of self-defence

was Germany. And, although it might be thought unlikely that Germany would allow war, it was by no means so certain that, if Roumania made it worth her while, she might not impose a revision or even a reversal of the Award. Roumania was now feverishly bidding for her favours in precisely that hope, and was not Hungary’s only hope of retaining Northern Transylvania to outbid her? There could be only one argument against this: Teleki’s old one, that the goodwill of Great Britain was in the long run more important than that of Germany. But it was not easy at that juncture to believe that Britain would end the war in a position to enforce her will in Eastern Europe, and, even if she did, it would not be for a very long time. For some years, at least, Germany was quite undeniably the only Power whose word ran on the Danube. If argument were needed that Hungary must not only expect an Axis victory but desire it in her own interests, there was the contrast between the help which the Axis had given Hungary to realise at least part of her national ambitions and the chilly reception given to the Award by Britain, coupled with her recognition, during those very weeks, of the Czecho-Slovak Government. Even although Germany had not made her support of Hungary’s claims in Vienna subject to any conditions—except as regards the Volksgruppe—she was now giving the Hungarians clearly to understand that she would regard with favour an extensive remodelling of Hungarian policy. Sztdjay reported from Berlin that what she wanted of Hungary was: no criticism in the Press; punctual fulfilment, and if possible over-fulfilment, of her economic obligations, social reform, including land reform and abandonment of her “‘feudal’”’ and conservative structure; satisfaction of the wishes of the German minority ;

432 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH and “settlement of the Jewish question.’”! It was further believed in Budapest that Germany had confidentially requested the Hungarian Government “'to adapt Hungarian policy, increasingly, in every field, to the new transformation of Europe”’; specifically, to repeal the legal enactments against the Right, | especially Order 3400; to amnesty SzAlasi; to introduce further anti-Jewish legislation and perhaps even to introduce a one-party system.” It was hardly

surprising that when the Award was announced and the Right felt free to resume their political campaign they should have raised an insistent clamour not only for the introduction of all or most of these changes but for an appropriate change of regime; pointing their arguments with references to what was happening across the frontier in Roumania. . No one, indeed, so much as suggested that Hungary should deal with Horthy as Roumania dealt with King Carol on 6th September. Horthy’s person had by now become almost sacrosanct; nor, indeed, had he publicly associated himself, as Carol had done, with political trends—or with persons

—intolerable to the Germans. But it was logical enough to maintain that the proper persons to carry out a policy were those who believed in it, and that in any case, Teleki ought to draw the consequences from the admission repeatedly made in the Government’s own Press, that the premises of his previous policy—an Allied victory—had proved mistaken, and to give place to those whose premises had proved correct. Teleki at this time would have been more than ready to resign. The whole negotiations for the Award had thrown him into a state of extreme nervous irritation and despondency. He had never truly lost his conviction that northern Transylvania would prove a Danaide gift, and had displayed this feeling openly enough. He had refused to attend the Belvedere meeting except as an “‘observer,”’ to show himself to the crowds which flocked to see the delegates’ train return, or to sign the

Proclamation which announced the terms of the Award. He said to one friend? that the whole thing would be waste labour, as after the war, Hungary would have to leave Transylvania again, having merely embittered her relations with her neighbours. To another* he said gloomily that the price would be very high. The Volksgruppe agreement, in particular, had so oppressed him that he had again threatened suicide when it was under discussion.” He

actually sent in his resignation to Horthy on Ist September, not on the grounds that a more pro-German policy would be incompatible with his own record and principles but because, as he wrote, the Chief of Staff was interfering in policy in a way which made the position of the Minister President intolerable, particularly since Horthy had backed the military against the civilians. He must therefore give way to someone who at once enjoyed the Regent’s full confidence and was able to control both the military and the civilians.® Keresztes-Fischer appears to have resigned at the same time, on 1 These lines summarise a series of reports from Sztdjay given in the Sz. I. MS. His own recommendations were satisfaction of these demands and also some personal gesture from Horthy

to Hitler, since relations between the two States depended, he said, largely on the personal relations between the two men. Sztdjay also mentioned Germany’s “‘increased interest in the Right,’ but without mentioning names or going into details. 2 Szig. Biz., p. 253.

3 Hlatky to C. A. M. 4 Apor to C. A. M. 5 Hlatky to C. A. M. 8 The two letters written by Teleki to the Regent are reproduced in the Sz. I. MS. They are of the highest interest, but too long to be quoted here. Teleki advises Horthy against himself taking charge of affairs and insists only that whoever is appointed must (a) enjoy the Regent’s confidence, (b) have ‘“‘the sole right of determining policy,”’ including that of the Army, except

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 433 . the grounds that the concessions to the Germans were irrevocable and it | was against his principles to make them. | Once again, however, Horthy refused to take what in Great Britain would have seemed the obvious constitutional course. He consented to remedy Teleki’s grievances against the military, and at an audience to which he summoned Teleki, Werth and Bartha, agreed that the particular practice to which, at that audience, Teleki took specific exception—the rather technical one that the Minister of Defence was allowed by convention to present his estimates to the Minister of Finance in global form, which the Minister of

Finance, again by convention, accepted without criticism or question— should be altered, and further promised to allow legislation to be introduced to strengthen the constitutional position of the Minister President vis-a-vis his colleagues, particularly the Minister of Defence.2 But although he agreed that concessions to the Germans, and to the Right, were necessary, he refused to accept Teleki’s and Keresztes-Fischer’s resignations. Even Horthy could not have maintained this decision against very strong and united pressure from the Right, but this did not materialise, in spite of expectations which were raised when, on 18th September, the Government made the first of its concessions, this being to release Szalasi.2 News of this had leaked out—although the Government had hoped to keep the event a secret—and a procession of the PV’s followers flocked to Szeged to meet him at the prison gates, while others organised demonstrations of welcome for him in the streets of Budapest, and many were the hopes and fears of an immediate Arrow Cross putsch. But Szalasi himself took a different view. On receiving the news that he had been amnestied, he had sardonically thanked the warden for “‘the suspension of his sentence for five years.”” When

the warden protested that that was not what the order said, he simply answered: ““Wait and see.’’* When his sanguine friends, including both Hubay and Ruszkay, urged him to strike while the iron was hot, he answered

that the movement as it stood was still far too weak. Even if it seized the power, it would be unable to hold it. Much organisation was necessary first. And although on 29th September the Government further repealed Order 3400,° the course of the next weeks proved him right. He brought his own in those internal questions for which the Regent is competent as Supreme War Lord. He is against a military dictatorship. The letter is rather helpless, for while Teleki grants that Werth, Lajos Keresztes-Fischer and Sztéjay would enjoy the confidence both of the Regent and of the Germans (which at this point he admits to be indispensable), he does not regard any of them as competent to govern Hungary. Both Csaky and Reményi-Schneller would be popular, but could they control the army? Ferencz Keresztes-Fischer perhaps still less. He sees no one else in his own party. There are, indeed, moments at which the letter reads simply like a long complaint against the Regent’s own conduct, worded indirectly out of tact, and the main purpose of it may well have been to persuade Horthy not to go behind his own Minister President’s back.

But the wish to resign was certainly there. In the days after writing these letters Teleki was further greatly infuriated against the military for their conduct during the occupation of the recovered areas (which had spoiled all his plans for setting the world an example), and it took all the persuasions of the Regent and Bethlen to induce him to remain in office. 1 Szig. Biz., loc. cit.

2 The correspondence is in the Sz. I. MS. The audience took place on 29th September. Bartha in his turn offered to resign, but the Regent refused his resignation also. 3 The Germans had not asked for this, but the Hungarian Government decided to do it when

informant was Antal). .

the Roumanians made Horia Sima Deputy Minister President (Michaelis to C. A. M.; his 4 It was not a bad guess. Szalasi was arrested in Austria by American troops in May 1945.

He6 State was executed on 12th March 1946. employees were, however, still forbidden to hold office in any political parties, to wear party badges or to speak at party meetings.

2F

434 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH adherents and ex-adherents to heel easily enough. Five Deputies who had seceded from the Party returned to the fold; after each had signed an abject apology for his disloyalty, Szalasi took him by the hand and said: “Ferencz Szalasi forgives you.’’ Next, on Ruszkay’s initiative, the Natonal Socialists agreed to place themselves under Szalasi’s leadership, and the two parties fused on 29th September, under the name of “‘the Arrow Cross Party,” Ruszkay, Csia, Hubay and Széchényi coming on to the Council, while Szalasi was the “leading brother’? and exponent of a single will and responsibility. A revised Party programme allowed, in foreign policy, for “‘adjustment to the New Order desired by the Axis Powers,’’ but only in so far as this was

compatible with Hungarism. Its postulates of internal policy were as nebulous as usual, except that Jews were to be “‘eliminated”’ (a phrase which did not mean extermination, but excretion, in some way, from the national life).

The new Party numbered 46 Deputies, roughly the number elected on the

Arrow Cross ticket in 1939, but this was clearly too few to threaten the position of the Government, unless reinforced by dissidents from the MEP. And there matters stuck for the time. Ruszkay begged Szalasi to meet Imrédy, but Szalasi replied, not unnaturally, that the meeting was unlikely

to end in mutual goodwill. He had just come out of the prison to which Imrédy had sent him, and the sight of his persecutor would make him see red. If Imrédy meant business, his duty was to enter the Arrow Cross and accept the PV’s leadership. If, on the other hand, Imrédy really believed that 120 to 160 Deputies stood behind him, as he was said to be claiming, he should put the matter to the test by seceding from the MEP. By this time Szalasi had blotted his copy-book, with a lavishness which it took four years to erase, with the Germans, one of whose agents in Hungary,

Michaelis, had gone to meet him on his release and had travelled up from Szeged with him. He was, as he writes, “horrified by Szalasi’s unrealistic view of the situation,” but agreed to go to Berlin and bring back a memo-

randum bearing on the question. He went off at once, consulted with Rothen—and presumably with Rothen’s superiors—and on 2nd October returned with an aide-mémoire which, according to his own account,} contained inter alia the statement that Hitler and Mussolini had agreed that Greece, Albania and Croatia fell within Italy’s sphere of influence, but Hungary in Germany’s; and that “in view of the delicate situation in SouthEast Europe, it would be better if Szalasi would abstain from speaking of the Kingdom of St. Stephen, since Hungary’s revisionist claims complicated Germany’s relations with Hungary’s neighbours.”’ Szalasi’s own account of the episode puts it more bluntly—it runs: ‘““Rothen sends the PV a message via Michaelis, that Hungarism is dead and done. It was all right before 1938, but events had outstripped it; it was out of date. Michaelis had seen the official plan for South-East Europe which had already been accepted. Its essence was that the seven ‘Volksgruppen’ living in the territory of Hungary? were to be grouped

separately in ‘vdlkisch’ States, each linked separately to Berlin. If Szalasi would accept this ‘sober view,’ Rothen would stand most completely at his disposal.” 1 As given to the present writer.

* Presumably Historic Hungary, thus giving Magyars, Germans, Roumanians, Slovaks, Ruthenes, Serbs and Croats.

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 435 The Germans were in fact at that time brooding on a number of quite extraordinary schemes for reorganising South-East Europe after the war.} These appear to have been mercifully hidden from Szalasi, but it was enough for him that they did not accept Hungarism. He replied, according to himself, that if this was an official communication it should be brought to him by an official person; and secondly, that he could not see that it was the mission of German National Socialism “‘to realise Wilson’s Fourteen Points in South-

Eastern Europe.’ He then proceeded, on 6th October, to make a speech in which he trotted out all his old, untranslatable formulae of the bond of the

blood, the bond of the soil, etc. But he also made certain very concrete remarks about foreign policy. He said that Hungary lay on the border-line between German and Italian interests, and although avoiding the expression

“realm of St. Stephen,” he coined the remarkable expression “CarpathoDanubian-Great Fatherland” (Karpat-Duna-Nagyhaza) which meant exactly the same thing. The German journalists were furious, and he had, not unnaturally, a bad Press in Germany. Hubay tried to make things better, and gave an At Home to German and Italian journalists to meet Szalasi. Szalasi refused to discuss any serious matter with the Germans, requesting that any question should be put in writing, and promising written answers. He then retired into the next room, where, in fluent German, he discussed any problem which they liked to raise with the Italian guests.”

Meanwhile, the malcontents in the MEP had been planning a bulk secession from the Party in the hope of putting Teleki in a minority and forcing the Regent to appoint one of themselves Minister President. The new Government might or might not have included Arrow Cross members. Things were to be brought to an issue at a Party meeting which had been

arranged for lst October. But just before that date the forty-six newly nominated Transylvanian Deputies—this time the newcomers had been care-

fully hand-picked, and a high proportion of them were spiritual kinsmen of Teleki’s, if not his physical relatives’>—announced that they proposed to

form a separate bloc which would always support the Government if left alone to manage their own affairs. Teleki now seemed assured of a majority,

and revolt against him lost its glamour. At the meeting the leading malcontents, some forty in number, committed an error in tactics which seems ineradicable among Central European politicians, and absented themselves. In their absence, their followers dared not raise their voices. Teleki simply talked the meeting out, and when someone did venture a criticism, replied that anyone who did not like his policy could leave the Party. A day or two later a circular was sent round to the malcontents calling on them either to declare their loyalty or to leave the Party. On 4th October Imrédy and Jaross 1 The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle had worked out a plan at the beginning of the war for evicting the Magyars altogether from the Dunantul and populating the whole area with Volks-

deutsche, who were to be concentrated there from the entire Danubian area. When it was

discovered that there would not be enough Volksdeutsche to go round, another suggestion was made to settle with Volksdeutsche a strip 50-100 km. wide along both banks of the Danube from Mohacs to the Black Sea. A third plan reduced this to a strip 35 km. wide, from Orsova to the

Black Sea, with German colonies in the strategic key-points, including Belgrade and the Carpathian passes, and this was actually approved by Ribbentrop and Hitler and circulated to the Ministers concerned (Michaelis to C. A. M.). 2 Personal, Michaelis to C. A. M. 3 It should be said that this involved little falsification of the representative principle, for

Teleki’s political principles and methods were themselves essentially Transylvanian. The Transylvanians, indeed, stood much nearer to him than the bulk of the MEP. 4 Szig. Biz., pp. 255, 258.

436 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH drew the consequences and resigned from the MEP, but only sixteen adherents

followed them that day, and one more a few days later. On the 8th Teleki made a pronouncement of the Government’s intentions, in which he included

most of the points which Sztéjay had indicated as calculated to please the Germans, these being also, for the most part, the points which Imrédy had been urging; he promised a third Jewish law, which was to be “clear, radical and simple, without the complications and loopholes for evasion of its predecessors’’; extension of the land reform, to deal more drastically with fidei-commis and mammoth estates, and with Jewish-owned property; and,

in general, a speeding up of social reform. The constitution was to be strengthened “‘to adapt it to present circumstances.” His differences with the

Imrédists, he said, related only to “tempo,” not to points or principles. On the other hand, when rumours circulated the next day that the Government was doing a deal with the Arrow Cross, he issued a statement denying this in the strongest possible terms, saying that: “Any combination suggesting possible compromise, collaboration, or other political action was merely the fantastic product of nervous minds.’ After some hesitation, Imrédy, with his eighteen followers and Rajniss, who had recently been sitting as a non-party Deputy, constituted themselves on 18th October into a new party entitled the “Party of Hungarian Renewal,’

under an executive Committee consisting of Imrédy, Jaross and Ratz. A fifteen-point programme proclaimed “the community of interests with National Socialist and Fascist Ideals.’’? Although, like the Arrow Cross, the new party refused to accept Germany’s complete terms as regards the re-

organisation of South-Eastern Europe, offering the minorities only an assurance that they would “‘be able to cultivate their national individualities, coupled with assurance of the indissoluble unity of the Hungarian State,” in

almost all other respects it proposed adapting Hungarian institutions very closely to National Socialist, and still more to Fascist, models. There was to be ‘“‘a settlement of the Jewish question which frees Hungary entirely from the Jews and the Jewish spirit; meanwhile, elimination of Jews from cultural life and immediate expropriation of Jewish estates.’’ For the rest, the domestic programme provided for “‘a social labour State, in which finance should be based on work, the legal right to work, a one-party system, abolition of the Upper House, reorganisation of the Lower House on a corporative basis, tripartite organisation of production, nationalisation of key industries, more extensive land reform, the abolition of conscription, a quicker tempo of work and social and popular? reform.”’ While incompatible with the pure doctrines of the Volksdeutsche Mittel-

stelle, this was a programme to appeal to the more moderate leaders in Germany, who, indeed, never thereafter lost their conviction that the 1 The rumours had started because Szalasi and Ruszkay had been observed calling on Teleki

in his office. In fact, Szalasi’s own account of the meeting shows that he had come only to restate his position, which was unaltered, and to thank the Regent for amnestying him—unless, he added characteristically, the rumour which he had heard was true that the Regent had been forced to do so by the Germans, against his own will. In that case, said Szalasi, he would thank the Germans, not the Regent, but would return to Szeged to complete his sentence, since he did not admit the right of the Germans to amnesty a Hungarian citizen. Teleki discreetly evaded answering this remark. Another person entered the room during the interview and found Teleki and Szalasi pouring over maps, which suggests that the PV was taking the opportunity to give the Premier a lesson in Hungarism. *- Magyar Megujulas Partja. 3 Népi, the translation of the German ‘‘vélkisch.”’

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 437 Imrédists were the men whom they would like to see in charge of affairs in Hungary. But they also saw clearly that the Imrédists were nothing but a brains trust, without masses in the country and without organisation behind them. They could do nothing unless either the Regent could be induced to

appoint Imrédy Minister President (when he could have used the MEP organisation) or they could be got to agree with the Arrow Cross, whom the same observers described cruelly as a torso without brains. For the moment, neither of these conditions could be fulfilled. The Regent would not hear of replacing Teleki, while Szalasi was as intractible towards Imrédy as he had been towards themselves. He had noted with sardonic satisfaction how few dissidents had followed Imrédy out of the MEP, and expressed in his Diary sovereign contempt for the Party of Renewal, which he described with cruel aptness as °*the Party of the Right Honourables, the Stellenbosched Ministers, the Old School Ties and the place-hunters’’; alternatively, as ‘‘a mule, which is tough but treacherous, false and untrustworthy.’ At Ruszkay’s insistence, he agreed to meet Imrédy, but the interview was magnificently unsuccessful. Imrédy, according to Szalasi’s account, opened it by asking: ‘“‘How did you enjoy prison?’ (whither, of course, Imrédy had sent him). ‘‘Sz.’’, Szalasi’s account goes on, “‘controls himself and does not kick Imrédy in the stomach. He answers: “Reasonably well in the situation and under the circumstances.’ Imrédy condescends to smile. Sz. opens his mouth, like a well-disciplined convict, shows his gold teeth and says: ‘This is how I enjoyed it.1. The time will come when I shall send in the bill for my gold teeth to the gentlemen whom I have to thank for them... .’ Imrédy gives no more condescending smiles.”’

At the end of the conversation Szalasi solemnly “‘forgave’’ Imrédy, in theatrical language, but the interview had only confirmed him in his devastat-

ing opinion of Imrédy and his party, and he continued to insist on their accepting his own leadership as the price of co-operation: a price which Imrédy was as little as ever prepared to pay. On the urgent representation of Rupprecht, and of the Germans, all the

Right supported a single candidate (in each case an Imrédist) in two byelections which took place in the autumn, but in each case the Government candidate got in easily; and the arrival in Parliament of the Transylvanian Deputies made Teleki’s position finally secure. In the meantime the Government had had the satisfaction of seeing Hubay and Vago sentenced to loss of their mandates, and a couple of months later, Vago was in trouble again for a different offence.» Hubay continued a lively political career, but outside Parliament.

The Government could thus feel its position quite secure, but it was, of course, aware that it would have to pay the price of security by itself carrying out a policy in accordance with Germany’s wishes. Apart from the internal political changes which Teleki in his statement had promised to make, the

first demands which Germany had to make of Hungary were for closer economic co-operation. In September she announced that the time was come to inaugurate the second stage of the New Economic Order, the first stage of which had begun in 1934. Germany was to be the centre of the new 1 Meaning of course, that the warders had knocked out his teeth in prison. 2 He was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment for manslaughter of a Jew who had been courting his daughter. He never served his sentence, but soon afterwards fled abroad.

438 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH system, and each other country was to be linked to her by a bilateral Treaty, operating through a clearing agreement, the system forming a planned whole in which each country was allotted its particular place.

On this point the Hungarians were neither so servile, nor, indeed, the Germans so unreasonable as was often alleged. The Hungarians defended with great tenacity their point of view that Hungary was a semi-industrial country, whose industry must not be sacrificed, and the Germans did not

try to deindustrialise her. On the contrary, they fostered some of her industries, and to that end encouraged forms of exploitation of her land which were economical in man-power. But they did try to get her to adapt her production, both agricultural and industrial, to Germany’s own needs. The most important “co-ordinating agreement” of the period was the so-

called Jurcsek-Moritz agricultural agreement, signed, after protracted negotiations, on 10th October. This represented a real effort at co-ordination.

Germany had stated what agricultural products she wished to receive; Hungary what she could produce. As a result, Hungary undertook to produce, and Germany to take, over five years, considerably larger quantities than before of various plants, including a variety of clovers and other fodder plants, oil-seeds and other industrial plants, including medicinal herbs; also larger quantities of cattle, swine and sheep, poultry and eggs. Germany for her part agreed to deliver stud animals, plant, seeds, etc. She also supplied

types of agricultural machinery. Research was to be co-ordinated and the results of it pooled. The agreement did not set the quantities to be delivered mutually each year: these were to be provided for in the main annual agreement. But it was understood that the result of it would be a substantial increase in Hungary’s exports to Germany in the field covered. A further special agreement provided that Hungary should no longer be allowed to accumulate a large active balance of commodities; she must pay

for her imports by exports. But Germany was prepared to deliver commodities which Hungary really needed, including high-grade coal and coke, machinery and raw materials both for the textile and the munition factories.

