A WATERSHED IN DANUBE SWABIAN HISTORY
Henry A. Fischer
A presentation at Mount Angel,
Oregon
September 18, 2010
At the Danube Swabian Treffen
- World War One: The
Watershed
- Setting the Scene
- The Treaty of Trianon:
June 4, 1920 (Map)
- Horthy and Hitler and
the German Minority
- Franz Basch: Volksbund
- The Reichstag Speech:
October 6, 1939
- Prelude to War
- The Die Is Cast
World War One:
The Watershed
The First
World War and its aftermath mark a watershed in Danube Swabian history and set
the scene for the beginning of the end of their life together as a people; the
destruction of their communities; their dispersal throughout the world; the
loss of their culture and sense of identity; their expulsion from their
beloved Heimat: all the ties that held them together personally, as
families and as communities. It would see a parting of the ways of the
various threads that made up the tapestry of Danube Swabian experience since
their arrival in the Habsburg lands along the Danube in the eighteenth century
during the Great Swabian Migration and Schwabenzug.
Their
communities had developed in
six major regions of the Kingdom
of Hungary each with different and separate patterns of settlement, with the
settlers representing various regions of South Western Germany that would
impact on the dialect spoken, the culture and various traditions that were
maintained among them; each of the settlement areas faced unique conditions
and political situations out of which emerged a more or less common history.
The major common outside influence and force that shaped and formed their life
and history was the fact that they were subjects of the Kingdom of Hungary;
subject to its laws, policies, institutions and aspirations. In this
multi-ethnic Kingdom, the Magyars were a minority in their own house and
sought to rectify that through the assimilation of the other minorities. This
was their major thrust during the 19th Century when Hungarian
became the language of instruction in the schools of the minorities and was
the official language in the courts and all phases of public life. This would
be true for all of the Danube Swabian communities in all of the settlement
areas but all of that would change after the First World War when there would
be a parting of the ways.
The
Batschka, Syrmien, Slavonia and the western Banat would find themselves in the
successor state of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes the so-called
south Slavs or Yugoslavia. The eastern Banat would fall into the hands of
Romania, while Swabian Turkey, Sathmar and the Hungarian Highlands would
remain in Hungary. Each of the three nations would deal with their German
population in their own way and in each case the German population would adopt
their own response to their situation as much as it was possible for them to
do so. This will become the key to understanding the different and varying
responses of the various governments to their Danube Swabian population during
the trauma of the Second World War. The inter-war years were crucial for what
would follow and I will attempt to delineate that for the Danube Swabians in
Hungary and hopefully someone in future will address the situations in former
Yugoslavia and Romania during that time frame that is beyond the scope of my
presentation.
Setting the Scene:
A sense of betrayal stalked the land and mistrust permeated
all levels of government and those being governed as the First World War went
through its final death agony and ground to a complete halt on November 3,
1918 when an armistice was signed between the Western Powers and
Austria-Hungary even though it would drag on for eight more days on the
Western Front. Ten days after the armistice, the Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary was declared dissolved and disappeared from the map of Europe
and was rather brutally
carved up by its successor
states with the full blessing of the Western Powers.
On November
16, 1918 the Hungarian National Assembly declared independence and the
establishment of the People’s Republic of Hungary. Count Mihály Károly was
elected as its first President promising the introduction of universal male
suffrage in the next election in order to win the support of the Social
Democrats and trade unionist allies who assisted him in coming to power. He
would face the fierce opposition of the ancient regime: the vested
interests of the magnates, nobles, gentry, the moneyed upper and middle class,
the military and higher clergy of the Roman Catholic Church who made up the
electorate in the past who accounted for less than five per cent of the
population. These political forces were united in their efforts to bring down
the populist and democratic government and restore the old order of class and
privilege at the helm of government and conspired to carry out a quick
military takeover. Yet on the day of the declaration of independence of
Hungary, Béla Kun, a Hungarian Army officer born and raised in a Jewish family
in Transylvania, arrived in Budapest along with eight companions disguised as
army surgeons who had all just recently returned from captivity in Russia.
Their mission was to carry out Lenin’s directive to set in motion events that
would lead to the founding of a Hungarian Soviet Republic.
All cross
the country; all eyes were now focused on Budapest, a virtual seething
political cauldron, where Hungary’s fate was about to be sealed.
Hungary was
without allies, besieged on all sides, falling victim to the aspirations of
its land-grabbing neighbours in their quest for territorial expansion at
Hungary’s expense. They were all free to act at will, with the full support
of the French government, who along with the other Western Powers, refused to
accept the legitimacy of the Károlyi government in Budapest. In early
December 1918 France was adamant in its demand for the immediate withdrawal of
the Hungarian armed forces and government administrators from Slovakia. By
the end of the year armies of the newly formed fledgling Czech state occupied
most of what had once been Upper Hungary. The Czechs further demanded that a
sizeable land corridor be established to pass through central Hungary to
enable them to join up with their fellow Slavs who lived to the south, in the
now so-called Yugoslavia, a union of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. France
supported the idea but the other Western Powers were rather cool to the
scheme.
The Serbian
Army occupied southern Hungary as far as Pécs while their government squabbled
with Romania over who would have control of the Banat. After occupying
Transylvania in mid-December, the Romanian Army advanced further into Hungary
and France ordered Hungary to avoid bloodshed at all costs by providing a
demilitarized zone between the two armies. In an attempt to pacify the
Hungarian people over the territorial losses that were taking place, Károlyi
initiated negotiations with the Swiss Red Cross for the repatriation of the
remaining 430,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Russia. His efforts
were scuttled by France to rob Hungary of the possibility of having any
additional manpower to prevent the takeover of more of its territory. It was
the intention of France and the occupying successor states to make the recent
territorial changes permanent and a weakened powerless Hungary was necessary
in order to affect that.
In an
attempt to drive the final nail into the coffin of the Károlyi government,
France issued a communiqué on March 20, 1919 giving Romania the green light to
occupy the Great Plains of eastern Hungary. The insatiable Czechs for
additional territory in Slovakia also made new demands. In order to save face
and not accept responsibility for the loss of still more territory, Count
Mihály Károlyi resigned from office and handed over power to a coalition of
dissident left wing Social Democrats and trade unionists who had joined forces
with the recently established Communist Party led by the same thirty-two year
old Bélá Kun, protégé of Lenin and a season revolutionary, who had spent the
past few months stealthily working towards manipulating the takeover of the
government.
