Figure 3.1. The entrance to the Szombathely airfield. The MAEFORT sign hangs under the military crest. Photo: Fortepan/Dezső Szent-Istvány.
Evasion: 1920–1927
EVEN AS NATIONAL ARMY FLYING CORPS’ AIRPLANES, each with a black-lettered “H” painted over the VR’s red star, circled the parliament building during Admiral Horthy’s triumphant parade on November 16, 1919, the Hungarian fliers knew the Corps’ days were numbered. Germany had signed the Treaty of Versailles in June, Austria the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in September, and both treaties required the vanquished countries to dismantle their air forces. Hungarian airmen expected to fare no better. Before the terms of the treaty were given the Aviation Department had declared its intention to preserve a national air service in spite of possible legal restrictions. For most of the next decade however, Hungary’s military weakness, economic dependency, and diplomatic isolation prevented the airmen from defying the Allies directly. Instead they practiced subterfuge and obfuscation, attempting to disguise prohibited military activity as commercial or sport flight, while at the same time doing all they could to promote the growth of legitimate civilian aviation endeavors. This same pattern of resistance—protest the conditions, then pretend to accept them while working to prevent their implementation—was employed by the army as well as the Foreign and Finance Ministries to minimize the adverse effects of the Treaty of Trianon.
The foundation for resistance to the treaty by Hungarian airmen was laid in a memorandum circulated in late September 1919. This memo contained both analysis and prescription, first describing the anticipated effects of the peace treaty and then offering a proposal to circumvent the air clauses:
After assuming that the Hungarian peace treaty will agree in large measure with the Austrian, we have to count on the complete destruction of Hungarian military aviation (a magyar aviatika teljes megsemmisítésével). And this means an even greater loss for the Hungarian National Army being formed against the victor states’ forces, since everywhere we see the enormous development of aviation as the armed forces’ third branch, along with the land and naval forces. The explanation for this large-scale expansion of aviation in the modern armed force lies in the experience of the war, when the flying corps became the army’s most important factor, without which not only will the army leaders be practically blind, but the infantry and artillery will also be incapable of accomplishing their missions.
The 37th Section, as Hungarian military aviation’s chief responsible directing organization, wants to fulfill its duty by calling its superiors’ attention to the above, because it considers its duty to point out every possibility which could ensure that, if required, the national army would not be forced to do without a flying corps that is properly trained and possesses all appropriate equipment, even if by so doing we should have to account for the evasion of the peace treaty’s relevant provisions (ha ezáltal a békeszerződés idevágó rendelkezéseinek megkerülésével kellene számolnunk).1
With the intention to skirt the treaty established, the author outlined the method. The Defense Ministry’s 37th Section should be officially dissolved, along with the current Civilian Aviation Committee. The successor agency would combine their functions under the Commerce Ministry. The location in the Commerce Ministry was strictly for the Allies’ benefit: the new Aviation Committee would in fact be “one of the Defense Ministry’s organizations, which would be hidden under a civilian dressing gown due to the pressure of the peace treaty’s conditions.”2 This plan was a clear signal that Hungarian airmen remained committed to air power despite the damage caused to the flying corps by the Romanian occupation, and that they rejected in advance the right of the Allies to strip the country of the means to exercise that power.3
The chief of staff accepted the proposal, and therefore the Aviation Department’s first step to preserve the air service was to eliminate itself. On February 1, 1920, the 37th Section was abolished and its successor established under the auspices of the Commerce Ministry.4 Section II Air Transport (Légiforgalmi szakosztály) had fifteen personnel, a budget of 1.4 million koronas, and worked from offices in the National Archives building.5 István Petróczy remained in charge without his military rank.6 This Air Transport Section functioned as the Hungarian air staff, and its establishing order left no doubt that commercial aviation personnel, materiel, and industry would be subordinated to the requirements of national defense.7
As if to illustrate that point, the first Hungarian national airline operated along clear military lines. MAEFORT (Magyar Aeroforgalmi Részvénytársaság) was created by decree in February 1920, equipped with the remains of the aviation materiel that survived the intervention. Count József Teleki led a survey of the existing stores and tallied their value at 20 million pengős. The government then “sold” the materiel (over 800 items, everything from hangars to unfinished fuselages to lubricants) to MAEFORT, which subsequently inflated its worth and publicized its operating capital at 50 million pengős.8 The airline also received a 10-million-korona subvention from the government. MAEFORT was expected to provide two squadrons of fliers ninety minutes of flight time per month, to obtain and store spare parts sufficient for twenty-five aircraft, to support a training squadron, and to maintain airfields in working order.9 Since MAEFORT’s collection of one- and two-seat former LFT and VR aircraft was not suitable for passenger travel, the airline’s first operation was a scheduled airmail service from Budapest to Szeged and Szombathely.10 To celebrate the initiation of the service, MAEFORT hosted an exhibition at Rákosmező that featured stunt flying, an aerial combat demonstration, and parachute jumping. The air show drew the attention of the country’s senior leaders, with Admiral Horthy, Count Pál Teleki, and the Archduke Joseph all in attendance.11 This early attempt at deception ultimately failed. MAEFORT’s transparently military organization and mission could not be hidden from Allied inspectors, who forced the company’s dissolution in early December 1921.
