Hungary The Military in Trianon Hungary
Liberation Monument on Gellert Hill in Budapest
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
Hungarian independence came in 1918, when the Habsburg
Empire's disintegration gave not only the Hungarians but
also the
empire's other nationalities the opportunity to establish
sovereign states. Hungarian soldiers, scattered among the
Habsburg troops at various places within and outside the
empire,
were ordered home by the government of Mihaly Karolyi in
the fall
of 1918. They found their country racked by political and
economic strife. Hungary could not resist the Romanian
army's
advance to Budapest but did drive the Czechs out of
northern
Hungary (present-day Slovakia). However, the Treaty of
Trianon
signed in June 1920 pushed the Hungarian army back close
to the
boundaries of the present-day boundaries
(see Trianon Hungary
, ch. 1). Moreover, the Treaty of Trianon limited Hungary's
military forces to 35,000 soldiers.
Motivated by a desire to regain lands lost as a result
of the
Treaty of Trianon, Hungary allied itself with Italy in the
late
1920s and with Germany during the 1930s. Diplomacy and
alliances,
rather than military action, brought about the return of
former
Hungarian lands in 1938-39. Hungary participated in the
German
invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 by committing a
small
force to aid in the German occupation of the Ukraine.
After
January 1942, however, the Hungarian army was thrown into
the
front lines with the Germans. Underequipped (one machine
gun was
allotted for every kilometer of front line) and lacking
warm
clothing and fuel, this army suffered about 200,000
casualties at
the battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-43.
This
defeat, combined with the Soviet rollback of the German
invasion,
quickly turned Hungarian public opinion against the war.
Many
Hungarian prisoners of war fought on the side of their
Soviet
captors or were sent as partisans behind the Axis lines in
southeastern Europe. Tired of the half-hearted Hungarian
war
effort, the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1943.
Admiral
Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian regent, attempted to
negotiate an
armistice with the Allies in the fall of 1944. Horthy was
soon
arrested by the Germans, but by then the Red Army had
already
entered eastern Hungary. The Red Army captured Budapest in
December and pushed the Germans completely out of Hungary
by
early April 1945.
Data as of September 1989
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