Figure 2.1. VR Aviatik Berg D.I fighter in 1919. Photo: Fortepan/Tibor Erky-Nagy.
Upheaval: 1918–1919
HUNGARY EXPERIENCED TREMENDOUS TURMOIL IN THE months that followed the end of the First World War. The disruptions were pervasive and profound: no element of public life was left untouched. Military defeat led to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire and was followed by successive revolutions and the eventual reimposition of a monarchy, albeit without a monarch. Entente forces initially held border regions under armistice terms, but eventually the armies of their allied successor states invaded and seized territory that had for centuries been united under the crown of St. Stephen. Budapest itself was occupied. Hungary’s populace, having persevered through four years of war, was rewarded with expanded suffrage and some land reform, but continued to face severe material shortages and hardship. Hungarians also suffered the consequences of fighting in their own towns and villages, something they had largely avoided in the war just ended, and they were subjected to the ravages of both Red and White Terrors.
Against this backdrop of turbulence and radicalism, Hungarian airmen of the recently disbanded LFT established a national flying corps that emphasized continuity in personnel, organization, and operations. The alacrity with which the air force began operations in unfavorable conditions reveals the professionalism of those early Hungarian airmen, and the loyalty of their service under five governments in the course of a year suggests patriotism as a motivation.1 With the parlous state of the domestic Hungarian aircraft industry, the continued shortages of raw materials, and the disruptions to production caused by political crises, it is no surprise that the flying corps was not the decisive arm in the battles of 1919. The air service did, however, make important contributions to the state’s political and military security by performing a range of aerial missions. While the four years of combat in the First World War would have remained the defining experience of air warfare for the individuals involved, the relatively short period of consolidation and conflict was crucial in shaping the corporate self-image of the nascent Hungarian air force. Hungarian airmen became accustomed to operating at a disadvantage, but remained committed advocates for the efficacy of air power in defense of the nation. This commitment was sustained even in the years after the proscription of a Hungarian air force by the Treaty of Trianon (1920).
The idea of a national Hungarian air service first arose during the First World War within those Austro-Hungarian flying squadrons that had strong Magyar contingents. The air arm was too new to have been part of the traditional Habsburg regimental system, and there were no Honvédség or Landwehr flying units.2 Nevertheless, Magyar pilots, some of them perhaps fleeing the “oppressive attitude of the ruling Austrians” (az osztrák elnyomás uralkodo szelleme), gravitated to those fliks commanded by Hungarian officers such as László Háry, Sándor Hartzer, Géza Csenkey, and István Wollemann.3 This tendency toward voluntary segregation among fliers hints at the complicated relationship between Hungarian officers and the Habsburg state. The Common Army “was the most important all-monarchical institution in the realm”; its officers were its “nerve center and spiritual essence” and they felt a particular duty to Franz Josef, to whom they swore a personal oath of loyalty.4 It was therefore a key centripetal force in the Dual Monarchy, resisting the centrifugal pull of nationalism, any manifestation of which was openly deplored.5 Regular officers, whatever their origins, were expected to be above nationalism. Magyars, however, were underrepresented in the regular army officer corps, since a large proportion of the martially minded chose instead to serve in the reserves or, better, in the Honvéd.6 This choice expressed a nationalist sentiment, and it was recognized as such by some non-Magyars in the officer corps, who resented Hungarian obstructionism and the concessions carved out for Hungarian officers after the 1867 Compromise.7 Such resentment could account for the “oppressive attitude” described above. In any case, Hungarian airmen were drawn to the vision of a national independent air force, free from both Austrian oversight and Common Army supervision.
That vision was realized sooner perhaps than they anticipated. On November 6, 1918, the Hungarian Defense Ministry (Hadügyminisztérium) established its 37th Section, the Aviation Department (Légügyi osztály), and charged it with the direction of all aviation activity.8 This clear line of control lasted just a few days. The government formed another body on November 12, the Aviation Commission (Légügyi Kormánybiztosság), subordinate to both the War and Commerce Ministries, to coordinate national aeronautics. The Aviation Commission included an executive branch along with three others (research and development, engineering, and accounting), and had directly under it another department confusingly given the same designation (Légügyi osztály) as the Defense Ministry’s 37th Section. The commission’s Aviation Department was separate from the Defense Ministry’s, and it comprised four groups: traffic, personnel, engineering, and finance. Subordinate elements included the Air Corps Headquarters (Légi Csapatparancsnokság), the float-plane section, and aviation stores warehouses. There were also two departments based in Vienna that represented Hungarian interests in the liquidation of indivisible LFT assets.9 That this was a complicated organizational structure is beyond doubt, but it was not without heritage and purpose. It remained somewhat simpler than the Habsburg military aviation organization, under which the Flight Arsenal at Fischamend had also been subordinate to two masters (in this case the Army High Command and Defense Ministry Aviation Department 5/L) and was composed of five departments, each of which was further divided into between eight and twenty-two subdepartments.10 It was hoped that the labyrinthine lines of authority and subordination to the Commerce Ministry would protect Hungarian aviation from future Allied inspectors, and the proliferation of bureaus provided billets for experienced officers whose expertise might otherwise have been lost.11 As for the perplexing arrangement, circumstances and personalities clarified institutional relationships in a way that lines on a chart never could.
In spite of the republic’s official policy of pacifism and an interest in developing the aerial post, military aviation crowded out commercial flight in 1918–1919, and the Commerce Ministry effectively ceded control of the Aviation Commission to the Defense Ministry. In January 1919, Lieutenant Colonel István Petróczy, the first Magyar military pilot and one of the most distinguished Hungarian aviators of the First World War, was selected to head the 37th Section. This made him the de facto chief of the air staff and gave him operational command of the Hungarian Flying Corps (Repülőcsapat) through the Air HQ.12 The situation would be exactly reversed after Trianon, when the center of Hungarian air power would necessarily shift to the Commerce Ministry.