Figure 3.1. The entrance to the Szombathely airfield. The MAEFORT sign hangs under the military crest. Photo: Fortepan/Dezső Szent-Istvány.
The inspectors belonged to the Aeronautical Inter-Allied Commission of Control (AICC), the agency charged with verifying Hungarian compliance with the air clauses of the Treaty of Trianon. Those clauses were as bad as the airmen had feared. The national flying corps was prohibited, and all air service personnel were to be demobilized within two months of the treaty coming into force. All trade and manufacture of aircraft parts of any kind was forbidden for six months. The naval and military clauses were similarly severe. All warships were to be broken up, fleet auxiliary ships disarmed and reconverted to civilian use, and submarines were forbidden for any purpose. Command and control systems did not escape the Allies’ notice. They demanded that the high-power wireless transmitter in Budapest was to be used only for commercial ends for a period of three months. Hungary’s army was restricted to a volunteer force of 35,000 total personnel, of whom no more than one-twentieth could be officers. Because its mission was restricted to internal security and border control, the type and size of units and their armaments were specified.12 These were victors’ terms, intended to ensure that the defeated belligerent would not have the capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Nearly identical provisions were included in the treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey, whose armed forces also were drastically reduced in size and scope. The treaties were unpopular in those countries, but they never became national obsessions as in Hungary. The difference, of course, was in Hungary’s massive loss of territory and population to surrounding states. Historic Hungary covered nearly 109,000 square miles; post-Trianon Hungary was one-third that size. More land was ceded to Romania (40,000 square miles) than retained (36,000 square miles). Population changes were only slightly less drastic. From Hungary’s 1910 population of 18.2 million people, just 7.6 million remained within its borders as drawn at Trianon. More than 3 million Magyars found themselves residents of neighboring, and generally hostile, countries.13 Budapest’s reaction to the treaty was captured by The Times on January 19, 1919, the day after the conditions were published: “Although a hard peace had been foreseen, the severity of the actual terms has astonished not only the general public but also the Prime Minister himself and other public men. The whole city has gone into mourning. Black flags hang from the public buildings.”14 The signing of the treaty on June 4, 1920, brought a similar response. Hundreds of thousands protested in the streets, shouting, “Nem! Nem! Soha!” (“No! No! Never!”), the daily newspapers were printed with black borders, and the national colors were flown at half-mast, where they would remain until 1938.15 Trianon was a “psychological shock … whose terms were unacceptable to all Hungarians regardless of social background or ideological orientation.”16 One recent study examined Hungarian irredentism through a sociological lens as a cult, and found that although government and right-wing social groups helped guide the response, “the spontaneous reactions of the population should not be underestimated since a great part of the society were personally affected by the loss of territory and of population.”
