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World War I
World War I
Austria-Hungary drafted 7,8 million soldiers in WW1 (4 million from Kingdom of Hungary).
In First World War Austria-Hungary was fighting on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey.
The Central Powers conquered Serbia.
With great difficulty, the central powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire.
Romania proclaimed war.
The Central Powers conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest.
The Austro-Hungarian army could not make significant progress against Italy after January of 1918.
By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated (strikes in factories were organized by leftist and pacifist movements),and uprisings in the army had become commonplace.
French Entente troops landed in Greece.
In October 1918, the personal union with Austria was dissolved.
Between the two world wars (1918–1941)
In 1918, as a result of defeat in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed.
On October 31, 1918, the success of the Aster Revolution in Budapest brought the left liberal count Mihály Károlyi to power as Prime-Minister.
Károlyi was a devotee of Entente .
In 1918, by a notion of Wilson's pacifism, Károlyi ordered the full disarmament of Hungarian Army.
Hungary remained without national defense in the darkest hour of its history.
The First Republic proclaimed in november 16, 1918 (Károlyi was the president of the republic).
By February 1919 the government had lost all popular support, having failed on domestic and military fronts.
On March 21, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Károlyi resigned.
The Communist Party of Hungary, led by Béla Kun, came to power and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
The Communists – "The Reds" – came to power largely thanks to being the only group with an organized fighting force, and they promised that Hungary would defend its territory (possibly with the help of the Soviet Red Army).
The Communists also promised equality and social justice.
Initially, Kun's regime achieved some impressive military successes: the Hungarian Red Army (armed factory workers), under the lead of the genius strategist, Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, ousted Czech troops from the north and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east.
In terms of domestic policy, the Communist government nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings of more than 400,000 square metres.
The support of the Communists proved to be short lived.
In the aftermath of a coup attempt, the government took a series of actions called the Red Terror, murdering several hundred people, which alienated much of the population.
The Soviet Red Army was never able to aid the new Hungarian republic.
The Hungarian Red Army was dissolved before it could successfully complete its campaigns.
In the face of domestic backlash and an advancing Romanian force, Béla Kun and most of his comrades fled to Austria, while Budapest was occupied on August 6.
All these events, and in particular the final military defeat, led to a deep feeling of dislike among the general population against the Soviet Union (which had not kept its promise to offer military assistance) and the Jews (since many members of Kun's government were Jewish, making it easy to blame the Jews for the government's mistakes).
The new fighting force in Hungary were the Conservative Royalists counter-revolutionaries – the "Whites".
These, who had been organizing in Vienna and established a counter-government in Szeged, assumed power, led by István Bethlen, a Transylvanian aristocrat, and Miklós Horthy, the former commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
Starting in Western Hungary and spreading throughout the country, a White Terror began by other half-regular and half-militarist detachments (as the police power crashed, there were no serious national regular forces and authorities), and many Communists and other leftists were tortured and executed without trial.
Radical Whites launched pogroms against the Jews, displayed as the cause of all the difficulties of Hungary.
The leaving Romanian army pillaged the country: livestock, machinery and agricultural products were carried to Romania in hundreds of freight cars.
The estimated property damage of their activity was so much that the international peace conference in 1919 did not require Hungary to pay war redemption to Romania.[citation needed] On November 16, with the consent of Romanian forces, Horthy's army marched into Budapest.
His government gradually restored security, stopped terror, and set up authorities, but thousands of sympathizers of the Károlyi and Kun regimes were imprisoned.
Radical political movements were suppressed.
In March, the parliament restored the Hungarian monarchy but postponed electing a king until civil disorder had subsided.
Instead, Miklos Horthy was elected Regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's Prime Minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces.
Hungary's signing of the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, ratified the country's dismemberment.
The territorial provisions of the treaty, which ensured continued discord between Hungary and its neighbors, required Hungary to surrender more than two-thirds of its pre-war lands.
However, nearly one-third of the 10 million ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the diminished homeland.
The country's ethnic composition was left almost homogeneous, Hungarians constituting about 90% of the population, Germans made up about 6%, and Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Jews and Gypsies accounted for the remainder.[citation needed] New international borders separated Hungary's industrial base from its sources of raw materials and its former markets for agricultural and industrial products.
Hungary lost 84% of its timber resources, 43% of its arable land, and 83% of its iron ore.[citation needed] Because most of the country's pre-war industry was concentrated near Budapest, Hungary retained about 51% of its industrial population, 56% of its industry, 82% of its heavy industry, and 70% of its banks.[citation needed] Horthy appointed Count Pál Teleki as Prime Minister in July 1920.
His government issued a numerus clausus law, limiting admission of "political insecure elements" (these were often Jews) to universities and, in order to quiet rural discontent, took initial steps toward fulfilling a promise of major land reform by dividing about 3,850 km² from the largest estates into smallholdings.