The
Hungarian Soviet Republic came into existence on March 22, 1919 with Béla Kun
at its head calling for a national military response to the threat of the
partition of Hungary by the successor states and played down the Communist
nature of the regime he was putting into place behind the scenes. Once again
the Western Powers refused to accept the legitimacy of the government in power
in Budapest and postponed any discussions for a peace treaty and the final
settlement of Hungary’s future borders. Meanwhile, the successor states used
the creation of a Communist Republic on their doorstep as a pretext for
invading Hungary. In this way they would not have to allow the local
populations in their annexed territories the right to self-determination
expressed through the results of a plebiscite. The plebiscite was but one of
the Fifteen Points related to national minorities that had been promised by
the American President, Woodrow Wilson, the rather late arriving ally of the
Western Powers, who was an ill-informed expert on all matters European. It
would be Romania that would be the first to test these troubled waters.
On April 17,
1919 the Romanians launched yet another invasion of Hungary from Transylvania
and their armies swiftly rolled across the Great Plains of eastern Hungary
heading towards Budapest. By the end of April they were less than sixty miles
from the capital when Béle Kun called upon the citizenry to take up arms and
join the Red Army and drive out the invaders from the sacred soil of their
Magyar Fatherland. The leaders of the trade unions recruited workers’
battalions numbering more than fifty thousand men who were quickly equipped
and sent directly to the Front. By the end of May they retook every major
town and city in the Great Plains and the fleeing Romanians retreated to the
safety of Transylvania, resulting in an outburst of patriotic fervour all
across Hungary over the victory won by the workers’ brigades of Budapest.
Béla Kun was astute enough to use that to his own advantage.
In early
June he decided it was time to consolidate his hold on power and appealed to
the awakened nationalism of the people and the newly created Red Army and
ordered an invasion to retake Slovakia. By the end of June, the Hungarian Red
Army occupied a considerable part of former Upper Hungary. An order
issued from Paris by the Western Powers put a halt to the invasion and
occupation which led to the immediate withdrawal of the Red Army because of a
promise by the Western Powers made to Kun to cease all further hostilities
against Hungary. There was now a temporary lull in military activity on the
part of Hungary’s rapacious neighbours in light of its recent military
successes. This breathing space provided the counter-revolutionaries in
Hungary more opportunities to spread their propaganda among the large
landowners, businessmen, financiers, industrial workers, peasants, members of
the middle class, Magyar nationalists and Roman Catholic clergy who had been
most affected and aggrieved by the economic and anti-religious measure imposed
by the budding Communist regime.
All of Kun’s
attempts to create his version of a Marxist utopia failed utterly. Businesses
and retail stores closed; land reforms that were undertaken were a disaster;
farmers refused to sell their produce at state regulated prices and city
dwellers went out into the countryside to barter for food. Inflation was
rampant. Banks and financial institutions fell into the hands of government
appointed hacks; workers’ committees governed industries. Opponents of the
new regime and its policies were arrested, imprisoned and executed depending
on the nature of their crime against the Soviet Republic. There were two
hundred and thirty-four victims who lost their lives during the Bolshevik
Terror. A disproportionately large number of their opponents and victims were
Jews. Ironically that fact was totally ignored by the virulent anti-Semitism
that was now sweeping the land. It was at the heart and core of the
counter-revolution that perceived Bolshevism as an anti-Christian Jewish plot
to rule the world based on the fact that there were a number of Jews among the
leaders of the Communist Party. The Magyar Nationalist
counter-revolutionaries saw the Jews as an undesirable foreign element in
Hungary’s body politic that needed to be eradicated to preserve the racial
purity and integrity of the nation.
An active
underground emerged. Uprisings against the government were planned by trade
unionists, deserters from the Red Army, politicians from both the left and the
right of the political spectrum and most importantly secret agents of Admiral
Miklós Horthy. As Minister of War of the counter-revolutionary government
that had been set up in the southern city of Szeged with the tacit approval of
Romania that occupied the area and with the full support and connivance of
France, he was gathering a National Army of dissidents to overthrow the Kun
government. With all of this opposition arrayed against him, Kun knew his
situation was precarious. In power for only four months, he and his acolytes
were now unable to enforce their authority in Budapest or in the countryside
except for isolated pockets of strength in Pécs and Kaposvár in southwestern
Hungary.
The final
death knell of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was sounded on July 24th
with another Romanian invasion of Hungary and a subsequent uprising in
Budapest that saw Béla Kun flee the country on August 1st. After
one hundred and thirty-three days, the failed Hungarian experiment with
Marxism ended and went underground for the next twenty-five years. Red
Kaposvár, as it would be soon become known, would be the last Communist
stronghold to fall in the face of the onslaught of Horthy’s Nemzeti
Hadsereg and the subsequent brutal White Terror that would be unleashed
all across the country.
Romanian
troops entered Budapest on August 6th as the internal government
structures collapsed after the departure of Béla Kun. Swift reprisals were
taken against all suspected sympathizers of the former regime, trade
unionists, journalists, Jews and Social Democrats carried out by death squads
consisting of reactionaries, scoundrels and freebooters that were associated
with the officers of Horthy’s National Liberation Army. It was only a
foretaste of what was yet to come. The loot-laden Romanian Army was forced to
abandon Budapest on November 14th on orders received from the
French government. France was anxious to place the counter-revolutionary
archconservative government of their choice in power through a totally bogus
election.
Admiral
Miklós Horthy, an established war hero, entered Budapest in his full dress
blue naval uniform under the weight of countless medals, service ribbons and
awards with gold epaulets on his shoulders, astride a white stallion
surrounded by troops of his National Liberation Army and took control of the
city in the name of the counter-revolution on November 16th. In
addressing the populace of the city he upbraided them for their betrayal of
the values held sacred by the old order that was being re-established and
placed in power once more. He assured Budapest it would pay a high price for
its flirtation with democratic reform and would eventually welcome the
stability the counter-revolution would bring to Hungary.
Under
Horthy’s auspices the two-year reign of his White Terror would be set loose.
The savagery of the acts of violence and bloodletting that were carried out
against its victims whether men, women or children had no parallel in
Hungarian history since the darkest periods of the Middle Ages. The perverse
brutality and indescribable tortures inflicted upon their prisoners and the
horrible deaths of thousands silenced all opposition. It was a time when the
informer was king. These systematic and sporadic killings were showcased as
reprisals for the Red Terror but yet they targeted Social Democrats, peasants,
journalists and Jews who were known supporters of the democrat reforms Horthy
and his followers feared and hated the most. Hungary gave Europe its first
taste of state Fascism. Nationalism was taken to the nth degree. In future,
worship of the nation could and did cover a multitude of other sins.