There were many whose birthplace, relatives, friends, forebears, assets or commercial interests were now on the far side of the new borders, others had treasured personal travel and literary experiences linking them to the lost areas and were embittered by the fate threatening their former compatriots. Some turned against the peace treaty simply because of their patriotism and there were also those who became severe critics of the treaty because of the sober realisation that there would be serious distortions in the world economy and world politics because of the new order. There were practically no Hungarians who approved of the changes. Those few, whose detestation of the counter-revolutionary system was so intense that they objected to any revision of the peace treaty for the benefit of ‘Horthy’s Hungary,’ later and with a more thorough understanding of the situation became critics of the Treaty of Trianon and supporters of its revision.17
Revisionism became the animating impulse of the Horthy regime, the “fixed point to which every subsequent act of Hungarian international policy was directly related.”18
The Horthy era officially began with the admiral’s election to the regency on March 1, 1920, although as head of the National Army he had wielded considerable influence during the transitional Huszár government from November 1919. Law I of 1920, which established Hungary as a kingdom, also set out the means by which the regent (kormányzó) was to be elected and enumerated his powers, which corresponded roughly with those of the president of a republic. Though he was given a fairly free hand in matters of foreign affairs and defense policy, the regent’s legislative mandate was rather constrained. He could not, for instance, veto legislation, being permitted instead only to send a bill back to the parliament for reconsideration, nor was his assent required for laws passed by the parliament to come into force. He retained, however, the once-royal prerogative of convoking or dissolving the assembly, and could appoint or dismiss the prime minister without consulting the legislature. Additionally, it was to the regent as supreme war lord (legfelsőbb hadúr) that the troops swore allegiance, and he had authority for the organizing, training, and equipping the armed forces within the budgetary limits approved by the parliament.19
Horthy’s ability to rally the army to his flag proved crucial during Charles IV’s second attempt to regain Hungary’s crown. Charles’s first foray into postwar Hungary had come in the spring of 1921, when he had arrived at Szombathely on Easter Saturday and proceeded to Budapest with an entourage of legitimists. Horthy knew well that the Allies would consider a Habsburg enthronement an act of war, and he managed to convince Charles to return to Switzerland.20 Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki’s ill-advised decision to publish Charles’s manifesto caused Horthy to dismiss him and appoint in his place Count István Bethlen, who would hold the position for a decade. In October 1921, Charles sought to exploit the instability surrounding plebiscites in the Burgenland, and tried again to secure the throne. He avoided border controls by flying into Sopron in a German-piloted Junkers F.13 from the Swiss airline Ad Astra Aero.21 After landing in a field outside the village of Dénesfa, Charles gathered a growing army of loyalists and marched on the capital, with Colonel Antal Lehár and Count Ostenburg at the head of his forces (Ostenburg’s battalion had sworn the traditional Honvéd oath to Charles, apparently after being told that he was responding to a communist uprising in Budapest).22 Horthy declared martial law and persuaded Lieutenant General Pál Hegedűs, the commander of the Sopron military region who had accepted the leadership of the king’s army, to withdraw his support from Charles. With Hegedűs again on the side of the government, the royalist force was substantially weakened, and following a brief battle at Budaőrs, Charles agreed to an armistice.23 Meanwhile, Prague had ordered mobilization and demanded Hungary’s immediate disarmament.24 After being held under house arrest at the Tihany monastery, Charles and his wife Princess Zita traveled by boat, rail, and car through Hungary and Romania to the Black Sea, whence they went into exile on Madeira.25 With the possibility of a Habsburg restoration now permanently foreclosed, Hungary’s position in the region was stabilized. Charles could no longer be used as a bogeyman by Hungary’s neighbors, and the legitimist-free elector tensions within conservative Hungarian circles were resolved. Horthy’s personal authority was also enhanced by the failure of the coup. For the 99 percent of the population who desired a king, the regent was now the best and most authentic alternative.26
