Hungary After a Thousand Years
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HUNGARY AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS by Imre Josika-Herczeg Edited by Andrew L. Simon Copyright © by Andrew L. Simon, 2000 Original Copyright by Dr. Imre de Jó sika-Herczeg 1934 Originally published in 1936 by American Hungarian Daily, Inc. New York, NY and printed in the United States by J.J. Little and Ives Company, New York ISBN 0-9665734-5-5 Library of Congress Card Number: 00-101927 Published by Simon Publications, P.O. Box 321, Safety Harbor, FL 34695 Printed by Lightning Print, Inc. La Vergne , TN 37086 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction by Andrew L. Simon 1 Preface by Count Albert Apponyi 7 1. HUNGARY IN 1934 AS SEEN BY THE TRAVELLER 9 2. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUNGARY 19 3. FROM THE HUNYADIS TO THE HABSBURGS 31 4. REACTION, REPRESSION, REVOLUTION 51 5. REVENGE AND REFORM UNDER FRANCIS JOSEPH 79 6. THE WORLD WAR AND AFTER 93 7. THE COLLAPSE OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY 101 8. SOME PRELIMINARIES TO THE WORLD WAR 113 9. THE ARMISTICE AND THE “FOURTEEN POINTS” 121 10. HUNGARY AFTER THE WAR 129 11. THE HUNGARIAN CONSTITUTION 141 12. EDUCATION IN HUNGARY 153 13. HUNGARIAN ART AND LITERATURE 167 14. ECONOMICS AND FINANCE IN POST-WAR HUNGARY 177 15. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF HUNGARY 189 16. GREAT BRITAIN AND MODERN HUNGARY 211 17. HUNGARIANS IN AMERICA 235 18. REVISION AND REVISIONISM 281 APPENDICES: General Harry H. Bandholtz 289 Lt. Col. Charles à Court Repington 292 Graham Hutton 311 John F. Montgomery 315 In tro duc tion by An drew L. Simon This book is quite unique. It was published a long time ago, in 1934. Written by a Hungarian immigrant, published in New York by a local Hungarian language newspaper, it was probably sold to the paper’s subscribers, not to bookstores and libraries. Consequently it has gone entirely unnoticed by those with professional interest in the political history of Hungary. It is a pity, because it contains a great deal of information about Hungary that are scarcely touched in other texts. The treatment of the topic is remarkably untainted by the vicious anti-Hungarian propaganda that appears in many similar books. It is written in the friendly spirit that characterized American - Hungarian relations before World War I. Before the first World War relations between the United States and Hungary were consistently warm. Only three foreigners were invited to address the U. S. Congress before 1913: The revolutionary hero Marquis de LaFayette , the leader of Hungary’s 1848 revolution Louis Kossuth and Hungarian statesman Count Albert Apponyi . A single Frenchman and two Hungarians in a period of 137 years. The list of Hungarian contributions to America is a lengthy one 1. Hungarians fought in the Revolutionary War as well as in America’s Civil War, on the Northern side. From 1832 on there were regular scientific exchanges between the American and Hungarian scientific academies, Ágoston Haraszthy initiated California’s wine industry, many Hungarians helped to establish the film industry, Hungarian scientist, John von Neumann, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard , Eugene Wigner , John Kemeny , Theodore von Karman and many others spearheaded research in atomic energy, aeronautics, computers and many other fields in the United States. Almost a million and a half Hungarian immigrants helped to build America’s industrial might. The personal story of the author, Imre Jósika-Herczeg is elusive. He held two doctorates, one from the University of Budapest, another from the University of Kolozsvár . Apparently, he had a diplomatic background in the 1 See Si mon, An drew L.: Made in Hun gary, Hun gar ian Con tri bu tions to Uni- ver sal Cul ture, ISBN 0-9665734-2-0 1 Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. His considerable knowledge of the secret political machinations of European governments that led up to the first World War is revealed in the text. He served as an officer in the Hungarian cavalry on the Russian front between 1914 and 1917. In 1917 Jósika-Herczeg was sent to Berlin as a Military Attaché representing the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, with the secret assignment to counteract anti-Monarchy propaganda that was increasingly virulent in German newspapers. After the war he resided in New York among quite affluent circumstances. In 1926 he could even afford a round-the-world trip. Little is known about his personal life, except that he was involved in ethnic Hungarian activities. His personal friendship with the great Hungarian statesman, Albert Apponyi led to the latter’s official invitation to America in 1923, was a significant event at the time in Hungarian-American relations. In 1934, when this book was written, Hungarians were still hopeful that eventually the disastrous Trianon Treaty ending WWI will be revised and, at last, justice