THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
would represent Poland at the forthcoming París Peace Conference.
It was up to the Allies to draw the definitive borders of Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, but a new and independent East Central
Europe was already in existence, although it was tumultuous, ravaged,
and internally divided.
200
7
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The First World War brought the collapse of the conservative monarchies
in Europe and a victory for democracy and national self-determination.
This victory, however, was neither complete or permanent.
The triumph of bolshevism in Russia meant not only the end of
tsardom, but also the elimination of the nascent parliamentary regime.
A way toward totalitarianism was opened under Lenin and reached its
heyday under Stalin. In Italy a totalitarian creed of the extreme right
carne to prevail with the victory of the fascists in 1922. The advent of
Nazi Germany in 1933 meant the addition of stringent racist doctrines.
A formidable challenge aróse which the Western democracies faced
somewhat passively. The Great Depression called into question the
very nature of capitalism. It radicalized the masses and brought new
arguments and new recruits to the anti-democratic camp. Indeed, there
carne about a profound crisis of parliamentary democracy as derived
from nineteenth-century liberal ideas, political and economic. In
the West only Britain, France, and the smaller states of Scandinavia,
Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands successfully withstood the
assault on their institutions. In East Central Europe, buffeted by the
totalitarian gales from east and west, and struggling with economic
problems worsened by the Depression, only Czechoslovakia was able
to retain until 1938 a democratic parliamentary regime and economic
stability. But even in this case one can speak only of a relative success.
The principie of national self-determination which the peacemakers,
especially President Wilson, adopted as a guide for the reconstruction
of East Central Europe, was to correlate state borders with ethnic
divisions. In view of the existence, in many cases, of inextricably mixed
áreas, and the need to take into account economic, strategic, and
historie factors, it was virtually impossible to draw absolutely equitable
borders. True, fewer national minorities would be found after the First
World War than before, but in the age of rampant nationalism they
201
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
posed insoluble problems. The ensuing instability was worsened by
the fact that although Germany had been defeated it did not cease to
be a great power. Similarly, the weakening of the Russian colossus
through revolution and civil war was of a temporary nature. Both
states, discontented, revengeful, and isolated, posed a threat to the
new East Central Europe, particularly to the Polish state.
Poland recovered its independence as a result of a combination of
many factors. War had broken the solidarity of the partitioning states,
and Russia had been forced out of the Polish lands by the Central
Powers. They in turn were defeated by the Allies, while the two
revolutions in Russia, the upheaval in Germany, and the disintegration
of the Habsburg monarchy created a power vacuum. It was filled by
the will and determination of the Polish nation that had never abandoned
its struggle for freedom. Polish borders with Germany were
drawn by the París Peace Conference, although the Poles were not
mere spectators, as witnessed by the 1918-21 uprisings in Prussian
Poland. The new frontiers denied to Poland its historie harbor Gdask,
which became the Free City of Danzig, and they split, after a plebiscite,
Upper Silesia. The Germans did not accept the existence of the "corridor"
(as they called it) linking Poland with the Baltic Sea and separating
Germany from East Prussia. They denounced it as an artificial monstrosity,
although ethnically it was predominantly Polish and had been
part of Poland before the partitions. Polish-Czechoslovak frontiers were
easier to establish except for a small part in Silesia (TéSín, Cieszyn,
Teschen) which the Czechs seized by forcé in 1919. The subsequent
división of this economically rich district was deeply resented by the
Poles, and it contributed to the bad blood between the two countries.
The Peace Conference could not effectively establish Poland's eastern
frontiers given the chaos prevailing in the former Russian empire
and the absence of Russia's representative in París. The advancing
detachments of the Red Army, seeking to carry revolution westward,
clashed with the Poles claiming the lands that had belonged to the
oíd Commonwealth. In former eastern Galicia an armed confrontation
between the Ukrainians and the Poles lasted until 1919, when the
Polish side took over the entire province.
Dmowski and the Polish right demanded the borders of 1772 as
corrected by ethnic changes that had oceurred in the course of the
nineteenth century. This meant a certain expansión in the west (Silesia)
and a contraction in the east (roughly the line of the second partition)In
the latter región the Polish minority was strong culturally and
economically and Dmowski believed in the possibility of assimilahng
the Ukrainians and Belorussians. Piísudski and the left favored a "federalist"
approach that would lead - after the withdrawal of Russia from
all of the lands of the oíd Commonwealth - to the creation of a bloc
202
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
of federated or allied countries: Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and
the Ukraine. The Dmowski-Piísudski controversy over Polish eastern
policies was not lost on the great powers, although they, as well as
the borderland nations, often suspected that both trends disguised
Polish imperialist designs.
The Peace Conference did not unequivocally side with the Poles
against the bolsheviks, politically or militarily, but it did not recognize
the bolsheviks or try to make peace with them either. Procrastinating
and zigzaging the conference in late 1919 proposed a minimal Polish
border in the east, known later as the Curzon Line. This was no
solution, and Allied preference for a policy of neither war or peace
with the bolsheviks was unacceptable to the embattled Poles. Piísudski
believed that peace could only be achieved after a military victory.
Gaining the support of the Ukrainian leader Petliura, he launched an
offensive in the spring of 1920 that resulted in the capture of Kiev. The
Red Army attacked in turn and reached the outskirts of Warsaw. The
entire postwar settlement was suddenly at stake. Poland and perhaps
even Europe was saved through the "eighteenth decisive battle of the
world," as a British diplomat termed the Polish victory. Piísudski's
opponents, trying to belittle his achievement, called it the "miracle of
the Vístula." The bolshevik rout opened the way to negotiations. The
Peace Treaty of Riga of 1921 split the ethnically mixed, but largely
Ukrainian and Belorussian borderlands between Poland and the Soviets.
As for Vilnius (Wilno) and its región - historically Lithuanian, but
ethnically Polish-Belorussian-Jewish - it was seized militarily by the
Poles. Piísudski was willing to give this región to Lithuania but only
if the oíd Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were recreated. This, the
Lithuanians, bent on independent national existence, were unwilling
to accept. A wall of enmity aróse between the two nations.
As compared with all the complexities of the Polish territorial settlement,
the drawing of Czechoslovak borders was far less dramatic. The
oíd frontiers with Germany remained unchanged, the Allies having no
intention of applying the ethnic principie to them or to Austria because
it would have resulted in a Germany stronger than before the war.
Henee the Sudeten Germans, as they carne to be known, vainly sought
to detach the border regions from the new Czechoslovak state. While
the peacemakers endorsed the historie borders of Bohemia and Moravia
I in Silesia the above-mentioned controversy with the Poles flared up they
accepted borders in Slovakia that were a mixture of ethnic, economic,
and strategic compromises. Several almost purely Hungarianmhabited
regions were included in them. Further east, the región
known as Carpatho-Ruthenia or Carpatho-Ukraine, was transferred
trom Hungary to Czechoslovakia mainly on strategic grounds, to
es
tablish contiguity with Romania. The Hungarians' bad record of
203
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
minority treatment was also invoked in this settlement. Thus, except for
some extravagant claims, virtually all Czechoslovak territorial demands
were granted, making the country highly heterogeneous. Somewhat
ingeniously Benes drew comparisons with Switzerland; critics said that
a near replica of the Habsburg monarchy had been created.
Czechoslovakia was the darling of the Entente; Hungary was its béte
noire. All the efforts of Károlyi to win Allied sympathy for the new
state after the disintegration of historie Hungary were in vain. The
subsequent short-lived Soviet Hungarian republie only increased antagonism
toward the Hungarians and delayed the peace treaty. When
signed in 1920 with the counter-revolutionary regime of Admiral M.
Horthy, it proved to be the harshest of all treaties that followed the
First World War. Not only was the ethnic principie used everywhere
against Hungary, but it was also violated when operating in Hungary's
favor. Plebiscite demands (with one exception in Sopron) were refused.
In virtue of the Treaty of Trianon Hungary (excluding Croaría) was
reduced territorially by two-thirds and in terms of population by threefifths.
Almost every third ethnic Magyar found himself now living
under Romanian, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, or Austrian rule. Hungary
was fully independent at last but under conditions that amounted to
a national disaster. Small wonder that extreme bitterness prevailed and
the cry "nem, nem, soha" ("no, no, never") reverberated throughout
the truncated land. The Hungarians became obsessed with a revisión
of Trianon, revisionism shaping to a large extent Budapest's external
and domestic politics.
The new international order that aróse out of the postwar treaties
was to be based on the League of Nations. Yet from the outset its main
pillar, the United States, was absent, and the support of the remaining
two, Britain and France, was weakened by their mutual differences.
The French were intent on the fulfillment of Versailles, preservation of
the status quo, and prevention of a Germán comeback, by forcé if
necessary. The British wished to elimínate the causes of Germán
revisionism by satisfying Germán grievances through peaceful change.
As time went on, France became increasingly dependent on Britain.
This had diré consequences for France's Eastern allies, Poland and
Czechoslovakia, whose fate was closely associated with the preservation
of the postwar system.
The international situation and the foreign policies of the three East
Central European states exerted a great impact on their domestic evolución
and vice versa. Poland, recreated albeit in a different shape after
one hundred and twenty-odd years of partitions found itself between
the Germán Scylla and the Russian Charybdis, or as it was said at the
time, between the jaws of a gigantic pair of pincers which when
closed would crush it. Poland could not, without jeopardizing its
204
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
independence, side either with Germany against Russia or vice versa.
Henee, Warsaw's foreign policy carne to be based on the twin principies
of balance and alliances with France and Romanía. It was not always
easy to reconcile the two.
