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This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Hungary was controlled by a Commission of Military Control after the 1st World War. The supervision was done by an international military commission of control, which got involved in both military decisions and issues of foreign policy. While the commission was originally planned to be a neutral and politically independent, the political attachment of the involved nations essentially made the organization a lobby group stationed in Hungary. The analysis of how conflicts of interest were dealt with during crisis situations should be especially interesting for academics. The Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control (hereinafter IMCC) was lead by three consecutive Italian officers, who not only managed to keep IMCC together, but even found a way to use their connections to improve Italian positions in Hungary. This study aims to explain the structure and the function of IMCC in addition to showing its influence on the Army's improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the traditional ties of Polish-Hungarian friendship, and how these were given expression in the first days of the Second World War, when, despite contrary political and military considerations, Hungary opened its borders an offered a place of refuge to over 100,000 Polish civilians and military. The author presents the personal stories of Halina Waroczewska (his mother) and her mother, Stanisława Rogińska, as they fled from Poland and crossed into Hungary in September 1939, noting also the subsequent challenges they experienced in the first difficult months of life in foreign exile. This article arose from a paper the author had originally presented at the annual Polono-Hungarica scholarly conference in May 24-25, 1994, "Pamięć o Halinie Waroczewskiej."

The article presents an examination into the theological relations between Protestantism and the Catholicism during the inter-war period of Hungarian history. The work of Hungarian Calvinist theologian László Ravasz is reviewed within this paradigm as a case study and example of the larger trends of his society. The conflicted dialectic of conservative nostalgia and liberal utopianism within the theological circles of the period is highlighted. Also discussed is the larger conflict of secularism and Christian teaching regardless of denominational perspective.

This article looks at the response of the aristocracy to militia and mob violence in Hungary between 1919 and 1922. It argues that the experience with radical paramilitary groups in the era after the first world war colored the political behavior of the aristocracy and its political representatives, especially in their attitude to fascism, in the 1930s and 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Balint examines the current case of Karoly Zentai, an Australian wanted for war crimes in Hungary, his country of origin. She explores the evidence for his extradition, the broader historical context of the Zentai case, from 1944 until the present day, and its implications for historical understanding in Hungary and Australia. In the former, the complicity of the state in the Holocaust remains subject to historical denial, drowned out by the dominant narrative of Hungarian victimhood in the war. In the latter, the migration of war criminals to the country via the mass immigration programme conducted in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps of post-war occupied Europe has been hidden by the more widely known story of rescue. Balint also explores the wider history of connection between these two countries, forged during the post-war voyages of immigrants from the DP camps in occupied Europe. She questions to what extent Zentai's extradition and possible trial would help to promote collective understanding of the 'lessons of history' in contemporary Australian or Hungarian society, and argues that, even in this 'twilight time' of Holocaust memory, such efforts are necessary, though risky, for the future as well as to do justice to the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study trip to Finland, realized in 1924 under the leadership of Pal Teleki, was the first major result of the new direction found after WW I for Turanism and Hungary's kinship ideology. The reasons behind the journey may have been the outcome of several factors: the country's isolation after the Paris Treaties, its politicians' attempt to express their views abroad and the young Finnish nation state's effort to represent itself and its national propaganda. The Hungarian's stay in Finland was organized by Finnish organizations interested in kinship ideology but other national and public bodies were also mobilized to make the visit a success story. The Hungarian group was made up of professors, students and their family members, while the recipient party also aligned prominent scientists to help educational objectives realized. The Hungarian's visit attracted broad public interest all over Finland, and for this reason the country's revisionist stance and its political state of affairs received wide coverage. For Teleki himself, the study tour meant spiritual and intellectual refreshment and a cure for his depression. To analyse the experiences gathered during the trip, he used the concept of "geographic landscape and gender", summarized in a volume published four years later and entitled Finnek. Esztek. A magyarok eszaki