When Hungary’s harvest turned out badly, she renounced some of the quantities of wheat and fats which she had bought, taking only 1:2 million quintals of wheat instead of 3-1 m.q., and allowing the balance to be made up with horned cattle, flour, meat, herbs, tobacco and bauxite. The only point on which she pressed the Hungarians really hard was for deliveries of timber from Northern Transylvania which Roumania had promised her before the Award. For three weeks after the Award Germany raised no foreign political questions at all. Then negotiations began which ended in establishing a new and closer contractual relationship not only between the Axis countries and Hungary but between the Axis and a whole string of other States also. The initiative came, however, not, or not intentionally, from Germany but from

Hungary. 1 This story has nearly always been given wrongly, Hungarian historians being anxious to show that they moved only under pressure, while Western writers have also taken it for granted that Germany was the active partner. The confusion has been facilitated by the fact that there were two stages: the first when Hungary made her offer, which was not accepted, and the second when Germany decided after all to act on the suggestion, and then told Hungary she could sign. There has also been the usual confusion between the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Tripartite Pact. But the true history, and also the truth regarding Hungary’s motives, emerge quite clearly from the documents, the most important of which, including Sztojay’s own account of his actions,

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 439 The story began when the representatives of Germany, Italy and Japan met in Berlin on 27th September to sign the newly agreed Tripartite Pact, and

Ribbentrop, in the course of a ceremonial speech, used the following in-

discreet words:

“The purpose of the Pact is, above all things, to help restore peace to the world as quickly as possible. Therefore any other State which wishes to adhere to this bloc (der diesem Block beitreten will), with the intention of contributing to the restoration of peaceful conditions, will be sincerely and gratefully made welcome and will participate in the economic and political reorganisation.”

As soon as Sztdjay heard these words he rushed to telegraph to Csaky that the invitation should be accepted without delay. Only so could Hungary

make certain of taking an active part in the post-war settlement, “when political, economic and, assuredly, territorial questions would be decided.”

Both Germany and Italy expected Hungary to adhere, and if she did so quickly, getting in ahead of Roumania, this would be doubly advantageous.} Csaky brought the question before a Ministerial Council, which debated the question at length.

It was a crucial moment; for it was possible to argue that the de facto abrogation of the Anti-Comintern Pact which had just occurred had restored to Hungary her freedom of action: placing her, unexpectedly and without her own assistance, before a fresh parting of the ways. And continuance on the path which carried on the direct line of her previous progress certainly involved dangers the existence of which even Csaky recognised. If Hungary adhered to the Pact she was committing herself to the Axis—ostentatiously so if the adhesion was volunteered. Moreover, Ribbentrop had explicitly described the Pact as a “‘military alliance,’ so that adhesion might easily involve obligations more stringent than those of the vaguely worded AntiComintern Pact. If the Axis lost the war, the step might prove—as in the event it did—absolutely fatal. On the other hand, in the case of an Axis victory, or of a draw which left Germany and Italy dominant in Central Europe, Sztdjay’s argument was very cogent. Hungary’s adhesion would take the sting out of the Roumanian (and Slovak) situations, for Germany could hardly allow her own ally to be attacked. On the contrary, Hungary, as a participant in the Peace Conference, would have a right to present her claims and a prospect of enforcing them. There was also the consideration of domestic politics that if Germany was satisfied with Hungary’s existing Government, she would not try to replace it, nor to force unwelcome demands on it. An obeisance to Nazism abroad are collected in the Sz. I. MS. These make it quite clear that Hungary volunteered her adherence, or rather Sztéjay volunteered it for her. The other main sources are Teleki’s and Csaky’s speeches

in Parliament, Bardossy’s evidence at his trial (pp. 19 ff.) and Ciano Diary, 10th October and

20th November. When the different pieces of evidence are checked, it emerges clearly that one statement by

Csaky is only very approximately true: when he suggested (on 4th December) that Hungary would have lost Italy’s friendship if she had not signed the Pact. That is, by the time things got so far that the Germans had taken up the idea of bringing in the satellites as signatories, Hungary could not then have refused without losing Italy’s friendship; but when she first offered

her adherence, the position was rather the reverse. Secondly, one may query the suggestion made by Ribbentrop to Ciano (Diary, 10th October) that what Hungary wanted was “‘to join in

the anti-British fight.’ I can trace no passage in the Hungarian documents indicating that Hungary ever committed herself to such a statement. 1 Sz, I. MS.

440 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH would once again permit a stronger stand against Nazism in Hungary; and the Government might even, by this one concession, prevent Hungary from

making much larger ones under different leadership.’ This last danger, incidentally, was immediate, whilst an Allied victory, if it came at all, would certainly not come quickly, and by the time it did come, a pro-Allied Government might have found ways and means to retrace its steps. Finally, Sztéjay’s message, as we have seen, had indicated that Germany and Italy not merely desired Hungary’s adhesion but actually expected it; and Csaky seems not to have communicated to his colleagues the fact that Sztojay in his enthusiasm had not even waited for the answer from Budapest

before galloping round to the Wilhelmstrasse’—not indeed to volunteer adherence but to make enquiries in terms which practically amounted to volunteering. What Csaky did for the time was to wire to Sztdjay instructing him “to make enquiries without delay about (1) adherence, (2) the circumstances of such co-operation as would be involved. He added that a further tightening of Hungary’s bonds with the Axis would be possible “‘only if we know what we are undertaking and if these Great Powers desire our open adherence.’’* He also wired to Villani to ask Mussolini’s advice.*

In the event, Sztdjay’s initiative led to one immediate result. When he went round again on the 28th to make his enquiries, Weizsacker told him that “he thought that the formal adherence of other States had not been envisaged—rather an attitude in the spirit of the Pact.’® When Sztdjay appealed to Ribbentrop’s words, he was told that the phrase quoted by him (that given by us above) had been a reporter’s mistake: what Ribbentrop had really said had been “behave towards.’’® A similar message came from Villani

that Ribbentrop had not meant other States to adhere to the Pact.’ The Hungarians could do nothing but send back a message of “‘spiritual adherence,” which they did®’—followed effusively by the Slovaks. Actually, the first response received by Hungary to this effusive message

was one which was little to her taste. On 19th September Hitler had at last decided to grant Roumania’s repeated requests and send a garrison into the country, and not only to train the Roumanian Army but to protect the oilwells and possibly serve as nucleus for later operations against Russia.® The Roumanians were notified on 30th September, and on the same day the Hungarians were asked to grant the necessary transit facilities. Seeing that the Roumanians undisguisedly hoped to use their Army, as soon as trained, 1 Bardossy at his trial stressed this point strongly. Teleki, too, according to M. Kovrig, saw in this “‘the real value of the Pact.”

* The memorandum submitted to the Allies in Moscow by the Hungarian pre-armistice delegation, which was the work of Teleki’s son, Count Géza Teleki, and of the head of his private ‘‘Cabinet,”’ D. Szentivanyi, goes so far as to say that Sztojay and Csaky had committed Hungary to signing the Pact before the Cabinet was consulted at all. 3 Sz. I. MS.

‘Id. 5 Id.

8 J.e. “‘gegentiber tritt’’ for ‘“beitreten will.”” The former phrase had been given by the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the latter, in the official DNB version and the majority of the Press.

The sentence, however, reads so clumsily with the words “‘gegentiber tritt,’’ that it is almost necessary to regard them as an amendment, probably introduced to avoid precisely the situation which had now arisen.

7 Sz. I. MS. |

8 Teleki, speaking in Parliament on 4th December, said that Hungary ‘‘adhered to the Pact, in the very week in which it was concluded, in the form of a spiritual assent, in that we communicated our good wishes in a form which already conveyed our readiness to take the step.” ® Nazi Consp. and Aggr., V1, 877.

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 441 to recover Northern Transylvania, the Hungarians were certainly not enchanted by the requests, and it even seems possible that they began by refusing it; for a German instruction of 3rd October says that they would ‘“have to be informed of the general nature of our plan.’! But after what had passed in earlier months, a refusal could hardly be maintained, although the facilities, when granted, were grudging enough. Six trains daily were to be allowed to cross Hungary, moving at night. The waggons were to be sealed, and the troops not allowed to get out. The Germans were allowed no R.T.O.s

or supply officers; Hungary made all the necessary arrangements herself. These conditions were rigidly enforced when the operation began.” Their consent to this request of Germany’s, however, probably contributed to the fulfilment of their own wish. It may be taken for granted that Hitler would never have given Hungary preferential treatment over Roumania and he may well have feared that until the garrison was safely established in

Roumania, any pronounced political gesture towards that country would frighten the Russians into occupying the oil-fields—just as they might have done had they got wind that the troops were on the way. But on 7th October the Roumanian wireless announced the arrival of the advance-guard of the mission. Now the Russians could no longer enter the oil-fields without a

direct clash with the Germans, and Hitler probably considered—or the Roumanians may have put it to him—that a more open demonstration of Germany’s patronage of Roumania would be not only safe but actively desirable. At any rate, he must have arranged with the Roumanians, some time during these days, that they, too, should accede to the Pact.* Then, on or about the 9th, Ribbentrop sent a message to Sztdjay, via Weizsacker, that he had “‘taken cognisance of Hungary’s message”’ and that “the Fuhrer had changed his mind and wanted to make it possible for ‘friendly States’ to adhere.’’* He also rang Ciano and told him that the Hungarians had made a second application—it is not clear whether this was the truth or not—and that he was now inclined to accept the offer, since “‘no one who wants to join the anti-British front must be turned down.’® Mussolini consented, although only reluctantly®; and on the 12th Ribbentrop called Sztdéjay and

told him that Italy and Japan had agreed to Hungary’s adherence to the Pact. She had better hurry up with her consent, if she was going to give it, and he would like to do her the favour of letting her be the first new adherent’ : 1 N.G. 3823. 2 According to Lajos, on one occasion when a delay had been caused by the later arrival of a Roumanian locomotive at SepsiszentgyoOrgy and the German Commander wanted to march his troops across on foot to Brass6, to save time, the local Hungarian Commander threatened armed resistance.

3 Marshall Antonescu’s affidavit read out at Nuremberg (Trial, VI, 273) speaks of an agreement to this effect which had been concluded before the Marshall’s visit to Berlin on 22nd November. No date is assigned to this agreement, but apart from the fact that Hitler would never have admitted Hungary to the charmed circle without Roumania, Ribbentrop’s message of the 12th (below, this page) shows that the agreement must have been reached before that date. 4 Sz. I. MS. 5 Ciano Diary, 10th October. 6 Ciano remained to the last hostile to the idea of bringing in the smaller nations. He wrote

on 20th November: ‘“‘they weaken the Tripartite Pact itself, and seem useless bits of ersatz diplomacy.” 7 This little concession seems to have been made as a personal favour to Sztojay, who had most earnestly pleaded for it. Barczy writes that Sztdjay afterwards attributed this merit to himself. So, too, the DNB in its outburst against Horthy of 16th October 1944 (see below, Pt. II, “‘ Horthy Agonistes’’) said that: ‘“‘At Horthy’s special request, the then Hungarian Minister in Berlin absolutely implored the Government of the Reich to be allowed to be the first State to adhere to the Tripartite Pact, and thus to have the privilege of entering into a community of destiny with the Reich.”

442 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH seven or eight more were expected. On Sztdjay’s asking what would Hungary’s rights and obligations be under the Pact, Ribbentrop answered that “‘if attacked by another State she would be defended by the three main signatories, while if a State not at present in the war entered into war with the States signatory to the Pact, Hungary would thereby also enter in a state of war.” It was now the Hungarians’ turn to be cautious. Csaky wired back (on the 13th) that “‘we adhere to the Peace Bloc,” and that to emphasise the principle of equality of rights, he proposed to sign the documents himself. But he insisted that the adherence must be couched in that form—“‘to a peace bloc”’ and also that “‘in some way the facts must be expressed that the reorganisation must include satisfaction of our claims against the Yugoslavs and a complete settlement of the Slovak and Roumanian questions.” To this Ribbentrop gave an answer which was only partially favourable. Hungary, if she wanted to adhere, must do so unconditionally. He was prepared to make an official declaration that “in the work of reorganisation Hungary would, of course, rank as an equal partner in S.E. European questions, that is, in questions interesting her.’’ He “took cognisance”’ of her claims against Yugoslavia, but did not want to make her adherence conditional on satisfying them; the Slovak and Roumanian questions must be “dissociated.” After further consultations, Ribbentrop went so far as to agree to a declaration that “‘the territorial provisions of the Treaty of Trianon might be the subject of peaceful revision’’; but Hungary also had to consent to differentiation in rank: the three original signatory Powers were to constitute one Contracting Party and the subsequent adherents a second. The text was not finally agreed until 8th November, for meanwhile Hitler had changed his mind, this time about the hurry. Having once decided to extend the Pact, he wanted Spain to sign it, and presumably preferred not to debase the currency in advance. His bargaining with Franco took him till

23rd October, and on returning from this he had on the 28th to face the infuriating news that Mussolini had double-crossed him and attacked Greece. The complications arising out of this situation, including his secret negotia-

tions with Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey, and his attempt to avert ‘Russian dynamism” away from the Balkans, occupied him fully for many days. It was only after Molotov’s visit to Berlin had ended—in mutual dissatisfaction—that the invitations to the prospective signatories were sent out. The Germans had kept their promise that Sztéjay’s Hungary was to be the first of the signatories, and Teleki and Csaky were invited to Vienna for 20th November.

This was the first public announcement of what was afoot, although a week previously, when making his annual review of his country’s foreign policy, Csaky had dropped broad hints that Hungary was going in the near future to draw closer to the Axis. He had justified this in advance by saying, more flatly than ever before, that Hungary’s destinies were in any case irrevocably bound up with those of the Axis, and had gilded the gingerbread with hints that she was about to receive some signal honour.! * In this speech Csaky developed at great length a Leitmotif of his of which he was very proud:

that Hungary’s position should be that of “primus inter pares’’ in the Danube basin. That this was a specific allusion to the Pact emerges from what Csaky said afterwards, in describing Hungary’s adhesion: she “‘had been obliged to act with great decision in order to be the first State in South-East Europe to sign the Pact,” and this had been “‘in order to follow the Government’s principles of being primus inter pares and not waiting to be anticipated by other States.”

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 443 Nevertheless, when the moment came, the atmosphere, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, remained flat and dispirited. The Germans, it appears,

had thought that Hungary’s act in volunteering her adherence had really signified a change of heart, and expected this to be made plain in the appropriate way. Sztdjay had been sending in fresh lists of recommendations of what Hungary was now to do,! and had not concealed his opinion that in

the Germans’ eyes the results of these exhortations had been very disappointing. Hungary obstinately remained feudal and insufficiently antiSemitic, and, what stung Hitler and Ribbentrop particularly keenly, ungrateful. Instead of rejoicing in her acquisitions under the Vienna Awards, and loading Germany with gratitude for them, she kept the national flag hoisted at half-mast and blamed Germany that she could not run it up to the top of the pole.” The Hungarians on their side were sulky with the Germans and frightened of the consequences in which their action might land them. The speeches and toasts accompanying the ceremony were quite singularly anodyne, being chiefly concerned to emphasise that the Pact was not directed against anyone.

So the step was taken, and it was one which had far-reaching consequences. It is true that the adhesion imposed few fresh positive obligations

on Hungary. In any case, whatever action was required of her could only be against a State not yet in the war at the date of signature of the main Pact, that 1s, according to any reasonable calculation, only the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. and then only if such a State attacked Germany, Italy or Japan. It appears, moreover, that Ribbentrop gave Teleki a kind of “‘authentic interpretation” of her responsibilities, under which she was obliged, in such case, to show “‘solidarity’® with the Power attacked, but could use her free judgment in deciding what kind of assistance this “solidarity”? involved.? Towards the signatories of the Pact, other than the three original ones, the Pact imposed no obligation whatever. But against this Hungary had of her own volition again ranged herself by the side of the Axis Powers. She had even done so in the most demonstrative fashion possible, claiming for herself the position on the right of the line of the rear file of satellites now ranging

themselves behind the main signatories. She had acted as marker and facilitated Ribbentrop’s task in falling in the other satellites on her left, and although it may be doubted whether she had done more in this respect than help Ribbentrop by presenting him with a procedure which he ultimately found convenient—she would indeed have been only too happy to see the

file smaller—she herself was far from emphasising this point. On the contrary, Csaky with his speeches about primus inter pares and Ullein in a spate of placed articles did everything in their power to magnify the significance of Hungary’s act as regards both herself and others.

What had she gained in return? For all Csaky’s boasting, no special 1 A series of these are reproduced in the Sz. I. MS. They contain nothing new, by comparison with earlier reports, except for the personal reproaches against Teleki, particularly for his frequent expressions of dissatisfaction with the Vienna Award. 2 The State flag had, ever since Trianon, been hoisted only at half-mast, in mourning for the

lost territories. Germany thought it should have been run right up after the Awards, to show that Hungary was more satisfied; and took it very ill that this was not done. 3 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., p. 70. According to the same writer, the interpretation was “assez bénigne,”’ but it was given only orally, and no one except Csaky and Teleki knew its precise

nature. Teleki, on returning to Budapest, said that “Hungary had not lost and would not lose her independence.” For the later occasions on which the question became actuel, see below, Pt. II, pp. 22, 62.

444 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH place in the counsels of the Axis, no privileged position by comparison with her neighbours; for Slovakia signed the Pact two days later and Roumania on the 25th, and the Germans never in any way treated the difference in dates

as establishing any hierarchy of importance or intimacy as between their satellites. In fact, Hungary was very soon further behind Roumania than ever in the race for Germany’s favour, for when Antonescu arrived in Berlin on the 22nd, Hitler took a warm liking to the little red-headed Roumanian, whom he described to Mussolini as “‘a real fanatic in the national camp’’; promptly took him into his confidence about the plans for Operation Maritsa,

and thereafter treated him with a trust and cordiality which contrasted markedly with his attitude towards any of the Hungarians.’ The real question, however, had not been whether Hungary would get (to change the metaphor) a seat on the box of the new bandwagon but whether she would be able to scramble on to it at all. This she had done, and, in the eyes of those who believed in an Axis victory, this was a most important achievement. As to immediate advantages: she had Ribbentrop’s word for it, as given to Sztojay, that Germany, Italy and Japan would now “help, that is, defend’’ her if she were attacked by another State. The promise was, perhaps, not worth very much, for, as we now know, it was only two days before Hitler was promising Antonescu to revise the Transylvanian Award in favour of Roumania, and deference to the Pact does not appear to have suspended for a single day German secret plans for cutting up Hungary after the war and repeopling selected areas with Germans.’? These things were, however, mercifully hidden from Hungary at the time— indeed, she claimed emphatically that her act had “‘fully assured her Lebensraum” so that she could “‘devote herself peacefully to the solution of her internal problems.’* It would “‘consolidate what Hungary had achieved after twenty-two years of hard work.’* That no frontier guarantees were included was, after all, due to her own wish, convinced as she was that she was still due to expand, on balance. The real value of the signature, in the eyes of its supporters, was that Hungary would be present at the Peace Conference which ended the war, and would there have a voice in the new settlement. This was the point on which the Press insisted, above all others, and also that made most strongly by Csaky when he defended his policy before the Foreign Affairs Committee

of Parliament. This result of Hungary’s adherence was admitted by the German Press,° which otherwise showed itself rather slow to endorse the claims which Hungary was making on her own behalf. Whether the ticket of admission would prove to have any value at all must, of course, depend on the performance’s taking place; and on this point Csaky, although he 1 Antonescu’s affidavit, Nur. Tr., VI, 273. * So, too, Hitler told Ciano on the 18th: ‘“‘For the moment it is necessary to dissemble with

the Hungarians, as we need their railways. But the moment will come when we shall speak plainly” (Ciano Diary, 18th November 1940). Ciano rightly noted that ‘however much he dissembles, the Hungarians know his ideas very well.”’

’ Almost identical articles to this effect appeared on 29th November in German in Pester Lioyd and in Magyar in Magyarorszdg. The Magyar version put it that Hungary had “gained time’’ for internal consolidation. * Speech of 16th December 1940. * See an article in the Berliner Bérsenzeitung, 25th December 1940. This was obviously written to show which of Hungary’s claims Germany accepted, and which not. It agreed that Hungary’s adherence “had the practical result that Hungary was to co-operate and would co-operate in the creation of a new European Order, especially in the reshaping of East European conditions.” That was as far as it went.

THE TRIPARTITE PACT 445 | could not but admit that there was a risk, argued that the risk was so small, | compared with the advantages which would accrue if all went well, that it had to be taken. Many in Hungary were of the same mind, but not all. In view of the “risk,” the Pact was brought before Parliament immediately after Teleki and Csaky returned from Vienna, the procedure adopted being private debates in the Foreign Affairs Committees of the two Houses. The Right could not argue against the move, even though knowing that it had been made largely to keep themselves out of office. So Sz6ll6si, speaking for the Arrow Cross, gave the Government his august approval on this count, and declared that his party would not oppose the Government’s foreign policy so long as it interpreted loyally the obligations it had undertaken. Imrédy spoke in much the same sense. The Left took the opposite line. In the Lower House Committee Eckhardt attacked Csaky vigorously, arguing that Hungary had made a grave mistake in abandoning her neutrality and in linking her fate to one group of belligerents, whose victory was by no means certain. By associating herself with countries so much larger than herself, she stood to gain nothing and risked losing everything. Eckhardt was supported by Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Peyer, both of whom demanded that Parliament should refuse to ratify

the Pact on the ground that the majority of public opinion in the country was against it. Bethlen took a similar line. The Committees ended by approving ratification, but the entire “Left-wing”? Opposition dissented: it was the first action taken by the Teleki Government which was seriously unpopular with those circles and in the country at large.

| CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP SECONDARY effect of the developments which brought about the

A sen Vienna Award, and its other sequels, had been to open up a

real prospect that Yugoslavia would accept Hungary’s friendship on the terms at which Hungary was pricing it. The obstacle hitherto presented by Yugoslavia’s treaty obligations towards Roumania was removed on 3rd

October by Roumania herself, who on that day denounced her “‘local treaties,’ that is, her Little Entente treaty and her Balkan Entente obligations. Yugoslavia was thus now technically free to respond to Hungary’s advances; moreover, the shift in the relative power-positions now gave her considerable inducements to do so. With Czecho-Slovakia wiped off the map, France out of the picture, Roumania in the Axis camp, she was almost isolated diplomatically, and with neither Italy nor Bulgaria even pretending to hide their hostility she could no longer afford to despise an offer of friendship from Hungary—a Hungary which, moreover, was now very considerably enlarged and strengthened—even if she had to pay for it the very moderate price which Hungary was now asking. As for the Hungarians: one of the motives which had first led them to seek the rapprochement had, indeed, vanished when Roumania’s volte-face followed the disintegration of Czecho-Slovakia, and it is true that a certain party in Hungary now held that the next step should be

to join hands with Italy and Bulgaria in dismembering Yugoslavia. But another school, headed by Teleki and numbering Csaky also among its members, held that the need for support against Germany and for keeping open a “window to the West” through Yugoslavia’s Western connections,! was paramount, and therefore preferred to press on with the policy which they had now been vainly trying to put into effect for a full two years; although even this school was no longer prepared to renounce absolutely Hungary’s claims against Yugoslavia. They were, however, ready to reduce those claims to very moderate dimensions and to put off the realisation of them for an almost indefinite period. On 3rd October, the very day that Roumania renounced her ‘‘local treaties,’” Csaky wrote to Bakach-Bessenyey in Belgrade that ‘“‘we’’ (Hungary

and Yugoslavia) “ought to make at least an attempt to settle the questions outstanding between us—including the territorial question—by negotiation between ourselves.”” The matter was urgent, as Prince Paul’s Regency would end in eleven months’ time—Csaky evidently anticipated that matters would become more difficult when King Peter came of age and his “‘circle”’ came into power. Bessenyey, in his reply, anticipated difficulties, because if * “A window to the West” was a favourite phrase of Csaky’s. He told Bakach-Bessenyey during the negotiations that the object of the negotiations was the securing of this window to the West, and on 10th December, when he received Prince Paul’s personal assurance that the Pact could be concluded, he drew a long breath and said: “At last I have my window to the West” (Bakach-Bessenyey to C. A. M.). Csaky told the same informant that “‘he hoped to utilise Prince Paul’s Western connections for Hungary’s benefit.” * Following from Sz. I. MS.

ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP 447 Yugoslavia came to terms with Hungary, the Bulgarians, and then the Italians and Albanians, would send in their bills. On making enquiries, however, he found a fairly widespread opinion in Belgrade in favour of a bilateral settlement, the feeling being that if Yugoslavia made a voluntary offer she would get off cheaper than if she waited for a crisis. The first person with whom,

on the 9th, Bessenyey discussed the matter in detail—M. Smiljanié, the Deputy Foreign Minister—began, indeed, with the ingenious suggestion that Yugoslavia would not need to cede territory at all: the whole thing could be

arranged by means of a transfer of populations, and, since there were admittedly more Magyars in Yugoslavia than Yugoslavs in Hungary, the balance could be made up by transferring Ruthenes from Carpatho-Ruthenia. This suggestion was repeated by Cincar Markovic, whom Bessenyey saw on

the 11th, but Bessenyey made it clear that this was out of the question. Hungary was prepared to consider exchanging outlying groups of population, but would insist on a modicum of territorial revision. According to himself, the Yugoslavs realised Hungary’s demands to be the Muravidék, the Baranya (Darda) Triangle, and the Bacska as far as the Canal. He reported that the Yugoslavs understood the position, and that, although he did not think that they would dare initiate negotiations “for fear of starting an avalanche,” and for that matter had not admitted the full Hungarian claim, the ground was now prepared. A fortnight after this came Italy’s attack on Greece, which seems to have

surprised the Hungarians as much as it did the Germans. During the following three weeks the Hungaro-Yugoslav conversations appear to have been in suspense, yet those weeks were of great importance for the history of the rapprochement, for they changed the whole setting of it, building up, as it were, round its anti-German core—which remained for the Hungarians its essential purpose—a shell of precisely the opposite character. Hitler was probably quite well aware that Hungary’s search for the rapprochement was a discreet but definite part of her resistance policy to Germany herself, but he regarded the situation created by Mussolini’s cumulative blunder of first attacking Greece at all, and then doing it so badly that the British were able to establish bases within striking range of the vital Roumanian oil-fields, as

so dangerous that nothing counted beside the need of driving the British back out of range. If this was to be accomplished successfully, it was essential

that Yugoslavia should not intervene on the Allied side. Since, in his view, she could not be crushed in a winter campaign, she must be conciliated; and any step which helped conciliate her was welcome to him. From this moment onward, therefore, Hungary’s overtures to Yugoslavia could be sure of meeting with Hitler’s blessing and encouragement, and therewith they naturally acquired, or re-acquired—for there was nothing new in this—significance and purpose. For what Hitler hoped was, of course, to draw Yugoslavia into the Axis orbit by removing those considerations which would otherwise have tempted her to take the other side: put differently, he was buying Yugoslavia’s non-support of the Greeks and the British for a

price which included an assurance of her security against attack from Hungary (or Italy). And the Hungarians obviously knew this, and were well 1 Bakach-Bessenyey writes that the Yugoslavs were willing to “‘give only the Zenta and Topolya districts,’ and it is not clear whether the word “only” means, “‘so far as the Bacska is concerned, only”’, i.e. whether it does or does not exclude the Muravidék and the Darda Triangle; but, in any case, the statement that some territorial revision was conceded is categorical.

448 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH aware that in continuing to seek the rapprochement, they were now reinsuring against Germany only in a limited sense. In the larger sense, they were playing Germany’s game for her, for an essential condition of the rapprochement was that Yugoslavia, on her side, should move into the Axis orbit. It could not have been otherwise, for no Government not standing within that orbit could possibly have entered into close relations with a country which had signed the Tripartite Pact, as Hungary was now pressing

to do. To ignore this obvious fact casts an unduly favourable light on Hungary’s actions in seeking the rapprochement; at the same time, it also unfairly blackens her conduct in April 1941. Immediately he became aware of the extent of Mussolini’s blunder, Hitler

himself opened negotiations with the Yugoslavs. Fortunately for him, the Yugoslav Government, or at least certain members of it, received favourably his suggestions that if they fell in with his wishes Salonica should not only

be kept out of Italian hands but given to Yugoslavia herself. Equally fortunately, the Italians were sobered by their military fiascos, and when, on 11th November, an emissary from Prince Paul’s court arrived in Rome to challenge the Italians as to their real intentions, he found Ciano in the right

mood. Dropping his Croat friends like a hot potato, Ciano told the Yugoslav that Italy wanted a strong and independent Yugoslavia, whose territorial integrity she “respected and wished to safeguard.” He was willing to expand the 1937 Treaty into an alliance of the widest character, and as earnest of his good intentions gave the Yugoslavs two important assurances: (1) Italy did not wish to interfere in Yugoslavia’s internal politics and thus accepted as definitive the removal of Stoyadinovié, (2) her ambitions did not go beyond the Florina-Vodena line; she ‘‘did not desire, even temporarily, the occupation of Salonica.” All she wanted in return was the demilitarisation of the Adriatic.? When, then, Ciano met Hitler and Ribbentrop on 18th November and in reply to Hitler’s anxious insistence on the vital importance of conciliating Yugoslavia told him that Italy was in fact engaged in a rapprochement with her, Hitler was immensely relieved, and told Ciano that he was sure that the Axis could get Yugoslavia on its side if Mussolini would make a Pact with

Yugoslavia covering three points: an Axis guarantee for Yugoslavia’s frontiers, cession of Salonica to Yugoslavia and demilitarisation of the Adriatic by Yugoslavia. And when, two days later, Teleki and Csaky arrived in Vienna to sign the Tripartite Pact, Hitler took with them exactly the same line as he was taking

with the Italians. He even used almost exactly the same words. He told them (according to the Sz. I. MS.) that “the thought it important that Hungaro-Yugoslav relations should not deteriorate,” and the evidence seems overwhelming that if he did not ask them in so many words to conclude a

Pact with Yugoslavia, he used language which was tantamount to such a request, and so taken by the Hungarians.” The way was now clear. Bakach1 Ciano’s Diary (11th November 1940) gives a false impression on this last point. Cuiano pressed for it; the Yugoslav did not offer it, nor, at that time, definitely concede it. 2 The Sz. I. MS. writes that Csaky interpreted the Fiihrer’s words as an invitation to conclude a Pact, and in an interpretative passage maintains (from Ribbentrop’s later coldness) that he was

mistaken in so doing. But we shall find other reasons for Ribbentrop’s ill-humour, and the evidence that Hitler recommended at least a rapprochement is overwhelming. When, as he reported to Budapest on 19th December (Sz. I. MS.), Sztéjay discussed the Pact with Weizsacker, he quoted Hitler as having said to Csaky: ‘‘Entlasten Sie Ihre Siidflanke.””» When Horthy wrote to Hitler on 28th March (see below, p. 476; the letter was drafted by Bardossy), he spoke of “‘the

ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP 449 Bessenyey had come up from Belgrade when the Tripartite Pact was signed, and asked Csaky: “I suppose my mission is now over?”—a question which

suggests that he was remarkably ill-informed on what had already been going on in Belgrade. “On the contrary,” replied CsAky, “it is only just beginning,” and gave him instructions to sound Belgrade on the possibilities of a Pact; and although the writer who gives us this anecdote! reproduces

Csaky’s alleged conversation with Bessenyey as though Csaky had not suggested anything but the anti-German aspect of the affair,2 Bessenyey’s despatches from Belgrade leave no doubt that he, at least, understood both aspects. He went about his enquiries? very cautiously, fearing leakage if things went outside the circle of the Prince Regent, Cvetkovié and Cincar Markovic, but when (on the 23rd) he felt himself able to speak freely to Cincar Markovic, all his introductory remarks amounted to a most plain intimation that the Yugoslavs would do wisely to enter the Axis orbit, and that, if they would do so, their way would be made smooth for them.

Cincar Markovic took these hints without the slightest repugnance, whereupon Bessenyey suggested that Csaky might come to Belgrade, but that this would only be possible if the visit were accompanied by some concrete result, e.g. the signature of a Treaty of Friendship. Hungary’s condition for

concluding this would be “‘the satisfaction of the rightful demands of the minority living here’; but Yugoslavia would gain an important point: while admittedly she could, in view of her past, hardly adhere to the Tripartite Pact, “she would through us establish a new, reliable connection with that

group of Powers.’ These remarks, too, Cincar Markovié received with “great pleasure.”’ He must, indeed, report to the Prince Regent; but on the 26th he asked Bessenyey to call on him again and told him that the Prince Regent and the Government would be delighted to welcome Csaky at an early date; any time after 3rd December would suit them. Csaky made a similar communication to the Yugoslav Minister in Budapest, whose Government called him to Belgrade, discussed his report and authorised him to tell Csaky that they were favourable in principle to the idea of concluding a Pact of Friendship.® Thus the first stile was got over very easily, and so little trouble was taken to conceal what way the path was leading that on the evening of the 22nd the inspired Pester Lloyd reported rapprochement recommended by Your Excellency.’’ Bardossy (who, incidentally, was opposed to the Pact, and begged Teleki not to conclude it precisely because he foresaw the possibility that Yugoslavia might suddenly turn away from the Axis and thus put Hungary in an impossible position) said at his trial (p. 17) that the Treaty was concluded at Germany’s request, and when the statement was queried, repeated: “It was concluded expressly at Germany’s request.’’ He went on to say that the Pact “came into being within the framework of the idea that it would bring Yugoslavia nearer the group of Powers headed by the German Reich.”’ In his final speech, again, he said: “‘Part of Yugoslav opinion—even of that opinion which was otherwise friendly

to Germany—hesitated to adhere to the Axis Powers out of fear that they would support Hungary’s revisionist claims against Yugoslavia to a measure which might bring about a disintegration of the State.’’ German diplomacy ‘“‘arranged for the Pact to be concluded in order to dispel that fear.” 1 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., pp. 75 ff. 2 So Ullein Reviczky records him as saying: “It would be dangerous to think of an ordinary political alliance in the face of Germany, but something more indirect could be managed.” 3 This from the Sz. I. MS. 4 “T went very cautiously and used above all Your Excellency’s circular. Other points were: Germany’s intact military, economic and moral preparedness, the exceptionally deep and intimate nature of German-Italian relations, Roumania’s and Slovakia’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact, Bulgaria’s refusal to adhere. Finally I mentioned that Your Excellency had found the atmosphere favourable to Yugoslavia in Vienna and had gathered the impression that Germany would welcome a Hungaro-Yugoslav rapprochement.”’ 5 Sz. I. MS.

2G

450 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH from Belgrade that: “Yugoslavia would not feel her relations with Hungary altered by Hungary’s adhesion to the Tripartite Pact. Indeed, although no sudden change in Yugoslavia’s policy was to be expected, a gradual adaptation of her attitude to the new situation was probable. She was forced to see that neutrality was only an empty form today. This change could only be furthered by the adhesion of other States to the Pact.” The negotiations had, however, to be fitted into the larger framework. We do not know whether any communications passed at the time between Germany and Belgrade. On the 22nd Mussolini answered Hitler’s letter of the 20th in a decidedly irritated tone, which showed that his amour propre was suffering. He hinted broadly that there would be no need for German armies to intervene at all. But he was prepared to guarantee Yugoslavia’s frontiers and to let her have Salonica on three conditions: (a) That Yugoslavia adhered to the Tripartite Pact. (b) That she demilitarised the Adriatic. (c) That she did not enter into action ‘“‘until the Greeks had received a first correction, administered exclusively by the Italians.” This was asking more than Yugoslavia could be expected to give at the

moment, and for that matter, offering, in the shape of the guarantee (if Mussolini really meant the term in the strict sense), more than Hungary’s friend and treaty partner should have offered. But it cleared out of the way the difficulties centring on Italy. The Bulgarian question was, apparently,

not considered all-important.2 Hitler now took personal charge of the central negotiations with the Yugoslavs, and after a preliminary interview had taken place between Ribbentrop and the Serbian middleman, Gregoric,

he called Cincar Markovié to him, on or about Ist December. The Serb apparently agreed to conclude with Italy a Pact which carried within it all the desired implications, although Hitler now told him that could be only a nonageression Pact, without guarantee, as this ““would be easier for Hungary and Bulgaria to accept.”? But the Serbs had now crossed the Rubicon, and on 6th December Cvetkovié made a speech in the Belgrade Municipal Council saying that Yugoslavia was “‘willing to co-operate in the New Order.”’ Ciano noted this as “‘the beginning of a manceuvre for a change of policy in Yugoslavia.”” Csaky now said openly in Parliament that the Hungarian Government “‘intends to draw our relations with Yugoslavia still closer.... I have reason to believe that a similar opinion has grown up in Yugoslavia. Itis not to Hungary’s advantage to see a politically weakened Yugoslavia, and it is to Yugoslavia’s advantage to have for neighbour a strong and reliable Hungary.” About 5th December the Hungarians had prepared a draft non-aggression

Pact, the text of which they showed the Germans, who approved it. The ' Lettres Secrétes, pp. 93 ff. ° The writer has no information on what was being done at this stage about Bulgaria. A despatch from Jungerth in Sofia on 7th December reports great uneasiness when Csaky’s visit to

Belgrade was announced, as the Bulgars “‘were afraid that the Hungaro-Yugoslav territorial question would be suddenly settled without Bulgaria being brought in.”’ Significantly, Jungerth adds: ‘““The Macedonians are afraid that if Your Excellency agrees with Belgrade, the Hungarian government will stop supporting them” (Sz. I. MS.). No reply is recorded, but Csaky also told

Prince Paul on the 10th that “‘the Bulgarians were very annoyed; the Bulgarian Minister in Budapest had come to him and complained that Hungary was betraying the common cause.”’ > German documents (N.G. 2312), dated 7th December, show Ribbentrop replying to an enquiry from Erdmannsdorff: ‘“‘Please inform the Hungarian Foreign Minister, in reply to his enquiry for any suggestions from the Government of the Reich about the proposed HungaroYugoslav Agreement, that in our opinion the draft contains pretty well everything that is to be said on the matter. We have therefore no further suggestions to make.”’

ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP 451 Germans at this moment were playing down the proposed Pact, presumably to avoid exciting nervousness abroad: so Roumania was informed that the instrument “‘concerned relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia. There was no question of Hungarian mediation between Yugoslavia and Germany.’”! The Yugoslav Press, too, emphasised that the Treaty was coming into being “exclusively on a Hungaro-Yugoslav basis.”” The Hungarian Press, however,

took a less discreet line, saying openly that, if Hungary was not actually mediating between the Axis and Yugoslavia, she was acting as a link between them.” For that matter, Varga, when questioned by a Yugoslav, whether the Pact was a move to get Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, admitted that Germany had “prompted”? Hungary, and when Csaky arrived in Belgrade he

told the Yugoslavs that, as soon as he arrived, the German and Italian Ministers had come and asked him whether the Yugoslavs were going to adhere to the Tripartite Pact. ‘“‘Of course,” he said, “‘the Germans would like to use me against you for their own purposes.’”? So much had been done behind the scenes that the final stages could be accomplished quickly. Csaky arrived in Belgrade on 10th December, when his first visit was to Prince Paul. To him he put exclusively the anti-German aspect of the Pact, 1.e. the reinforcement which it would give both countries in their common struggle against German pressure; his conversation, indeed, consisted mostly of abuse of the Germans.* Nor did he mention Hungary’s revisionist claims to Prince Paul.

In fact, the Hungarians were prepared, in order to make matters easier for the Yugoslavs, not merely not to raise their claims at this point, but not to let the fact of their continued maintenance of those claims be apparent, lest the Yugoslav Opposition should accuse their Government of giving something

away. They were, however, not willing to accept a form of words which implied renunciations of those claims. On those grounds they rejected the wording first proposed by the Yugoslavs, which was that of the FrancoGerman Agreement of December 1938, since this contained the statement that the contracting parties recognised that there were no territorial questions outstanding between them, and that they recognised their common frontier as final.> Finally, and most unfortunately for them, they consented to Yugoslavia’s wish® and accepted for the first clause of the Treaty (after a somewhat flowery preamble) the wording of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian Treaty of 1937, so that that clause ran:

“Constant peace and eternal friendship shall prevail between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.” 1 On 11th December Weizsacker told the German Minister in Roumania for the information of Bucharest, that Cs4ky’s journey to Belgrade ‘‘had a definitely Hungarian background and concerned relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia. There was no question of Hungarian mediation between Yugoslavia and Germany. But the Hungarian Government had notified Germany and Italy in advance of the journey and of its intention to sign a Treaty of Friendship on the pattern of that between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. ... No particular importance would

attach to this Treaty” (N.G. 2650).

2 Magyar Nemzet wrote on 6th December that Yugoslavia was seeking a rapprochement with the Axis through Hungary, and Pester Lloyd, 7th December, that Yugoslavia was “giving clear proof of a positive attitude towards the efforts of the Axis Powers”’; the friendship with Hungary “fitted into the framework of the Axis and was made possible by Axis policy.”

3 Yuki¢ to C. A. M.

4 He also warned the Yugoslavs against Italy’s designs on them. 6 Bakach-Bessenyey to C. A. M. 6 Id. According to Bakach-Bessenyey, the Hungarians distrusted the words strongly but the

Yugoslavs insisted that if a different wording from the Bulgarian were adopted, their public would smell a rat and object.

452 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH To this was added a second clause: “The High Contracting Parties have agreed to consult together on all questions which, in their opinion, affect their mutual relationship.”’ The Hungarians afterwards claimed, on many occasions, that these words referred to Hungary’s revisionist claims; that the Yugoslavs knew this and that by accepting the formula they had, if only tacitly, agreed to the principle of revision by consent!; and although it is attested that the actual question of revision was not raised during the Belgrade meeting,’ the confidence with

which the Hungarians made this claim—added to their rejection of the Franco-German wording and to the attested fact of Bakach-Bessenyey’s earlier conversations on the subject with Smiljani¢ and Cincar Markovic—

would seem to justify them in making it. The Hungarians seem to have understood that when the time came Yugoslavia would re-cede to them the

Baranya Triangle, the Muravidék and the Bacska north of the Ferencz Jozsef Canal, possibly with the north-western corner of the Banat, while they would renounce the Murakéz and the remainder of the Bacska and Banat, but it is difficult to say whether they had received any specific assurances on the point.®

The Pact was to come in force on the day of ratification. It contained no provision for denunciation. It was signed on 12th December. A verbal agreement was reached on the same day on cultural facilities for the Magyar minority in the Voivodina. Such was the genesis of this unhappy Treaty, which only a few months later was to cause Hungary so much painful embarrassment, and her alleged

disregard of it, to bring down on her so many and bitter reproaches. We shall see when we come to the story of that crisis that some of these reproaches

were undeserved, or at least exaggerated, for it is not true that she showed indifference towards the obligations which she had incurred, still less that she revived claims previously renounced. But she had invited these accusations by her failure to guard against the eventuality which in fact occurred, and, in part, by her disingenuousness in explaining to the West the nature and conditions of the transaction. Both parties to it understood perfectly well that it formed part of a complex of mutually interlinked moves and agreements, the very king-pin of which was Yugoslavia’s undertaking to move into the Axis orbit and then to follow a pro-Axis policy. There was very much truth indeed in the Hungarians’ later contention that the Yugoslavs themselves destroyed the basis of the Treaty by their political volte-face

in March. The first mistake which they made was to underestimate the strength of the anti-Axis party in Belgrade. Carried away by his enthusiasm

Teleki forgot that Serbs in general have not the skill in sitting on fences which has become second nature to Hungarian Transylvanians; in a crisis, they slip down on to one side or the other and then batter. The second, most 1 This was stated by Horthy in his (i.e. Bardossy’s) letter to Hitler (below, p. 475) and also, quite explicitly, by Bardossy at his trial. Bardossy also, at Munich, asked Hitler to convey Hungary’s attitude to the Yugoslavs (below, pp. 471-2). It is inconceivable that he should have been springing a surprise on the Yugoslavs at that stage. * Both Bakach-Bessenyey and Prince Paul have stated this to C. A. M. 3 At his trial Mesko, who knew Teleki well, said that Teleki had told him that Prince Paul had given him a secret promise to this effect (Magyar Nemzet, 15th May 1945). Barczy gave evidence to the same effect at the Bardossy trial (p. 34). Bakach-Bessenyey’s reports in the Sz. I. MS. do not go quite so far, but they do show the Yugoslavs with whom he talked as admitting some measure of revision.

, ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP 453 grievous mistake was not to insist on some safeguard against such an event

as occurred, and instead to consent to a theatrical form of words which implied that the habitual understanding of “‘rebus sic stantibus,’’ which here was of the very essence of the contract, was unnecessary in this instance. Their third error was to misrepresent the facts to Great Britain. It is true that their Press was completely explicit, writing many times that the Pact had been concluded ‘“‘in the spirit of the Tripartite Pact,” ‘“‘with the full approval of the Axis Powers,” etc. But by this time the Hungarians themselves had told the Foreign Office so often that what the Press wrote was simply dust thrown in the eyes of the Germans, that the Foreign Office took them at their word; whereas they did believe in the private communications

of the Hungarian Government. Now, when Barcza communicated the conclusion of the Treaty to the Foreign Office, Cadogan remarked sensibly that the step was a welcome one, if Hungary meant by it to express her wish for independence and to draw herself away from Germany’s influence; but the position was quite different if she was acting as place-maker for Germany and trying to draw Yugoslavia nearer to the Axis. Barcza then asked for an official interpretation of the Pact, and Budapest was so incredibly foolish as to answer that Hungary “definitely wanted to prove her political independence and was not seeking any Axis interests of any sort.’’ This Barcza, who was personally anxious to represent Hungary as “‘independent”’ as possible, passed on to Cadogan and “‘convinced him,’’! with the result that Hungary was later convicted out of her own mouth of a treachery which she had not committed.

The Yugoslavs, incidentally, gave the same version; Cincar Markovic telegraphed it to Foti¢ in Washington,” and Prince Paul, when the American Ambassador asked him for advance information on 8th December, explained

that the Pact was intended purely to serve the purpose of enabling both Yugoslavia and Hungary to resist Germany more effectively. He, indeed, seems not to have been aware of Hitler’s words to Csaky, or of BakachBessenyey’s hints to Cincar Markovic; but the same can obviously not be said for Cincar Markovic. A British writer will not feel inclined to labour the point that Hungary was acting in something less than good faith towards Germany, towards

whom her Press was never weary of pouring out its protestations of exaggerated devotion, and whose help she was always quick to invoke when it suited her. Nor was she at all successful in this particular bit of deception. When Csaky visited Prince Paul on the 10th, he brought the disconcerting story that Erdmannsdorff had called on him on the previous morning and had repeated to him, with great accuracy, what the Prince Regent had said to the American Ambassador the day before. How far Csaky succeeded in smoothing matters over with the Germans we do not know, but it is perhaps

not surprising that, while the Italian Press crowed like a farmyard full of roosters over the Pact, the German was far more reticent and, as Sztdjay reported, “‘seemed to be anxious to avoid letting the impression spread abroad that the Treaty had come into being under German influence or 1 Barcza MS. 2 Foti¢é, The War We Lost, p. 39.

3 He told the Italians (who, strangely enough, had asked exactly the same question as the British) that the purpose of the Pact was to stabilise peace in the Danube valley. Stakic writes that the Italians also were displeased, but the people who reacted most of all were the Russians, who, according to Gregori¢, broke off negotiations for supplying Yugoslavia with arms when they heard of the treaty. They seem to have taken it as equivalent to adhesion to the Axis.

454 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH pressure.” Even Weizsacker and Woermann were chilly about it in private conversation with Sztéjay, who had to insist to them, with some eloquence, that Hungary had been obeying Hitler’s expressed request in concluding the Pact. “They seemed,” wrote Sztdjay, ‘“‘reluctant to acknowledge paternity.”” Germany’s reserve was probably enhanced by the reception accorded to the Pact in Hungary, where the general public, of all political tendencies, uninitiated into the inner history of the Pact and accustomed to regard what their newspapers had said’ as meaning nothing at all, chose to disregard every protestation of the MTI and to concentrate exclusively on the anti-German, defensive aspect of the Pact.2, Of the newspapers, it was the pro-Western organs (Magyar Nemzet and Népszava) which were the most enthusiastic, and when the Pact was submitted to the same preliminary discussion in the Foreign Affairs Committee as had been allowed to the Tripartite Pact, the Left-Wing Opposition spoke for it, while all the pro-Germans, from Imrédy to the Arrow Cross, were against it. Thus, Teleki’s Government retrieved much of the popularity which it had lost by its earlier move and the country breathed again, under the impression that it had at least gained a real friend whose support would offset the increased subservience to the Axis imposed by the Tripartite Pact. As for Yugoslavia: Bakach-Bessenyey reported that the Croats were not best pleased with the Pact, since they saw in it a strengthening of the Centralist and dictatorial elements in Belgrade. The Croat Press, however, welcomed it

warmly, and Maéek, in an interview which he gave on 1th December to Pester Lloyd, described Yugoslavia’s ““new policy” as “a great improvement on her Little Entente policy” and said that now that the Pact was concluded he meant to visit Budapest. 1 Sz. I. MS. Sztdojay’s report is dated 19th December. * This opinion was so widespread that when at his trial Bardossy said that the Pact had been concluded ‘‘expressly at Germany’s wish,”’ the President of the Court called him a liar for his pains.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SLIPPERY SLOPE N one respect the Hungarian Government got substantial advantages

icn its adhesion to the Tripartite Pact. The Chief of Press in Teleki’s

office reported after the meeting that “‘Hitler raised no question of internal politics’’: neither the Arrow Cross nor the Volksbund was mentioned. From the internal aspect, the only important point for them was that the Government should rest “‘on a firm basis.”! The Arrow Cross information went

further still. A secret report by Ruszkay to Szalasi stated that there was ‘every reason to believe that the Hungarian Government had coupled its signature of the Pact with certain wishes connected with the cessation of any moral support to the extreme Right,’’ and, although not certainly informed

on the German reaction, the report deduced this reaction to have been ““positive.”* The hints thrown out in the Hungarian Press after the signature, as well as the course of subsequent developments, fully confirm this sugges-

tion. The dégringolade of the Arrow Cross continued unabated. Wirth and Kovarcs were duly prosecuted in November, the former receiving five years’ hard labour,* while the latter was eventually sentenced in absentia to five years. Other sentences were passed on the Klima group, and in March Hubay got three months for distributing seditious leaflets. Szalasi himself was treated with open derision; Teleki publicly described one of his speeches as “‘to put it mildly, a psychopathological phenomenon,” and Szalasi noted that rumours that he was insane were current in Berlin, set about, he supposed by Rothen. He had ordered his party to continue opposition to the Government in the domestic field on the ground that, while the Government had

adopted a correct foreign policy, its internal policy did not conform to national socialist principles, but the Party seemed to disintegrate under his

hand. At the end of the year he himself noted that his popularity was precipitately on the decline and that the Right Radicals were divided into eight cliques, each of which was intriguing against the others and against Szalasi himself; all of them in contact with the police, and all, without exception, in touch with one or another German informant. All threads ran together in the hands of Rothen. One name which figured in Szalasi’s list is new to these pages, but interesting: that of the youthful and ambitious Archduke Albrecht. The Archduke enjoyed that title gua son of the old Archduke Frederick, whose death had not long before made him claimant to Frederick’s vast estates, some

of which now lay in Hungary, some in Yugoslavia—these had been confiscated by the Yugoslavs—and the largest and most valuable part in Silesia ; these had been confiscated by the Czechs. After Munich this area had passed

to Poland, and, after September 1939, to Germany. Rumour had it that Albrecht’s real father was a Hungarian nobleman, but since he was born in 1 Szig. Biz., p. 218. 2 Szalasi’s Diary. 3 Raised by the Higher Court to fifteen. He served four of these, and was released when the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944.

456 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH wedlock this gossip—which was probably quite unjustified, for he had the physical characteristics of the Habsburgs—only gave him a national prestige

without invalidating his legal position, and this fortunate conjunction, together with the fact that on his first marriage, which was with a divorcée,!

the Archduke Otto had declared him “‘no longer a member of the House of Habsburg,’’ made him at one time the favourite candidate of the Free Elector Party in Hungary, that is, those who wanted a king but did not admit the claim of the senior Habsburg to succeed under the Pragmatic Sanction. In the period immediately following the First World War the Archduke’s parents, or rather, his mother, the Archduchess Isabella, for it was she who provided the driving force, had run this candidature very energetically. It was the Archduke Frederick’s money which largely financed the MOVE and

the Awakening Hungarians, and also the Munich circles with which the Hungarian Right was connected, and in which the seeds of the German National Socialist Party germinated. After the failure of the projected putsch of 1923, which, according to one version, was to have put Albrecht on the

Hungarian throne, these plans had to be put into cold storage. Not long after, the Archduchess died, and her son under the more pacific influence of his father devoted himself more to private interests. It seems to have been after Germany had occupied Silesia? that the Archduke first conceived the idea of doing a deal with the Germans, whereby his vast family possessions in the Teschen area should be restored to him in

return for services rendered in Hungary. For himself he seems to have designated the post of Regent, either before or after Horthy’s death, and as

Regent he would then introduce a 100 per cent. Nazi and pro-German Government. Early in 1940 he had gone to Berlin to pursue these plans, and in October offered Szalasi to make contact between him and the Germans. Szalasi replied with his infuriating logic that he already had a Head of the

State. He would be glad to receive a liaison officer from the Nazi Party, which he regarded as the counterpart of the Arrow Cross, but wanted no support from the German Government, since that organ was bound to the Hungarian Government by Treaty so long as the latter fulfilled its obligations. In his list of cliques, Szalasi couples the Archduke’s name with those of Ruszkay, Imrédy and Ratz, and it is with these men that we shall find him

chiefly connected in the future. It would seem also that the seed sown by him on his journey did not fall entirely on barren ground, for the Germans thought of him as a possible successor to Horthy.* But they had only filed him for future reference; it is as true of him as of the other persons listed by the PV that it was an exaggeration to represent them as enjoying, at that time,

any active support from Germany. The Germans still stuck to their thesis that they could in no case support the Hungarian Right until it united; and 1 This marriage had afterwards been dissolved, and in the summer of 1938 the Archduke had married again, his second wife being Mlle. Catherine Bocskay, a village schoolmistress. ? The first reference I have found to these activities is in February 1940, when, according to

Szig. Biz., p. 137, a high legal official of the Hungarian Government warned the Archduke confidentially that the Government was aware that he was “acting as a link between the Arrow Cross and the Germans.” If he did not desist, even his high position would not save him from serious Consequences.

3 When Hassell passed through Budapest on 3rd April 1941, the President of the GermanHungarian Chamber of Commerce mentioned the Archduke to him as a possible successor to Horthy. Hassell talked to him, and several attempts were made to photograph the two men together. But Albrecht told Hassell the regular story: it was no use doing anything until the Imrédists and the Arrow Cross—the head without a body and the body without a head—had united (Hassell, Diaries, p. 197).

SLIPPERY SLOPE 457 even then not so long as they themselves were on satisfactory terms with the Hungarian Government—which they now regarded as being the case. The Imrédists consequently languished almost as desolately as the Arrow Cross. They possessed no organisation at all worthy of the name and, for a long time, only a small weekly newspaper in which to air their views. When at last they founded a daily, the Virradat (Dawn), it was little read. The Volksgruppe, it is true, could record a little positive progress, for on 28th November the agreement which Hungary had accepted in Vienna was at last promulgated, and Basch was allowed to set about organising his Volksgruppe, schools, Press, etc., The Volksgruppe’s new paper, the Deutsche Zeitung, began publication immediately, and in March 1941 the constitution

of the Volksgruppe itself was announced. Thereafter the Swabian Youth was also allowed to enter its own paramilitary and pseudo-nationalist organisations, instead of the official Levente, to speak German and to use the Nazi salute. Butif the German minority was thus now largely withdrawn

from the control of the Hungarian authorities, coming, in effect, under Himmler’s direct orders, it was firmly excluded from influence in Hungarian

affairs. The first issue of the Deutsche Zeitung carried a statement that German Nazism was the German form of life, but “how Hungary carries through her vélkisch renewal, German National Socialism does not wish to

determine. Hungary has throughout history always found the form appropriate to the demands of the age, whether political or economic... . The German Volksgruppe does not wish to meddle in the internal struggle.’ Any possibility of such “‘meddling’’ was in any case excluded by the relentless hostility with which the Volksgruppe was treated not only by the Hungarian authorities but also by Szalasi. Basch met Szalasi and, protesting

rather helplessly that he had to obey Himmler’s orders, claimed that all Volksdeutsche should belong exclusively to the Volksgruppe. He begged Szalasi to be “‘elastic’’ and to give up his Hungarism. Szalasi again refused to abate Hungarism by one iota and said that his party being a nation-wide one, to which any Hungarian citizen could belong, he proposed to continue

recruiting from the German minority—unless, indeed, the Hungarian Government would pass a law that all Hungarian political parties should confine their membership to Magyars alone. The Party then issued a statement calling on its members to co-operate fraternally with the Volksgruppe and not to prevent any “brother” whose

conscience required him to do so, from leaving the Party (or the Volksgruppe); but insisting on its own doctrine. On 9th January 1941 the Volksgruppe replied that ‘“‘for the Germans of Hungary there is only one National Socialism possible—German National Socialism. The relations between the

Volksbund and the Arrow Cross must depend on the latter’s unreserved acceptance of the Volksbund standpoint.” The Government was thus completely secure, for the Left, although displeased at the new relationship with Germany, still appreciated that Teleki’s regime was the best they could get, and took care to make no difficulties for it. The Smallholder spokesman, Tildy, actually voted for the Government

in the Appropriation Debate, as did the Christian Party. The Tran1 This article was reprinted by the Magyarorszdg (28th November) in heavily leaded type, with a paragraph commending it to the attention of the Hungarian ‘‘Arrow Cross and half-

Arrow Cross’’ who were attacking the Government for not applying national socialism in its own system,

458 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH sylvanians,! it is true, formed themselves into a separate party in December with a special Transylvanian programme,” and announced in effect that they would not interfere in the affairs of Inner Hungary so long as they were left alone in Transylvania. In fact, however, they continued to support the Teleki line both in Transylvania and in Inner Hungary, where they “allied them-

selves” with the MEP, and in token thereof were given a portfolio in the Government, Mihaly Teleki standing down from the Ministry of Agriculture on 3lst December in favour of Baron Banffy, a connection of the Telekis and a personal friend of both Pal Teleki’s and of the Regent’s, and a proved and staunch supporter of their policy. Nor do the Germans appear to have pressed the Government itself very hard for many further immediate concessions, and where they did put forward

requests, the Hungarians, who had by now developed an accomplished resistance technique, succeeded in yielding relatively little ground. Shortly after the signature of the Pact the Germans suggested adding to it a “‘secret additional protocol to reinforce German-Hungarian collaboration in the field of Press and propaganda.’ The Hungarians refused, and the Germans ended by accepting their refusal,*® so that the Left-wing Press was enabled to Survive; it is true that the caution displayed by this section of the Press and

the effusiveness of the rest were such as should have satisfied the queasiest

of dictators. In his Budget speech, Teleki again promised anti-Jewish legislation, saying that “the key positions of Hungary’s economic life must not be left in the hands of Jews, half-Jews, guinea-pigs or dummies,”’ and hinted at legislation against mixed marriages. Drafts of a new Jewish Law were now actually being prepared in the relevant Ministries. But they were not brought forward, and Teleki himself indicated in his speech that they could not be 100 per cent. radical: it was impossible, he said, “‘to take away their livelihoods from 800,000 or a million people without giving them an opportunity to move elsewhere; the Jewish question was a European one and could only be finally settled in a new, organised Europe.” Similarly, Teleki made some rather vague references to plans which, he said, he had under consideration for introducing into the Lower House national and vocational representation parallel with the existing representation. But he said that the Chambers of Industry, Agriculture, etc., would first have to be reorganised. 1 This situation, it may be stated here, continued substantially unchanged until 1944. It was only in 1943 that any party other than the Transylvanian was allowed to organise in Transylvania, and then their organisations did not get beyond the embryonic stage. Of the Deputies, one or two joined the MEP, one became a Smallholder, and the two Germans eventually joined the Volksgruppe, but the rest remained solid. Maramaros did not accept this decision and here the MEP took charge. “ The programme was published on 9th January 1941 as follows: (i) A strong, independent Hungary on a national, social and Christian basis. (11) Development of the defence forces, especially of the Székely Frontier Guards.

(ii1) Protection of Magyars beyond the frontier, including repatriation and the care of refugees.

(iv) Reparation for injustices committed by the Roumanian authorities: restoration of the Székely Frontier Guards estates. (v) No Party agitation in Transylvania, as this would weaken the Magyars against the Roumanians. (vi) Economic, social and cultural development. (vii) Work for the unemployed, the existing Hungarian laws, including the Jewish Laws, to be applied. ‘Transylvanians to be given the first choice of employment. (vill) Land settlement and labour exchanges. (ix) Industrialisation, railway construction, etc. (x) Maintenance of social legislation in favour of workers and employees. 3 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., pp. 171-2.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 459 In fact, the only important law passed by Parliament that session was one (modelled on the relevant I.L.O. Convention) enacting the Sunday rest in industrial and commercial undertakings; a measure which completed the long-prepared programme of social legislation. The Government generally gave economic difficulties, and the necessity

for maintaining production, as excuse for postponing any radical social reforms or changes, desirable or undesirable; among the more important postponements being that of the Land Reform Act. Of this, one section (relating to the provision of housing plots for agricultural labourers) was now promulgated separately, but promulgation of the rest of the Act was

deferred (as the event proved, for ever). In fact, all the main crops, except the sugar-beet, had been below average; most of them, including the

all-important bread-grain crops, the main fodder crops and the vintage, catastrophically so. Moreover, the entrance of Italy into the war had finally cut Hungary off from Western and overseas sources of supply, leaving her heavily dependent on Germany and Italy whenever she found it necessary to go outside her own frontiers. One result of this was considerable industrial unemployment. Other difficulties were the complete cessation of oil supplies

from Roumania, and the claims made by the military on the railways. Finally, both Ruthenia and Transylvania were passive areas from the point of view of food supply. In the autumn the Government was apparently still reckoning on an early

end to the war, and introduced few new restrictions: bread was for a few weeks mixed with potato flour, the number of meatless days in restaurants was

raised from two to three, petrol rationing was introduced—that was about all.

But towards the end of the year the Government woke up to the fact that the war was likely to be prolonged, and even the immediate prospects were bad. There were actual shortages of food and fuel (the former due almost entirely to hoarding by farmers, shopkeepers and rich householders), while a cold and rainy autumn, accompanied by unusually heavy autumn

floods, had hampered the sowing of autumn crops. On 12th December Reményi-Schneller was made Minister of Economic Co-ordination—the job originally created for Imrédy, and since allowed to lapse—and D. Laky was put under him as Minister without Portfolio in charge of supply. Now the whole position was attacked rather more seriously, Laky announcing that Hungary must prepare for ‘“‘months, if not years, of shortage.” Rationing to the consumer was still very mild: the only foodstuff newly rationed was flour (in Budapest and its neighbourhood only), and that on the reasonable scale of 200 gr. weekly, while 20 per cent. of maize flour was mixed in the bread. Sugar actually came off the ration. Electricity was cut, and footwear

placed on ration cards. Artificial feeding stuffs were rationed to the consumer. But stocks of a large number of products were now blocked and could be sold only to the authorities, at fixed prices, and heavy penalties were enacted against hoarding. Household stocks, also, had to be declared, and the Government assumed powers to requisition quantities above certain minima. The slaughtering of calves was restricted, etc. Prospects were made more serious in February by a renewal of the floods which had proved so disastrous in the previous year. Nearly a million hold

460 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH were under water at the worst moment, so that another bad harvest seemed inevitable. Prices, too, were beginning to rise rather fast. The Government put up wages in trade, industry and mining by 7 per cent. to meet the rising cost of living, and wages in agriculture, which were now settled locally by mixed boards, rose by a larger figure, as labourers were now, for the first time in many years, in the stronger bargaining position. The fixed-income classes, however, were now feeling the pinch.

The Germans also celebrated the signature of the Pact by demanding

more favourable terms of trade. They did not now ask for increased deliveries, but Baranyai had to agree to raise the premium on the R.M. from 13 per cent. to 21 per cent., at the same time reducing the basic premium on free exchange from 50 per cent. to 47 per cent. the supplementary premium of 10 per cent. remaining unaltered. Even this change, however, left the R.M. at a bigger discount than before the outbreak of war, and Baranyai himself was surprised when Clodius accepted his offer.1 As late as December 1940 Teleki asked Tyler to go to New York to negotiate new agreements with Hungary’s creditors, “‘taking into account the possibilities still within her reach,’ and Tyler was on his way back to Hungary, after negotiating a series of these agreements, when he learnt of Teleki’s suicide.’ It is true that in another and very important field the contacts between Hungary and Germany now became closer, but, as in the autumn, this came

about on the Hungarians’ initiative, and at their wish. Immediately after Hungary’s signature of the Pact, her General Staff asked their opposite numbers to help them make up Hungary’s deficiency in arms. In December Werth appears to have written to his German colleagues drawing attention to Hungary’s needs, and asking in particular for delivery of the outstanding balance of Hungary’s old order for 10-5 cm. Goéring howitzers and also for

up-to-date tanks for the mobile brigades. A buying commission of Hungarian ordinance officers now went to Germany, where they asked for help in equipping their air-force, A.A. guns, searchlights, listening apparatus, tanks, artillery, signals apparatus and heavy guns, offering in return facilities for the manufacture of gauges and fuses, artillery equipment, tanks and tank

tractors. In the same month, Colonel Laszl6, Chief of the Operational Section of the Hungarian General Staff, visited the German H.Q. Land

Command, at Zessen, for consultations on the reorganisation of the Hungarian Army from a brigade to a divisional basis and the establishment of motorised and armoured units,” and finally Bartha was invited to come to Berlin for discussions on the highest level. He made the journey in January, when he was received by Hitler and Ribbentrop. These visits did not result in the assumption by Hungary of any fresh military obligations; and the reader should be warned that the affidavits of the two renegades, the German Field-Marshal Paulus and the Hungarian Colonel Ujszaszy, produced at Nuremberg by the Soviet prosecutor,® are a ' Personal, L. Baranyai to C. A. M. “ Personal, R. Tyler to C. A. M. ° Nur. Trial, VI, 290-1 (Ujszaszy’s evidence). 1 Nazi Consp. and Agg., IX, 1088 (2553 P.S.). > Nur. Trial, VI, 241 (Paulus’ evidence).