will prevail. The book is a true mirror of this political naïvité prevalent in Hungary at the time. No one, not even in a delirious nightmare, would have guessed that ten years later Hungary would be first occupied by Hitler’s Germany and then overrun by the Soviet Red Army. The rape and destruction of the country was followed by a Soviet-sponsored Communist takeover that did not end for almost a half of a century. The image of Hungary in America has been badly tarnished during the 20th century by three discrete causes: A. Functionaries of the 1919 Bolshevik regime in Hungary who escaped to the United States, other Western countries as well as to the Soviet Union exerted a great deal of effort to spread ill will against their former homeland. B. The Little Entente—Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia—were ceaseless in their anti-Hungarian propaganda from WWI. After all, they were created from, or—in the case of Romania—hugely enlarged by historically Hungarian territories, and they did everything to pre-empt Hungary’s futile efforts to peacefully revise the Trianon Treaty. C. For the Soviet-installed Communist rulers of Hungary condemning the previous regime was doctrinal self-justification. From 1945 on, Hungary’s Muscovite Communist historians concocted expressions about the earlier 2 regime like “institutional terror of the fascist dictatorship”, in their attempt to denigrate the earlier era, with total disregard of the truth. In the 1920 to 1945 period, often referred to as the “ Horthy Era”, Hungary was a constitutional parliamentary democracy where any political party, with the singular exception of Communists, were free to organize. In fact 10 to 12 political parties of every political creed gained seats in the Parliament. According to the 1919 election laws, some 75 percent of the adult population had the right to vote. The freedom of the press was comparable to that in any democratic Western country. A great variety of newspapers with a broad spectrum of political persuasion were published without any censorship: in 1938 there were a total of 376 periodicals of political nature in Hungary 2, representing a wide range of views. Regent Horthy’s political power was quite limited. It certainly did not exceed that of an elected president of any of Europe’s democracies. But one rarely learn these facts from even recently written history books. What one finds appears like a mantra: “In the White Terror 5 thousand people were executed, 70 thousand were imprisoned and 100 thousand left the country.” Utter nonsense! The three-pronged anti-Hungary propaganda was described in detail by no less than Communist Hungary’s ambassador to West Germany in the 1980’s, István Horváth —serving under dictator János Kádár —who wrote: “The negative image of Hungary—beyond the actual facts—have partly caused by the campaigns of propaganda generated by Hungary’s emigrants from the 1918 ‘chrysanthemum’ revolution and the 1919 proletarian dictatorship continued for decades in the West (after the collapse of the soviet republic many thousand operated in the West, mainly in Austria and France) and in the Soviet Union. They incessantly elaborated about Horthy-fascism , anti-Semitism, bloody counter-revolution, chauvinism, reaction and oppression. These notions, asserted up by Hungarian emigrants, were coming from the West as well as from the East and they still influence the Western public opinion in regard to the regime in Hungary between the two World Wars. In addition to the purposefully created negative image of 2 Ignac Romsich : The char ac ter of the Horthy Era; Bu da pest: Mag yar Nemzet , March 3, 2000. 3 Hungary, the post-war Communist party propaganda endeavored to rewrite history. Scores of politicians, newspapermen and historians feverishly worked to depict ‘counter-revolutionary’ Hungary as criminal in its attitude and behavior, in order to create the ideology of the ‘guilty nation’, and to indoctrinate the Hungarians toward an ‘indelible guilty conscience’. The purposeful over-emphasis by the Communist party of Hungary’s ‘fascist-infestation’ came also handy to stress the democratic re-education that was demanded in the Yalta Doctrine, and to offer itself as the best qualified instructor for the job.” 3 A declaration like this, coming from a former Hungarian Communist diplomat, can shed light on Hungary’s “image problem” far better than scores of self-serving explanations by anti-Communist Hungarians at home or abroad. But from the beginning, Hungary between the two world wars did very little to counteract the malicious barrage of lies directed against her. When Hungary’s long time prime minister, Stephen Bethlen was asked why Hungary never responded to the virulent anti-Hungarian propaganda in the West, he replied: “We did not have the money for those kind of things”. In fact, in the light of Hungary’s grievous losses at the end of World War I, the country was well on its way to recovery economically as well as culturally.