World War II (1939-1945) & the Holocaust
During the 1920s, under the leadership of the Gömbös government, the suppression and victimization of the Jewish population continued with the help of Nazi policies and extreme right-wing organizations. At the same time, the desire for territorial revisionism in Hungary enticed Hitler, and by signing the Treaty of Trianon, Germany and Italy further reinforced Hungarian claims of lost territories among those Hungarians who were living in the lost areas. Thus, in 1938, Hungarian forces peacefully occupied some of the newly transformed former Hungarian territories, and Hitler promised that in exchange for a military alliance, he would transfer even Slovakia to Hungary. However, the Horthy government rejected this proposal. In the upcoming year, in 1939, Germany invaded the Czechoslovak Republic, which resulted in the dissolution of the Republic and gave rise to the declaration of Slovakia as an independent state. Likewise, the act of independency also was followed by Carpatho-Ukraine. However, Hungary rejected the independence of Carpatho-Ukraine and occupied Carpathian Ruthenia. Although Prime Minister, Pál Teleki, declared that Hungary would not take part in the war against Poland, and thus, he would not allow German troops to pass through Hungarian territories, in September, the Germans invaded Poland, and by this move, they initiated the Second World War (WWII). Poland collapsed and to Germany´s annoyance, Hungary accepted 70 000 Polish refugees. In the following, to ease the tensions built up in Hungary, Hitler transferred the northern part of Transylvania to Hungary at the Second Vienna Award in 1940, and after the two Vienna rewards, Hungary regained most of its earlier lost territories. In November, Pál Teleki, under German pressure, joined the Tripartite Pact (which was initially signed by Italy, Germany, and Japan on the 27th of Sept 1940 in Berlin and which declared assistance and help amongst the three given states in case of an attack)and in December he also signed the Treaty of Eternal Friendship with Yugoslavia. However, a coup in Yugoslavia threatened the German invasion of Russia (USSR /CCCP), and therefore Hitler sought Hungarian support for the invasion of the country. When Teleki realized that he would not be able to prevent war, he committed suicide. Subsequently, the prime minister post was filled by László Bárdossy, a right-wing radical. Just three days later, the German army began the bombing of Belgrade and invaded Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, opposing an increased reliance on Germany, Horthy forced Bárdossy to resign and replaced him with Miklós Kállay. But Kállay followed Bárdossy´s support of Germany against the Red Army and began secret negotiations with the Western Powers.
In June 1941, Hungary joined World War II (WWII) as an Axis Power (alongside with Kingdom of Romania and Bulgaria, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy) after a series of bombings of Kassa, Rahó, and Munkács from unidentified planes. Whereas the declaration of war against the Soviet Union stemmed from these events, Hungary chose to fight beside the Germans to prevent Hitler from favoring Romania in the case of border revisions. The Kárpát Group of Hungary advanced successfully far into the southern part of Russia and managed to capture and destroy twenty Soviet divisions. Subsequently, the Hungarian government transferred the responsibility of over 18 000 Carpato-Ruthenian Jews to German forces, and soon after, Bárdossy prohibited all sexual intercourse and even marriage between non-Jews and Jews in Hungary. This ban is known as the Third Jewish Law. The same year, Hungary regained even some of its territories in the south by participating in the invasion of Yugoslavia. However, after two years on the eastern front and after catastrophic losses at Stalingrad, the Hungarian government was looking for a peace pact with the Allies (a military coalition which is also known as United Nations and included the US, UK, Russia, and China) but when Germany found out of Horthy´s plans on the peace pact, Hitler ordered the German troops to launch Operation Margarethe, and in March 1944 they occupied Hungary. Next, Hitler deposed the Horthy government, and instead, he installed a Nazi supporter Döme Sztójay as prime minister. While Sztójay legalized the Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt), ethnic Germans were still not allowed to join the party. Nonetheless, just a few weeks after Sztójay´s installation, the Germans claimed the disposal of 300 000 Jewish laborers for the Reich.