° For Paulus’ oral evidence before the Tribunal, see Nur. Trial, VI, 290-1. Extracts from his affidavit were read out, id., 228-9, 239 ff. Parts of Ujszaszy’s evidence were read out, id. 290 ff.; he also gave some broadcasts to the same effect on the Soviet wireless. Ujszaszy had been head of the Hungarian Military Intelligence 1939-42.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 461 ' tissue of dictations or pure inventions, and that that portion of the Nurem: berg Judgment which is based on them, and declares that in December 1940

' Germany “drew Hungary,” with Roumania and Finland, “into the war against the U.S.S.R.” and that at that time ““Hungary agreed to participate,

on the promise that she should have certain territories at the expense of Yugoslavia,’! is sheer nonsense. As to Yugoslavia: Hitler himself first thought of attacking that country on 27th March 19412; and up to that moment he was always trying to restrain Hungary from raising claims against Yugoslavia, not the contrary. As to Russia: Hitler had not only assigned no

active part to Hungary in the plans which he was then working out for Operation Barbarossa, but was particularly careful to keep his intentions hidden from her, because of her potential unreliability. He felt this so strongly that, rather than let her into the secret of his plans, he preferred to leave a yawning gap between his forces operating respectively from West Galicia and from Moldavia.* All Hungary was to be asked to do would

simply be to prevent that gap from being pierced, and when Hitler saw Bartha, he tried to indicate to him, by hints of a possible Russian attack, that

she should strengthen her defences on her frontier. She should, he said,‘ strengthen her Army, because “‘in the general settlement which must come at

the end of the war, a friendly Hungary might conceivably gain certain advantages.’” He could not now give Hungary the arms for which she was asking, because Germany needed them for herself; in a few months he would be able to satisfy Hungary’s wishes more fully. He had his treaty with Russia at the moment, but if Stalin died, “who knew who would succeed him? There were a great many Jews in the gang behind him: that was a great potential danger.”” Hungary’s role was defensive; it was to guard the Carpathian crests, ““because if Russian Bolshevism breaks through that barrier, it might advance as far as Vienna.”” It was a German defensive interest that that line should remain in Hungarian hands. In this connection Hungary could count on Germany’s support. As regards the Balkans, Germany needed peace there, and Italy’s non-

success was annoying, but he did not take it too seriously, although he would not tolerate British troops in the Balkans. He did not altogether trust the Yugoslavs, as he knew that in their hearts they sympathised with the West. A strong Hungarian Army would have a pacifying effect on Yugoslavia.

Ribbentrop was even less definite. He mentioned the Russian question, but said it was not actuel. Not being fools, the Hungarians must have guessed what was in the wind, and there even exist a fair number of circumstantial stories of their having actually learned, through one channel or another, fairly intimate details of Hitler’s plans. But among the things which they learnt was that they were not being assigned an active role in the campaign, and it seems well attested 1 Nuremberg Judgment, 1.34. 2 See Keitel’s evidence (Nur. Trial, XI, 10) and Lohr’s (Id., VI, 228); also Weizsacker’s (Min. Trial, p. 8037, 10th June 1948). 3 Cf, the minutes of the Operational Conference of 3rd February 1941 (Nazi Consp. and Agg.,

III, 622 ff.), when Hitler brusquely rejected Halder’s proposal to let Hungary participate, or even to ask her to let German troops attack from Ruthenia. F. M. Halder writes to C. A. M. that when he made these proposals, Hitler replied that “‘if we tell the Hungarians anything, the English know it within twenty-four hours.”

4 Bartha made notes of these interviews, and they are reproduced in Nagy, op. cit., pp. 59-61 The Sz. I. MS. gives Sztdjay’s report, which agrees closely with Nagy’s.

462 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH that their representatives made no attempt to press for one; although from the date of Bartha’s visit onward, Werth “bombarded the Government with reports on the Russian danger and on Russia’s aggressive intentions.””* As Hitler had indicated would be the case, the buying commissions came off badly. The Germans promised the Hungarians to supply them with most of the weapons for which they asked, but not before 1942. The only ready made material which they were able to purchase on the spot was some 4.7 Belgian anti-tank guns and a few 7-5 howitzers. But the Germans did offer immediate technical help to enable Hungary to save raw material by the issue of licences, and said that they would “‘shift some German orders to Hungary.”’

There emerged from this a series of arrangements under which certain machine-tools, etc., component parts and weapons were to be manufactured partly in Germany, partly in Hungary, the finished products being divided pro rata between the two countries. The most important of all these arrange-

ments was the so-called Joint Aircraft Construction Programme, which provided for the construction, on this co-operative basis, of a Hungarian air-

force, to consist of Messerschmidt 109s and 210s and Focke-Wulf 50s. The Hungarians had now a hope of at last filling some of the most serious gaps in their defences, although the process could not be quick; in fact, the machines did not come into full production until 1943. But they were now even more at Germany’s mercy than before, for the Germans kept in their own hands the production of certain essentials, including the armament of the Messerschmidts, so that Hungary remained dependent on Germany’s goodwill for the production in serviceable form of any aircraft, as of various

other types of armament for which joint production was arranged. They

had also made Germany dependent on Hungary, although to a lesser extent, so that neither country could henceforward easily quarrel with the other.

The Germans’ only real interest in Hungary at this time was that she should not endanger or obstruct, directly or indirectly, the execution of Operation Maritsa. As we have seen, it was because this consideration was for them so all-important that they had patronised the conclusion of the Hungaro-Yugoslav Pact, ambiguous as they had known the motives of both contracting parties to have been. For the rest, the role which Hungary had to play here, also, was only a passive one: that of a transit area, but once Hitler had decided to build up a large force in Roumania, it was, of course, important that Hungary should grant the necessary transit facilities. When the Tripartite Pact was being signed, Ribbentrop and Keitel asked Csaky for these facilities, and he consented.? Technical arrangements took a few days, but on 13th December, which was, incidentally, the day after the signa-

ture of the Hungaro-Yugoslav Pact and also the day of the issue of the revised Directive for Operation Maritsa, the transport began on a large scale.

The consent having been given at top level, there were no more serious difficulties. It is only fair to the Hungarian State Railways and to the much-

abused General Staff to say that they never went further than they were 1 Sz. I. MS.

° Doc. N.G. 2541. On 24th December some Hungarians, including Istvan Horthy, then President of the Hungarian State Railways, with some of his assistants, wanted further conversations on the diplomatic level before complying with certain increased demands. Erdmannsdorff

replied that this was unnecessary “‘since Csaky had already given an assurance to Ribbentrop and Keitel in Vienna.”

SLIPPERY SLOPE 463 ' authorised to do, and the railways even appear to have resorted to a certain

: measure of ingenious sabotage.2 Nevertheless, when Hitler wrote to Mussolini on 31st December he praised the loyalty with which Hungary and

' Roumania—"‘the two countries which had adopted the clearest attitude in . this conflict” had placed their railway systems at his disposal.2 They did so even at the expense of their own people’s Christmas gaiety, for railway traffic

| was suspended in Hungary for some days after 28th December, on the plea of coal shortage.

On 18th January 1941 a further agreement was concluded whereby German stores for the coming campaign were to be kept in Hungary. It was arranged that they should be kept in Hungarian warehouses, belonging to the

Futura, etc., and under Hungarian guard, Germany maintaining only a liaison officer in Budapest. Hungary asked for this, saying that any other arrangement would give rise to “undesirable suspicions that Germany was plundering Hungary,” and Germany gave way on the ground that Hungary had treated the whole question ‘““magnanimously.’”

Considerable as the concessions had been which Hungary had made since Ist September 1940 to Germany’s wishes, and considerable even as was the assistance which she was now giving to Germany’s designs, Teleki had

not ceased in his heart to wish to retain the goodwill of Great Britain and to hope that she would regard Hungary as acting under duress, and accept as unalterably valid his assurance that he would never carry compliance

beyond a certain fixed limit. It was, however, inevitable that Great Britain should reckon higher than he the concessions which he had made, and take less account of those which he had refused to make. Her first serious un-

favourable reaction had come when the German troop movements into Roumania began. On 8th October, when the first consignment was being moved across into Roumania, being duly reported by Reuter, O’Malley raised the question with Csaky, who at that time even had the folly and effrontery

to deny that troops had been passing, although he admitted that “‘it was possible that SS. and SA. men had been passing through in mufti to organise the repatriation of the Germans from the Bukovina and Bessarabia, but he

had no official cognizance thereof.’ When pressed by O’Malley to say what Hungary would do if, later, German formations, armed and in uniform, sought passage across Hungary to Roumania, he answered that no one could expect Hungary to resist by force of arms. He made the rather better point 1 See above, p. 441, n. 2, and Ritter’s evidence at the Ministries Trial (13th July 1948) that the conversations on the subject between the German and Hungarian General Staffs went easily, but “great care was taken to ensure that the agreements between the two General Staffs were carried out only when the two Governments had agreed.... And in my experience it happened at that time (1940-41) dozens of times that the Hungarian Staff officers, even on the most unimportant matters, said that they were now agreed, but that the discussions would have to go on, on the basis of the agreement, with the Foreign Ministers.” 2 A bundle of documents grouped together under the number N.G. 2546 relate to this question. They show the Hungarian authorities expressing great willingness to meet the Germans, but apparently allowing some confusion and congestion to arise on the plea that Germany had not provided the full quota of locomotives which they had demanded as condition (130 instead of 180). 3 Lettres Secrétes, pp. 107-8.

4 N.G. 2734 (Report from Weizsacker). The German negotiator was Werkmeister, the |

Hungarian, Nickl.

5 The Hungarians made some flimsy attempt to conceal what they were doing from the

Western Powers. The British and American Military Attachés were forbidden to leave Budapest. Horthy, however, himself supplied the American Minister with full information (Montgomery, op. cit., pp. 143, 177).

464 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH that Roumania was a neutral country and Great Britain had not broken off diplomatic relations with her.1 On 2nd November O’Malley, although emphasising that he was not making an official démarche, warned Csaky that H.M. Government could not condone the fact that, to their knowledge, three German divisions had crossed into Roumania across Hungary.? Now Csaky sent Barcza to the Foreign Office to explain things away by the transparent excuse that this was a service which Hungary was rendering not to Germany

but to Roumania. Cadogan apparently made the official motions of accepting the explanation, while remarking sardonically that he was surprised that the Hungarians should suddenly be so anxious to oblige Roumania. He

said that the question did not immediately concern Great Britain, since Roumania was not that country’s ally: but if Hungary allowed German troops to cross her territory against a country allied, or in friendly relations, with Britain, Great Britain would regard this as an unfriendly act, and would break off diplomatic relations with her. If she allowed those forces to remain

on her territory, and to utilise her military installations, still more if she herself participated in the attack, this would be a casus belli.* When the Tripartite Pact was signed, neither the Foreign Office nor the British Press was very severe on Hungary (the U.S.S.R., which had itself refused to sign the Pact only because Germany had refused its inordinate demands, was much surlier). Csaky telegraphed to Barcza that Hungary had taken her action in response to Ribbentrop’s invitation of 27th September [sic] and “‘that there was no cause for a rupture of diplomatic relations with

Great Britain, since it followed from para. 3 of the Pact that Hungary’s adherence was not directed against England.’* Cadogan agreed that this was so; according to Barcza,° he even said that “‘he laid great stress on the maintenance of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Hungary.” In any case, Britain continued to treat Hungary technically as a “friendly State,” and the Press in general, tactfully ignoring Csaky’s and the Magyarorszag’s protestations to the contrary, persisted in treating Hungary’s action as the mere jerking of a puppet arm not animated by any motive of her own. Nevertheless, although they kindly regarded her position of subservience

as not being of her own making, or her own desire, the British could not ignore it. Their propaganda was instructed to take a severe tone towards her. She was now the official friend and ally of Britain’s enemies and would have to take such consequences as might arise.

And in one important respect these consequences were not slow in arriving. In December The Times published a statement by President (as he now was again) Benes, which contained the following passage: ‘The British Government had also stated that they were not bound by any frontiers in Central Europe, and these reservations held not only for us, but for Poland, Hungary, Roumania and the other States of Central

Europe. In an official note of the British Government dated 11th November, I was expressly assured that the British Government do not recognise the Munich frontiers, and are not bound by them.” Barcza went to Cadogan, who (according to him) repeated that Bene’ had

been plainly told that recognition of his Government did not bring with it recognition of the 1937 frontiers. Hitler himself had broken the Munich

Sz.1. MS. J. MS. 2 Id. 41Sz. 6 Barcza MS.3

Barcza MS.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 465 Agreement, so that was no longer binding on H.M. Government. ‘“‘BeneS had not lied, but neither had he told the exact truth in his statement. He had insinuated into it things which did not entirely correspond with the facts.’”} Barcza, after expressing his view of BeneS’ attitude towards facts, said that he understood that Britain was not bound vis-a-vis Germany, with whom she

was at war; but that he did not see how she could query the frontiers of Hungary, with whom her relations were entirely normal. On 28th December, however, Barcza received a letter from Cadogan stating that the provisions of the Munich Agreement had not been complied with: ““There was substituted for them, without His Majesty’s Government having given their consent or even having been consulted, the procedure of the

Vienna Award, which was the concern of the German, Italian, Hungarian and Czecho-Slovak Governments alone. H.M. Government have therefore no responsibility whatever in connection with the Award, which resulted in a departure from the agreement reached at Munich.’” Barcza replied quoting speeches by Mr. Chamberlain and others which had expressly approved the Award,® and Cadogan in his reply of 30th January was forced to agree that these were correctly quoted. But he still argued that the Award had been reached not by the Munich procedure but by a variation thereof, whereby H.M. Government was not bound; adding, less pharisaically, that Hungary herself had marched into Ruthenia in March 1939, and afterwards westward across the (provisional) Slovak-Ruthene

frontier. The recorder of this correspondence remarks: “‘After this, Hungary could hardly hope for any realisation of her national aims from England.”

The Hungarian Foreign Minister who had to swallow the above mouthful

of British hypocrisy was no longer Csaky. When in Belgrade, Csaky had expressed a wish to see a chamois hunt, and this was organised for him. But

Csaky was no hardened sportsman. He shivered miserably through a December day and caught a chill which settled on his liver. He died on 27th January. The next day Laszlé Bardossy was appointed to succeed him.* In his short career in office Bardossy was to be associated with three of the most disastrous events of modern Hungarian history: the march into the Délvidék, the declaration of war on the U.S.S.R. and the similar declaration against the U.S.A. For these things he was made his country’s scapegoat— a fate which he foresaw.®> Yet when we come to study the events we shall

see that it is impossible to take the cheap and easy view of Bardossy’s personal “guilt.” Impulsiveness and impatience led him into ill-considered actions which, as it happened, had disastrous consequences, but they were taken from the highest of motives and warmly applauded at the time by many who afterwards took refuge in abusing him. He was a victim partly of temperament, very largely of circumstance. At the time of his appointment, Bardossy was little known in Hungary. He had been born some fifty years before, of a middle-class family from West 1 Sz. I. MS. 2 Sz. I. MS. 3 See above, p. 303.

4 The appointment was announced on 5th February. . ' | .

5 In 1943 a friend—one of those few who were devoted to him—visited him. Mme Bardossy asked that person, who had British connections, to find shelter for herself and her husband if the

Axis was defeated. Bdrdossy intervened: ‘‘What nonsense! If things go wrong I shall be the first to be hanged on a lamp-post.”

2H

466 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Hungary in which there was a strain of Roumanian blood. He had begun his career in the Ministry of Cults, but transferred to the Consular service, and after 1920 had been attached to the Foreign Ministry as head of the Press Bureau. His very conspicuous abilities won him promotion, which was presently assisted by family connections, for he married a lady of German

origin, who was also the sister-in-law of Gémbés. After some intervening posts, he went to London as Councillor of the Legation in the early 1930's, thereafter becoming Minister in Bucharest—the post from which he was called to become Foreign Minister.

Bardossy was a man of conspicuously brilliant intellect. At school he had been the typical prize boy, always at the top of his class, and his invariable successes seem to have engendered in him a sovereign contempt for those less brilliant than he; a contempt which, later, was turned particularly against those who, although obviously his intellectual inferiors, were able by superior wealth or connections to outstrip him in his chosen career; for he was a man of great ambition who had set his heart on becoming his country’s

Foreign Minister. The mordant and supercilious turn of his mind was accentuated by chronic ill-health. All his life he suffered from severe gastric trouble, to which, in his last years, disease of the kidneys was added. This did not, however, prevent him from being, when he chose, the most charming of companions, of a polished and witty conversation which it was a delight to enjoy. In England he was probably the best representative whom Hungary had in the inter-war period, and in Bucharest, whither he was sent with the

express purpose of improving Hungaro-Roumanian relations, he was a conspicuous success. But he was never popular in Hungary, except, indeed, during the last few weeks of his life, when facing death before a “‘People’s

Court.”” Then his consistently dignified bearing, which contrasted so strikingly with that of his accusers, made him for a brief while the most popular man in Hungary; and his last words when (having refused to appeal for mercy) he stood facing the firing-squad, ‘“‘God deliver Hungary from these bandits,”’ passed from mouth to mouth of those who shared his views. In office, however, he was, as a rule, more admired than liked by those who worked with him; his intellectual arrogance, his impetuosity and frequent changes of mind, his tendency to interfere with his subordinates’ work and his super-sensitivity made him a difficult colleague and a still more difficult superior. It was Bardossy’s fate to commit Hungary more closely to Germany than

any other Hungarian Foreign Minister except Csdky, or any Minister President except Imrédy; and what is more, to do so often on his own initiative, offering concessions instead of letting them be grudgingly forced

out of him. Yet he was no pro-German in the ordinary sense. In 1938 he had actually refused the post of Foreign Minister which his soul desired, on the ground that Hungary was too deeply committed to the Axis for his views,. and one of Teleki’s reasons for giving him Csaky’s succession was precisely that he was not committed, either by his past or his known sympathies, for or against Germany.” He was certainly not one of those who wanted to link ‘ I have this from a quite authentic source (Bakach-Bessenyey). The story that he was embittered by seeing Csaky preferred to him must therefore be rejected. 2 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., p. 81. Another reason was the fortuitous circumstance that having been recalled from Bucharest when Hungary’s relations with Roumania became very strained he

was at that moment without a post. In any case, Teleki had always liked him, and had been gTeat ly impressed by his handling of the negotiations with Roumania.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 467 Hungary to Germany on internal political grounds. He was neither conversant with nor interested in details of domestic politics, but his ideas on the

subject, such as they were, were totally devoid of any tinge of Right Radicalism. He seems to have entertained even more than the measure common to his class a horror of Bolshevism, but thought Nazism little better, and deeply disliked its exponents in Hungary. It was precisely in order to keep those men out of power that he made many of his concessions,

both in internal and foreign politics,’ thus acting, in this respect, from precisely the same motives as Teleki when he made concessions. If he went further than Teleki in both fields, this was not because his sympathy was greater, either for Germany or for Nazism, or for anti-Semitism, a question towards which he was rather indifferent. But as regards domestic politics, his position was much more difficult than Teleki’s. He came into Parliament a stranger and a novice, to face a compact group of hard-bitten Party hacks, all of them much older than himself in Parliamentary experience and many of them older in years, and he had not the immeasurable advantage, enjoyed

by Teleki before him and Kallay after him, of possessing the trust and personal friendship of the Regent, his relations with whom began on a footing of unintimacy and ended on one of mutual irritation. Ina different situation and with a different Party his internal policy, too, would have been different. The object of his foreign policy was undoubtedly exactly the same as that of Teleki’s or Kallay’s: to weather the storm. But he took over his portfolio just at the moment when the Allied fortunes were almost at their nadir, and in those months when Teleki was, as we have seen, being most widely and

most plausibly reproached with having sacrificed Hungary to a mirage. Added to this: if he desired a German victory no more than Teleki or KaAllay, he desired an Allied one less. Here an unfortunate personal factor came into

play. It had proved impossible for him to be appointed Hungarian Minister in London, a post which he would much have liked to hold, for the reason that Mme Bardossy was a divorcée. Although a sincere and even deep liking for the English remained in him to the last, the disappointment seems to have coloured his views. He held a much higher (and as the event proved a much more accurate) estimate of the strength of anti-Hungarian influences in London than either Teleki or Kallay. He held that Britain was hopelessly committed to the Little Entente, and that no Hungarian would be able to outweigh or counteract Benes’ influence in London. These various circumstances led him to the conclusion that the policy of sitting on the fence was a mistaken one; the only wise course was to choose your side—which in his view must of necessity be that of Germany—and support it sincerely, using the front door only, and trusting to the merits which that policy would acquire with the chosen partner to harvest results in the end.” For this reason he had been opposed to the conclusion of the Hungaro-Yugoslav Pact, because he 1 In a striking passage during his trial (which appeared only in newspaper reports; see Magyar Nemzet of 30th March 1945), Bardossy said: “For me it was almost indifferent whether

Germany won the war or not; for me the important point was that we should not get into the German grip, because this would have meant a complete forced transformation of our country and of our conditions of life.” 2 After his resignation from the Minister Presidency, Bardossy wrote a book (Magyar Politika a Mohdcsi Vész Utén—Hungarian Policy After the Battle of Mohacs), which, under cover of describing (very brilliantly) the “policy of balance” which the Hungarians of the sixteenth century tried to carry out, drew this conclusion very plainly. The book was generally, and rightly, regarded as the expression of his own political credo. On Kallay’s orders, it was strongly attacked when it appeared, and in 1945 was proscribed as “Fascist.” It is, however, a welldocumented and well-reasoned exposition of a perfectly possible thesis.

468 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH did not like the arriére pensée in it. As we shall see, he carried out its policy in April 1941 loyally and, while Teleki lived, to the latter’s satisfaction!; but he was acting out of honour rather than conviction, and the very fact that he had in the crisis to follow a course which he disliked perhaps made him the readier to appease Germany afterwards. The record of the two months during which Bardossy worked with Teleki as his Foreign Minister is by no means one of further attempts by Hungary to elbow her way into the Axis camp. Both men felt that Hungary was being

swept downstream towards rocks which might smash her, and were even fervently anxious to arrest the course. Bardossy sent an unofficial agent to

Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal, to try to organise a bloc of neutral countries, in which Hungary should be included. He could get no support,

as the neutrals, although sympathetic, were frightened of burning their fingers.”

On the other hand, there was quite a reconciliation with the U.S.S.R., which had, apparently, soon got over its ill-humour at Hungary’s signing the

Tripartite Pact. In January a trade delegation had gone to Moscow and reached agreement for the intensification of trade relations between the two countries, to facilitate which the Hungarians even agreed to let the broadgauge railway run across their frontier to the first station on the Hungarian side of it. Far from planning war against the U.S.S.R., Teleki was most anxious to establish friendly relations with her, and to emphasise the fact, a little ceremony was arranged, which took place on 21st March.

