FadeTheButcher
11-06-2004, 03:44 AM
Between 1938 and 1941 the Hungarians had been lured and coerced into the German camp, lured by promises of German support in regaining territory that had formally been part of the kingdom of Hungary, coerced by the presence of overwhelming German power and the fear of being sold out to their Eastern European rivals. In 1938 and 1939 Germany had secured large slices of Czechoslovak and Rumanian territory for Hungary; in return the Hungarians, in September 1939, had permitted the passage of German troops through their territory to enable the Germans to take over direct responsibility for the defence of the Rumanian oil fields. In April 1940, enticed by prospects of further territorial acquistions, Hungary joined Germany in the attack on Yugoslavia. And in June 1941 Hungary joined in the German attack on the Soviet Union.
Hungarian leaders did not participate with any enthusiasm in the war against the Soviet Union. They had no desire to dissipate their military strength in Russia, whose territories were not contiguous to Hungary and where they had little to expect by way of territoral gains. But they feared that failure to do so would give the Rumanians, who had also joined in the war against the Soviet Union, a critical advantage when the Germans made a final distribution of territory in Eastern Europe. Once the Hungarians were committed to war against the Soviet Union, the pressure of Germany, fear of their neighbours, and ultimately fear of Russian retribution and Communism, kept Hungary in the war on Germany's side to the end.
While participating in the war against Russia, the Hungarians did what they could to keep their military contribution to a minimum. When Admiral Miklós Horthy, the prince regent of Hungary, visited Hitler at his field headquarters in September 1941, accompanied by Prime Minister László Bárdossy and Field Marshal Ferenc Szombathelyi, the new chief of the Hungarian General Staff, the Germans were annoyed by the Hungarians' obvious reluctance to commit their forces to the Russian campaign. "The new chief of the General Staff takes the selfish view that what matters is to preserve Hungary's forces in consideration of her tasks in the Balkans," General Franz Halder remarked in his diary. Under German pressure the Hungarians promised to increase the number of troops on the eastern front, but in turn the Germans were obliged to promise them a rectification of their Carpathian frontier in eastern Galicia (at this time part of the Government General). A German record of the conference with the Hungarians concluded by noting that "for the rest, the visit offered an opportunity for counteracting the strong influence exerted on Hungary by Anglo-American propaganda, which can normally be observed. In view of present and future successes of German arms we can at any event be sure of Hungary's continued cooperation with the Axis powers."
While the successes of German arms continued, Hungary did indeed cooperate with the Axis. In November 1941 Hitler congratulated Bárdossy on the splendid services rendered by the Hungarian unit on the eastern front. "The Hungarians are good auxiliaries for us," he commented to his associates. "With proper stiffening, we find them very useful."
On the economic front, too, the Hungarians were cooperating. "The Hungarian government has tried as far as possible to take account of German wishes in the economic field," an economic specialist of the German Foreign Office reported after negotiations in Budapest during the summer of 1941. In compliance with German requests, they had raised the value of the Reichsmark, provided a credit of two hundred million Reichmarks for financing German purchases of strategic goods, and improved conditions for the activity of private German firms and German capital in Hungary. Fearful about losing their economic independence, the Hungarians tried to resist a German request to purchase controlling shares in Hungary's largest oil company, "Maort," which were owned by Americans. But Goering insisted that the Hungarians sell, and that all necessary pressure should be applied to make them do so. "The Reichsmarschall attached decisive importance to Germany's acquistion of 'Maort' because every oil deposit in Europe had to be utilized for German military purposes to the utmost limit of its capacity." The Hungarians procrastinated until at last Prime Minister Bárdossy himself assumed responsibility for complying with the German wishes "because he had become convinced that in the circumstances one could not act otherwise toward Germany, the ally to whom Hungary owed her large territorial expansion." For this service Bárdossy was given special thanks by Ribbentrop, who appealed to him to do everything in his power to increase deliveries to Germany, particularly oil. "The situation was such that relatively small quantities, such as an additional delivery of forty thousand tons, were of particular importance."
With the halt of Germany's Russian offensive in December 1941, and especially after the German declaration of war on the United States, the Hungarians initiated efforts to loosen their ties with Germany. In March 1942 Horthy dismissed Bárdossy, the leading advocate of cooperation with Germany, and replaced him with the former minister of agriculture, Miklós Kállay. "His aim, as Premier, was to regain Hungary's freedom of action and to return, if possible, to a state of non-belligerence," Horthy wrote in his memoirs. "In the summer of 1942, our first contact was made with Great Britain."
