Hungary - A 'Brief' Outline

[Vrylakas]

That's kind of a tall order to ask what Hungary's significance throughout history, but here's a brief outline.

The Hungarians are a Finno-Ugric people related distantly to Finns, Estonians, Kurs, and some smaller groups in modern Russia. This means that Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, and is therefore quite different from most of its neighbors' languages. Their original homeland some 3000 years ago was in the Ural mountains but they migrated over several centuries southward and westward until around the 9th century A.D. when they broke free from an old alliance with the powerful Turkic Khazar empire. A combined Pecheneg-Bulgar attack in 896 forced the Magyars (as the Hungarians call themselves) westward, and they seized the southern part of a Slavic empire in old Roman Pannonia, in the Carpathian Basin. This is where present-day Hungary is located.

This region was ideal for Hungary because of its wide grasslands (great for horses, and the Hungarians were like all Steppe peoples an equestrian people) surrounded by mountains (easily protected). The Carpathian Basin had been the home for several Steppe empires since the collapse of the western half of Rome; Goths, Gepids, Dacians, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, etc. The Magyars were just the next in line. They marauded around Europe, spreading destruction everywhere for decades after 896 - as far west as Paris - before being defeated by a rejuvenated German empire under Otto I in 955 at Lechsfeld/Augsburg. After Augsburg the Magyars faced a decision; either keep up the old Steppe ways but face a Christian invasion just like the one that destroyed their predecessors, the Avars, or convert to Christianity now and settle down and join Europe. The Magyars were blessed with intelligent leadership at the time and they decided Option B was the way to go.

Prince Géza accepted Christianity - sort of - and had his son Vajk baptized and re-named "István" (Stephen). Stephen fully Christianized the country and for his efforts was awarded a crown by Pope Sylvestor II in A.D. 1001, and since then Hungary has been a Christian country and very much apart of European history. (See my article here for some points about Stephen and the crown.)

Better move this along a bit; don't want to be too verbose....

To understand the Mongol invasions and their impact on Hungarian history, check out this article I wrote on it.

Hungary's first ruling dynasty were called the A'rpáds but they died out (as most dynasties eventually do) in 1301, and Hungary chose the then-powerful Anjou family for its next dynasty. The Anjous were from Burgundy (in modern France) and were among the most powerful rulig families in Europe at the time. The Anjous introduced a great era for Hungary and for Europe, and transformed Hungary from a minor kingdom to a major Central European power. They coordinated economic and security efforts between the Hungarian, Bohemian (Czech) and Polish kingdoms, eventually ruled all three countries through elections and launched related dymasties in all three. The Anjous coordinated their diplomacy in the region through the fortress at the Danube Bend in northern Hungary called "Visegrád", which is why in 1990 when fresh from overthrowing their communist governments Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia met at Visegrád and thereafter coordinated their efforts to get into the EU, calling themselves the "Visegrád Triangle". (In Poland the Anjous were half of Poland's greatest dynasty, the Jagiellonians, along with the Lithuanian Mindaugas line.) The last Anjou king for Hungary, Zsigmond (Sigismund), was among the greatest Hungarian kings but also the worst. When in 1396 the Ottoman Turks were attacking Byzantium, Zsigmond organized a crusade against the Ottomans and led the Christian European army to Nicopolis but disagreements in the Christian ranks about strategy led to disaster, and the Christian army was anniliated by the Turks. Zsigmond survived and went on to greater things - he was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1410 - but he left Hungary very exposed to Ottoman attack.

Hungary's butt was saved by an extremely able military commander, János (John) Hunyadi, the product of a mixed Hungarian-Romanian parents in Transylvania. (Ioan will hit me if I don't mention that he is known to Romanians as Iancu de Hunedoara. )

Hunyadi led several successful wars against the Ottomans, most famously saving Belgrade (which was a Hungarian city at that point, Nándorfehérvár) in 1456. For this act - which saved Hungary and possibly all of Central Europe from the Ottomans - Pope Calixtus III declared that all church bells in Europe should ring at noon forever to celebrate Hunyadi's victory. That's where the church bell ringing at noon tradition comes from. Hunyadi, while an able military commander, was less adept at politics. He was declared a regent to an absent king but managed to p*ss off most Hungarian nobles, which led at one point to his oldest son being executed.