The Soviet Government restored to Hungary the 58 flags of the Hungarian Honvéd which had been taken in 1849 by the armies of the Czar

Nicholas after Gorgey’s surrender at Vilagos. The flags were brought to the frontier by a Soviet delegation and there taken over by the Hungarians and brought to Budapest amid warm expressions of gratitude and appreciation. The flags were a sort of return for the gift of the person of M. Rakosi which Hungary had made shortly before, and Hungary thus got much the better of the exchange, for three of four years later Rakosi was back as her near-Dictator; thus she had both the flags and the politicians. There even seems reason to believe that, while these negotiations were going on, Teleki entrusted an unofficial emissary with the task of sounding Moscow whether it would help, and if so, in what way, if the negotiations between Germany and Yugoslavia broke down and Germany asked Hungary for passage to attack Yugoslavia and Hungary refused.®

Even the previous year’s plans for forming an émigré anti-German Government abroad if things went wrong were revived. This time the initiative came from O’Malley, who called on the Regent on 26th January and drew his attention to the serious position which might easily arise now * In a letter written to his son, in February, Teleki coupled Bardossy with Keresztes-Fischer and Banffy as the only Ministers whom he could trust. * Personal. Only unofficial persons were approached. In the previous autumn, Teleki had sent G. Ottlik to Salazar on the same mission and with the same result. * I have the story from K. Ratz, who has figured in these pages as an extremist hovering between Right and Left, and who, shortly before his death in 1952, definitely assured me that he had been sent on the mission described. Other Hungarians have cast doubts on the story, but Ratz was certainly in Moscow, nominally in connection with the economic negotiations, and it was indubitably Teleki’s habit to use unofficial agents in this way. The truth is probably that Ratz (who, socially, belonged to the inner ring) asked to be allowed to go to Moscow and try to mediate through certain friends whom he had there, and Teleki told him that he might try his hand, unofficially.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 469 that German troops were streaming through Hungary. The Regent replied that he would never agree to any demand inconsistent with Hungarian sovereignty, and expressed himself willing, if any such demands were made, first to appoint a legal Government, which would function in exile, and then to abdicate. Any pro-German Government which thereafter set itself up in Hungary would then be illegal. The plan then discussed was that in such a situation Count Bethlen should come to England and Eckhardt to the U.S.A. According to another version, Barcza would have been Minister President. O’ Malley reported this to London and said that if the plan came off, and

Bethlen went to England, O’Malley should accompany him as Minister. The Foreign Office “explicitly approved this’ on 10th February.

Almost at the same time, Barcza, on his own responsibility, asked Cadogan what H.M. Government’s attitude would be if Horthy and his Government flew to England. Cadogan replied that H.M. Government “would be honoured and pleased, and would recognise them as a Government.’”?

Teleki now called Baranyai, and asked him whether the plans for transferring a fund to America? were ready. The matter, he said, was urgent; there must be something simple, sure and quick. As the maze of Panama legislation

had not yet been threaded, Baranyai could do nothing else than send over the money in cash. He did so, by the hand of Baron Antal Radvanszky, and the money was duly lodged with the Hungarian Legation in Washington.

The Minister then placed it in a safe-deposit, the keys to which Horthy, Teleki or Baranyai were entitled to use.®

Eckhardt also duly started on what proved to be a long journey* to America, being sped on his way by drastic objurgations from the Arrow Cross Deputies, who were well aware of the purpose of his journey.® The preparations, however, remained incomplete, for the Hungarians wanted an

explicit assurance from H.M. Government that they would regard the Government formed in exile as the legal Government of Hungary, and would continue to do so, whatever happened thereafter, in the future. This assurance they had not received in February or March.° As these plans show, the British, in spite of Benes’ success, had not yet abandoned all trace of friendliness towards Hungary. On 9th January, when Barcza paid his ceremonial introductory call on Mr. Eden, the new British Foreign Secretary was still friendly enough and still said that ““England was fighting to restore a peace just to all parties.”"’ On 7th February he was still “friendly,” and recognised Teleki’s goodwill and Hungary’s difficult position. At the same time, Hungary now had to receive repeated solemn warnings. ‘Friendly’? as Mr. Eden had been on 7th February, he had also, as Barcza repeated, been “‘completely sincere.”” Hungary’s adhesion to the Tripartite Pact, her action in allowing the transit of German troops and the tone of her

Press and wireless were things which he could not ignore. And while 1 Personal, Barcza to C. A. M. 2 See above, p. 377. 8 L. Baranyai to C. A. M. 4 H.M. Government refused to grant him a transit visa across the U.K. and he was held up

in Egypt for many weeks.

6 Asa Deputy, Eckhardt had to ask leave of Parliament before going abroad, 6 Sz. I. MS. 7 Barcza MS.

470 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH repeating that he agreed with Mr. Churchill that he had not been happy about the way Hungary was treated in 1919, and that “‘there could be no question of a new Trianon, because England wished for a peace which should be durable and therefore as just as was humanly possible; that was one of her war aims,’ yet he said that England had allies whose rightful interests it was her

duty to protect.1. On the 12th Barcza was told in the Foreign Office that Britain had broken off diplomatic relations with Roumania, which it regarded as an enemy-occupied country, and reserved its right to bomb, as it would if necessary bomb enemy troops wherever found.’ Bardossy continued to argue that Hungary was letting the troops through on Roumania’s request, and not for military purposes, but Cadogan now said that that was only a verbal pretext and Hungary had in fact done Germany

a service by allowing the transit. On this and several other occasions Hungary was given very clear warnings that Britain reserved the right to bomb and to apply all economic sanctions against States on whose territory she found German troops; and the warning was repeated, given well in advance, so that Hungary should know where she stood—that if she facilitated or, still worse, joined in an attack on a country allied or in friendly relations with Great Britain, this might be regarded as a casus belli.®

As late as 14th March Teleki wrote Barcza a private letter, which was sent by the British courier, to convey a message to Mr. Eden that Hungary’s protestations of devotion to the Axis were not to be taken seriously. Hungary had in reality refused a long series of demands by Germany for substantial help (a list of these was enclosed), and so long as he remained at the head of

the Government would give her no active military support. To this Eden still replied that he did not doubt Teleki’s (or Barcza’s) good faith, but he was doubtful whether Teleki would be able to withstand the growing German

pressure; and he repeated most emphatically that Hungary would have to expect the gravest consequences if she allowed German troops to pass through

her territory against a country allied with Great Britain; still more if she joined in the attack.* And matters had now reached a stage when the Hungarians—hopelessly committed as they were to allowing the transit of troops—could only pray that none of the countries towards which those troops were streaming would in fact enable Great Britain to treat her as an ally, or even as a friend. This meant in practice that they could only hope most fervently that Germany’s

negotiations with Yugoslavia—the last unforged link in the chain after Bulgaria had come into line on 3rd February—should succeed. The speeches exchanged when the Yugoslav delegates came to Budapest on 27th February to exchange ratifications of the Pact® put this point with the utmost frankness. Bardossy said that Hungaro-Yugoslav friendship would help in the creation

of the New European Order, “thus contributing to the policy of our great friends, Italy and Germany,” while the Yugoslav replied: “May our peaceful endeavours, in co-operation with our great neighbours, Italy and Germany, bear their fruits for Hungary and Yugoslavia, and for all this part of Europe.” * Sz. I. MS. 2 Id. 3 Id. * Barcza MS. In the same letter Teleki suggested that Barcza should remain in England as a private person if diplomatic relations were broken off.

. On 3rd February Parliament had, by previous inter-party arrangement, simultaneously

ratified the Pact and the Tripartite Pact, without debate,

SLIPPERY SLOPE 471 Both speakers insisted that the purpose of the Treaty was ‘“‘to keep South-

Eastern Europe out of the war.” It is true that, in the more informal conversations which followed dinner, suggestions were made that if Germany

put the screw on too hard and Yugoslavia resisted, the Hungarian Army should fall back into the Bacska and fight with the Yugoslav Army against Germany’; but this was obviously an ebullience not to be taken too seriously.

The Hungarians’ hope of using a friendly Yugoslavia outside the Axis to help her withstand German pressure was stronger than ever, but no serious and sober Hungarian dreamed of moving outside the Axis orbit until the balance in Europe had changed radically. Meanwhile, the situation contained one complicating factor. Earnestly as the Hungarians wanted agreement to be reached between Yugoslavia and Germany, they did not want that agreement to be at their own expense; of which, as the negotiations dragged on, and the Yugoslavs raised their price higher and higher, there seemed to be a serious possibility. On 16th March Bardossy asked Erdmannsdorff to call on him and said that rumours were circulating that Yugoslavia had been granted, or at least had asked for, a guarantee by Germany of her territorial integrity, in return for her adhesion to the Tripartite Pact. He could hardly believe the rumours, since Hungary had always maintained her claims; she had said as much “‘in tactful fashion”’

at Belgrade and the Yugoslavs had ‘“‘tacitly agreed.’’ But in view of the deplorable effect which the guarantee would produce, he asked Erdmannsdorff to make enquiries and to request the German Government to think

twice before giving it. A similar message was sent to Berlin; in each, Bardossy emphasised that the Hungaro-Yugoslav Pact had been concluded at the Fiihrer’s express wish. He also said that correspondence had been going on about the visit of courtesy which he would ordinarily have been paying to Berlin; but he could not go there if Germany guaranteed Yugoslavia’s frontiers.’

This elicited an urgent message from Ribbentrop inviting Bardossy to come to Munich on the 21st; this being accompanied by a promise in advance

that Germany would do nothing contrary to Hungary’s interests; on the contrary, she might advance them. Ribbentrop begged Hungary not to press him to “‘place on record in some form Hungary’s revisionist claims,” as Sztédjay had asked: this would add to the Yugoslav Government’s difficulties. But he promised that he and the Italians would say only that they would themselves “‘respect”” Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity, not guarantee it.

When Bardossy arrived in Munich,® this promise was confirmed. Ribbentrop told Bardossy that Yugoslavia had now agreed to adhere to the Tripartite Pact and would be doing so in a few days, and that “in order to make this step easier for the Yugoslav Government, the German Government would issue a declaration that for its own part it would respect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.”’ Ribbentrop asked the Hungarian Government to acquiesce in this declaration, “‘which in no way prejudiced or hindered the

later realisation of the Hungarian claims.’ Bardossy replied “‘that if the declaration could not be altered, he asked the German Government to inform

2 Sz. 1. MS. On oo 1 Yukié to C. A. M.

3 There is a full account of this interview in the Sz. I. MS.; shorter ones in Lajos and “Bela.” It is also described by M. Ullein-Reviczky, who was present (op. cit., pp. 82 ff.).

472 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH the Yugoslav Government that Hungary could not renounce the satisfaction of her claims by peaceful means, and was prepared to collaborate for the realisation thereof at the appropriate time.”” Ata later stage in the conversation Ribbentrop repeated that ““Hungary’s revisionist claims are in good hands with Germany.”’ In other respects the visit, which was represented as

a normal one of courtesy, brought little of political importance.’ Hitler asked Bardossy, in the common interest, to improve his country’s relations with Roumania, to which Bardossy replied that he would gladly do so, but could not, so long as Roumania refused to regard the Vienna Award as final? (following this up by himself asking for revision in favour of Hungary); Hitler assured him that he had liked and trusted Carol and the Roumanians no more than any one else did, but he had had no alternative, the previous August, in view of Russia’s conduct. For the rest both Hitler and Ribbentrop took the utmost pains to impress Bardossy by the usual mixture of cajolery and intimidation. They lectured him at very great length on Germany’s invincibility, telling him again and again that “‘the war was really already won.” They told him that they would never forget the service done to them by Hungary in allowing their troops transit to Roumania, and at the official lunch Ribbentrop made an exceptionally warm speech, repeatedly describing

Hungary as Germany’s “ally... He probably did this with the best of intentions and may reasonably have been surprised when Bardossy in his reply used the word once only, and that in the phrase “ally of the Great War.’’?

It was on the same day that Bardossy was in Munich that a Crown Council in Belgrade was debating the text of the documents to be signed by

Yugoslavia on adhering to the Tripartite Pact; a Ministerial Council considered them on the day after. It is tempting to think that some message from Germany that the guarantee could not, after all, be given in formal terms, owing to Hungary’s objections, was among the facts which made the Pact unacceptable to some of the Yugoslav Ministers, but if this consideration was present at all, it cannot have been important, since none of the documents makes any reference to it. On the contrary, the Ministers in favour of the Pact were the Croats and the Slovene; it was the three Serbs who objected. And for a moment, everything went as the Hungarians hoped. Following Hitler’s ultimatum of the 22nd that Yugoslavia must sign on the 24th or she would not get another chance, Cvetkovi¢ hurriedly filled the gaps in his Ministry, and he and Cincar Markovié went to Vienna and signed the Pact on the 25th. As is known, the Yugoslavs received a public assurance from

both Axis Governments that they would not during this war direct any 1 I wrote “political”? because the record contains much of historical importance, particularly in the very full account given by Hitler of his actions at the time of the Second Vienna Award. He also confided to Bardossy a good deal about M. Molotov’s behaviour in Berlin; this, however, adds little to the documentary version in Nazi-Soviet Relations, except that Hitler after it asked the Bulgarians whether they wanted Russian troops, and they answered that “‘there was nothing they wanted less.”

* There had just been renewed trouble between the two countries. On 23rd February the Roumanian Government announced that the time-limit for option under the Vienna Award expired on 28th February, by which date persons opting for Hungarian citizenship must leave Roumania. The Hungarian Government declared officially that this was a purely unilateral action which Roumania had no right to take, and advised persons affected by it to ignore it. On 28th February it was announced that a new time-limit had been agreed. * Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., pp. 83-4. It was Ghyczy and Bartheldy who wrote out Bardossy’s sxeech for him, showing much indignation at Germany’s having dared to speak of Hungary as her “ally.” This indignation seems to the writer surprising, considering how regularly Hungary

had made the advances to Germany.

SLIPPERY SLOPE 473 demand to Yugoslavia to permit the march or transport of troops through Yugoslav territory, and from each of them a separate assurance that it would “respect at all times [but they did not guarantee] the sovereignty and territorial

integrity of Yugoslavia,’ while Hitler also gave the Yugoslavs a written assurance that they should have Salonica at the end of the war, and it was agreed that Yugoslavia need not explicitly permit the transport of war material and of wounded, since international law already allowed her to grant Germany those facilities. All seemed well, and the Hungarian Press, while alert to correct any mistaken suggestion that the Axis Powers had guaranteed Yugoslavia’s frontiers, or were in any way giving her preference over Hungary, welcomed the agreement, for the rest, in jubilant tones. “It can now truly be said,” wrote the Pester Lloyd, that peace in the South-East European Raum is assured... . After the imminent liquidation of the regrettable Greek episode, peace in this part of Europe seems 100 per cent. assured for as long as can be seen.’”! It was the last day for many years that the Hungarian Press could write of any event with such unalloyed satisfaction, for that night the Yugoslav Government was overthrown and all the dangers which the Hungarians had feared rose up to confront them. 1 Pester Lloyd, 26th March 1941. The official instructions of the Press Bureau are given by Szig. Biz., p. 319.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SUICIDE E need not retell here the full story of Hitler’s most swift and violent

\ \ | reaction to the news of the Simovic¢ putsch. Having at once decided

‘to destroy Yugoslavia, militarily and as a national unit” by a sudden

operation launched without diplomatic preliminaries of any sort, he immediately issued orders for a new plan of operations, that is, an enlarged Maritsa, which was to include an attack in the general directions of Zagreb, Serajevo and Belgrade, to be initiated on 11th April by “an army in Styria and West Hungary.” Military support was to be asked of Italy, Hungary and, in certain respects, Bulgaria. When, on the afternoon of the 27th, he communicated this general plan to his advisers, who were to work out the details by the same evening, he told them that the Hungarian and Bulgarian Ministers had already been notified. The war should be popular with the three countries mentioned, since they were to receive rewards, Hungary’s being “the Banat”

[sic]. But their help was essential, since without it “operations could not develop with the swiftness which might be necessary under the circumstances.”

Therefore, as he wrote next day to Mussolini, he had explained to their representatives “the negative, as well as the positive effects which would arise for them in this case’’—a phrase which explains itself. In the case of Hungary, it was Sztojay whom Hitler had, at noon on the 27th, called to him. Sztdjay afterwards testified’ that Hitler had told him that “‘he knew that Hungary was not satisfied with the revision which she had received hitherto, and also that Hungary had claims on Yugoslavia. If Yugo-

slavia took up an anti-German attitude, he would descend on her like lightning and annihilate her.” He asked Sztojay to convey the following ‘“‘confidential message’ to the Regent?:

“It seemed to him that Hungary’s hour to get revision against Yugoslavia had struck, if he were forced to proceed against Yugoslavia. Hitler sent word to the Regent that he recognised in full measure Hungary’s revisionist claims up to the line fixed by the Regent himself. He mentioned the Bacska and the Banat by name (marschieren Sie ins Banat). But he knew that the Regent’s heart also drew him towards the Adriatic

and that Hungary needed a free maritime harbour. Fiume belonged, indeed, to the Italians, but Hitler promised to use all his influence in this respect. He had only one wish: that the Croats should receive autonomy. He, that is Germany, had no political or territorial demands except that he wanted to reannexe [the Maribor district]. He did not want an outlet on the Adriatic. This would once again split Germany’s operations, etc. 1 In his evidence at his trial.

* The text of this message is given in the Sz. I. MS. and as it is obviously the authentic version, I translate it verbatim. This shows that when the German Directives, etc., speak of ‘‘the Banat” as the area being offered to Hungary, they are using the word loosely for the whole Voivodina. The offer of Croatia is worth noting; Hitler had gone back with a vengeance on Ribbentrop’s promise to recognise Italy’s interests and wishes as paramount in Yugoslavia if that country had to be broken up. For the stipulation that the Croats should receive autonomy, cf. the Directive of 29th March, which says that “‘the internal crisis in Yugoslavia will be aggravated by political guarantees promised to the Croats.”

SUICIDE 475 The North Sea and the Baltic were enough for him. Naturally he also recognised Bulgaria’s claims to Macedonia.” He was not anxious to take up arms against Yugoslavia, whose policy he

thought lunatic. He left it to the Regent to decide—or wished to propose that the Regent should consider—whether he would take appropriate military

steps. “The German High Command would probably be getting in touch with the Hungarian High Command within twenty-four hours.” According to himself, Sztdjay said that Hungary had a Treaty of Friendship with Yugoslavia, but also had revisionist claims which she had never renounced. He then raised an aeroplane off Ribbentrop and flew down to Budapest, where he arrived at 5.10 p.m. The events had caught Hungary completely unprepared. She had had no intimation of what was brewing in Belgrade; her first warning that things might go wrong had actually come from Cvetkovi¢ himself, when he and Cincar Markovic passed through Budapest on their way back from Vienna? on the 26th. Teleki had even left Budapest that evening and spent most of the 27th in Szatmar Németi attending an unimportant political meeting. Recalled urgently, he hurried back. Sztdjay reported first to Bardossy, then to Teleki; then the three men went together to the Regent. As so often, Horthy’s first thoughts were impetuous. Teleki said afterwards to Count Maurice Esterhazy, bitterly: ““The Regent has told me thirtyfour times that he would never make war for foreign interests, and now he has changed his mind.’’? He was “‘fire and flames”’ for the idea and wanted to write straight off to Hitler pledging his support.° Teleki and Bardossy—who on Teleki’s testimony, gave him “most loyal support’’*—persuaded him at least to sleep on it, but when, next day, the argument was renewed, Horthy was “‘even more enthusiastic,’’ and when Teleki said: ‘‘We cannot stab in the back those people to whom we have sworn friendship,’’ Horthy retorted, ““Yes, but the people to whom we swore friendship are no longer there.”® At last, however, the other two “got him to see that the world would regard Hungary’s honour as lost if she did as Hitler asked,’’® and accordingly it was decided, as Teleki put it, “to answer with a big gesture, but to put the brake on militarily by appealing to the Russian and Roumanian danger.’’’ The letter was eventually drafted in the following form®:

“Your Excellency,

“T thank you most warmly for the highly important message transmitted by you through Minister Sztdjay. I feel myself most deeply obliged 1 When the two Yugoslavs passed through, the Sous-chef de Protocole, a young man named Forster, was sent to the station to meet them. He asked: “‘What time do you arrive in Belgrade, M. le Ministre Président?”’ Cvetkovié answered: “‘I arrive at such and such an hour, but whether I shall still be Minister

President, I don’t know.”’ }

Forster hurried back and reported to Bardossy, who was ‘‘very astonished.” He said that Bakach-Bessenyey had reported nothing, he knew nothing (Ullein-Reviczky to C. A. M.). 2 Rassay at the trial of Bardossy. 3 Teleki to Apor in the letter quoted below.

6 Teleki to Apor.

5 Worthy to C. A. M. (personal).

7 From some MS. jottings by Teleki placed at C. A. M.’s disposal by Geza Teleki.

8 Text in Sz. I. MS. The text is also reproduced (translated into Magyar and with one or two misprints) by Nagy, op. cit., pp. 61-2. Nagy, however, while dating the letter correctly, writes erroneously that it was taken to Hitler by Bartha on 4th April,

476 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH to Germany. The Hungarian nation has always in the past stood at the side of the German Reich, and today, too, its firm resolve—knowing our community of destiny—is to follow this political line and stand firm by the side of the German Reich in unchanged loyalty, to the measure of our forces.

‘*Those territorial claims to which Your Excellency was pleased to allude in your message stand, and await fulfilment. ‘““My Government never made any secret of these claims when making

the rapprochement with Yugoslavia recommended by Your Excellency and kept open the possibility of realising them in Part 2 of the Treaty of Friendship. ‘““Your Excellency was kind enough to suggest to Minister Sztdjay that the High Command of the Army should get into touch with the Hungarian

military command. I look forward to this contact with sincere satisfaction. ‘““Observations of the events which have taken place in the last days in

Yugoslavia shows that Yugoslavia could hardly have strayed into this step without a certain influence from Soviet Russia. The situation thus created reveals the outlines of the Russian aims which serve the cause of the common Slav aspirations. Furthermore, the steadily hostile feelings of the Head of the Roumanian State must be taken into consideration. With respectful regards—”’

The letter was given to Sztdjay, who, since he handed it to Hitler the same evening,’ must have started back with it about noon.

