DuringWorld War II, theKingdom of Hungary was a member of theAxis powers.[1] In the 1930s, theKingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade withFascist Italy andNazi Germany to pull itself out of theGreat Depression. Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become more stridently nationalistic by 1938, and Hungary adopted anirredentist policy similar to Germany's, attempting to incorporate ethnic Hungarian areas in neighboring countries into Hungary. Hungary benefited territorially from its relationship with the Axis. Settlements were negotiated regarding territorial disputes with theCzechoslovak Republic, theSlovak Republic, and theKingdom of Romania. On November 20, 1940, Hungary became the fourth member to join the Axis powers when it signed the Tripartite Pact.[2] The following year, Hungarian forces participated in theinvasion of Yugoslavia and theinvasion of the Soviet Union. Their participation was noted by German observers for its particular cruelty, with occupied peoples subjected to arbitrary violence. Hungarian volunteers were sometimes referred to as engaging in "murder tourism."[3]
After two years of war against theSoviet Union, Prime MinisterMiklós Kállay began peace negotiations with the United States and the United Kingdom in autumn of 1943.[4] Berlin was already suspicious of the Kállay government, and in September 1943, the German General Staff prepared a project to defend Hungary with German forces when they learned the Soviet forces were threatening Hungary and soon an armistice was signed between Hungary and the USSR by RegentMiklós Horthy. Soon afterward, Horthy's son was kidnapped by German commandos and Horthy was forced to revoke the armistice. The Regent was then deposed from power, while Hungarian fascist leaderFerenc Szálasi established a new government, with German backing. In March 1944, Hitler declared Budapest a fortress city underOperation Margarethe and to be defended to the last man. German forces were sent to defend Budapest alongside the Hungarian forces (which were strategically positioned on the Buda side of the city which offered high ground defensive positions).In 1945, the Soviet advance reached Budapest which began theBattle of Budapest. Although the Soviet forces suffered much higher casualties, the Hungarian and German forces were eventually overrun by the sheer numbers of the advancing Soviet soldiers.[5]
As the Soviets invaded Hungary and eventually took control of Budapest they began engaging in extensive atrociousSoviet war crimes such as mass murdering of Hungarian troops and civilians (including women and children) and simultaneously, mass raping of Hungarian women.
Approximately 300,000 Hungarian soldiers and more than 600,000 civilians died during World War II, including between 450,000 and 606,000Jews[6] and 28,000Roma.[7] Many cities were damaged, most notably the capitalBudapest. Most Jews in Hungary were protected from deportation to Germanextermination camps for the first few years of the war, although they were subject to a prolonged period of oppression by anti-Jewish laws that imposed limits on their participation in public and economic life.[8] From the start of the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, Jews and Roma were swiftly deported toAuschwitz concentration camp. Hungary's borders were returned to their pre-1938 lines after its surrender.
InHungary, the joint effect of theGreat Depression and theTreaty of Trianon resulted in shifting the political mood of the country towards theright. The Treaty - imposed on the vanquished nations of theFirst World War by the victors - effectively reduced Hungary's territory by two-thirds. Efforts to reverse the severance of these territories took a central role in Hungarian political life for the next two decades. In 1932, the regentMiklós Horthy appointed a new prime minister,Gyula Gömbös. Gömbös was identified with theHungarian National Defence Association (Magyar Országos Véderő Egylet, or MOVE). He led Hungarian international policy towards closer cooperation with Germany, and started aneffort to assimilate minorities in Hungary. Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany (21 February 1934)[9] that led to fast expansion of the economy, drawing Hungary out of the Great Depression but making the country dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and export revenues.
Gömbös advocated a number of social reforms,one-party government[citation needed], revision of theTreaty of Trianon, and Hungary's withdrawal from theLeague of Nations. Although he assembled a strong political machine, his efforts to achieve his vision and reforms were frustrated by a parliament composed mostly ofIstván Bethlen's supporters and by Hungary's creditors, who forced Gömbös to follow conventional policies in dealing with the economic and financial crisis. The result of the 1935 elections gave Gömbös more solid support inparliament. He succeeded in gaining control of the ministries of finance, industry, and defense and in replacing several key military officers with his supporters. In October 1936, he died due to kidney problems without realizing his goals.
Meanwhile, ultra-nationalism was on the rise. In 1935, Hungarian extremistFerenc Szálasi founded a fascist party, The Party of National Will, which evolved into theArrow Cross Party, which closely mimicked Nazi politics and anti-semitism.