Unlike Poland Czechoslovakia had no declared enemy among the
great powers. Identifying closely with the new international order,
Prague relied in its foreign policy on three elements: the League of
Nations, with which it cooperated very closely; the alliance with France,
whose protege it became; and regionally the Little Entente, composed
of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. In the mid-1930s a pact
with the USSR was added. As for the Little Entente, designed to keep
Hungary in check, it was above all a diplomatic instrument operative
against revisionism, a Habsburg restoration, or a unión (Anschluss)
between Germany and Austria.
The international standing of the defeated and truncated Hungary
was obviously very different from that of the victor states. With an
área of 92,963 sq. km Hungary was much smaller than Czechoslovakia
with 140,493 sq. km and Poland whose territory comprised some
388,634 sq. km. Poland was the sixth largest state in Europe; Czechoslovakia
was only thirteenth, but it made up for the difference in
economic might. Hungary was by far too weak to think of altering the
Trianon settlement by forcé, and it pursued its revisionism through
diplomacy. Budapest's foreign policy oscillated between coopera tion
with Rome and with Berlin, while seeking also to exert some influence
in London. Its options were obviously limited. Hungarian enmity centered
on Czechoslovakia, the loss of Slovakia being particularly resented,
and here Budapest and Warsaw found some common ground. The
Polish card was never a trump in the Hungarian diplomatic pack, but
it had its use, and it reinforced the tradicional friendship between the
Hungarians and the Poles.
While many reasons seemed to dictate Polish-Czechoslovak cooperation
the two states never closed ranks. Prague did not want to jeopardize
its position by siding with Poland, which was threatened by both
Germany and the USSR. When in the mid-1930s the situation changed
to Czechoslovak disadvantage, Prague's advances met with a cool
reception in Warsaw. Hungarian, Czechoslovak, or Polish external
preoecupations, whether they were a desire for change or the fear of
it, affected domestic developments, political and economic. Concern
for security necessitated heavy military expenditure by both Poland
and Czechoslovakia. Hungary, of course, was disarmed under the
Treaty of Trianon.
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THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
ECONOMY, SOCIETY, CULTURE
Many traditional socio-economic and cultural features remained
unchanged in interwar East Central Europe. But there were also new
phenomena. With the merger of Bohemia and Moravia with Slovakia
and Carpatho-Ukraine within the Czechoslovak state, the country as a
whole offered more parallels to Hungary and Poland, becoming more
truly East Central European. Still, it was the most advanced of the
three; Hungary carne second; Poland was a poor third.
As can be seen from the figures in Table 7.1, the population of the
three countries increased; that of Poland much more rapidly than that
of its neighbors. Czechoslovakia remained the most densely populated
country, and the number actively engaged in the rural population was
high throughout the área. In fact, it was higher than needed on
economic grounds. The result was, to use current terminology, hídden
unemployment.
While roughly as many people in Italy or Germany were actively
engaged in agriculture per ha of arable land as in Czechoslovakia or
Hungary, the average figures for Britain and Denmark were much
smaller: 15-17 persons. As regards totals deriving their livelihood from
agriculture the average for Western Europe would be between 20 and
40 percent of the entire population.
Table 7.1 Population and agriculture in interwar East Central Europe
Total population Czechoslovakia Hungary Poland
Increase (%) 14.0 14.2 29.9
Total population 13.6-15.2 7.9-9.1 26.8-34.8
increase in millions
Density per sq. km 110.4 98.0 89.7
Dependent on 34.5* 51.8 60.6
agriculture (%)
Active persons per 100 34.7 29.6 45.5
ha of arable land
*In Bohemia-Moravia 25.6 percent; in Slovakia-Carpatho-Ukraine 58.5.
Sources: J. Zarnowski, "Authoritarian systems in Central and South-Eastern Europe
1918-1939," in J. Zarnowski (ed.), Dictatorships in East Central Europe 1918-1939
(Wroctaw, 1983), p. 22; Z. Landau and J. Tomaszewski, Polska iv Europie i siviecie 1918-1939
(2nd, rev. edn, Warsaw, 1984), p. 36; M. C. Kaser and E. A. Radice (eds), The Economic
History of Eastern Europe 1919-75, vol. I (Oxford, 1985), pp. 75 and 82.
The number of hectares of arable land per tractor (in 1939) showed
that Czechoslovakia with 920 and Hungary with 829 were somewhat
behind France (700) and a long way behind Germany (227). The figure
for Poland was exceptionally low: 8,400. One must remember, however,
the war devastations in the Polish lands, which were responsible for
206
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
almost halving the cattle herds, leaving large portions of land fallow,
and crippling the system of transportación through the destruction of
bridges, railroad stations, and rolling stock.
To remedy the existing problems it was essential to change the
structure of agriculture, modernize production methods, and relieve
the rural overpopulation through land reform and industrialization.
Land reform per se was no panacea, but it was important on political
and psychological grounds, and all three countries adopted it. In
Czechoslovakia roughly 16 percent of arable land formerly owned by
Germans and Hungarians was distributed, in Poland about 10 percent
(although about 25 percent of large estafes were affected), in Hungary
about 4 percent (but the figure for large estafes was only 10 percent).
Thus, in the Hungarian case there was no real transformation of the
countryside and oíd conditions and relationships survived.
While agriculture had been a cause of economic dynamism in the
nineteenth century, now only Bohemia and some parts of western
Poland produced surpluses of agricultural capital. In Hungary the
owners of the large estafes mainly consumed theirs. Some accumulation
of industrial capital occurred in the Hungarian case in the Budapest
región, or in Polish Silesia. But there was need of more foreign investments,
and indeed foreign capital played a significant, if not always a
beneficial, role in interior East Central Europe.
Foreign investments in Poland (with the United States and France
leading) reached a high point of over 40 percent of capital in the Polish
joint stock companies. They were placed in the key branches of the
economy: oil, heavy industry, electricity. Foreign capital was often of
a speculative kind, seeking quick profits that were not reinvested in
the country. There was a good deal of friction and mutual recrimination.
The situation was rather different in Czechoslovakia where foreign
capital in industry, representing 20 percent of the total investments,
was much better integrated in the country's strong economy. French
and British capital was particularly important. The presence of foreign
investments was less striking in Hungary where, however, foreign
loans were much larger than in the other two countries: $95 per capita
as compared to $27 in Poland and $14 in Czechoslovakia.
To turn to industry, the output of iron in the former Congress
Kingdom fell in the wake of the First World War to one-tenth of the
pre-1914 production; the Lódz textile industry regressed to its 1870
levéis. The total industrial output (mining excluded) of Poland in 1920-1
was 35 percent of that of 1913. The corresponding figures for Czechoslovakia
and Hungary were 84.9 and 80 percent.
After achieving a certain degree of economic recovery and financial
stabilization in the mid-1920s, East Central Europe was hit by the
Great Depression on a scale unparalleled elsewhere. While European
207
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
industrial production (USSR excluded) fell by 27 percent, in Poland the
drop was 41 percent. In the period 1929-33 Polish national income
declined by 25 percent. Unemployment affected 43 percent of the
working population. Even Czechoslovakia, which overéame the
Depression earlier than its neighbors, had not reached its 1929 level of
production by 1937.
The necessary condition of industrial growth was a strong and
expanding domestic market, in terms of consumption and investments,
and this was not realizable in Poland. Attempts were made, however,
to tackle the problem of industrialization through state intervention,
particularly in the late 1930s. As it was, the Polish state controlled
about 16 percent of national wealth. Out of the total investment in the
industrial sector the state owned 58 percent in 1928 and 63 percent in
1939. In Hungary the state share was much smaller, only about 5
percent. Thanks to the involvement of the state and French credits, the
Poles built their harbor, Gdynia. Its architect, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski,
in 1936 launched an imaginative project of a Central Industrial District
(COP) involving the construction and development of steel milis, chemical
industries, and armament faetones. A comprehensive six-year plan
followed, aiming at a radical restructuring of the economy. While Polish
means were insufficient to achieve it, there was a 28 percent increase
in industrial production over a two-year period. The incorporation in
1938 of Teschen, which produced 52.2 percent of Poland's coke, 67
percent of its pig iron, and 38 percent of its steel, was a powerful boost.
Were the chances of a self-sustaining economic take-off real? Experts
are divided. The launching in Hungary of a somewhat comparable
Gyór program of industrialization did not achieve a similar upsurge.
Hungarian economic expansión was mainly in consumer, not investment,
goods. By and large, the country progressed least, comparatively
speaking, toward sustained capital accumulation.
Historians have characterized the relationship between agriculture
and industry in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia as dual economy. They
mean that the agrarian sector revolving largely around local markets
and operating along traditional ways, was as it were divorced from
industry. The peasantry was too poor to buy industrial produets; the
industry, deprived of an expanding market, could not develop cheap
mass production. A "price scissors" opened wider between the rising
prices of the industrial goods the farmer had to buy and the farm
produets he had to sell in order to survive at near-subsistence level.
There was a vicious circle.
In 1936 industrial workers constituted 44.6 percent of the actively
working population of Czechoslovakia, 21.8 percent of that in Hungary,
and 18.5 percent of that of Poland. The ratio between population and
industrial output was about 1:1 in Czechoslovakia, 2:1 in Hungary, and
208
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
3:1 in Poland. By way of comparison, we can note that in Germany
the ratio was 1:2. Production per capita, taking the European averages
in 1936-40 as an indicator, amounted to roughly 67 percent in Czechoslovakia,
43 percent in Hungary, and 20 percent in Poland. These
figures represented an increase over 1913 in the first two countries,
and a slight decrease in the Polish case. Should we thus speak of
stagnation or even a decline of the interwar Polish economy? While
new branches were developed, for instance chemical and electrical
industries, and pre-1913 levéis were surpassed in hard coal or iron
ores, to mention just two, there were instances of stagnation or even
regression in many áreas of the economy.
