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The Dynamics of British Official Policy towards Hungarian Revisionism, 1938–39
The Dynamics of British Official Policy towards Hungarian Revisionism, 1938–39
Andras BeckerRelated Papers
In this study it is argued that the Hungarian decision to grant a carte blanche way-leave passage to Germany in April 1940 fundamentally changed British perceptions towards Hungary, and in particular the way London looked at the trustworthiness of the Hungarian elite, and its willingness and ability to confront Germany. This made a dramatic impact on British attitudes towards Hungary’s future role, geographical shape and social and political structure in post-war Central Europe. This episode is effectively the long lost puzzle piece of the evolution of British opinion about Hungary: it finally explains the reasons behind the sharp deterioration of British official opinion during the course of the summer of 1940; a phenomenon which so far has been understood only superficially, and which have been explained with the generalisation that Hungary followed an increasingly pro-German policy.
This article concerns British official policy and political propaganda disseminated in the first year of World War II towards Hungary and Romania. The story is told in the broad framework of the relationship between foreign propaganda, foreign policy implementation and war strategy. As these embody short-term strategic aims and long-term political objectives, the analysis throws light upon the often differing requirements of British diplomacy, war strategy and post-war plans. This context is discussed through the prism of the British evaluation of the minority and territorial dispute in Transylvania between Budapest and Bucharest. Such a perspective has been of little concern in the historiography, although it provides a means for putting into question certain basic assumptions underpinning existing models in the history of British policy towards the region. Although these countries lay on the periphery of British war strategy, London aimed at expanding its political influence there during and after the war. For one, the analysis of this dichotomy tells us about the paradoxes, dynamics and interplays of short and long term political, economic and strategic interests; for another, it answers the question, whether any broad patterns could be reached about British Central and South East European policy or did actions distinctively differ towards individual countries. Regarding this last question, it is offered here that precisely because these countries lay outside of primary imperial interest, standard diplomatic and strategic procedures were subverted, criteria were less carefully calculated and historical reflexes and prejudices governed British viewpoints and actions.
2005 •
Aliaksandr Piahanau, Hungary's Policy Towards Czechoslovakia in 1918 - 36. PhD thesis (Toulouse University)
Hungary's Policy Towards Czechoslovakia in 1918 - 362018 •
The replacement of Austria-Hungary by series of new nations in 1918 is a key event in the historical reflections in Central Europe. This thesis deals with the bilateral relations between two ‘new born’ states - Hungary and Czechoslovakia.This thesis pays special attention the topic of the foreign policy of Hungary, by exploring the perceptions, motives, and the decisions that the government of Budapest and its different political bodies expressed in regard to the Czechoslovak Republic. This thesis aims to challenge the mainstream historiography, which portrays the Budapest-Prague relations between the two World Wars through the prism of the territorial dispute over Slovakia and Ruthenia, two Hungarian provinces that were annexed by Czechoslovakia in 1918–1919. This research confirms that the Hungarian elites and the governmental circles were indeed unsatisfied with the loss of these two regions. However, the historiography has over-estimated the impact of territorial dispute on the practical and every day political attitudes and the decision making process in Budapest. This thesis claims that the Hungarian government tended to avoid open conflicts with Prague, considering that Czechoslovakia was more populous, industrialized, militarized and had more international alliances than Hungary. Analyzing primary sources mainly in Hungarian, and Czech, but also in Slovak, French and English, found both in the archives in Budapest and Prague and in published versions, this thesis argues that the government of Hungary seriously considered developing political, economic and international cooperation with Prague in the middle years of the Interwar. This thesis is organized into five parts. The opening part deals with the sources and the historiography. Part 2 examines the Hungarian policy on Czechoslovakia in 1918–1921. Part 3 tackles the Budapest-Prague relations between 1922 and 1930. Part 4 portrays the connections of the Hungarian democratic opposition with Prague in 1919–1932. Part 5 uncovers the changes of the foreign policy of Hungary towards Czechoslovakia in 1931–1936.
The „operation” of the British Council in Hungary, 1957–1963
The „operation” of the British Council in Hungary, 1957–19632019 •
After 1950, the role played by the British Council in the Hungarian context was discussed at almost all levels during negotiations, discussions, or even short meetings. During the negotiations that took place after the British Council's forced closure, the British policy emphasized year after year that it was not possible to talk about normal cultural relations without BC, so the idea and realization of the reopening of the Budapest office was necessary and justified. However, following the events of 1956 when the unacceptable Kádár government was set up, the question arose of how useful it would be for BC if any formal agreement would be reached between the British and the Hungarian government. The relationship system between the two countries must be assessed adequately to this. In this study, we try to confirm with archival sources how tense the relationship between the two countries was, among others, because of the closing and ignoring of the British Council.
Sociology and anthropology
The Changes of Hungarian Security Policy Preferences in the First Years of World War II (1938-1941)2017 •
Many historians have written fair and balanced accounts on Hungary's conduct in the Second World War, but there are also one-sided, prejudiced, or apologetic works on the subject. Public perception (both in Hungary and outside it) is dominated by two equally fallacious tendencies: whitewashing or blackening. Though flawed, it is understandable that many Hungarians believe that their country was basically innocent in becoming an ally, a satellite of Nazi Germany, because it was a kind of set course, doom, inevitable destiny, caused by the 1920 Peace Treaty signed at the Greater Trianon Palace at Versailles. The summary of this version is the following: the Paris Peace Conference reduced the historic kingdom to one third of its territory and transferred close to 3.5 million Hungarians (including those of Jewish origin), against their will, to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia respectively. 2 Those Hungarians became ill-treated minorities, longing to be returned to Hungary.
Maney Publishing
University College London
The Dynamics of British Official Policy towards Hungarian Revisionism, 1938–39
Author(s): Andras Becker
Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (October 2015), pp. 655-691
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.93.4.0655
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The Dynamics of British Official
Policy towards Hungarian
Revisionism, 1938–39
ANDRAS BECKER
An anecdote of July 1938 records the perceptions of British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain about the minority problems of Czechoslovakia.
A reporter asked him whether he believed that Prague was handling
the tense minority situation correctly. Chamberlain gave an affirmative
answer, noting that his information came from the most authentic source,
Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Minister in London.1 The accuracy of
this anecdote remains highly questionable, but outwardly it displays
Chamberlain’s profound naivety towards Central European affairs, as
he seemingly did not question the Czech statement. Since stories of this
sort strongly characterize the image we conjure up of Chamberlain, and
have also influenced the memory and legacy of appeasement, not least the
historiography of British policy towards Central Europe, its validity needs
testing. In essence, the anecdote corresponds exactly to Chamberlain’s
infamous words about the ‘faraway country [Czechoslovakia] of which
we know nothing’. Thus it apparently confirms the cliché frequently
encountered about Chamberlain’s ignorance of Central Europe.
This article will show that the historiography has often used examples
like this to emphasize British disinterest in Central Europe. Yet these
viewpoints have a number of inherent flaws. Essentially, the mechanical
repeating of these clichés produces mono-causal interpretations of Britain’s
policy towards the region. It is easy to discern, however, that these
official public declarations do not provide a representative picture of the
Andras Becker is a Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Southampton.
1
Stanford University, CA, USA, Hoover Institution Archives (hereafter, HIA), ‘Diaries
of György Barcza Nagyalásonyi’ (manuscript) (hereafter, Diaries, Barcza), Box 0008, 2 July
1938.
Slavonic and East European Review, 93, 4, 2015
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656
ANDRAS BECKER
perceptions of key officials.2 First, such statements served domestic aims,
targeting the opinion of either the governing party or the public. Erik
Goldstein has convincingly argued that because Chamberlain never won
a general election he was primarily concerned with generating domestic
political success, while David Hucker has pointed to the insignificance
of East-Central European questions in the eyes of the British public.
Thus, these comments aimed to evoke associations of a mystical ‘Eastern
Europe’ that were strongly prevalent in the British mind-set.3 At the
same time, these comments underlined the region’s insignificance for the
British Empire. Hence, it is plausible to infer that Chamberlain’s seemingly
careless remarks were carefully made to influence public opinion towards
appeasement and against being forced into unwanted commitments
regarding Czechoslovakia on moral grounds by popular demand.
Second, historians have steadfastly maintained that at least until the
Munich Conference, Chamberlain single-handedly dictated the direction
of foreign policy towards Czechoslovakia.4 Reiterating this argument
about East-Central Europe has helped fuel the idea that Chamberlain’s
naivety was solely responsible for reduced British attention towards the
region in 1938. During the Chamberlain-Hitler discussions the British
Prime Minister supposedly had a profound personal influence on policy,
but this argument largely ignores the role of the Foreign Office, whose
advice and expertise in Central European matters (such as the Hungarian
question, which did not necessarily gain Chamberlain’s attention) was
crucial. Formulating and executing policy towards Hungary largely fell
2
Scholars of diplomatic and international history have long abandoned relying solely
on official communications and diplomatic correspondence for analysing interstate
relations, but the British and Hungarian historiography about the Hungarian angle of
the Czechoslovak crisis, partly because of language barriers, still largely employs this
approach. A number of works in the English language have emerged from the pen of
Central European scholars, which provide a more complete analysis. See Mark Cornwall,
‘The Rise and Fall of a “Special Relationship”?: Britain and Czechoslovakia, 1930–1948’,
in Brian Brivati and Harriet Jones (eds), What Difference did the War Make?, Leicester,
1993, pp. 130–50; Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude
to World War II, Basingstoke, 1999, and Vít Smetana, In the Shadow of Munich: British
Policy towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich
Agreement (1938–1942), Prague, 2008.
3
Erik Goldstein, ‘Neville Chamberlain, the British Official Mind and the Munich
Crisis’, in Lukes and Goldstein, The Munich Crisis, pp. 276–92; Daniel Hucker, Public
Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France, Farnham, 2011. Andrea
Orzoff has argued that travelogues significantly coloured British perceptions of the region:
Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948, New
York, 2009, pp. 178–79.
4
For example, R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the
coming of the Second World War, London, 1993.
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BRITAIN & HuNgARIAN REvISIONISm, 1938–39
657
upon the Foreign Office. For these reasons, this study will emphasize
the dynamics of policy-making towards Hungary in the light not only of
Foreign Office perspectives, but also Chamberlain’s troubled relationship
with this institution, and will examine to what extent the ‘Inner Circle’ and
the Foreign Office steered the Anglo-Hungarian relationship in different
directions.5
The complex problem of British policy-making sets the agenda for
further questions. The problem of differentiating official policy from
the individual perceptions of key policy-makers (and the question of the
existence of an institutional perception in Whitehall) and of deciding
their role in the policy-making process has been unduly neglected in the
historiography of British Central European policy during the pre-war
era.6 This is particularly true in the case of Hungary and British opinions
on Hungarian revisionism.7 The narrative of Hungarian historiography
bristles with judgments about Britain’s and Hungary’s role in the crisis,
but only considers the outcomes of British policy, paying less attention to
the interplay of perceptions and official behaviour in the foreign policymaking process.8 Primarily, this has resulted in a sketchy understanding of
Britain’s strategy towards Hungary as well as the categorization of British
Central European strategy as being pro-Little Entente and inherently antiHungarian, on the basis of Britain’s limited attention towards Hungary
in 1938–39.9 This perspective tends to predetermine conclusions about
Britain’s rejection of Hungary’s claims and the country’s insignificance
in British regional policy. As we will see, a study of Hungary helps to
illuminate the strategy of constructing defensive, anti-German regional
5
The close working relationship between Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary Lord
Halifax, Home Secretary Samuel Hoare, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Simon and
Chamberlain’s private secretary Horace Wilson, is often referred to as the ‘Inner Circle’
due to their habit of consulting each other outside the Cabinet. Decisions reached by them
about Czechoslovakia were rarely contested in the Cabinet: Ivonne Kirkpatrick, The Inner
Circle, London, 1959.
6
These problems have been examined by a number of historians, concentrating on
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: T. G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The
Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865–1914, Cambridge, 2011; Gaynor Johnson (ed.), The
Foreign Office and British Diplomacy in the 20th Century, London, 2009.
7
Since the Treaty of Trianon (1920), which after the Great War dismembered the
Hungarian kingdom, Hungary contested its frontiers with its neighbours. During the
interwar period the primary foreign political aim of all Hungarian governments was to
restore Greater Hungary’s frontiers.
8
Gyula Juhász, Magyarország külpolitikája 1919–1945, Budapest, 1988.
9
The Little Entente was an alliance formed after the Great War by Czechoslovakia,
Romania and Yugoslavia with the purpose of common defence against Hungary’s
ambitions for the revision of the Treaty of Trianon.
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658
ANDRAS BECKER
cooperation after the Munich crisis. Evidence produced here also proves
that Hungarian minority complaints were considered to be just as
important as Czech viewpoints, and Hungarian territorial ambitions in
Slovakia were not rejected per se from a pro-Little Entente perspective, but
were the subject of careful consideration in London.