Commissioner Sándor Hangay, Petróczy’s predecessor at the 37th Section, called senior air service leaders to Budapest immediately after his appointment in November. When their conference at the Nádasdy barracks broke up, critical personnel and organizational questions had been settled. By order of the war minister, airmen were exempted from forced demobilization.13 The new national flying corps initially consisted of three air companies (repülőosztály): the 1st Air Guard Company, commanded by Captain József Gergye; the 2nd Airmail Company, commanded by Captain Ernő Szalay; and the 3rd Operational Training Company, commanded by Captain Sándor Hartzer. The flying corps would soon grow to eight companies, with a further five companies planned but never activated. Hartzer’s training unit was assigned to Rákosmező airfield, the center of Hungarian pilot training since 1910. The 1st and 2nd Companies shared the airfields at Mátyásföld and Albertfalva with the country’s two largest aircraft manufacturing plants. Albertfalva was the home of UFAG, a Castiglioni firm whose 1,700 employees at peak wartime production rolled out 40 aircraft per month. The factory, which changed its name to Magyar Repülőgépgyár (MARE) in reflection of the times, built Brandenburg designs, primarily the C.I, a capable two-seat multipurpose machine, and the fine W.29 float-plane. Magyar Általános Gépgyár (MÁG) had its plant at Mátyásföld (1,100 employees, 24 aircraft per month peak production), and was the main Hungarian supplier for single-seat fighter craft, especially the Aviatik D.I and state-of-the-art Fokker D.VII.14 Production was already below peak levels by the end of the war, due to the dearth of men and materials, and an Aviation Commission decision further reduced output. Having declared on November 8 “the time of peace had set in,” the Commission demanded a cut in aviation industry employment of 75 percent, beginning with workers of foreign origin (including those Austrians and Czechs who were fellow Habsburg subjects weeks earlier).15
That this policy went against the instincts of the Hungarian airmen can be inferred from their subsequent actions to preserve and consolidate as much aviation materiel as possible in front of the advancing Allied armies. It was, however, entirely consonant with the outlook of the new government headed by Mihály Károlyi, a long-standing opponent of the war and “friend to democracy and peace.” 16 Károlyi’s National Council had come to power in a near-bloodless revolution on October 31, carried along by an uprising of the newly established Soldiers’ Council, and its first priority was terminating the war. Béla Linder, the new minister of war, ordered Hungarian forces to disarm on November 1.17 Hostilities on the Italian front ended on November 4, but reports of Allied incursions from the south made it clear that the Padua Armistice did not constrain the Entente’s Armée d’Orient. On the same day that the Defense Ministry established its 37th Section, Károlyi led a delegation to Belgrade to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with French general Louis Franchet d’Espèrey. Franchet d’Espèrey was cordial to Károlyi personally, but treated the delegation with disdain, reacting especially to the presence of Baron Hatvany, a Jew, and to the representative of the Soldiers’ Council.18 The armistice terms were harsh: Hungarian forces were to be withdrawn from most of Transylvania as well as from large portions of southern Hungary; Allied forces were to have the right of passage throughout the country; and Hungary’s army was to be restricted to eight divisions.19 In an apparent oversight that perhaps reflected a lack of knowledge or interest in aviation on the part of Franchet d’Espèrey or his staff, the armistice did not specifically address aircraft, although it did require Hungary to disarm the remnants of its navy and deliver to Belgrade six armored riverboats. (The Italians, having suffered much at the hands of Habsburg pilots in Brandenburg float-planes, insisted at Padua that “all naval aircraft are to be concentrated and immobilized.”)20 After receiving reassurance from Clemenceau that the agreement was strictly a military one—which Károlyi understood to mean that permanent lines of demarcation would be negotiated at the future peace conference—the National Council authorized Linder to sign the armistice. Allied troops, including Serbs and Romanians, contrary to Károlyi’s specific request, immediately occupied the zones vacated by Hungarian forces. Meanwhile, the Czecho-Slovak National Council, dissatisfied with Article 17 of the Belgrade Armistice, the clause that permitted Hungarian administration of historically Hungarian lands, began to intervene militarily to bring disputed areas under Czechoslovak control. Károlyi momentarily abandoned the policy of passive resistance and used force to eject the Czechoslovak troops from Pozsony. Eduard Beneš, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, appealed to the French for assistance, which was promptly supplied in the form of a directive from the Allied Supreme Command for Hungarian evacuation of the contested land. With Article 17 thus rendered inoperative, Hungary’s neighbors no longer felt constrained by the Big Four, and increased pressure on the Hungarian Republic’s frontiers.21 Disarmament continued nonetheless. These actions did not diminish Károlyi’s belief that Hungary would receive justice from the Allies at the peace conference in accordance with Wilsonian ideals of self-determination.
Flying operations continued throughout this time. On November 6, the 1st Air Guard Company’s Lieutenant Viktor Stohrer led a three-ship formation on an “air police” (karhatalmi) mission in the capital area to stop possible looting and agitation, and to drop leaflets encouraging support of the new government. Stohrer was dispatched again on November 8 on reports of civil disturbances, but he found the area calm. Later that day, two other fighters along with one of Szalay’s 2nd Airmail Company planes were sent to Örkény at the request of the Pest County high sheriff ( főispán) for reconnaissance and leaflet drops. One aircraft failed to return from the afternoon missions, but no casualties were reported. The 2nd Company also flew four air police missions on November 10 in Brandenburg C.Is. The situation was somewhat different in Transylvania, where the remnants of two reconnaissance fliks were still flying combat sorties in support of the Székely detachment. On November 7, these planes attacked a meeting of the Romanian National Council in Tusnád, inflicting, by the observers’ accounts, 150 casualties.22 Though the damage report from the Tusnád raid was almost certainly inflated, consideration of the missions flown in the second week of November shows that in the midst of national confusion, the essential components of an air force were present and operable: aircraft were serviced, fueled, and armed; pilots were available for flight; and a command-and-control system functioned sufficiently for requests from proper authorities to be fulfilled. Furthermore, the capital-area air police sorties demonstrated a sophisticated and restrained use of air power, while the operations of the Székely company exhibited initiative and aggressiveness.
