|
|
| 2010 Február 09 (Kedd) |
Abigél, Alex névnapja |
Articles/Cikkek |
 |
Count Mihály Károlyi’s Policies Led to the Destruction of Hungary
Count Mihály Károlyi’s Policies Led to the Destruction of Hungary
By Lajos Szászdi León-Borja
It was actually Count Mihály Károlyi who asked the troops to return home and abandon the battlefronts of World War I, who told the soldiers to disarm, and who dissolved the army when he was chosen the last Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary by King Charles IV on 31 October 1918, leaving the borders exposed and allowing the Rumanians, Czechs, and Serbs to invade the country. Ironically, it was the Communists then who defended Hungary against the Czechs and Rumanians invading the country as tools of the Entente to put an end to the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Kun Béla and the Communist commissars defended Hungary while the nobles and the Hungarian bourgeoisie saw the Communists as the greater evil, welcoming the invaders, who were anti-Communists, bourgeois and monarchists, to "liberate" the country from Communism. And of course, the invaders took advantage of the situation to take what land they wanted. A very sad time, to see the Communists defending what the monarchists should have been defending.
President of the Republic Károlyi, who was chosen as such on the previous 11 January, transferred full government powers to the Revolutionary Governing Council on March 21, 1919, where Kun Béla was Commissar for Foreign Affairs. However, Kun became the actual leader of the Communist government that was taking over at the Social Democrats' expense, who joined the Communists in the Revolutionary Governing Council in a political alliance. Granted that Kun’s regime was characterized by the Red Terror and by the instability caused by their arbitrary imposition of their alien dictatorship of the proletariat. But he wanted Bolshevik Russia to come to the aid of the Hungarian Soviet Republic to drive the Rumanians, Czechs, and Serbs away from the Hungarian territory they invaded under Károlyi's government. Kun Béla hoped for the Bolshevik’s Red Army to come to Hungary to help defend its territory from the foreign invaders. The Hungarian Communist leader rationalized the defense and liberation of Hungarian territory as a struggle against the invading reactionary forces of imperialist capitalism. It was on March 25, 1919, that the Hungarian Communist regime officially established the Hungarian Red Army, thus reconstituting the Hungarian military. Despite the ostensible motive of the Hungarian Communists to defeat the foreign invaders, which was to defend the Hungarian Soviet Republic following the Kingdom’s borders against the foreign reactionary enemies of the Revolution, the Hungarian Red Army was fighting out of patriotism to defend the country from external aggression and to preserve its territorial integrity. This patriotic motivation was for example very clear in the minds of Vilmos Bohm, the Hungarian Red Army’s Commander-in-Chief, and Aurél Stromfeld, the Chief of the General Staff, and among the generals and officers of the Red Army.
Kun Béla led a successful offensive in the middle of May 1919 that liberated from Czech occupation Upper Hungary, occupying Kassa. Despite problems with logistics, supply shortages, and the anti-Communist internal opposition that was on the rise against the government in Budapest, on July 20 Kun Béla unleashed an offensive against the Rumanians, who occupied Hungary east of the River Tisza. The Hungarian Red Army managed some initial successes in pushing the Rumanian invaders out of Hungarian soil, but supported with French weapons and assistance, the Rumanian forces defeated the Hungarians in their counter-offensive. On top of all, the monarchists and bourgeois elements of Hungary joined the French, whose troops occupied Szeged, to form there an anti-Bolshevik Committee on June 3, 1919, backed by France. But it was the French that supported the idea of the cordon sanitaire to stifle Hungary by surrounding the country with the Little Entente, therefore favouring the Czechs, Serbs, and Rumanians, the latter being armed with the weapons of the French military intervention force operating against the Bolsheviks in Ukraine and Crimea. When this French force was ordered by Paris to pull out of Ukraine and Crimea, they were instructed to hand over their weapons to the Rumanians to use them against Hungary. Count Gyula Károlyi headed the French-led anti-Bolshevik Committee of Szeged, with Count Pál Teleki becoming foreign minister and Rear-Admiral Miklós Horthy becoming minister of war. They collaborated with the enemies of Hungary by denying and opposing an internal united front of support for the Hungarian Red Army, which wanted to free the country from its invaders. Czechs, French, and Rumanians received thus the support of the Hungarian nobility, the bourgeoisie, and internal anti-Communist forces in general, for those invaders were perceived as liberating Hungary from a Communist dictatorship. Kun Béla and the Communist-controlled Governing Council finally were forced to resign on August 1, 1919. The Rumanian troops entered Budapest on August 3, 1919. Victorious, the foreign invaders of Hungary consolidated their mutilation the country after “liberating” it.