Teleki's government resigned, however, after, Charles IV, unsuccessfully attempted to retake Hungary's throne in March 1921.
King Charles's return produced split parties between conservatives who favored a Habsburg restoration and nationalist right-wing radicals who supported election of a Hungarian king.
Count István Bethlen, a non-affiliated right-wing member of the parliament, took advantage of this rift forming a new Party of Unity under his leadership.
Horthy then appointed Bethlen prime minister.
Charles IV died soon after he failed a second time to reclaim the throne in October 1921.
(For more detail on Charles's attempts to retake the throne, see Charles IV of Hungary's conflict with Miklós Horthy.) .
As prime minister, Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931.
He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, providing jobs in the expanding bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas.
Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counterrevolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists.
In 1921, he made a deal with the Social Democrats and trade unions (called Bethlen-Peyer Pact), agreeing, among other things, to legalize their activities and free political prisoners in return for their pledge to refrain from spreading anti-Hungarian propaganda, calling political strikes, and organizing the peasantry.
Bethlen brought Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922 and out of international isolation by signing a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927.
The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda and the strategy employed by Bethlen consisted by strengthening the economy and building relations with stronger nations.
Revision of the treaty had such a broad backing in Hungary that Bethlen used it, at least in part, to deflect criticism of his economic, social, and political policies.
The Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further toward the right.
In 1932 Horthy appointed a new prime-minister, Gyula Gömbös, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany and started an effort to magyarize the few remaining ethnic minorities in Hungary.
Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets.
Adolf Hitler appealed to Hungarian desires for territorial revisionism, while extreme right wing organizations, like the Arrow Cross party, increasingly embraced Nazi policies, including those related to Jews.
The government passed the First Jewish Law in 1938.
The law established a quote system to limit Jewish involvement in the Hungarian economy.
Imrédy's attempts to improve Hungary's diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom initially made him very unpopular with Germany and Italy.
Undoubtedly aware of Germany's Anschluss 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.
Intent on amassing a base of power in Hungarian right wing politics, Imrédy began 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 along totalitarian lines and drafted a harsher Second Jewish Law.
The Parliament under the new government of Pál Teleki approved the Second Jewish Law in 1939, which greatly restricted Jewish involvement in the economy, culture, and society and, significantly, defined Jews by race instead of religion.
This definition altered the status of those who had formerly converted from Judaism to Christianity.
Hungary in World War II (1941–1945)
After being awarded by the Germans and Italians part of southern Czechoslovakia and Subcarpathia in the First Vienna Award of 1938, and then northern Transylvania in the Second Vienna Award of 1940, in 1941 Hungary participated in their first military maneuvers on the side of the Axis.
Thus, Hungarian army was part of the invasion of Yugoslavia where it committed numerous war crimes, of which the best known is the Novi Sad raid, gaining some more territory and joining the Axis powers in the process (showing his disagreement, prime minister Pál Teleki committed suicide).
On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa.
Hungary joined the German effort and declared war on the Soviet Union on June 26, and entered World War II on the side of the Axis.
In late 1941, the Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front experienced success at the Battle of Uman.
By 1943, after the Hungarian Second Army suffered extremely heavy losses at the river Don, the Hungarian government sought to negotiate a surrender with the Allies.
On March 19, 1944, as a result of this duplicity, German troops occupied Hungary in what was known as Operation Margarethe.
By now it was clear that the Hungarians were Germany's satellite.
On October 15, 1944, Horthy made a token effort to disengage Hungary from the war.
This time the Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and Horthy was replaced by a puppet government under the pro-German Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi.
Szálasi and his pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party remained loyal to the Germans until the end of the war.
In late 1944, Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front again experienced success at the Battle of Debrecen.
But this was followed immediately by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Battle of Budapest.
During the German occupation in May-June 1944, the Arrow Cross Party and Hungarian police deported nearly 440,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz.
Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were slaughtered during the Holocaust, as well as tens of thousands of Romani people, mostly in occupied Bačka.
Hundreds of Hungarian people were also executed by the Arrow Cross Party for sheltering Jews.
The war left Hungary devastated destroying over 60% of the economy and causing huge loss of life.
On February 13, 1945, the Hungarian capital city surrendered unconditionally.
On May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe officially ended.
Communist era (1947–1989)
Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Soviet troops occupied all of the country and through their influence Hungary gradually became a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union.
After 1948, Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi established Stalinist rule in the country complete with forced collectivization and planned economy.
Mátyás Rákosi now attempted to impose authoritarian rule on Hungary.
An estimated 2,000 people were executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned.
Hungary experienced one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.
Approximately 350,000 officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956 Rákosi had difficulty managing the economy and the people of Hungary saw living standards fall.
His government became increasingly unpopular, and when Joseph Stalin died in 1953, Mátyás Rákosi was replaced as prime minister by Imre Nagy.