That afternoon a Ministerial Council was held.? Bardossy reported on his visit to Munich, and Sztdjay’s message, and presumably the answer, must

also have been discussed. The Council seems to have thought that Yugoslavia might yet give in and the crisis pass over; and it is to be remarked that both Hitler’s words to Sztojay and the letter to Horthy had (contrary to what he was saying in his own circle) allowed for that possibility. The military, however, pressed that some preparation must be made for the eventuality of Germany’s attacking Yugoslavia, so that conditional agreement was, apparently, reached that Hungary would move if, but only if, one or more of the following conditions (which were not cumulative, but alternative) were fulfilled:

(1) If Yugoslavia disintegrated as a State, i.e. if the Croats proclaimed their independence.

(2) If the security of the Magyar minority in the Voivodina was endangered by the Serb military action. (3) Ifa “‘vacuum’’ was created in the Voivodina in consequence of the German military action. In such case, Hungary was to employ the minimum of forces which would suffice to fill the vacuum, viz. not more than three to four divisions. After the Council, Teleki sent a messenger down to Rome by special plane to ask Mussolini for help.

So far, Teleki was relatively satisfied with the results which he had achieved. He wrote to his friend, Apor, in Rome, that he had managed “‘to cut out the most dangerous passages’ of the Regent’s letter; and indeed it

* $z, 1, MS, 2 Barczy.

, SUICIDE 477 would be possible to read the letter far rather as an apology for inaction than as a promise of action. But it did not contain an explicit refusal to act, and ambiguity, to which Teleki was all too prone to trust, was no safe refuge at such a crisis. Later, both Werth and Bardossy were to affirm their belief (no doubt acquired in absolute good faith) that even Hungary’s active partici-

pation, not to speak of her passive participation by consent to allowing Germany facilities, had been ‘‘definitely and irrevocably fixed”’ on the 28th.! Such was certainly the opinion of Sztdéjay, who, being heart and soul in favour

of participation, was no safe postman to carry a message susceptible of various interpretations. His own reports? of the scene in Berlin when he handed over the letter prove that he represented it as a joyful and grateful acceptance of Hitler’s offer, and afterwards many officers (“‘Frick, Rosenberg, Rust and many senior generals’’) expressed the most cordial delight that ‘“‘at

last Hungaro-German friendship is fully restored, despite everything.”’ Hitler asked him to convey to the Regent “‘his sincere joy that he had answered his [Hitler’s] message in so positive a fashion” (according to another version

of the words, “‘thanked him for having adopted the idea’’). There had been

differences of opinion in the past, but all that was over now, and he was convinced that Hungary was advancing towards “‘a great and fair future.” Indeed, the letter contained one sentence which was sheer dynamite: the consent to staff talks, which the Germans naturally interpreted as proof that Hungary was prepared to co-operate militarily. The Germans had already, on the 28th, before Sztdjay’s arrival with the

letter, drawn up a preliminary plan providing for a concentric attack on Yugoslavia from three sides. One force was to attack from Bulgaria; one ‘will be deployed around Graz and in certain circumstances also in southwest Hungary in order to penetrate later into Yugoslavia in the direction of Belgrade and westward” (whether part of this force would need to pass through Hungary depended on the arrangements to be made by the OKW); while for the third force there would be “‘probably an Hungarian attack group reinforced by German forces which will concentrate in the general direction towards Belgrade on both sides of the Danube.” It had already been decided on the 27th that the German Air Force was

“to make use, if possible, of the Hungarian ground installations” for its attack on Belgrade.? The attack was to begin on the 12th April. When, then, Horthy’s letter arrived, Paulus was ordered to go, first to Vienna, then to Budapest, where he was to reach an understanding with the

Hungarian staff ‘“‘on the deployment of German troops on Hungarian territory and the participation of Hungarian troops in the attack on Yugoslavia.”’ He left for Vienna on the 28th. Colonel Kinzel, head of the Eastern Department of the German General Staff, seems to have gone direct to Hungary with a letter to Werth stating Germany’s requirements.* The 29th and 30th were days of relative inactivity in Hungary. The Press was still playing down the crisis and expressing the hope and expectation that

“reason would prevail’? in Belgrade. The Croat question was hardly 1 See the Sz. I. MS., summarising documents which it does not quote in full. 2 He sent two, one on the evening of the 28th and another on the 29th. Both are reproduced

in the Sz. I. MS. 1, 275 (B.S. 1746) 4 Oo Rae Taek Vi 292. UjszAszy writes that Kinzel asked for five corps and Werth replied by offering three—one of his usual ex post facto reconstructions based on the fact that Werth proposed to mobilise five corps and the Hungarian Ministerial Council beat him down to the smaller figure. But there seems no reason to reject Ujszaszy’s story of Kinzel’s mission.

478 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH mentioned.! Bardossy telegraphed to Bessenyey to find some means of impressing on the Yugoslav Government, very discreetly but very strongly, that Germany was certain to require absolute guarantees that Yugoslavia would not intervene in the Greek campaign and to draw the final consequences if these were not forthcoming. But the news grew more ominous every hour. There were anti-German demonstrations in Belgrade, evoking a protest from the German Minister there. Barcza telegraphed that, if Germany attacked,

| Yugoslavia would ally herself with England. From Sofia and Ankara came reports of probable Turkish intervention. Bulgaria did not propose to march against Yugoslavia, but had mobilised her entire army and was massing it on the Turkish frontier. Finally, the messenger whom Teleki had sent to Rome brought back Mussolini’s answer. It was simply ‘‘a verbal negative.”’ Another singularly alarming piece of news came in on the 29th. We have mentioned that round this period the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and kindred

bodies in Germany were busy hatching plans for the reorganisation of Eastern Europe under German domination. The Volksdeutsch leaders of the areas concerned were, of course, initiated into these plans and indeed often their main authors. One of the most ambitious of them centred on the old ““Schwabische Turkei’’—that area in the south of Historic Hungary which after the expulsion of the Turks had been recolonised largely with Germans and still contained big German populations. Ever since Trianon the Yugoslav, and also the Roumanian, Governments had deliberately fostered the national consciousness of the German minorities assigned to them in these areas, in order to wean them from their former attachment to Hungary and weaken the pull of Hungarian irredentism. In this they had been completely successful, and by 1940 the large majority of the Yugoslav Swabians had exchanged their former Hungarian patriotism for a flamboyant contempt and

hatred of the Magyar people and the Hungarian State. But this had not been coupled by any attachment to Yugoslavia. The Swabians were as ready as ever to see Yugoslavia break up; but they proposed that the Voivodina, from Eszek and Pécs to Temesvar and Orsova, with Hunedoara and its ironworks in Transylvania and perhaps even Tolna in Hungary, should, under the name of “Prinz Eugen Gau,”’ be constituted as an outlying but integral part of Germany. Things had got so far that a statistical office already existed in Ujvidék containing all details of the agricultural and other supplies which this Land was going to furnish to Germany, with other relevant information; and under the helpless eyes of the Yugoslav authorities, practically the entire adult and near-adult Swabian population was strutting about in the near-SS. uniforms of para-military formations, openly awaiting the signal to take over. In March 1941] the leaders of the Magyar minority in Ujvidék, who seem to have been better aware than the Hungarian Government of the dangerous situation which was developing between Yugoslavia and the Reich, sent one of their number, M. Ivan Nagy, to Budapest to inform Teleki of the position and to ask him what could be done to safeguard the interests of the Magyars.”

Nagy saw Teleki on the 22nd. Teleki had presumably just heard from Bessenyey that Yugoslavia had agreed to sign the Pact; he told Nagy that there 1 Szig. Biz., p. 323, writes that the censorship “tried to bring out the Croats’ discontent.” I can only say that, reading the Press at the time, I got the opposite impression, being struck by the paucity of the references to Croatia during the first days after the coup (it is true that the Croats themselves had not yet decided on their line). Szig. Biz. itself quotes (p. 325) instructions to the Press not to write over-sensationally. 2 The following personal, Nagy to C. A. M.

SUICIDE 479 was no danger whatever that Germany would either make war on Yugoslavia

or use pressure to dismember her. When, however, Nagy returned to the Bacska on the 26th, he found the German formations in a state of alert, expecting an order for action to come within the next few hours, while some of the leaders had mysteriously disappeared. He learnt that orders had gone out to crush immediately any attempt by the local Magyars to take action or even to demonstrate in favour of the return of the Voivodina to Hungary.

The next day came the Simovic putsch. Unable to recross the Bacska frontier, which was now closed, Nagy made his way to Zagreb, where he succeeded in getting into touch with Altgayer, the “Volksgruppenfiihrer’’ of the Germans of Croatia. From him he heard, in strongly expressed terms, that the Fiihrer and the German people had no need of Hungary, whose aspirations in the Voivodina were “‘unacceptable” to Germany. The German soldiers were not going to die for Hungary’s sake. Even at the cost of blood, the Germans of the Voivodina were going to create the Prinz Eugen Gau. Nagy reported to Bartok, who by secret messenger sent Ghyczy an account of the German plans, with a message that: “‘Nagy fears that if the German Army advanced and we remained passive, the German Army would go into

the Bacska and create under our noses the Banat State of which we have heard so much.... It would therefore be well for us to begin our military action parallel with the Germans to avoid being confronted with a fait accompli.”! The message reached Budapest on the 29th.

It is true that, as Hitler’s messages show, Altgayer was mistaken in believing that the Prinz Eugen Land was going to be created under all

circumstances. The idea would be dropped if Hungary moved. But precisely this fact made the message the more effective, for there was absolutely no reason to doubt that if Hungary failed to move, she would find this new German ‘‘Gau’’ on her southern frontier—in a region, moreover, which contained as many Magyars as Germans.” It would be difficult to

imagine a communication the effect of which would be more powerful precisely on Teleki, with his special phobia about the encirclement of Hungary by Germany.°

And on that particular day his mind was especially ill-prepared to appreciate calmly disquietening news; for his wife was lying ill in a sanatorium, and the specialist told him that day that the illness was incurable

and that she had only a few days to live.* /

If Teleki had ever considered the possibility of Hungary’s standing aside altogether if Germany attacked Yugoslavia, he discarded any such thought

now. But he still hoped to obtain what was for him the most important point of all, the understanding of the West for Hungary’s action. He now

called to him two of his most trusted helpers, M. Kovrig and M. Ronai, the head of the State Institute of Statistics. Kovrig was instructed to draw up a memorandum which was to begin by setting out in detail Hitler’s plans for establishing the Prinz Eugen Gau, together with proposals, details of which Teleki also gave Kovrig, for compensating Roumania in the Ukraine for the 2 whe Macyars outnumbered the Germans substantially in the Bacska although not in the ae We have already mentioned Teleki’s nightmare of Hungary’s being gripped in a German pincers, one claw extending through Slovakia-Ruthenia, the other through the Voivodina. On the day that Nagy’s message reached Budapest, Teleki told his son, Géza, that “‘he had cut the one claw, in Ruthenia, and now he must cut the other, in the Délvidék”’ (Géza Teleki to C. A. M.). 4 Actually, Countess T eleki survived her husband by a full year.

480 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH sacrifices in the West which the project would impose on her. The opportunity was taken to pass on to the recipients of the memorandum the fairly copious information in Teleki’s possession of Hitler’s plans for attacking Russia.! —The memorandum was to end by stating that if Germany attacked Yugoslavia, it would be impossible for Hungary to remain inactive, in view

of these probable eventualities. A Hungarian Government which by its passivity contributed to the loss of historical Hungarian territories to the new South-East German State would become the object of general contempt

to the nation, which would eject it in favour of a regime of the extreme Right, which might hope to gain back these territories by yielding completely to all Germany’s demands. Should the attack come, Hungary would therefore have no choice but to occupy the Bacska and the Baranya Triangle, and by doing so, she would actually be serving the interests of Europe by frustrating Hitler’s plans and preventing the consolidation of German power on the Lower Danube. Ronai was to get together the necessary maps and statistics to support the argument. The material was to be completed by 2nd April. It was then

to be sent by special courier (not through the regular Foreign Ministry channels) to London and Washington (via Lisbon) and used as the basis for attempts to be made by Hungary’s representatives in those capitals to win approval for her proposed action.’ The recorded moves made by Bardossy on these two days exactly followed

the line which, as the above paragraphs show, Teleki had adopted (that, when on trial for his life and coarsely abused by the “‘People’s Judge’’ for having betrayed Teleki’s policy, he suffered the accusation in silence rather than reveal that the policy which he was following was Teleki’s own, was

typical of his character). On the 29th, obviously in the hope of winning Left-wing support for this, he sent for the Liberal leader, Rassay, and told him that Hungary would be forced to move because, if she did not, Germany would occupy the country and would put in “‘a Government of the sweepings.”’ ‘Do you mean Imrédy?” asked Rassay; Bardossy answered: ““Why mention names?’’* The Government was being subjected to intolerable pressure by the military, ““who said the Army had now been mobilised three times without blood-letting and if a fourth mobilisation was not followed by military action

the morale of the Army would be destroyed.” Finally, Hungary dared not offend Germany because there was every indication that Roumania was going to make a sudden volte-face and throw herself into Russia’s arms, when she would recover Transylvania unless Germany supported Hungary. 1 According to M. Kovrig, to whom I owe this information, Teleki had been receiving

‘‘almost daily reports’’ on this from the Hungarian General Staff. * Both men were pledged to the strictest secrecy. In the event, nothing ever came of this plan. Kovrig completed his memorandum late on the evening of 2nd April and handed it in to Teleki’s office, but Teleki had already retired. His envelope was handed back to him, unopened, the next day. Ronai, to preserve complete secrecy, had worked out the statistics and drawn the maps single-handed, and had never completed his task. 3 T have found no evidence from the German side of any such threat, but Bardossy maintained

the same thesis at length in his final speech. He argued that refusal either to let the German troops through or to co-operate actively would have entailed the same consequences. Probably the country would not have accepted such an order: the Government would have been swept away and a Right Radical one put in its place. Alternatively, there would have been a German occupation. Resistance could in any case have been hardly more than symbolic and would have entailed consequences exceeding any possible advantage.

It is also fair to say that there is no evidence that Germany was then in touch with any

Hungarian Right-wing politicians, Imrédy or any other. 4 Rassay’s evidence, Bardossy trial, p. 43.

SUICIDE 481 On the 30th Bardossy telegraphed to London and Washington a message which in fact repeated, very exactly, the conclusions of the secret memorandum which Teleki’s helpers were preparing. “Our attitude towards Yugoslavia,”’ he said, ‘“‘depends in the first instance

on the behaviour of the present Yugoslav Government. Hitherto the Hungarian Government has been guided by the attempt to preserve peace and quiet, in collaboration with the Belgrade Government. We are trying to keep war at a distance from this part of Europe, or at least from Hungary’s frontiers, and to create a relationship between the two countries which makes

possible the peaceful satisfaction of our rightful territorial claims.” The volte-face in Yugoslavia made it seem likely that the new regime would oppose these objectives and “‘provoke an action by the Axis which

would bring war near our frontiers.” “Such a development cannot, of course, be indifferent to us. No one can ask of us, if the Yugoslav Kingdom becomes involved in war with the Axis, that the Hungarian Government should quietly look on while a German, or still worse, a Roumanian army occupies and makes itself at home in Magyar-inhabited territory unrightfully taken from Hungary in 1918. It would be quite impossible for the Hungarian Government and the whole of Hungarian public opinion not to protest and safeguard those Magyars living there. It is the less possible to expect this of us because we have always maintained our rightful claims to former Hungarian territory vis-a-vis the Yugoslav Government and created a vehicle for settling precisely those claims in Paragraph 2 of our Treaty of December last. The new Belgrade regime has by the consequences of a policy contrary to earlier intentions torn up this agreement also, so that in the given situation it cannot be binding on us, either.’’* Bardossy added that it was easily possible that Yugoslavia might dis-

integrate, when again it would be Hungary’s duty to protect the areas concerned.

Meanwhile, on the morning of the 30th Paulus himself had arrived in Budapest, with disastrous results for Teleki. We shall never know what instructions, if any, from Horthy or another, had guided the deliberations of

the Hungarian General Staff, but Werth? and Laszlé had a plan all ready, , which was based on the unquestioned assumption that Hungary was going

to take part in the attack. Besides the Frontier Guards of the north, five corps were to be mobilised. Of these, two were to be kept in reserve against a possible Serb counterattack, while the J and V Corps and the Mobile Corps

were to deliver a main attack against Szabadka, with a subsidiary attack starting from Szeged, down the left bank of the Tisza. The Germans altered this to the minor extent that Hungarian troops were not to move east of the Tisza, nor to enter the Banat; a German column was to operate in that area.° This having been settled, ‘‘the conferences,’ as Paulus said, “went very smoothly and ended very quickly, and the desired result was achieved. This result was put down in map form.’* It must have been telephoned to Berlin, for Brauchitsch’s revised Operational Order (No. 25)? incorporating it was 1

2 Cal Tombor gave evidence when the indictment against Werth was being drawn up in 1945

that Werth had maintained to the last that he had acted completely “correctly” in the whole business (Kossuth Népe, 13th July 1945). When he reported to the Supreme Defence Council on the Ist Werth said that he had made his arrangements “‘on the basis of the authorisation received by me” (a kapott felhatalmazas alapjan). 3 Bartha to C. A. M. This was done at Antonescu’s request (Hillgruber, op. cit., p. 124).

4 Paulus’ evidence, Nur. Trial, loc. cit. 6 Nazi Consp. and Agg., VII, 50 (R. 95). 21

482 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH issued the same day. As in the original proposals, the German force on the West (Second Army) was to debouch from the Klagenfurt-Graz area and the environs of Nagykanizsa. In the east, no change was made in the original arrangement: Roumania was not being asked to participate,’ while the details of Bulgaria’s action were to be settled later. The Hungarian troops were to take the centre.2, As now arranged one corps of three brigades was to operate west of the Danube from ‘“‘a line running due south from the south-west extremity of Lake Balaton to Barcs on the Drave,”’ and twelve brigades (nine in the front line, three in reserve) were to advance in the Bacska. The Danube Flotilla was to cover the movement of the troops on its flank, and the air-

orders. ,

force to stand by for orders. All this force was to come under German In addition, the Mountain Brigades and Frontier Chasseurs with the VIII Corps, the so-called Carpathian Group, were to be mobilised on the Ruthene frontier and the Mobile Corps to wait in reserve behind it.* Having made these arrangements, which committed Hungary to the hilt to attacking Yugoslavia simultaneously with Germany, Werth immediately applied to the Government, not for confirmation of the arrangements—which he wrote that he had concluded ‘‘on the basis of the authorisation received by me’’—but for authorisation to mobilise five corps and the Mobile Corps on the Ist April.* “It was necessary,’’ he wrote afterwards, “for the mobilisation order to be issued on the Ist, because General Paulus told me that the date for carrying through the German military operation had been fixed for 12th April.”’? Hungary could not be ready so quickly, ““so we had to plan the 15th for the first day of our operations. This is itself proof that if we had already decided to participate in the campaign, the issue of the mobilisation order was of the utmost urgency.’” A clash followed between Werth and Teleki; the former maintaining that he had acted with full authorisation, while Teleki said the opposite. ““Werth,” noted Teleki, “‘wascurt.’® But finally Teleki and Bardossy went round to the Regent.

Horthy was now unhappy again about Hungary’s participation. After his interview with Bardossy, Rassay had looked round him for some person

capable of influencing the Regent, and had thought of Count Maurice Esterhazy, the ex-Premier, whose word, as was well known, carried much weight with Horthy. “‘Esterhazy,” said Rassay, “‘sat down at my desk and wrote a letter in which he expressed his opinion of the possibility of such a war in fearfully severe terms.””? This seems to have been conveyed to Horthy,

from whom Teleki now “extracted his consent” that the whole question 1 Werth’s memorandum of 6th May (see below Pt. II, p. 17) says that Roumania offered to participate but was told that “‘her Army was needed for the war against Russia.”’

2 In this account I supplement the meagre details given in R. 95 by an article by General Naray, at that time Secretary to the Supreme Defence Council. (La Campagna Militare per la Reoccupazione Dell’ Ungheria Meridionale: Rassegna d’Ungheria, June 1941.) * It was on the strength of this disposition that Paulus at Nuremberg (Nur. Trials, VI, 242) said that the Hungarians themselves realised that the U.S.S.R. would regard an attack by Germany on Yugoslavia as a hostile act. The Soviet prosecutor, going further, deduced that Paulus and the Hungarians had together plotted war against the U.S.S.R. * A mobilisation order, in Hungary, had to be approved by the Cabinet. It was then endorsed by the Regent and issued over the signature of the Minister of Defence. ° Sz. I. MS. The verbs in the extract are in the past tense, so Werth was obviously writing retrospectively, but on what occasion it is not clear. ® From Teleki’s jottings quoted above. ’ Rassay’s evidence, Bardossy Trial.

SUICIDE 483 should be brought before a meeting of the Supreme Defence Council. This was convened for 6 p.m. on the Ist April. Another day—31st March—passed waiting for this. Bardossy was now

obviously convinced that the wheel could not be turned back. He sent

Bakach-Bessenyey a series of messages which seem designed to excuse the imminent Hungarian mobilisation as necessitated by Yugoslavia’s own acts:

Yugoslavia was now beginning to mobilise! On this day also he sent his first message to Macek, who had taken the initiative by asking for Hungary’s

“information and ideas.” The reply was: “That the Hungarian Government continues to maintain unchanged the point of view long ago taken up and repeatedly expressed by it: that it regards with complete understanding the Croat people’s attempts to realise their sovereignty.’” Questioned on this message at his trial,? Bardossy explained that all he meant was that if Hungary marched into the Voivodina, this did not mean that she would try to annex Croatia, to which, in spite of Hitler’s offer, she was making no claim unless the Croats themselves wanted to join her.’ It was thus rather a message of reassurance than one of incitement. It remains, of course, true that the message contained no reference to the Treaty of Friendship, nor did it suggest that Hungary wished for the survival of Yugoslavia.