Again, it was a tragedy that Hungary was thus torn between Communist, the non-Communists and the foreign invaders. The main fault is Count Mihály Károlyi’s decision to have ordered the return of all Hungarian forces after taking over in October 31, 1918, telling the Hungarian troops to disarm and in addition dissolving the Hungarian military. And by telling the troops to come home and abandon their positions on the front, by telling them to disarm, and by dissolving the Hungarian military, Károlyi provoked the collapse of the Italian front when Austro-Hungarian forces were until then resisting the Italian attacks. The desertion of our troops led to a collapse of the Italian front and thus an armistice was signed with the Italians in Padua on 3 November 1918, causing a chain reaction of events that led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy on November 11 with the abdication of the King. Károlyi in turn declared Hungary a Republic on November 16.
Perhaps also due to the chaos he created in the Austro-Hungarian armed forces due to his induced implosion of its Hungarian component, which abandoned its positions, disarmed and dissolved in following Károlyi’s instructions, another armistice was signed in Belgrade on November 7, 1918, by the government of Count Károlyi with the commander of the French Balkan Army. Without a standing army to defend the country’s territorial integrity, Hungary’s enemies began to tear the Kingdom apart. Czech forces began their invasion of defenseless Upper Hungary on November 8, proceeding also to occupy with the help of bayonets the northeastern counties of Ung, Bereg, Ugosca and Máramaros. On November 10 and from the city of Arad the Rumanian National Council informed the government of Prime Minister Károlyi that it was assuming governing powers over 23 counties and over portions of three additional counties. On November 24, 1918, the Serbs assumed effective control of the regional administrations of the Bácska, the Baranya, and of the western portion of the Banat, having initiated their invasion of southern Hungary on November 5. Also unopposed, the Rumanian army started its invasion of Transylvania on December 2, 1918, beginning its armed occupation. Regarding this, the Károlyi government had three weeks to organize a defense of Transylvania from November 10, when the Rumanian National Council in Arad illegally gave itself powers of administration over more than 23 counties, to December 2, when the full-scale Rumanian army invasion of Hungary actually began. The government in Budapest headed by Count Mihály Károlyi clearly failed to take effective measures to stop the invasion of the country by Rumania. On December 3 and on December 23 the Allied Supreme Command recognized the occupation and administration of Upper Hungary by the Czechs. Then on January 11, 1919, the Rumanian government formally but illegally annexed the lands seized from Hungary by force.
Before being appointed Prime Minister, Count Mihály Károlyi was conspiring to destroy Austria-Hungary and the Dual Monarchy. On October 25, 1918, Károlyi helped establish the Hungarian National Council, which he headed and which was based on a coalition of his Independence and `48er Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the radicals from the bourgeoisie. Among the main political aims of Károlyi’s Hungarian National Council were for Hungary to become independent from Austria and to immediately reach a separate peace with the Allies. Probably as a result of a Hungarian National Council-led campaign of political propaganda and agitation to win popular support for its political agenda, more citizens increasingly joined mass demonstrations in Budapest, demanding that Count Mihály Károlyi be appointed Prime Minister and that the political agenda of his Hungarian National Council be adopted as government policy. Things came to a head when the police opened fire against protesters on Budapest’s Chain Bridge. The consequence to this action was the outbreak of the so-called Chrysanthemum revolution, a popular revolt characterized as bourgeois and democratic.
The Hungarian National Council was also winning the support of soldiers in the Hungarian capital. In addition, military units from the Honvéd, Hungary’s National Guard, pledged their support for the Hungarian National Council. Then in the early hours of October 31 took place what amounted to a coup d’état, more than likely provoked and if not then instigated by Károlyi’s Hungarian National Council, when Honvéd units loyal to the Hungarian National Council seized control of the post office, the telephone exchange, the telegraph office, the railway stations, and other public buildings of strategic value. Having manipulated the Honvéd troops to open revolt, Károlyi achieved what he wanted. On the same day of October 31, 1918 King Charles IV, who no doubt felt pressured by what was an act of armed coercion in support of the Hungarian National Council, commissioned Károlyi to form a new government by appointing him Prime Minister. The die was cast. Count Mihály Károlyi, a political opportunist who lacked true leadership and intelligence and who was acting to destroy the Habsburg monarchy - he suggested in no uncertain terms in his memoirs that he never forgave the Habsburgs for what they did in 1849 - sealed the fate of Hungary in a matter of days.
Sources consulted:
Borsody, Stephen, ed. The Hungarians: A Divided Nation. Yale Russian and East European Publications. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988.
Hoensch, Jörg K. A History of Modern Hungary 1867-1986. Translated by Kim Traynor. London: Longman, 1988.
Szaszdi Nagy, Adam. Conversations with Lajos F. Szaszdi.
|
 |
|
|
HAL: List 