Hunyadi's younger son, Máttyás (Matthew, or as he is known by his Latin name "Matthias") took the rthone after he died, which was a bit of a problem because technically Hunyadi was never king so Matthias' claim to the throne was a bit weak. Still, Matthias came to be medieval Hungary's greatest and most effective king - and also its last. Matthias Corvinus ("Matthew the Raven", because of the raven on the family coat of arms) defeated the Turks several times, successfully interefered in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, expanded Hungary's borders along the Dalmatian Coast (modern Croatia) and even captured Vienna (making it his capital) along with most of eastern Austria, Silesia (modern western Poland) and Moravia (eastern Czech Republic). Matthias also built one of the largest libraries in Renaissance Europe, establishing universities and encouraging studies and science.

Like many powerful rulers, when Matthias died in 1490 (likely by poisoning), the state had become so dependent on him that in his absence it fell apart. Post-Matthias Hungary deteriorated under weak rulers until in 1526 it met doom at the Battle of Mohács, when the Ottoman Turks finally managed to conquer Hungary. The Turks conquered most of Hungary except for a thin strip in the north in what is today Slovakia. This part of northern Hungary was taken over by the Habsburg family, and for 150 years the Habsburgs and Turks fought one another alng their border in Hungary. Hungarian Transylvania became independent under the Turks and even fought as a Protestant state in the Thirty Years War, playing a major role until its leader's death in 1629. The Turks encouraged the Protestant churches (because the Catholics had an organized church with headquarters in Rome to organize anti-Turkish resistance), so still today Hungary is about evenly divided between Calvinist Protestants (called locally Református or Reformist) and Roman Catholics.

The Turkish occupation of Hungary came to an end between 1683-1690 when they unsuccessfully attempted to conquer Vienna, failed, and inspired a Christian alliance that nearly drove the Ottomans out of the Balkans. (Check out my article with this link to better understand these wars.) Hungary was "liberated" from the Turks, but now belonged to the Habsburgs (who had ruled northern Hungary since 1526). The Hungarians revolted against the Habsburgs in 1703-11 but unsuccessfully, and Hungary remained in the Habsburg empire.

In 1848 all Europe exploded into revolution, and Hungary was in there with the best of them. Hungary organized a national government and army and managed to drive the Habsburgs out of the country. There were problems with the country's minorities but repeatedly the Hungarians fended off Austrian invasions, even after all the other revolutions failed. In 1849 however the Austrians asked for outside help from the Russians, and a combined Austrian-Russian invasion finally destroyed the new Hungarian state. The Austrians severely repressed the Hungarian rebels and banned just about any expression of Hungarian nationalism - including wearing Hungarian national clothes in public - throughout the 1850s. (A colleague once wrote a paper comparing the Austrians' suppression of Hungarian nationalism with the English suppression of Scottish nationalism; very interesting.)

Luck was on the Hungarians' side however. In 1866 the Austrians had a show-down with their rivals in Germany, the Prussians, and lost spectacularly. The Prussians effectively pushed the Habsburgs out of Germany, and the Austrians needed to establish their power base outside Germany. For this they turned to the second largest group in their empire, the Hungarians, and they created in 1867 the dual-monarchy called Austria-Hungary. The military, foreign office and national economic matters were handled by Vienna but all else was controlled by the Austrian and Hungarian governments. The Hungarians remember this as a second golden age, and many of their cultural classics came from this time. Unfortunately however while at first the Hungarians created good minority laws, when they discovered through the first modern censuses told the Hungarians that their population in Hungary was shrinking and their minorities' populations (Slovaks, Serbs, Romanians, Croats) were growing they panicked and began trying to force their minorities to "Hungarianize" or "Magyarize". This of course did not sit well with these minority peoples and they developed a great hostility towards the Hungarians.

