After Budapest
Montgomery was recalled from his posting Budapest in March 1941, three months before Hungary finally joined the Axis as a full war partner during the invasion of the Soviet Union. When the United States entered the Second World War that December, Horthy's alliance with Hitler placed the minister’s beloved Hungary in America’s enemies column; but Montgomery remained committed to Hungary’s independence and well-being. He viewed with anguish the destruction of virtually half the capital during the Battle of Budapest, and he bitterly mourned the ceding of Hungary to Soviet control at the war’s end.
Montgomery also remained committed to the well-being of Miklós Horthy, who was captured by American troops at the war's end: as the Allies prepared for the Nuremberg Trials, Montgomery used his influence in Washington to help extricate Horthy from indictment and trial. Horthy was interviewed extensively, and later was called to testify at the trial of a Nazi administrator in Budapest, but was never charged for any of his actions during or before the war.
After the trials, Montgomery continued to support the Horthys in their exile (they could not and would not return to Budapest, which was now controlled by a Soviet-led Communist government). After the Horthy family relocated to Estoril, Portugal, Montgomery raised funds for their upkeep from a small committee of wealthy Hungarians in America. After Montgomery died in 1954, his daughter Jean continued supporting the ex-regent and his wife until their deaths.
In 1947 Montgomery published a heartfelt memoir of his Budapest days called Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite. The book was, and remains, a widely-read and widely-quoted source for examinations of Hungarian pre-war politics, in some measure because it is unique as a thorough Western lens on interwar Hungary; the Soviet-dominated Hungarian leadership after 1947 vilified Horthy and promoted an official view that Horthy was a fascist and a Nazi collaborator.
The stories Montgomery told in The Unwilling Satellite were further illuminated by the discovery, among Montgomery’s personal papers, of his own private notes on many of his discussions with Hungary’s leaders. These notes were found by scholar Tibor Frank after he met Montgomery’s daughter Jean, and was given unconstrained access by her to the Montgomery papers. Frank published many of these notes in his book Discussing Hitler: Advisors of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe, 1934-1941.
Read more about this topic: John Flournoy Montgomery