Charles’s decision to initiate the royal putsch by air is revealing. He clearly recognized the abundant advantages of air transport, and he judged the risks of flight worth running. The incident also points out the necessity and difficulty of controlling national airspace. The HSR had earlier come to a similar conclusion regarding the efficacy of personal air travel. In May 1919, VR pilot István Dobos carried Tibor Szamuely, one of Béla Kun’s most trusted and ruthless lieutenants, from Budapest to Kiev to lobby for Ukrainian intervention against Romania. Szamuely’s mission failed, but the 700-mile flight over the Carpathians in the Brandenburg C.I was widely celebrated.27
Admiral Horthy, too, had experienced the power of arriving personally by air. In the early days of the Szeged counterrevolution, he flew to Siófok, not yet firmly under the control of his forces. “The mere sight of the eagle feather on the cap of my aide-de-camp,” he wrote, “indicating his status as an officer in the National Army, sufficed to make the Bolsheviks turn their heels.” Elsewhere in his memoirs, Horthy described how a leaflet drop from the White forces’ only aircraft caused a “fully equipped squadron of hussars” to defect.28 Naval aerial reconnaissance had also contributed to Horthy’s signature victory over the Italians at Otranto in 1917.29 The regent was slow to embrace new ideas, and so these examples of air power had not yet made their full impression. He would eventually emerge as an energetic supporter of the cause of Hungarian aviation, declaring, “We were a riding nation; we will become a flying nation” (Lovas nemzet voltunk, repülőnemzet leszünk). In the late 1930s his son István would be the country’s most prominent airman.30
While the major political figures in Hungary and abroad were occupied with great affairs of state, Hungarian staff officers and Entente disarmament inspectors were engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse. The initial attempts to circumvent Trianon’s air clauses have already been described: the Aviation Department went underground, a clandestine air staff was formed, and two squadrons were disguised as an airline. Hungary insisted that enforcement of the disarmament clauses could not begin until the treaty was ratified by parliament, which took place only on June 26, 1921. In the period from signing to ratification, the Magyar military establishment carried on business as usual whenever possible. The army increased its intake in the intervening months, squirreling away recruits against the coming winter.31 The General Staff (Vezérkarfőnökség, VKF), dissolved under the Károlyi government and subsequently proscribed under Trianon, was briefly reestablished from August 1920, and its officers openly wore the distinctive branch badges.32 In September, the VKF, noting that “aviation is becoming a factor of more considerable importance every day,” added two airmen to the VKF, a military aviation representative and his executive deputy.33 After the treaty came into force, Hungarian airmen initiated “Action E,” a deliberate attempt to shuffle aircraft around the country to shield them from the Allies. Perhaps thirty-five machines were saved in this way. Nevertheless, AICC inspectors discovered and destroyed 119 airplanes, 77 aircraft motors, and some quantity of specialized production equipment not included in the peace treaty’s terms. (In Austria, which had more aircraft to begin with and did not experience the wastage of an additional war and occupation, 1,333 aircraft and 3,289 motors were destroyed.)34 Airplanes being difficult to hide, the AICC had good success in unearthing hardware; rooting out illicit organizations was substantially more challenging. Since the shadow air staff in the Commerce Ministry had so far gone unmolested, the government asked Colonel Petróczy to expand the small cadre into a covert air service. Designated Section XI Air Transport, Petróczy’s organization consisted of nearly one hundred experienced pilots. The airmen were scattered to work in different government ministries, but ultimately reported to Section XI.
Petróczy had in July 1921 undertaken an intensive three-week research trip to Germany to study the Luftstreitkräfte’s organizational reaction to defeat. His itinerary included the German Transportation Ministry, the Aviation Science Association, aero club headquarters, and major airline offices. He had also intended to participate in the Rhön gliding competition, but it was postponed due to inclement weather. The rapid German conversion from military to civilian aviation deeply impressed Petróczy, who reported that “German aviation, between the harsh current conditions and the pressures of the Versailles peace, has reached a degree of development which is exemplary even compared to the Entente.”35 In contrast, he thought Hungary’s present situation matched that of prewar Austria, and that no time could be wasted in establishing domestic aviation: “Here is the last hour in which we can create those basic conditions without which aviation cannot develop. During the time of prohibition forced on us by the peace treaty in which we cannot fly, we have to create further opportunities, by increasing propaganda activities, establishing schools and courses, and organizing social and economic associations.”36 Petróczy consciously modeled aspects of his plan on the German experience, particularly the use of civilian flying as a vehicle for the preservation and future development of military aviation. That was the method employed by the pioneer aviator August Euler, who in 1919 was appointed to lead the Reich Aviation Office, an agency that maintained the “incestuous” ties between Luft Hansa and the Reichswehr.37 Like his German counterpart, Petróczy believed air power was essential for national revival and that its cultivation was a multigenerational undertaking. “I turn to our youth,” he wrote, “because Hungary’s future greatness depends on them. I will awaken the interest in aviation in every beautiful and impressionable spirit. I will convince them of the tremendous importance of aviation to our country’s reconstruction, and that without its development, a broken-winged Hungary will fall behind the other peoples of the world.”38
