Tibor Frank

Anglophiles

The "Anglo-Saxon" Orientation of Hungarian Foreign Policy,
1930s through 1944

 

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The "Anglo-Saxon" political orientation always constituted a minority view in Hungary. Few spoke English in Hungary at the time; the linguistic barrier itself curtailed the proportions. German was then generally considered the main and most useful foreign language in Hungary, largely because the country had been a part of the Habsburg Empire for nearly four hundred years. Besides, it is an almost forgotten fact today that the legal and political language was Latin up to the end of 1844. Apart from these two languages, members of the Hungarian aristocracy spoke French- many of the aristocrats of Hungary were, in fact, absentee landlords spending much of their time abroad, in an international ambience. English came only after these languages and even English literature was read in German translation in a country where low rates of literacy dwarfed the number of readers. Few people travelled to Britain, only a handful to the United States before 1848. The active use of English was necessary and possible only for the few, and as a result, only some of the representatives of the Hungarian political élite could directly speak to the British or the Americans. This fact alone limited the prospect of communicating with the English-speaking world and significantly restricted Hungary's foreign political orientation.
Yet, an Anglophile tradition did exist in Hungary.10 Though most of our historians, including Henrik Marczali and Gyula Szekfu, did not see any "causal similarity" between the Magna Carta of England (1215) and the Hungarian Bulla Aurea (1222), the idea of an alleged constitutional parallel between the two nations left a lasting imprint on Hungarian thinking that even nurtured illusions as to the allegedly similar character and political thinking of the two.11
Hungarian interest in England as well as in the English language had been growing increasingly strong since the late eighteenth century. In his diary for 1787, Count Ferenc Széchényi noted that the influence of British culture became especially noticeable on the Continent after the peace treaty of Paris in 1763. As Count Széchényi noted: "One started to dress in the English fashion, learnt their language and ate their food".12 During the Napoleonic Wars, the influence of English life, attitudes, ideas and customs became even more marked, particularly in countries allied to Britain against France, such as the Habsburg Empire, of which Hungary was part. Vienna became a focal point of interest in Britain, and it was often there that travelling Hungarian noblemen learned to appreciate the qualities of the English constitution, government, industry and commerce.
"England is surely the most interesting country in the world. This goes for the nation, the constitution and the government, as well as for industry and trade."13 At the end of the 18th century, members of the Hungarian nobility began studying English as a foreign language, using a number of grammars and dictionaries available in German or Latin editions.14 Count György Festetics considered the knowledge of English so important that he included it in his study plan for his son (1799).15 Count László [III] Teleki gave similar advice to the tutor of his three sons, arguing that knowledge of English was increasingly needed, not necessarily to speak it, but to understand the growing number of important books in that language.16 One of his sons, Count József, was to become the first President of the Hungarian Academy. These instructions were also consulted by Baroness Ilona Cserei-Wesselényi for the education of her son Miklós, an aristocratic mentor of and model for Lajos Kossuth, the future freedom fighter and Governor of Hungary.17 The study of English went so far, in aristocratic circles at least, that Count Aurél Dessewffy considered it simply a matter of empty fashion that "did not go beyond some conversation in English with the horse trainer and the stable boy, and at best the reading of perhaps one or two fashionable novels".18
It is to this generation of Anglophile Hungarian aristocrats and noblemen that the reformers of the 1820s and 1830s looked as ideals and models to follow.19 The young men of the 1820s continued to travel and introduce the study of English. English literature in translation flourished, with some of the very best literary talents involved.20
Encouraged by eminent authors and influential journals such as Erdélyi Múzeum and Felsőmagyarországi Minerva, the study of English became intellectually chic for the new generation. For some English visitors, it seemed almost Anglomania. At the same time, only a limited number of language instructors could serve the needs of this burgeoning class of Anglophiles, which often resulted in self-teaching.21 The poet Mihály Vörösmarty started to read Shakespeare in 1820, and collected his works for his library. In 1822 he declared,
Shakespeare's is a world we choose to dwell in,
Since, for the while its noises fill our hearts,
We will not hear the outside world's loud din,
Which, here, threshes and flails our own sweet dreams.22
(Translated by John Ridland)
Reading Shakespeare was common for members of the intellectual élite in Hungary at the end of the eighteenth century. The Hungarian authors who served as guardsmen in the Habsburg court of Maria Theresa in the late 1700s, such as György Bessenyei, studied Shakespeare along with the works of Young and Milton. József Kármán wondered "whether Pannonia could be turned into England? Is there a Newton, a Locke, a Shakespeare, a Milton to rise from us [...] Away, you daring dream that deceives me with your delusive images"!23 Though most English literature came to be known in Hungary in translations, particularly German and French, English editions also appeared in the libraries of Hungarian aristocrats and knowledgeable members of the gentry.
Count István Széchenyi (1791- 1860) was the most notable purveyor of English traditions, bringing the customs and habits of Englishmen into Hungary. Following the dreams of his father, Count Ferenc (1754- 1820), he introduced horse racing and established the first casinos (gentlemen's clubs) in Hungary, built the first permanent bridge between Buda and Pest across the Danube, founded the Hungarian Academy, and thus contributed to the foundations of an English culture in Hungary.25 Other Hungarian aristocrats, such as the Apponyis, the Bánffys, the Bethlens, the Károlyis, the Telekis, the Zelenskis and the Zichys, carried on this tradition.