In August 1944, Sztójay was replaced by Géza Lakatos, an anti-fascist general. While Soviet forces crossed the border of Hungary in September, the Hungarian government put great effort into disengagement from the war. Hence, in October, Hungary signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. However, the Hungarian army did not follow the ceasefire, and by kidnapping Miklós Horthy Jr. (son of Horthy), the Germans forced Horthy to abolish the armistice. After deposing the Lakatos government, Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross Party, was appointed as the new prime minister. As a consequence, Horthy abdicated. In December 1944; while the new provisional government formed in Debrecen reorganized the public sector, modernized elementary education, introduced land reforms, and called for elections; the Soviet and Romanian armies encircled Budapest. Then, when the Arrow Cross regime gradually lost its power, the competing provisional government of Szálasi, with Béla Miklós as prime minister, signed an armistice in Moscow in January 1945. In February, after the unconditional capitulation of Budapest, the Red Army successfully occupied the whole capital city. Nonetheless, the pro-German and German supporters of Szálasi fought on. Yet, Szálasi and his government eventually fled the country, and in April, under Soviet occupation, even the German troops left Hungary. Subsequently, an unconditional surrender of all German forces was signed by the German Chief of Staff, General Alfred Jodl. The Szálasi regime was officially resolved in May 1945, and in November, the Soviets authorized the first free election in post-war Eastern Europe in Hungary. Although Hungary became under the geopolitical influence of the Soviets, it still had a multiparty democracy at this time. However, the Soviet commander, Marshal Voroshilov, did not allow the winning Independent Smallholders´ Party to form a government on their own, and forced the nominee of the Hungarian Communist Party, László Rajk, to become a Minister of Interior. Rajk founded the ÀHV (Államvédelmi Hatóság – State Security Department), a secret police, whose task was to suppress the opposition through false accusations and torture.
The Soviet occupation lasted between September 1944 and April 1945, and Budapest experienced one of the longest sieges in history. To slow the Soviet advance in Budapest, the Germans troops blew up all the bridges of the Danube, and then; when leaving the country; they also destroyed the railroads, roads, and all the communication systems, causing severe damage to Hungary´s infrastructure. In addition, the national wealth of Hungary was equally seized by the Germans and the Soviets, and even the post-Trianon borders became restored after the war. The Peace Treaty of Paris from 1947 left Hungary with only a small fraction of its earlier territories. Territorial changes were neither supported by the Soviets nor by western powers. In addition, during the 45 years long Cold War that followed, Hungarian political, economic, and cultural life was strongly intervened by the Soviet Union, and even though Soviet military operations officially ended in April 1945, Soviet troops were still stationing in Hungary. Moreover, while the 1945 elections resulted in a coalition government that included the party of Agrarian Workers, Independent Smallholders, and the Civic Party; the supporters of the Communist Party continually harassed, repressed, threatened, and in some cases even tortured their opposition by using the so-called “salami tactics”. In addition, Hungary suffered terrible population losses caused by deportations, dislocations, and war victims. Besides the over 600 000 victims of the holocaust and the 900 000 war victims (= 300 000 soldiers and 600 000 civilians), about 280 000 other Hungarians were deported for slave labor, raped, murdered, or executed. There was also a forced exchange of population between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. However, after the war, the ethnic German minority of Hungary suffered the first major violation of civil rights as many of them became deported to Germany without their belongings and without giving any consideration to their position on German politics or pro-Nazi movements.
Holocaust
Jews had been a natural part of the Hungarian population since the Hungarian conquest. Moreover, several written evidence prove that during the 13th century, king Andrew II had Jewish officials at his court. By WWI, these Jews became a well-integrated part of Hungarian society, and many excelled in business, science, and art. Although Jews met common limitations of their life sphere and even persecution on several occasions earlier in history (not least under the reign of foreign kings; 1349-1526), their life was to change for the worst when Hungary began a closer economic relationship with Italy and Germany.
During the Lakatos regime (from Aug. 1944), the Hungarian gendarmes (csendőrség) were ordered by Béla Horváth (the Hungarian interior minister at the time) to prevent the deportation of Hungarian citizens. Hence, the Jewish population of Hungary was protected from deportation in the first few years of WWII. Nevertheless, during the German occupation, when Szálasi´s fascist government promised full support for the German war machine, deportations were recommenced. With the help of Hungarian police and the Arrow Cross Party, in just two months (May and June 1944), approximately 440 000 Jews were deported. The deportations were supervised by Adolf Eichmann (an SS Colonel) and by July 9th, the majority (~ 80%) of the over 400 000 Jews who had been deported mainly to Auschwitz were killed already upon arrival, and still more thousands had been killed by the members of the Arrow Cross. Although Raoul Wallenberg (a Swedish diplomat) and Rezső Kasztner (leader of the Aid and Rescue Committee) managed to save several Jews by bribing SS officers (Adolf Eichmann among many) to let Jews escape, neither the Protestant nor the Catholic clergy showed any resistance against the deportations.
The total number of Hungarian Jewish victims of the Holocaust constituted at least 600 000 people, and it was about one-third of the victims of Auschwitz. The Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust are estimated to be only 200 000 Jewish people.
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Written by Gertrúd Windberg 2023, Sundbyberg
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