The 1938 Chamberlain anecdote had a devious afterlife. György Barcza,
the Hungarian Minister in London from 1938 to 1941, learned of it with
utter astonishment. He felt that it accurately described the absurdities
of British regional policy because it proved that the Czechs had gained
the trust of the British, which made Hungarian minority complaints and
territorial demands in Slovakia seem irrational in British eyes.10 Contrary
to this contemporary Hungarian belief, we shall see that the political will to
strengthen relations with Budapest did in fact exist in London, but because
Britain was unable to provide substantial material support to Hungary,
thanks to its own economic weaknesses, this course was pushed to the
background. Eventually, this strengthened feelings in Budapest of being let
down, which explains the frequent occurrence of misunderstandings and
disappointments between London and Budapest during the Czechoslovak
crisis.
Britain’s official attitude towards Hungary’s role in the Czechoslovak
crises of 1938–39 will be analysed against this background, with the aim of
identifying the criteria responsible for British policies towards Hungary’s
territorial claims and the Magyar minority question in Slovakia from the
Anschluss through to the summer of 1939. This requires a particular focus
on how the British saw the German-Hungarian relationship evolving.
Since Nazi Germany was essentially viewed as an aggressor, it is crucial
to look at how the good German-Hungarian official relationship affected
British opinions about Hungary: how far Whitehall saw Hungary as a
German accomplice, and particularly whether policy-makers interpreted
Hungary’s claims on Czechoslovakia as demands originating in Berlin.
Moreover, part of our analysis considers the interaction between British
and Hungarian official policies, the individual and collective perceptions
of the British foreign policy-making elite towards Hungary and the role
of outside factors on decision-making. Analysing and contextualizing
this array of inter-connected perspectives, in order to identify the
strategic, political and economic factors motivating British policy towards
10
Such an interpretation was largely shared by the Hungarian foreign policy-making
elite: HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 2 July 1938. Andrea Orzoff has pointed out that Jan Masaryk
was indeed popular in London, but his good reputation was an exception and the British
fundamentally distrusted all Central Europeans: Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, p. 10.
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BRITAIN & HuNgARIAN REvISIONISm, 1938–39
659
Hungarian revisionism, enriches our understanding of the mechanisms
of British foreign policy-making and provides additional insights into
the collapse of Czechoslovakia. Concerning these perspectives, this
article scrutinizes a number of themes which thus far have been relatively
neglected in any study of British policy towards Central Europe. Historians
have often emphasized East-Central Europe’s relative insignificance in
appeasement. However, some key questions have yet to be considered:
the reasons for the rigorous promotion of regional stability (which
overshadowed any initiative of treaty revision); why Britain supported an
ethnographic revision of the frontiers of Czechoslovakia (in contrast to
other multi-national states like Romania); and why Britain discouraged
plebiscites while promoting national self-determination. Disentangling
these problems and contradictions tells us much about the priorities of
British Central and South-East European policy and explains the dramatic
shifts in British action.
Appeasement remains a vibrant field of scholarly interest, and it is one
of the most thoroughly researched eras of the Anglo-Central European
relationship. The studies of Gábor Bátonyi on British policy towards
Central Europe and Hungarian revisionism provide an overview of British
policy towards the region on the eve of the Sudeten crisis.11 Hungary’s role
in the Munich crisis has mostly been approached from the perspective
of Hungarian foreign policy or the German-Hungarian relationship,
and less from the context of an Anglo-Hungarian relationship.12 István
11
Gábor Bátonyi, Britain and Central Europe, Oxford, 1999; Gábor Bátonyi, ‘British
Foreign Policy and the Problem of Hungarian Revisionism in the 1930s’, in László Péter
and Martyn Rady (eds), British-Hungarian Relations since 1848, London, 2005, pp. 205–16.
The following also provide a useful analysis of British policy from a broader Central
European and Balkan perspective before the Czechoslovak crisis: Magda Ádám, The
Versailles System and Central Europe, London, 2004; Dragan Bakić, ‘Great Britain, The
Little Entente and Security in the Danubian Europe, 1919–1936’, unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Leeds, 2010; Michael Newman, ‘The Origins of Munich: British Policy in
Danubian Europe, 1933–1937’, The Historical Journal, 21, 1978, 2, pp. 371–86; Thomas L.
Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis 1936–1939, Athens, GA,
1980. For the Sudeten question, see Mark Cornwall, ‘A Leap into Ice-Cold Water: The
Manoeuvres of the Heinlein Movement in Czechoslovakia, 1933–1938’, in Mark Cornwall
and Robert J. Evans (eds), Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918–1948,
Oxford, 2007, pp. 123–42; Milan Hauner, ‘The Sudeten Crisis of 1938: Beneš and Munich’,
in Frank McDonough (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War: An International
Perspective, London, 2011, pp. 360–74.
12
Magda Ádám, ‘The Munich Crisis and Hungary: The Fall of the Versailles Settlement
in Europe’, in Lukes and Goldstein, The Munich Crisis, pp. 82–122.; Endre B. Gastony,
‘Hungarian Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya, Hitler, and Peace in Europe, AugustSeptember, 1938’, Hungarian Studies Review, 53, 1986, pp. 3–34; Pál Pritz, ‘A kieli találkozó’,
Századok, 107, 1974, 3, pp. 646–80; Thomas L. Sakmyster, ‘Hungary and the Munich Crisis:
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ANDRAS BECKER
Janek has recently assessed Britain’s view of the First Vienna Award but
concentrated only on the official response.13 The First Vienna Award has
also been thoroughly analysed by Gergely Sallai and Edward Császár, but
they were chiefly interested only in German and Italian attitudes.14 From
the plethora of British historiography, it is R. A. C. Parker and David
Gillard who have shown more interest in the role of East-Central Europe
in appeasement. Despite their convincing analyses, their consideration of
the wider implications of the Hungarian question is limited. They have
claimed that under the pressure of necessity (because Hitler brought
up the Magyar problem), the Magyar minority question gathered some
unwelcome attention in Whitehall as a by-product of the Sudeten question,
but played only a limited role in British policy.15
In the following the impact of the Anschluss on the Anglo-Hungarian
relationship is analysed first, followed by an examination of the role of the
Hungarian question in the meetings between Hitler and Chamberlain.
The article then concentrates on the Hungarian question at the Munich
Conference and the British views of the First Vienna Award before turning
to Britain’s reaction to the Hungarian occupation of Ruthenia, and
Hungary’s role in the British guarantees of Poland and Romania.
The Revisionist Dilemma’, Slavic Review, 58, 1973, 4, pp. 725–40; Betty J. Winchester,
‘Hungary and the “Third Europe” in 1938’, Slavic Review, 32, 1973, 4, pp. 741–56. For the role
of Slovakia in the Munich crisis and its aftermath from a Slovak perspective, see Valerián
Bystricky, ‘Slovakia from the Munich Conference to the Declaration of Independence’, in
Mikuláš Teich (ed.), Slovakia in History, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 157–74.
13
The First Vienna Award (2 November 1938) was the German-Italian decision
concerning the Hungarian-Czechoslovak territorial dispute. It transferred a wide strip
of Southern Slovakia to Hungary: István Janek, ‘Az első bécsi döntés és Nagy-Britannia
álláspontja’, Új Szó (Pozsony), 28 October 2005, pp. 17–18. Janek also studied Hungarian
revisionism in Slovakia during the Munich crisis: István Janek, ‘Magyar törekvések a
Felvidék megszerzésére 1938-ban’, Történelmi Szemle, 105, 2010, 1, pp. 37–66.
14
Edward Chászár, Decision in Vienna: The Czechoslovak-Hungarian Border Dispute
of 1938, Bratislava, 1978; Gergely Sallai, Az első bécsi döntés, Budapest, 2002. Sallai was
also interested in the role of the Magyar minorities in the Hungarian-Czechoslovak
interstate relations: Gergely Sallai, “A határ megindul…” A csehszlovákiai magyar kisebbség
és Magyarország kapcsolatai az 1938–1939. évi államhatár-változások tükrében, Budapest,
2009.
15
David Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis: From Munich to Prague, October 1938–March
1939, London, 2007; R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy
and the Coming of the Second World War, London, 1993. See also, Clement Leibovitz,
The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal, London, 1993; R. W. Seton-Watson, From Munich to
Danzig, London, 1939. This study, following the methodology of the English-language
historiography, refers to Hungarian speakers living outside of the frontiers of Hungary as
Magyars, to define them ethnically, and will call the population of Hungary Hungarians.
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661
The impact of the Anschluss on Anglo-Hungarian relations
In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria. The British Cabinet
accepted this with reserve, feeling that it was not worth risking Germany’s
hostility by condemning the recent change in Austria’s status.16
Consequently, the Versailles peace suffered a stinging blow and by
renouncing the option to confront the first major alteration of the Central
European territorial status quo, Britain embarked on a path of voluntary
isolation from the territorial questions of the region. However, it would
be a mistake to suggest, as historians often do, that British foreign policy
was on a predetermined path following the Anschluss, drifting towards
a foregone conclusion of concurrence with any German-orchestrated
territorial change. Similarities have been drawn between the British
official attitude towards the Anschluss and the Munich crisis, based on
the absence of official opposition to these forced territorial changes.17 It is,
however, problematic to use the Anschluss to analyse British perceptions
and official attitudes towards Central European minority grievances and
their possible territorial implications, such as the Magyars in Slovakia.
Most importantly, this argument misrepresents the complexity of British
political, economic and strategic aims by focusing mainly on the strategic
motives of official policy (which at the time arguably influenced British
hesitation). Crucially, they disregard the existence of other factors in
British thinking, such as the determination to reorganize the territorial
status quo in order to guarantee stability (a notion which, as we will see,
significantly influenced perceptions, but was pushed to the background
due to momentary strategic weaknesses).
Great War perceptions about Germany’s traditional supremacy in
Central Europe also determined foreign policy-making. Bátonyi has
stressed that Britain officially (and continually) disapproved of Hungarian
16
London, The National Archives (hereafter, TNA), Cabinet Office Papers (hereafter,
CAB), CAB 27/624, Foreign Political Committee Conclusion, 27 March 1938. For the
Anschluss, see Jürgen Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931–1938, London, 1963;
for the Hungarian response, see András Bán, Hungarian–British Diplomacy 1938–1941:
The Attempt to Maintain Relations, London, 2004, pp. 42–43; Gyula Juhász, Magyarország
külpolitikája 1919–1945, Budapest, 1988, pp. 173–74, 177–79, 183–85. Gábor Bátonyi has
contested the historiographical consensus that Britain was indifferent towards the survival
of Austria in the interwar period, and has pointed out that the small countries of the
region had important strategic implications for Britain: Gábor Bátonyi, ‘Anglo-Austrian
Relations between the Wars’, in Klaus Koch and Arnold Suppan (eds), Von Saint Germain
zum Belvedere, Österreich und Europa 1919–1955, Außenpolitische Dokumente der Republik
Österreich 1918–1938 (ADÖ), Special Issue, Munich and Vienna, 2007, pp. 115–29.
17
Juhász, Magyarország külpolitikája 1919–1945, pp. 178–79.
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662
ANDRAS BECKER
revisionism in the interwar period.18 The evidence tells us that the
Anschluss marked the beginning of a further deterioration in British
opinion, precisely because of this notion. The first reaction to Hungary’s
future after the Anschluss came from Orme Sargent, the senior official of
the Southern Department at the Foreign Office. Sargent was well-known for
his antipathy towards the Hungarian elite and, now reacting to Budapest’s
congratulatory messages on the Anschluss, he predicted that thanks to
the pro-German policy of Hungarian Prime Minister Kálmán Darányi,
Hungary would join Germany as a semi-independent state, and would
willingly submit its army, economy and foreign policy to German tutelage.19
Hungarian approval of the Anschluss also brought deep-seated prejudices
to the surface among senior and junior officials alike: German-Hungarian
fraternization was associated with the Central Powers alliance of the Great
War. Hungary’s attitude, therefore, provoked wide speculation about the
existence of a German-Hungarian scheme to destabilize the region. This
train of thought proved resilient and, as we will see, had far-reaching
ramifications for Britain’s attitude towards Hungary’s role in the Munich
crisis.
Crucially, these viewpoints also negatively affected perceptions in the
Foreign Office about Hungarian revisionism and the Magyar minority
question in Czechoslovakia. Taking the lead in the debate, Sargent claimed
that any rapprochement between Hungary and its neighbours (the Little
Entente) would now be impossible, because Budapest had sold itself to
Germany in order to realize its territorial ambitions against them.20
Frightening reports after the Anschluss coming from the British Legation
in Budapest fuelled these suspicions and strengthened prejudices. The
British Minister, Geoffrey Knox, prophesied the imminent occupation
of Hungary, while First Secretary Gascoigne set alarm bells ringing by
warning of the immediate conclusion of a German-Hungarian military
18
19
Bátonyi, ‘British Foreign Policy and the Problem of Hungarian Revisionism’, pp. 214–16.
TNA, Foreign Office (hereafter, FO), FO 371/22380, R 3302/719/21, Sargent’s report on
conversations with Szilárd Masirevics (Hungarian minister), 17 March 1938; R 3105/719/21,
minutes by Noble and Ingram, 23 March 1938.