Hungary used its relationship with Germany to attempt to revise the Treaty of Trianon. In 1938, Hungary openly repudiated the treaty's restrictions on its armed forces.Adolf Hitler gave promises to return lost territories and threats of military intervention and economic pressure to encourage the Hungarian Government to support the policies and goals of Nazi Germany. Gömbös' successor,Kálmán Darányi, attempted to appease both Nazis and Hungarianantisemites by passing the First Jewish Law, which set quotas limiting Jews to 20% of positions in several professions. The law satisfied neither the Nazis nor Hungary's own radicals, and when Darányi resigned in May 1938Béla Imrédy was appointed prime minister.
Imrédy's attempts to improve Hungary's diplomatic relations with theUnited Kingdom initially made him very unpopular with Germany and Italy. Aware of Germany'sAnschluss with Austria in March, he realized that he could not afford to alienate Germany and Italy on a long-term basis: in the autumn of 1938 his foreign policy became very much pro-German and pro-Italian.[1] Intent on amassing a powerbase in Hungarian right wing politics, Imrédy started to suppress political rivals, so the increasingly influential Arrow Cross Party was harassed, and eventually banned by Imrédy's administration. As Imrédy drifted further to the right, he proposed that the government be reorganized alongtotalitarian lines and drafted a harsher Second Jewish Law. Imrédy's political opponents, however, forced his resignation in February 1939 by presenting documents showing that his grandfather was a Jew. Nevertheless, the new government of CountPál Teleki approved the Second Jewish Law, which cut the quotas on Jews permitted in the professions and in business. Furthermore, the new law defined Jews byrace instead of just religion, thus altering the status of those who had formerlyconverted fromJudaism toChristianity.
Nazi Germany andFascist Italy sought to peacefully enforce the claims of Hungarians on territories Hungary had lost with the signing of the 1920Treaty of Trianon. Two significant territorial awards were made. These awards were known as theFirst Vienna Award and theSecond Vienna Award.
In October 1938, theMunich Agreement caused the dissolution of theCzechoslovak Republic and the creation of theCzecho-Slovak Republic (also known as the "Second Czechoslovak Republic"). Some autonomy was granted to Slovakia and toCarpathian Ruthenia in the new republic. On 5 October, about 500 members of the HungarianRagged Guard infiltrated Slovakia and Ruthenia as "guerrillas". On 9 October, the Kingdom of Hungary started talks with the Czecho-Slovak Republic over Magyar-populated regions of southern Slovakia and southern Ruthenia. On 11 October, the Hungarian guards were defeated by Czecho-Slovak troops atBerehovo and Borzsava in Ruthenia. The Hungarians suffered approximately 350 casualties and, by 29 October, the talks were deadlocked.[10]
On 2 November 1938, theFirst Vienna Award transferred to Hungary parts of southern Slovakia andCarpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia, an area amounting to 11,927 km2 and a population of 869,299 (86.5% of which were Hungarians[11]). Between 5 and 10 November, Hungarian armed forces occupied the newly transferred territories.[10]
In March 1939, the Czecho-Slovak Republic was dissolved,Germany invaded it, and theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established. On 14 March,Slovakia declared itself to be an independent state. On 15 March,Carpatho-Ukraine declared itself to be an independent state. Hungary rejected the independence of Carpatho-Ukraine and, between 14 and 18 March, Hungarian armed forces occupied the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia and ousted the government ofAvgustyn Voloshyn. By contrast, Hungary recognized the Germanpuppet state of Slovakia led by theClerical FascistJozef Tiso[12] but on 23 March 1939, Hungarian attacks on Slovakia on the east claiming a border dispute, led to a localized armed conflict between the two countries. TheSlovak–Hungarian War, also known as the "Little War", ended with Hungary gaining the easternmost strip of Slovakia, 1697 km2.
In September 1940, with troops massing on both sides of the Hungarian-Romanian border, war was averted by theSecond Vienna Award. This award transferred to Hungary the northern half ofTransylvania, with a total area of 43,492 km2 and a total population of 2,578,100. Regarding demographics, the Romanian census from 1930 counted 38%Hungarians and 49%Romanians, while the Hungarian census from 1941 counted 53.5%Hungarians and 39.1%Romanians.[13] While according to the Romanian estimations in 1940 prior to theSecond Vienna Award, about 1,300,000 people or 50% of the population was Romanian and according to the Hungarian estimations in 1940 shortly following theSecond Vienna Award, about 1,150,000 people or 48% of the population was Romanian.[14] The establishment of Hungarian rule met sometimes insurgency, most notable cases are theIp andTreznea incidents in Northern Transylvania.
