Search

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]

Decline was the fundamental issue in Hungarian historiography and historical thinking between the two world wars. This article primarily analyses the views of historian Gyula Szekfű, the writers and essayists Dezső Szabó and László Németh, and those of philosophers Lajos Fülep and György Lukács. In this period, the so-called spiritual history (Geistesgeschichte) prevailed in Hungarian intellectual circles, in which the themes of decline and even fall were fundamental. Of the most important representatives of Geistesgeschichte, Spengler, Ortega, Huizinga, Croce and Maritain had significant influence on the authors mentioned above. Historians were ready to reject the ideas of these thinkers regarding the criticism of culture, and rather followed the power- and state-centred streams of Geistesgeschichte, conceived by Ranke, Troeltsch and Meinecke. At the same time it is also true that the decline and generation theory developed by the historian Gyula Szekfű (e.g., in his book Three Generations), is one of the most original interpretations of modern Hungarian history. It was shared by many Hungarian intellectuals of the period. Paradoxically, the theme of decline also appeared in the views of the so-called ‘Századok’ (Centuries) circle, mainly in the writings of the historians István Hajnal and István Szabó. They rather followed the social-history-oriented French Annales School, and even attempted to offer a solution to the problems of the so-called ‘third way’ alternative. Almost all of the above-mentioned concepts were tied in the later political discourse to the so-called right-wing tradition of Hungarian political–historical thinking, but the author also touches briefly upon the notion of decline in the leftist (Marxist) tradition of György Lukács, whose ideas had an impact on the beginnings of the Frankfurt School. The article also offers a brief overview of the main ideas of spiritual history/Geistesgeschichte, since the author suggests that this was a common feature in all the interpretations of decline in the period treated here. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper deals with an untypical military officer, Kisbarnaki Farkas Ferenc (or Farkas Ferenc de genere Kisbarnaki), who also had a good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and scouting movement. His career evolved smoothly until 1944. The Wehrmacht occupied the Kingdom of Hungary on 19 March, and not much later the front reached the Hungarian border. A part of the Hungarian leader group—including Governor Horthy—wanted to extricate Hungary from the war and therefore contacted the Soviet leader. But the German secret service knew everything about this negotiation as well. Therefore a coup d’etat was organized by the German secret services using the Hungarian extreme-right parties as well. 15 and 16 October were key days of the coup d’etat. Although some became loyal to the Hungarian Government, a large number of people joined the new regime. A few officers and clerks waited to see whether the coup d’etat would prove successful or not. Kisbarnaki Farkas was an officer of this kind. From then on his fate was linked to the will of the new puppet government. The paper presents how Kisbarnaki Farkas acted in various political situations and what kind of decisions he made during this period. It is also an important question how all this influenced his post-war life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the diplomatic role of the United States within the creation of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which formally ended World War I. Focus is given to the treatment of Hungary by the U.S. diplomatic mission. Topics addressed include the U.S.'s position over the reforming of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's borders, disagreement by the U.S. Senate over ratification of the Treaty, and the specific work of U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and diplomat Charles Seymour.

This article argues that the ideological and emotional meanings of the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘antisemitism’ have obstructed their use as analytical concepts in Holocaust scholarship. It claims, specifically, that they frame the persecution and annihilation of Jews during World War II as unique, placing these events and processes apart from essential historical and political contexts. The destruction of Jews in wartime Hungary underscores how histories of state and nation building—in this case the drive to realize ‘Greater Hungary’ with a marked Magyar majority—generated multi-layered mass violence against non-Jews as well as Jews. Focusing on the multi-ethnic borderland of Subcarpathian Rus’beforethe German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 illuminates the links in the state's multi-layered attack against the region's society and sheds new light on the particular victimization of Jews, also after March 1944. Almost all the scholarship on the Holocaust in Hungary has addressed the period after the German invasion, dealing with ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. This perspective has provided important insight, but it has also overshadowed significant dimensions in the history of wartime Hungary. The histories of the state's borderlands, which have received limited attention, challenge this account of ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. This article uncovers how anxieties about disloyalty and foreignness played crucial roles in the exclusionary campaign against Jews, Roma and Carpatho-Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Rus’. The Hungarian authorities planned and carried out discriminatory and violent measures against them and, whenever national and international opportunities permitted, mass deportations. The examination of these related processes of mass violence lays bare the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in a specific political context, highlighting connections between anti-Jewish policies and the persecution of other groups. Viewing this violence as it unfolded, rather than backward from the ‘final solution’ and Auschwitz, opens new paths to rethink ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses eugenic policies for social and biological improvement implemented by the Hungarian government between 1940 and 1941. Particular focus is given to the relationship between practical politics and the rhetoric surrounding social and biological renewal. Topics discussed include antisemitism, territorial expansion, population control, and Hungarian nationalism.

An article is presented that examines national socialism and the establishment of German-Hungarian borderland space, known as Burgenland, prior to World War II. The article examines the collapse of Austria in 1938. It examines the role of nationalism and the German Nazi Party in German and Hungarian territories during the time period. The article also discusses the oscillation between offensive and defensive nationalization tactics employed by Germany, the reaction to such actions by Hungary, and the roles played by Germany and Hungary in establishing borderland space following 1938.

