History of Budapest - 20th Century

20th Century

At the beginning of the 20th century the cultural efflorescence and sparkling energy of abundance and well-being of Budapest rivaled that of Vienna and its café society that of Paris, a belle époque extinguished by World War I. In the aftermath of World War I which had led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, half of the Hungarian population was cut away from Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon and made part of surrounding nations. In 1918-19, Budapest was shaken by two revolutions: the Aster Revolution brought about the Hungarian Democratic Republic, which was followed by the Hungarian Soviet Republic, a short-lived Communist regime led by Béla Kun, followed by two years of White Terror. The Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919 ended with the Romanian occupation of parts of Hungary proper, including Budapest in August 1919, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary, led by Miklós Horthy, the self-appointed regent for the exiled King Karl IV (see the conflict of Charles IV with Miklós Horthy). His domain and regency was characterized by gala balls as well as hunger marches by the poor, of nationalism and anti-Semitism by inheritance, again inherited by joining the wrong side (the Nazis), who promised the sweet reward of re-joining of the Hungarian nation as a whole in the post-Trianon era. Yet Horthy was considered a moderate compared to the fascist Arrow Cross Party, whose power grew as World War II raged across Europe.

Anticipating and knowing about Horthy's communication with the Allies and possible defection from the Axis alliance in 1944, the Nazis staged “Operation Panzerfaust”, a coup against Horthy, and installed an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi to make allowance for the unobstructed massacre of the Jews of Budapest.

Before World War II, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Budapest was a safe haven for Jewish refugees. Before the war some 5,000 refugees, primarily from Germany and Austria, arrived in Budapest. With the beginning of deportations of Jews from Slovakia in March 1942, as many as 8,000 Slovak Jewish refugees also settled in Budapest. Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany. Despite discriminatory legislation against the Jews and widespread antisemitism, the Jewish community of Budapest was relatively secure until the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 (Operation Margarethe). With the occupation, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish council in Budapest and severely restricted Jewish life. Apartments occupied by Jews were confiscated. Hundreds of Jews were rounded up and interned in the Kistarcsa transit camp (originally established by Hungarian authorities), 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Budapest. Between April and July 1944, the Germans and Hungarians deported Jews from the Hungarian provinces. By the end of July, the Jews in Budapest were virtually the only Jews remaining in Hungary. They were not immediately ghettoized. Instead, in June 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered the Jews into over 2,000 designated buildings scattered throughout the city. The buildings were marked with Stars of David. About 25,000 Jews from the suburbs of Budapest were rounded up and transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Hungarian authorities suspended the deportations in July 1944, sparing the remaining Jews of Budapest, at least temporarily. Many Jews searched for places of hiding or for protection. They were aided by foreign diplomats like Nuncio Angelo Rotta, Raoul Wallenberg, Giorgio Perlasca, Carl Lutz, Friedrich Born, Harald Feller, Angel Sanz Briz and George Mandel-Mantello who organized false papers and safe houses for them. These actions saved tens of thousands of Jews.

In October 1944, Germany orchestrated a coup and installed a new Hungarian government dominated by the fascist Arrow Cross Party under Ferenc Szálasi. The remaining Jews of Budapest were again in grave danger. The Arrow Cross instituted a reign of terror in Budapest and hundreds of Jews were shot. Jews were also drafted for brutal forced labor. On November 8, 1944, the Arrow Cross militia concentrated more than 70,000 Jews—men, women, and children—in the Ujlaki brickyards in Obuda, and from there forced them to march on foot to camps in Austria. Thousands were shot and thousands more died as a result of starvation or exposure to the bitter cold. The prisoners who survived the death march reached Austria in late December 1944. There, the Germans took them to various concentration camps, especially Dachau in southern Germany and Mauthausen in northern Austria, and to Vienna, where they were employed in the construction of fortifications around the city. In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews in Budapest into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took Jews from the ghetto in nightly razzias, as well as deserters from the Hungarian army or political enemies, shot them along the banks of the Danube and threw their bodies into the river. Soviet forces captured Budapest on February 13, 1945. More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at time of capture.

Upon retreating, the Germans also blew up all the Danube bridges as a way of hampering the progress of the Communist Red Army of the Soviets. A two month long siege of Budapest reduced the entire city, but mostly the Castle District to rubble, as it was assigned to the mostly Hungarian army with German leadership to defend and to "hold back". Most roofs in Budapest were blown in by Soviet bombs, walls blown in by Soviet tanks. The occupants sought shelter in cellars and ate dead horsemeat found in the streets just to survive.