On March 1,
1920 the National Assembly made up of members of the old order that longed for
the kind of power they had known in the glory days of feudalism in Hungary,
re-established the Kingdom of Hungary but without a King and voted to install
Admiral Horthy as Regent and Protector of Hungary. After receiving a small
delegation from the National Assembly, he accepted the position but only on
condition of additional powers, which included the authority to appoint and
dismiss prime ministers, to convene and dissolve parliament and command the
armed forces. After being granted these sweeping powers, he took the oath of
office and began his twenty-four year Regency, maintaining a stranglehold on
all attempts at democratization of the nation and its government; forcing
Magyarisation on its remaining minorities and providing a guide for
institutionalizing Fascism that was on the rise all across Europe and passing
and enforcing the first anti-Jewish laws since the Middle Ages.
The Treaty
of Trianon, the final peace treaty with Hungary was concluded on June 4, 1920
without Hungarian participation in the negotiations. Hungary lost two thirds
of its former territory and one third of the Magyar population. For the first
time in Hungary’s history, Magyars were the overwhelming majority of the
population within its own borders with the German and Jewish populations
forming the only large minorities.
The Treaty of Trianon: June 4, 1920
(Map)
Horthy and Hitler and the German
Minority
There was a rumour going around that Regent Horthy
probably slept in some type of naval attire. He was never seen in public
without wearing his full-dress Admiral’s regalia, which seemed strangely out
of place, since Hungary was a landlocked country without a seaport or a navy.
In addition to his uniform there was always an appropriate colourful silk sash
draped over one shoulder on which he pinned every military and navel
decoration he could lay his hands on. He preferred a white ostrich plume on
his tri-corner hat that he felt gave his appearance a special flair indicative
of his position as the Head of State and created the illusion he was taller
than he actually was. For that reason he always rode on his white horse when
in public so that the cheering crowds had to look up to him. These were only
some of his fetishes that reflected his vanity and arrogance.
As the
Commander in Chief of the Imperial Fleet of the vanquished Austro-Hungarian
Empire, he had risen to power at the head of the Hungarian Nationalist Army
that had put down the Red Revolution in 1919 as noted before and then
unleashing his White Terror to stabilize and strengthen his personal hold on
political power. He had ruled unchallenged ever since, surrounded by a cadre
of anti-Semitic military officers like himself, right-wing politicians and
outright Fascists like Szálassi, the leader of the infamous Arrow Cross Party,
who all did his bidding and were determined to realize the goal held in common
by all Hungarian political parties regardless of their stated ideology. It
was best summed up in their rallying cry: Nem. Nem soha. No. No
never. This slogan was an expression of their refusal to accept the
territorial and population losses Hungary had suffered as a result of the
Treaty of Trianon following the First World War. All polices, both domestic
and foreign, had to pass the litmus test of how they would affect or bring
about the return of the Lost Territories in the neighbouring successor
states. A revisionist dream gripped the soul of Hungary and Regent Horthy
would prove to be the greatest dreamer of them all.
A Magyar
confession of faith was born during the 1930s that always accompanied the
singing of the National Anthem at sports and entertainment events,
governmental and public gathers and even services of worship:
Hiszek egy Istenben…
I believe in one God
I believe in one Fatherland
I believe in the eternal justice of God
I believe in the resurrection of Hungary.
Amen
As part of
Hungary’s stated foreign policy and using their position at the League of
Nations, no opportunity was lost to present their case protesting loudly that
the minority rights enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles were not being
granted to the three million Magyars cut off from their homeland, living in
the successor states oppressed by alien regimes. The truth of the matter was
that the situation of the Hungarian minorities living outside of Hungary was
far better than that of the minorities within what remained of Hungary. That
was primarily true of the German minority, known as the Swabians, who lived in
their insular agricultural enclaves in various regions of the country and were
the only large minority left in Hungary after the Kingdom had been so
mercilessly truncated by the Major Powers at Versailles.
The
Swabians, who the Hungarians referred to as the Svábok, also included other
German speaking populations and the term Danube Swabian was virtually unknown
in Hungary having only recently been invented by an Austrian geographer. The
Swabians became the target for total assimilation while at the same time talk
of deportation of the unwilling became rampant in the nationalist press. The
whole issue began to come to the fore in 1933 with the government’s organized
campaign for all citizens of Hungary to adopt a Hungarian surname. This
struck much too close to home and gave birth to opposition from various
quarters within the German community. It was a clear violation of minority
rights and there were those who raised the matter publicly leading to arrests
and public convictions of some of their spokesmen. In this way the issue
became known abroad, notably in Germany where there were calls for the
rectifying of the situation. In the following years more pressure was applied
against the Swabians in the matter of their schools, resulting in
interventions on their behalf by the German government and most especially
after Hitler’s ascendancy to power.
Special
agreements were dawn up between the two governments regarding the German
minority (as it was called) primarily because of lucrative trade treaties and
incentives mutually beneficial to both nations and support for one another’s
foreign affairs objectives in calling for a revision of the terms of the
treaties concluded at Versailles. That was especially true of Hungary’s goal
to regain their Lost Territories which fit in quite nicely with
Hitler’s overall plans for the Balkans where he needed a compliant and willing
ally. In the face of immense public resistance; the opposition of all
political parties and the negative editorial stance of the all of the major
newspapers, Regent Horthy sanctioned the organization of the Volksbund der
Deutschen in Ungarn (The Folk Union of the Germans in Hungary) on November
26, 1938 to carry out its official cultural, social and educational program
under the leadership of Dr. Franz Basch. The nationalist opponents of the
Volksbund saw it is an affront to Hungary’s national interests if not
treasonable because of the organization’s stated opposition to assimilation.
Regent
Horthy mistrusted both the organization and its leadership and kept both under
stick surveillance. He was simply providing window dressing in order to court
Adolph Hitler to achieve his own ends. It was all part of the give-and-take
nature of the relationship between Hitler and Horthy, Germany and Hungary.
The Munich Agreement signed September 29, 1938 had provided the incentive for
his decision.