testvernepei (Finns, Estonians. Hungarians' relatives in the North). This work highlighted some relevant viewpoints put forward by the representatives of different disciplines, and outlined the experiences gained by the scientists during the journey to Finland. Hungarians saw an optimistic, progressive world in Finland; a rather contradictory imagery to a dismantled, looted Hungary that was conveyed to the Finnish public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines US-Hungarian bilateral relations from the Hungarian declaration of war on the United States in 1941 to the collapse of the communist system in 1989. It deals with bilateral issue from both the American and the Hungarian angles on the basis of archival sources from both countries. Throughout the period bilateral relations were subject to changes in world politics. Hungary was never an independent actor -- being under the influence of Germany and then the Soviet Union -- and the United States was unable to assert its political will in the sphere of influence of another great power. Even though -- as sources reveal -- the Hungarian public's attitude was generally favorable and even friendly towards the United States, and Washington regarded the majority of Hungarian public to be generally favorably disposed towards the United States, with the exception of the 1945-1947 period relations ranged from hostile to uneasy accommodation but never cooperation. The United States viewed Eastern Europe in the paradigm of national self-determination and continental stability. Stability always had priority over self-determination; Washington supported self determination in case that condition seemed compatible with stability. This was the case between 1948 and the early 1960s; in that period Washington sought to roll back the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe to enhance Western security and stability. In 1942-1944 Hungary sought to jump out of the war in the hope that it could avoid both evils: German and Soviet invasion of the country. Hungarian strategy was built on erroneous assumptions: namely that the Anglo-Americans would invade the Danubian Basin and would count on Hungary as a bastion against Bolshevism. Even though Hungary, which was allied to Germany, performed some services to the Allied (including intelligence gathering) and was the last haven for European Jewry, Washington made it clear that it could offer no inducements to Hungary. In fact Washington and its allies sought to force Hungary (as well as Romania and Bulgaria to jump out of the war) in order to elicit their invasion by the Wehrmacht so as to relieve the Western theater or war. Winning the war dictated post-war planning as well: in order to secure Soviet cooperation in winning the peace, Washington accepted an open sphere of influence in Eastern Europe for Moscow. Hungary was not immediately written down; the US hoped to keep it economically open to the West. But Washington had no leverage on Moscow; Stalin opted for an exclusive sphere in Eastern Europe at the expense of cooperation with his former allies. The weakness of the Hungarian democratic opposition dampened American enthusiasm for championing Hungary's independence; US inaction convinced the Hungarian to give in to the Soviets. In 1956 the revolution presented an opportunity to roll back the Soviets from Eastern Europe, a prime objective of American foreign policy since 1948. Since military intervention was ruled out, the US hoped that it could work out a political solution for Eastern Europe o the basis on Finlandization. But simultaneously -- even though the State Department deemed armed struggle against the Soviet suicidal -- US propaganda urged the Hungarians to fight possibly in the hope that self-liberation would work. The failure of 1956 spelled the end of liberation; from the early 1960s the earlier policy of destabilizing Eastern Europe to maximalize Western security was changed to one of consolidating the communist regimes. Instead of isolating them bridges would be built for trade and cultural contacts. This policy met with Hungary's economy-driven desire to open up to the West and the US in particular. But for a long time the policy of bridge-building was little more than rhetoric just like Budapest's claim that it wanted normal relations with the West. From the mid sixties it became apparent that the US accepted the European status quo. Washington still pushed for domestic reform and external autonomy to make the continent more stable but gave up the idea of eventual continental reunification. From the early 1970s the policy of engaging the East Europeans economically and culturally overcame political and security obstacles. Hungary sought foreign loans to modernize its economy and thereby consolidate its political system. In order to do so Kadar opened the country to Western cultural penetration and thrust the country into a indebtedness. Hence he inadvertently undermined the system he wished to consolidate. In 1989 when events spiraled out of the control of the ruling party, which gradually relinquished its monopoly of power, the West, including the United States, anxious to keep Gorbachev in power and to safeguard European stability, sought to keep a lid on transformation in Eastern Europe. The Bush administration's position was to support political reform and economic transformation without, however, challenging the Soviet Union's security interests in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]