Hungarian airmen attempted, sometimes in vain, to keep their aviation stores out of the hands of the Entente. The Defense Ministry’s Aviation Department was active on this front from its inception: on November 6 it sent a lieutenant to Csány airfield with orders to ship the hangars’ contents to Budapest. The following days saw other officers assigned to the same task at Zalaegerszeg, Pándorfalu, and Kolozsvár. These first missions succeeded in salvaging crucial aircraft and parts, but a similar endeavor just days later at Újvidék failed. After being advised that the terms of the Belgrade Armistice would place that airfield, one of the Dual Monarchy’s primary training bases, under Yugoslav control, the Aviation Department planned a large-scale evacuation of its aircraft to Szeged. Serb forces advanced more quickly than expected, however, and occupied Újvidék on November 10, capturing every aircraft on the field with the exception of a 2nd Airmail Company plane that took off minutes before the Serbs arrived. Ninety miles east of Újvidék, Habsburg soldiers of Romanian extraction seized the airfield at Lugos in the name of the Romanian National Council. The station commander, who could muster just eighteen armed Magyars, was unable to offer effective resistance. An episode at Arad proved the air service was not immune from the confusion afflicting the disintegrating Common Army. A second Air Group (Csoportparancsnokság) was to be established there, and the Aviation Department requested the airfield’s current strength. The initial report on November 8 from Major Frigyes Medvey, Arad’s commander, counted twenty-one flyable planes. A more detailed and distressing report came two days later, explaining that, of the seventy machines possessed by the two squadrons at Arad, only seven were serviceable. With the Újvidék debacle in mind, Medvey was ordered to keep a section of aircraft on alert and prepare the rest for shipment by wagon to Szeged.23 In the event, the flying corps did not desert Arad after all, maintaining a presence there until it was occupied by French troops in early January 1919 as part of the buffer zone between Hungarian and Romanian forces.24
After the intense activity in the first weeks of November, the air service settled in to a period of relative calm that lasted until the declaration of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (HSR) in March 1919. In these months the staff continued to oversee flight operations while they also inventoried, refurbished, and distributed equipment, and attended to bureaucratic matters. Since Károlyi remained convinced that diplomacy would eventually reverse the territorial encroachment by Hungary’s neighbors, the flying corps devoted most of its energy to performing reconnaissance, transport, and liaison missions. Szalay’s Airmail Company was especially helpful in the liaison role, as its ability to fly couriers around the country provided the new government with a method of communication that was fast, secure, and fairly reliable. In contrast to the LFT, the air service embraced propaganda operations, dropping leaflets proclaiming the formation of the Hungarian Republic, and even on occasion delivering copies of the socialist daily Népszava to workers in the countryside.25 As technicians made planes airworthy, small detachments stood up at airfields across the country. Units at Arad, Szeged, Szombathely, Kaposvár, Beregszász, Pozsony, and Kecskemét reported ready, although not all were tasked with missions. When the realities of equipment shortages and the shifting demarcation line set in, the Aviation Department gave up on its thirteen-company plan, and instead accepted an eight-company structure, with some companies having detachments at other locations. A streamlined version of this organization, approved in January 1919 and updated in February, formed the basis for the HSR’s flying corps.26 With the border situation deteriorating, Petróczy directed in late February an intermediate organization consisting of six flying squadrons, one assigned to each of the six divisions. The 4th and 5th Squadrons were to be reconstituted with eight aircraft each and were to proceed to the headquarters of the 4th and 5th Divisions in Győr and Miskolc.27
The same material deficiencies that constrained the corps’ size also affected personnel compensation. Pay for airmen was set at 500 koronas for pilots, 400 for observers and technical officers, 300 for engineers, and 100 for unskilled enlisted men. Fliers received monthly bonuses based on the distance of their flights, and pilots and engineers could earn additional pay for keeping the aircraft in good order.28 In prewar terms those were extravagant figures, since Hungary’s per capita gross domestic product in 1913 totaled 435 koronas annually, but inflation had eroded much of the korona’s purchasing power.29 The cost of living was twenty-four times higher in 1919 than in 1913, and the 1919 korona held only 1 percent of its prewar value.30 Nevertheless, the monthly outlay of nearly 1.5 million koronas to pay the flying corps’ 300 officers and 1,000 enlisted men was “a serious burden on the Defense Ministry’s wallet.” 31 The ministry’s commitment to a dependable wage when the rest of the force was under mandatory demobilization indicates a high level of governmental support for the air service. It does not, however, suggest that the flying corps was a mercenary force—the pay was not generous enough for that. As a comparison, the Red Army, not known for extravagant compensation, had to offer common soldiers 450 koronas per month (the pay of a lieutenant colonel in 1907) plus a family supplement in order to increase enlistments in March 1919.32
If money was not the primary motivation, what was? What encouraged men to stay in the air service in spite of danger and deprivation? A feeling of esprit de corps and adventure would surely have been part of the motivation. The reality of aerial combat strips away military aviation’s romantic appeal, but not its fundamental challenge, and it offers a satisfaction and sense of camaraderie that few other activities can match. Prospects for promotion and advancement may also have played a role. Demobilization forced the retirement of all general officers, and the Common Army’s General Staff was dissolved; these vacancies provided opportunities for ambitious airmen to make rank and to enhance the standing of air power within the new Hungarian security establishment.33 But the evidence suggests that the Hungarian airmen were chiefly animated by patriotism.