While the
word waited anxiously, as the major European Powers met with Hitler and
attempted to negotiate the Sudeten Crisis in Czechoslovakia, Regent
Horthy bided his time at home. He had been personally affronted and stung by
Hitler’s barbed comment directed at him during his state visit to Germany
earlier in August. Horthy had expressed reluctance to provide troops for
Hitler’s planned take-over of Czechoslovakia in order for Hungary to annex its
Lost Territories: the southern counties of Slovakia, known as the
Feldvidék and the Carptho-Ukraine bordering Poland. He had indicated he
was afraid to risk war with the well-equipped Czechoslovakian army and hoped
to regain the territory through diplomatic means. At the time Hitler had
sneered, “If you want to share in the meal you must help in the kitchen.” The
two dictators had kept their distance ever since although Horthy kept
diplomatic channels open just in case.
With the
total capitulation of the European Powers to Hitler’s demands and the signing
of the Munich Agreement, the subsequent rape of Czechoslovakia followed in its
wake.
The first
step in what would lead to the total dismemberment of Czechoslovakia took
place at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna where negotiators representing Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy met with representatives from Czechoslovakia and
Hungary. In addition to the Hungarian Foreign Minister Kálman Kánya to
represent him, Regent Horthy had assigned then Minister of Education, Pál
Count Teléki to state the case for Hungary’s claims to its Lost Territories.
On November 2, 1938 the largely populated Feldvidék and the southern
portion of Carpatho-Ukraine were awarded to Hungary in what would become known
as the First Vienna Accords. Unopposed units of the Hungarian Army completed
the occupation of the newly awarded territories by November 10th.
On the following day, Regent Horthy in his full-dress naval uniform, seated on
his white prancing charger made his triumphant entry into Kassa the principal
town in the region. He was met there by adoring crowds of thousands as he
officially welcomed one million Magyars back home into the fold.
Going
through the motions of officially permitting the organization of the
Volksbund two weeks later on November 26th was a small price to
pay for what Horthy had achieved and experienced that day in vindication of
his foreign policy. He later described it in his diary, “As I passed along
the roads, people embraced one another, fell upon their knees and wept with
joy because liberation had come to them at last…”
Early in
1939, it was revealed to Horthy that his Prime Minister, Béla Imredy, a well
known pro-Fascist anti-Semite was in fact of Jewish descent. He was
immediately forced from office. Remembering the outstanding work that Count
Teléki had done during the negotiations that had led to the Vienna Accord, the
Regent appointed him his new Prime Minister on February 15, 1939. Hungary
joined the Anti Comintern Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan and became
part of the Axis on February 24th and withdrew from the League of
Nations a few weeks later. Then as a further reward for marching lock-step
with the Nazi Führer and his policies, on March 19th Hitler gave the
green light for Horthy to order his army to occupy the northern portion of the
Carpatho-Ukriane up to the Polish border as Germany took over what remained of
Czechoslovakia by force.
Still not
content with his recent acquisitions of territory, Horthy now cast a covetous
eye in the direction of Transylvania that Hungary had lost to Romania. Its
reunification with Hungary became central to his foreign and domestic policies
with the full support of a compliant Prime Minister who was beginning to have
reservations about the directions in which Adolph Hitler was heading and began
to caution the Regent in that regard. Not gaining the kind of support he had
hoped from Hitler for the reacquisition of Transylvania and the bellicose
response of the Romanians to his demands by sending troops to its borders with
Hungary, Regent Horthy had second thoughts. It became the opportunity Prime
Minister Teléki had been awaiting and he persuaded him to steer a more
independent course for Hungary.
Prior to the
launching of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Hitler demanded
that Horthy provide freedom of passage for his troops through the Carpatho-Ukraine
to attack Poland from the south. Teléki convinced the Regent not to comply.
Horthy declared Hungary was a non-belligerent nation and refused to allow
German forces to travel either though or over Hungary. Budapest would await a
response as Hitler concentrated on defeating Poland, fully aware that the
German dictator would not rupture their relationship because of any possible
affect on the German minority and the aspirations the Führer had for
using the Volksbund to meet his own ends.
Franz Basch: Volksbund
Dr. Franz Basch the self-proclaimed university intellectual
had been born in Zürich, Switzerland on July 13, 1901 to a Swiss mother and a
Swabian father from the Banat. At the age of two, his family relocated to the
Basch family home in Hatzfeld, in that portion of the Banat that was
originally ceded to Yugoslavia in the Treaty of Trianon after World War One
but later became part of Romania. Because all of his preparatory studies for
university had been done within the framework of the Hungarian educational
system and the Hungarian language he opted to attend university in Budapest
both for practical and career related reasons and cast his lot with whatever
the future held for Hungary his newly adopted homeland.
During his
student days at university, he came under the influence of Dr. Jakob Bleyer
who was professor of German studies at the Jesuit operated Peter Pazmany
University in Budapest. Dr. Bleyer, like Basch himself, had been born in what
became Yugoslavia but had chosen to remain with Hungary and had been part of
the first Horthy government in which he served as Minister of Minorities a
position from which he resigned due to pressures from the nationalists who did
not believe he could be trusted because of his desire to ensure the rights of
the German minority. Returning to a career in the academic world he focused
his attention on the preservation of the history, culture, traditions and
language of the German minority in Hungary. In order to accomplish this goal
he and his close associates mostly fellow academics from within the German
minority promoted the formation of local educational societies in the Swabian
villages to carry out the program by establishing libraries, dancing groups,
choirs, youth events, gatherings and folk festivals to celebrate their
heritage. Together these local societies formed the membership of the
government approved, Ungarländische Deutsche Volksbildungverein (UDV)
of which he was the president. (The Germans of Hungary Educational Society)
Franz Basch
joined the student and scholarly circle gathered around Dr. Bleyer and was
soon brought to his personal attention. Bleyer was impressed with him not
because of his intellectual brilliance but because of what Bleyer described as
his energetic personality; his intensity; his grasp of issues and fiery
magnetism. He became the professor’s protégé and was groomed for a future
leadership role in the movement as his heir apparent. After receiving his
Doctor of Philosophy degree and teaching diploma at Budapest University he
assumed the functions of the General Secretary of the UDV until the
death of Jakob Bleyer in 1933. He was almost immediately forced out of his
position by Gustav Gratz who had succeeded Bleyer to the presidency, who
charged Basch with fomenting discord within the organization because of his
radicalizing tendencies.
In his
previous position he had become the self-styled spokesman for the younger more
radical elements within the movement who were impatient with the slow pace of
progress being made under the older conservative leadership. They demanded an
active political role for the organization in confronting the Hungarian
government and its minority policies and achieving more autonomy for the
German minority and securing the rights guaranteed to them in the Treaty of
Versailles. This went far beyond Bleyer’s original intentions and his policy
of working in close harmony with the Hungarian state as much as possible.