New frontiers naturally affected economic developments in East Central
Europe. Postwar boundaries were generally advantageous for
Czechoslovakia. Although the disappearance of the large market of
Austro-Hungary caused problems, the country as a whole adapted its
production and trade structure to the new situation. Czechoslovakia
figured among the first ten industrial producers in Europe. Internally,
however, Slovakia suffered from the severing of its natural (in terms
of geography and Communications) ties with Hungary. Trade and
population movements were adversely affected, and within Czechoslovakia
the Slovak lands underwent a certain "deindustrialization."
As for the small banking system it passed from Germán and Hungarian
to Czech hands. The 1913 levéis were passed only by 1937.
The disappearance of the geographic unity represented by the Crown
of St Stephen produced at first dramatic difficulties for the Hungarian
economy. After Trianon the country retained some 55.5 percent of its
industrial production valué, about 50.9 percent of its industrial labor,
and 49 percent of its factories. Losses were particularly heavy in the
timber industry (84 percent), and iron ore production (89 percent).
Those in the machinery industry, printing, and clothing were relatively
light. By and large post-Trianon Hungary was a more industrialized
country than the historie Kingdom.
Problems faced by the Polish economy were of an entirely different
nature. Here a single economic unity was created out of three distinct
parts, which for more than a century had operated in the context of
different economic systems. In trade, the loss of the Russian market
and a dependence on Germany called for new departures. Indeed, all
of East Central Europe faced the complex problem of reorientation of
its foreign trade. Without entering into all the intricacies one may just
observe a retraction of regional commerce and an overall decline.
While this was true for interwar Europe in general, the three countries
experienced the fall in valué more strongly than many other states.
Table 7.2 shows the regional decline.
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THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Table 7.2 Foreign trade in dollars per capita
Czechoslovakia
Hungary
Poland
1925
128
59
32
1929
138
72
37
1938
42
30
14
Source: Based on Z. Landau and J. Tomaszewski, Polska w Europie i éwiecie 1918-39 (2nd,
rev. edn, Warsaw, 1984), p. 227.
The social structure of the región underwent no basic changes,
although some issues became more acute. In Hungary, the highly
visible aristocracy now comprised the refugees from Transylvania and
Slovakia who had lost their land. Birth was still more important than
wealth, and an official annual publication dutifully recorded tifies,
ranks, and precedence. Szeklers had their noble status verified and
many others laid a claim to nobility; a hereditary "Order of Valiants"
was established by the Regent. Within the political élite, however, a
larger proportion of commoners than in the past was noticeable.
The intelligentsia doubled proportionately through an influx of refugees
from the lost lands, but the oíd distinction between the Christian
or "historie" middle class (the gentry) and the other part in which Jews
or people of Jewish origin were dominant, remained valid. The postTrianon
borders contained only half of the former Jewish population,
and its numbers continued to decline. But proportionately it stayed at
the 5 percent level, and became if anything more bourgeois and
Budapest-centered. While 82 percent of Magyars belonged to the poorest
stratum, only 24 percent of Jews (of which 3 percent were in
agriculture) did. By contrast, the Jews constituted over 40 percent
of great industrialists and nearly 20 percent of big landowners. The
phenomenon of a split middle class, a cultural gap between Budapest
and the countryside, and the unresolved problem of an agrarian proletariat,
contributed to the socio-economic backwardness of the country.
As in the past Polish and Hungarian societies had many similarities.
The gentry tradition and ethos continued to domínate over a bourgeois
outlook, or at least it constituted a certain ideal to which other social
groups aspired. True, Polish aristocracy could hardly rival their Hungarian
counterparts in political importance. Officially all hereditary tifies
were abolished. The landowning gentry struggled hard to maintain its
traditional way of life on the heavily mortgaged estafes. If upward
social mobility was relatively modest, social relations seemed to have
been more democratized and modernized than in Hungary. The percentage
of the petite bourgeoisie increased slightly (11 to nearly 12
percent) and those of the workers rose from 27.5 to 30.2 percent. The
intelligentsia, estimated at 500,000 people and composed of white-
210
THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
collar workers and free professions, continued to gain in numbers and
importance. The largest single group was the peasantry, about 70
percent, but figures would be different if we took into account the
multi-ethnic composition of the total population.
The Poles, according to the 1931 census, accounted for 69 percent of
the inhabitants of interwar Poland. The Jews who, unlike in Hungary,
were officially counted as a national minority, were numerically the
third largest group (after the Ukrainians) and amounted to roughly 10
percent. Around 90 percent of them were unassimilated, and distinguished
themselves by dress, mode of life, and the Yiddish language.
They lived in a world apart, as the novéis of Isaac Bashevis Singer
demónstrate so well. Only thirteen individuáis were great landowners,
and members of the grande bourgeoisie were hardly numerous. Twothirds
of Jews belonged to the petite bourgeoisie, especially small
traders and craftsmen, which was increasingly pauperized. They were
visible among the white-collar workers (about 14 percent) and constituted
nearly 50 percent of the free professions, virtually dominating
medicine and law. Not only was the oceupational structure of the
Jewish community different from that of the Poles and other minorities,
but they were also unevenly distributed throughout the country. The
Jewish population ranged from tiny groups in western Poland to majorities
in the small towns of former eastern Galicia and Russian Poland,
and constituted nearly 30 percent of the population of Warsaw.
By way of contrast the Ukrainians and Belorussians were a "territorial"
minority living in fairly compact blocs in regions adjoining those
inhabited by their countrymen across the border in the USSR. Ninetenths
of the Ukrainians - who according to statistics numbered below
4.5 million, but were probably well over 5 million - were peasants and
agricultural workers. Virtually all the Belorussians (ranging between 1
and 1.9 million) belonged to this category. The Germán minority had
a much more balanced structure: around 24 percent in mining and
industry, and cióse to 60 percent in agriculture. The Germans, comprising
some 800,000 people, led the other minorities in economic and
social standing, not to mention educational and cultural standards.
More than half of them lived in the regions that had been formerly
under Prussia.
Czechoslovakia was even more muí tina tional than Poland. Czech
and Slovaks constituted (according to the 1931 census) jointly 66.9
percent of the population; the Czechs over 50 percent, the Slovaks over
16 percent. The Germans with 23 percent carne in fact second after the
Czechs; the Hungarians amounted to some 5 percent and the
Ukrainians to about 3.8 percent. The social structure of the BohemianMoravian-Silesian
lands differed greatly from that of Slovakia and
even more so from Carpatho-Ukraine. Czech society, characterized by
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
upward mobility, had a large middle class (20 percent of the economically
active population), a growing working class (about 30 percent),
and a well integrated peasantry that resembled western European
farmers. The country's élite was drawn from the grande bourgeoisie
(some 5 percent of the total population) as well as from the middle class
(often one generation removed from the villages) and the prosperous
peasants. The practical and down-to-earth Czech continued to represent
bourgeois valúes, and he had more affínity with his hard-working
Germán neighbor than with a member of the Polish intelligentsia or a
Magyar nobleman.
In Slovakia, the vast majority of people were peasants. Owing to a
high birth rate and economic dislocations, a large number fell into
the category of destitute rural proletariat. The small industrial and
commercial sector was largely dominated by Germans and Jews, and
a portion of the landed estafes was in Hungarian hands. Still, a relatively
small number of Slovak families controlled a significant part of
the country's wealth. A tiny Slovak gentry often intellectually Magyarized,
and a growing intelligentsia which showed traces of the age-long
Hungarian connection, but was now in the forefront of Slovak activities,
completed the picture.
The Jewish issue as a socio-economic problem existed in Slovakia
where the Jews constituted 4.8 percent, and in the backward CarpathoUkraine
around 12 percent. Only about half of all people of Judaic faith
defined themselves as being of Jewish nationality. This represented 1.3
percent of the total population of Czechoslovakia. In Bohemia and
Moravia the figures were much smaller - 0.2 and 0.6 percent - for
many persons of Jewish faith regarded themselves as Czechs or as
Germans.
Religious, national, and social issues were frequently interconnected,
and the standing of the church in society was high in various parts of
East Central Europe. In Hungary 65 percent of the population was
Román Catholic and 27 percent Protestant. Bohemia, Moravia, and
Silesia were predominantly Catholic although adherence to Catholicism
was often nominal in Bohemia and among the middle classes in general.
The Germans were mostly Catholic. In Slovakia the división between
the Catholic majority (69 percent) and a Protestant minority (18.7
percent) had social and political connotations. By and large the Slovak
Protestants were closer to the Czechs and represented the wealthier
element; among Germans and Hungarians there were Lutherans and
Calvinists. All this made Slovak nationalists tend to consider only
Catholic Slovaks as genuine Slovaks.
This tendency to identify religión with nationality was pronounced
in Poland where the nationalists stressed the Pole equals Catholic
equation. Interwar Poland consisted of 63 percent Román Catholics, 11
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percent Greek Catholics (Uniates), 11.5 percent Greek Orthodox, and
3.2 percent Protestants. (Jews who have been mentioned above are not
included in these figures.) Although Poles were predominantly Catholic
there were also some Polish Protestants. Ukrainians and Belorussians
were either Greek Catholic or Orthodox. There was a Catholic minority
among the Belorussians and the Germans, the latter being mainly
Protestant.
The social, economic, and national position of the Catholic Church
in Poland was traditionally high. But this does not mean that anticlericalism
was non-existent, particularly among the leftist intelligentsia.