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Britain and British (mostly English) culture became to some extent fashionable, and this tendency was strengthened by a number of prominent members of the Anglophile élite, who spoke or understood English, cultivated an Anglophone culture and even English social contacts. Some of these studied at English or Scottish universities. Most belonged to the aristocracy, the world of money, the diplomatic corps, certain educated sections of the middle class, the professions and a fair number had a Jewish background. In the public domain, this varied group included such figures as the elderly Count Albert Apponyi, Hungary's representative at the League of Nations in Geneva, Béla Imrédy, President of the National Bank of Hungary and later Prime Minister (1938- 39), Baron Móric Kornfeld, industrialist, writer and philanthropist, Professor Gyula Kornis, philosopher and speaker of the Lower House of Parliament and Tibor Eckhardt, President of the Smallholders' Party, as well as a hostof authors, artists, scholars and professors. The acknowledged leader of this group was Count István Bethlen (1874- 1946), long-serving Prime Minister of Hungary (1921- 1931) and a close personal adviser to Regent Horthy until 1944. The links between Hungary and the West proved to be weak and fragile after the First World War, as the Hungarian political élite could not prevent the Treaty of Trianon and its aftermath. Nonetheless, they tried to use their British and French, Italian and American contacts to re-establish at least a semblance of the status quo and revise the borders imposed at Trianon. Notable cases included the effort to obtain the support of the Bank of England and the British Government to consolidate Hungary's finances (1923- 26), as well as to establish the Englishlanguage The Hungarian Quarterly and the almost completed plan to publish a major history of Hungary in English and French. An Anglo-Hungarian Society was founded in 1930, and a variety of British and American politicians, journalists, scholars and artists were invited to Hungary after 1934- 35, mainly under the sponsorship of the Society for The Hungarian Quarterly. These achievements could all be at least partly attributed to the political acumen and clear-headedness of Count István Bethlen. It was Bethlen's authority that kept alive the unofficial Anglophile orientation of Hungary's foreign policy, even when the country, yet again, drifted toward alliance with Germany. Bethlen sought to establish friendships and cultivate old ties at the highest levels of the British civil service, the diplomatic corps and among financiers, through diplomatic, social and cultural channels. Accordingly, he did not originate the much publicised scheme to win over the international propaganda machinery of the British press magnate Lord Rothermere to aid revisionist claims (1927- 28), an unwise and hopelessly doomed initiative.
Next to Bethlen, it was Count Pál Teleki (1879- 1941), the outstanding geographer, one of the first cartographers of the Japanese islands and twice Prime Minister of Hungary, who was at home in the "Anglo-Saxon world". Today it seems that the chief merit of Count Teleki was to keep Hungary out of war between 1939 and 1941, and as Lipót Baranyai, president of the National Bank of Hungary, noted after the Second World War, "Count Teleki ... was thoroughlydevoted to the immensely difficult task of pursuing revision without risking the independence of the country." Teleki gave refuge to the officer corps and many soldiers of the beaten Polish army in 1939. He tried to defend the sovereignty of his nation in an increasingly Nazi-dominated Europe with a steadfastness and love of independence that he inherited from his Transylvanian ancestors. "The Hungarians received the Poles with extraordinary kindness." French prisoners of war remembered Hungarians similarly. Teleki gave a series of lectures on geography in the United States and had excellent connections with British and American academia as well as with the British aristocracy. He was involved in editing French and English-language quality journals in Hungary. This is true even if his foreign policy led to failure and to his own suicide and even if present generations should also remember this extremely conservative statesman as one of the founders of political anti-Semitism in Hungary.
It is usually not known or remembered that the Regent of Hungary, Vice- Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868- 1957) had also had strong ties to the British and the American élite. As a naval officer and last commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, he spoke and wrote English well, maintained friendly relations with the U. S. Minister in Budapest for many years and felt much private contempt for his political ally, Adolf Hitler. He did not harbour a kinder opinion of Germany's allies, the Japanese (soon to become the allies of Hungary as well), and strangely enough, discussed these views with U. S. Minister John F. Montgomery on December 16, 1937 when the Sino- Japanese war was raging: "... I was there once and they are only little monkeys anyhow."
Horthy himself, just as some of the Hungarian leadership until 1944, privately hoped for a British victory and political support, mostly because they were frightened by, and despised, the Soviet Union. Like most members of his generation, the Regent had very bitter and emotional memories of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, a short-lived and failed copy of the Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which he bitterly opposed and took ruthless revenge for in 1919- 20.42 Horthy and his system were afraid of Communism more than anything else and thisstrengthened his readiness to attack the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, only days after the German attack. This fear motivated him to postpone asking for an armistice from the Soviet Union until mid-October 1944, when it was much too late. Revisionism and anti-Soviet feeling went hand in hand in foreign policy during his regime, and this silenced every voice, effort and political concept that would open toward the Soviet Union. Yet, right after the war, in the summer of 1945, Horthy declared to the British historian C. A. Macartney that he used all his influence to stop the declaration of war on Russia and stop the German occupation of Hungary. The 1993 reburial in Hungary of the Admiral, who died in Portuguese exile in 1957, provoked an outburst of feeling inside and outside Hungary and showed how divided Hungarian public opinion had been toward the former Regent and his politics. It would be misleading to suggest that pre-war and wartime Hungary was indeed an Anglophile nation and to consider its leaders as tacit allies of the "Anglo-Saxon peoples". Many groupings were traditionally (some since the end of the 19th century) German-oriented- the greater part of the military, broad layers of the small bourgeoisie, the Transylvanian refugees particularly hard-hit by Trianon, the right-wing that abhorred the memory of the 1919 Soviet Republic, and the many people and their parties on the far right who saw the Nazis as the chief supporters of Hungarian revision and anti-Semitism. Hungarian public opinion as a whole, however, considered the Second World War mostly, if not exclusively, from the viewpoint of treaty revision. The liberals, the Leftist groupings and their parties opposed Hungary's participation in the war. An article by Sándor Pethő, editor of the daily paper Magyar Nemzet, was characteristic of the skeptical distance which anti-German forces in Hungary maintained from the war. The editor quoted Ernest Renan on Marcus Aurelius on October 29, 1939: "He disliked the war... he went into it against his own will."45 "Hidden between the lines,"46 this message reflected the opinion of many. As the war proceeded and the German defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad and the landing in Normandy spelt the final disaster for Germany, the Hungarian political leadership could only hope that the country would be liberated by Anglo-Saxon forces. This was certainly the case until the conference in Tehran in November 1943.47As trust in, and hope for, Germany's victory and a treaty revision through German support waned, the political élite and the middle class retuned their diplomatic ears towards the Anglo-Saxon powers in the hope of a special peace treaty which would be lenient to Hungary. The "media mogul" Miklós Kozma, president of the Hungarian Telegraph Agency, was influenced by his London and Paris correspondents Dezső Rácz and Miklós Ajtay to the effect that Hungary should be kept on the side of the English and the French: "at least it should not be torn away from them as the German adventure is far too daring and its outcome unsafe at best." Kozma, like Prime Minister Teleki, was of the opinion that "the country should reach maximum but at the same time 'optimal' successes in terms of revision aided by a pro-German course, as it were with a German tailwind, without, however, getting entirely under Germany's influence, a Germany of which they were both increasingly afraid, and without a confrontation with the West European democracies."
The endeavour of the political system to distance itself from Nazi Germany became particularly strong in 1943, when it became evident that the Germans would lose the war. The year 1943 brought substantial hope for bailing out of the German alliance and joining the Anglo-Saxons. For many, this year was a "moment of clarity", as the title of the radical democrat Imre Csécsy's 1943 book suggested. In this indeed historical and brief moment, the Hungarian government, the diplomatic corps and the anti-German forces around Count Bethlen were particularly active in documenting independence, underlining that Hungary could still boast of a functioning parliamentary system, a working, if constrained, Social Democratic Party, free churches and a Jewish population that outnumbered all the other Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe put together. The diplomat Aladár Szegedy-Maszák, head of the political section of the Foreign Ministry and Hungary's Minister in Washington, D.C. after the war, noted in a confidential memorandum in 1943:

In Hungarian intellectual life there is still undiminished interest in the classical and more recent works of English and French literature. Innumerable translations are published steadily; many independent works address the history and problems of English and French literature. The publications of the societies for the Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie and The Hungarian Quarterly continue to be published in an unchanging spirit, and our press takes over increasingly more English news. Our radio keeps the literary masterpieces of the hostile countries steadily on its repertoire. The Hungarian translation of the Beveridge Plan has already been published. Even the English press noted the Budapest success of Brush up your English.

Aladár Szegedy-Maszák was one of those Hungarian diplomats and public figures who conducted secret negotiations with Great Britain on promoting an Anglo-American victory, avoiding German or Russian hegemony and saving the country. The British government had its own plans to restructure the East- Central European region after the war. When Antal Ullein-Reviczky, Hungarian Minister in Stockholm, visited Swedish foreign minister Christian Günther (1886- 1966) on October 6, 1943, Günther called Hungary's foreign policy "intelligent". 

 

Tibor Frank
is Professor of History at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and author of Picturing Austria- Hungary: The British Perception of the Habsburg Monarchy 1865- 1870 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2005). The above is the edited version of the introduction to his collection of essays in Japanese, Senkanki Hungary-Gaikoh to Seioh-Gensoh no Wana: Eibei to Suhjikukoku no hazama de (The Trap of Western Illusion: Inter-war Hungarian Foreign Policy between the English-Speaking World and the Axis, translated by Nobuaki Terao, Tokyo: Sairyu Sha) forthcoming in 2006.