Although Petróczy had taken close notice of Euler’s bureaucratic initiatives, he apparently missed the operational analysis commissioned by General Hans von Seeckt. Von Seeckt, the commander in chief of the Weimar Reichswehr from 1920 until 1926, believed it “absolutely necessary to put the experience of the war in a broad light, and to collect this experience while the impressions won on the battlefield are still fresh.”39 To that end, in December 1919 he ordered a comprehensive study of the war, directing fifty-seven committees to consider how prewar expectations had borne out; how German forces had responded to unforeseen situations; how the fielding of new weapons had been managed; and which new problems that arose in the war remained unaddressed.40 Nearly 500 officers ultimately contributed to the effort, out of which grew a new German army doctrine. In a related effort, the head of the Air Service led a study of the air war initially focused on organization, tactics, and technology. The project eventually involved 130 senior airmen, most of them combat commanders or general staff officers, and its scope broadened to include all aspects of aerial warfare. Their self-critical reports formed the basis for Army Regulation 487, Leadership and Battle with Combined Arms.41 There was no Hungarian equivalent to this service-level debrief. Professional military historians published academic articles, and staff officers hustled to preserve men and materiel from Allied inspectors, but each tribe remained on its own reservation. There was no systematic evaluation of operational effectiveness conducted with the intent of incorporation into future doctrine. In the next decade, Hungarian airmen would engage in vigorous theoretical debates about the role and efficacy of air power, but a critical opportunity to improve the Honvéd’s effectiveness in a manner not prohibited by Trianon had been missed. It must be mentioned that other countries did not follow Von Seeckt’s example either. While most governments published official histories of the war and a few visionary strategists garnered enthusiastic reviews (Billy Mitchell, Basil Liddell Hart, Giulio Douhet), no force other than the Reichswehr subjected itself to such a rigorous examination.
The AICC reported in the spring of 1922 to the Ambassadors’ Conference that Trianon’s Article 132 requirements for turning over aviation materiel had been fulfilled. On April 5, the AICC was withdrawn.42 The end of the commission did not mean the end of Entente oversight of Hungarian aviation, however. The Allies extended Article 131’s six-month moratorium on the manufacture and import of aircraft and equipment for an additional six months, and in order to enforce the Article 128 prohibition on the establishment of military air forces they left behind an aeronautical inspector seconded to the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control (IMCC).43
From the beginning of the IMCC’s mission until its termination in 1927, Hungarian authorities worked diligently to undermine the commission and impede its progress. The Hungarian campaign was inventive and thorough, if not always effective, and the efforts to frustrate inspectors were not confined to warehouses, barracks, or airfields. The first line of attack was economic: the IMCC’s expenses, including billeting and salaries, were borne by the defeated country, and the Hungarian government pressed relentlessly for reductions in the size of the inspector force.44 The press was cooperative in this undertaking. Pesti Hírlap decried the “outrageous wages paid to the members of the Commission which has long terminated its work and remains on for its own convenience.”45 Magyar protestations on this front eventually wore the Entente down, and from 1924 the costs of operating the IMCC were deducted from the reparations account. Still, the papers ridiculed the luxurious lifestyles the stipends afforded. Budapest’s legation in Rome pointed out that the IMCC’s senior officer, an Italian general, was paid more than Admiral Horthy. When some wives of French members were killed in a car crash, “the tragedy was used to mock the high number of vehicles used by the French delegation.”46 Social isolation was another tool employed against the monitors. The Hungarian representative to the IMCC, Colonel Richárd Rapaich, learned the names of Hungarian officers likely to be issued social invitations by the Allied members and quietly instructed them to shun the inspectors in public.47