Basch’s ongoing attacks against Hungary’s assimilation policies led to a
backlash within the organization that led to the forming of factions and a
parting of the ways with the young radicals who sought another forum to
achieve their aims.
Basch would
eventually come into his own in 1934 while speaking at an UDV event in
Bátaapáti, a German Lutheran community in Tolna County, where he railed
against the government legislation calling for the Maygarization of
German family names. He publicly declared, “Whoever does not honour his
father’s name is not worthy of his ancestors and betrays them.” This comment
was picked up by the Hungarian press and seen as traitorous and he was
vilified all across the country. He was put on trial for slandering the
honour of the Hungarian people and for bringing contempt on Hungary in the
eyes of the world. After serving a three-month prison sentence, he and his
fellow radicals continued in their agitation within the UDV but with
limited success. Making a second public denunciation of the name changing
legislation again in 1936 he was put on trial and sentenced to five months in
prison. In order to disassociate itself from Basch’s anti-government
pronouncements, the General Assembly of the UDV met on August 2, 1936
and formally expelled Franz Basch and his followers from its membership.
As a result
of his second imprisonment and the action taken by the UDV, Franz Basch
came to the attention of the Nazi leadership in Germany. Overnight, he was
lionized in the German press as the victimized Führer of the German
minority in Hungary and through official Reich intervention he was released
from prison early in 1937 and later pardoned. Nazi officialdom saw the value
in promoting Basch and his associates as the legitimate spokesmen for the
German minority in Hungary in their future dealings with the Hungarian
government. But, he would require mentoring for the task, consistent with
Nazi objectives both for the German minority and Hungary and the advancement
of National Socialism. They would discover in Franz Basch an apt and willing
learner.
In a sense,
National Socialism came naturally to him and his close associates who saw
within its ideology the thrust and impetus they needed to achieve their goals
in Hungary. In their eyes the German minority was simply part of the Reich
living in Hungary and that met a responsive chord within the Nazi leadership
who offered the financial support and political clout and foreign intervention
that could help them achieve their ends. The anti-Semitism of Jakob Bleyer
and his leading followers within the UDV was almost legendary and was
fertile soil for the racial policies of Nazism that Basch and his circle fully
embraced as they began to shape and form a new Society that would become the
Volksdeutsche Kameradschaft (The Folk German Brotherhood) to rival the
UDV and did so without government sanction and was therefore illegal.
Hand in hand with Basch’s efforts to enlist the support of the German minority
to his cause, representatives and agencies within the German Reich government
worked to promote the legitimacy of Basch and his fledgling movement with the
Hungarian Ministry of the Interior responsible for affairs related to the
Germany minority beginning early in 1937. They agreed to turn a blind eye to
the illegal activities of the Kameradschaft that began to disrupt life
in the Swabian communities as rival factions began to form. Horthy welcomed
this schism in the ranks of the UDV. He saw it as a sign of its imminent
demise and was prepared to simply let matters run their own course.
While the
Hungarian negotiators participated in the discussions that would lead to the
Vienna Accords in early November 1938, Franz Basch was summoned to Germany for
discussions with the Nazi establishment to finalize the formal documents
outlining the goals and objectives for a new organization to represent the
German minority in Hungary. Negotiations had been ongoing and Basch had
become a familiar face to all concerned and his judgment related to Hungarian
affairs was respected. At his suggestion they accepted the focus of the
organization be placed on the cultural aspirations of the German minority for
now and all references to any political role be avoided except for his
pet project: the recognition of the organization as the representative
of the German nation in Hungary. It was the only stipulation with
which Horthy would not concur because he saw it as an infringement on
Hungarian sovereignty over its German citizens. Basch was prepared to wait
for a more propitious opportunity to present itself in the future.
The Horthy
government on November 21, 1938 officially sanctioned the organization of the
Volksburnd der Deutschen in Ungarn and its goals and objectives were submitted
to the Ministry of Interior for approval. The announcement was met with
newspaper headlines calling for the deportation and expulsion of the entire
German minority as the only credible solution to Hungary’s nationalities
problem. Meanwhile, five days later on November 26th the
constituting assembly of the Volksbund with seven hundred persons
present took place in Budapest. Franz Basch was the keynote speaker. He was
clear in telling his listeners that their new organization marked a total
break with the past and everything associated with the UDV and they
would strive for the cultural autonomy they needed to achieve their wider
goals in concert with and through the support of the German Reich government.
On December
23, 1938 the UDV officially went out of existence. All of its local
branches were disbanded and their activities and programs were brought to an
abrupt halt. The Volksbund now had the field all to itself and was
fully prepared to fill the vacuum. The focus of their efforts now shifted to
the insular and sometimes isolated villages where the vast majority of the
German minority lived all across Hungary. It was only natural that Franz
Basch would first set his sights on those in Swabian Turkey where the highest
concentration of Swabians was to be found in all of Hungary. In going there
he also know of the divisions, conflicts and bad feelings that were already
tearing many of these communities apart as the villagers struggled with the
question of what it meant to be an ethnic German living in Hungary and what it
would mean for the future.
The village
of Cikó is situated in the heartland of Swabian Turkey in southern Tolna
County, located among its lofty forested hills that provide a panoramic view
of the market town of Bonyhád only six kilometers in the distance. On April
30, 1939 a festival was held there to celebrate the formation of the
Volksbund with an estimated thirty thousand participants present, at least
according to “Deutsche Volksbote” which was the Volksbund
newspaper whose publication costs were bourn by the German Reich. Other
estimates were more modest and in the neighbourhood of eight thousand five
hundred.
The local
inhabitants had to undertake the organization and make preparations for the
event and from the outset they were beset with difficulties. The nearby town
of Bonyhád was the centre of opposition to the Volksbund and many of
its leading citizens were calling for the creation of a movement among the
German minority to demonstrate their loyalty to Hungary and repudiate the
aspirations of the Volksbund and discouraged participation in the
event. There was also local opposition in Cikó, coming chiefly from among the
older generations and the landowning families. Weeks before the planned event
the local supporters of the Volksbund prepared banners, flags and
decorations. They were mysteriously destroyed and after new ones were
assembled they were guarded night and day by a group of local youth until the
day of the assembly. Fights brought out in the local Wirtshaus
(tavern) among the rival groups; heated arguments took place between
neighbours; extended families were torn apart; lifetime friendships were
destroyed. Cikó’s Dorfgemeinschaft (village sense of community) was
unraveling. This kind of strife and disunity among its inhabitants had been
totally unknown in the two hundred and thirty year history of the village.