Afterinvading Yugoslavia on 11 April 1941, Hungary annexed sections ofBaranja,Bačka,Međimurje, andPrekmurje.[15] The returned territories – 11,417 km2 – had a population of 1,025,508 which comprised 36.6% Hungarians, 19% Germans, 16% Serbs and 28.4% others.[16] Nearly one year later theNovi Sad raid was conducted initially targetingPartisan resistance,[17] while between 1944–45, it was followed by thepurges by thePartisan movement.
Following the two Vienna awards, a number of counties that had been lost in whole or part by theTreaty of Trianon were restored to Hungary. As a result, some previouslycounty of temporary united administration – in Hungarianközigazgatásilag egyelőre egyesített vármegye (k.e.e. vm.) – were de-merged and restored to their pre-1920 boundaries.
The region ofSub-Carpathia was planned to be granted a special autonomous status with the intention that (eventually) it would be self-governed by the Ruthenian minority. This was prepared and billed in the Hungarian Parliament, but in the end, after the outbreak of theSecond World War it never passed through.[18] However, in the corresponding territory the Governorate of Subcarpathia was formed which was divided into three, theadministrative branch offices of Ung (Hungarian:Ungi közigazgatási kirendeltség), Bereg (Hungarian:Beregi közigazgatási kirendeltség) and Máramaros (Hungarian:Máramarosi közigazgatási kirendeltség), havingHungarian andRusyn language as official languages.
On 20 November 1940, under pressure from Germany, Hungarian prime ministerPál Teleki signed theTripartite Pact. In December 1940 Teleki also signed an ephemeral Treaty of Eternal Friendship with theKingdom of Yugoslavia, which was led by aregent,Prince Paul, who was also under German pressure.
On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact on behalf of Yugoslavia. Two days later, a Yugoslaviancoup d'état removed Prince Paul, replaced him with pro-BritishKing Peter, and threatened the success of the plannedGerman invasion of the Soviet Union.
Hitler asked the Hungarians to support his invasion of Yugoslavia. He promised to return some territory to Hungary in exchange for military cooperation. On 3 April 1941, unable to prevent Hungary's participation in the war alongside Germany, Teleki committed suicide. The right-wing radicalLászló Bárdossy succeeded him as prime minister.
Three days after Teleki's death, theLuftwaffebombed Belgrade without warning. The German army invaded Yugoslavia and quickly crushed Yugoslavian armed resistance. Horthy dispatched theHungarian Third Army tooccupy Vojvodina.
Hungary did not immediately participate in theinvasion of theSoviet Union. The Axis invasion began on 22 June 1941, but Hitler did not directly ask for Hungarian assistance. Nonetheless, many Hungarian officials argued for participation in the war in order to encourage Hitler not to favour Romania in the event of border revisions in Transylvania. On 26 June 1941, unidentified airplanesbombed Košice (Kassa). Although Hungarian authorities assumed Soviet responsibility, some speculation exists that this was afalse-flag attack instigated by Germany (possibly in cooperation with Romania) to give Hungary acasus belli for joiningOperation Barbarossa and the war,[19][20] although it is plausible that Soviet bombers mistook Kassa for nearby Prešov in Slovakia. Hungary declared war against the Soviets on 27 June 1941, less than 24 hours after the Košice bombing raid.
On 1 July 1941, under German instruction, the Hungarian Carpathian Group (Karpat Group) attacked the12th Soviet Army. Attached to theGerman 17th Army, the Karpat Group advanced far intoSoviet Ukraine, and later into southernRussia. At theBattle of Uman, fought between 3 and 8 August, the Karpat Group's mechanized corps acted as one half of a pincer that encircled the6th Soviet Army and the 12th Soviet Army. This action resulted in the capture or destruction of twenty Soviet divisions.
In July 1941 the Hungarian government transferred responsibility for 18,000 Jews from Carpato-Ruthenian Hungary to theGerman armed forces. These Jews, without Hungarian citizenship, were sent to a location nearKamenets-Podolski, where in one of the first acts of mass-killing of Jews during World War II,Nazi mobile killing unitsshot all but two thousand of these individuals.[21][22] Bárdossy then passed the Third Jewish Law in August 1941, prohibiting marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews.