Although patriotism and nationalism are easily conflated, they can be distinguished. “The former seems to spring from love of home and the desire to protect it, while the latter is inspired by opposition or aversion to persons and things which are strange and unintelligible.”34 And even if some have attributed the birth of modern nationalism to the Magyars’ opposition to Joseph II, and nationalism’s role in Hungarian history in the period 1920–1945 cannot be overstated, the response of Hungarian airmen to the crises of 1919 is better explained by the desire to protect their homeland than by opposition to any other nationalities. They voiced no objection to Oszkár Jászi’s plan for a Danubian Confederation or to Béla Kun’s internationalist vision. Indeed, the best testimony of the airmen’s patriotism is the constancy of their service under widely divergent governments. The same men who joined the Habsburg LFT flew under the flag of the bourgeois Hungarian Republic, the HSR, and finally the Kingdom of Hungary. There were no purges or large-scale defections. With the single exception of Ernő Szalay, who was killed in a crash on March 13, the air companies’ commanders in the first order of battle issued by the Aviation Department of the People’s Committee for War (Hadügyi Népbiztosság Légügyi Osztálya) matched exactly the last one published by Károlyi’s Defense Ministry. The only apparent concession to communist ideals was the substitution of proletárkatona (proletarian soldier) for százados (captain) and főhadnagy (lieutenant).35 Perhaps more striking is that nearly all of those leaders retained their positions under Admiral Miklós Horthy’s counterrevolutionary government.36
This was true to some lesser degree for the land force as well, as Red Army officers “merged almost completely into the National Army,” though in some cases their careers were monitored more closely as a result of their Red Army service.37 Not all Red Army officers were accepted by the National Army; some were imprisoned and others were forced to retire or accept demotion.38 For most, however, service with the Red Army did not stunt career progression in the regent’s armed forces, and some reached the highest levels of leadership: of the thirty-five lieutenant generals (tábornok) in the 1938–1945 Hungarian Army, fifteen had served in the Red Army.39 Reconciliation of that degree argues strongly for the officer corps’ dedication to national defense. The majority of officers who left the Red Army for the Szeged Whites did so only after Béla Kun ordered the army to withdraw from Upper Hungary, a “fatal strategic and tactical mistake” that led to widespread desertions.40 While common soldiers might have fought “to defend the new society, and not the old frontiers,” officers felt much the opposite, questioning the need to defend a Soviet republic that would sacrifice Hungarian territory.41 In the aftermath of the retreat, both War Minister Vilmos Böhm and Chief of Staff Aurél Stromfeld resigned in protest.42 Stromfeld revealed the strength of his conviction in a diary entry addressed to his recently deceased sister: “You, a fanatical lover of the Hungarian fatherland, you now lie in foreign soil [Czechoslovakia]. Was I not right to have tried to prevent this?”43 The resignations and desertions were not caused by disillusionment with communist ideology or even battlefield losses (although those were soon coming), but rather because many soldiers no longer believed that the Kun regime was willing or able to defend the country’s borders. This realization was felt as a betrayal by a pair of officers who joined the Red Army for explicitly patriotic reasons, which they later related to a historian: “Even if we start into battle under red flags, by the time we reach the Carpathians our colors will be red-white-green!”44 A former Red Army political commissar acknowledged in a posthumous article decades later that “the Red Army was in essence a Hungarian army: it was defending against foreign attacks.”45
If the airmen of the Hungarian Red Flying Corps (Vörös Repülőcsapat, VR) and Red Army officers were motivated largely by patriotism and not revolutionary fervor, what was the nature of their obligation to the successive administrations in Budapest? It seems that the Hungarian officer corps exhibited conditional loyalty to the governments of the revolutionary period. A regime earned the officer corps’ support and service to the extent that it defended Hungary, and that support was liable to be withdrawn. It can be argued that conditional loyalty is no loyalty at all—a government that must take into account the desires of its armed forces in formulating security policy is the servant, not the master. But that view reduces a nation to nothing more than its government. Such an idea would have been foreign to Habsburg officers, who pledged fealty to the emperor, and not to a particular combination of ministers, and its Hungarian successors carried on the concept, with the integrity of historic Hungary standing in place of the monarch. In Western democracies the situation is little different: British and American officers, then as now, swear allegiance not to governments but to the Crown and Constitution respectively. The HSR benefited from officer corps’ willingness to transfer allegiance from one government to another in March 1919, just as it suffered in June and July when the retreat from Felvidék undermined its legitimacy. The Hungarian officer corps was professional, but that did not mean it was apolitical. Habsburg officers had seemed so only because of their close identification with the person of Franz Josef. Once the empire dissolved and revolution ensued, the officer corps’ conservatism stood out in stark contrast, being no longer part of the background, but having a shape and color of its own. Nevertheless, most of the officers suppressed any personal dissatisfaction about the particularities of their new governments’ domestic agendas, and when permitted, served faithfully and bravely. A minority of restorationist and committed anticommunist officers began plotting against the revolutions, first in Vienna and later in French-controlled Szeged.