20
TNA, FO 371/22380, R 3302/719/21, minute by Sargent, 17 March 1938. Earlier, London
exerted influence on Budapest to put aside its territorial claims and form a bloc with
the Little Entente to jointly counter German influence. Juhász’s claim, that Hungarian
reliance on German support in satisfying territorial ambitions destroyed any hopes in
London of organizing a collective security bloc in Central Europe, seems governed by the
Marxist perspective to exaggerate the image of Hungary as a German accomplice: Juhász,
Magyarország külpolitikája 1919–1945, p. 176.
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663
alliance.21 Consequently, until the Munich Agreement, the Foreign Office
and the Cabinet regarded German-Hungarian military cooperation
against Czechoslovakia as a quasi-certainty.22 Sargent immediately linked
Hungary’s constant territorial ambitions to this alleged collaboration.
Based on his outlook, the Foreign Office then decided that any future
Hungarian territorial claims and any direct Hungarian intervention
regarding Magyar minority questions should be firmly rejected. Budapest
would be warned that minority complaints had to be referred to the League
of Nations in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Trianon.23
These perceptions changed little in the coming months. Hungarian
historiography has put much emphasis on the positive impact on British
perceptions of the replacement of pro-German Darányi with the pro-British
Béla Imrédy. These claims, however, have relied far too heavily on official
documents.24 True, Imrédy’s appointment secured a positive reaction
officially, but the tone of Foreign Office debates was much more guarded
and guided by prejudices since the Great War. While by all appearances
British policy remained friendly towards Hungary for practical purposes
(Hungary was not formally a German ally), behind closed doors the
British foreign policy-making elite highlighted the destabilizing effect of
Hungary’s territorial ambitions, and viewed Hungarian foreign political
machinations with distrust.25
21
TNA, FO 371/22380, R 5416/626/21. Knox was British minister in Budapest between
1936 and 1939. He strongly disliked Hungary and the Hungarian political elite, which
greatly affected his diplomatic reports about Hungarian revisionism. Earlier, he was closely
connected to the League of Nations; he was the commissionaire of the Saar-plebiscite in
1935, where he advocated preserving the Versailles status quo. He retained these strong
anti-revisionist views during his years in Hungary. Gascoigne believed that during the
July visit of the chief of staff of the Wehrmacht to Budapest, Hungary had granted military
passage to Germany. Gascoigne warned that in the event of a German-Czechoslovak war,
the Wehrmacht might outflank the Czechoslovak army from Hungarian territory: TNA,
FO 371/22380, R 6743/719/21, Gascoigne to Halifax, 28 July 1938.
22
TNA, FO 371/22373, R 3497/97/21, minute by Noble, 1 April 1938, minutes by Ingram
and Sargent, 2 April 1938, minutes by Cadogan and Halifax, 5 April 1938; TNA, War Office
(hereafter, WO), WO 190/606; WO 190/681; WO 190/691; WO 691/694.
23
TNA, FO 371/22377, R 5245/178/21, Sargent to Knox, 9 June 1938.
24
András D. Bán, Hungarian-British Diplomacy 1938–1941: The Attempt to Maintain
Relations, London, 2004, p. 36.
25
As we have seen, Gascoigne predicted a German-Hungarian military alliance, but
outwardly he remained very cordial towards Hungarian officials. For instance, he assured
Budapest that it could expect a favourable British stance towards Magyar minority
complaints: Budapest, Magyar Országos Levéltár (hereafter, MOL), Foreign Ministry,
Political Department (hereafter, K 63), 11. cs., 1938-2/1, II., 2744i/1938, Apor to Kánya, 30
August 1938. György Barcza also reported that he was told that the expansion of GermanHungarian trade was understood by Britain, and London greatly appreciated Hungary’s
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ANDRAS BECKER
In August 1938, Hungary signed the Bled Agreement with the Little
Entente, renouncing the use of force in their mutual relations, and
recognizing Hungary’s equal right to armaments. András Bán has argued
that as a result British opinion about Hungary had taken a positive
turn.26 Indeed, the British press reacted positively to Bled, but Bán
fails to distinguish between the encouraging tone of the press and the
nature of debate in the Southern Department, which remained markedly
wary. Officials were very suspicious about Hungary’s role in the Bled
Agreement; and the fact especially that the treaty remained unratified with
Czechoslovakia increased British distrust towards Hungarian intentions in
Slovakia.27
Before turning our attention to the unfolding of the Sudeten crisis and
the British view of its Hungarian angle, it is useful to provide a brief bird’seye view of the aims of Hungarian revisionism in Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Imrédy and Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya followed a cautious foreign
policy, and were keen to maintain a delicate balance between Germany
and the Western powers. For these reasons, and because of severe military
weakness, territorial demands were silent on the official level, and until
August 1938 Budapest mostly raised its voice over the protection of Magyar
minorities only through the League of Nations.28 However, because
efforts to maintain political independence: MOL, K 63, 11. cs., 1938-2/1, I. 96/pol. 1938,
Barcza to Kánya, 24 July 1938; II. 84/pol. 1938, Barcza to Kánya, 22 June 1938. See also,
György Barcza, Diplomataemlékeim, Magyarország volt vatikáni és londoni követének
emlékirataiból 1911–1945, 2 vols, Budapest, 1994, 1, p. 318.
26
Bán, Hungarian–British Diplomacy 1938–41, pp. 37–38. For the Bled Agreement,
see Magda Ádám, Hungary and the Little Entente, Budapest, 1976; Juhász, Magyarország
külpolitikája, pp. 186–87.
27
MOL, K 66, 14/pol. 1938, ‘A bledi egyezmény visszhangja a brit sajtóban’, Marosy
(London) to Kánya, 26 August 1938. London welcomed the Bled agreement officially, as a
sign of independent Hungarian foreign policy: MOL, K 74, 1938, London, 6097/83.
28
Gastony, ‘Hungarian Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya’, pp. 7–8; Zara Steiner, The
Triumph of the Dark, Oxford, 2011, pp. 371–72. Hungary was careful not to alienate the
international community by expressing radical revisionist claims. For example, on a rare
occasion, on a lecture tour in Britain, István Bethlen called for the restoration of a wide
strip of Czechoslovak territory to Hungary, but this claim remained in general terms:
István Romsics, Bethlen István. Politikai életrajz, Budapest, 1991, pp. 248–49. Revisionist
demands were mostly channelled through organizations such as the Revisionist League
or articulated in journals such as the Hungarian Quarterly: Miklós Zeidler, A revíziós
gondolat, Budapest, 2001, pp. 88–158; Tibor Frank, ‘Editing as Politics: József Balogh and
the Hungarian Quarterly’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 34, 1993, pp. 5–13; Tibor Zs. Lukács,
‘The Hungarian Quarterly 1936–1941: Hungarian Propaganda for Great Britain Before the
Second World War’, Hungarian Studies, 13, 1998/99, 1, pp. 95–118; Tibor Frank, ‘To Comply
with English Taste: The Making of The Hungarian Quarterly, 1934–1944’, Hungarian
Quarterly, 44, 2003, pp. 67–80.
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665
Budapest since 1937 was aware of Hitler’s plan to destroy Czechoslovakia,
a major rearmament programme was initiated in preparation for the
realization of revisionist dreams.
Concurrently with the Bled Agreement, Regent Horthy, Imrédy and
Kánya were invited to Germany for a grandiose state visit, where
their hosts evidently aimed to present to the world the conclusion of
a German-Hungarian alliance. Hitler offered Slovakia in return for
Hungarian participation in a war against Czechoslovakia, but due to the
unpreparedness of their army the Hungarians were reluctant to commit
to this plan. Fearing the loss of German support for frontier revision, they
did however decide that under specific circumstances they would side
with Germany in any German-Czechoslovak war.29 London, because of
inadequate reliable information, reacted positively to the apparent lack of
an immediate agreement, and considered it a promising sign of Hungarian
independence; at the same time the occurrence of such a state visit did not
help to calm British unease.30
Because after the Anschluss Hungary seemed to commit itself to
Germany, the Foreign Office stiffened against Hungarian revisionism. It
dredged up the memory of the German-Hungarian alliance of the First
World War, confirming that throughout the 1930s the British had seen
Hungary as part of Germany’s political and cultural sphere. While British
official opinion towards Budapest remained amiable, the visible aversion
towards Hungarian revisionism meant that Britain would not consider
raising the question of the Hungarian-Czechoslovak frontier, not least
because the question lacked direct strategic implications for British EastCentral European policy.
Between Berchtesgaden and Munich
The discussions between Chamberlain and Hitler at Berchtesgaden
and Bad Godesberg about the Sudeten problem have produced a mass
of scholarship, dominated by the analysis of why Britain acquiesced to
German territorial demands in Czechoslovakia. However, how the two
29
The sources for these German-Hungarian negotiations provide an ambiguous picture.
The Hungarians were very reluctant to participate in a war against Czechoslovakia, and
Horthy reminded Hitler that British imperial and naval power would eventually prevail
in a global conflict. Juhász and Pritz agree that the fervent Hungarian will for revision
was the fundamental reason for eventually agreeing to participate in a war against
Czechoslovakia, with the condition that Yugoslav neutrality be guaranteed and the war
localized between Germany and Czechoslovakia: Juhász, Magyarország külpolitikája
1919–1945, p. 188; Pritz, ‘A kieli találkozó’, pp. 646–80.
30
MOL, K 66, 113/pol.1938, Marosy to Kánya, 26 August 1938.
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666
ANDRAS BECKER
leaders treated Hungary has received limited attention even though it
significantly influenced British policy towards Central Europe. Hitler’s
new claim at Berchtesgaden, that apart from a plebiscite in the Sudetenland
the magyar and Polish minorities might also demand national selfdetermination, brought the Hungarian question into the international
limelight. Consequently, it was not confined solely to the corridors of
the Foreign Office but catapulted to British Cabinet attention. Hitler
caught Chamberlain by surprise: but the latter along with the Cabinet
was convinced that the magyar question would not stand in the way of
agreement with germany.
While the magyar question was certainly less urgent than the Sudeten
one, new and persuasive evidence suggests that Hungary’s assiduous
lobbying for frontier revision in London was convincing policy-makers
that for the sake of future stability the redrawing of the HungarianCzechoslovak frontier might be necessary, applying the concept of national
self-determination. We will now consider how London saw questions
such as national self-determination, plebiscite and frontier change, in
the context of Czechoslovakia’s Sudeten german and magyar minorities.
Analysing British strategy from this perspective highlights why the
magyar question was treated differently from the Sudeten german, and
helps explain the dramatic shifts in British policy towards the ‘Hungarian
question’ in 1938–39.
There has been little historical analysis of how Britain saw the Magyar
problem on the eve of the Czechoslovak crisis.31 Some have stressed that
since the Anschluss, in order to prevent raising new problems in Central
Europe, London deliberately tried to shelve minority problems other than
the Sudeten German at international forums.32 Cabinet minutes attest
that precisely for this reason a decision was made in August 1938, before
Chamberlain embarked on his missions to Berchtesgaden, that Britain
would not raise the subject of the Magyar minority of Czechoslovakia.33
This suggests that the British were fully aware of the erosion of the
Versailles territorial status quo after the Anschluss, and also of the
territorial implications of minority grievances being raised. However,
it is problematic to decide whether the Magyar question was conceived
just as a minority problem, which could potentially be contained in
Czechoslovakia, or as a territorial issue between two states with potential
31
32
33
The most important exception is Ádám, ‘The Munich Crisis and Hungary’, pp. 82–122.
Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 141–44.
TNA, CAB 23/95, Cabinet Conclusion 64 (38), 13 August 1938.
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667
international implications. The evidence suggests that Chamberlain, like
the rest of the Cabinet, was certain that the magyars in Czechoslovakia
were content.34 It is therefore not surprising that when Lord Runciman was
sent to mediate between the Sudeten Germans and Prague, Chamberlain
instructed him to concentrate only on the Sudeten German problem.35
Without much opposition, the Cabinet agreed to Hitler’s Berchtesgaden
demands for the transfer of the Sudetenland if a plebiscite favoured it, but
confirmed the earlier decision that the same principle would not be applied
to the Magyar areas as it would set an unwanted precedent in the region.36
The Cabinet meeting on 21 September which discussed British strategy in
advance of the Chamberlain-Hitler meeting in Bad Godesberg produced
intense debate about Hungary. Curiously, Chamberlain and Halifax had
significantly changed their opinion and now showed themselves receptive
towards the revision of Hungary’s frontiers, but they advised against it
due to the possibility of German interference. Most importantly however,
a comment made by the Home Secretary Samuel Hoare dramatically
changed the tone. Hoare noted that, because of the maltreatment of
nationalities in nineteenth-century Hungary, non-Magyars should not
be transferred if revision was approved. This notion, like the memory
of the wartime German-Hungarian alliance (which had transformed the
34
Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis, pp. 185–86, 192–93.
Chamberlain’s memoirs, his letters to his sister, Cabinet minutes and Foreign Office
files reveal close to nothing about Chamberlain’s perceptions. Immediately before he
travelled to Berchtesgaden, through Sir Ralf Glynn, who had recently visited Hungary,
Chamberlain received secret messages from the Hungarian political elite that Budapest
intended to follow a peaceful policy: MOL, K 63, 11. cs., 1938-2/1, II., 115/pol. 1938, Marosy
to Kánya, 9 September 1938. Other British personalities, such as Lady Snowden and Lady
Londonderry also visited Hungary in the course of 1938. They intended to influence high
British circles towards a friendly policy towards Hungary, but there is no evidence that
they were able to achieve their goal: Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, Fond X, Géza Szüllő
Papers.