After 1945 free elections were held, in which many parties (among them the Smallholders, the Social Democrats, and the Communists) were voted into Parliament. Due to Soviet pressure the government coalition, led by the Social Democrats, accepted the small Communist Party into the coalition. By the next election, most of the former government MEPs were entered into the Communist Party. In the election of 1949, the party, with Soviet backup resources, used the flaw in the so-called 'blue-ticket' election system, from which this election got its name, to have his voters transported in trucks to all voting offices, where with reproduced and collected blue tickets they could vote away from their home address district.

The Communists gained power while the Soviet Army propped up the Hungarian state. Under their auspices, the former Arrow Cross torture chambers in the prisons filled up with their opponenets. Arrests, beatings or summary executions were used as a standard tool by the Secret Police, who employed an extensive net of informants. Random arrests without charge were commonly initiated by regime informants, some of these abductees were never heard from again. By this time the administration was composed predominantly of hardline communists or carrierists, who made up the Soviet-accepted controllers of wealth and power. Materials were routinely confiscated from the Hugarian populace and taken to the USSR for "War Repairs". These administrators' actions were rewarded with position and favour. In Budapest this administrative approach was paired with aggressive industrialisation, militarisation, collectivisation and politicisation of the economy. Factories, chimneys, bridges, and railways were rapidly construicted. Workers during rest time were often subjected to Soviet propaganda and had to practice self-criticism in public meetings, negatively appraising their own performance. Rákosi's government was one of the most dictatoric and most exploitative of the Warsaw Pact countries.

The political situation was centred on advancing the interest of those informal factions, which had their primary focus on well-being. In this situation, Imre Nagy was elected as next Prime Minister. He had gained widespread popularity by distributing land to farmers, and the support of the elite by practicing self-criticism and completing party programs, even when it conflicted with his proposals. He moved to create a multiparty system, winning the support of the MEP majority. He declared Hungarian sovereignty and self-governance, its departure from the Warsaw Pact and its willingness to co-operate with all countries. During this time, the CIA-sponsored Radio Free Europe broadcast effective methods of urban combat, including constructing barricades and producing explosives. In Budapest, peaceful protests demanding Soviet withdrawal, free press, freedom of expression and free elections, were organized by university students, professors and intellectuals. The Soviet Minister for War Issues ordered the brigades to move into the city. In response to this action, the protesters set up defenses. When the tanks and elite forces opened fire on the mass protest situated in front of the Parliament buildings, they caused a national uprising overnight. There were examples of long-stationed Soviet soldiers refusing to accept the authority of their officers and defecting to the revolutionary forces.

The Soviets were eventually defeated and all surviving units were ordered to return to army bases in the countryside. Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, stated he was working to cooperate with all willing countries, and declared free elections, parties were founded or reopened in the city. The USA declared that the neutrality of the small country did not affect the World Powers. The Soviet Union, which feared NATO deployment, took this as a permission to invade Hungary. In reality the USA wanted to ensure Hungary was not invaded by retaining its neutral position. Soviet units were ordered to invade, along with the militaries of the surrounding nationalities of the Warsaw Pact, with which Hungary already had a strained history. On November 4, the Warsaw Pact forces launched their attack. Imre Nagy fled to the Yugoslavian Embassy, and refused to take responsibility for ordering resistance. He was promised free passage to the border by the next leader, but was arrested by Soviet troops and later put on trial in secret.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed, the Soviets, rather than appointing a Hungarian hardliner or a Soviet general, gave a chance to János Kádár, a former kidnapped minister of the revolution. He defeated the remaining rebel forces, then embarked on cautious reforms to create a "Goulash Communism" that differentiated Hungary from its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Due to the co-operative efforts of Kádár and huge loans taken from the West to offset the failing economy, Hungary became the favorite Communist state of the West by the late 1970s. A decade later, the city was the center of opposition activity, rallies, printing and selling of unauthorized material and secret-service surveillance. In addition the talks between opposition and government representatives (dubbed the "Round Table Consultations") were held there. Finally, the majority of the multi-sided regime decided to step over Gorbachev's line and open the borders (the first official break of the Iron Curtain), declared Hungary a Republic on October 23, 1989 then issued free elections. While communism was toppled in Berlin and Prague, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party was simply voted out of power in Hungary, initiating a peaceful transition from one political system to another. Hungarians simply refer to all that has happened since then as "after the System-change".