Six months after the mass murder at Kamianets-Podilskyi in January 1942, Hungarian troopsmassacred 3,000 Serbian and Jewish hostages nearNovi Sad, Yugoslavia.
Worried about Hungary's increasing reliance on Germany, Admiral Horthy forced Bárdossy to resign and replaced him withMiklós Kállay, a veteran conservative of Bethlen's government. Kállay continued Bárdossy's policy of supporting Germany against the Red Army while also initiating negotiations with the Allies. Hungarian participation in Operation Barbarossa during 1941 was limited in part because the country had no real large army before 1939, and time to train and equip troops had been short. But by 1942, tens of thousands of Hungarians were fighting on the eastern front in theRoyal Hungarian Army.
During theBattle of Stalingrad, theHungarian Second Army suffered terrible losses. The Soviet breakthrough at theDon River sliced directly through the Hungarian units. Shortly after the fall of Stalingrad in January 1943, the Soviets crushed the Hungarian Second Army at theBattle of Voronezh. Ignoring German orders to stand and fight to the death, the bewildered Hungarian troops, fighting without antitank weaponry or armored support, harassed by partisan groups and Soviet air attacks, and having to endure the Russian winter weather, tried in vain to retreat. Most of the survivors were taken prisoner by the Soviet army, and total casualties numbered more than 100,000 men. The Hungarian army ceased to exist as an effective fighting force, and the Germans pulled them from the front.
While Kállay was prime minister, the Jews endured increased economic andpolitical repression, although many, particularly those in Budapest, were temporarily protected from thefinal solution. For most of the war, the Hungarian Jews lived an uneasy existence. They were deprived of most freedoms, but were not subjected to physical harm, and Horthy tried to contain anti-Semitic groups such as the Arrow Cross. After two years of war against theSoviet Union, Prime MinisterMiklós Kállay began peace negotiations with the United States and the United Kingdom in autumn of 1943,[4] and 1944 Horthy secretly started peace talks with the Soviet Union and attempted to create the National Centrist-Governance (Nemzeti Középkormány) through the series of secret negotiations with the Hungarian Front (an anti-German rebel group) to push back the management's pro-German far-right endeavors. Berlin was already suspicious of the Kállay's government, and in September 1943, the German General Staff prepared a project to invade and occupy Hungary. At the request of the Allies, there were no connections made with the Soviets.
Aware of Kállay's deceit and fearing that Hungary might conclude a separate peace, in March 1944 Hitler launchedOperation Margarethe and ordered German troops to occupy Hungary. Horthy was confined to a castle, in essence, placed under temporaryhouse arrest until the occupation could be fully implemented.Döme Sztójay, an avid supporter of the Nazis, became the new prime minister. Sztójay governed with the aid of a German military governor,Edmund Veesenmayer. The Hungarian populace was not happy with their nation effectively reduced to a German protectorate, but Berlin threatened to occupy Hungary withSlovak,Croat, and Romanian troops if they did not comply. The threat of these ancestral enemies on Hungarian soil was seen as far worse than German control. Hungary kept entire divisions on the Romanian border while the troops of both nations were fighting and dying together in the Russian winter.
As the Soviets pushed westward, Sztojay's government mustered new armies. The Hungarian troops again suffered terrible losses, but now had a motive to protect their homeland from Soviet occupation.
In May 1944, the Nazi administration, with the collaboration of the Hungarian gendarmerie, began transporting the Jews of Hungary's rural regions toAuschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In roughly eight weeks, the German and Hungarian authorities entrained some 437,000 Jews to the camps, where almost all of them were murdered. By many estimates, one in three of all Jews who died at Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew who arrived in those eight weeks of 1944.[23] On July 8, under pressure from Allied contacts and the Pope, Horthy used his remaining influence to discontinue the transports.[24]
In August 1944, Horthy replaced Sztójay with the anti-fascist generalGéza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting interior ministerBéla Horváth orderedgendarmes to prevent the deportation of Hungarian citizens. The Germans were unhappy with the situation but could not do a great deal about it. Horthy's actions thus bought the Jews of Budapest a few months of time.