The clergy inclined to a tactical alliance with the political right. The
Archbishop of Gniezno was the primate of Poland, and his standing
was probably even more elevated than that of his Hungarian counterpart,
the Archbishop of Esztergom, given the influential Protestant
section in that country. In Poland, Slovakia, and often among the
Ukrainians priesthood represented social advancement and prestige.
The Slovak Father A. Hlinka or the Ukrainian Metropolitan A. Sheptytskyi
were both father figures and national leaders.
Even the briefest overview of the independent East Central Europe
must stress the importance of culture, for this was a rich period in
intellectual, artistic, and scholarly activities. Polish poetry reached new
heights with J. Tuwim, K. Wierzyski, and A. Stonimski; prose was
dominated by women writers. The pioneering theater of S. I. Witkiewicz
was later to achieve world-wide recognition and this was also true for
a few avant-garde authors. The ame of K. Szymanowski, the foremost
composer, deserves mention. In the case of Hungary the music of
Bartók and Z. Kodály was known throughout the world. The prose of
Mihály Babits and Zsigmond Móricz as well as the poetry of Attila
József gained a high place in the litera ture of the country. The ame
of Jaroslav Hasek, from Czechoslovakia, became known throughout
Europe, but the impact on literature and on Czechoslovak politics of
Karel Capek was of special importance. Kafka's earlier-mentioned
works transcended the Czechoslovak framework.
The traditional importance of arts and belles-Iettres must not make us
forget the great achievements in learning. Among the many disciplines
for which the región was renowned let us just mention the Polish and
Hungarian schools of mathematics and philosophy, and the Prague
center of structural linguistics. In the interwar period Poland had 24
institutions of higher learning, Czechoslovakia 17, Hungary 13. As
throughout Europe, universities were elitist and had relatively few
students from the lower classes. Still, one could speak of an overproduction
of intelligentsia and a scarcity of white-collar positions. Did
interwar education foster nationalism? After the long period of foreign
rule which often produced a depreciation of national valúes a reaction
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was understandable. The government used the schools and the army
as instruments of national integration. While illiteracy was very low in
Bohemia and Hungary (respectively 2.4 and 8.8 percent) it was still
significant in Slovakia and Poland (15 and 23.15 percent). As nationalism
became more stringent in the 1930s, and the Great Depression
produced hardships, universities and even high schools became politicized
and students were often driven to extreme positions: nationalist
or, less frequently, communist.
East Central Europe could boast doctors, lawyers, engineers, scholars,
and intellectuals who were second to none in Europe. There were
also highly qualified technicians, artisans, and blue-collar workers.
None the less a gap, least visible in Czechoslovakia, between the
cultural aspirations and the means to satisfy them was characteristic of
the entire región. The vast majority was poor, and the leading class, the
intelligentsia, often suffered privations. The fact that the membership in
the élite (the intelligentsia) was determined by educacional standards
rather than by economic status as in the case of the middle class
symbolized the difference between East Central and Western Europe.
POLITICS
Interwar politics in the región were naturally affected by socio-economic
and cultural structures and relationships. In the pursuit of a stable
constitutional-political model Poland moved from a weak parliamentary
regime to a contested authoritarian system. Authoritarianism also prevailed
in Hungary, where an essentially conservative regime was gradually
yielding to the challenge of a radical right. Czechoslovakia alone
was relatively successful in its parliamentary system.
Political institutions were shaped by native tradirions, when they
existed, and by West European models. At this time, parliamentary
democracy in the West operated either on the British two-party or the
French multi-party system. The latter seemed to correspond better to
East Central European theory and practice of politics. In the West a
professional civil service assured a relatively smooth functioning of the
administra tion. The "new" states of the región had to créate their
own bureaucracy, often inspired by or inherited from the Habsburg
monarchy. Throughout most Polish lands, the tradition of a native civil
servant was lacking.
In Poland the interwar period was characterized by a quest for a
political model which led all the way from the French-inspired 1921
constitution to the sanacja constitution of 1935. A turning point was
Piísudski's coup d'état oí 1926, which made the marshal the real master
of the country. The parliamentary system failed largely because of the
gulf that separated the mainly socialist left from the national-
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democratic-led right. Except for short periods of national emergency
the two could not form common cabinets. This restricted political
maneuver to right-center or left-center coalitions, and the center (mainly
populist) although numerous did not effectively play the role of a
balancer or a bridge. The left-right rift was enhanced by the PiísudskiDmowski
conflict which was colored even more by outlook and mentality
than by doctrine.
Piísudski and his followers, but not the left as such, carne to govern
Poland. In a way they became a center, not so much in terms of
ideology, for their "state ideology" was somewhat nebulous, but
through a pragmatic approach that transcended party politics. Most of
Piísudski's men were former legionaries, now high-ranking officers.
Henee people talked of a "colonels' regime." Yet, it would be a mistake
to imagine a militarization of Polish politics along the lines of a South
American junta. The army in reborn Poland was too young to have
created its own establishment, and these officers were not so much
professionals as men who through the forcé of circumstances had to
fight for the rebirth of their country in uniform.
Piísudski's principal adversary Dmowski never governed Poland, but
he exerted a sway over the minds of many a Pole, particularly of the
younger genera tion. Increasingly uninterested in parliamentary politics
he steered his followers in the direction of a "national revolution" as
exemplified by Mussolini's Italy or Salazar's Portugal. Historians who
speak of Dmowski as a nationalist and apply the same adjective to
Piísudski confuse the doctrinaire nationalism of the former with the
ardent patriotism of the latter. The difference was basic and it could
be observed when examining attitudes of nationals and patriots toward
national minorities. It is true, however, that there were times when it
was blurred in practice.
Poland, as a Germán historian put it, was "a multi-national state
with a uni-nationalist ideology."53
Or, to express it differently, it was
perceived by Poles as a national state although having a large number
of minorities. Originally, Piísudski and the left favored concessions to
non-Poles provided they were good citizens. But passions ran too high
on both sides. Neither the Poles who denied autonomy to the Ukrainians
in eastern Galicia and resorted to reprisals, or the Ukrainians who
made use of terrorism could find an área of agreement. At times the
practice of the government carne dangerously cióse to the program of
the integral nationalists who wanted to cut drastically the rights of the
minorities under the slogan "Poland for the Poles."
The stringent anti-Semitism of the Dmowski camp, particularly of its
extremist splinters like Falanga, was translated into demands for the
elimination of Jews from politics, the economy, and culture. Piísudski,
to whom anti-Semitism was completely alien, never tolerated such
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positions. After his death, however, some of his followers began to
borrow the nationalist slogans (anti-Semitic ones included), largely fQr
tactical reasons. Condemning the use of violence as practiced by
extreme nationalists, the post-Piísudski government admitted the legitimacy
of economic boycott and explored possibilities of gradual Jewish
emigration. The latter also figured as a possible solution in centrist and
leftist programs and was supported by Zionist groups. No anti-Jewish
legislation was, however, adopted by the interwar Polish republic.
Having experimented first with a "sejmocracy" and then with a
"pluralist authoritarianism" or limited dictatorship, Poland offered a
very different picture from Hungary, which looked to its prewar past
for political inspiration. A Habsburg restoration did not prove a real
option for domestic and external reasons, but Hungary remained a
kingdom, be it only to retain claims to the lands that had been historically
part of St Stephen's Crown. Admiral Miklós Horthy, a former
aide-de-camp of Francis Joseph, became regent. His original position
of holding the kingdom for its rightful ruler was little more than a
sham. Horthy's Hungary, however, revived much of the past. The
electoral reform of the inicial postwar period was abandoned and the
suffrage limited to some 27 to 29 percent of potential voters. Open
ballot was restored in the countryside. The upper house also reemerged,
although in a somewhat changed form. All these provisions
ensured the rule of the so-called Unity Party, which was an instrument
for administration rather than a unión of like-minded people. While
opposition parties were tolerated in the parliament they had no possibility
of going beyond their status of a permanent minority.
The interwar Hungarian model was largely worked out during the
1921-31 decade of I. Bethlen's premiership. It was a neo-conservative
system reminiscent of that under István Tisza, based on the manipulation
of the electorate and administrative pressures. Its actual practices
were more important than the nationalist ideas that had accompanied
the counter-revolution and were characterized by xenophobia, antiurbanism,
and anti-modernism. The extremists regarded liberalism,
socialism, and bolshevism (seen as a sequel) as essentially unHungarian.
They emphasized their attachment to the past and to
Christianity and they preached various forms of anti-Semitism.
Horthy himself was an anti-Semite, which did not prevent his political
establishment from making deals with the top Jewish grande bourgeoisie.
In that as in other respects the ruling conservatives, often
drawn from the aristocracy, differed significantly from the radical right
which ranged from nationalist extremists (but still operating within the
system) to openly Nazi-type mass movements like the Arrow Cross.
The latter did not gain power, but made those in power come closer
to their views. This was evident in the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s, the
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last of which in 1941 resembled the racist Nuremberg Law. Conservative
Hungarians strongly objected to them as they objected to the rabblerousing
and crude Hungarian Nazis who defied their notion of gentlemenly
behavior in politics.
It was ironic that it was the Hungarian Jews, many of them ardent
Magyars and Magyarizers, who were singled out for these discriminatory
measures, even though there were exceptions and loopholes. But
in the near ethnic Hungary the Jews suddenly became the only de facto
nacional minority. They were no longer needed as allies, and the high
visibility of Jews during the communist episode helped to turn popular
feeling against them. The other national minority, the Germans, also
largely Magyarized, was by contrast a privileged group with a tradición
of military service. Some Germans, although it is debatable whether
they were a majority, proved susceptible to the attraction of Hitler's
Germany. This seemed to be valid for certain members of the officers'
corps who played an important role in politics.
