Europe's Third World by Derek H. Aldcroft

Author:Derek H. Aldcroft [Aldcroft, Derek H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781317138877
Google: M5MWDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-29T16:14:54+00:00

Hungary

Hungary’s situation at the end of the war was probably only marginally better than that of Poland even though physical destruction and devastation through conflict were less intense. By the autumn of 1918 Hungary, along with the whole of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the brink of collapse. Agricultural and industrial production were but a fraction of prewar levels and so it was almost impossible to feed and clothe either the civilian population or the troops in battle. Mounting inflation and large budgetary deficits coupled with loss of markets and resources left the country’s economy in ruins.

The biggest blow to Hungary, however, came when the peace terms were announced in the Treaty of Trianon of 4 June 1920. This dismembered Hungary largely on grounds of its racial diversity so that she lost over two thirds of her former territory and 58 per cent of her population. The new Hungary bore little resemblance to any Hungary of the past millennium. The detached territories and peoples were distributed among the successor states, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and also Italy. This meant that over three million Magyars – or nearly every third Hungarian national – found themselves under foreign rule, mainly on the borderlands of the new states. The irony of the settlement was that in the process of reducing the multinational character of Hungary it increased the racial minority component of the successor states (Halasz 1928, 28, 39; Kiraly, Pastor and Sanders 1982, 73–74).

It is true that most of the displaced Hungarians remained in their new locations, though some half a million eventually made their way back to their homeland. Hungarians were committed to a revision of the frontier changes to rectify what they regarded as a gross injustice, but the successor states rejected any proposed revisions which they saw as a threat to their hard-won security. Hence there was bitterness on all sides and ‘The resulting cool relations between Hungary and its neighbours weakened them all, increased their isolation, and prepared the way for domination of the entire region by a great power’ (Mocsy 1983, 195). Throughout the postwar period, as one official source noted, ‘The integral revision of the Treaty of Trianon ... became almost the exclusive object of Hungarian foreign policy ...’ (Foreign Office 1941, 300). It was the strong commitment of all the country’s politicians to the revision of the 1920 frontiers that led Hungary to cooperate with Hitler and Mussolini and which resulted in increasingly authoritarian domestic policies (Polonsky 1975, 60).

The territorial changes had a marked impact on the economic structure of the new Hungary. She lost many of her raw material supplies for manufacturing industry, but retained proportionately more of industrial capacity. Some 84 per cent of forest resources were relinquished and a similar proportion of iron ore, all copper, most nonferrous metals and salt, 90 per cent of water power, 30 per cent of lignite as well as between one quarter and one half of the livestock. There were also substantial losses of industrial capacity

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