World War I of course did not go well at all for Austria-Hungary. In 1878 Austria-Hungary was given Bosnia-Herzegovina as a protectorate (from the Ottoman Empire) and in 1908 the Empire annexed Bosnia outright. Serbian nationalists wanted to seize Bosnia for Serbia and it was they who organized the assassination of the Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28. June 1914 in Sarajevo. At first Austria wanted to immediately attack Serbia but the Hungarians dragged their feet because they feared bringing more Serbs into the country. This is why the crisis after the assassination dragged on for a month in July 1914, giving other countries time to respond and choose sides in the crisis, setting the stage for a world war. The Serbs of course repulsed the first Austro-Hungarian attacks in 1914, but were defeated in 1915 with German help. The Austro-Hungarian Army also had success against the Italians but the Russian Brusilov Offensive in 1916 destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Army. When defeat came in 1918, the empire collapsed and both Austria and Hungary declared their independence. Oddly enough though Hungary took most of the blame for the war instead of Austria.

For an article on a story from post-World War I Hungary, check out another article here.

Part II comin'

 

[Vrylakas]

Part II:

The Treaty of Trianon between Hungary and the Allies in 1920 was an intrinsically unjust treaty, born not of an Allied commitment to amending local aggravating issues but rather of French political intrigue. France was attempting to construct a cordon sanitaire in Eastern Central Europe ostensibly against the Germans but as well to maintain a level of French political leverage on the Continent against the British, who survived the war better than France did. This project, which came to be known as la Petite Entente, ultimately became distorted and twisted by France's new "allies" in the region - Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the future Yugoslavia. This alliance was a failure from the start because it excluded the region's largest country by population - Poland (because of Czech fears) - and instead of an anti-German alliance it morphed into an anti-Hungarian alliance because all the local members wanted to keep the real estate they'd gained from Hungary. The alliance was already a virtual dead letter by 1929, and when in 1938-39 Hitler dismantled one of its signatory members (with France's acquiescence) none of the other members lifted a finger in Prague's defense. Robert Seton-Watson, the British historian who championed the South Slav cause at the Paris peace talks and who was rabidly anti-Hungarian, would later write of his disgust with the nations of the region as they set about doing exactly the same things he had chastised pre-war Hungary for doing with its minorities.

In the Treaty of Trianon Hungary lost two-thirds of its pre-war territory, and in a single day Hungarians became the largest ethnic minoritry in Europe as 3 million were left outside the Hungarian state borders. U.S. President Wilson pleaded strongly for thin revisions of territory, only a few miles wide, along the Slovak and Partium Romanian borders which would have put almost 1 million of those 3 million back in Hungary (with almost no minorities), but to no avail. Hungary lost more territory than Austria, the senior partner of the Austro-Hungarian dual-monarchy, and indeed Hungary even lost some territory (Burgenland) to Austria. Austria lost very few ethnically German-Austrian regions (South Tyrol) while Hungary lost a substantial amount of ethnically Hungarian regions. France was willing to entertain some of the most extreme territorial claims by its new allies against Hungary to keep them in the la Petite Entente, including Romania’s claim to all Hungarian lands up to the Tisza (Theiss) River – about one-third of modern Hungary (which was refused over Anglo-American complaints) – and Yugoslavia’s claim to Baranya County in southwest Hungary (including the city of Pécs, the 3rd largest city in modern Hungary) which ended with France having to threaten Belgrade to free Pécs from two years of occupation by Serbian troops. The city of Eszék (modern Osijek, Croatia) was ceded to Yugoslavia exclusively on the premise that it was needed as a local rail connection hub. Eduard Benes began to deport ethnic Hungarians from Czechoslovakia after he lost a war with the Kun regime in 1919 but the ACC halted these deportations. (He would try this again after WW II but while he was given the go-ahead for Germans in the Südetenland, he was not allowed to deport Hungarians.)