The contest between the conservative and the radical right constituted
the essence of Hungarian politics in the interwar period. The left had
been badly discredited by its association with the communists. There
existed a "third road" group, which opposed both capitalism and
communism. Its heralds preached populism as a valué system that was
least corrupted by the ill effects of industrial sociecy: materialism,
atheism, cosmopolitism. With its Chriscian and patriotic - although
bordering on nationalist - watchwords, the third road populism
belonged to a transición zone between practical politics and political
thought. It never had a direct impact on major political developments.
Turning to Czechoslovakia, its political system, operating under the
1920 constitución, seemed pattemed on the French model. Yet unlike
the latter it was characterized by great stability. Corning cióse to the
"directed democracy" concept, vainly pursued by the Poles, it was
based on three pillars: the castle (hrad), meaning the president and his
associates; the governmental coalition; and the financial and economic
establishment. Presidential powers, not inconsiderable in themselves,
became much greater in the hands of Masaryk, who until the early
1930s appointed and dismissed premiers at will. The image of the
"president-liberator" was consciously cultivated by his admirers. He
was, like the former emperor, a father figure: the "oíd gentleman," as
he was familiarly called. Only a minority strongly opposed Masaryk
and questioned his fundamental ideas and the use he made of them
in politics. Was Benes, the second president, Masaryk's spiritual heir
or merely his palé reelección? Opinions differed sharply, and the philosopher
Jan Patocka passed the severest judgement on Beneá when he
called him "an ambitious, diligent, talkative mediocrity." It was a
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tragedy, Patocka wrote, that Benes had to "decide upon the future
moral profile of the Czech nation" and that "he chose smallness."54
Masaryk's rule, as a historian put it, was a dictatorship based on
respect. The president believed that a dash of dictatorship was essential
in a democracy that was not yet fully mature. There were instances of
governmental handling of opponents in Slovakia (Hlinka or Tuka) or
in Bohemia (Gajda) when the law seemed to have been stretched a bit.
As for the Czech bureaucracy it continued the Austrian tradition of
combining modérate effectiveness and honesty with some harshness.
The governmental coalition, an informal semi-permanent fixture, was
at the very heart of the Czechoslovak political system. An author called
Czechoslovakia a multinational parties' state. The five major political
parties: the agrarians, social democrats, national socialists, populists,
and national democrats (henee the term pétka (five)) acted as shareholders
of power and beneficiaries of spoils and patronage. Governed
by a strict discipline that precluded the possibility of rebellion in the
ranks, the parties made the parliament little more than a forum for
debate. No cabinet was overthrown by a non-confidence vote in the
chambers, for all real decisions were made by the party leaders. The
concern for an inter-party balance assisted the Communist Party the
only one that operated legally in East Central Europe - for even
the rightists feared that banning it would unduly strengthen the socialists
and thus destroy the equilibrium.
Cabinets assumed various forms, going beyond the five or contracting
below that number. From 1926 Sudeten Germans were represented in
the government. The largest party, the agrarians, was present in all
political cabinets, and their leader Antonín Svehla deserved more credit
than he usually receives for making the system work. National democrats
led by Kramáf were mostly in opposition, and the challenge to
the regime from the right in 1926 and 1935 proved a failure.
Characterized by a low degree of polarization, the system was
occasionally criticized as somewhat mechanistic and uninspiring. More
serious was the aecusation of inner incompatibility between the proposition
that the Czechoslovak republie must be a democracy with equal
political and civil rights for all its nationalities, and the assumption that
it must express Czechoslovak national culture. In other words, was real
democracy and multi-ethnicity reconcilable in twentieth-century East
Central Europe?
Masaryk did not think in terms of a Czech national state, but there
was no clearly visible alternative program, and the administration,
especially on the local level, promoted Czechization. Prague's centralism
was supported by Masaryk's Slovak associates who thought it
necessary to de-Magyarize, secularize, and modernize Slovakia. In
the absence of trained Slovak cadres there was a need for Czech
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administrators, teachers, and specialists, but while some of these people
were dedicated, others were arrogant and viewed the Slovaks as poor
and backward Czechs. The government's policies were often unimaginative
and insensitive. The Czechs spoke of losing money in Slovakia
and taunted the Slovaks with the question of where they would go if
they left the republie. The Austrian tradition of avoiding change unless
forced by circumstances had left its imprint on the Czech administrative
style.
The argument that the Slovak problem resulted from divisions among
Slovaks is only partly correct. True, the largely Protestant pro-Czechoslovak
establishment - the twenty families that ruled Slovakia, according
to Benes - confronted the populists, Catholic and autonomists. The
latter all too frequently claimed that they spoke for all Slovaks, but
their strength and the prestige of their leader Father Hlinka was undeniable.
To represent him as a disgruntled office seeker was a political
mistake. Prague's role was hardly that of a disinterested observer of
inner Slovak divisions, and the rejection by the parliament of the thriceintroduced
bilí for Slovakia's autonomy only aggravated matters.
The Slovak question was basically a constitutional problem - after all
the republie was a state of Czechs and Slovaks - but it also appeared
as a national minority issue. The Germán question belonged more to
the latter category, although the Germans viewed themselves as natives
of Bohemia and wanted the position of co-rulers or associates in the
multinational state. Their short-lived secessions in 1918 somewhat
compromised this position, as did the Czech reaction to the Germán
"rebels." Even Masaryk once called the Sudeten Germans "immigrants."
But it was clear that some arrangement was necessary, and as
mentioned, the Germans carne to be represented in the cabinet, the
only minority in East Central Europe to enjoy such a privilege. Was
this a token arrangement, and was the subsequent worsening of CzechGerman
relations unavoidable? Or could their demands for autonomy
have been satisfied, since even in 1939 a third of Sudeten Germans did
not oppose the Czechoslovak state? There are no easy answers. We
must remember, however, not to divorce the evolution of GermanCzech
relations from the rise of Hitler and his policy of making the
Germán minority an instrument for the destruction of the republie.
THE TWENTY YEARS 1919-39
Turning to a chronological overview we must go back to the proclamation
of the Czechoslovak state on October 28, 1918 in Prague. It
marked a bloodless transición which preserved legal continuity with
the defunct monarchy. The constitutional process of building the state
was the work of Czechs and Slovak centralists; the Germans and other
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national minorities were not involved. Kramáf became briefly premier,
and his national democrats pursued anti-inflationary policies that
spared the country the first postwar economic and financial chaos that
prevailed elsewhere throughout the región. Under the presidency of
Masaryk, who would be re-elected twice more, and with BeneS as
the perennial foreign minister until 1935, the state became stabilized
internally and externally. The formation of the Little Entente and the
alliance with France (in 1924) were the major achievements in the
international field.
The "castle" successfully weathered the 1926 crisis in which the right
and especially the small but vocal fascist group promoted General
Rudolf (Radola) Gajda as the leader. His removal from the army and
his later trial, as well as Beneé's victory over the rightist faction among
the national socialists showed the furility of a challenge to the system.
A "gentlemen's coalition" under Svehla comprised not only Germán
ministers but briefly even Hlinka's populists. But the cooperación with
the latter broke down over the arrest and trial of a Slovak populist
leader Vojtéch Tuka, accused of treason. It was a bad ornen for the
fu ture.
The Great Depression hit the German-inhabited regions as well as
Slovakia particularly hard. In the atmosphere of radicalization, nationalist
and extremist political trends carne to the fore. The rise of Hitler
had a direct impact on Czechoslovakia. Thus far Prague's relations with
Germany had been correct if not friendly; now the thrust of the Nazi
program menaced the Czechoslovak republic. The dissatisfied Germán
minority became receptive to extremist slogans. In 1933 an organization
aróse under the leadership of Konrad Henlein that assumed its final
pro-Nazi form two years later as the Sudeten Germán Party. In the
1935 general elections it captured two-thirds of the Germán vote. By
that time Hlinka's populists had also strengthened their position, and
the 1933 celebration of the founding of the first Christian church in Nitra
in Slovakia turned into a demonstration in favor of Slovak autonomy.
The mid-1930s represented a turning point. The international situation
grew more tense. The signing of the 1935 pacts between Paris,
Prague, and Moscow only increased Germán and Italian accusations of
Czechoslovakia as an advance guard of communism. The main Western
ally, France, became increasingly weak and indecisive. A tensión with
Poland grew as Warsaw fanned the grievances of the Polish minority
in Teschen, flirted with Slovaks and found itself on the opposite side
to Prague in international counsels. The Hungarian anti-Czechoslovak
stance grew bolder. There was unintended irony in the wish extended
to BeneS on his succession to Masaryk in 1935 that he become the
"president unifier." Lacking Masaryk's stature and fighting spirit,
Bene§ was more adroit in external than domestic politics. M. Hodza,
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THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
the modérate Slovak aerarían who became prime minister, was not
equal to the deceased Svehla.
It was an isolated and domestically undermined Czechoslovakia that
entered the fateful year 1938. Demands of the Sudeten Germán Party
for far-reaching autonomy were voiced in the Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad)
program and were meant as escalating demands. When BeneS, whose
position was weakened by the British mediatory mission under Lord
Runciman, satisfied (in his fourth plan) virtually all the Germán
demands, the response was an uprising and Henlein's flight to Germany.
It was now a showdown between Hitler and Benes, with the
Western powers anxious to avoid war and willing as arbiters to sacrifice
Czechoslovakia. Should Benes have defied all pressures, united the
country in resistance to Hitler, and risked a war in isolation that was
bound to be lost? This is a question which has been preoccupying many
a Czech and Slovak as well as historians. The risk was enormous and
Beneá felt he had no right to sacrifice an entire generation. The recollection
of the catastrophe of the White Mountain was present in his mind.
or did Benes wish to appear in Western eyes as the man who
recklessly plunged Europe in war. So, he chose to capitúlate, and the
price in terms of national morale was heavy. A "Munich complex"
would henceforth haunt Benes and his people.
