Admiral Nicholas Horthy: MEMOIRS Annotated by Andrew L. Simon Copyright © 2000 Andrew L. Simon Original manuscript copyright © 1957, Ilona Bowden Library of Congress Card Number: 00-101186 Copyright under International Copyright Union All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval devices or systems, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 0-9665734-9 Printed by Lightning Print, Inc. La Vergne , TN 37086 Published by Simon Publications, P.O. Box 321, Safety Harbor, FL 34695 Admiral Horthy at age 75. Publication record of Horthy’s memoirs : • First Hungarian Edition: Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1953. • German Edition: Munich, Germany, 1953. • Spanish Edition: AHR - Barcelona, Spain, 1955. • Finnish Edition: Otava, Helsinki, Finland, 1955. • Italian Edition, Corso, Rome, Italy, 1956. • U. S. Edition: Robert Speller & Sons, Publishers, New York, NY, 1957. • British Edition: Hutchinson, London, 1957. • Second Hungarian Edition: Toronto, Canada: Vörösváry Publ., 1974. • Third Hungarian Edition: Budapest, Hungary:Europa Historia, 1993. Table of Contents FOREWORD 1 INTRODUCTION 5 PREFACE 9 1. Out into the World 11 2. New Appointments 33 3. Aide-de-Camp to Emperor Francis Joseph I at the Court of Vienna 1909-1914 49 4. Archduke Francis Ferdinand 69 5. Naval Warfare in the Adriatic. The Coronation of King Charles IV 79 6. The Naval Battle of Otranto 93 7. Appointment as Commander of the Fleet. The End 101 8. Revolution in Hungary: from Michael Károlyi to Béla Kun 109 9. Counter-Revolution. I am Appointed Minister of War And Commander-in-Chief 117 10. Regent of Hungary 127 11. Attempts at the Restoration of King Charles in 1921 139 12. The Road to Freedom 153 13. The Rome Protocols and the Rome-Berlin Axis 163 14. Travels and Visitors 173 15. Friction with Hitler 189 16. The Second World War; Hungary’s Non-Belligerence 205 17. Hungary Enters the Second World War 225 18. Appointment of a Deputy Regent 237 19. The Search for the Way Out 245 20. The Occupation of Hungary 257 21. Appealing for Armistice. My Imprisonment 281 22. The Arrival of the Americans 301 23. A Last Glance in Retrospect and Outlook on the Future 315 APPENDICES 321 1. Horthy’s October 15, 1944 Proclamation 321 2. Recollections by Mrs. Ilona Bowden, widow of Stephen Horthy 323 3. Letters to the Editor on Horthy’s re-burial 328 4. New data on Julius Gömbös 335 5. On Horthy and the Hungarian Jews 337 6. The Forgotten Rescue 344 FOREWORD by Andrew L. Simon, Professor Emeritus, The University of Akron It is a sure sign of respectability if one is routinely vilified for 80 years by the Communists and for 60 years by the Nazis. Without the opportunity for rebuttal, a fiction repeated often enough, will become ‘self evident truth’. Goebbels knew this, so did Beneš , two of the 20th century’s master propagandists. When Admiral Nicholas Horthy, Regent of Hungary for a quarter of a century, was re-buried in his family’s cript in September of 1993, there was an international uproar in the media. The Economist wrote about ‘Hungary’s shameful past’. The New York Times served up a dire warning about the return of Fascism, the Frankfurter Allgemeine ‘would rather forget it’, the Brazilian Veja commented that ‘Hungary honors a Nazi’. There is no end to the list. One sane opinion appeared in The Financial Times : ‘western historiography was interested exclusively in his alliance with Hitler, and the Communists characterized the anti-Bolshevik as a monster’. Admiral Horthy, privy to the domestic policies of the Habsburg empire at the highest level, naval hero, last commandant of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Regent of a destroyed country that he led into relative prosperity against great odds, an anti-Bolshevik, a prisoner of the Nazis, was indisputably a statesman. Under his rule, to quote Columbia University history professor Istv <n De <k, “Hungary … was an island in the heart of Europe where a semblance of the rule of law and a pluralistic society had been preserved in a sea of barbarism”. Having traveled the world while in the navy, speaking six languages (Hungarian, Croat, Italian, German, French, English), serving as aide-de-camp of Emperor Francis Joseph, he had a solid background for his position. Horthy was not a narrow-minded Nationalist but a patriot who greatly preferred the multi-ethic, multi-religious, multi-lingual diversity of the Monarchy in which he grew up and had an admirable career, even as a Hungarian Protestant in a Austrian Catholic “regime.” Above all, he was a gentleman in the old, true sense of the word. His intimate knowledge of the politics of Central Europe during a time that led from the heights of the cultured, law-abiding, modernizing, developing age of the Monarchy to the depths of the Communist reigns of terror throughout the region makes his Memoirs an interesting, informative reading. 