John Flournoy Montgomery - Montgomery and The Rise of Hitler

Montgomery and The Rise of Hitler

Unquestionably the most critical trend which Montgomery was required to monitor from Budapest was the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany - and Hitler's growing influence in Hungarian political circles. Like many American diplomats, Montgomery was suspicious of Hitler from early in the dictator's reign; the ambassador's scathing reports on Hitler delighted FDR, who shared his contempt for the German dictator.

The Hungarian leadership was aware of American hostility toward Hitler’s Nazi regime; as Hungary crept deeper into Hitler’s sphere of influence throughout the 1930s, Horthy and his colleagues took pains to assure Montgomery that they, too, disliked and feared Hitler – a message which Montgomery dutifully passed back to Washington, as they doubtless hoped he would.

What Hungary’s various leaders actually thought of Hitler and alliance with Germany is the subject of a complex debate that lasts to the present day. Hungary had its own home-grown fascist movements and right-wing politicians, but much of the political elite in Budapest was genuinely wary of Hitler. The German Fuehrer was generally seen as a powerful but dangerous ally: he clearly had his own designs on Hungary's natural resources, and after the 1938 Anschluss, Hitler had a well-equipped army standing directly on Hungary's borders. At the same time, Horthy was hoping to make use of Hitler: the regent, like most of the political class, was virulently anti-Communist, and he was gambling that Hitler would keep Hungary safe from the dangers posed by Joseph Stalin's "Asiatic barbarians." Horthy was also dedicated (as was virtually every Hungarian) to re-acquiring territories which Hungary had been forced to cede to neighboring nations at the end of the First World War - and some of which were re-annexed by Hungary with Hitler's help between 1938 and 1940.

Nevertheless, Montgomery’s Hungarian friends convinced him that Hungary’s capitulations to the Nazis were essentially pragmatic, the only possible path for a weak nation facing a well-armed and ruthless neighbor. As Montgomery wrote in Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite:

In this, Montgomery echoed the stance of the regent Horthy, who wrote in his own memoirs:

This similarity of opinion is not unusual: a comparison of Horthy’s memoirs and Montgomery’s yields a regular alignment of their views, especially regarding Hungary’s political choices before and during the Second World War.

The friendship between the two men was cemented during a famous episode on March 15, 1939. Both men were attending a gala performance at the Budapest Opera House, when supporters of the fascist Hungarian Ferenc Szálasi (recently jailed on Horthy’s order) disrupted the opening ceremonies by chanting, from a box above the regent’s, “Justice for Szálasi!” Horthy, enraged, dashed out of his royal box, and Montgomery followed to see what was happening. When he caught up with Horthy, he reported that:

Horthy apparently believed that Montgomery was coming to offer help, because he thanked Montgomery later with a gift of a photograph of the opera event, a present which Montgomery treasured. The two men became close (according to Tibor Frank, a Hungarian scholar who closely studied Montgomery’s private papers, Montgomery even shared Horthy’s “drawing-room anti-Semitism,” and viewed the pre-war anxieties of Budapest’s large Jewish upper-middle class with a mixture of sympathy and condescension). Montgomery did his best to foster a sense of personal connection between the regent and President Roosevelt – a connection which Horthy apparently felt, but which Roosevelt did not. On the whole, Montgomery resented the way in which Roosevelt held him at arm’s length, and complained that FDR was insufficiently curious about real reports from the field.