The Slovaks, deprived of Hlinka, who died in August 1938, were
now led by the discordant Tiso-Sidor team. The two negoriated with
Prague, and Sidor did appeal for the defense of the common fatherland.
But BeneS proved unwilling or unable to open a new chapter in CzechSlovak
relations. Slovak leaders made secret overtures to Warsaw for
a Polish-Slovak unión, but generally they felt uncertain and vulnerable.
The fate of Czechoslovakia was decided by the German-Italian-BritishFrench
díctate at Munich. Czech western provinces were annexed to
Germany. Subsequently, under the so-called First Vienna Award (by
Germany and Italy) parts of southern Slovakia were transferred to
Hungary. As for the contested Teschen, Poland gained it (and a little
more) through a direct ultimátum addressed to Prague. Czechoslovakia
lost some 30 percent of its territory, one-third of the population, and
two-fifths of its industrial capacity, not to mention the strategic and
fortified borders. Bene§ apparently hoped that the truncated country
might survive until the outbreak of the general war that he believed
imminent. But he was forced to resign, and the Second Republic aróse
under the colorless president Emil Hacha. It was called Czecho-Slovakia
and under the ilina accord it was a state of two equal nations with
their own parliaments and administrations. Carpatho-Ukraine received
an autonomous status. All this proved to be a transient arrangement.
The Germán shadow fell on the country, which had to adjust its internal
system to Nazi demands. Berlín closely watched Czech-Slovak friction
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They were successful in the working-class districts of Budapest and
around it, in áreas dominated by agrarian radicáis, among Protestants
and Catholics, Germans, and the lower classes.
The impact of the Third Reich was increasingly visible under Gómbós,
the first foreign statesman to visit Hitler officially, and under his
successors. By 1939 Hungary's economic dependence on Germany was
expressed by 50 percent of all exports and 26 percent of imports. One
half of all foreign capital was Germán. The Nazi example served as
inspiration for the anti-Jewish legislation, which the conservative upper
house vainly opposed. The pro-German line earned Hungary the
already-mentioned territorial gains under the Vienna award in 1938
and in Carpatho-Ukraine in 1939. The anti-Trianon stance was present
throughout all these years, the post-1920 Hungary being treated as a
truncated and mutilated fatherland and not a permanent state that
could be taken for granted and identified with.
The history of interwar Poland fell, like that of Hungary, into clearly
delineated periods, the divisions being even sharper. The initial phase
of building up the state ended in 1921 with the adoption of the March
constitution, the Upper Silesian plebiscite, the treaty of Riga with the
Soviets, and the alliances with France and Romanía. During the first
three months Piísudski had virtually dictatorial powers and then he
acted as a constitucional head of state. He refused, however, to be a
candidate for the presidency under the 1921 constitution that placed
all power in the sejm. The latter's composition at this point showed a
rightist plurality (36 percent) with the center slightly below that figure
and the left having some 27 percent of deputies.
The election of G. Narutowicz as president in 1922 opened a new
phase. The right vehemently protested against his choice, calling him
a president imposed by the national minority vote which had allegedly
swung the balance. A nationalist fanatic shot Narutowicz, a murder that
shocked the nation and deeply affected Piísudski. The new president
Wojciechowski, although elected by the same majority, was more
acceptable to the right, and assumed office without difficulty. As a
right-center coalition carne into being under the premiership of the
tough, pragmatic populist leader Witos in 1923, Piísudski withdrew
from politics and the army. The three years that followed were characterized
by frequently changing cabinets - seven months' duration being
the average - and grievous economic problems. The hyper-inflation of
1923 was, however, brought under control by the Grabski reforms,
which introduced a stable currency. But there was a growing discontent
among the masses and fears about the fu ture. Germany waged an
economic war on Poland, and rejoining European counsels through
the Locarno treaties in 1925 it did not hide its revisionist anti-Polish
objectives.
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THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
Projects for constitutional and political change became more current.
Those on the right showed a growing fascinación with Italian fascism
and proposed to curtail the presence of national minorities in the
parliament. The left spoke of a threat to democracy, and the Jews in
particular were alarmed. The eyes of the left were turning toward
Piísudski as the only savior. He was fulminating against unbridled
parliamentarism and irresponsible politicians, calling for "cleansing"
(sanacja) of the entire system. He had devoted supporters among his
former legionaries in and out of the army, and in May 1926 he led a
few regiments on Warsaw. This was designed as an armed demonstration
that would forcé the president to dismiss another center-right
cabinet of Witos. The unexpected resistance of Wojciechowski led to a
clash and bloodshed. After three days of fighting Piísudski's forces,
supported by the entire left, prevailed. A new period began.
After 1926 the powers of the president were somewhat increased,
but Piísudski refused the post. While his associate Moscicki became
president, Piísudski commanded the army and was twice premier. But
he was the real master. A born leader and a complex personality,
comparable in some respects to Charles de Gaulle, Piísudski rejected
fascism, but did not seek coopera tion with a chastized sejm. Trying
deliberately to discredit it along with the political parties, he wanted
the cabinet to govern and the sejm merely to control its activities. Piísudski
disappointed the left by insisting that he wished to remain above
parties, and his supporters, ranging from socialists to conservatives,
organized themselves into a Non-partisan Bloc of Cooperación with the
Government (BBWR). They became the largest group in the sejm after
the 1928 elections.
Piísudski was growing impatient with what he regarded as sterile
opposition. He responded to some acts of Ukrainian terrorism by
ordering brutal reprisals ("pacifications") in 1930. When the center-left
Consolidated bloc accused the government of destroying democracy,
Piísudski had the leading politicians arrested, mishandled, and imprisoned
in the Brzesc fortress and tried in 1931. The sentences were light,
for Piísudski's objective of overawing the opposition had already been
achieved. It was tragic and paradoxical that Piísudski, who genuinely
believed that forcé "does not edúcate but destroys" felt obliged to use
such high-handed methods. His main concern, as always, was with
the security of the country, and he devoted most of his attention and
energy to foreign policy and the military. In 1932 Poland signed a nonaggression
treaty with the USSR and two years later a similar declaration
with Nazi Germany. The jaws of the pincers were seemingly pried
further apart. Under Józef Beck as foreign minister, Warsaw pursued
a policy of balance. There was really no alternative, for Poland's
tragedy, as a French historian remarked, was that it was reborn too
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weak to be a power and too strong to be reconciled to the role of a
client state. A certain defiant style and occasional sabré rattling earned
Polish diplomacy severe criticism that a more powerful state might
have been spared. While Marshal Piísudski's health declined and he
became a tense, intolerant, almost neurotic recluse, his followers passed
a new constitution through dubious parliamentary tactics. The April
1935 constitution was of a presidential-authoritarian type that dispensed
with the traditional división of powers. The president was placed above
all branches of government, the judiciary, the legislature, and the army.
But the constitution that was made for Piísudski became an empty shell
when he died in May of the same year.
Piísudski's legend could not be bequeathed and his supporters'
constant invocation of his ame was no substitute for policy. Torn by
personal rivalries and contradictions, the Piísudski camp began to
disintegrate. A democratic wing was opposing those who, observing
the successes of dictators and the shortcomings of parliamentary democracy,
stood for an authoritarian regime. President Moscicki steered his
own course, but he was challenged by the new commander-in-chief,
Marshal ámigíy-Rydz who was being represented as the true successor
of Piísudski. To enlarge the basis of governmental power a new political
movement, the Camp of National Unity (OZN) replaced the defunct
BBWR. Its ideology, as a wit put it, was a cocktail: 40 percent nationalism,
30 percent social radicalism, 20 percent agrarianism, and 10 percent
anti-Semitism. It proved a soulless body. Under the existing conditions
Poland could either evolve toward a semi-totalitarian model for which
Dmowski's nationalism would be needed as the cement, or return to
parliamentary democracy. Since the political parties boycotted general
elections, because of a new law that discriminated against them, only
the local elections held in 1938-9 provided some indications of the
political profile of the country. In larger towns the government gained
about a third of the vote, but was followed closely by the socialists
and the nationalists. The opposition grew in strength with the united
Populist Party (SL) and the newly formed Christian Democratic Front
Morges, so-named after Paderewski's residence in Switzerland. What
direction would Polish politics have taken if peace had prevailed for
another decade or so? It is impossible to say.
As the threat of war loomed large, the governmental camp refused
to share power and responsibility with the opposition. It persisted in
this attitude when Germany launched the attack on Poland on September
1 that started the Second World War, and it went down with Poland
in the military catastrophe that followed.
The point has sometimes been made, especially in the West, that the
interwar East Central Europe was a failure. It has been suggested that
the discrepancy between an advanced political model and the backward
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THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
socio-economic context in which it operated precluded any chances of
success. The fact that it was the most advanced country, Czechoslovakia,
that achieved the greatest stability seems to argüe in favor of
this thesis. But it leaves unexplained Prague's inability to resolve either
the Czech-Slovak or the Czech-German problem. In the case of Hungary
it is true that its interwar record and achievements did not compare
favorably with those of the preceding century of semi-independence.
But then the shock of Trianon and the ensuing revulsions were partly
responsible for it. Looking at the big neighbors, surely the Bethlen
middle-of-the-road model or the post-1926 authoritarianism of the Piísudski
camp compared favorably with what was happening at that time
in Italy, Germany, or the USSR.
In a sense each of the three states emerging after centuries of dependence
or partitions was a half-way house and faced problems of overawing
magnitude. That they did not resolve them in twenty years time
is not all that surprising. Czechoslovakia and Poland had national
minorities that they could neither absorb or conciliate through federalist
solutions, although autonomous arrangements were a possibility
that the intensely nationalist atmosphere made virtually inapplicable.