From the moment the IMCC teams left their dwellings (first-class hotels for the officers), interference was the order of the day. Surprise inspections were permitted but rarely achieved. Convoys were followed to the outskirts of Budapest by bicycle-mounted scouts before having their destination confirmed by roadside observers. After the inspection location was ascertained, csendőr (gendarme) checkpoints delayed officials’ arrival until evidence of illicit activity could be hidden. If the inspection were to take place at an airfield, the gate guards would hold the inspectors outside the field until the station commander approved their entry. The station commander would invariably be hard to find at short notice; while the guards were desperately searching for him, engineering staff would make operable aircraft appear to be useless spares, and then those personnel in excess of authorization would disappear. The station commander could then turn up, make the appropriate apologies, and welcome the inspectors to his airfield. When a surprise inspection did come off smoothly, IMCC personnel faced the possibility of angry crowds awaiting their departure. The mob always seemed to be better informed than the police, who tended to show up a bit late.48 On at least one occasion, shots were fired at the French delegation, injuring the driver (almost certainly a Hungarian national). The government refused to apologize for the attack, a position the British Foreign Office thought “characteristic of their whole attitude towards military control.”49
One series of incidents did lead to an apology from Count Bethlen, and to the sacking of a defense minister. In December 1922, Allied inspectors had been denied permission to search a hut on the premises of a barracks they believed held a stash of rifles. The confrontation occurred in full view of the public and was widely reported in the press as a defeat for the IMCC. The following month, “representatives of the commission discovered 300 carbines and 33,000 rounds of ammunition in the house of a retired colonel of the regular army in Budapest. The explanations furnished by the Hungarian Minister of Defense were described by the commission as puerile, and the tone of the two letters he has addressed to them on the subject have been defiant and truculent.”50 The situation nearly repeated itself in late March. Allied inspectors were searching a house in the garrison town of Kecskemét, and again they were denied access to a storage building. The inspectors could see long wooden crates in the shed through the door, and their interpreter overheard members of the crowd boast that they would not allow a single weapon to be seized. Nevertheless, the Hungarian army officer who showed up in mufti refused to open the gate without orders from his superiors. Meanwhile the local police declined to control the crowd, whose attitude “became more and more menacing.” The Allied officers suspected the mob was largely composed of members of the irredentist group Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete (Awakening Hungarians). When after nearly an hour the inspectors gave up and began to make their way “with great difficulty” back to their vehicles, the crowd pelted their cars with stones, breaking windows. The inspectors escaped unharmed but furious.51 After the IMCC filed a formal complaint, the Hungarian government handed out “grossly inadequate punishments.” The Foreign Office informed Budapest’s chargé d’affaires that “His Majesty’s Government were seriously displeased at the incident.”52 When this failed to bring about more than vague expressions of regret, the British minister in Budapest repeatedly addressed the issue with Bethlen, who promised to look into the matter further. Only when threatened with the loss of the loans he had secured in London did Bethlen take action. He asked for Sándor Belitska’s resignation, and appointed in his place Count Károlyi Csáky. That Bethlen was willing to ignore the Allied demands for apology and redress until faced with losing the Western financial infusion demonstrates the contempt the IMCC engendered even at the top levels of government.
In spite of the constant obstruction, the IMCC did manage to limit Hungary’s rearmament. Through its monitoring regime a number of illegal arms caches were discovered, most notably at the Kistétény and Hajmáskér weapons depots, and the Hungarian attempt to build an army reserve by shaving the minimum enlistment periods was slowed. A handful of secretly imported airplanes were seized, but some paramilitary flight schools survived.53 And although the IMCC was hampered by its small size and a fluctuating degree of motivation (high when a French officer was in charge, less so when an Italian commanded), it at the very least imposed an opportunity cost on Hungarian rearmament. Magyar military officials spent considerable amounts of money and effort trying to evade Trianon’s sanctions. Without the IMCC, those resources could have been poured directly into personnel, arms, and training.