35
Evidently, Runciman was instructed to ignore the Magyar question and showed no
interest in that minority question. He promised to visit Slovakia, but told the Magyars not
to make any demonstrations, otherwise he would leave Slovakia immediately. The visit
never materialized, and Runciman met János Eszterházy, the leader of the Magyar Party
in Czechoslovakia only very briefly: MOL, K 63, 11. cs., 1938-2/1, II. 201/pol. 1938, Vörnle to
Kánya, 17 August 1938. For the Runciman-Eszterházy meeting: K 64 pol. 1938 7/4, 72/2396.
For a pro-Czech viewpoint on the Runciman mission, see: Paul Vyšný, The Runciman
Mission to Czechoslovakia, 1938: Prelude to Munich, Basingstoke, 2003.
36
TNA, CAB 23/95, Cabinet Conclusions 39 (38), 16 September 1938; CAB 23/95, Cabinet
Conclusions 41 (38), 21 September 1938. For the German account of the Berchtesgaden
meetings, see Documents on German Foreign Policy (hereafter, DGFP), ser. D., vol. 2.,
896. Parker is of a different opinion. He stresses that cabinet ministers aimed to postpone
plebiscites in order to provide in an orderly fashion for the eventual dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia: Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 161–62.
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ANDRAS BECKER
Foreign Office view), now had a critical impact on Cabinet members.
Ministers unanimously agreed that Hungarian frontier revision should
not be encouraged for this reason; it would also set a precedent and offer
Germany an opportunity for intervention.37
Given this radical transformation of thinking about Hungary in
late September, its origin needs further explanation. On the one hand,
in his memoirs, Hoare passionately described his affection for the
Czechoslovak cause and his long-term close friendship with historian R.
W. Seton-Watson. Seton-Watson, who had published extensively on Central
European minority affairs, was well-known for his aversion to nineteenthcentury Magyarization and interwar Hungarian revisionism. Thus it is
not difficult to imagine what stimulated Hoare’s anti-Magyar feelings.38
On the other hand, intriguingly, the new and almost pro-revisionist tone
of Chamberlain and Halifax came from a very different source. György
Barcza’s diaries reveal that he had already conferred with Halifax and
emphasized Hungary’s peaceful intentions, which the Foreign Secretary
deeply appreciated. In order to circumvent the hostility of the Foreign
Office, Barcza also sent a memorandum about Hungary’s claims directly
to Chamberlain, via Andrian Dingli.39 Dingli was the legal counsellor of
the Italian Embassy in London, and regularly served as a contact between
Barcza and Chamberlain. Historians have been aware of the Italian angle
of the Chamberlain-Dingli link, but the Hungarian link has been mostly
unresearched. Compared to the abrupt disapproval of the Foreign Office,
Chamberlain promised sincere and fair treatment, appreciating Hungary’s
peaceful attitude.40 Dingli’s account seems to prove that this was more
than a regular diplomatic assurance. Chamberlain encouraged further
37
38
TNA, CAB 23/95, Cabinet Conclusions, 40 (38), 21 September 1938.
Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years, London, 1954, pp. 285–87. Seton-Watson’s
publications on Central European and Balkan minority affairs are vast. He wrote his
most influential works in the early twentieth century. Scholars have argued that the antiHungarian tone of his writings substantially coloured the viewpoint of the British public,
and most crucially the Foreign Office in the era of the Great War. See Mark Cornwall,
‘Great Britain and the Splintering of Greater Hungary, 1914–1918’, in Péter and Rady,
British-Hungarian Relations since 1848, pp. 103–22; Géza Jeszenszky, Az elveszett presztizs:
Magyarország megítélésének megváltozása Nagy Britanniában (1894–1918), Budapest, 1994,
pp. 12–14.
39
HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 19 September 1938, Box 0008. See William C. Mills, ‘Sir Joseph
Ball, Andrian Dingli, and Neville Chamberlain’s “Secret Channel” to Italy, 1937–1940’, The
International History Review, 24, 2002, 2, pp. 278–317.
40
Chamberlain also sent a similarly worded official letter to Barcza, in which he
promised to keep Hungary’s case carefully in mind: MOL, K 74, 1938, London, 6097/83. For
the Foreign Office’s attitude, see HIA, Barcza, Diaries, Box 0008, 17 September 1938; MOL,
K 74, 1938, London, 5909/64.
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669
secret contacts, because he felt that Sargent and Cadogan were withholding
diplomatic information from him.41 This example demonstrates the
apparent differences between the approaches of the Foreign Office and
the highest circles of the Cabinet, where there was apparent willingness to
impartially address the Magyar question.
After Berchtesgaden, indications of a transformation in British opinion
towards Hungary’s frontiers were evident, but Chamberlain and the
Foreign Office seemed to pull policy in different directions. Before a clear
policy could have materialized, Hitler pushed the crisis to a new level. At
Bad Godesberg he shocked Chamberlain by demanding the immediate
transfer of the Sudetenland and the settlement of Hungarian and Polish
territorial claims.42 Earlier, the Cabinet had decided that further demands
would not be tolerated, so Chamberlain returned to London. Chamberlain
and Halifax then diverged on future policy towards Germany and the
way to handle Hungarian territorial claims. Halifax recommended an
immediate decision, arguing that otherwise the problem would lead to
a new crisis, but Chamberlain, seemingly still aiming to cooperate with
Hitler in order to remove potential frictions with Germany, was keen to
postpone dealing with the Hungarian problem. Growing international
tensions postponed any immediate decision.43
Between Bad Godesberg and Munich, when war seemed inevitable,
London did its utmost to argue Hungary out of igniting a regional war by
marching into Slovakia.44 Although Halifax recommended an immediate
decision in the Cabinet, during a meeting with Barcza he sharply warned
against Hungary attempting any direct military action. According to
an earlier Cabinet decision, which recommended the mediation of the
41
42
HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 19 September 1938, Box 0008.
David Faber, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis, London, 2008, pp. 334–37;
Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis, p. 203; Robert Self, Neville
Chamberlain: A Biography, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 316–20.
43
TNA, CAB 23/95, Cabinet Conclusions 42 (38), 24 September 1938. The escalation of
the international situation after Bad Godesberg reduced the importance of the Hungarian
question in London. Prague rejected the new German demands and mobilized for war.
It has to be noted here that even though Hitler once again offered the re-annexation of
Slovakia to Hungary, Imrédy and Kánya rejected Germany’s demand to present Britain
with a fait accompli by attacking Czechoslovakia while Chamberlain was negotiating
with Hitler in Bad Godesberg: Mária Ormos, Magyarország a két világháború korában,
Budapest, 2000, pp. 195–96.
44
Both Hungary and the Magyars in Slovakia raised their voice on the international
level only in mid August, when the escalation of the Sudeten crisis promised revisionist
ambitions with success. To keep a free hand, however, territorial claims in Slovakia were
not defined and only the right of national self-determination and equal consideration for
all of Czechoslovakia’s minorities was demanded.
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ANDRAS BECKER
League as a means for solving Magyar minority complaints, Halifax
recommended appealing to Geneva for frontier adjustment. The bare
mention of the League of Nations, whose ability to protect minority rights
was deeply suspect in Hungary, caused an intense chill of disappointment
in Barcza who demanded equal consideration for the Magyars with the
Sudeten Germans, evidently counting on the cession of the latter to
Germany.45 The Halifax-Barcza meeting fully clarified the yawning gap
between British and Hungarian policies. Regardless of having supported
frontier revision earlier out of strategic consideration to limit frictions with
Germany, Halifax officially rejected Hungary’s demands, something that
Budapest found morally unacceptable.
The fact that Halifax had advised frontier revision nevertheless seemed to
alter the rigid standpoint of the Foreign Office. Sargent, who had previously
condemned Hungary’s pro-German policy, and had disapproved of any
territorial alterations in favour of Hungary, now expressed a very similar
opinion to that of Halifax. He declared that London should eventually
accept that the Magyars receive similar treatment to the Sudeten Germans:
territories would have to be ceded to Hungary.46 Whether Sargent was
yielding to a higher authority, or simply reacting to the strategic necessity
of appeasing Hungary by offering frontier revision, is unclear. This notion
nevertheless appeared in two crucial memoranda, compiled by Sargent and
Philip Nichols in the Southern Department, which were used for reference
on the Magyar question at the Munich Conference.
These documents recommended applying pressure on Prague to accept
an ethnographically more justifiable frontier with Hungary, and thus the
transfer of some of the districts inhabited by Magyars in Southern Slovakia.
Now, after both Berlin and London rejected supporting plebiscites in
Czechoslovakia, since they were anxious about setting precedents, British
45
It is interesting to note that Barcza reported to Budapest his impression that Halifax
contemplated the comprehensive reconstruction of Central Europe, under the aegis of
the League, with British leadership. This notion however did not appear either in his
diaries or in Halifax’s account of the meeting, which suggests that Barcza intentionally
projected a friendlier British attitude towards Hungary than it actually was, probably in
order to encourage Budapest to be more amiable towards London: Magda Ádám, Gyula
Juhász, Lajos Kerekes and László Zsigmond (eds), Diplomáciai iratok Magyarország
külpolitikájához 1936–1945, 5 vols, Budapest, 1965–82 (hereafter, DIMK 1–5), DIMK 2, 391,
Barcza to Kánya, 24 September 1938; 427a, Barcza to Halifax, 29 September 1938; compare
with HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 21, 25 September 1938; TNA, FO 371/21568, C 10591/2319/12,
Halifax’s note on the conversation with the Hungarian minister, 21 September 1938.
46
TNA, FO 371/21568, C 10782/2319/12, minute by Sargent, 23 September 1938. Sargent
here used the word ‘similar’, and not ‘the same’, which indicates that he still had
reservations about satisfying Hungarian demands.
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671
policy shifted towards the concept of arbitrarily enforcing ethographic
frontier adjustments. Thus, instead of directly applying the concept of
national self-determination (via plebiscite), they now preferred its arbitrary
application for the Sudetenland. Since London aimed for an agreement
with Germany to reduce the risk of war, this tied the course of British
official attitudes to that of Germany in any repercussions raised by the
Sudeten problem. Hence, in the Magyar case, British policy shifted from
discouraging frontier revision to quietly acceding to some adjustment
applying the ethnographic criteria.
However, in British thought this concept was intermingled with notions
about the traditional alliance of Germany and Hungary, and Hungary’s
intolerance of non-Magyars. Hence, the first Sargent-Nichols memorandum
favoured the limited application of ethnicity, and only recommended the
transfer of the Csallóköz (area south east of Pozsony [Bratislava]) and
Beregszász ([Berehove], a town in Ruthenia, right on the Czechoslovak
side of the frontier), which both had a higher than 80 per cent Magyar
population.47 In addition, the memorandum used C. A. Macartney’s study
of Trianon as a reference book.48 Interestingly, it mentioned that the opinion
of former British representatives in Budapest, such as Thomas Hohler,
Henry James Bruce and William Goode, was also sought, and they had all
spoken in favour of Hungary.49 They were all well-known pro-Hungarians
in Whitehall, and their influence on decision-making is surprising, since
the Foreign Office was notorious in rejecting any outside influence. It also
refutes suggestions that Czech, pro-Czech or anti-revisionist viewpoints
were favoured in the corridors of power. A second memorandum, however,
which also seems to have been written by Sargent and Nichols, advised
the transfer of a significantly larger territory to Hungary. This would
have returned 425,000 Magyars (out of approximately one million in
47
TNA, FO 371/22380, R 8359/97/21, P. B. Nichols and O. Sargent, ‘Hungarian Minority
in Czechoslovakia’, 28 September 1938.
48
Carlile A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors: The Treaty of Trianon and Its
Consequences, 1919–1937, London, 1937. Attached to the memorandum was a short study
which described the historical background of the problem. Although it is unsigned, its
views very closely resemble Macartney’s. See ibid., pp. 246–50.
49
Thomas Hohler was British minister in Hungary from 1921 to 1924; Henry James
Bruce was an adviser to the Hungarian National Bank in the 1930s; and Sir William Goode
was an adviser of the Hungarian government in the 1920s, and the unofficial financial
adviser of the Hungarian Legation in London from 1936. Earlier, Barcza and Budapest
failed to persuade London of the necessity of revision. However, because in the past
Hohler, Bruce and Goode had conveyed messages to the highest British circles on behalf
of Hungary, it seems highly probable that their advice now reflected Hungarian opinion
or influence.
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ANDRAS BECKER
Slovakia), who comprised 73 per cent of the population of the area under
consideration. From the documents and correspondence it is difficult
to decide which scenario the British actually preferred, but the second
proposal was only attached to the original memorandum at a later date,
which suggests the fluidity of British opinion.50
The significance of these documents lies in their ability to reveal British
views on Hungarian territorial claims in a period when official opinion
was silent for strategic reasons, to avoid arguments with Germany. They
also prove that Whitehall did not dismiss frontier revision out of hand,
but was certainly aiming to limit its extent. To promote stability, and to
harmonize with the criteria applied to the Sudetenland, a frontier closely
following the ethnographic dividing-line was then recommended. These
pieces of evidence also help us to understand Britain’s view of the First
Vienna Award, which settled the Hungarian-Czechoslovak territorial
dispute a month later, and of which only ambiguous analysis has emerged
so far. Decisions on Hungary were formulated on these principles, and the
British delegation went to Munich with this mind-set.