In September 1944, Soviet forces crossed the Hungarian border. On 15 October, Horthy announced that Hungary had asked for an armistice with the Soviet Union. The Hungarian army ignored Horthy's orders, fighting desperately to keep the Soviets out. The Germans launchedOperation Panzerfaust and, by kidnapping his sonMiklós Horthy Jr., forced Horthy to abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name the leader of theArrow Cross Party,Ferenc Szálasi, as prime minister. Horthy resigned and Szálasi became prime minister of a newGovernment of National Unity (Nemzeti Összefogás Kormánya) controlled by the Germans. Horthy was taken to Germany as a prisoner but survived the war and spent his last years exiled in Portugal, dying in 1957.
In cooperation with the Nazis, Szálasi attempted to resume deportations of Jews, but Germany's rapidly disintegrating communications largely prevented this from happening. Nonetheless, the Arrow Cross launched a reign of terror against the Jews of Budapest. Thousands were tortured, raped and murdered in the last months of the war, their property looted or destroyed. Swedish diplomatRaoul Wallenberg saved thousands of Budapest's Jews using Swedish protective passports. He was ultimately taken prisoner by the Soviets and died some years later in a labor camp. Other foreign diplomats such asNuncioAngelo Rotta,Giorgio Perlasca,Carl Lutz,Friedrich Born,Harald Feller,Angel Sanz Briz andGeorge Mandel-Mantello also organized false papers and safehouses for Jews in Budapest. Of the approximately 800,000 Jews residing within Hungary's expanded borders of 1941, only 200,000 (about 25%) survivedthe Holocaust.[25] An estimated 28,000 HungarianRoma were also killed as part of thePorajmos.
Soon Hungary itself became a battlefield. Szálasi promiseda Greater Hungary and prosperity for the peasants, but in reality Hungary was crumbling and its armies were slowly being destroyed. As an integral part of German generalMaximilian Fretter-Pico'sArmeegruppe Fretter-Pico, the reformedHungarian Second Army enjoyed a modest level of combat success. From 6 to 29 October 1944 during theBattle of Debrecen,Armeegruppe Fretter-Pico managed to achieve a major win on the battlefield. Avoiding encirclement itself, it encircled and severely mauled three Soviet tank corps serving under the Mobile Group ofIssa Pliyev. Earlier in the same battle, Mobile Group Pliyev had sliced through theHungarian Third Army. But success was costly and, unable to replace lost armor and heavy artillery munitions, the Hungarian Second Army was defeated on 1 December 1944. The remnants of the Second Army were incorporated into the Third Army.
In October 1944, theHungarian First Army was attached to the German1st Panzer Army, participating defensively against the Red Army's advance towardBudapest. On 28 December 1944, a provisional government was formed in Hungary under acting prime ministerBéla Miklós. Szálasi and Miklós each claimed to be the legitimate head of government. The Germans and pro-German Hungarians loyal to Szálasi fought on.
The Soviets and Romanians completed the encirclement of Budapest on 29 December 1944. The battle for the city turned into theSiege of Budapest. WhileKállay himself was in theDachau Concentration Camp at the time, the Sovereignty Movement (Függetlenségi Mozgalom) he supported, fought alongside the Soviets. Famous people from the group wereSzent-Györgyi Albert biochemist (who was proposed to be the prime minister) andVárnai Zseni revolutionary writer.[26] During the fight, most of what remained of the Hungarian First Army was destroyed about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of Budapest in a running battle from 1 January to 16 February 1945. On 20 January 1945, representatives of the Miklós provisional government signed an armistice in Moscow. In January 1945, 32,000 ethnic Germans from within Hungary were arrested and transported to the Soviet Union as forced laborers. In some villages, the entire adult population were taken to labor camps in theDonets Basin.[27][28]: 21 Many died there as a result of hardships and poor treatment. Overall, between 100,000 and 170,000 Hungarian ethnic Germans were transported to the Soviet Union.[29]: 38
The remaining German and Hungarian units within Budapest surrendered on 13 February 1945. Although the German forces in Hungary were generally defeated, the Germans had one more surprise for the Soviets. On 6 March 1945, the Germans launched theLake Balaton Offensive, attempting to hold on to the Axis' last source of oil. It was their final operation of the war and it quickly failed. By 19 March 1945, Soviet troops had recaptured all the territory lost during the 13-day German offensive.[30]: 182
After the failed offensive, the Germans in Hungary were eliminated. Most of what remained of the Hungarian Third Army was destroyed about 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of Budapest between 16 and 25 March 1945. From 26 March and 15 April, the Soviets and Bulgarians launched theNagykanizsa–Körmend Offensive and more Hungarian remnants were destroyed as part ofArmy Group South fighting alongside the2nd Panzer Army. By the start of April, the Germans, with the Arrow Cross in tow, had completely vacated Hungarian soil.