For this reason Hungary obviously fell into the revisionist camp in interbellum Europe, with those countries (Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Soviet Russia) who wanted to change the Versailles Treaty system borders, versus those (France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) who wanted them preserved at all costs. Interbellum Hungary was lead by the old feudal aristocracy after the failed Kun experiment and the country became increasingly militant in its revisionism. La Petite Entente, in its furor to contain the Hungarians, also cut nearly all economic ties with Hungary - which did a great deal of damage to all of the region's economies, but most of all to Hungary. This meant that in 1929 Hungary had a far more developed and larger volume of trade with the United States across the Atlantic (despite being a land-locked country) than with neighboring Czechoslovakia or Romania, despite economic "synergies". Modern Hungarian historians acknowledge that a fatal flaw in the interbellum Horthy regime’s revisionist policy was its insistence on the recovery of all 1914 borders, and not just those with majority ethnic Hungarian populations – but Hungary was hardly alone with absurd border claims in 1920s and 30s Europe. Italy created the first fascist regime over its desire for the Adriatic in 1922, Greece attempted to conquer most of Anatolia in 1922 and failed leading to an exodus of 1.2 million Greeks to the Greek mainland, Yugoslavia coveted Albania; Poland, Lithuania, Simeon Petlura’s Ukraine and Soviet Russia struggled over western Ukraine and Byelorussia; while France and Britain neatly divided the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern possessions – some of the consequences of which the world is currently struggling with.

This economic aspect is what principally drove Hungary into German arms, and the very first German-Hungarian agreements in the interbellum era are indeed trade agreements. As Hungary became more and more dependent on the German economy, Hitler enticed Horthy and the aristocrats who ruled Budapest with the two Vienna awards that gave part of the Hungarian lands back in Slovakia and Transylvania (Romania), but the country resisted war when it first broke out. Hungary refused transit rights for the Wehrmacht when it attacked Poland in 1939 as well as refusing to provide food or medical aid to the Germans, and provided safe haven for many Polish refugees fleeing the Nazi and Soviet onslaught. (For instance there is a plaque on Fõ utca along the river in Buda commemorating a secret Polish military hospital the Hungarians allowed to be set up.) There are also reports of French POWs escaping from Germany in 1940 finding refuge in Hungary, much to Hitler’s ire. Hungary also refused Hitler’s demands that Hungarian Jews be rounded up and “ghetto-ized”, passing only mild anti-Jewish laws (as compared to those elsewhere). Budapest also maintained good relations with the West, especially Britain, despite Germany’s state of war with them, and quietly suppressed the Hungarian fascist party, Nyilaskereszt (“Arrow Cross”) despite its rabidly pro-Hitler policies.

The Hungarians fumbled into the war when Hitler would no longer accept “No” for an answer, with Yugoslavia in April 1941. Initially they demanded that the Wehrmacht be allowed to use the Hungarian rail system to attack Yugoslavia and when Hungary caved in, Hitler demanded they join in. Hungary had signed a pact of friendship with the Yugoslavs only weeks before, and after caving in to German pressure and ordering the invasion, the Hungarian Prime Minister (Pál Teleki) sat down and blew his brains out with a pistol. (Churchill thought this noble despite the circumstances and preserved an empty chair in memory of Teleki at the Paris peace conferences in 1946-47.) After participating in taking over Bácska, the Hungarian-inhabited part of Yugoslavia (modern Vojvodina) the Hungarians still balked at military cooperation when Hitler brought up Operation Barbarossa. That issue was solved when bombers attacked the eastern Hungarian cities of Kassa (modern Kosice, Slovakia), Munkács and Ruhó; it’s never been proven but everyone assumes it was the Germans using planes with Soviet markings to drag Hungary into the war. It worked; the Hungarians joined the Germans in late June, 1941.

