1 DOKTORI (PhD) ÉRTEKEZÉS CHASING A MIRAGE: HUNGARIAN REVISIONIST SEARCH FOR US SUPPORT TO DISMANTLE THE TRIANON PEACE TREATY, 1920–1938 MATHEY ÉVA DEBRECENI EGYETEM BTK 2012 2 CHASING A MIRAGE: HUNGARIAN REVISIONIST SEARCH FOR US SUPPORT TO DISMANTLE THE TRIANON PEACE TREATY, 1920–1938 Értekezés a doktori (Ph.D.) fokozat megszerzése érdekében az Irodalom- és kultúratudományok tudományágban Írta: Mathey Éva okleveles angol-történelem szakos tanár Készült a Debreceni Egyetem Irodalomtudományok Doktori Iskolája (Angol és észak-amerikai irodalomtudományi programja) keretében Témavezető: . Dr. Glant Tibor A doktori szigorlati bizottság: elnök: Dr. ………………………… tagok: Dr. ………………………… Dr. ………………………… A doktori szigorlat időpontja: 201… . ……………… … . Az értekezés bírálói: Dr. ........................................... Dr. …………………………… Dr. ........................................... A bírálóbizottság: elnök: Dr. ........................................... tagok: Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. A nyilvános vita időpontja: 201… . ……………… … . 3 Én Mathey Éva teljes felelősségem tudatában kijelentem, hogy a benyújtott értekezés a szerzői jog nemzetközi normáinak tiszteletben tartásával készült. Jelen értekezést korábban más intézményben nem nyújtottam be és azt nem utasították el. …………………………. Mathey Éva 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER ONE: Political and Historical Background 17 CHAPTER TWO: The Trianon Syndrome and Treaty Revision 38 CHAPTER THREE: Hungarian Perceptions of America between the World 62 Wars: The US as Arbiter Mundi CHAPTER FOUR: Revisionist Expectations toward the USA and Hungarian 73 History Writing: A Case Study of Jenő Horváth CHAPTER FIVE: Semi-Official Revisionism Aimed at America 89 CHAPTER SIX: Revisionist Propaganda toward the USA through Popular 115 Channels CHAPTER SEVEN: Official America and Hungarian Revisionism 136 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY 174 BIOGRAPHICAL SKECTHES 193 MAPS 199 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the years of research for and work on this dissertation I have been privileged to receive the help and assistance of many people. First and foremost I wish to express my warmest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Tibor Glant, who encouraged my academic career and graciously supported me in various ways during the evolution of the present work. I am greatly indebted to him for his valuable criticism and comments, for the books and materials he was generous enough to share with me and also for his never-fading patience with me in working on the drafts of the present work. My sincere appreciation is extended to my professors and mentors both in Hungary and abroad who continued to provide me professional and moral support. A few deserve special mention: Professor Zoltán Abádi-Nagy, Professor Zsolt K. Virágos, Professor Donald E. Morse, Csaba Lévai, all from Debrecen University; Professor Tibor Frank of Eötvös Lóránt University, Budapest; Professor Andrew Ludányi of Ohio Northern University, August J. Molnár of the American Hungarian Foundation, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Professor Jack Resch of the University of New Hampshire and Gary L. McDowell of the University of Richmond. I wish to thank the members of the Preliminary Defense Committee: the designated reviewers of my dissertation Professor Peter Pastor, Professor Tibor Frank; Chairman Professor Zoltán Abádi-Nagy, and the members of the committee Róbert Barta, Csaba Lévai and Eric Beckett Weaver for reading my work and offering their sincere comments on my dissertation. Their valuable observations and advice fostered its completion and the preparation for the final defense. I gratefully acknowledge both the professional and the financial assistance I received from Péter Szaffkó, Péter Pelyvás and István Rácz, directors of the Institute of English and 6 American Studies at Debrecen University. I wish to express my appreciation to the heads of the North American Department, namely Judit Molnár, Professor Zsolt K. Virágos, Professor Zoltán Abádi-Nagy and Tibor Glant. Their moral and professional support was inestimable during the evolution of the present work. My thanks are also due to many of my colleagues and friends at the Institute of English and American Studies for their encouragement and love. I am immensely indebted to the wonderful Irene and Mickey Schubert who graciously invited me and my husband to their Virginia home during our stay in the United States. For their hospitality, friendship and love I am most grateful. I wish to thank Mickey for reviewing the draft of my dissertation and for his valuable suggestions and thoughtful criticism from which I greatly benefitted. Librarians and archivists in Hungary and abroad also facilitated my