However, he retained his position as general secretary of the Hungarian Workers Party and over the next three years the two men became involved in a bitter struggle for power.
As Hungary's new leader, Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform.
This included a promise to increase the production and distribution of consumer goods.
Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact.
Nagy was removed by Soviets.
Rákosi did manage to secure the appointment of his close friend, Ernő Gerő, as his successor.
The rule of the Rákosi government was nearly unbearable for Hungary's war-torn citizens.
This led to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Hungary's temporary withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.
The Soviets retaliated massively with military force, sending in over 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks.
Nearly a quarter of a million people left the country during the brief time that the borders were open in 1956.
From the 1960s through the late 1980s, Hungary was often satirically referred to as "the happiest barrack" within the Eastern bloc.
As a result of the relatively high standard of living, and more relaxed travel restrictions than that of other Eastern Bloc countries, Hungary was generally considered one of the better countries in which to live in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
(See also Goulash Communism for a discussion of the Hungarian variety of socialism.) This was under the autocratic rule of its controversial communist leader, János Kádár.
It was the so called Kádár era (1956-1988).
The last Soviet soldier left the country in 1991 thus ending Soviet military presence in Hungary.
With the Soviet Union gone the transition to a market economy began.
The Third Hungarian Republic (1989-)
In June 1987 Károly Grósz took over as premier.
In January 1988 all restrictions were lifted on foreign travel.
In March demonstrations for democracy and civil rights brought 15,000 onto the streets.
In May, after Kádár's forced retirement, Grósz was named party secretary general.
Under Grósz, Hungary began moving towards full democracy, change accelerated under the impetus of other party reformers such as Imre Pozsgay and Rezső Nyers.
Also in June 1988, 30,000 demonstrated against Romania's communist Regime plans to demolish Transylvanian villages.
In February, 1989 the Communist Party's Central Committee, responding to 'public dissatisfaction', announced it would permit a multi-party system in Hungary and hold free elections.
In March, for the first time in decades, the government declared the anniversary of the 1848 Revolution a national holiday.
Opposition demonstrations filled the streets of Budapest with more than 75,000 marchers.
Grósz met Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, who condoned Hungary's moves toward a multi-party system and promised that the USSR would not interfere in Hungary's internal affairs.
In May, Hungary began taking down its barbed wire fence along the Austrian border – the first tear in the Iron Curtain.
June brought the reburial of Prime Minister Nagy, executed after the 1956 Revolution, drawing a crowd of 250,000 at the Heroes' Square.
The last speaker, 26-year-old Viktor Orbán publicly called for Soviet troops to leave Hungary.
In July U.S.
President George Bush visited Hungary.
In September Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that East German refugees in Hungary would not be repatriated but would instead be allowed to go to the West.
The resulting exodus shook East Germany and hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On October 23, Mátyás Szűrös declared Hungary a republic.
At a party congress in October 1989 the Communists agreed to give up their monopoly on power, paving the way for free elections in March 1990.
The party's name was changed from the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party to simply the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and a new programme advocating social democracy and a free-market economy was adopted.
This was not enough to shake off the stigma of four decades of autocratic rule, however, and the 1990 election was won by the centre-right Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), which advocated a gradual transition towards capitalism.
The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), which had called for much faster change, came second and the Socialist Party trailed far behind.
As Gorbachev looked on, Hungary changed political systems with scarcely a murmur and the last Soviet troops left Hungary in June 1991.
In coalition with two smaller parties, the MDF provided Hungary with sound government during its hard transition to a full market economy.
József Antall, the first democratically-elected prime minister of Hungary, died in December 1993 and was replaced by the Interior Minister Péter Boross.
The economic changes of the early 1990s resulted in declining living standards for most people in Hungary.
In 1991 most state subsidies were removed, leading to a severe recession exacerbated by the fiscal austerity necessary to reduce inflation and stimulate investment.
This made life difficult for many Hungarians, and in the May 1994 elections the Hungarian Socialist Party led by former Communists won an absolute majority in parliament.
This in no way implied a return to the past, and party leader Gyula Horn was quick to point out that it was his party that had initiated the whole reform process in the first place (as foreign minister in 1989 Horn played a key role in opening Hungary's border with Austria).
All three main political parties advocate economic liberalisation and closer ties with the West.
In March 1996, Horn was re-elected as Socialist Party leader and confirmed that he would push ahead with the party's economic stabilisation programme.
In 1997 in a national referendum 85% voted in favour of Hungary joining the NATO.
A year later the European Union began negotiations with Hungary on full membership.
In 1999 Hungary joined NATO.
Hungary voted in favour of joining the EU, and joined in 2004.
On March 19, 2008 Hungary recognized Kosovo as an independent country.
Source: CIA Factbook, Wikipedia
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