The article discusses the mission of Raoul Wallenberg, as the secretary of the 1944 Swedish delegation to Hungary, to coordinate humanitarian relief for the Jews of Europe during the Jewish Holocaust. The genesis of Wallenberg's mission, which resulted from a request to Sweden's government by the U.S. government's War Refugee Board (WRB), is discussed. The Soviet Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vladimir G. Dekanozov's assertion that the Soviets would protect Wallenberg in Hungary is discussed. An overview of Wallenberg's disappearance in 1945, which resulted from his arrest by the Soviets, is provided.

The article focuses on Hungary's secret peace talks with the U.S. and Great Britain (Allies) during World War II (WWII) and how the Allies' failure to capitalize on these offers of peace impacted their war strategy. The author explains how the Allies provoked a German invasion of Hungary to launch the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, explores how this decision put Hungary's Jewish population in danger and led to the final phase of the German-sponsored genocide program Holocaust, and analyzes the moral choices of the Allies.

In the Early Republican period, Turkey developed relations with Hungary in several areas and in different levels in order to empower her international position, provide collaboration and accelerate her development. In the same period, the Turkish-Hungarian academic relations were also given mutual importance. An example that can be examined within this context emerged in July 1924, when a Hungarian committee of 29 people most of whom were university representatives visited Turkey. This study analyzes the familiarization trip of Hungarian professors to Turkey in 1924, which was one of the first relations of the Republican period and which contributed to the Turkish-Hungarian academic relations in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postwar Hungarian Communists wanted to construct the history of 1919 as an instance of a usable past and establish the First Hungarian Soviet Republic as the praefiguratio of their own regime. In this attempt they could benefit from previous Soviet exercises in historical typology, which identified episodes in the past as models for contemporary political action. Nonetheless, the thirtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Bolshevik regime in 1919 was not only an occasion for creating a historical interpretation adequate for the objectives of Sovietization. The ceremonies did not merely aim at making their conception of history authentic, but also to induce a particular politicized relationship to historical time. Yet, the ceremonies Hungarian Communists carefully designed to disseminate their political agenda failed in fulfilling these goals. Their failure calls the attention to that the relationship of cautiously executed political rituals and the credibility of ideological messages is far from being unambiguous. The case of the thirtieth anniversary of First Hungarian Soviet Republic provides the opportunity to examine how historical festivals function and what are the criteria of successful political rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In interwar debates about Hungarian modernity, the countryside played a prominent symbolic role. For conservative nationalists, the Hungarian countryside became a symbol and source of authentic, 'traditional' Hungarian national culture, unchanging, hierarchical, ordered society and stable community, and national uniqueness. Entertainment films of the 1930s provided alternative representations of the countryside that upheld the possibility of modernising traditional Hungary. According to the films, modern Hungary would be created at the intersection and out of the cooperation between rural and urban, modern and traditional. The films questioned and challenged the idea that the rural was 'pure', authentic, untainted, but they also rejected the idea that it was shameful, hopelessly backward, or unable to change. Showing the countryside as both traditional and part of modern mass culture, as both nostalgically stable and an exotic vacationland, the films offered an integrative vision of Hungary which destabilised assumptions of both liberals and conservatives. Popular films used the countryside to provide a unique and alternative vision of modern Hungary that was integrative and reconciliatory; they provided an outlet for a liberal, democratic, capitalist perspective unavailable elsewhere in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article discusses relations between the various Hungarian social classes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the bourgeoisie's interactions with workers and white-collar employees. It is said that the Hungarian bourgeoisie maintained a paternalistic approach into the 20th century. Hungary is said to have had no labor laws until 1937. Social security legislation and insurance are particularly pointed to as playing a part in preserving this paternalist pattern. The polarization of politics in the 1930s also reduced the power of the Hungarian bourgeoisie.

This article examines the Treaty of Trianon made after World War I that defined the borders of Hungary. The author looks specifically at how the treaty addressed minority groups, arguing that it made up for the omission of these groups from the previous treaties such as that which formed the League of Nations. It is also suggested that former President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points laid the foundation for subsequent treaties.

Examines the history of the Red Army in Hungary during the period 1944 to 1945. Details about the rape of Budapest women by soldiers from the Red Army during the Soviet Union occupation of Budapest; History of the Red Army's behavior in Eastern Europe; Indications of war history and politics.

Hungarian-Romanian relations were extremely tense throughout the inter-war period. The two sides' failure to come to some form of rapprochement has traditionally been blamed on Hungary's obsession with territorial revision and her desire to reclaim Transylvania which had been assigned to Romania after World War I. This article argues, however, that even during the premiership of Gyula Gömbös, one of the most vocal Hungarian revisionists, Hungary was prepared to come to rapprochement with Romania. Continuing distrust of Romania's intentions, fuelled by the negative reporting of the Hungarian legation in Bucharest, nevertheless ensured there would be no improvement in relations between the countries in the period 1932-36. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography is presented which includes the books "Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987–1991," by Leon Aron, "The Second Vienna Award and the Hungarian-Romania Relations, 1940-1944," by Béni L. Balogh and "The Last Dictatorship in Europe: Belarus Under Lukashenko," by Brian Bennett.