On the morning of the Ist things were a little worse still. It was reported that in Yugoslavia the military were in complete control. If Germany called on Yugoslavia to demobilise, the Government would certainly be unable to secure compliance with the order. Yugoslavia had asked Italy to mediate, but, as the request contained a last sentence referring to Yugoslavia’s ‘‘vital

interests,’ the Italians thought it useless.» Meanwhile the Germans were pressing for the Paulus-Werth arrangement to be put into operation; which arrangement, of course, involved two interlinked but separate questions: that of the use by Germany of Hungary’s territory and communications for her operations in west Hungary and east of the Tisza, and that of Hungary’s own participation in the central sector. When the Defence Council met at 6 p.m., Bardossy reported the German

request for the use of Hungarian territory and communications and Werth reported the arrangements made by him and asked for authority to mobilise immediately five corps and the necessary auxiliary troops. He added that “the German Chancellor was pressing for fulfilment’ of the agreement. The mobilisation should begin at once and be completed by 6th April, although it was not expected that the troops would have to move before the 15th.°® It would be most misleading to represent the Council as at all indifferent

to Hungary’s obligations towards Yugoslavia. Of those present, outside Werth, only Bartha was strongly in favour of Hungary’s participating in the attack, although Reményi-Schneller said that the operation was financially ‘ Sz. I. MS. The messages, of which there were a series, were extremely cautious and show a desire not to adopt a provocative tone. 2 Sz. I. MS. 3 Trial, p. 6. At the trial the message was wrongly dated the 27th. 4 Hassell in his Diary notes that the Hungarians “‘were sensible enough to refuse the offer of Croatia.” 5 From a report by Bessenyey in the Sz. I. MS. ® Sz. 1. MS.

484 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH practicable, and Hdéman pointed out that the Délvidék was historically Hungarian. The majority of those present would certainly have wished that Germany could be denied the use of Hungary’s territory and communications, either for her attack in west Hungary or for moving further troops eastward. On this, however, there was little resistance. It is known that Bardossy, while not liking the request, thought it impossible to reject it. Teleki would have liked to refuse it, but nobody, not even he, thought that it would be practicable to offer resistance if Germany ignored the refusal. It was decided simply to send Germany a request not to use Hungarian territory for operational purposes.2. But on Hungary’s own participation, Teleki carried his point. After the debate had gone on a long time, he drafted a resolution which was accepted by all present, which was that the Hungarians should not join at all in the German campaign, but that they should act independently, if any one or more of the three conditions mentioned above were fulfilled—the ‘“‘“vacuum”’ must, however, be complete, and there must be no danger of a

collision with Yugoslav troops. Any Hungarian troops utilised for the purpose would remain under the supreme command of the Regent, and were not to co-operate with Germans, nor Germans with them. They were not to go beyond the historic frontiers of Hungary proper, that is, not to enter Croatia.®

Werth argued that for this purpose the Army must in any case be mobilised. Teleki first opposed any mobilisation at all, saying, amongst other things, that the supply position, endangered as it was by frosts and floods, would not stand it. Defeated on this, he went for the minimum, pleading that the smaller the force mobilised, the better, as if the Germans thought that the Hungarian Army represented a valuable fighting force, they might feel inclined to take it with them into the Balkans. On this point the record* shows that Werth eventually won the day, and his full mobilisation programme was agreed. It appears, however, that even this was still only provisional, for the mobilisation order was not signed that day, nor indeed the next, and Teleki still hoped to get the numbers whittled down.° Finally, Teleki insisted that a note should be inserted in the minutes that Hungary must at all costs avoid getting involved in a world conflict, because 1 Naray’s evidence at the Bardossy Trial, p. 46. (Naray was the officer taking the minutes.) * The evidence on this point is fragmentary, as all the accounts have concentrated on the question cf Hungary’s participation. Bdardossy in his final speech simply said that ‘‘the Cabinet acceded to the (German) request,’’ as does Ullein (p. 93). But that Hungary sent a request as described above follows from the fact that it was refused next day (below, p. 486). N. Horthy confirmed to the writer that “‘a number of Notes’’ passed on the point. It is, however, quite certain that no one suggested resisting. Bardossy at his trial (p. 19) said: ‘“Everyone was convinced

that if the Germans marched through, nothing and no one would stop them. The Head of the State and the Minister President agreed to this.’’ Again, in his final speech, Bardossy argued at length that refusal would have been impossible: Germany would have immediately answered by occupying Hungary, directly or through a puppet Government. The present writer himself asked Horthy point-blank whether he had ordered resistance, even in token form, and Horthy replied categorically that he had not done so; it would have been crushed in an hour and could only have led to useless bloodshed. When reminded that he had threatened the Germans with resistance if they tried to march through against Poland, he replied simply: ‘“The Poles were our friends’ —a remark which shows too clearly that in the Yugoslav crisis his conscience but not his heart was involved. * Bardossy Trial, pp. 5-6. Teleki also gives these in his letter to Apor, putting as his first point: ‘““‘We don’t move until the Germans are past Zagreb, when the Croats will probably have turned round.” 4 Lajos and Sz. Il. MS. * He wrote to Apor next day that “‘the soldiers want 5 corps and 2 motorised Brigades and 2 cavalry Brigades. I may succeed in getting it down to 3 or 4 corps—but it’s a hard struggle.” Bartha confirms to C. A. M. that the order was not issued until the 4th, as described below.

SUICIDE 485 she would find arrayed against her “‘the inexhaustible forces of Britain and America.”’

So much for these resolutions, which amounted, after all, to a not inconsiderable defiance of the Germans and frustration of their plans. At the very least, they left a yawning gap in the very centre and most vulnerable part of the Yugoslav front—a gap which the Yugoslavs could, and did, leave undefended. If, into the bargain, Hungary had made good her request to Germany not to use Hungarian soil or communications—to attack in west

Hungary and to move troops to the Banat—she would have been doing |

Yugoslavia a very large service indeed. The decision not to notify Hungary’s ; intention to resist if her request was refused may well be criticised; but there is force in Horthy’s argument that any resistance which could have been put up would have been crushed in an hour, and the Germans could have bombed

Budapest at their leisure. Perhaps the Government might have taken a bolder stand here, if they had been more certain of reward; but a few days earlier, when Baranyai had reported to Teleki that the money had reached America, Teleki had told him that “there was still one difficulty left: he was still trying to get adequate safeguards against the danger that the Western Powers, under the influence of Benes, would refuse to recognise an émigré Horthy Government.’’! When O’Malley went, on the Ist, to urge execution of the plan, /e cas échéant, he met only with evasive answers. As for the conditions under which the Hungarians had decided that they would act themselves: those will be readiest to criticise them who know least of Central European conditions and live in the innocent belief that, because the Peace Treaties said so, the Croats to a man were loyal supporters of the Yugoslav State. Hungary probably went too far the other way in her judgment of the situation; but the touchstone of her honour, on this point, is whether after having signed the Treaty with Yugoslavia she intrigued against her with the Croats. On this point, the fuller documents show Bardossy’s message to Maéek in a more favourable light than the mere (wrongly-dated) mention of it at his trial suggested. In fact, Hungary simply stood aside on the Croat question. The ‘‘vacuum’”’ was an alternative way of describing the situation which

would arise if Croatia proclaimed her independence: it presupposed by definition the disappearance of the Yugoslav State, and the filling of it would, again by definition, be a move against Germany: specifically, the frustration of Germany’s plan to create a German State in the old South Hungary. The insertion of this condition was due to Teleki’s personal initiative, and due to his special fear of the ““German pincers.”’* He did not, however, anticipate that the case would arise unless Croatia first proclaimed her independence. It may be added that Bardossy maintained at his trial® that: ““His conversations with the British Minister in Budapest* had convinced him that England understood that if the opportunity was opened for Hungary to liberate some 500,000 Magyars in the south she must seize the opportunity, the more so as it was unimaginable that she should stand by with folded arms while those Magyars exchanged slavery to the Serbs for slavery to the Germans.”

1 Baranyai to C. A. M.

2 Géza Teleki to C. A. M. Teleki also thought that ‘““Hungary would only be able to keep territories for which she had made sacrifices.” 3 Trial, p. 7. ¢ Sir Owen O’ Malley.

486 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH He had, as we have seen, telegraphed in the same sense to London and Washington. Whether Teleki proposed to accompany the occupation with any sort of

intimation that Hungary did not regard it as final, we do not know. The next morning, 2nd April, there were no important developments in the situation although Bakach-Bessenyey reported from Belgrade that there was now practically no hope of the Serbs yielding.’ Teleki spent part of the morning writing a letter to Apor, in Rome, in which he drew a very black picture of the situation. The Regent, the Army, half the Cabinet and the majority of Parliament were against him. His tone, however, although gloomy, was not desperate. In the afternoon came Germany’s reply. The Germans’ main attack had been planned to come from Roumania and Bulgaria, and it was too late to alter the arrangements, to which Hungary had already consented. They were marching through under all circumstances and had already set their troops in motion. Indeed, by that evening, “‘a crowd of German Generals,”’ mostly of the staff, had already reached Budapest.? There was no question any more of their using only roundabout roads and railways.° According to Barcza, who, when he returned to Budapest, collected what he could of the story from Teleki’s family and intimate friends, the Germans

also demanded that Hungary join in the “‘action,’’ as arranged. Horthy called over Teleki and various other counsellors, all of whom advised him strongly not to depart from the line agreed at on the previous day. Horthy would seem to have undertaken this, for when Bartha saw Teleki later in the afternoon, having gone with Werth to talk over the details of the mobilisation,

he found him “‘perfectly calm.’ About 8 p.m. Teleki went to Basilica, where a service was being held for the Scout Officers.” The next morning they were to make their confession and receive the Easter Sacrament. He sat in a vacant place in the second row and after Service went to speak to Father Witz, his regular confessor, to whom he said that he proposed to confess and receive the Sacrament the next morning with the other Scout Officers. The priest suggested that as Teleki was looking very tired, he should confess that evening, thus giving himself a little longer sleep the next morning. Teleki refused, as he had not prepared

himself, and would have to leave at a quarter to nine (it was then eight o’clock). The priest insisted, so Teleki went and knelt for a quarter of an hour. Then he took his place in the queue, confessed and was shriven. After-

wards he talked a little while to the priest and to friends, from whom he parted, promising to meet them next morning at half-past seven and afterwards to breakfast with them. On his way back from the Basilica Teleki looked in for a word with his old colleague, Yolland, the Professor of English Literature at Budapest University. Yolland found him quite normal, as also did Lipdt Baranyai, whom he saw also. Then he looked in at the Foreign Ministry, where bad news awaited him. A long telegram had come in from Barcza, in London, 1 Sz. I. MS. * Hassell, op. cit., p. 157.

* Apor to C. A. M. Cf. also what Hassell writes (loc. cit.): ‘“‘So far Horthy has stipulated successfully that the German troops shall be as little visible as possible, and not at all in Budapest. That will change now.”’

4 Bartha to C. A. M. 5 Witz afterwards wrote an account of this scene in the Press.

SUICIDE 487 being an answer to Bardossy’s wire of the 30th. This wire in no way bore out the impression which Hungarian wishful thinking had gathered from O’Malley about British comprehension of their case. Its gist was as follows: If Germany attacked Yugoslavia, Britain would at once declare Yugoslavia to be her ally. If Hungary allowed or facilitated the transit of German troops across her territory, or the use thereof as a military basis for an attack on Yugoslavia, Great Britain would break off diplomatic relations with Hungary,

who would have to take all the consequences of the situation. If Hungary joined in the attack under any pretext whatever (e.g. defence of the Magyar

minority in the Voivodina), Great Britain, and presumably her allies, would |

declare war. At the end of the war, if the Allies were victorious, Hungary would be treated as a defeated enemy and especial odium would attach to her for having attacked a State with which she had just signed a Pact of Eternal

Friendship. No one in Britain or America would appreciate the “‘special , considerations” which Bardossy had put forward in his telegram. Teleki read the message very carefully and ordered a copy of it to be sent across to his own office. It immensely increased his depression, since he had, apparently, believed up to the last moment that the British would understand Hungary’s motives, especially given the need of preventing Germany from establishing a German State in the Voivodina “vacuum.” Ullein-Reviczky saw the two men in the office at about 9 p.m. Both were silent. Teleki was pacing about the room, his head sunk, his hands in his pockets. Barcza’s telegram was lying on the desk. After a while Teleki said in a low voice: “‘I have done what I could. I can do no more.’”® Teleki dined quietly in his official flat and then went down to visit his wife in the sanatorium. He was sitting there with his wife and daughter when the telephone rang. He went to it, and as he listened, his expression changed. He cried out angrily: ‘““Hat, mégis, mégis!’’* and slammed down the telephone

so violently that it broke. When he had recovered his self-possession, he said: “I was speaking to my Boy Scout friend, from whom I got bad news.”’ The “‘Boy Scout friend’? has never been identified, nor has it ever been ascertained what the “‘bad news’’ was. Every kind of rumour went round afterwards: that the Germans had crossed the frontier in spite of Teleki’s request; that Werth had signed some irrevocable order; that the Regent had given way again. None of these seems to fill the bill. The Germans were already in Hungary, and Teleki knew it: and there is no evidence that Werth or Horthy had, at that moment, done anything to anger Teleki (nor is it likely

that action of the Regent’s would have been reported by a “Boy Scout friend’). The only new element that seems to have entered the picture at about that moment was the arrival of alleged appeals from both Magyars and Germans in the Voivodina, the fact of which would have made Teleki forbode danger. That is all that can be said.° 1 Text in Sz. I. MS. Barcza also gives a full account in his own MS. 2 Bardossy at his trial (the passage was not reproduced in the book version). 3 Ullein-Reviczky, op. cit., pp. 92-3.

‘ “After all, then! After all!” | oe

5 A document was produced at the Ministries Trial (N.G. 5615) in which a German agent named Berger confirmed to Himmler on 3rd April that Ribbentrop had “ given orders to organise cries of help from Yugoslavia: from Volksdeutsche, Croats, Macedonians and Slovenes.” Teleki’s letter, quoted below, shows that such appeals had come in, although he dismissed them as inventions. One rumour is that one appeal was received from Werth’s brother, who was a Volksdeutscher living in the Voivodina, and that Werth had gone with this to Horthy, saying that Hungary had now got her justification for action. There is, however, no evidence whatever that Horthy had gone behind Teleki’s back on the strength of this or any other message.

488 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH Teleki then left the room, and his family never saw him again alive.

He got into his car to drive to his office, but on the Bastion suddenly stopped it, got out, and spoke to a man who was passing on foot. The two

men walked up and down together, talking, for several minutes. Then Teleki concluded the short remainder of his journey on foot. The passer-by, again, has never been identified. On reaching his office, he telephoned for his personal secretary, Erzsébet Bethlen. By a tragic chance, Countess Bethlen, who very seldom went out in the evening, had gone to the theatre that night. He left a message for her to come round to him as soon as she returned, whatever the hour: but she only came home after midnight, and, unhappily, did not like to disturb him so late. Then Teleki went into his private rooms. So far as is known, no one after this had any communication with him or saw him alive. The next morning, at 7 a.m., his valet came to call him. When he drew the curtains, he saw Teleki lying on the bed, a bullet hole in his right temple and his own Browning revolver by his side. His left hand, which was under the

, sheet, was clutching the holster of the revolver. The pillow was drenched in blood. On the table beside the bed was a copy of Barcza’s despatch and a copy of the Prophecies of Nostradamus. On the writing-table, a few almost illegible words were scrawled on a pad, and the pen had been jabbed into the wood. On this table were also a copy of Széchényi’s Diaries’ and a statuette of Laszlo Teleki.’

On the writing-table in the next room were two envelopes, the one addressed to the Regent, the other to Teleki’s secretary, Péter Incze. The latter contained two enclosures, one for the Ministerial Council, the other addressed to Mer. Kelemen, the Arch-Abbot of Pannonhalma.°

The subsequent autopsy put the time of death at 2.30 a.m. It also revealed an embola in Teleki’s brain, some fourteen to sixteen hours old, which must have been causing him intense pain. All the three letters on the writing-table have been lost, but that to the Regent had been opened by Barczy, who memorised it and afterwards wrote down his recollection of it. As M. Barczy’s recollection was not entirely consistent, the exact text is not absolutely certain*; but it ran approximately as follows: 1 Count Istvan Széchényi, the ‘‘Greatest Hungarian” of the 1840’s, lost his reason and died by his own hand in Dobling lunatic asylum. * Laszl6o Teleki, a collateral ancestor of Pal Teleki’s, took his own life in 1861 as the result of a conflict of conscience.

3 In the drawer were also some letters to his son, but these referred to purely family matters and (contrary to report) had all been written some time previously. 4 Barczy himself gave at least three different versions of the letter; one in the memoirs which he wrote out in the winter of 1944-45; a second to the examining magistrates who were drawing up the indictment for the trial of Bardossy; and a third in oral evidence at the same trial. None of these agrees exactly. Further, a letter (to which reference will be made in Vol. II) written by Horthy to Hitler on 3rd April gives further variants. It may be added, as a matter of curiosity, that all the six Press reports which the present writer read of Barczy’s oral evidence gave the wording, even of the sentences quoted below, slightly differently, although all six versions of the sentences quoted were so similar that the same English translation might pass as covering them

all. The version given by me is that contained in Barczy’s memoirs. The most important variants are that in one of his versions (that given in evidence) Barczy left out the second sentence, but inserted a penultimate one: “I accuse myself, I plead guilty to not having been able to restrain your Serene Highness.’’ Horthy’s letter to Hitler said that Teleki reproached himself with not having opposed with sufficient vigour, at the meeting of the Supreme Defence Council, the military action against Yugoslavia, and for letting Hungary become ‘‘a despoiler of corpses.” The chief interest in the variants thus lies in the question of responsibility; but as we see, the weight of the evidence suggests that it was himself whom Teleki reproached, and that it was his attitude at the meeting of the Supreme Defence Council with which he found fault.

SUICIDE 489 “Your Serene Highness,

“We have become breakers of our word. I accuse myself for not having been able to prevent our participation in the German action against the Yugoslavs. I have allowed the nation’s honour to be lost. The Yugoslav nation are our friends. Your Serene Highness yourself proclaimed that at Mohacs.! But now, out of cowardice, we have allied ourselves with scoundrels. The stories of atrocities against the Magyar

and German minorities in the Delvidék are not true; they are simply German inventions.” Perhaps by my voluntary death I may render a service to my nation.”

No one could believe that so devout a Catholic as Pal Teleki had committed suicide, and fantastic rumours consequently circulated. It was even suggested that German emissaries had visited him in the night and murdered him. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Apart from the fact that such a visit could not have been kept secret, the letters, the authenticity of which is quite indisputable, indicate beyond any reasonable doubt that Teleki wrote them as his last word before taking his own life.? His exact motive in doing so is hard to define. As we have said, there is no evidence whatever that any other person—Werth, Horthy, Erdmannsdorff* or any other—suddenly sprung something on him to which he had not consented. It seems to the writer more likely that, while other factors such as depression over his wife’s illness and physical pain contributed,°® it was really Barcza’s telegram that gave the final impetus (as Bardossy told Barcza, to the latter’s fury). For Teleki had made it the very fundamental of his policy that under no circumstances must Hungary be involved in war with the Western Powers. When, therefore, he consented, as consent he did, to the policy adopted on Ist April, it could only have been in the belief that Britain would understand his actions.® Barcza’s message told him—quite correctly—that this was not the case. This explains why he should have ‘‘accused himself’ for having yielded as far as he did, and also explains his last words of all: “perhaps by my voluntary death I may render a service to my nation.” That part of his train of thought is clear. He meant his act as a gesture and a message to

the West, for those who could understand the message and accept the sacrifice. It was a vain hope. When the time came for Hungary to stand 1 In 1926 Horthy had made a speech at Mohacs containing very friendly references to the Yugoslavs. 2 It transpired afterwards that a large number of Magyars had been arrested ; 560 of them were

held as hostages in the fortress of Pétervaradin. The writer has failed to trace any evidence of massacres.

3 The handwriting of the letter to Pannonhalma was disordered, the lines running sharply upward at the end. Only a fortnight earlier Teleki had said to a friend (Hlatky) with whom he was dining: ‘‘situations may arise out of which there is no issue but rhis,” and had made a gesture

of holding a pistol to his head.

been present. ; . , ,

4 Erdmannsdorff, personally, had not even seen Teleki for several days before his death.

Their last meeting had been at a lunch given by Bartha, at which the Yugoslav Minister also had

5 Géza Teleki believed that physical pain was the ultimate cause. All evening Pal Teleki had been holding his hand to his head. G. T. does not, however, think his father was contemplating

suicide in the evening or even when he went to bed. . |

6 Cf, his reservation at the Council of the Ist that Hungary must do nothing which involved her in war with the West. M. Ottlik writes me that Bardossy told him that when Teleki read Barcza’s telegram Teleki prophesied to him (Bardossy) the whole coming course of events quite correctly, except that he thought that the Serb resistance would be prolonged and that Russia would intervene before it was over, when Germany would be defeated earlier than actually proved to be the case,

490 | OCTOBER FIFTEENTH before the bar of judgment, no one, either among her judges or even among

the cowards purporting to represent her, who had been ordered by their Russian masters to paint the past regime of their country in the blackest possible colours—no one recalled Pal Teleki’s sacrifice. On finding Teleki’s body, his valet at once called his son and his secretary. Incze at once telephoned to Keresztes-Fischer, who came over immediately. He took the two letters into his keeping and sent for a doctor. Then he went across to the Regent.

| At 9 a.m. a Ministerial Council was held with Keresztes-Fischer presiding

as senior Minister. The only question then discussed seems to have been whether the suicide should be admitted. Bardossy was against this, saying it would make a bad impression on the Germans;? and the first communiqué issued only said that Teleki had died “‘with tragic suddenness.”” But at 11 a.m. the Regent came over. He had previously sent Barczy across to collect the papers and had telephoned that Barczy alone was to receive him, and he stayed alone by the bedside for half an hour. He agreed with Barczy that the fact of suicide—which was already widely known—should be made public; and another communiqué stated the fact accordingly.” Meanwhile the German troops bound for the Roumanian Banat? were passing through Budapest; the first units had reached the capital by 11 a.m.

The road from Vienna runs close under Buda Hill, and the watchers by Teleki’s bier could see the endless procession of tanks, guns, lorries, while aircraft roared overhead. The German Staff made the exhibition an impressive one; there was to be no more nonsense. On the same afternoon the Regent appointed Bardossy Minister President. 1 Sz. I. MS. * Barczy.

3 The Sz. I. MS. notes that all the troops passing through, except for a very few units, were bound for Roumania.

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