John Lukacs
The Tragedy of Two Hungarian Prime Ministers
[...]
Béla Imrédy was the Prime Minister of Hungary from May 1938 to February 1939: a very crucial time. This was a turning-point in the political history of Hungary as well as in Imrédy's life. Before 1938-1939 the main principle of every Hungarian government and of Hungarian public opinion was to aim for an eventual revision of the excessive and injurious provisions of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which had deprived Hungary of more than two-thirds of its traditional territory and left three million Hungarians under foreign rule. But in March 1938, after the German incorporation of Austria, the Third Reich appeared at the very frontiers of Hungary, with tremendous external and internal consequences. Thereafter the principal duty of Hungarian governments was to maintain Hungary's independence at least to a considerable degree. But about this there was no consensus among the political leaders, or within public opinion. A fair amount of Hungarian independence remained until the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944; but-as this reviewer has stated often-during the years 1938-1945 a political and intellectual and emotional civil war was raging in Hungary between those who believed that Hungary's exterior and interior alignment with Hitler's Third Reich was desirable as well as advantageous for the nation, and those who saw it to be catastrophic as well as immoral.
Imrédy was one of the central figures of this contest, and well beyond the time of his Premiership. The most debatable (and crucial) event of his career was his sudden and unexpected decision, crystallizing during a few days in early September 1938, to choose his alignment with the Third Reich and National Socialism. Ever since that the people, his contemporaries and later historians, have been discussing the sources of that mysterious turnabout: that is, Imrédy's motives and purposes. Now we have adequate documentation in a massive volume, replete with documents and testimonies and Imrédy's own words, recording Imrédy's postwar trial (November 1945). He was condemned to death as a war criminal and executed in February 1946.
Unlike most of the spokesmen of a National Socialist inclination Imrédy was a man of more than considerable intelligence. His expert knowledge in high financial matters led to his presidency of the National Bank of Hungary in 1935. The reputation of his conservatism and of his judiciousness made the Regent Horthy appoint Imrédy to the Prime Ministership in May 1938. This came at a time when the German and National Socialist influences in Hungary grew by leaps and bounds. (In the election of May 1939, the first national election of universal and secret suffrage, National Socialists won no less than 30 per cent of the vote. Their popularity was even greater throughout 1938.) Consequently Imrédy's prime ministership was welcomed with great relief by the moderates in Parliament and throughout the country, by old-fashioned conservatives, as well as by Liberals and even by the small Social Democratic Party. Imrédy's first public speeches confirmed this trust. He also decreed a few severe measures against National Socialists and their agitation.
Then, in late August 1938, the Regent and Imrédy and their entourage visited Hitler at a great state occasion in Northern Germany. A few days after his return Imrédy spoke at Kaposvár. The tone of his speech was in startling contrast with his earlier pronouncements. Thereafter more and more of his statements and decisions showed a closer and closer alignment not only to the
Third Reich but to the ideology of a national socialism. Increasingly they
suggested his purpose of a drastic reformation of Hungary's social structure,
including a reduction of the existing features of a remnant feudalism but also
of parliamentarism. This brought about a serious political crisis within the
goverment party, a split forcing Imrédy to resign. His next move was to form a new national movement, not a mere party, led by himself. The Regent felt
compelled to reappoint Imrédy as Prime Minister for the second time. The latter, among other things, was already proposing a second anti-Jewish law, restricting the civil rights of the Jewish population of Hungary severely. But now, Imrédy's political adversaries moved. They found documents proving that Imrédy had a Jewish ancestor, three generations removed. This made it possible for the Regent to force Imrédy's resignation in February 1939. The bitterness between Horthy and Imrédy persisted thereafter. It was one of the keys to Imrédy's subsequent behaviour.
He was no longer Prime Minister but his political ambitions and his career went on, with not inconsiderable effects. His convictions of not only the necessity but of the merits of a German alignment, together with his convictions of the validity of the ideas of National Socialism (and of anti-Semitism) marked his personality and his political career. He was not a member of the various Hungarian Arrow Cross (National Socialist) parties, mostly because of their intrigues and because of his appreciation of their intellectual poverty; but he was their ally, almost without exception. In Parliament and elsewhere he attacked the cautious international and domestic policies and moves of his successors. He worked with German officials and agents, including the sinister Edmund Veesenmayer in 1943, who then in March 1944 would be empowered by Hitler to be his principal commissioner in Hungary. Imrédy's animosity against the Regent was also evident. When Hitler decided to occupy Hungary and install an entirely subservient government under Sztójay, Imrédy welcomed that. Two months later he was made its Minister of Economics. He made himself leader of a new paramilitary organization, The Comradeship of the Eastern Front. After August 1944 he withdrew from political activities, but he remained in basic accord with the extremist Szálasi Arrow Cross regime, retreating with them to Austria where he lived to see the end of World War II. American military agents arrested him soon thereafter; he was brought to Budapest, tried, and condemned to death.