The Hungarian relations with the USSR were complex, but resolved around fear. We have to remember that in pre-1939 Europe Hitler didn’t look so bad to many Continental Europeans. We know him now as the author of the Holocaust and the slaughterer of millions but in 1939 he looked like the guy who was going to finally break the Versailles system. The Polish historian Jan T. Gross reports that even Jews in 1939-1940 occupied Poland fled in large numbers from the Soviet parts to the German occupation parts out of fear of the mythical Russian anti-Semitism. Also, to the smaller states of Eastern Europe, Hitler looked like the guy who could save them from the USSR. The Soviet Union had large land claims against several states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Romania) and repeatedly made its intentions clear. The communist rhetoric about world revolution didn’t help matters, nor its active support for the various communist revolutionary parties in these states. In the 1930s many states feared the USSR more than Germany, or at least as much as Germany. Even in countries like Poland, no friend of Germany, the Germans were remembered as the people who finally broke up the Tsarist Russian empire. In a state like 1930s Hungary, ruled by old-style feudal aristocrats, communist propaganda (as well as memories of Béla Kun’s 1919 Red Terror among Hungarian peasants) and Soviet land claims produced very real fear. The Soviets belatedly launched a charm offensive to keep Hungary out of any German-Soviet war, but Stalin fumbled with his usual mixed messages – sending for instance a collection of captured banners from the failed Hungarian 1848-49 War for Independence back to Budapest in 1940 when the Tsarist Russian army helped defeat the Hungarians, in effect giving the modern Hungarians a gift but as well a warning that another Russian army could cross into Hungary if need be. The Hungarians sought refuge from what they saw as a Soviet threat by keeping close to the Germans – in other words, they hid between a rock and a hard place.

The Germans never fully trusted any of its satellite armies and rarely allowed them near the front lines in the Soviet war. The Hungarians were left mostly to rear-guard duty, as was the case when the Soviets broke out of the Stalingrad salient in January 1943 and caught up with the Hungarian 2nd Army, utterly mauling it (killing more than 150,000). After this battle the Hungarian military’s activities were restricted almost exclusively to Hungary itself. In 1943 the Hungarians found out about an Allied plan to invade Europe through the Balkans and Horthy began negotiations for Hungary to switch sides as soon as the Allied armies reached Hungary. Unfortunately the Allies switched for strategic reasons to an Italian invasion, and worse yet Hitler found out about the negotiations. After prolonged negotiations between Berlin and Budapest (in which Horthy’s son was taken as a hostage) the Germans gave up and occupied Hungary in March, 1944. Still, Horthy tried to exit the war and requested an armistice with the dreaded Soviets in October – which when it became public via Magyar Rádió resulted in the Nazis’ overthrow of Horthy and installation of the Nyilaskereszt with its clinically insane fascist leader, Ferenc (Franz) Szálasi. This is when the Jewish deportations began, and when most Hungarian atrocities against Jews and minorities took place.

As to the accusation that Hungary “got what it deserved” as a German ally through its treatment by the Soviets, I would remind everyone that the Soviet military made little distinction between friends or foes in its march across Central Europe. Soviet soldiers raped and pillaged their way across allied Poland, tearing up all industry they could find (German, Polish or otherwise) and committing mass atrocities along the way. At a time when coal production in Poland was running at about 45% capacity in the immediate post-war years (completely inadequate for Poland’s needs), the Soviets forced Poland to export massive quantities of coal to the USSR until 1955. Thousands of Poles remained in Soviet gulags until Khrushchov’s amnesty in 1955, and of course we all had to lie about the 14,000 murdered Polish pre-war officers killed by the NKVD in 1941 at Katyn (but admitted by Gorbachov in 1990). Let’s face it: Russia achieved in 1945-1989 what Britain and France had achieved in the 18th and 19th centuries; an overseas Empire. The Soviet Union was little more than a vehicle for Russian imperial ambitions, and it treated the victors and vanquished of WW II equally (equally viciously, that is) within its realm.

Hungary in 1945 was a Soviet satellite, forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Empire and occupied militarily until 1989, when the Soviet Empire crumbled. (For some reading on the unsuccessful 1956 Hungarian Revolution, read
my article here.

Modern Hungary of course is a democracy, a member of NATO, a probable member of the EU next year, and home to several American military bases for operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and eastern Croatia.

Hope that helps - feel free to hit me with any questions!