Hungary, and also Poland, operated with an amalgam of a free market
and a planned economy, but for social reasons did not go far enough
in the directions of reforms. The Czechoslovak parliamentary system
proved unusually successful; those of Poland and Hungary did not,
but they still retained enough traditional pluralism to preserve their
civil societies. During those twenty years the national cohesión of Poles,
Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians was strengthened. The spiritual and
moral valué of independence was great for peoples who had been
deprived of it. If excessive nationalism was the price, it still allowed
them to survive the triáis of the Second World War and of forty-five
years of communism that followed. The resources of Czechoslovakia
and Poland were insufficient to protect them against Nazi Germany
and the Soviet Union. The fact that they succumbed tells more about
the system of international security or lack thereof, and of the guardians
of the post-Versailles order than about the states of East Central Europe.
Munich and later Yalta testified only to the vulnerability of the región,
not to its inability to survive in freedom.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, but while it met with
stiff resistance the outcome of the struggle was never in doubt. Britain
and France declared war on Germany three days later, but brought no
effective aid to the outnumbered and outgunned Poles. On September
17 the Red Army acting in collusion with Germany (the Ribbentrop-
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Molotov pact) struck from the east. There were hardly any Polish troops
available to oppose the entering Soviets.
A new partition of the country placed western lands under direct
Germán rule, their Polish and Jewish population being deported into
a central región called the General Gouvernement. There the Poles
were to be reduced to the lowest material and cultural levéis, and the
Jews shut in ghettos and then liquidated. A similar fate awaited most
Gypsies. The General Gouvernement thus became the scene of one of
the most horrible developments in history, the Holocaust. The Auschwitz
(Oswiecim) concentration camp together with the death camps of
Treblinka and Sobibor was grim testimony to the Final Solution. Occupied
Poland, dotted with Nazi camps, carne to be the cemetery of
Polish and much of European Jewry. Jewish resistance was hardly
possible, although it did fiare up in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in
April 1943. The death penalty for harboring Jews (nonexistent elsewhere
in Europe) discouraged assistance on the part of the Poles, whose
attitudes ranged from passivity to the two extremes of denunciación
and active help. The Polish underground, the largest and most effective
in Europe, the resistance movement in Yugoslavia excepted, extended
some help and tried in vain to alert the West to the terrible plight of
the Jews.
Life under the Germán occupation was a continuous nightmare.
Arrests, hostage-taking, mass executions, were all meant to terrorize
the Poles, who were denied secondary and higher education and whose
élite and heritage were systematically destroyed. The eastern lands
suffered comparably under the Soviets, who sought, however, to cloak
their actions under the mask of pseudo-legality. Thus "elections" were
held that produced the usual figures in the 90 percent range in favor
of incorporation into Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Belorussia. Undesirables
were "resettled," that is, deported under inhuman conditions into
various provinces of the USSR. Although exact figures may never
be known over one and a half million Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and
Belorussians - men, women, and children - were involved. Most of
them never returned. In all, some six million Polish citizens perished
in the Second World War; about half of them were Jews.
The Poles did not surrender after the lost campaign of September
1939. A Polish government which represented a legal continuity of the
Polish state was constituted, mostly out of prewar opposition leaders,
in Allied France. After the French collapse in 1940 it moved to England.
Under the presidency of W. Raczkiewicz, General Wíadysíaw Sikorski
became premier and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which
were composed of Poles who lived abroad or succeeded in escaping
from the occupied country. These troops distinguished themselves in
virtually every European theater of war and in North África. Polish
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THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
pilots played a disproportionately large role in the Battle of Britain. The
small navy was often cited for bravery. The military underground in
Poland, the Home Army, was also under the orders of the government
in London.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Sikorski
government found itself in a singular situation. The new ally in the
anti-German coalition had so far been an accomplice of Hitler in the
invasión and partítioning of Poland. It was difficult to view it suddenly
as a friend. Succumbing to British pressures and wishing to free the
deported Poles, Sikorski signed a pact with the USSR on July 30. It
restored Soviet-Polish relations, provided for an "amnesty" to Poles in
the Soviet Union, and permitted the organización of a Polish army
there. Although the accord annulled the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact it
did not explicitly restore the prewar borders. Henceforth, the Soviets
would insist on retaining their territorial acquisitions by invoking the
fake elections of 1939. The Polish government was split on the wisdom
of such an imprecise accord, but Sikorski felt that no viable alternative
existed. So he journeyed to Moscow to sign an agreement with Stalin
on the Polish army in Russia, which was placed under the command
of General Anders. But mutual suspicions lingered. The Poles did not
trust the Soviets, and indeed friction over the troops ensued. Eventually,
they were evacuated to the Middle East, and fought later under
British command, gaining a major victory at Monte Cassino.
Sikorski realized the vulnerability of Poland facing in effect two foes:
Germany with which a life-and-death struggle was being waged, and
the Soviet Union, which had hegemonic designs on East Central
Europe. He sought to obtain the backing of the United States (during
the three Washington visits) and of Britain. He tried to strengthen the
position of postwar Poland and of the entire región by planning, jointly
with Bene§, a Czechoslovak-Polish confederación. But neither Roosevelt
or Churchill wished to wreck their cooperation with the USSR on the
Polish rock. Churchill believed that if the Poles reconciled themselves
to territorial losses in the east, Russia would not inferiere with their
domestic freedoms. This sounded logical, but was in reality misleading.
Stalin wanted a "friendly" postwar Poland that would subordinare
itself to the USSR. Only a government controlled by the communists
could guarantee such behavior. Moreover, Sikorski could hardly sign
away half of the country, the home of many of his soldiers, without
being accused of treason. Thus the situation began to look hopeless as
the Red Army stemmed the Germán tide at Stalingrad, and began a
westward advance that would bring it to the heart of Europe.
In April 1943 the Germans announced a discovery in the Katyn
woods of mass graves of Polish officers who had been captured by the
Red Army in 1939. The Soviet authorities, when pressed by the Sikorski
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government, had hitherto professed complete ignorance as to the fate
of these officers. Now that the Polish government asked the Swiss Red
Cross to investígate the allegations of a Soviet massacre, Stalin accused
the Poles of playing into Germán hands and broke off diplomatic
relations with them. The Polish position deteriorated with the mysterious
death of Sikorski in a plae crash, and the arrest by the Gestapo
of the commander of the underground Home Army (AK). The new
premier, a populist leader S. Mikoíajczyk, and the new commanderin-chief
General Sosnkowski, lacked Sikorski's standing. Worse still,
they strongly disagreed with one another.
The hope that Soviet-Polish relations could be restored through
actual cooperación in the field was dashed. The Red Army had been
accepting the aid of the Home Army against the Germans, but once
victorious it proceeded to arrest Polish officers and incorpórate the
other ranks into its own communist-led Polish units. From May 1943
a Polish división, later expanded, was organized in Russia under the
command of General Berling. Its political umbrella was the communistled
Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow. Meanwhile a small communistdirected
partisan movement developed in occupied Poland as a rival
to the main underground. A pro-Moscow National Committee of the
Homeland (KRN) was constituted toward the end of 1943, and a Polish
Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) was installed in the Sovietoccupied
town of Lublin in July 1944. As the Soviets were driving the
Germans out of Poland they were establishing their own military and
political structure in the country.
The Western Allies felt that they had limited means of influencing
the course of events. They virtually conceded all prewar Polish eastern
lands to Stalin at the Conference in Teherán in 1943. The Poles were
to be compensated at the expense of Germany. The British pressed
Mikoíajczyk to accept and the premier went to bargain in Moscow in
August 1944. Simultaneously Warsaw staged a massive uprising against
the retrearing Germans, hoping to clear the city of them in time to act
as host to the advancing Red Army. But the Germans were still too
powerful, and the Soviets withheld their aid, regarding the uprising as
politically directed against them. Therefore, even British and American
planes flying rescue missions were denied permission to land at Soviet
airports. In the course of the next two months of fighting the élite of
the Home Army perished alongside 200,000 inhabitants of Warsaw.
The city was reduced to ashes. Whether the rising was necessary or
avoidable is still debated.
The Warsaw uprising was perhaps the most dramatic event of the
war and it left permanent scars. Mikoíajczyk's subsequent efforts to
preserve Poland's independence at the price of some territorial concessions
proved fu tile, and he resigned. His successor, the veteran
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socialist T. Arciszewski, was merely tolerated by the Allies; his government
was that of national protest. The fate of Poland was decided
independently of the Poles at the Yalta Conference. There the Teherán
border deal was endorsed and a formula found for recognizing the
already functioning communist government which was to be enlarged
by the addition of a few non-communist Poles like Mikoíajczyk. It
called itself the provisional government of national unity. What bitter
irony!
The Red Army was in control of Poland and the communists were
in power. The Berling-led troops constituted the fighting forcé. Sixteen
leaders of the underground, lured into talks by the Russians, were
arrested and flown to Moscow to be tried. The remnants of the dissolved
Home Army were hunted down. Under these conditions the "free and
unfettered" elections promised in the Yalta accord were hardly a
realistic proposición; Poland was destined to be a Soviet satellite.