The HSR came into being on March 21, 1919, following the crisis brought about by the Allies’ demand that Hungarian forces in the east withdraw some 60 miles further west, thereby ceding several thousand square miles to Romania.46 The Entente, anticipating a large-scale invasion of Soviet Russia, wanted to secure eastern Hungary as a base of its operations.47 Károlyi believed the new lines to be final political decisions, and concluded that the Allies had finally and completely abrogated the terms of the Belgrade Armistice.48 His government, whose legitimacy rested in large part on the assumption that it could garner goodwill and fair treatment from the Entente, was paralyzed. Nationalist members of the cabinet “could not accept the responsibility of giving up such extensive territories before the Peace Treaty was signed,” but the party was too weak to command the country in resistance to the ultimatum.49 The government therefore rejected the Allied demand as relayed by French lieutenant colonel Vix and immediately resigned. Károlyi remained head of state, and he asked the Social Democrats, who had the support of the trade unions (the best organized and functioning segment of Hungarian life at the time), to form a government that would seek help from the Soviet Union. They agreed, but entered without Károlyi’s knowledge into power-sharing negotiations with the communists, whose leader, a journalist and former prisoner of war named Béla Kun, was still in jail for his role in a communist-inspired mob attack on the Social Democrat paper Népszava.50 Later that evening, believing it was still in his power to do so, Károlyi appointed the centrist socialist Zsigmond Kunfi prime minister. In fact, the Workers’ Council had already effectively seized power. Károlyi was notified of this when his secretary asked him to sign a prepared document in which he resigned and turned power over to the Hungarian workers. He refused, but was informed that the morning papers had already printed his resignation, and that posters proclaiming a dictatorship of the proletariat were appearing all over the capital. Feeling that clinging to power would incite a civil war, Károlyi retired to the Buda hills.51
On the morning of March 22, 1919, thirty-three “people’s commissars” convened the first Revolutionary Governing Council (Forradalmi Kormányzótanács) of the new state—the Magyarországi Szocialista Szövetséges Tanácsköztársaság (HSR).52 The Social Democrat Sándor Garbai was elected president of the council, but Kun, as the people’s commissariat of foreign affairs, was wholly in control of it.53 Although the March 21 manifesto had declared “complete ideological unity with the Soviet government” and offered “the proletariat of Russia a military alliance,” Kun immediately sent Károlyi on a mission to Vienna to open negotiations with the Entente. Károlyi was to pledge that the Hungarian Soviet forces would not join with the Russian Red Army and would not spread revolution abroad. In return, the Allies should hold plebiscites in the disputed territories and provide Hungary with food aid.54 Nothing came of the Károlyi mission, but the Entente, now keenly interested in Hungarian matters but deluged with conflicting reports, did send a mission of its own to Budapest, led by the South African lieutenant general Jan Smuts. Smuts offered Kun some concessions, namely an adjustment to the Vix lines in Hungary’s favor, and acknowledgment that further changes could be possible. Kun submitted a counteroffer, demanding a conference of Hungary’s neighbors to discuss territorial and economic matters. Smuts, who had been charged with presenting the Entente’s position and who was not authorized to negotiate further, left Budapest the next day. In his report to the Entente, Smuts supported Kun’s idea of a regional conference and suggested that the economic blockade be lifted once the Hungarians accepted the new demarcation lines. “Paris was not too interested in his propositions but paid close attention to his conclusion: Hungary truly had an essentially Bolshevik government.”55 With this established, the French army command continued its preparations for a military intervention. Czechoslovak and Yugoslav units were not ready for action, so the invasion was left to the Romanians.56
The March 24, 1919, order from the Aviation Department of the People’s Committee for War was the foundational document for the VR. After a brief summary of the events that led to the establishment of the HSR, the order declared “the entire flying formation stands in the service of the new Red Army, and is placed in a state of war.”57 It accepted as the VR’s current order of battle the earlier flying corps organization, with eight operational flying companies at eight airfields. This order established capital air defense procedures and instructions for maintaining telephonic contact with Air HQ. The Aviation Department warned that Budapest’s industrial areas could come under air attack at any time, and it therefore instituted an aerial observation zone extending in a semicircle from the capital 60 miles south. The order also detailed air raid alarm procedures. The entire force was directed to respond to unknown inbound aircraft; the Aviation Department specified a dedicated telephone line for the signal; and it instructed observers to note the intruders’ type, number, flight direction, location, and estimated time over Budapest. Finally, it set expectations for air alert postures. Each company and detachment was to have one aircraft and crew on thirty-minute alert status from 07:00 until twilight. Companies in Budapest, Szeged, and Debrecen were required to have an additional plane and crew ready to take off within ninety minutes daily from 08:00 until 17:00.58
Eventually the air defense system around the capital incorporated AAA. The first emplacements, sited on hills overlooking Budapest and near the Rákosmező airfield, comprised discarded Model 75 90-millimeter cannon. Air defense efforts intensified after hostilities began in April. The formation of the Budapest Air Defense Artillery Command in May 1919 brought order to the ground-based defense and extended the AAA coverage to a few batteries guarding the Csepel Island arms manufacturing plants. The Csepel batteries were armed with the more modern 76-millimeter guns capable of firing 10–15 rounds per minute with a maximum range of 12,000 feet.59 By early summer 1919, the 43rd Artillery Regiment was established as an antiaircraft unit with five batteries, the fifth and newest protecting the western industrial city of Győr. In July, concern about night bombardment led to seven searchlight sections being deployed on strategic hills and rail lines around Budapest. Concentration of the few medium-caliber AAA pieces meant that ground-based air defense in the field consisted primarily of rifles and machine guns.60
The HSR had a three-week respite from the time of its founding until war began. While Kun met with Smuts, the Red Army tried to fill its ranks with proletarian soldiers. An air staff order on April 8 changed the VR’s structure. The flying companies were redesignated as squadrons and given new numbers. Squadrons 1 through 7 (now at Kaposvár, Albertfalva, Rákosmező, Győr, Kecskemét, Békéscsaba, and Debrecen) took operational orders from the 1st through 6th Infantry Divisions and the Székely detachment.61 Air HQ retained responsibility for training, supplying, and staffing these units. Control of the 8th Squadron (László Háry’s fighter unit based at Mátyásföld) remained with Air HQ, but the 9th Squadron at Csepel Island (István Wollemann’s float-plane fighters) was placed under the Warship HQ.62 This reorganization was in part a reversion to the early days of military aviation, and stood in contrast to the general trend in the West toward centralized control of air power. A return to a field aviation model was not, however, an unreasonable response to conditions. Since the VR’s primary mission was conducting reconnaissance in support of land forces, physical proximity and organizational subordination to those forces maximized effectiveness. Consolidation of aircraft in a single area under Air HQ control would have eased the VR’s supply problem and might have put more planes in the air, but this advantage would have been offset to some degree by the increase in flight time to the front, and the coordination required between air and ground units that were no longer colocated. The relative merits of centralized versus distributed air power would be debated for years to come in professional journals and defense committees around the world, including in Hungary, but there is no evidence that this particular solution to the problem was controversial. The Aviation Commission’s arrangement gave control of the capital defense force (8th Squadron’s single-seat fighters) to Air HQ, while ensuring that army formations around the country could count on aerial reconnaissance assets that were available and responsive, if limited in number.
When the Romanian army attacked across the broad eastern front on April 16, the nine squadrons of the VR had a programmed strength of seventy-eight aircraft. The exact number of aircraft available on that day is unclear, but since only the Békéscsaba and Debrecen squadrons were engaged (the others being kept on defensive duty around the rest of the country), the figure could not have exceeded fourteen, and based on later, more exact tallies, was probably closer to the six that the 5th and 7th Squadrons reported as serviceable on April 19. Pilots and observers of all ranks, including those in command and staff billets, numbered 317. Romanian air support came from the three squadrons of Grupul 5, which should have fielded thirty aircraft, but had in actuality only a dozen, primarily Sopwith and Nieuport machines.63 The roughly two-to-one advantage enjoyed by Grupul 5 extended to the infantry, which fielded sixty-four regiments against thirty-five Hungarian battalions, and the Romanian edge in artillery and cavalry was even greater.64 Benefits that normally accrue to the defenders, including prepared positions, shorter interior lines, and the incentive of fighting for one’s own land, seem to have accounted for little in this case, and the Hungarians were defeated across the front. Their army had been deliberately neglected under Károlyi, communist political agitation had caused dissension in the ranks, and discipline was lax. The Red Army’s recruitment drive had added 20,000 soldiers in ten days, and communist volunteers arrived from other countries (1,200 from Austria), but the reinforcements could not be fielded in time to stop the Romanian advance.65
Due to the chaotic retreat of the Hungarian forces, the VR contributed very little in this first round of fighting. Its crews conducted reconnaissance missions, but the information proved of small value to forces that were already under constant pressure. The Romanians’ rapid advance forced the Debrecen squadron to flee to Mátyásföld on April 23. At first only a single UFAG/MARE C.I escaped, but the following morning a second machine made it out, getting airborne just as Romanian cavalry fired on the field.
Grupul 5 airmen, like their Hungarian counterparts, had before the invasion mostly flown reconnaissance and propaganda missions—in this case, scattering leaflets to encourage ethnic Romanians to rise up against the Magyar authorities. After hostilities commenced, Romanian airmen continued reconnaissance activities, but also intervened directly in the ground war, conducting low-level attacks on retreating Hungarian columns and bombing the airfield at Nagyszalonta. Due to the small numbers of planes involved on both sides, opposing airmen rarely encountered each other and there are no reports of air-to-air combat. One VR two-seater did make a forced landing behind Romanian lines, after which the crew was captured and the aircraft was repaired and pressed into service by the Romanians.66 Red Army troops fell back throughout the last week of April, and by May 1 Romanian forces were established along the entire eastern bank of the Tisza River. The next day Kun sought a ceasefire, and under pressure from the Entente, Romania agreed.