1 The death of Communism, (if not the Communists) revived the old ethnic and religious conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe, not only in Bosnia but throughout the Danubian basin. To address these problems western statesmen, and indeed, the general public, must understand them. Alas, this understanding will not come from western history books. As a 1993 survey of standard American college history textbooks indicated, these are saturated with some eighty years worth of propaganda. First, this propaganda was directed toward the dissolution of the Habsburg empire. Then it was a reaction of Hungary’s demand of the peaceful return to her historic borders. Hungary lost two thirds of her territory at the end of the first world war; one out of every three Magyars became “ethnic minorities” in their own land of birth. Hungary wanted ‘everything back’, the Successor States were not prepared to give an inch. The end of the second world war, and the Communist oppression that followed, has placed a lid on the boiling pot. Now the lid is off. The age-old concept of the Danubian Federation, in the form of the European Union, reemerged from the ashes of nationalistic madness and communist oppression that plagued the region during the 20th century. “The old Austro-Hungarian empire is reemerging in the new political geography” wrote The Boston Globe as early as August 20, 1989. Columnist Flora Lewis echoed from Paris that in proposing a Danubian Federation “Kossuth’s Idea is Timely” (September 24, 1989). Otto von Habsburg, quoted in Le Figaro as saying in 1991: “under Austria one should not consider the present tiny country but a cultural sphere that spread from Czernowitz to Sarajevo. A survey article in The Economist (November 18, 1995) David Lawday wrote: “The countries of Central Europe, unavoidably detained for a while, are clamoring to join the European Union. When they do, it will be a homecoming.” Hungary’s joining NATO in 1999 was the first step toward her reintegration to the European community of nations. Horthy would be pleased. For this edition, the text was compared to the Hungarian original and its English version was edited accordingly. About 600 footnotes were added to clarify names and some issues the reader may not be familiar with. The sources of these footnotes range from the private letters of Wallenberg to the records of the interrogations of Eichmann by the Israeli police, from long hidden memoirs of Hungarian generals and politicians, and a wide variety of books, articles and private recollections, mainly dealing with Hungary during World 2 War II, the German occupation of Hungary in the Spring of 1944, Horthy’s attempts at saving his country, getting out of the war and his eventual imprisonment by the Nazis. The primary aim of this book is not to present Horthy’s memoirs but to describe the history of Hungary during the ‘Horthy Era’ through a rich mosaic of views and comments of a multitude of participants. The Memoirs, originally published in several languages in the 1950’s, serves as the structural support, the skeleton, of the story. The text was reviewed by Mrs Ilona Bowden, widow of Stephen Horthy, Professor István Deák of Columbia University, Professor Scott F. Korom of the University of North Dakota, and Sandor Balogh , Professor Emeritus, Hudson Valley Community College. Their helpful comments and assistance in minimizing the number of errors in the text is gratefully appreciated. Without the help of Dr. Antal Simon of Budapest, who collected a huge array of reference material, this work could not have been done. Safety Harbor, Florida, St. Stephen’s Day, 1999. Andrew L. Simon 3 4 INTRODUCTION by Nicholas Roosevelt, former U.S. Minister to Hungary NICHOLAS HORTHY will figure in European history of the 20th century as the powerful head of a small state who was powerless to prevent the absorption of his country first by the German Nazis and then by the Russian Communists. His failure was due not to incapacity, weakness or blundering on his part, but rather to the simple fact that the Hungarians were outnumbered ten to one by the Germans and twenty to one by the Russians, and that Germany and Russia each regarded occupation of Hungary as a pre-requisite to its own aggrandizement. Hungary had no more chance of effective resistance against either aggressor than a wounded stag attacked by a pack of wolves. I saw Admiral Horthy from time to time when he was Regent of Hungary and I was United States’ Minister to that country. This was in 1930-33. In appearance he was a typical sea-dog, red faced, sturdy, energetic, powerful, though relatively short in stature.