The vast
majority of the participants that converged on Cikó for the festival came from
the southern districts of Swabian Turkey. On their arrival, others greeted
them with shouts of: “Heil!” They called one another “Volkskamerad”
and many wore the official uniform adopted by the Volksbund or that
worn by the UDV in the past. After Basch and the other leading
Volksbund dignitaries arrived the assembly attended Mass. An outdoor band
concern followed in the afternoon and then the local groups who were
represented marched in formation carrying their Volksbund flags led by
two Hungarian flags and passed by the reviewing stand where the Volksbund
leaders stood and raised their right arms in the “German salute”. Then the
speeches followed.
Before it
was Basch’s turn to address the assembly two telegrams were read. The first
was from Regent Horthy who expressed his personal good wishes and every
success to the Volksbund and the role it would play in the life of
Hungary. The other was from the Prime Minister who encouraged them in their
cultural aspirations and continued loyalty to the Hungarian state. Basch and
his cohorts were only too well aware of both men’s actual attitudes towards
them but knew their hands were tied in order to maintain their current close
relationship with Hitler and his regime.
For Basch’s
part he reciprocated and expressed his personal loyalty to Hungary and its
government waxing eloquent about his greater loyalty to the Volk (using
that loaded word with all of its racial implications) and their Hungarian
Fatherland. Both of which he claimed had produced the need to form the
Volksbund. He also spoke of his deep respect for Adolph Hitler, the
Führer of their German Motherland who was the greatest friend that their
Hungarian Fatherland could ever have. The Volksbund would become the
bridge forever connecting their Fatherland and Motherland.
Later in the
day, the local Volksbund organization was formed in Cikó, the first in
all of Hungary. Within the week there were almost one thousand members; an
executive was elected and positions of responsibility were assigned. With no
government interference to worry about, plans were immediately drawn up by
Basch to inaugurate a massive membership drive beginning in the fall once the
harvest was in. That changed quickly following the German invasion of Poland
and declaration of war by Britain and France.
Adolph
Hitler addressed the German Reichstag following the quick defeat of
Poland on October 6, 1939. In his rambling speech he went on interminably
vindicating Germany’s response to Poland’s unprovoked attack along the German
frontier that had been repulsed by an avenging German Army fighting against
great odds. He must have stretched the limits of his own imagination to have
concocted the scenario he presented to the German people and the rest of the
world for the unprovoked invasion and subjugation of Poland that had fallen
quickly to the double thrust of German and Russian aggression.
He ended his
diatribe outlining the next five steps that would have to be taken after the
collapse of Poland with short statements on establishing new boundaries;
bringing peace and order; maintaining security and restoring economic life.
Then he added a fifth urgent step that had to be taken in future that I am
certain immediately had the full attention of both Regent Horthy and Franz
Basch.
Hitler went
on to say: “The most important task, however, is to establish a new set of
racial conditions, that is to say, through the resettlement of
nationalities in such a manner that the process ultimately results in
obtaining better defined borders than in the present case. The problem is not
simply restricted to the particular sphere of Poland but of a task with far
wider implications both for Eastern and Southern Europe which are to a great
extent inhabited by various splinter groups of German nationality,
whose existence can no longer be assured or maintained.”
I can
imagine Regent Horthy snap: “Repeat that!” to his interpreter hardly able to
believe what he had just heard. While I can imagine Franz Basch turn green.
Hitler
continued: “Their very existence is the reason and cause for continued
international disturbances. In this age of the principle of nationalities and
of racial ideals it is utopian to believe that members of a highly developed
people can be assimilated without trouble. It is essential for a farsighted
ordering of the life of Europe that a resettlement be undertaken to
remove at least part of the cause for future European conflicts.”
Regent
Horthy had just heard Hitler propose the final solution to Hungary’s Swabian
problem: resettlement elsewhere.
For his
part, Franz Basch was totally aghast. Once the Swabian population in Hungary
heard of Hitler’s plan to resettle and remove them from their beloved
Heimat it would unleash unrest in the villages and raise hostility against
him and the Volksbund for aiding and abetting Hitler in achieving his
aims. If word got out it would completely destroy the credibility of the
Volksbund and would make it impossible to accomplish its goals and those
of the Third Reich. It was all a terrible blunder!
The entire
leadership of the Volksbund was in immediate panic mode. They still
hoped that time was on their side before the news filtered down to
the-less-than-well-informed Swabian villagers in their isolated rural
communities with few radios. Franz Basch was called upon to take charge of
damage control with both the Hungarian and Reich governments.
He appealed
personally to officials in the Ministry of the Interior and those close to the
Regent to officially oppose such a proposed resettlement of Hungary’s German
citizens as interference in the internal affairs of Hungary. Horthy
instructed the Ministry not to respond to his request. Franz Basch was
informed unofficially that the matter was Adolph Hitler’s issue and not that
of the Hungarian government. He should take his concerns directly to him. He
knew that to get a retraction on the part of the Führer was
impossible. He wrote hurriedly to Heinrich Himmler to ask Reich officials to
tone down the rhetoric and hopefully things would simply settle down if there
was simply less said about it in the future. Himmler concurred with him but
word was out in the scattered Swabian communities and suspicions of complicity
on the part of the Volksbund were rampant across Hungary.
The threat
of resettlement added renewed impetus for action on the part of those who
opposed the Volksbund and gave birth to the Treu Zur Heimat Bewegung
(Loyal to the Homeland Movement) that came to birth in Bonyhád to thwart
the efforts and plans of the Volksbund. The Volk Kampf
was now about to begin throughout the nation.
Regent
Horthy waited until early November before responding to the Reichstag
speech. He wrote personally to Hitler indicating his gratitude for the
proposed resettlement of the German population of Hungary because it would
stabilize what could have otherwise become a volatile situation. After
writing he informed the Ministry of the Interior he indicated the need to make
plans for future land reform in order to entice Magyars living outside of
Hungary to return home by offering them the land, livestock, homes and
property of the Swabians after their resettlement. In a reflective moment he
commented that he could finally be able to change the face of Swabian Turkey
and make it Magyar once more and do the same in other parts of the country.