Even in the midst of battlefield setbacks the HSR observed official communist May Day celebrations, and the VR had a role. One VR pilot recalled flying low over the Danube, around the Vár, and above the Vérmező, where he saw thousands of people. He and his flight mates buzzed the crowd: “We arrived unexpectedly, which surprised the celebrating masses, and we flew so low that at the same time everybody stood looking in fascination at our airplanes.”67
The republic’s leaders were shocked at the ease with which the Romanians had defeated their army. Vilmos Böhm, the Social Democrat leader of the five-member People’s Committee for War, had earlier recalled to active service Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, and now Böhm appointed him chief of staff and charged him with revitalizing the Red Army. Stromfeld, also a Social Democrat, was a gifted former Habsburg General Staff officer who had resigned his post in February 1919 after a five-week army recruiting campaign that was expected to return 70,000 soldiers yielded only 5,000.68 Fortunately, the reality of the April 16 invasion had encouraged enlistment in a way that the mere threat of it in February had not, so Stromfeld’s immediate problem was not a lack of soldiers, but rather poor leadership. Recruiting materials began to address directly former Habsburg officers, appealing openly to nationalist sentiment. Leaflets that weeks earlier cried out to “Proletariat soldiers! Comrades!” now implored “Commanders! Former officers! … We trust you!” Claims that workers who did not “rush enthusiastically and resolutely” to the recruiting office were not real communists or socialists were replaced by references to “thieving Romanian boyar occupying forces” (román bojárok rabló csapatai tartanak megszállva).69 No longer barred from service because of class distinctions, former officers, over half of whom came from territories presently occupied by the Entente, joined the Red Army by the hundreds.70 Their combat experience, planning expertise, and steady leadership were crucial to the Red Army’s success in the northern campaign. With professional officers in charge, the fifty battalions of Jenő Landler’s III Corps regained over 1,100 square miles of Upper Hungary in three weeks.71 Stromfeld also introduced measures to streamline unity of command and effort, including the creation of an army high command (Hadsereg főparancsnokság [HFP]) to exercise operational control of all Red forces.72
As the chief of staff exerted more influence over the Red Army as a whole, the General Staff started to task the VR squadrons more directly, and the division-based system weakened. On May 8, the HFP issued detailed reconnaissance mission orders that allocated the 1st, 4th, and 5th Squadrons to I and II Corps, left the 3rd Squadron assigned to its division, and kept the 2nd, 6th, 7th, and 8th Squadrons to itself for tasking. The next day, the HFP created an air group from the last four squadrons. This arrangement did not affect the other units, and on May 16, the 8th Squadron was assigned to III Corps. The movement of squadron alignment from division to corps was formalized in a May 28 order from the People’s War Committee. In the last major structural change in the VR, control of the flying units (all now honored with “Red” in their names, and the single-seat units designated as fighter squadrons) was returned to the Air HQ, with operational command delegated to the army corps.73 The exact rationale for this series of decisions is unclear, but it fits the trend of increased centralization across the HSR armed forces as the competence of commanders and staffs grew and the disorder of the retreat subsided. Acquisition authority still resided with the Aviation Department, and on May 24 it proposed production targets to aircraft manufacturers. The suggested output was twenty aircraft per month: ten from MARE, six from MÁG, and four from Lloyd. That rate of production, it calculated, would allow complete replacement of five ten-plane squadrons per quarter, after accounting for the diversion of ten aircraft to training schools.74 The next quarter’s production figures are not available, but from November 1918 to August 1919 Hungarian factories turned out 123 aircraft.75
On the evening of May 19, the Red Army launched an offensive against Czechoslovakia. The regime judged the Czechoslovak army to be the weakest of the occupying forces; the Felvidék counties of Nógrád and Borsod were rich in manufacturing capacity; and the industrialized Czech lands appeared ripe for a proletarian revolution.76 If successful, the invasion would reclaim part of Upper Hungary, establish a Slovak Soviet Republic, and overthrow the imperialist regime in Prague. Kun timed the operation to coincide with a planned uprising in Vienna, and he hoped that HSR troops would link up with the Russian Red Army attacking across Bessarabia. The Austrian rising fizzled and the Russian cavalry never arrived. Landler’s III Corps acquitted itself well, however, and captured Miskolc on the morning of May 21.77 This victory energized his soldiers and in less than three weeks they routed the Czech army.
Hungarian airmen played a bigger role in the northern campaign than they had in the April fighting against Romania. They conducted reconnaissance sorties before and during the invasion, attacked Czechoslovak ground forces, and served in the liaison role. One event brings to mind the 1911 autumn maneuvers in the Pilis mountains. On the first day of the advance, counterattacking Czechoslovak forces had cut off the 3rd Division’s 80th International Brigade in Salgótarján. The division immediately dispatched a crew from the 3rd Squadron, who dropped instructions to the brigade to turn south to envelop the Czechoslovaks.78 Some aerial attacks were made in close support of infantry (the method of coordination between air and ground is not recorded), but most targets seem to have been on fixed sites or along lines of communications. Armored trains fit in the last category, and they were perhaps the best-defended asset on the battlefield. Two 8th Squadron airmen were killed and Mátyás Bernárd, the new commander of the 7th Squadron, was seriously wounded during an attack on an armored train on May 29. Even the float-planes of the 9th Squadron saw action, supporting the river monitor operations and bombing an artillery battery in Komárom.79 Counterrevolutionary river monitors became the targets of the VR on at least one occasion, when on June 24 the 8th Squadron was ordered to bomb gunships manned by anti-Kun forces that had attacked targets along the capital’s riverbanks.80
The Czechoslovak air force was manned, like the VR, by pilots from the LFT. Unlike Hungary, Czechoslovakia did not have its own defense establishment under the Dual Monarchy. There were, of course, regiments raised from the Czech and Slovak lands, but they did not match the number of Magyars in the Common Army, and there was no home guard or staff equivalent of the Honvédség.81 On the other hand, Czechoslovakia enjoyed substantial support from the Entente, including eventually the direct intervention of a French squadron. Although Czechoslovakian airmen planned for an eighty-two-plane force of six squadrons, in December 1918 they had only eighteen serviceable machines in two squadrons. In early February the number was down to seven, but they added four flyable reconnaissance planes later that month with the capture of the Hungarian airfield at Kassa. Czechoslovak forces flew fifty-nine combat sorties during the northern campaign. The French unit attached to them, a mixed squadron of Breguet and Salmson reconnaissance bombers and SPAD fighters, flew more than a hundred missions and provided excellent support to the ground forces, but did not change the outcome of the campaign.82
The Hungarian attack on Czechoslovakia was a tactical and operational success, but a strategic failure. The Red Army decisively defeated the enemy forces, reclaimed a thousand square miles of territory, and established a friendly revolutionary government in rump Slovakia. But Kun eventually gave in to Entente pressure to pull out of Slovakia, after securing a promise for a reciprocal Romanian retreat from the Tisza. Romania did not comply with the deal made in its name, and Hungary’s voluntary withdrawal did irreparable harm to the Red Army. “The governing council’s decision fundamentally broke the morale of the troops ordered back to Hungary.”83 Its top leaders resigned, there was an unsuccessful coup attempt, and the counterrevolutionary National Army became a more hospitable place for noncommunist patriots. The chaos threatened the existence of the HSR, and for that reason the committed internationalist Kun ordered the Red Army to prepare to eject the Romanian army. Universal conscription, made necessary by desertions and refused orders, was introduced on July 12. In some divisions the situation resembled the last weeks of the First World War. Nevertheless, Jenő Landler and Ferenc Julier, the new commander in chief and chief of staff, planned the offensive, which began on July 20. The Hungarians had some success early and managed a few bridgeheads on the east side of the Tisza, but the success was short-lived. On the fourth day Romanian reserves arrived. They pushed the Red Army back and eventually forced the river. From July 31, defeat turned to catastrophe. Julier reported that the troops “did not want to fight any more at any price.”84 That same day Kun received Lenin’s response to his telegram for help. Lenin allowed that he would like to help his Magyar friends, but his own poverty of armed force precluded it.85 Kun correctly apprehended the situation and the following day he addressed the Budapest Workers’ Council, declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat had collapsed, and fled to Austria on a special train. On August 4, 1919, Romanian troops entered Budapest.