The Soviet Union established aProvisional National Government of Hungary [ru] in the Soviet-occupied city of Debrecen on 22 December 1944. It began forming small military units to assist the Soviet Union, the largest of which was theVolunteer Regiment of Buda. Following the Soviet occupation of Budapest in February 1945 and the collapse of the Iron Cross government in March, the Provisional National Government became the temporary semi-independent government of Hungary under the supervision of the Soviet Union.[31][32][33][34]
Officially, Soviet operations in Hungary ended on 4 April 1945, when the last German troops were expelled. Some pro-fascist Hungarians such as Szálasi escaped—for a time—with the Germans. A few pro-German Hungarian units fought on until the end of the war. Units such as theSzent László Infantry Division ended the war in southernAustria.
On 8 May 1945 at 4:10 p.m., the 259th Infantry Regiment of the 65th Infantry Division (commanded by Major GeneralStanley Eric Reinhart) of the United States Army was authorized[citation needed] to accept the surrender of the 1st Hungarian Cavalry Division (1stHuszár Division,[35]Hungarian:Huszár Hadosztály) and of the 1st Hungarian Armoured Division,[36]then in the area of present-day Austria.Surrender and movement across theEnns River had to be completed prior to midnight.
In the town ofLandsberg inBavaria, a Hungarian garrison stood in parade formation to surrender as Americans forces advanced through the area very late in the war.[37] A few Hungarian soldiers ended the war inDenmark in some of the last territory not yet occupied by the Allies.
This is a list of battles and other combat operations in World War II in which Hungarian forces took part.
On 19 March 1944 German troops occupied Hungary, prime minister Miklós Kállay was deposed and soon mass deportations of Jews to Germandeath camps inoccupied Poland began. SS-ObersturmbannführerAdolf Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee the large-scale deportations. Between 15 May and 9 July, Hungarian authorities deported 437,402 Jews. All but 15,000 of these Jews were sent toAuschwitz-Birkenau,[21] and 90% of those were immediately killed. It has been estimated that one-third of the murdered victims at Auschwitz were Hungarian.[38] Sztojay, unlike previous prime ministers, answered mostly to Berlin and was thus able to act independently of Horthy. However, reports of the conditions in the concentration camps led the admiral to resist his policies.
In early July 1944, Horthy stopped the deportations, and after the failed attempt on Hitler's life, the Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations, although some smaller groups continued to be deported by train. In late August, Horthy refused Eichmann's request to restart the deportations. Himmler ordered Eichmann to leave Budapest.[39]
Theforced labor service system was introduced in Hungary in 1939. The system affected primarily the Jewish population, but many people belonging to minorities, sectarians, leftists and Roma were also inducted.
Thirty-five thousand to 40,000 forced laborers, mostly Jews or of Jewish origin, served in theHungarian Second Army, which fought in the USSR (see below). Eighty percent of them—28,000 to 32,000 people—never returned; they died either on the battlefield or in captivity.