The dramatic story of Poland offered a contrast to wartime developments
in Czechoslovakia. Its two parts, the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia, and the formally independent Slovak state, in turn differed
greatly from one another. The protectorate was treated as an
economic base and a reservoir of the Germán Reich, free from Allied
bombings, its inhabitants exempted from military service. It con tribu ted
9 to 12 percent of the total Germán industrial output. Although the
Czech intelligentsia faced persecutions - universities were closed - and
the Jews were gradually liquidated, workers and farmers were actually
courted. Much of the administration was in the hands of the Czechs,
although under strict Germán control, and Protector Constantin von
Neurath was a modérate compared with his sadistic successor in 1941,
Heydrich, and the governor of Poland, H. Frank. Under these conditions
the Czechs sought to survive without unduly provoking the
Germans, and avoided provocations and reprisals.
This did not mean that they willingly adjusted to the Nazi regime.
There was an underground and a range of resistance groups. But they
practiced rather passive resistance and economic sabotage. A tough
line was taken by Heydrich: imposition of martial law and the execution
of Premier Elias, who was accused of contacts with Benes's government
in London; it called for a response. A team of Czechoslovak paratroopers
sent from London killed Heydrich. By way of reprisals the
Germans razed to the ground the village of Lidice, shot all the male
inhabitants and deported women and children, many of whom died.
Advertised by Germán propaganda in order to overawe the Czechs unlike
massacres in Poland that were often concealed - Lidice became
a symbol of Nazi brutality. It was psychologically easier to feel for
and identify with a hundred or so villagers than with millions being
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systematically exterminated. After a certain point these just became
statistics.
The post-Heydrich terror leveled off in the remaining years of the
war. All in all, although the estimates vary, some 55,000 Czechs perished
in the Second World War alongside some 70,000 Jews who
represented three-quarters of the total Jewish population.
The Germans at first treated Slovakia as a show piece of the Nazi
"New Order." For the Slovaks this was their first chance to enjoy the
attributes of a national state of their own. The price, however, was
heavy: an accommodation to Nazi Germany in a material and spiritual
sense. Most industries carne under Germán control; some Slovak troops
joined in the war against the Soviet Union; anti-Jewish measures
resulted in the deportation and death of three-quarters of Slovak Jewry.
Slovakia was established as a one-party state under a constitution of
July 21, 1939 that followed Austrian and Portuguese corporationist
models; it was headed by Father J. Tiso as President, and after 1942
as Leader. He tried to curb the pro-Nazi extremists but enjoyed the
support of Berlín, which wished to preserve a certain stability in the
country. Slovak freedom of maneuver was greatly restricted. Attempts
to strengthen its position vis-a-vis Hungary by cooperation with Romanía
and Croatia were opposed by Germany. Contacts with the Allies
had to be most circumspect and were channeled through the Vatican.
It was actually under the pressure from the papacy, as supported by
some Slovak bishops, that Tiso halted the deportations of the Jews in
the 1942-4 period.
Turning to Czechoslovak activities abroad, Benes had in 1939 already
begun to agitate for the creation of a political center that would be
recognized by the Allies and to obtain an official repudiación of Munich.
Prevailing over potential rivals, especially Hodza and those who
insisted on a Czecho-Slovak federative structure after the war, Benes
in July 1940 gained Britain's recognition for his provisional government.
After the Germán invasión of the USSR a full recognition from the
three big Allies followed. By 1942 Britain and the Free French repudiated
Munich, which implied the restoration of prewar frontiers. Subsequently
Beneá obtained a somewhat reluctant Allied approval for the
postwar deportation of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. It
was evident that Benes attached great importance to collaboration with
the USSR, which he saw as the liberator and the dominant power in
East Central Europe. The role of Czechoslovakia, as he put it, was to
be a bridge between the West and the East. Benes's rather optimistic
visión contrasted with that of the Poles. Under Moscow's pressure he
abandoned plans for a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation, and further
distanced himself from the isolated Poles by signing an alliance with
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the USSR in December 1943. While in Moscow he urged Stalin to
eradicate "feudalism" in postwar Poland and Hungary.
As the Soviet armies neared Czechoslovakia, and Romanía switched
sides from the Germans to the Russians, an underground Slovak
National Council, comprising democrats and communists and endorsed
by BeneS, was getting ready to stage an uprising. Part of the army
joined in. The uprising, precipitated by an attack by Slovak partisans
on the Germans in late August 1944, lasted for two months, but received
no real Soviet aid. Its collapse was followed by the Germán occupation
of the country and harsh reprisals. The uprising is still hotly debated.
Was it a communist-inspired operation or was it a Slovak national
struggle against the Germans and the satellite regime? Did it constitute
(from the Slovaks' standpoint) national redemption or treason? Was
it manipulated by the government seeking to maintain independent
Slovakia? Be what it may, the rising was, except for military operations
of small Czechoslovak units on the Western and Russian fronts, the
only great battle fought against the Germans. To say that is not to
dismiss the brief uprising in Prague in May, another much disputed
event.
As the Red Armies were entering Czechoslovakia BeneS flew to
Moscow, where he presided over an agreement with Czech and Slovak
communists to form a new government. This was much more than an
enlargement of the London-based ministry. From the liberated town of
Kosice a program was announced on April 5, 1945 that was to serve
as the basis of the new Czechoslovakia. The underground in Prague,
seemingly encouraged both by communists and the KoSice government,
decided to rise on May 4. It was a somewhat confused affair. Czech
communists did not wish the American troops of General Patton to
help libérate the city; this honor was to be reserved for the Red Army.
Besides, Patton had orders not to encroach on the Soviet sphere of
activities. The underground was not strong enough to win militarily
and was paradoxically saved from a massacre by the anti-Soviet Russian
units of General Vlasov who turned against the Germans. In spite of
the fact that Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8, the local
Germán troops were still able to negoriate their withdrawal with the
Czechs. On May 9 the Red Army officially "liberated" Prague although
it is not clear from whom. The entire operation cost about 2,000 Czech
lives.
Unlike the Polish government, BeneS could return to Prague in
triumph, but the picture was not as rosy as it seemed. Postwar Czechoslovakia
no longer comprised Carpatho-Ukraine, which had been seized
rather high-handedly by the USSR, and the new regime bore only a
seeming resemblance to the prewar model.
The wartime story of Hungary differs sharply from that of the Poles,
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Czechs, and Slovaks. Driven by the constant urge to recover its former
place and undo the Treaty of Trianon, an urge colored somewhat by
ideological preferences, Hungary entered the Second World War on
the side of Germany and Italy. First, in April 1941, acting under Berlin's
pressure the Hungarians joined in the attack on Yugoslavia. The act
was considered shameful by Premier Teleki, who committed suicide.
Then after an incident at Kosice (Kassa) that was probably manufactured,
Hungary declared war on the USSR in June. There was little
that Hungary could gain from this war. As mentioned earlier, Budapest
had regained parts of Slovakia in 1938, annexed Carpatho-Ukraine in
1939, and received half of Transylvania under the Second Vienna Award
made by Germany and Italy in 1940. Hungary reclaimed Bacska in
Vojvodina from Yugoslavia after the campaign in 1941. As a result of
all these territorial changes the state almost doubled its size and population.
But the durability of gains depended largely on Germany, and
Budapest felt that it had to compete with Romania in particular for
German support. Thus the country became ever more dependent on
Berlin, politically and economically, and it had to send troops to fight
on the eastern front.
The Hungarians tried to convey to the British that it would be a
mistake to place them in the same category as Hitler's Reich. Indeed,
they harbored Polish military and civilian refugees and did not fire on
Allied aircraft. The latter in turn did not bomb Hungary until the
Germán troops occupied it in March 1944.
During the course of the war Horthy tried to continué his, poli cies
of slowing down or moderating an evolución to the right, and keeping
the local Nazis on leash. This proved increasingly difficult, given the
growing dependence on Germany, and resulted in political zigzags.
The shock over the atrocities committed by Hungarian military, among
whom the rightist radicáis played an important role, in occupied Novi
Sad in Yugoslavia, which claimed thousands of Serb and Jewish victims,
contributed to a change of premiers. L. Bárdossy, who had been
subservient to the Germans, made room for M. Kállay. The latter was
well aware of the Hungarian dilemma of being caught between Nazi
Germany and Soviet Russia, and he explored ways of getting out of
the war through secret overtures to the West. The débácle suffered by
the Hungarian army at Voronezh reinforced those who wanted peace.
In the mean time a drastic curtailment of active war effort took place.
All this was not lost on Hitler.
On March 19, 1944 Germán troops occupied Hungary. Kállay had to
take refuge in the Turkish embassy; Bethlen, who had been using his
influence to stiffen Horthy's resistance to the Germans, went into
hiding. The regent gave in, and a new government was named that
complied with Germán demands for mass deportations of Jews. Horthy
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THE DIFFICULT INDEPENDENCE
prevented, however, the inclusión of those living in Budapest. While
yielding to Berlin, Horthy had not abandoned his plans to bring Hungary
out of the war. As Romania switched sides in August, Horthy
authorized an armistice with the Russians, a maneuver which was
clumsily executed and left him unprotected. This time the Germans
forced him to name the Arrow Cross leader Szálasi as premier, and
then removed the regent from Hungary to Germany.
The Hungarian Nazis at last tasted power and they proceeded to
deport Budapest Jews and to intensify the Hungarian war effort. In
September and October, however, the fighting moved on to Hungarian
soil, and under the aegis of the Red Army a provisional government
carne into existence in Debrecen in December. It comprised three
Horthyite generals, social democrats, populists, and communists under
the premiership of General B. Miklós. The government signed an
armistice with the Allies and declared war on Germany. On April 11,
1945 it was installed in a Budapest ravaged by a long siege. Both
Hungary and Romania were now on the Allied side and they vied for
the control of Transylvania. Would Hungary return to its post-Trianon
shape, making war and all the sacrifices needless and vain? The price
paid by the country, maneuvered into war, was high and the future
seemed uncertain. It was clear that a new era was dawning, but it held
in store many dangers and few hopes.
235