Hungary's nonbelligerence was evidently only intended to apply to major powers. In that same summer of 1942 Kállay went to see Hitler with a request from Horthy that he "should turn a benevolent blind eye if the Hungarians started a fight with the Rumanians." From the Hungarian point of view, Kállay said, such a fight would be part of the European struggle against Asia. Hitler at once put a stop to this idea, as he did to all Hungarian plans for territorial expansion that threatened the disruption of order in Eastern Europe. By this time his admiration for the fighting qualities of the Hungarians had declined sharply. "If the Hungarians go to war with the Rumanians," he said, "then, unless I am much mistaken, [Marshal Ion] Antonescu will knock the hell out of them!"
Kállay's efforts to withdraw from the war were soon known to the Germans through intercepted telegrams and the reports of secret agents, "Fortunately we have never had any illusions about the Hungarians, so that now we are not disappointed," Goebbels remarked in his diary. In mid-April 1943 Hitler summoned Horthy to Schloss Klessheim near Salzburg, where he confronted him with evidence of Kállay's duplicity and demanded his dismissal. Horthy defended his prime minister and his country's record as an ally, pointing out the considerable economic contribution Hungary was making to the joint war effort and appealing to Hitler to have faith in Hungary and its government. Horthy's arguments can hardly have convinced Hitler, but the German leader was evidently too preoccupied with other problems to press matters in Hungary. For the time being he did no more than keep the country and its leadership under close observation.
With the surrender of Italy in September 1943, Hitler ordered that preparations be made for the occupation of Hungary and Romania. According to German intelligence reports, the governments of both countries were negotiating with the western Allies hoping to persuade the British and the Americans to undertake a campaign in the Balkans which would liberate them from the Germans and at the same time protect them from the Russians. A Himmler agent considered the situation in Hungary to be particularly dangerous: The Hungarian government was now openly pro-West and German intervention imperative to pervent Hungary's defection. In any case, however, Germany could not tolerate that a regime based on "feudal concepts of individualism" and partly on "Jewish exploitation" should remain in the geographical center of its communications to the Balkans and the Near East. A report Goebbels received from Hungary in November was also anything but encouraging. "Influential circles in Hungary are at work for a direct break with us," he wrote in his diary. "The Regent is trying to create the impression that he is neutral in these efforts. This is, however, in no way the case. I even regard him as the mainspring of this development. . . . If the English were to attempt an invasion of the Balkans, Hungary would be the first country to desert us. The Hungarians are also interested in keeping their army intact because they are still flirting with the idea of fighting the Rumanians."
Unwilling to move against the present regime in Hungary without having another to put in its place, Hitler sent a special political agent to Budapest, Dr. Edmund Veesenmayer, who entered into negotiations with pro-German elements. Horthy, when he learned of Vessenmeyer's activity through his own agents, demanded his expulsion from the country. But Veesenmayer had collected enough information to convince his government to take action, and in February 1944 Hitler issued orders for the military occupation of Hungary.
To prepare the way politically for this move Hitler again summoned Horthy to Schloss Klessheim where, in a conference of March 18, he accused the Hungarian government of planning to make a separate peace. To forestall such treasonous behaviour, he intended to occupy the country until a government acceptable to Germany had been formed. He assured Horthy that he had no intention of making Hungary a German province on the order of Bohemia, which after all had been part of Germany's Holy Roman Empire; but the best way the Regent could safeguard Hungary's sovereignty and independence would be to name a government that would guarantee Hungary's loyalty to Germany. If Horthy dramatized his opposition to the German occupation by resigning or encouraging any kind of resistance, Hitler would feel justified in seeking the cooperation of Rumania, Croatia, and Slovakia. In Hungary itself he would instal a government of the fanatic right-wing Arrow Cross movement, Hungarian military units would be incorporated into the German army, and the Hungarian economy would be submitted to the ruthless exploitation of the occupying powers. On the ohter hand, if the regent remained at his post and did as the Germans requested, the German army of occupation would be withdrawn as soon as a government acceptable to Germany had been appointed.