However, it turned out to be ‘much ado about nothing’ because
at Munich the British remained completely silent over the Magyar
question. The Munich Agreement, applying the ethnographic principle,
transferred districts with a 50 per cent or higher German majority to the
Reich. The Magyar question was raised by Mussolini, but Hitler refused
to include it in the immediate settlement and, responding to German
disapproval, Chamberlain also expressed his disinterest.51 Mussolini
prepared a minority draft, which proposed equal treatment for the
minorities of Czechoslovakia, but it was rejected by all parties. Hitler only
agreed to sign an appendix, which asked the Hungarian and Czechoslovak
governments to seek a solution by direct negotiations, and stated that if
an agreement could not be reached in three months, the case should be
the subject of a new four-power conference. Once again, Chamberlain
followed the German lead and agreed, thus committing Britain further to
the settlement. Under pressure from Berlin, London accepted the ‘50 per
cent rule’ in the Sudetenland, which it was able to refuse for the Magyars
of Czechoslovakia because of Hitler’s lack of interest.
50
It should be noted here that the Czechoslovak refusal to consider ceding territory to
Hungary had no influence on formulating British policy: TNA, FO 371/21568, C 11042/2319/12,
Newton (Prague) to Halifax, 28 September 1938.
51
Before travelling to Munich, István Csáky, the Hungarian deputy Foreign Minister,
met Mussolini. Csáky presented the Hungarian demands which Mussolini promised to
support.
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Between early August and the Munich Conference, British viewpoints
about Hungarian revisionism had undergone profound transformations.
Assuming that the Magyars were content in Slovakia, and to limit causes of
friction with Germany, the Runciman mission dealt only with the SudetenGerman minority and refused dealing with the Magyar question. After Hitler
signalled his interest in the settlement of the Magyar minority problem,
Whitehall’s viewpoints were primarily underpinned by the strong strategic
consideration of avoiding war with Germany, which determined that Britain
would follow any German initiative regarding the Magyar question.
The British reaction to the First Vienna Award
In accordance with the Munich Agreement, Hungarian-Slovak negotiations
commenced in early October. Difficulties emerged from the outset;
Hungarian and Slovak concepts of an agreement were far apart. While
the Slovaks offered the Csallóköz and territorial autonomy for the rest of
the Magyars, Hungary, in the spirit of Munich, demanded the cession of
territories with a 50 per cent or higher Magyar population, and a plebiscite
for Slovakia and Ruthenia.52
After war was finally averted at Munich, Whitehall had no taste for
seeing the Hungarian-Slovak dispute grow into another unmanageable
crisis. According to the ’Munich idea’, which now became the order of
the day in British foreign policy-making, Britain officially supported the
parties in reaching a mutually acceptable and ethnographically just and
balanced solution, and declared its commitment to a new four-power
arbitration if negotiations proved to be unsuccessful. This policy, however,
remained largely undefined publicly, which in fact left plenty of room
for diplomatic manoeuvres.53 There is evidence that the Foreign Office
directly intervened to influence the press towards this principle. Press
editors were instructed to write about the Hungarian-Slovak territorial
dispute only from the minority and ethnographic perspective, and were
told to disregard economic, historical or other bases for frontier revision.54
52
53
Sallai, Az első bécsi döntés, pp. 82–84, 278–79.
It is difficult to determine what London considered as ‘ethnographically just’ at this
stage. Judging from the 80 per cent rule, and the 51 per cent basis of the Munich agreement,
London presumably contemplated a solution anywhere between the two figures. More
crucially however, London desired a mutual agreement without the threat of force. DIMK
2, 452: Barcza to Kánya, 3 October 1938; 478: Barcza to Kánya, 7 October 1938; TNA, FO
371/21568, C11293/2319/12, minute by Strang, 3 October 1938; C12507/2319/12, minute by
Strang, 4 October 1938; C13057/2319/12, minutes by Strang, 6 October 1938.
54
MOL, K 63 1938-2/1, 159., Cadogan to Barcza, 5 October 1938; HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 6
October 1938, Box 0008.
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ANDRAS BECKER
However, regardless of the official support, Whitehall tried its utmost
to avoid being drawn into the dispute and applied constant pressure on
Prague to yield to Hungary’s moderate ethnographic demands.55
meanwhile, Hohler, goode and macartney, who were unaware of the
influence of their recommendations, began petitioning the Foreign Office
after munich against leaving the magyar problem out of a settlement. They
argued that Hungary could be easily won over by supporting its reasonable
claims, because the majority of Hungarians were fond of Britain, but hated
germany.56 As previously, their views made a notable impact and evidently
strengthened the notion that the territorial reconstruction of the region
was essential for future stability.57
In mid October, simultaneously with the Hungarian-Slovak negotiations,
the Foreign Office continued debating the future of the region. Key policymakers almost unanimously agreed that the region would fall under the
german yoke. Halifax, Sargent, Cadogan, Laurence Collier, the head of
the Northern Department and Aston-gwatkin, the head of the economic
section of the Western Department, now all predicted that due to British
military weakness a complete german domination of Central Europe
was inevitable and pointed to the importance of accelerating British
rearmament in order to be in a better position to protect more vital
interests in the mediterranean.58 Frank Roberts, a senior official of the
Central Department, was the only one to disagree; he called for an active
policy in the region and cautioned that Britain should not make deals at
the expense of Central European states.59
These viewpoints have to be taken into account when analysing two
lengthy memoranda produced after Munich about the Magyar question.
These documents demonstrably embraced the ethnographic principle
55
TNA, CAB 23/95, Cabinet Conclusions 47 (38), 30 September 1938; DIMK 2, 451a:
Halifax to Barcza, 2 October 1938; 451b: Barcza to Halifax, 3 October 1938; 452: Barcza to
Kánya, 3 October 1938; 503: Barcza to Kánya, 11 October 1938; 699: Barcza to Kánya, 17
October 1938.
56
TNA, FO 371/21570C11976/2319/12, Hohler to Cadogan, 9 October 1938; FO 371/21570,
C12104/2319/12, Goode to Cadogan, 10 October 1938; FO 371/21572 C13087/2319/12, Goode to
Gladwyn Jebb, 27 October 1938; FO 371/21571, C12627/2319/12, Macartney, ‘The Hungarian
Question’, 10 October 1938.
57
TNA, FO 371/21570, C12104/2319/12, Jebb to Goode, 25 October 1938; FO 371/21571,
C12627/2319/12, minute by Ingram, 13 October 1938, minute by Sargent, 15 October 1938.
58
TNA, FO 371/21659, C 14471/42/18, Halifax, ‘British Strategy’, 25 November 1938;
Llewellyn E. Woodward (ed.), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, ser. 3, vol.
3, London, 1950 (hereafter, DBFP), 285: Halifax to Kennedy (American ambassador in
London), 12 October 1938.
59
Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis, pp. 21–23, 76–77.
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advocated by munich, but the fatalistic approach they exhibited towards
german domination suggests that adopting this principle was primarily
rooted in realpolitik. Both documents showed considerable confusion
over future policy towards Slovakia and Ruthenia. ‘Future of Slovakia’,
written by W. I. mallet, a senior official of the Central Department and
Halifax’s private secretary, acknowledged that a wide southern strip
should eventually be ceded to Hungary because it was mainly inhabited
by magyars. However, quite strikingly, it openly renounced one of the
strategic cornerstones of the Little Entente by abandoning Czechoslovak
control of Ruthenia’s magyar districts; previously that zone had served as a
corridor between Czechoslovakia and Romania (and most importantly the
Romanian Army was supplied from Czechoslovakia’s Skoda arms business
through this link).60 The objective of harmonizing with the Munich idea
(supporting ethnographic frontiers) now overrode interwar strategic
interests in an intriguingly abrupt manner. The other memorandum on
Ruthenia seemed similarly confused. On the basis that the province had its
historic and economic ties with Hungary, it recommended its cession. Yet,
contradicting this recommendation, it suggested that due to Hungary’s bad
record of minority treatment only territories inhabited by compact blocks
of Magyars should be transferred.61 Both documents received limited
attention in the Foreign Office, indicating that a final decision had not
been made.
Analysing British opinion towards Ruthenia in mid October 1938
provides a touchstone for British Central European strategy. Hesitating
about the direction of policy, the Foreign Office endlessly debated
alternatives without making a decision. However, a decisive factor was
missing from this equation: Germany. Halifax, reflecting on the debates,
plainly noted to the Cabinet that a policy could not be formulated until
Germany had reached a decision on the future of Ruthenia, something
Britain would discreetly adopt. He added that in the meantime London
had officially taken the line that it was not concerned in the matter.62
60
TNA, FO 371/21570, C12133/2319/12, W. I. Mallet, ‘The Future of Slovakia’, 10 October
1938. Bucharest asked for British mediation to ensure that Hungary would guarantee the
uninterrupted movement of transport on this railway line in the event that it be ceded.
Cadogan and A. N. Noble in the Central Department noted that Britain had no interest in
raising this question at any forum: TNA, FO 371/21570, C13578/2319/12, minutes by Noble
and Cadogan, 16 October 1938.
61
TNA, FO 371/21571, C12378/2319/12, Stevens, ‘Ruthenia’, 10 October 1938. According to
the 1910 and the 1930 censuses, the Magyar population of Ruthenia was between 17 and 21
per cent.
62
TNA, CAB 23/96, Cabinet Conclusions 50 (38), 26 October 1938. The Times went
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ANDRAS BECKER
Negotiations between Budapest and Bratislava had meanwhile broken
down on 13 October mainly due to a basic disagreement in interpreting
the censuses of the disputed territories.63 Viewpoints had arguably begun
to converge, but control over the larger cities, such as Pozsony (Bratislava),
Nyitra (Nitra), Kassa (Košice), Ungvár (Uzhhorod) and Munkács
(Mukachevo) divided the parties.64 Throughout the negotiations, the
Hungarians relinquished few of their original demands, as they clung to the
‘50 per cent rule’ in order to harmonize with the Munich Agreement.65 The
ink was barely dry on the latter when peace was once again threatened by
the outbreak of a Hungarian-Czechoslovak war. Thus, when negotiations
broke down, Halifax applied strong pressure on the Slovaks to assent to
Hungary’s ethnographic demands.66
Germany’s intervention for a continuation of negotiations, and
the German rejection of Mussolini’s proposal for a new Munich-style
conference had a crucial impact on British policy. It signalled that
Hitler wished to solve the dispute himself, something the British readily
accepted. Consequently, to avoid disagreements with Berlin, London gave
up supporting four-power arbitration.67 Subsequently, the British hastened
the conclusion of an agreement, and strong pressure was applied on Prague
to satisfy moderate Hungarian demands. 68
directly against British official policy and supported the Hungarian acquisition of Ruthenia:
‘Poland and Hungary’, The Times, 7 October 1938, p. 5. Frank Roberts remembered that this
caused much annoyance at the Foreign Office: Frank Roberts, Dealing with Dictators: The
Destruction & Revival of Europe, 1930–1970, London, 1991, p. 29.
63
The Hungarians contested the 1930 Czechoslovak census, which was favourable for
Slovak claims, but the Slovaks contested the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census, which was
more acceptable to the Hungarians.
64
For the numerous Hungarian demands and Slovak counter-offers during the
negotiations, see Sallai, Az első bécsi döntés, pp. 278–79.
65
Macartney argued that after Munich the Hungarians gave up claiming the entire
territory of Slovakia, and demanded only an ethnographic frontier out of respect for British
opinion: C. A. Macartney, October Fifteen: The History of Modern Hungary 1929–1945, 2
vols, Edinburgh, 1957, 1, p. 250. Hungarian primary sources and recent historical analysis
have proved that although Budapest was responsive to British opinion, most crucially the
Hungarians wanted to follow the Munich idea dictated by Berlin. Also, Budapest shelved
its more radical claims, convinced that in the long-run Slovakia would join Hungary by
its own volition due to economic reasons: MOL K 27, Minisztertanácsi Jegyzőkönyvek, 13
October 1938; see also: Janek, ‘Magyar törekvések a Felvidék megszerzésére’, pp. 37–66.
66
DIMK 2, 503: Barcza to Kánya, 11 October 1938; MOL, K 63, 11. cs., 1938-2/1, I., 159/pol.
1938, Barcza to Csáky, 14 December 1938.
67
Noble’s minute is telling: ‘Until we know the German point of view, we can’t appeal
to a four power conference.’ TNA, FO 371/21571, C 12666/2319/12, minute by Noble, 22
October 1938.
68
DIMK 2, 548: Barcza to Kánya, 17 October 1938; DBFP ser. 3. vol. 3. 227: Cadogan to
Krofta, 17 October 1938.