Prelude to War:
With the
beginning of 1940, as Hitler secured his position in the West, Horthy cast his
covetous eyes in the direction of Transylvania once again. By July, Horthy
was prepared to launch an invasion and sent military and diplomatic officials
to Munich to meet with the representatives of the Axis Powers to obtain their
blessing. Both Italy and Germany held back from becoming diplomatic umpires
between the two belligerents who saw both Hungary and Romania essential to
their own plans. Nor did Hitler want to rock the boat with the Romania in
order to safeguard his interests in the German minority that included both the
Transylvania Saxons and the Banat and Sathmar Swabians. He offered a
compromise allowing Hungary to annex the northern portion of Transylvania and
giving Romania the green light to annex a portion of disputed territory with
Bulgaria. The compromises were offered while he carried a big stick; his
military might that intimidated his allies. Hungary added 44,000 square miles
to its territories along with 2,700,000 inhabitants. The vast majority were
Hungarians but also included 50,000 Transylvania Saxons and an equal number of
Sathmar Swabians. Horthy made another excursion into liberated Lost
Territories to the acclaim and adoration of over 1,5000,000 Magyar
compatriots. This fortified Hungary’s revisionist dream, even if only
partially.
This was
ratified at a meeting at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna on August 30, 1940 and
would become known as the Second Vienna Accords. Less noticed than the recent
land acquisitions of Hungary detailed in the agreement at the expense of
Romania was the wording of that part of the agreement that would regulate the
relationship of the German minority in Hungary with the Reich. In fact, the
matter had never been discussed and the Hungarian delegation was taken off
guard and felt under duress when forced to act. The Prime Minister Teléki
threatened suicide unless it was reworded. They were able change some of the
wording to lessen the impact of the proposed rights of the Volksbund in
Hungary and allow the members to espouse and promote National Socialism
The
inclusion of these stipulations in the Accord was a result of goals that the
Reich authorities had decided upon for the ethnic German minorities in South
and Eastern Europe and for which the department: Volksdeutsche
Mittelstelle had been established by Hitler on July 2, 1938 and was part
of the SS apparatus. The purpose of the VOMI as it was called under
the leadership of Rudolph Hess and later Heinrich Himmler was to transform the
various German Volk group organizations into a functioning instrument
of the Nazi Party and its program. In other words, said less prosaically, in
future they would become the vehicle for the recruitment of canon fodder for
the Nazi war effort.
As a result
of the Accord the Hungarian government was forced to acknowledge that the
Volksbund was the only legitimate representative of the German minority in
Hungary and they had the right to acknowledge themselves as a distinct
national group within Hungary. Theoretically they had established an
organization that included all Germans in Hungary and membership meant
to adopt the National Socialist worldview. Basch was well aware that the
Reich had no intention of helping the Volksbund achieve its cultural
goals but was to act as an outpost of the Reich. It must be understood by us
that the force of the Accord in terms of the German minority in Hungary was
not in response to their wishes but rather a furthering of the interests of
the Third Reich. The Hungarian Prime Minister and other government officials
saw the concessions in the Accord as an infringement on Hungarian sovereignty
and led to fierce debate in parliament about the appropriateness of collective
rights for the German minority…a state within a state. But that did not
resonate well as Hungarian foreign policy drew it closer to the Reich. A
whole range of economic and trade agreements were quickly put into effect much
to Hungary’s benefit and the Volksbund and its activities slipped under
the radar as it pushed its agenda of membership recruitment so that by the end
of 1940 there were 95 local groups made up of some 75,000 members.
But Basch’s
activities and energy had to be redirected to deal with a new problem. How to
incorporate the Transylvania Saxons and Sathmar Swabians into the Volksbund
when they brought new dynamics into play because of the relative autonomy they
had enjoyed under more benevolent Romanian rule operating a whole complex of
German educational institutions, at every age level up to university and
technical schools had been developed by the Saxons unlike their Swabian
compatriots in Hungary whose young people were practically functionally
illiterate in the German language. The Saxons had political aspirations and
their own political party, which would have been unheard of in Hungary. They
were not prepared to accept Basch’s leadership and tried to take an
independent course to safeguard their rights and privileges, as they had known
them under the Romanians. These were a few of the dynamics that were
beginning to surface among the various Danube Swabian and German groups in
response to the different governmental policies in the jurisdictions in which
they lived.
To make
matters worse the Fidelity movement: Loyal to the
Homeland that had its beginnings in Bonyhad was spreading especially in
Swabian Turkey following the news of Hitler’s announcement of resettlement.
There was a similar movement emerging in the numerous Swabian enclaves around
Budapest. Basch had his hands full and ideology was now the least of his
worries as he began to feel pressure to provide volunteers to serve in
the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. He was hesitant to
support such a move because it would mean a citizen of Hungary would have to
swear allegiance to a foreign Head of State. In most places that would be
known as treason. The implications were mind-boggling and yet several hundred
young men had been enticed to go to Germany to participate in sports event and
would end up on the battlefront with their families unaware of what became of
them. It was a foretaste of things to come. Clandestine recruitment of
volunteers for the German military would be ongoing.
For some
time Hitler had been courting the Yugoslavian Government’s participation in
the Tripartite Pact, which their foreign minister signed on March 26, 1941 in
Vienna. On his return to Belgrade he found that a bloodless military coup
d’état had taken place that rejected the alliance and accepted a
British guarantee of its security instead. Hitler feared his southern flank
would be exposed while already preparing his Operation Barbarossa, the
invasion of Russia, the following year. A military operation against the
recalcitrant Yugoslavs was planned immediately. The Hungarian ambassador in
Berlin was sent home by air with a message for Regent Horthy:
“Yugoslavia
will be annihilated, for she has just renounced publicly the policy of
understanding with the Axis. The great part of the German armed forces must
pass through Hungary but the principal attack will not be made on the
Hungarian sector. Here the Hungarian Army should intervene, and, in
return for its co-operation, Hungary will be able to reoccupy all those
former territories, which she had been forced at one time to cede to
Yugoslavia. The matter is urgent. An immediate and affirmative reply is
requested.”
An offer
like this was hard to turn down to a revisionist dreamer like Horthy but his
Prime Minister would not assent to the invasion because Hungary had signed a
Treaty of Eternal Friendship with Yugoslavia in December of the previous
year. He cautioned the Regent to remain out of the conflict unless the
Hungarian minority in Yugoslavia was in some kind of danger. The vision of
Lost Territories returning to the bosom of Hungary was too much of
a temptation for Regent Horthy to resist. But as always he was hesitant to
commit any troops but the Hungarian military was prepared to act and without
any government approval General Werth, Chief of Staff of the Hungarian Army
made a private agreement with the German High Command for the transport of
German troops across Hungary. Teléki denounced the General for treason. When
the aging Prime Minister received the news that the German Army had just
started its March into Hungary on the night of April 3, 1941 he committed
suicide. On April 6th Germany launched its invasion of Yugoslavia
and in eleven days the war was over.