research, and I wish to thank them all for their help. Special mention should be made of James P. Niessen of Rutgers University, Kenneth E. Nyirády of the Library of Congress, Margaret Papai of the American Hungarian Foundation, New Brunswick, NJ and Ilona Kovács of Országos Széchényi Könyvtár. The completion of the present dissertation was assisted by grants and scholarships as well. Firstly, I wish to thank Huba Brückner and the Hungarian Fulbright Commission for their support I had the privilege to receive. The Fulbright scholarship was an exceptional opportunity to extend my professional perspectives without which it would have been impossible to complete my dissertation. My thanks are extended to the Soros Foundation as well as to the JFK Institute, Free University, Berlin for their financial aid which enabled me to carry out research abroad. And last but by far not the least, I wish to share my heartfelt gratitude with my family: Zsolt, for his whole-hearted support and love and my little son, Peti, who probably learnt what a dissertation is much earlier than any child of his age. 7 INTRODUCTION The present study is the product of the work and research of the last ten years. As a History and English major at then Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen, I came to develop a special professional interest in the study of the diplomatic relations between the United States and Hungary during the interwar years, in large part due to the outstanding and intellectually stimulating lectures and seminars offered by the faculty of the Institute of English and American Studies, especially by Tibor Glant. It was upon his advice and encouragement and under his supervision that I started my dissertation research project. I planned to offer the first comprehensive overview of American-Hungarian diplomatic, cultural and economic relations between the world wars, but this proposal turned out to be too ambitious. Within the compass of my general research of the period in question I came to realize that the revision of the Treaty of Trianon was a fairly recurrent issue. Furthermore, I realized that, based on a complex set of historical, political and cultural tenets, Hungarians considered the United States of America to be a potential supporter of Hungarian revisionism and entertained high, yet unfounded, expectations toward her. This, in turn, generated my interest in, and turned my attention to, an important, yet hitherto neglected, topic: the question of Hungarian revisionist search for American support to revise the Trianon Peace Treaty. An inquiry with this special focus promises to be a unique academic contribution to the Trianon scholarship and the study of interwar American-Hungarian relations. The dismemberment of historic Hungary by the Trianon Peace Treaty was a shock on the collective Hungarian consciousness and was perceived as one of the most severe national tragedies. Therefore, Trianon became an overarching national issue during the interwar period, and regardless of social, economic, and political background of the Hungarian people, 8 the whole nation regarded the rectification of Hungary’s frontiers necessary. Trianon became a national obsession, giving rise to popular revisionist beliefs and expectations. Stemming from its extremely emotional and sensitive nature, both academic and popular discourse about the Trianon question during the interwar period often resulted in exaggerations, misinterpretations, and misrepresentations. From Jenő Horváth’s A magyar kérdés a XX. században and the collective publication, Justice for Hungary, through the fairly diverse revisionist and irredentist pamphlet literature to various everyday manifestations of revisionist culture,1 it is clear that neither the intellectual and political elite, nor people of the streets could come to terms with what they viewed as Trianon’s tragedy. Following World War II and with the coming of the Communist era it became well nigh impossible for the interwar and postwar generations to come to terms with this national trauma, since it became a taboo to talk about Trianon and its consequences. Naturally, official Marxist historiography also swept the question under the rug. Marxists held the view that to all Trianon-related problems, ethnic, minority or otherwise, international socialism would be the solution rendering the meaning of nations and their national borders irrelevant. In the 1960’s, however, early signs of genuine academic interest in the history and the consequences of Trianon manifested itself in some significant works, for example, A párizsi békekonferencia [The Paris Peace Conference] by Zsuzsa L. Nagy, which, almost two decades later, was followed by Mária Ormos’s Padovától Trianonig [From Padua to Trianon].2 After 1989, however, following forty years of almost