Not all of the airmen’s intellectual energy was expended in obstruction. The 1923 opening of the French-Romanian airline CIDNA was not an event expected to further the cause of Hungarian air power, but Magyar officers were able to use it to their advantage. The interest of air transport safety, they reasoned, demanded a high-altitude meteorological reconnaissance capability, and the best platform for that mission was the Bristol F.2B, a top-of-the-line British fighter. Somewhat surprisingly, the Entente agreed with this thinking and approved the purchase of two aircraft. The importer’s request for “spare parts” was also approved, and under that name he was able to buy four additional machines, complete with state-of-the-art 300-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engines. These aircraft were maintained at the Székesfehérvár-Sóstó workshops, the best equipped maintenance facility in Hungary. The Székesfehérvár machinery had come from Szeged, where it had been quarantined under French occupation, and therefore had not been available for use by the revolutionary government. It was, however, protected from confiscation by Romanian troops, and the plant in its new location far from the frontiers was used for manufacturing and repair.54
Planning for a postinspection future carried on as well. In anticipation of the Entente lifting the aerial sanctions, Petróczy forwarded to Prime Minister Bethlen a proposal for the development of a twenty-eight-squadron air force under the cover of a commercial aviation agency. No action was taken until July 1923, when Sándor Belitska, still at that time the defense minister, raised the issue in a ministerial council meeting. Belitska reminded his colleagues that “according to accepted opinion, in a future war, aerial combat will have a large influence on the outcome…. Our neighbors, the successor states, have made extraordinary efforts in this direction, such that they have built their armed forces to the maximum extent possible. For us, there is only one path: under the guise of civil aviation, as much as circumstances permit, we must be ready, so that when the opportunity arises, we may move into military aviation quickly and without a hitch.”55
Belitska’s argument carried the day, and the council approved the creation of the Aviation Bureau (Légügyi Hivatal, LÜH), which opened for business in April 1924. Like Section XI, LÜH appeared to be an element of the Commerce Ministry, but was wholly directed by the Defense Ministry. Through such subterfuge Belitska was able to show to Allied inspectors an organization whose nominal strength was twenty, but which in reality numbered nearly 200 personnel, including seventy-four officers.56 The defense minister’s statement is a nearly perfect distillation of Hungarian (and German) air policy in the years of forced disarmament. It contains three of the essential components: certainty about the importance of air power in coming conflicts; concern about potential enemies’ air forces; and the commitment to build an air service in spite of international agreements otherwise. The only missing piece was an exhortation to revanchism, support of which would have been assumed and therefore its open expression unnecessary.
Figure 3.2. The Bristol F.2B “weather reconnaissance aircraft” was actually a top-of-the-line fighter. Photo: Fortepan/Dezső Szent-Istvány.
Commercial aviation was important not only as a blind for the air force, but also as an engine of economic growth and as a link with the world outside the former Habsburg lands. After MAEFORT was shuttered by the AICC in December 1921, the establishment of a new national airline became a high priority for the government. Magyar Légiforgalmi Részvénytársaság (MALERT) was formed in November 1922, and began a daily service to Vienna in July 1923.57 The end of the import ban meant that MALERT could purchase new aircraft from abroad, and the Vienna flights were conducted in Dutch Fokker F.IIIs, which could carry five passengers in a fully enclosed cabin.58 A German-financed competitor, Hungarian Aero Express, sprang up in early 1923 and also flew the Budapest-Vienna route. Aero Express pioneered river-based pleasure flights over the capital, launching float-equipped Junker F.13s from the Danube and flying to and from Lake Balaton.59 In the years 1923–1925, the two companies received equal subsidies from the LÜH (600 million koronas each total), but the merger of Junkers Luftverkehr and Deutscher Aero Lloyd into Luft Hansa caused the Bethlen government to worry about excessive German control of Hungarian aviation, and in 1926 the Aero Express subvention ended.60 The company was dissolved that same year, which left MALERT alone in the market and without competition for government support. The decision to favor MALERT over Aero Express was based on the prospects of future military necessity, not business efficiency. Aero Express had been more effective than MALERT, and had been a member of the Trans-Europa Union, a consortium of German, Swiss, and Austrian airlines that provided regular service along the route Geneva-Zurich-Munich-Vienna-Budapest.61