Air operations on the eastern front had intensified well before the ground offensive was launched in late July. Both sides conducted reconnaissance flights as well as defensive fighter sorties. On the morning of June 12, two 8th Fighter Squadron pilots recorded the first air-to-air victory for a national Hungarian air force. Géza Keisz and László Újváry were scrambled on reports of a Romanian observation plane in the vicinity of Miskolc. They caught the plane, a captured UFAG C.I in Romanian colors, headed toward the demarcation line southeast of Miskolc. Keisz and Újváry chased it to 300 feet before Újváry, an Italian front ace, shot it down. Both Grupul 5 airmen were killed. Three days later another 8th Fighter Squadron pilot, József Kretz, scored a victory on the northern front. Kretz, flying an Aviatik D.I, shot down a Breguet bomber that was attempting to bomb Győr.86
For the July offensive, four squadrons (2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 8th), comprising twenty-four aircraft, were available to the VR. Grupul 5 had three squadrons, and on July 20 could field seventeen airplanes—ten fighters and seven two-seaters, of which eight were Hungarian machines captured on airfields or after forced landings. At the end of the fighting, only six Grupul 5 planes were serviceable. France tried to assist the Romanian air force by sending twenty Breguet bombers, but of the first eight deliveries, only two reached the front; the others crashed due to bad weather or the inexperience of their Romanian crews.87 As in April, the length of the front (150 miles) divided by the number of aircraft engaged (perhaps twenty on both sides in a day) gave a very low aircraft density, and therefore few opportunities for dogfights. Reconnaissance was the primary mission of both forces. But some squadrons, including the VR’s 5th at Kecskemét, which received in late June two new Brandenburg C. Is and three refurbished Anatra trainers, managed a number of ground attack sorties. They broke up a Romanian column near Szentes on July 21, and the following day three squadron aircraft supported the Red Army in the same area with bombs (most likely 25-pound devices) and strafing attacks.88 On July 31, the last day of organized resistance, 2nd Squadron crews, also flying from Kecskemét, bombed bridges on the Tisza to slow the Romanian advance.89
The VR maintained its cohesion until the end, with no signs of the dissension that corrupted the ground component of the Red Army. Airplanes eventually have to land, however, and when the Red Army no longer could provide the VR secure airstrips, it ceased to be an effective combat force. In the aftermath of the Romanian occupation, it nearly ceased to be a force at all. When Romanian troops captured Kecskemét, all eight of the remaining 2nd and 5th Squadron aircraft were seized. The same fate befell the 6th Squadron, which had packed its equipment on rail cars and fled. The unit made it as far as Gödöllő before the being caught. The newly created 10th Squadron’s eight Berg fighters never left the factory at Rákosmező. Ninth Squadron had only two W.29s remaining, but they too were captured. Elements of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 8th Squadrons managed to escape to Transdanubia, and these aircraft formed the basis for the brief pre-Trianon national air force.90
Figure 2.2. A VR Phönix C.I nosed over on the Mátyásföld airfield outside Budapest, June 1919. Courtesy of Dénes Bernád.
White forces in Szeged had created a paper squadron four months earlier and had offered 5,000 koronas for any pilot who defected with an airplane, but there were no takers. A later plan called for a five-squadron force that included an Austrian detachment to support the counterrevolutionary Lehár group. A party was dispatched to Vienna to secure thirty airplanes from the Liquidation Commission, but this attempt was blocked by the ruling Social Democrats’ boycott on the transfer of arms to the Whites.91 Therefore the flying corps prepared for the reoccupation of Budapest with the handful of aircraft saved from the Romanians.
The Defense Ministry reorganized the 37th Section on August 22, 1919, and officially established the National Army Flying Corps on October 12. Lieutenant Colonel István Petróczy was tasked to lead the thirteen officers of the 37th Section.92 At the head of the Flying Corps was Major Artúr Bogyay, Hangay’s deputy in the Károlyi-era service and later the commander of the 1st Air Group. Subordinate units included squadrons at Szeged, Szombathely, and Budapest, with a detachment at Siófok. The Szeged squadrons had approximately fifteen officers and eighty enlisted men, and shared the three operable aircraft. Vince Martinek, commander of the 5th Squadron at Szeged in the VR, commanded the new training squadron there. At Szombathely, László Háry led the remains of the 8th Fighter Squadron: sixteen officers, thirteen noncommissioned officers, fifty-five men and five (later two) aircraft. József Steiner, also a VR Air Group commander, headed the Budapest squadron, which existed only in its hundred or so personnel—it had no aircraft at all. There were very few missions in those days. An airmail route between Siófok and Szeged was established, as was a standing flight from Szeged to Székesfehérvár.93 In spite of the desultory pace of flying, losses still occurred. A medical report indicates that Hugó Matzenauer, then the commander of the 5th Squadron, had a hard landing on August 14 that completely destroyed the airplane and left Matzenauer sidelined for two months with broken ribs.94 In mid-November there was a return to reconnaissance, air police, and propaganda sorties. A four-ship formation of fighters was dispatched to reconnoiter the city and its environs, monitor the Romanian army’s withdrawal, and to stand ready to attack in support of the National Army if required. The Romanian pullout complete, the flying corps scattered White leaflets along the capital’s main boulevards and accompanied the National Army’s procession.95
The twenty months from the end of the First World War until the acceptance of the Treaty of Trianon helped shape the Hungarian air force for years to come. Magyar airmen learned that they could rely on their comrades to remain loyal and disciplined whatever the political orientation of their leaders. They grew in their appreciation for the contributions of air power, but understood its limitations and relationship to ground forces. And they expected that flight operations had to be conducted in spite of austere surroundings and minimal technical support. These lessons, first derived from their experiences in the Habsburg air service, were subsequently reinforced in the revolutionary period, and would inform operations in 1941–1945 as well.
NOTES
1. A few words about “patriotism” and “professionalism”: I do not use these terms to express approval (that is, as synonyms for “good”) but rather because the evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of airmen served Hungary regardless of the government’s ideological orientation, and that they exhibited the traits of a professional armed force. Samuel Huntington, for example, listed expertise, responsibility, and corporateness as professional hallmarks in The Soldier and the State (pp. 8–10). The Hungarian air service, like the Habsburg force from which it descended, met these criteria. Huntington’s analysis of what defines a modern officer corps is useful, although his later discussions of civil-military relations and objective control are not relevant.
2. The Austrian Landwehr and Hungarian Honvédség were the national land defense components of the Dual Monarchy’s armed forces. Magyar was the language of command in the Honvédség.
3. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 109. The authors do not offer a reference for this claim.
4. Deák, Beyond Nationalism, p. 4.
5. Centripetal/centrifugal paradigm: Oszkár Jászi, cited in Cole and Unowsky, Limits of Loyalty, p. 2. Opposition to nationalism: Deák, Beyond Nationalism, p. 183.
6. In 1910, Hungarians made up 19.6% of the Imperial population, 23.1% of the Common Army’s rank and file, 23.7% of reserve officers, but only 9.3% of career officers. See Stone, “Army and Society,” p. 99; and Deák, Beyond Nationalism, pp. 179–183. Deák questions the accuracy of the ethnic calculations based on the accounting criteria, and thinks minorities among career officers may have identified as German due to their self-reported daily language.
7. Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, pp. 127, 146. Deák found that Magyar officers born in Hungary advanced faster than any other nationality (including Germans), and eight Honvéd officers were admitted to each general staff school course without having to take the admission exam.
8. There seems to be no significance to the section’s number: Section 36 was given to People’s Uprising, and 38 was for Equine Affairs.
9. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 504.
10. Morrow, German Air Power, p. 182.
11. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 504.
12. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 122.
13. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 506.
14. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 110–113.
15. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” p. 614.
16. Károlyi, Memoirs, p. 102.
17. Farkas, “Military Collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,” p. 20.
18. Károlyi, Memoirs, p. 130.
19. Text of Belgrade Armistice in Krizman, “Belgrade Armistice of 13 November 1918,” pp. 85–87.
20. See “Armistice Convention with Austria-Hungary … November 3, 1918.”
21. Pastor, Hungary between Wilson and Lenin, pp. 65, 69. The Czechoslovak incursion on November 9 forced Linder to resign. He signed in Belgrade as minister without portfolio and ambassador at large.
22. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 115–117.
23. Ibid.
24. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” p. 607.
25. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 120.
26. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” pp. 606, 619.
27. HL HM Eln. 5141/37.-1919.
28. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” pp. 506–507.
29. Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, p. 29.
30. Nötel, “International Credit and Finance,” 2:178, 193.
31. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 506.
32. 450 korona per month: Liptai, A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg harcai, p. 55. Lieutenant colonel’s pay in 1907: Deák, Beyond Nationalism, p. 119.
33. Szakály, “Officer Corps of the Red Army,” pp. 170–172.
34. Chadwick, Nationalities of Europe and the Growth of National Ideologies, p. 3.
35. “A Hadügyi Népbiztosság Légügyi Osztálya intézkedik a repülőalakulatok hadiállapotba helyezéséről és a legfontosabb feladatokról, 1919 március 24,” in A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg 1919, pp. 85–86.
36. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 128, 143.
37. Szakály, “Officer Corps of the Red Army,” p. 175.
38. Ibid.
39. Romsics, “Social Basis of the Communist Revolution,” p. 160.
40. Tőkés, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, p. 200.
41. Hajdú, Hungarian Soviet Republic, p. 143.
42. Gosztony, “Collapse of the Hungarian Red Army,” p. 70.
43. Balogh, “Nationality Problems,” p. 114.
44. Quoted in Gosztony, “Collapse of the Hungarian Red Army,” p. 76.
45. Ibid. The commissar in question was the Marxist philosopher György Lukács; the article was published in Élet és Irodalom in May 1975.
46. 60 miles west: Hajdu, “Revolution, Counterrevolution, Consolidation,” p. 302; several thousand square miles: Károlyi, Memoirs, p. 152.
47. Romsics, Hungary in 20th Century, p. 98.
48. Károlyi, Memoirs, p. 152. Vix denied having stated that the boundaries represented a final decision. Bryan Cartledge in Will to Survive says the evidence that he did so is “compelling” (p. 307).
49. Károlyi, Memoirs, pp. 153–154.
50. Cartledge, Will to Survive, p. 306.
51. Károlyi, Memoirs, pp. 154–158; and Pastor, Between Wilson and Lenin, p. 143.
52. Tőkés, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, p. 137.
53. Cartledge, Will to Survive, p. 309.
54. Pastor, Between Wilson and Lenin, p. 145.
55. Hajdu, “Revolution,” p. 304. Károlyi wrote of Smuts’s offer: “These amazingly favorable conditions should have been accepted without delay.”
56. Romsics, Hungary in 20th Century, p. 105.
57. “A Népbiztosság Légügyi Osztálya intézkedik,” pp. 85–87.
58. Ibid.
59. Deployment: Czirók, “Az első légiháború Magyarország fellett-1919,” p. 338. 76-millimeter capability: Barczy and Sárhidai, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség Légvédelme, p. 10.
60. Czirók, “Első légiháború Magyarország felett,” pp. 338–339.
61. Liptai, Magyar Vörös Hadsereg harcai, 73; and Csizmarik, “Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Légiereje,” pp. 355–357.
62. Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 510. Liptai places the float-planes also under Air HQ control, but Gellért’s account accords with Nagyváradi et al.’s contention that 9th Squadron largely supported riverine operations (Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 136).
63. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” pp. 620–627.
64. Fogarassy, “Eastern Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army,” pp. 36–37.
65. Liptai, Magyar Vörös Hadsereg harcai, pp. 64, 70.
66. Bernád, “A Román Királyi Légierő első magyarországi hadjárata,” pp. 32–34.
67. Horváth, “Visszaemlékezés” (HL Tgy 3.643), pp. 17–18.
68. Vermes, “October Revolution in Hungary,” p. 54.
69. A Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Röplapjai, pp. 35, 84, 163, 250.
70. Szakály, “Officer Corps of the Red Army,” p. 172.
71. Gosztony, “Collapse of the Red Army,” p. 69.
72. Csizmarik, “Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Légiereje,” p. 355.
73. Ibid., pp. 361–362; Gellért, “Adalékok a magyar történetéhez,” p. 511.
74. “A Hadügyi Népbiztosság Légügyi Osztályának előterjesztése a repülőgépgyártásról,” in A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg 1919, pp. 265–266.
75. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” p. 616.
76. Balogh, “Nationality Problems,” p. 114.
77. Hetés, “Northern Campaign of the Hungarian Red Army,” p. 56.
78. “A 3. Hadosztályparancsnokság repülőgépről ledobott parancsában utasítja a salgótarjánnál bekerített csapatokat déli irányú támadásra,” in A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg 1919, p. 287.
79. Csizmarik, “Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Légiereje,” p. 381; and Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 135.
80. Horváth, “Visszaemlékezés,” p. 27.
81. Of every 1,000 men in the Habsburg army, 223 were Magyars, 135 Czechs, and 38 Slovaks. Rothenberg, “Habsburg Army in the First World War,” p. 74.
82. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” pp. 624–625. The Société Pour L’Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) was a successful French aircraft manufacturing consortium during the First World War.
83. Gosztony, “Collapse of the Red Army,” p. 69.
84. Ibid., pp. 71–73.
85. “Lenin távirata Kun Bélához a kért katonai segítség ügyében,” in A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg 1919, pp. 481–482.
86. Bernád, “A Román Királyi Légierő első magyarországi hadjárata,” p. 37.
87. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” pp. 625–626.
88. Kenyeres, Kecskeméti katonai repülés története kezdetektől a Gripenig, pp. 19–21.
89. Csizmarik, “Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Légiereje,” pp. 385–386.
90. Bernád, “A Román Királyi Légierő első magyarországi hadjárata,” pp. 40–41.
91. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 142.
92. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. I/24.
93. Czirók, “A magyar repülőcsapatok,” pp. 630–631.
94. HL HM Eln. 16385/37.-1919.
95. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 142–143.