Unlike many of the post-war trials (and not only in Hungary)
there was not much that was discreditable in Imrédy's trial, (especially given
its circumstances under the Russian occupation of Hungary). This is why the
materials in this thick volume are of great value for historians. Imrédy spoke
in his own defence intelligently, and fairly honestly. He defended himself
better than another wartime Premier, László Bárdossy, whose trial preceded
Imrédy's by a few days. Credit is due, too, to Imrédy's court-appointed lawyer
for the defense. There were none of the interruptions or unseemly scenes that
marked some of the other trials of "war criminals."
At the end of the trial one of the appointed judges (perhaps even two) voted in secret session for a conditional pardon, in favour of life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. They were overruled by the Justice Minister Ries (who would be beaten to death by the Communist police five years later). The only concession was execution not by hanging but by a firing squad. Imrédy was a sincerely believing Catholic, and he faced his executioners bravely.
Like Bárdossy, Imrédy deserved conviction but not execution.
This is of course the judgment of this historian. But this is not the occasion
to argue this. The importance of the present volume of documents is their
illumination of Imrédy's character-and, even more interestingly, the reason
for his great reversal in August and September 1938. For a long time it was
believed that (a) Imrédy was not only an extremely ambitious man but an opportunist; (b) that his unexpected troubles with British journalists at that very time
made him distrustful and disillusioned with Britain and with British people.
There is much truth in these reconstructions. The documentation of his trial,
and especially some of Imrédy's own statements, reveal something additional.
This is that Imrédy's conviction of the merits of Nationalist Socialism preceded
his "public conversion" in August 1938. An example of this is his, hitherto
unpublished, memorandum to the then Prime Minister Darányi as early as March
1937, when Imrédy was still President of the National Bank: "I must begin,"
Imrédy wrote, "that in my opinion the Jewish question is one of the most important,
and perhaps the decisive question for Hungary." But besides this early suggestion
of Imrédy's anti-Semitic convictions, he goes on to write that there is more
than that: Hungarian society is still too feudal-patriarchal, meaning backward.
This cries out for reforms, strong and deep reforms indeed. International
socialism is contemptible; not only the future but the present is a nationalist
socialism. This belief, hardened into a conviction, marked Imrédy's life ever
since that time.
Miklós Kállay (1887-1967) was one of the bravest-and, in my opinion, one of the greatest-prime ministers of Hungary. For reasons difficult to assess, no biography of Kállay and no history of his prime ministerhip has existed until now, before this excellent and detailed volume by Antal Czettler. There is, however, a regrettable shortcoming in the title of his book which is deceiving. (The English translation of the title: "Our little life-or-death questions" (this is a quotation from Kállay)-Hungarian foreign policy from the entry into the war until the German occupation.") It gives the impression that this volume comprises nothing but the attempts-futile as they were-of Kállay's foreign policy. Yet it was not these attempts that should establish Kállay's historical reputation. They were inseparable from his domestic struggles-struggles with pressures of public opinion-which he waged bravely and not unsuccessfully, and through which (this is the crux of the matter) he avoided Hitler's unrestricted control over Hungary (whether by means of a German occupation, or whether through the triumph of Hungarian pro-German forces) for two years. These activities of Kállay's premiership are well documented and described in Czettler's book, for which "The Prime Ministership of Miklós Kállay" should have been the proper title.
Kállay descended from one of the oldest and deepest-rooted families in Hungary. He and his ancestors did not enter the ranks of the aristocracy; they were members of a class that could be best described by the French term, petite noblesse terrienne. He had a distinguished but not particularly remarkable career in public service until, in March 1942, the Regent summoned him and asked him to assume the burdensome prime ministership. It seems that Kállay was proposed to Horthy by the latter's conservative and sagacious adviser, Count István Bethlen, Prime Minister from 1920 to 1931; it also seems that Bethlen and Horthy wanted, as early as February 1942, no matter how cautiously, to lessen the Hungarian alignment with Hitler's Germany, an alignment that had led, under Kállay's predecessor, to Hungary's declaration of war against Soviet Russia as well as against the United States, and to a British declaration of war on Hungary two months before his appointment. That was, in sum, the policy that Kállay pursued for two years, a policy entirely in accord with his personal and patriotic convictions. It was overturned by Hitler himself who recognized and condemned Kállay's inclinations from the beginning and who, finally in March 1944, ordered the German occupation of Hungary, and the installation of an unreservedly pro-German government. Thereupon Kállay, threatened by arrest, fled to the neutral Legation of Turkey in Budapest, from which he was later extracted and transported to the concentration camp of Mauthausen. At the end of the war Mauthausen was liberated by the Americans; Kállay lived in Italy for a few years and then in exile in the United States, where he died in 1967. His ashes were brought back to his modest family seat in eastern Hungary where they are buried in the small family chapel. Of the six prime ministers of Hungary between 1938-1944, Béla Imrédy and László Bárdossy and Döme Sztójay were convicted and executed, Pál Teleki committed suicide, Miklós Kállay (and Géza Lakatos, who was Prime Minister only for seven weeks, August-October 1944) were the only ones who survived the war, though in exile. There may be a moral in this somewhere.