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At the end of October, the negotiation reached its second and now final
deadlock. Horthy and Kánya both insisted on four-power arbitration as
they believed that it would provide permanence, but eventually, under
strong german pressure, Prague and Budapest jointly applied for Axis
mediation instead of a four-power conference.69 The British were fully
satisfied with this turn of events, and quietly following the German views
openly welcomed German-Italian arbitration.70 When Hitler rejected the
four-power basis, British policy shifted, but only in order to harmonize
itself to German interests. As a result, the 80 per cent proposition,
advocated before Munich, was set aside and London seemed to accept
the adjustment of the Hungarian-Slovak frontier on the basis of a bare
majority.71
Germany and Italy, seeking a non-violent end to the HungarianCzechoslovak territorial dispute, decided the question on 2 November 1938,
which became known as the First Vienna Award.72 It claimed to apply
ethnographic criteria when ceding a wide strip of territory from southern
Slovakia and Ruthenia to Hungary with 1 million inhabitants. According
to the 1910 Hungarian census, 80 per cent of the population was Magyar,
while the 1930 Czechoslovak census claimed a 55 per cent Magyar majority.
69
MOL K 27, Minisztertanácsi Jegyzőkönyvek, 13 October 1938. Horthy appealed for
British support in a personal letter to Chamberlain: Miklós Szinai and László Szűcs (eds),
Horthy Miklós titkos iratai, Budapest 1962, pp. 179–80. In his reply, Chamberlain supported
the ethnographic frontiers and a decision in accordance with the Munich powers, but
said nothing about British arbitration: DIMK 2, 603: Chamberlain’s letter to Horthy,
28 October 1938. George Ogilvie-Forbes, the counsellor of the British embassy in Berlin
reported that Ribbentrop suggested that the Hungarians should be strongly pressured
to relinquish their idea of a Munich-style arbitration: TNA, FO 371/21573, C13751/2319/12,
Ogilvie-Forbes to Halifax, 27 October 1938.
70
TNA, FO 371/21572, C12924/2319/12, Halifax to Perth (Rome), 25 October 1938; A
Palazzo Chigi és Magyarország. Olasz Diplomáciai Dokumentumok Magyarországról. A
Darányi-kormány megalakulásától a Szovjetunió elleni hadüzenetig (1936–1941), ed. Gy.
Réti, Budapest, 2007, 190: Attolicio (Berlin) to Ciano, 26 October 1938.
71
TNA, FO 371/21571, C12848/2319/12, minute by Mallet, 25 October 1938; minute by
Lancelot Oliphant, 26 October 1938.
72
The First Vienna Award has recently triggered intense disagreement between
Hungarian and Slovak historians. Hungarian historians are eager to point out that
the award was a balanced decision, made on the basis of ethnicity. Slovak scholars, on
the other hand, view the decision as the starting point of a seven-year long Hungarian
occupation. On both sides, the literature of the subject is vast, but the following offers
a good starting point: L. Deák, Viedenská arbitráž – ‘Mníchov pre Slovensko’, Bratislava,
1998; Sallai, Az első bécsi döntés. The author personally experienced this disheartening
nationalistic attitude at an international conference in Šurany in 2011. See Jan Mitáč (ed.),
Juh Slovenska po Viedeňskej arbitráži 1938–1945, Bratislava, 2011.
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ANDRAS BECKER
London gave a positive official reaction to the award. Chamberlain in
the House of Commons and Halifax in the Lords welcomed the award,
but de jure recognition was not given.73 Chamberlain openly declared that
Britain interpreted the Hungarian-Slovak appeal for Axis mediation as a
successful outcome of their negotiations which, according to the Munich
Agreement, relieved Britain from taking part in a new four-power decision.
Cabinet documents also prove that Chamberlain and Halifax readily
accepted the new frontiers, as they believed they were in harmony with
the Munich Agreement. But the absence of active British policy marked
a growing reluctance to make unnecessary territorial commitments in
Central Europe.
At the Foreign Office, William Strang and A. N. Noble also praised the
agreement on the same grounds, although Noble voiced his doubt since the
decision did not satisfy either side.74 Once again, it was Mallett, Halifax’s
private secretary, who explained the motives of British perceptions and
official policy. He minuted that the new frontier was acceptable for
Britain, as it now ran closer to the ethnographic dividing line between
the quarrelling Magyars and Slovaks, so it would provide more stability.
He stressed that Whitehall heartily agreed that not many non-Magyars
were transferred to Hungary, a notion which now formed the basis of
British policy towards the Vienna Award. The same minute also offers a
rare and intriguing glimpse into an opportunistic dimension of British
policy-making. Mallett noted that immediately after Munich, the idea
of following a radically different strategy had circulated the corridors of
power. When it finally became clear that in one way or another Germany
would dominate Czechoslovakia, policy-makers recognized that checking
German eastward expansion would be possible either by supporting Slovak
independence, or by dividing Slovakia between Hungary and Poland. The
wording of Mallet’s note is vague, but it sheds a fresh light on the variables
of British strategy. It proves that out of crude strategic interests a complete
reversal of British policy was considered possible regarding Hungary,
which would have involved supporting its extensive territorial ambitions
in Slovakia. This alternative eventually fell victim to British military
weakness: French and Romanian military commitment was essential to its
realization, which they rejected. British policy hence took a very different
73
Hansard (Commons), vol. 353, p. 122, 4 November 1938; Hansard (Lords), vol. 110,
p. 1622, 4 November 1938.
74
TNA, CAB 23/96, Cabinet Conclusions 53 (38), 7 November 1938; FO 371/21572,
C13476/2319/12, minute by Noble, 3 November 1938, minute by Strang, 4 November 1938.
TNA, FO 371/21572, C13331/2319/12, minute by Noble 3 November 1938.
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direction and discouraged the creation of a common Hungarian-Polish
frontier by the division of Slovakia and the Hungarian occupation of
Ruthenia. Instead, the British hoped that their official disinterest would
embolden German ambitions and direct aggression away from Western
Europe.75
Consequently, Britain returned to the principle of ethnicity and told the
Hungarians that their claims in Ruthenia could not be supported, as they
were ethnographically unjustifiable (the remainder of Ruthenia had only a
7–10 per cent Magyar minority).76 Mallet’s note however proves that British
eyes were not closed to frontier revision on bases other than ethnographic
ones, and the official British declaration of ‘no support’ was only the result
of strategic considerations. Consequently, Britain was indifferent towards
Hungary’s persistent attempts to acquire Ruthenia.77
New directions before the destruction of Czechoslovakia in March 1939
After Munich, as is visible from Mallet’s note, the mind-set of British
officials had been governed to some extent by the idea of more actively
confronting Germany. There is an imposing mass of evidence to prove that
from late 1938 this notion gradually advanced into strategic planning, and
its implementation was only hampered by British military weakness. Some
of this thinking even found its way into the otherwise distilled official
documents about Central Europe, all suggesting that a regional German
economic and political empire was becoming more and more unacceptable
to Britain. Analysis of these sources has often been missed in the
historiography, concentrating instead on the radical shift in British policy
after Hitler’s coup de force in Prague on the Ides of March. Study of this
under-researched period therefore offers fresh insight into the political,
75
TNA, FO 371/21573, C13549/2319/12, minutes by Mallet, 10 November 1938; December
1938. Since the Sudeten crisis, Hungary and Poland had aspired to create a common
frontier in Ruthenia. They viewed it strategically advantageous against Germany, but the
centuries-long friendship of the two nations was also considered important.
76
MOL, K 63, 11. cs., 1938-2/1, I., 4467/pol. 1938, Barcza to Csáky, 29 December 1938;
TNA, FO 371/22373, R 10213/97/21, minute by Ralph Murray, 3 January 1939; minute by
Nichols, 5 January 1939; minute by Rab Butler, 11 January 1939.
77
The Vienna Award only transferred to Hungary the southern part of Ruthenia, which
was inhabited by Magyars. Hungary, however, did not give up its aspirations for the entire
region, something which Poland fully supported. The British Cabinet expressed complete
disinterest and decided to accept any future German policy on Ruthenia. A Hungarian
occupation was planned for the end of November, but strong German objection quickly
upset the scheme: TNA, FO 371/21573, C14295/2319/12, Knox to Halifax, 20 November 1938;
TNA, CAB 23/96, Cabinet Conclusions 56 (38), 22 November 1938; Józef Kasparek, ‘Poland’s
1938 Covert Operations in Ruthenia’, East European Quarterly, 23, 1989, 3, pp. 365–73.
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ANDRAS BECKER
economic and strategic dilemmas of British policy towards Hungary. It
helps explain why London then embarked on the unprecedented path of
guaranteeing Poland and Romania in the spring of 1939.
A late-1938 memorandum about British policy towards Central and South
East Europe, initialled by Halifax, reflects this tentative transformation
and the apparent conflict between strategic aims and the possibilities of
their execution. While it recognized that recent political changes were
inevitable and even beneficial, it stressed that the political containment
of Germany — stopping it from acquiring raw materials — was highly
desirable.78 The memorandum noted only generalities about Hungary. It
declared the political will to support any moderate Hungarian government
by extending Anglo-Hungarian trade, but signalled continued British
coolness by underlining Hungary’s political and economic instability
in the proximity of Germany.79 Crucially moreover, an attached report,
written by Frederick Leith-Ross (chief economic advisor to the Cabinet),
exhibited the Board of Trade’s reluctance to extend Anglo-Hungarian
trade on political grounds.80
By early 1939 the gap between British political and economic strategy
towards East-Central Europe was clearly closing. The Committee of
Imperial Defence provided a £10 million commercial credit for Europe. On
its commercial-priority list Belgium was first, Yugoslavia tenth, Romania
eleventh and Bulgaria twelfth, but other Central European countries
78
It is very unclear what Halifax meant here. Most probably, he was arguing for
the benefits of a re-organization of the region on an ‘ethnographic basis’: as with the
Anschluss, the Munich agreement and the First Vienna Award.
79
TNA, CAB 24/280, Halifax, ‘Central and South Eastern Europe’, 10 November 1938.
80
TNA, CAB 24/280, Leith-Ross, ‘Interim Report of the Interdepartmental Committee
on Central and South Eastern Europe’, 26 October 1938. Until the outbreak of the war the
Foreign Office had no influence on foreign trade policy, which was under the control of
the Board of Trade. Paul Hehn and David Kaiser have also argued that regardless of the
emerging political will, there was a noticeable economic disinterest towards extending
trade with Central Europe at the end of 1938, mostly due to the lack of financial and
industrial means to counter German competition: Paul N. Hehn, A Low and Dishonest
Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II,
1930–1941, New York, 2006, pp. 135–39, 307–09; David Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the
Origins of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France and Eastern Europe, 1930–1939,
Princeton, NJ, 1980, p. 290. A crucial factor in the lack of British economic interest was
the 1932 British Empire Economic Conference (Ottawa Conference), which established a
zone of limited tariffs within the British Empire, but high tariffs with the rest of the world:
Robert A. MacKay, ‘Imperial Economics at Ottawa’, Pacific Affairs, 25, 1932, pp. 873–85.
Moreover, in November 1938 a British-American trade pact allowed the United States
to sell its wheat surplus, duty and tax free, in Britain. These factors diminished British
interest in buying large quantities of agricultural products from Central Europe.
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681
did not appear.81 Newly granted commercial credits were normally an
indicator of increasing British interest towards a country, but David Kaiser
has emphasized that such credits only served political purposes, to assure
these countries that Britain would not abandon them.82 The figures indeed
attest that the volume of British trade in this part of the world remained
largely unchanged. Although agricultural imports to Britain went through
a four-fold overall increase, Central Europe and the Balkans still accounted
for only 8 per cent of the total agricultural imports in 1939. The position
of Hungary looked even bleaker: although Hungarian exports to Britain
nearly doubled in a year, they still only accounted for a meagre 0.1 per cent
of overall British imports.83
A closer analysis of the debate in London over the purchasing of
Romanian wheat underlines both the motives and constraints of this new
economic policy. Chamberlain agreed to buy 200,000 tons of Romanian
wheat (out of the 1.7 million tons of total surplus), but was keen to limit this
purchase, anxious that a sudden spike in Anglo-Romanian trade might
provoke Germany.84 In early 1939, Hungary offered its total surplus of one
million tons but Britain did not purchase it.85 Although Hungary had no
significant importance in this new policy direction, the intensification of
strategic interest in the region would later have important implications for
the Anglo-Hungarian relationship.
The question then inevitably arises: what motivated these purchases
and credits? First, the continuous development of British armed strength
provided more elbowroom for realizing certain strategic and foreign
political aims, such as shaping a regional co-operation against Germany
and depriving her of easy access to raw materials.86 Second, rumours of
81
Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy, p. 293. An arms-export priority list was also compiled,
on which Yugoslavia was seventh, Poland thirteenth and Romania fourteenth, with Egypt
topping the list, but Hungary’s name did not appear on this record either. Ibid., pp. 82–86.
82
Ibid., pp. 290–93.
83
Ibid., p. 320.
84
TNA, CAB/24/279, C. P. 226 (38), ‘Purchase of Romanian wheat’, 14 October 1938.