Horthy succumbed to this pressure. At a meeting of the Crown Council in Budapest on March 19, he expressed the conviction that if Hungary made any effort to resist, Hitler, with the aid of his East European allies, would not only occupy Hungary but destroy the Hungarian race. To shield the people from this fate, he was resolved to remain at his post and to appoint a government dictated by Germany -- in short, to provide the legal facade fro the German occupation that Hitler desired.
When German troops marched into Hungary on March 19, 1944, they ment with no resistance. Horthy remained in office, and the entire government and administrative appartus was placed at Germany's disposal.
TBC
Hungarian leaders did not participate with any enthusiasm in the war against the Soviet Union. They had no desire to dissipate their military strength in Russia, whose territories were not contiguous to Hungary and where they had little to expect by way of territoral gains. But they feared that failure to do so would give the Rumanians, who had also joined in the war against the Soviet Union, a critical advantage when the Germans made a final distribution of territory in Eastern Europe. Once the Hungarians were committed to war against the Soviet Union, the pressure of Germany, fear of their neighbours, and ultimately fear of Russian retribution and Communism, kept Hungary in the war on Germany's side to the end.
While participating in the war against Russia, the Hungarians did what they could to keep their military contribution to a minimum. When Admiral Miklós Horthy, the prince regent of Hungary, visited Hitler at his field headquarters in September 1941, accompanied by Prime Minister László Bárdossy and Field Marshal Ferenc Szombathelyi, the new chief of the Hungarian General Staff, the Germans were annoyed by the Hungarians' obvious reluctance to commit their forces to the Russian campaign. "The new chief of the General Staff takes the selfish view that what matters is to preserve Hungary's forces in consideration of her tasks in the Balkans," General Franz Halder remarked in his diary. Under German pressure the Hungarians promised to increase the number of troops on the eastern front, but in turn the Germans were obliged to promise them a rectification of their Carpathian frontier in eastern Galicia (at this time part of the Government General). A German record of the conference with the Hungarians concluded by noting that "for the rest, the visit offered an opportunity for counteracting the strong influence exerted on Hungary by Anglo-American propaganda, which can normally be observed. In view of present and future successes of German arms we can at any event be sure of Hungary's continued cooperation with the Axis powers."
While the successes of German arms continued, Hungary did indeed cooperate with the Axis. In November 1941 Hitler congratulated Bárdossy on the splendid services rendered by the Hungarian unit on the eastern front. "The Hungarians are good auxiliaries for us," he commented to his associates. "With proper stiffening, we find them very useful."
On the economic front, too, the Hungarians were cooperating. "The Hungarian government has tried as far as possible to take account of German wishes in the economic field," an economic specialist of the German Foreign Office reported after negotiations in Budapest during the summer of 1941. In compliance with German requests, they had raised the value of the Reichsmark, provided a credit of two hundred million Reichmarks for financing German purchases of strategic goods, and improved conditions for the activity of private German firms and German capital in Hungary. Fearful about losing their economic independence, the Hungarians tried to resist a German request to purchase controlling shares in Hungary's largest oil company, "Maort," which were owned by Americans. But Goering insisted that the Hungarians sell, and that all necessary pressure should be applied to make them do so. "The Reichsmarschall attached decisive importance to Germany's acquistion of 'Maort' because every oil deposit in Europe had to be utilized for German military purposes to the utmost limit of its capacity." The Hungarians procrastinated until at last Prime Minister Bárdossy himself assumed responsibility for complying with the German wishes "because he had become convinced that in the circumstances one could not act otherwise toward Germany, the ally to whom Hungary owed her large territorial expansion." For this service Bárdossy was given special thanks by Ribbentrop, who appealed to him to do everything in his power to increase deliveries to Germany, particularly oil. "The situation was such that relatively small quantities, such as an additional delivery of forty thousand tons, were of particular importance."
With the halt of Germany's Russian offensive in December 1941, and especially after the German declaration of war on the United States, the Hungarians initiated efforts to loosen their ties with Germany. In March 1942 Horthy dismissed Bárdossy, the leading advocate of cooperation with Germany, and replaced him with the former minister of agriculture, Miklós Kállay. "His aim, as Premier, was to regain Hungary's freedom of action and to return, if possible, to a state of non-belligerence," Horthy wrote in his memoirs. "In the summer of 1942, our first contact was made with Great Britain."