Before March 1944 (and thereafter) Imrédy and Bárdossy were convinced that Hungary's only hope consisted in her alignment with the Third Reich, complying with most German requests (including what Berlin demanded to be done with Hungarian Jews). Teleki (1939-41) and Kállay (1942-44) thought otherwise, even as they were aware of the immense difficulties of Hungary's geographic and of their own situation. With all respect due to Teleki, it may be said that Kállay's situation in 1942-44 was even more difficult than Teleki's in 1939-41. About Teleki the German government was ambivalent: Goebbels disliked him (and the "feudal" Hungary he represented); Hitler was indifferent, as long as Hungary was furnishing him the goods he wanted. Of Kállay, Hitler and Ribbentrop and Goebbels were suspicious from the very beginning. Soon their suspicions congealed into outright hostility. This happened well before the Germans gathered information about Kállay's secret efforts to get in touch with agencies of the Western Powers. After September 1943 the German authorities and agencies in Hungary were ordered to restrict their contacts with the Prime Minister entirely. By that time Hitler was beginning to convince himself that Hungary must be occupied sooner or later. Yet Kállay was able to maintain himself and the relative independence of Hungary until March 1944.
In April 1943 Kállay went to Rome. He (and he was not alone in this at the time) hoped to extract from Mussolini a promise to lead a bloc of small states whose course would be more and more independent from that of Hitler. Mussolini said as much as that he could not do anything. Then the Allies invaded Sicily, and Italy and Mussolini fell. Even before that Kállay instructed and allowed certain Hungarian diplomats to enter into clandestine negotiations with the British (and the Americans), mainly in Turkey, but also in Switzerland and Portugal. The records of these contacts had been well known for some years; they are detailed extensively (perhaps too extensively) by Czettler. Except for establishing the evidence of the existence of a non-Nazi Hungary, they did not lead anywhere. The reasons for this are obvious: the Anglo-Americans could not abandon the slogan of "unconditional surrender" (even though that was hardly more than a slogan); their wartime alliance with Soviet Russia they thought they could not (with many reasons) endanger. Kállay, and many others, thought and hoped that after the Allied invasion of Italy an Anglo-American landing in Yugoslavia would come as a matter of course. This did not happen. Despite Churchill's occasional plans in that regard, it was scotched at the Teheran conference in December 1943. What Kállay, and many Hungarians, were concerned about was not only the danger of German brutality but also the approaching might of Soviet Russia. Yet the hope to surrender to the British and to the Americans but not to the Russians was a chimera. By January 1944 Kállay recognized this. He now changed his policy somewhat. Having had to live through the catastrophe of the Hungarian Second Army in deep Russia the year before, he wanted to withdraw the Hungarian forces in the Ukraine and in Poland to the Carpathian borders of Hungary; he, and Horthy, hoped against hope that-perhaps-Hitler would consent to that. Meanwhile, the secret contacts with the British and the Americans intermittently continued. Hitler knew what all this was about, and in March 1944 decided to put an end to it, including of course Kállay.
It was not only with the German danger and pressure that Kállay had to struggle. In 1942 he inherited a parliament where the overwhelming majority consisted of a government party that was far from cohesive, most of its members being at least partly sympathetic to the National Socialists and to Imrédy's own extreme-Right party. Like Hitler, these knew very well what Kállay was trying to do and what kind of a man he was. He was publicly attacked, criticized, and secretly conspired against, not only by the Arrow Cross but also by his predecessors Bárdossy and Imrédy. In May 1943 Kállay dared to adjourn Parliament so as not to allow a public forum to those who regarded (and often said) that his policy amounted to near-treason. In retrospect, it is impressive how much of relative independence and freedom could prevail in Hungary until March 1944. Very much of that was due to Kállay. Among other matters, had it not been for him, the deportation of Hungarian Jews and their eventual mass killing in Auschwitz and elsewhere would have begun one or two years earlier.
Kállay deserves solid respect, and not only because of the record of the Second World War. He incarnated many of the virtues of an old-yes, half-feudal and patriarchal-Hungary that was not devoid of democratic and humanitarian features. He was, as I wrote above, not an aristocrat, and had no personal interests in defending the somewhat archaic and old-fashioned social structures of his country. But he was a protector and even a champion of old-fashioned decency. That old-fashioned Hungary has now vanished forever. Sixty years after those events there are people in Hungary now who say that Kállay and his kind pursued vain illusions; that Hungary had nothing to hope from the English-speaking Powers, and nothing to hope from Hitler's defeat (and, as some of them even go so far as to mutter, nothing from Kállay's protection of Hungarian Jews). Yes. Nothing but honour.
John Lukacs
is a Budapest-born historian, living and teaching in the U.S. since 1946. His most recent books include Budapest 1900 (1988), Confessions of an Original Sinner (1990),
The Duel (1990), The End of the Twentieth Century-The End of the Modern Age (1993) and A Thread of Years (1999).
