1941: Hungary

Within the Nazi Orbit.

This central European kingdom continued during 1941 to be ruled by Admiral Nicholas Horthy as regent representing the Hungarian throne, which has been vacant since 1918. Under Admiral Horthy, Hungary continued its policy of close collaboration with Germany and of integration into the 'New Order,' a policy that brought Hungary actual results in the aggrandizement of her territory, although accompanied by many internal difficulties and by complete subservience to Germany. Hungary continued to make territorial gains in 1941. By the first Vienna award of Nov. 2, 1938, she received 4,605 square miles, with a population of 1,044,438, from Czechoslovakia. She annexed, in March 1939, an additional 4,690 square miles with 671,962 inhabitants, mainly the territory of Carpathian Ukraine or Ruthenia. On Aug. 30, 1940, by the second Vienna award, she received from Rumania, the northern part of Transylvania, about 16,642 square miles with a population of 2,392,603. In April 1941, she annexed Yugoslav territory in the Voivodina comprising about 8,000 square miles with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants.

The war had serious effects on the country's economy. Italy's entrance into the war virtually cut Hungary off from overseas markets, and made impossible her imports of many essential raw materials. That brought about not only a scarcity of certain industrial products but also a rise in prices, especially because a very poor agricultural harvest has also led to an increase in food prices and cut down Hungarian exports in wheat and other agrarian products.

Early in 1941, the country mourned the loss of two of its leading political figures. On Jan. 27, Count Stephen Csaky, the foreign minister, died. He had been instrumental in bringing Hungary more and more into Germany's orbit, in engineering Hungary's adherence to the Rome-Berlin-Tokio Pact in November 1940, and in concluding a pact of eternal friendship with Yugoslavia on Dec. 12, 1940. Both of these pacts were unanimously approved on Feb. 4, 1941, by the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies. Csaky was replaced by a Hungarian diplomat, Laszlo Bardossy, who followed without, hesitation the pro-German policy of his predecessor and was ready to adopt it completely even so far as to involve Hungary without reservation in Germany's wars and thus sign away her independence. By the end of March the relations between Germany and Yugoslavia had become so strained that German aggression against Yugoslavia could be expected at any moment. It was under these circumstances that the Hungarian prime minister, Count Paul Teleki, finding himself pledged to allow German troops to occupy Hungarian territory and thus involve Hungary in a war against Yugoslavia with whom but three months before she had concluded a pact of everlasting friendship and non-aggression, committed suicide on April 3. By granting concessions, Count Teleki had hoped to be able to keep Hungary from disaster and dishonor. With his hopes shattered he did not wish to live longer. But his warning remained unheeded.

Foreign minister Laszlo Bardossy became prime minister, and did not hesitate to follow a policy which put Hungary completely into German vassalage. It is true that Hungary could occupy, thanks to the German conquest, a part of northeastern Yugoslavia in which there was a Hungarian minority, and that this land in the Serbian Voivodina was of great fertility. But in occupying this land the Hungarians met with bitter resistance on the part of its Serb inhabitants, and there were many reports of mass executions as a consequence.

Attitude toward Minorities.

However, Hungary began to follow a more enlightened policy toward its many minorities whose oppression before the First World War had been the fundamental cause for the dismemberment of Hungary. On Feb. 2, a decree granted priority of minority languages over Hungarian in the approximately 1,200 minority schools of the country. The then Hungarian premier, Count Teleki, took the opportunity to emphasize the desire of the state not to create cause of irritation between it and the minorities, granting to parents the right to decide which language the children should regard as their mother tongue and be taught in it. Later during the year a Slovak Party was founded in Koice, to organize the large Slovak minority for collaboration with the Hungarian state while maintaining its rights and civilization.

Relations with Rumania and Slovakia.

But the relations between Hungary and her neighbors, Rumania and Slovakia, remained extremely strained throughout the year. Hungary had annexed in 1938 and 1939 important parts of Slovakia with a very large Slovakian population, and in 1940 the annexation of northern Transylvania had deeply wounded the national feelings of the Rumanians who regarded Transylvania as one of the most important parts of their national heritage. The desire of the Rumanians for the reconquest of Transylvania was frequently and openly expressed. At the same time Hungary was in no way satisfied with her annexations, and wished to restore the frontiers of the Hungarian kingdom of 1918, in which the Hungarians themselves had formed only a minority of the population. Thus Hungary had aspirations for the remainder of Transylvania which by the end of 1941 still belonged to Rumania, and for the whole of Slovakia which had been constituted by the Germans as an independent state under their protection.

These internal hostilities among the satellites of Germany were not even silenced by the fact that all three of them fought with Germany in her war against the Soviet Union which she started on June 22. Hungary, which had now become entirely a part of the German system, joined the war immediately and Hungarian troops fought against the Soviet armies.

At War with the United States.

As was to be expected, when Germany declared war against the United States, in December 1941, Hungary immediately followed suit. But meanwhile, Hungarians who had managed to leave Hungary, organized a Free Hungarian movement in New York and in London under the leadership of Tibor von Eckhardt, who had been one of the leading Hungarian politicians of the past twenty years and chairman of the party of the small Hungarian farmers. Although he was deprived of his citizenship by the Hungarian government as a result of his action, nevertheless he appealed to all Hungarians against the policy of their government which in his opinion could not lead to Hungary's true greatness or honor, and bade them to establish Hungary's independence in union with all other free peoples. See also YUGOSLAVIA.