85
Macartney, October Fifteenth, p. 353. The underlying reason for Hungary’s unfavourable
position in British trade was Germany’s dominant position in Hungary’s economy:
György Ránki, Gazdaság és külpolitika, a nagyhatalmak harca a délkelet-európai gazdasági
hegemóniáért, 1919–1939, Budapest, 1981; György Ránki, A Harmadik Birodalom árnyékában,
Budapest, 1988.
86
The literature on this area is vast; the following provide a broad introduction: George
C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932–39, Edinburgh, 1979; Brian Bond,
British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, Oxford, 1980; Peter Neville, ‘Lord
Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate about Treasury Interference in the Conduct of
British Foreign Policy in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 36, 2001, 4, pp. 623–33;
James P. Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain 1936–1939, London, 2006.
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ANDRAS BECKER
an imminent German invasion of the Netherlands, coupled with an aerial
knockout blow against Britain, further increased Whitehall’s concerns,
strengthening the notion that Germany should be contained wherever
possible.87 The Cabinet had also taken seriously a Joint Planning Committee
(JPC) report of January 1939, which stressed that a British failure actively
to oppose any new German aggression on the continent would gravely
undermine Britain’s reputation in the world, with repercussions for any
later struggle against Germany and Japan.88
It was this change in strategy that caused a sudden increase in British
attention towards Central Europe and Hungary. Cadogan and ‘Rab’ Butler,
the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, confidentially
told Barcza in February 1939 that due to its increased strength, Britain
would now support Hungary’s occupation of Ruthenia and the creation
of a Hungarian-Polish common frontier, something London had earlier
discouraged.89 Furthermore, London now made genuine steps to improve
relations with Hungary. Chamberlain took seriously Barcza’s continuous
complaints that Knox, the current British minister, was a barrier to good
relations. Through the Dingli secret channel, he assured Barcza of Knox’s
imminent replacement. Shortly afterwards, Owen O’Malley was appointed
as the new British minister.90 The importance of this British diplomatic
move should be noted. The replacement of Knox with O’Malley, who as an
influential figure in the Southern Department was already well known for
supporting an active British policy towards Central Europe, was a definite
sign that London was interested in improving the Anglo-Hungarian
relationship.
87
88
Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis, pp. 86, 90, 93, 111.
TNA, CAB 53/44, Chiefs of Staff (COS) memorandums, 830 (JPC), 24 January 1939.
The question of the ‘loss of credibility’ in relation to appeasement has been studied by D.
G. Press from the broad geographical perspective of the British Empire. A similar analysis
has not been made by historians in a Central European and Balkan context, which could
clarify how important strategic consideration was in British regional policy. See Daryl G.
Press, ‘The Credibility of Power: Assessing Threats during the Appeasement Crises of the
1930s’, International Security, 29, 2004/2005, 3, pp. 136–69.
89
Macartney argued that the Foreign Office finally recognized Hungary’s historic and
economic claims for Ruthenia, but new evidence conclusively proves that there were only
strategic considerations behind this shift in British policy: Macartney, October Fifteenth,
p. 333; compare with: MOL, K 63, 15. cs., 1939-2/1, I., 5209/1939, Barcza to Csáky, 18 February
1939.
90
HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 20 January 1939, Box 0009; compare with: MOL, K 63 1938-2/1,
115., ‘The weakening position of Knox’, December 1938; HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 14 February
1939, Box 0009.
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683
Continuous British support for Imrédy, in order to prevent a far-right
takeover in Hungary, was also behind this change of strategy. The image
of the radicalizing and increasingly pro-German Imrédy looms over
the historiography of the Anglo-Hungarian relationship. Imrédy had
indeed implemented Hungary’s First Jewish Law, but it oversimplifies
British foreign policy-making to suggest that as a result Imrédy became a
persona non grata in London.91 The City’s sharp disapproval of Imrédy’s
anti-Jewish policy was an inconsequential element in the formulation of
policy, and was not shared by the Foreign Office. Until Imrédy resigned
in February 1939, regardless of his openly pro-German rhetoric, Britain
officially supported him because of concerns about regional stability. The
Foreign Office believed that the only possible alternative was a far-right
government, which would immediately ally itself with Germany and
further destabilize the precarious equilibrium of Munich.
On the other hand, in early 1939 British confidence in Hungary was
severely shaken by Hungary’s accession to the Anti-Comintern Pact,
viewed by London as a German alliance system. Historians have argued
that the lack of official British disapproval proved the insignificance of this
act but, as we have seen, to rely only on analysing the outcome of official
policy is unhelpful. 92 Cabinet documents attest that the Hungarian action
had a significant impact on British perceptions, but as previously, it was
not Hungary’s pro-German policy which became the target of criticism but
rather the geo-strategic implications.93 Since the Munich crisis, in order to
strengthen the chance of regional co-operation against Germany, London
was aiming to facilitate a rapprochement between Bulgaria and Romania.
For this reason, Britain applied considerable pressure on Bucharest to
return to Bulgaria the territory of Southern Dobruja, annexed by Romania
after the Great War. Hungary’s entry into the Anti-Comintern Pact, which
was viewed as a definite sign of a pro-German orientation, greatly hindered
any progress in this direction. Policy-makers were certain that a negotiated
91
Imrédy’s sudden volte-face has been enthusiastically debated in the historiography
without any consensus. Macartney claimed that Imredy turned from Anglophile to proGerman as a result of the City’s negative reaction to the First Jewish Law: Macartney,
October Fifteenth, pp. 327–28. Barcza reported the same about the City’s attitude: MOL,
K 63, 15. cs., 1939-2/1, II., Marosy to Csáky, 23 December 1938; HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 20
January 1939, Box 0009. See also Péter Sipos, Imrédy Béla és a Magyar Megújulás Pártja,
Budapest, 1970.
92
Both Macartney and Bán stressed that the act had no far-reaching impact on London:
Macartney, October Fifteenth, pp. 318–19; Bán, Hungarian–British Diplomacy 1938–41, p. 56.
93
TNA, WO 190/747, ‘Report on Hungary to the Cabinet, after Hungary joined the
Anti-Comintern Pact in January 1939’, n.d.
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ANDRAS BECKER
frontier change would immediately trigger reciprocal Hungarian claims to
Transylvania, something that would undermine Romania’s stability.94
By early 1939, Britain’s steadily increasing military power made the
theoretical exploration of certain strategic options possible, which all
aimed to limit further German expansion. Central Europe and Hungary
occupied an ambiguous and rather limited role in this new policy, but
increased British interest to trade with the region, as well as to encourage
Hungarian independence from Germany, attest to a fundamental change
in British perceptions.
Hungary’s occupation of Ruthenia and the British guarantees to Poland
and Romania
When the Wehrmacht marched into Prague in March 1939, Hungary
simultaneously occupied Ruthenia, a dream it had long cherished. While
London sharply condemned the German aggression, the Hungarian action
was received with passive acceptance. In effect, the Munich agreement was
now in ruins, along with its widely trumpeted principle of ethnographic
frontier revision. In the light of the dramatic turnaround in British policy
towards Central Europe after Czechoslovakia’s destruction, it is crucial to
determine London’s thinking. Did the distinction made between German
and Hungarian aggression reflect a growing understanding of Hungary’s
more radical territorial ambitions (which could mean that Britain aimed
to turn Hungary against Germany)? Or was the reserved British official
attitude simply due to Ruthenia’s insignificance compared to the events
occurring in the Czech lands? 95 Fresh evidence strongly suggests that
Ruthenia and Hungary played a significantly greater role in the new
direction of British strategy after the fall of Prague than has previously
been understood. Indeed, British reaction to the Hungarian occupation
of Ruthenia (and the growing attentiveness towards Hungary) cannot be
viewed in isolation from the British guarantees of Polish and Romanian
94
TNA, CAB 27/627, Halifax, ‘Central and South-Eastern Europe’, 30 January 1939; FO
417/39, R 712/126/7, Halifax to Rendel (Sofia), 16 February 1939.
95
The English-language historiography has paid very limited attention to the
implications of the Hungarian occupation of Ruthenia on British regional policy:
Macartney, October Fifteenth; Simon Newman, March 1939: The British Guarantee to
Poland. Study in the Continuity of British Foreign Policy, Oxford, 1976; Anita Prazmowska,
Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939, Cambridge, 2004. In contrast, the Hungarian
historiography has extensively discussed the problem of Ruthenia in the context of
relations with Germany, but made little attempt to place the problem in the context of
Anglo-German rivalry in the region: Ignác Romsics, Magyar sorsfordulók 1920–1989,
Budapest, 2012.
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BRITAIN & HuNgARIAN REvISIONISm, 1938–39
685
independence: all were coherent elements in a strategy to deter further
German expansion.
In the Commons, Chamberlain made a clear distinction between the
German and Hungarian moves: the occupation of Prague was briskly
condemned, but about Hungary he said nothing. Instead he declared
Ruthenia to be a matter of Hungarian and Ruthenian domestic policy.96
This signalled that momentarily Britain accepted the occupation de facto,
but the absence of de jure recognition indicated a variation between short
and long-term British objectives, raising questions about the viability of
this frontier change.97
In the face of the lightning-speed German military campaign, the
immediate Foreign Office and Cabinet reaction shows their concern
about a more extensive German expansion in the region. Regardless of
increased British power, London was still anxious to refrain from openly
confronting Germany in the region. Thus, when immediately before the
German occupation of Prague Slovakia declared independence, Cadogan
retracted any earlier suggestions about British support for Hungary and
firmly reminded Barcza that Hungary first had to consult Berlin over
Slovak and Ruthenian questions.98 Clearly, in March 1939 Ruthenia was
not the main issue in the Anglo-Hungarian relationship: Britain was
more concerned about the wider strategic implications of the Hungarian
question.99 Thus any analysis also has to abandon narrow geographical
limitations, which thus far have been the recurrent characteristic in
96
Hansard (Commons), vol. 345, p. 632, Chamberlain’s answer to Major Stautorn,
16 March 1939. The Foreign Office also instructed the press to refrain from criticizing
Hungary. Indeed, the occupation was hardly commented upon: Ágnes Beretzky, Scotus
Viator és Macartney Elemér: Magyarország-kép változó előjelekkel (1906–1945), Budapest,
2005, p. 105.
97
The earlier British decision that either a Slovak or Ruthenian declaration of
independence would nullify all British commitments to Czechoslovakia offered an exitstrategy from being dragged into war (both Slovakia and Ruthenia declared independence
in mid March): TNA, CAB 24/280, ‘British Guarantee to Czechoslovakia’, 12 November
1938.
98
At the Cabinet on 15 March, Hore-Belisha, Secretary of State for War, noted that the
Hungarian occupation was in Britain’s interest, but Chamberlain said he did not wish to
consider the matter any further: TNA, CAB 23/98, Cabinet Conclusions 11 (39), 15 March
1939; MOL, K 63 1939-33/a 414, Cadogan to Barcza 11 March 1939; Macartney, October
Fifteenth, p. 333.
99
After the occupation, Sargent remarked openly to Barcza that Hungary could not
sit on the fence for much longer in the struggle against Germany and would soon need
to decide. After the meeting, Sargent minuted that in the near future Germany would
undoubtedly encourage Hungary to attack Romania, and Berlin would intervene in the
conflict: MOL, K 64 1939-2/1, 10., 19 March 1939; HIA, Barcza, Diaries, 18 March 1939, Box
0009; TNA, FO 371/23061, C 3980/3356/18, minute by Sargent, 22 March 1939.
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686
ANDRAS BECKER
Hungarian historiography. A comparison of British viewpoints on the
repercussions of Hungary’s occupation of Ruthenia — the growing discord
between Budapest and Bucharest, the Hungarian-Slovak war in April 1939
— explains British constraints and priorities in the immediate aftermath
of the crisis.
Growing tensions between Hungary and Romania, reawakened by the
Hungarian expansion in Ruthenia along Romania’s frontiers, profoundly
disturbed British policy-makers. In fact, this crisis provided golden
opportunities for German intervention, and the mobilization of both
armies along their common border threatened to plunge Europe into
war.100 Although London applied pressure on both parties to demobilize,
due to Knox’s anti-Hungarian reports the Foreign Office held Budapest
responsible for the mobilization.101 Arguably, the aim of keeping Germany
away from Romanian oil was an important element of this strategy,
but nevertheless Britain was not ready to contest the status quo, even
if it hampered strategic goals. For example, as with the indifference
adopted earlier towards Romania’s uninterrupted communication with
Czechoslovakia during the Munich crisis, London now failed to support
Romanian ambitions to occupy the easternmost corner of Ruthenia,
which would have provided for better communications with Poland, an
important ally of Bucharest. The Foreign Office firmly advised Bucharest
not to aggravate tensions by forcing any territorial claims.102
In comparison, the Hungarian-Slovak war in March-April secured
no real attention from London. The Hungarian occupation of a narrow
eastern Slovakian strip in this conflict improved communication between
Hungary and Poland which, as Mallet, Butler and Cadogan had noted
earlier, could have been to Britain’s advantage. However, since Slovakia
was already under direct German military and political influence, and
also because, compared to Romania, Slovakia did not offer significant
100
TNA, FO 371/23061, C 3665/3365/18, Halifax to Perth (Rome), 24 March 1939. The
revision of Hungary’s northern frontier deeply alarmed Bucharest, and it was expected
that Budapest would soon officially step up with claims against Romania. British Military
Intelligence in turn reported large-scale Hungarian and Romanian mobilization and
predicted a Hungarian-Romanian war: TNA, WO 190/765, MI3 information, 19 March
1939.