Once
hostilities were over the Hungarian Army occupied the Batschka in lieu of its
co-operation in the war effort but was denied control of the Western Banat,
which remained under the jurisdiction of the German Army, and they were
promised that it would later be ceded to Hungary. Croatia had declared its
independence with Hitler’s support so there was no likelihood that it would
return to Hungary in the near future. Hitler retained control of the Western
Banat to punish Horthy for his refusal to send his troops into battle. The
local German minority in the Batschka were shocked by the arrival and
occupation by Hungarian troops and they were unwelcome in their villages and
their leaders made no bones about it. Franz Basch and the Volksbund
attempted to take control of the Swabian Cultural Association that had been
established and developed in Yugoslavia and it took Reich persuasion to enable
him to do so over the objections of the Batschka Swabian leadership and those
in the Banat and Croatia were able to assert their independence. In future
the Swabians in the Batschka and those in Hungary would share many similar
experiences because of the Volksbund.
To his
chagrin Basch discovered that because of their past experiences under the
Yugoslavian government and the advances they had made in terms of their
language rights, schools, the development of their own political party and a
cultural association the Batschka Swabians were not prepared to take a back
seat to Basch’s leadership. They too had won young “Renewers” as they were
called who were infected with National Socialism and were impatient with Basch
because of what they saw was his subservient role when it came to direct
relationships with the Hungarian Government and his sometimes lackluster
pronouncements that did not satisfy the convinced Nazis.
The Die Is Cast:
In early
1942, the Hungarian government responded favourably to the proposal made by
the VOMI that Franz Basch act as the Führer of the expanded
Volksbund in all of the territories that now made up “Greater Hungary”.
They also provided economic, educational and cultural incentives as part of
the agreement. They requested only one additional concession on Hungary’s
part; permission for the young men in the German minority to fulfill their
military duty by serving in the German Wehrmacht or the Waffen
SS. Surprisingly, the Hungarian Prime Minister who had always been
seen as being pro-German rejected the proposal. The radicals in the
Volksbund were outraged and demanded action on Basch’s part. In the
meanwhile, the German ambassador in Budapest instructed Basch to tone down any
criticism of the Hungarian government action and restrain his members to avoid
endangering Hungarian-German relations.
Unfortunately, Franz Basch did not listen but took up the cause based on the “Führer
principle” that he was above taking advice from anyone. He attacked
the Hungarian government publicly in a speech reported in the press. The
Reich ambassador was called in to the Prime Minister’s office and he received
a dressing down for the actions of Basch and the Volksbund. The
VOMI informed Basch to co-operate because the invasion of Russia was just
around the corner and Hitler needed Hungarian support, both economic and
military to accomplish that. He further added it was time that the German
minority picked up the tab for past support by the Reich. In April of 1942 a
direct agreement was signed by Hitler with the Hungarian government, that the
Volksbund be authorized to carry out a recruitment drive among the men
of the German minority for volunteers to serve in the Waffen SS.
There was however a caveat: the volunteers had to be members of the
Volksbund and would lose their Hungarian citizenship by doing so. It was
assumed that meant that they would receive Reich citizenship in return but
that never materialized. Over 25,000 reported to the recruitment centers and
7,500 were accepted into the SS and 10,200 were taken into the Wehrmacht.
Almost 10,000 of the volunteers came from the Batschka where the drive had
been most successful.
The reaction
in the Swabian villages was mixed and there was an obvious decline in
enthusiasm for the Reich and its war effort because of the way the recruitment
had been carried out in some communities where coercion was used on the young
men. The Volksbund suffered membership losses and the Loyalty Movement
and its growing success outraged Basch and his associates. It’s
counter-propaganda cost the Volksbund thousands of members and the
support of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran clergy played an important part in
holding the Volksbund accountable for its anti-Hungarian agitation. In
Tolna and Baranya the heartland of Swabian Turkey the Loyalty Movement had
already attracted 10,000 members. In corresponding with the VOMI,
Franz Basch now recommended the introduction of compulsory conscription into
the German armed forces.
In an
attempt to counteract the charges of the Loyalty Movement the Volksbund
in the mind of the Swabian public, Basch and his associates all professed to
be Hungarian patriots. Basch ordered that all local branches of the
organization put up pictures of Regent Horthy next to that Adolph Hitler and
always include Hungarian flags in parades at all Volksbund events. In
response, the leaders of the Loyalty Movement issued a challenge to Basch and
his cohorts to volunteer for the SS themselves.
On June 22,
1942 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa the invasion of Soviet Russia. A
force of 4,500,000 men streamed across the frontier into Mother Russia
including units from Finland, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Italy along with the
Waffen SS and German Wehrmacht as the Luftwaffe
flew overhead. Four days later, Regent Horthy finally yielded to Hitler’s
demands and on June 27th declared war on the Soviet Union. The
Hungarian Second Army consisting of 200,000 poorly armed and equipped troops
joined in the Crusade against Bolshevism. The die was cast and everything
that would follow had consequences for the German minority in Hungary that no
one had ever envisioned except for Adolph Hitler himself. The expulsion of
the German population of Hungary at war’s end was the direct result of three
men meeting in Potsdam to redraw the map of Europe once more. But then that’s
another story for another time.
I was six
and one half years old living at 23 Oak Street in Kitchener, Ontario in Canada
on the night it was announced that Hungary had entered the Second World War.
As usual my father and Uncle Adam were huddled around the shortwave radio for
the nightly report from the BBC, Dr. Joseph Goebbels shrieking from Radio
Berlin and at eight o’clock as usual it was time for Gabriel Heatter. I
remember that night he did not begin his program with his familiar trademark
introduction: “There’s good news tonight!” He used that to boost the morale
of his listeners in those very dark days of the Second World War. Instead he
began by saying; “There’s bad news tonight for all of the people of Hungary
and what is now in store for them…”
From the
expressions on the face of my father and uncle I knew they were apprehensive
about what they were about to hear but little did we know then that this was
the beginning of the end…for the Children of the Danube and the world they had
known.
September 2010