Hungary During World War II - Aftermath

Aftermath

See also: End of World War II in Europe and Beneš decrees

By 2 May 1945, Hitler was dead and Berlin surrendered. On 7 May, General Alfred Jodl, the German Chief of Staff, signed the surrender of Germany. On 23 May, the "Flensburg Government" was dissolved. On 11 June, the Allies agreed to make 8 May 1945 the official "Victory in Europe" day.

By signing the Peace Treaty of Paris, Hungary again lost all the territories that it gained between 1938 and 1941. Neither Western Allies nor the Soviet Union supported any change in Hungary's pre-1938 borders. The Soviet Union annexed Subcarpathia, which is now part of Ukraine.

The Treaty of Peace with Hungary signed on 10 February 1947 declared that "The decisions of the Vienna Award of 2 November 1938 are declared null and void" and Hungarian boundaries were fixed along the former frontiers as they existed on 1 January 1938, except a minor loss of territory on the Czechoslovakian border. Two thirds of the ethnic German minority (202,000 people) was deported to Germany in 1946-48, and there was a forced "exchange of population" between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

On February 1, 1946, the Kingdom of Hungary was formally abolished and replaced by the Second Republic of Hungary. Post-war Hungary was eventually taken over by a Soviet-allied government and it became part of the Eastern Bloc. The People's Republic of Hungary was declared in 1949 and lasted until the Revolutions of 1989 and the End of Communism in Hungary.