101
TNA, FO 371/23108 Foreign Office (unsigned) to Budapest, Bucharest and Warsaw,
21 March 1939; FO 371/23108, Knox to Foreign Office, 22 March 1939; Hoare to Foreign
Office, 22 March 1939.
102
Béni L. Balogh, A magyar-román kapcsolatok 1939–1940-ben és a második bécsi
döntés, Csíkszereda, 2002, p. 57. See also, TNA, WO 106/5387, Kennard to Halifax, 19
March 1939; TNA, FO 371/23061, C 3665/3365/18, Halifax to Knox and Hoare, 23 March
1939.
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BRITAIN & HuNgARIAN REvISIONISm, 1938–39
687
economic and trading opportunities, confronting Germany on this
question was unthinkable. Thus, German pressure on Hungary to stop its
incursions against Slovakia was accepted by the Foreign Office without
hesitation.103
Only two weeks after the destruction of Czechoslovakia, in an evident
sense of urgency, British policy in Central Europe went through a radical
reversal: on 31 March and 13 April, London guaranteed Polish and Romanian
independence. Historians have intensely debated the reasons for this
unprecedented British commitment, but a satisfactory conclusion has never
been reached.104 Fresh archival evidence suggests that although Hungary
had been viewed with suspicion and Hungarian territorial aspirations were
discouraged, Whitehall also seriously considered guaranteeing Hungary
in the framework of encircling Germany. This reality calls for a revision
of historiographical clichés, which have steadfastly maintained the image
of Hungary as a cooperative German ally from March 1939. It is often the
most important feature that is overlooked about the British guarantees. The
fact that Britain guaranteed only the independence, but not the territorial
integrity of Poland and Romania, reveals important indications about
British strategy.105 Moreover, it also had far-reaching implications for the
Anglo-Hungarian relationship. Whitehall took every care to avoid publicly
clarifying the nature of the guarantees, leaving serious questions about
their application. Chamberlain’s private correspondence, however, leaves
no doubt about the British official mind-set. In his political diaries he noted
103
In an attempt to occupy eastern Slovakia, the Hungarian army, upon completing the
occupation of Ruthenia, turned westwards and invaded that region: TNA, FO 371/23108,
Foreign Office to Knox, 4 April 1939.
104
Dov Lungu has emphasized the effect of Tilea’s (Romanian Minister in London)
communication that Bucharest had received a German ultimatum: Dov B. Lungu, Romania
and the Great Powers, 1933–1940, Durham, NC, 1989, pp. 163–73. Cienciala stressed that
the anti-German British public mood was a significant factor in the decisions: Anna M.
Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers 1938–1939: A Study in the Interdependence of
Eastern and Western Europe, London, 1968, p. 225. Newman and Gillard considered the
question from a broader perspective, explaining that the guarantees were given for the
global strategic reason of stopping Germany and projecting strength: Newman, March 1939;
Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis, pp. 126–29. Others have suggested that the underlying reason
was to silence Dominion and American criticism of British passivity: Bruce G. Strang, ‘Once
More unto the Breach: Britain’s Guarantee to Poland, March 1939’, Journal of Contemporary
History, 31, 1996, 4, pp. 721–51. See also, Prazmowska, Britain, Poland, pp. 38–56.
105
TNA, CAB 23/97, Cabinet Conclusions 6 (39), 8 February 1939. A. J. P. Taylor and
Cienciala have argued that the guarantees did not constitute a shift in British policy but
were the continuation of appeasement, since by guaranteeing only the independence
of Poland and Romania, they allowed room for further bargaining: A. J. P. Taylor, The
Origins of the Second World War, London, 1961, pp. 240–41; Cienciala, Poland, pp. 200–10.
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688
ANDRAS BECKER
frankly that beyond the independence of Central European countries,
Britain was not concerned with borders.106 For one, this comment amply
demonstrates the radical shift in Chamberlain’s perception, which now
was a huge distance from the notion of the ethnographic reconstruction of
the region in ‘the Munich spirit’. Second, it is also immediately apparent
that this course was designed to allow maximum flexibility. The policy
fell short of defining ‘independence’, raising questions about Britain’s real
motives.107
There is strong evidence that after the Polish guarantee, due to the
strategic shift in British policy and the firm Polish declaration that PolishHungarian friendship was pivotal for Polish foreign policy, London was
thinking of revising its Hungarian strategy.108 This daring new development
was encouraged by completely unexpected and seemingly desperate
appeals from the highest Hungarian quarters for British assistance. In
a private message through Conservative MP Thomas Moore, Regent
Horthy asked for a similar British guarantee for Hungarian independence
and expressed his readiness for immediate discussions.109 The surviving
archival material is thin. But this mostly unknown Hungarian initiative
corrects our understanding of Hungarian foreign policy in 1939, which
has mostly been researched only concerning Germany, and points to
the importance for Hungary of London as a counterweight to Berlin. Yet
this message enjoyed a frosty reception in the Foreign Office, potentially
because Thomas Moore’s earlier reputation as the advocate of Hitler and
Nazism caused scepticism.
Eventually it was the Cabinet which took a more positive stance in order
to secure regional cooperation against Germany. In early April the idea
of bringing Hungary into the guarantee-system was actually discussed
at Cabinet level. Although Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer John
Simon and Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha were initially
concerned about the practicality of such a scheme, they later decided that
if Hungary was attacked first by Germany and Poland entered the war on
106
University of Birmingham, Papers of Neville Chamberlain, NC, 18/1/1092, 2 April
1939.
107
At the time, the Chiefs of Staff sharply criticized decision-makers for overlooking
their warnings about the military implications of the guarantees: Bond, British Military
Policy, pp. 305–07. Historians have also argued that the purpose of the guarantees was to
diplomatically deter Germany from further aggression: Cienciala, Poland, p. 224.
108
Beck refused the British demand to guarantee Romania due to this reason: DIMK 4,
103b: Csáky on Hungarian foreign policy, 18 April 1939.
109
TNA, FO 371/23062, C 4927/3356/18, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Thomas Moore to
Halifax, 3 April 1939.
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689
Hungary’s side, then Britain should immediately come to their aid. The
view that under specific circumstances Britain considered the possibilities
of attracting Hungary to regional cooperation in the spring of 1939 is a
completely new notion in the history of British foreign policy towards
Central Europe.110 Until now the historical consensus has been that
because Hungary was already written off as a German satellite Whitehall
never considered including it in the British guarantees.
While these discussions were taking place, news of the impending
German invasion of Romania dominated the headlines.111 Questions about
guaranteeing Romania’s ‘independence’ or ‘territorial integrity’ came
under heavy scrutiny in early April. New archival sources indicate that
Hungary also occupied a central role in the formulation of the Romanian
guarantee: considerations about the currently cordial Anglo-Hungarian
relationship and the aim of attracting Hungary to a defensive regional
block prompted London to refuse guaranteeing Romania’s territorial
integrity.
Reacting to the Polish guarantee and in response to an expected
Romanian one, Hungarian diplomacy became much more active in
London. The new Prime Minister Teleki sent numerous emissaries
to assure London about Hungary’s peaceful attitude. He also begged
Whitehall not to guarantee Romania’s territorial integrity, because it
would make Hungarian territorial aspirations in Transylvania impossible
and eventually sweep away his government.112 Highly skilful in his tactics,
Teleki played for the British objective in order to prevent a far-right takeover
in Budapest. These appeals were evidently taken seriously in London; it is
for example curious that a report on Teleki’s pleas was sent to the British
legation in Bucharest along with the official declaration of the British
110
TNA, CAB/23/98, Cabinet conclusion 19 (39) 5 April 1939; Cabinet Conclusion 20
(39), 8 April 1939; DIMK 4, 63: Barcza to Csáky, 5 April 1939; also: Lungu, Romania, p. 139.
111
From Bucharest Hoare reported that twenty-five German divisions were stationed
along the Hungarian-German frontier and in eastern Slovakia and were ready to overrun
Romania: TNA, FO 371/23108, Hoare to Foreign Office, 25 March 1939. According to
Olivier Harvey, Halifax’s private secretary, Tilea’s earlier pleas had a significant effect on
Halifax: J. Harvey (ed.), The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1937–1940, London, 1970,
18 March 1939. The journalist, Wickham Steed, who had excellent connections in Romania,
also informed the Foreign Office of a German ultimatum to Romania: TNA, FO 371/23061,
C 3749/3356/18, Vansittart to Halifax, 17 March 1939. According to Barcza, the Romanian
Foreign Minister Gafencu told the story in London that the Germans accidentally put up
posters in the Romanian language in Prague, instead of Bucharest, about the occupation:
DIMK 4, 111: Barcza to Csáky, 1 May 1939; see also: Grigore Gafencu, Last Days of Europe:
A Diplomatic Journey in 1939, London, 1948.
112
TNA, FO 371/23061, C 4633/3356/18, minute by Mallet, 3 April 1939.
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690
ANDRAS BECKER
guarantee to Romania. Manifestly, British strategy was becoming ever
more resolute in Central Europe. In large measure, retaining elbowroom
lay at the root of a reluctance to commit to Romania’s territorial integrity.
But driving a wedge into German-Hungarian cooperation and Hungary’s
direct appeals also played a role.113 In turn, until Romania renounced the
guarantee in July 1940, Hungary’s aim was to extract official assurance
from London that the guarantee was only for independence and not for
territorial integrity. London refused to declare this officially to keep its
options freely open.114
Conclusion
This article has shown that analysing the Hungarian angle of the 1938–39
Czechoslovak crises is an effective new instrument for illuminating British
foreign policy towards Central and Southeast Europe. A broad range
of previously unresearched primary sources (not least in Hungarian)
reveal that, contrary to the historiographical consensus, Hungary played
a significant role in Britain’s anti-German calculations after the Munich
agreement. However, the British elite’s perception that Hungary had
treated its nationalities harshly before 1914 (and anxieties about Germany’s
intentions in the region) largely determined Whitehall’s view of Hungarian
revisionism during the whole Czechoslovak crisis. This was the underlying
reason for recommending a limited frontier revision in the region.
The Magyar minority question and Hungary’s constant territorial
ambitions hampered any closer association between London and Budapest.
Regional interstate territorial and minority disputes, such as the HungarianCzechoslovak dispute, alarmed Whitehall because of their potential to
invite German intervention and aggression which, British policy-makers
feared, would result in the eventual German takeover of key raw materials
and strategic positions in the region. Hence, the Magyar question in
Czechoslovakia and Romania, because of Hungary’s traditional ‘special
relationship’ with Germany (with all of its implications for regional
113
For the official declaration of the Romanian guarantee; see Hansard (Commons), vol.
346, p. 654, 13 April 1939.
114
Whitehall hoped to enlist Hungarian cooperation, but nevertheless policymakers raised the possibility of a British declaration of war on Hungary if it marched
into Transylvania after 13 April: DBFP ser. 3, vol. 4, 1951, 460: Halifax, ‘The Romanian
guarantee’, 2 May 1939. Macartney also suggested that the Romanian guarantee had a
distinct anti-Hungarian bias. However, as we have seen this was only one facet of British
policy: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Carlile Aylmer Macartney Papers, MSS. ENG.c. 3302,
Box 23, Doc 13, C. A. Macartney, ‘British Policy towards Hungary in the Second World
War’, 1977.
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BRITAIN & HuNgARIAN REvISIONISm, 1938–39
691
stability), ties together the broad fabric of British strategy towards the
Hungarian angle of the Czechoslovak crisis. The difference in the British
response to the Slovak, Ruthenian and Romanian contexts of this problem
shows the disparate degrees of London’s political, economic and strategic
interest; these derived only partly from Britain’s traditional closer interest
in maritime states such as Romania (and lesser interest towards landlocked
ones, such as Hungary or Slovakia). In the region, the attitudes of countries
towards Germany also weighed significantly on British strategy. Hence, the
question of German expansion is the primary factor when analysing the
sharp fluctuations in British official policy toward the Magyar question.
The sources also reveal that there are several other dimensions to this
problem. Until now, historians have maintained that it was only after
the final destruction of Czechoslovakia that London acknowledged the
strategic opportunities the region (and Hungary) had to offer. In fact,
immediately after Munich London was already considering the options for
confronting Germany in the region. Hungary played an important role in
this strategy, with key policy-makers considering ways to attract Hungary
to anti-German regional co-operation.
The sharp contrasts in British policy, such as anti-revisionism and the
apparent cordiality towards Hungary on an official level, the constant
emergence of anti-Magyar opinion in the Foreign Office, and the plans
advocated in the Cabinet for bringing Hungary into the Allied camp has
provoked much debate amongst historians about the true nature of British
intentions. The evidence analysed here has proved that these viewpoints
cannot be separated from each other, as they simultaneously informed
both perceptions and official policies. Depending on the international
situation (and particularly with regard to the British strategic interest
to avoid war with Germany), one or the other became more prominent.
Nevertheless, they all underpinned the as yet undecided character of
British policy towards Hungary in the late 1930s.
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