Hungary's nonbelligerence was evidently only intended to apply to major powers. In that same summer of 1942 Kállay went to see Hitler with a request from Horthy that he "should turn a benevolent blind eye if the Hungarians started a fight with the Rumanians." From the Hungarian point of view, Kállay said, such a fight would be part of the European struggle against Asia. Hitler at once put a stop to this idea, as he did to all Hungarian plans for territorial expansion that threatened the disruption of order in Eastern Europe. By this time his admiration for the fighting qualities of the Hungarians had declined sharply. "If the Hungarians go to war with the Rumanians," he said, "then, unless I am much mistaken, [Marshal Ion] Antonescu will knock the hell out of them!"
Kállay's efforts to withdraw from the war were soon known to the Germans through intercepted telegrams and the reports of secret agents, "Fortunately we have never had any illusions about the Hungarians, so that now we are not disappointed," Goebbels remarked in his diary. In mid-April 1943 Hitler summoned Horthy to Schloss Klessheim near Salzburg, where he confronted him with evidence of Kállay's duplicity and demanded his dismissal. Horthy defended his prime minister and his country's record as an ally, pointing out the considerable economic contribution Hungary was making to the joint war effort and appealing to Hitler to have faith in Hungary and its government. Horthy's arguments can hardly have convinced Hitler, but the German leader was evidently too preoccupied with other problems to press matters in Hungary. For the time being he did no more than keep the country and its leadership under close observation.
With the surrender of Italy in September 1943, Hitler ordered that preparations be made for the occupation of Hungary and Romania. According to German intelligence reports, the governments of both countries were negotiating with the western Allies hoping to persuade the British and the Americans to undertake a campaign in the Balkans which would liberate them from the Germans and at the same time protect them from the Russians. A Himmler agent considered the situation in Hungary to be particularly dangerous: The Hungarian government was now openly pro-West and German intervention imperative to pervent Hungary's defection. In any case, however, Germany could not tolerate that a regime based on "feudal concepts of individualism" and partly on "Jewish exploitation" should remain in the geographical center of its communications to the Balkans and the Near East. A report Goebbels received from Hungary in November was also anything but encouraging. "Influential circles in Hungary are at work for a direct break with us," he wrote in his diary. "The Regent is trying to create the impression that he is neutral in these efforts. This is, however, in no way the case. I even regard him as the mainspring of this development. . . . If the English were to attempt an invasion of the Balkans, Hungary would be the first country to desert us. The Hungarians are also interested in keeping their army intact because they are still flirting with the idea of fighting the Rumanians."
Unwilling to move against the present regime in Hungary without having another to put in its place, Hitler sent a special political agent to Budapest, Dr. Edmund Veesenmayer, who entered into negotiations with pro-German elements. Horthy, when he learned of Vessenmeyer's activity through his own agents, demanded his expulsion from the country. But Veesenmayer had collected enough information to convince his government to take action, and in February 1944 Hitler issued orders for the military occupation of Hungary.
To prepare the way politically for this move Hitler again summoned Horthy to Schloss Klessheim where, in a conference of March 18, he accused the Hungarian government of planning to make a separate peace. To forestall such treasonous behaviour, he intended to occupy the country until a government acceptable to Germany had been formed. He assured Horthy that he had no intention of making Hungary a German province on the order of Bohemia, which after all had been part of Germany's Holy Roman Empire; but the best way the Regent could safeguard Hungary's sovereignty and independence would be to name a government that would guarantee Hungary's loyalty to Germany. If Horthy dramatized his opposition to the German occupation by resigning or encouraging any kind of resistance, Hitler would feel justified in seeking the cooperation of Rumania, Croatia, and Slovakia. In Hungary itself he would instal a government of the fanatic right-wing Arrow Cross movement, Hungarian military units would be incorporated into the German army, and the Hungarian economy would be submitted to the ruthless exploitation of the occupying powers. On the ohter hand, if the regent remained at his post and did as the Germans requested, the German army of occupation would be withdrawn as soon as a government acceptable to Germany had been appointed.
Horthy succumbed to this pressure. At a meeting of the Crown Council in Budapest on March 19, he expressed the conviction that if Hungary made any effort to resist, Hitler, with the aid of his East European allies, would not only occupy Hungary but destroy the Hungarian race. To shield the people from this fate, he was resolved to remain at his post and to appoint a government dictated by Germany -- in short, to provide the legal facade fro the German occupation that Hitler desired.
When German troops marched into Hungary on March 19, 1944, they ment with no resistance. Horthy remained in office, and the entire government and administrative appartus was placed at Germany's disposal.
TBC