Approximately half of the 6,000 Jewish forced laborers working in the copper mines inBor, Yugoslavia (nowSerbia) were executed by the Germans during thedeath march from Bor to Győr in August–October 1944, including the 35-year-old poetMiklós Radnóti, shot at the Hungarian village ofAbda for being too weak to continue after a savage beating.[40][41]
In autumn of 1941 anti-German demonstrations took place in Hungary. On 15 March 1942, the anniversary of the outbreak of the1848–49 War of Independence, a crowd of 8,000 people gathered at theSándor Petőfi monument in Budapest to demand an "independent democratic Hungary". The undergroundHungarian Communist Party published a newspaper and leaflets, 500 communist activists were arrested and the party's leadersFerenc Rózsa andZoltán Schönherz were executed.[citation needed]
The Hungarian underground opposition contributed little to the military defeat of Nazism. In July 1943 theSmallholders Party adoptedEndre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky's policy of working more closely with theHungarian Social Democratic Party and the Communists and on 31 July demanded from the government an end to hostilities and joining the Allies even at the price of armed conflict with Germany. At the beginning of August 1943 a programme of action was formally concluded with the Social Democrats and on 11 September they issued a joint declaration against the war on the side of Germany.[citation needed]
Various opposition groups deprived of their leaders most of whom had been arrested by theGestapo after the German occupation in March 1944 joined forces in May 1944 in the Communist-inspiredHungarian Front [hu] (Magyar Front). They demanded a "new struggle of liberation" against the German occupation forces and their collaborators and called for the creation of a new democratic Hungary after the war. The representatives of the Hungarian Front, being informed by Horthy of plans for an armistice on 11 October, founded theCommittee of Liberation of the Hungarian National Uprising [hu;tr] on 11 November 1944. Although immediately weakened by the arrest and execution of its leaders, with GeneralJános Kiss among them, it called for an armed uprising against the German forces which took the form of limited isolated partisan actions and attacks on German military installations.[42]
During the first months of Arrow Cross rule, resistors infiltrated the newly formedKISKA security division and used it as legal cover.[43]
Armed and violent resistance began shortly after the Third Reich occupied Hungary; most of the resistance groups held to left-wing views or consisted of fighters from neighbouring countries. There were Communist partisan detachments which were sent to Hungary from the Soviet Union, but these failed to turn their activities into a popular movement.Sándor Nógrádi [de;hu;sk] who was parachuted from the USSR in 1944[44] became the commander of such guerilla unit. In the Hungarian People's Republic, the Communist guerillas sent from the USSR and their activities were magnified and exaggerated, while the other partisan groups and non-violent activists, including some far-right intellectuals, were silenced, and today organized Communist partisan activity in Hungary is largely considered a myth, possibly because of the treatment of the subject by theMarxist-Leninist historiography. Hungarian historian Ákos Bartha noted that the "non-Communist" resistance in Hungary "have been relegated to the no-man's land in terms of memory politics in the 21st century", while László Bernát Veszprémy writes that "the current consensus of mainstream historiography is that there was no such thing as armed resistance in Hungary during the German occupation." However, he cites cases of armed struggle described by Hungarian and German authorities and argues that the materials of "the national committees after the Soviet occupation" and "people’s prosecutors cases and the people's tribunal cases" "still need to be explored by Hungarian historians."[45][46]
In December 1944, the USSR supported the formation of a Hungarian government alternate to Arrow Cross regime which was headed byBéla Miklós. During theBattle of Budapest, the USSR used theVolunteer Regiment of Buda composed of the Hungarian POWs; it was to become a Hungarian division of the Red Army, but the battle had finished by the time the division was formed.
By 2 May 1945, Hitler was dead andBerlin surrendered. On 7 May, GeneralAlfred Jodl, the German Chief of Staff, signed thesurrender of Germany. On 23 May, the "Flensburg Government" was dissolved. On 11 June, the Allies agreed to make 8 May 1945 the official "Victory in Europe" day.[30]: 298
TheTreaty of Peace with Hungary[47] signed on 10 February 1947 declared that "The decisions of the Vienna Award of 2 November 1938 are declared null and void" and Hungarian boundaries were fixed along the former frontiers as they existed on 1 January 1938, except a minor loss of territory on the Czechoslovakian border. Two-thirds of the ethnic German minority (202,000 people) was deported to Germany in 1946–48, and there was a forced "population exchange" between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
On 1 February 1946, theKingdom of Hungary was formally abolished and replaced by theSecond Republic of Hungary. Post-war Hungary was eventually taken over by a Soviet-allied government and became part of theEastern Bloc. ThePeople's Republic of Hungary was declared in 1949 and lasted until theRevolutions of 1989 and theEnd of Communism in Hungary.
The 1st Cavalry Division was mobilised in April 1944 under pressure from the Germans [...]. [...] On 23 September the now renamed 1stHuszár Division returned to Budapest [...].
In late July there was a lull in the deportations. After the failed attempt on Hitler's life, the Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations. Smaller groups continued to be deported by train. At least one German police message decoded by GC&CS revealed that one trainload of 1,296 Jews from the town of Sarvar in western Hungary Hungarian Jews being rounded up in Budapest (Courtesy: USHMM) had departed for Auschwitz on August 4.112 In late August Horthy refused Eichmann's request to restart the deportations. Himmler ordered Eichmann to leave Budapest
