Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
REVIEW JONATHAN EATON
In reading about the Second World War, it is easy to lose sight of the brutal realities of the conflict, whether revealed through acts of unfathomable evil or deeds of immense personal courage. In The Last Days of Budapest, Adam LeBor painstakingly recreates the war experience through the lens of a single city and its inhabitants.
The role of Hungary in the Second World War was prefaced by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. This agreement reset the borders of post-World War I Europe and resulted in the loss of almost two-thirds of the country’s territory and around 3.3 million Hungarian citizens. There was also a substantial reduction in military power. The sense of national humiliation resulting from the perceived injustices of the treaty was to prove fundamental in shaping Hungarian politics and society for the coming decades.
From 1920 until late 1944, Admiral Miklós Horthy served as Regent of Hungary. While it may be argued that he was ideologically closer to a national conservative than a fascist, Horthy was anti-Semitic and had few qualms about agreeing an alliance with Hitler against Soviet Russia. This permitted Hungary to regain some of the land lost through Trianon. But his administration and military were split between those who were sympathetic to the Allied cause and those who favoured closer alignment with the Nazis. This tension resulted in Budapest becoming a centre for espionage and intense political intrigue.
As Hungarian troops joined the fight on the Eastern Front, the true cost of the alliance with Nazi Germany became apparent as stories of atrocities gradually filtered back to Budapest. Hungarian troops were instrumental in massacres in northern Serbia, with, for instance, more than 3,300 people murdered at Novi Sad in January 1942. Meanwhile, István Horthy, the regent’s son and deputy, serving as a fighter pilot on the Eastern Front, concocted a plan to negotiate the alliance of Hungary with the Allied cause. While unexplained at the time, LeBor posits that his suspicious death in a flying accident may have been covertly designed by the Nazis to eliminate him before his plans came to fruition.
Occupation
The fiction of an independent Hungary initially suited Hitler’s plans. Yet, by March 1944, the pro-Allied leanings of important Hungarian military and political figures, along with his growing distrust of Horthy, convinced Hitler of the need to invade Hungary to ensure it remained aligned with his regime.
While under Nazi occupation in October 1944, Horthy publicly announced a ceasefire with Russia as an attempt to extricate Hungary from its alliance with Nazi Germany, but his attempt to take control of the army and use it to neutralise occupying forces was badly bungled.
Horthy himself was seized and escorted to Germany, while the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian fascist organisation, took political control and began to implement a horrific campaign of oppression against its internal enemies. Soviet forces finally seized Budapest in February 1945. Although liberated from fascism, the horrors to which the population of the city were exposed were not yet ended, as the Red Army pursued its campaign of mass rape against the civilian population.
Under Horthy’s government, sweeping anti-Semitic legislation was passed and more than 100,000 Jewish men were forcibly enrolled in labour camps. Two-fifths would not survive. The Nazi invasion in March 1944 accelerated the mass killings of Jews, Roma, and others, with deportations to Auschwitz commencing in May 1944, under the direct supervision of Adolf Eichmann, and actively aided by Hungarian supporters. Over 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz over 56 days between May and July 1944. As the remaining Jewish population was increasingly ghettoised within Budapest, the Arrow Cross conducted a campaign of mass murder across the city and on the banks of the Danube. By the end of the war, over 565,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered.
Heroic actions
Set against the horror of the Holocaust in Hungary were the heroic actions of diplomats who sought to shield as many of the Jewish population as possible. This they did through the provision of protective papers and a considerable amount of bluffing. For instance, Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian diplomat who sought Spanish citizenship following the Italian armistice. Perlasca was subsequently appointed to the Spanish Legation to aid in the distribution of protective papers to the Jewish population in Budapest.
Drawing on the desire of the fascist Arrow Cross to maintain good relations with the Spanish government, Perlasca also emphasised the presence of Hungarians living in Spain to convince them to permit him to continue to offer protective papers. Remarkably, Perlasca remained reticent about his wartime activities after 1945, and the true scale of the lives saved by his actions was only fully recognised in the 1980s.
Then there was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who was sent to Budapest in July 1944. He established houses under the flags of Sweden and other neutral countries to provide a measure of safety for their inhabitants, as well as issuing protective papers – sometimes as deportations were actually taking place – at considerable personal risk from both the SS and Arrow Cross. Though Wallenberg’s courageous actions undoubtedly saved the lives of thousands, he was arrested by the Red Army on their entry into Budapest, and would later die in a Soviet prison, though his fate remained a mystery for decades.
The Last Days of Budapest combines a detailed historical narrative with accounts of the lived experiences of a vast range of the city’s inhabitants. The array of voices from all sides of the conflict starkly exposes the human cost and tragedy of the war. This approach makes for a thoroughly engrossing read.
The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, rescuers, and resistance, 1940-1945
Adam LeBor
Apollo, hbk, 512pp (£27.99)
ISBN 978-1801100779
You must be logged in to post a comment.