Trans-Europa had been founded by the German aircraft giant Junkers primarily as a means to develop markets for its airplanes, which it hoped would be operated by subsidiary airlines around the world. Negotiation of contracts with the southern European partners had been left to Erhard Milch, a former Luftstreitkräfte fighter squadron commander turned Junkers executive, who would later be named director of Luft Hansa and eventually a Luftwaffe field marshal.62 Milch’s career trajectory, like the general development of European aviation in the interwar period, was shaped to a large degree by the First World War treaties.63 The phenomenon, although unexpected, is in retrospect completely reasonable. The victors, nearly as exhausted as the vanquished, were left with vast stockpiles of military materiel, including aircraft and engines. After securing peace in the palace halls, the people of the Allied nations lost interest in war and its implements, and aviation enthusiasts commenced beating swords into plowshares. Cheap surplus aircraft proved a windfall for individual pilots, spawning the age of barnstorming, but ultimately the ready availability of parts, especially 1918-vintage engines, retarded technological progress.64 The situation in the defeated countries was quite different. The professional core of their armed forces chafed under forced disarmament, political leaders sought to restore national respect, and significant elements (in Hungary nearly the entire country) pressed relentlessly for revision. Destruction of the defeated powers’ aviation stocks forced airmen in those countries to start with fresh designs rather than adapting older military airframes to civilian purposes. This was an unintended boon, especially to Germany, which retained its sources of raw materials and manufacturing centers in the postwar settlements. Germany also “benefited from the remarkable air-mindedness of the German people,” who were willing to subsidize national aviation through subscriptions and donation drives, as they had demonstrated during the Zeppelin craze of the early 1900s.65 With broad popular support, high levels of technological sophistication, and capable leadership, the German aviation industry was able to thrive despite Versailles’ strictures, Weimar’s chaos, and astronomical levels of inflation.66
Figure 3.3. Aero Express operated float-equipped Junker F.13s from the Danube. Photo: Fortepan/Tibor Weygand.
Hungary lacked Germany’s broad industrial base and deep financial pockets, and its aircraft-manufacturing sector was not able to capitalize on the opportunity of the clean slate. Separated from the Fischamend Arsenal and Škoda Works by imperial dissolution and the natural resources of Transylvania by treaty, the post-Trianon Hungarian aviation industry operated at a severe disadvantage. Nevertheless, domestic production resumed after the expiration of Article 131. In November 1922, Section XI solicited bids for a new training aircraft. The public tender stipulated that the new airplane must conform to the Ambassadors’ Conference regulations, but the participating companies were informed secretly that the machine should be capable of being retrofitted with a more powerful engine for future military use.67 Four designs were submitted and two prototypes requested, although it seems only the design from György Szebeny ever took flight. Szebeny was a former Fischamend engineer familiar with the metal construction techniques of Fokker and Junkers, and his plan was for a metal-skinned, high-wing monoplane with side-by-side seating. The development was plagued with problems. Appropriate metal sheeting could only be obtained from Germany, and in order to save money and reduce production time (Hungarian aircraft builders having very little experience with metal skin), Section XI decided on traditional wood and fabric construction.
The next major change involved the power plant. Jenő Fejes had promised a lightweight radial engine capable of 100 horsepower, but in tests at the end of January 1923 it was unable to lift the Szebeny machine (registration code H-MAAC) into the air. A Mercedes engine had to be fitted, and to reduce drag the fuselage was narrowed and seating changed to tandem.68 Test flight reports showed that even with its increased output and reduced profile, the aircraft would barely climb above 200 feet. A new propeller improved performance, and the airplane made a series of short flights to airfields around Budapest in late February. After the fitting of a thinner wing in March 1923, H-MAAC managed to reach 1,000 feet.69 It had in the meantime been presented to MALERT, its supposed purchaser, for inspection. In the middle of April, Szebeny’s airplane climbed to 2,000 feet, but by that time Section XI had given up on it for military use. At the same time, a modified prototype of one of the rejected designs had been constructed. Test pilot Antal Fehér took Kocsárd Jánky, chief of the VKF, for a successful flight in H-MAAB, Béla Oravecz’s parasol-winged adaptation of the UFAG C.I. With Jánky’s enthusiastic support, and following a László Háry test flight, Section XI ordered the Oravecz model for the new flying school being established at Szombathely.70
Military flight training was conducted there using MALERT as a front, with expenses filed on fake invoices printed with the company letterhead.71 Once the danger from Allied inspectors passed, the MALERT directors began to worry about the integrity of their accounts to creditors, prompting a letter to Defense Minister Csáky requesting written acknowledgment of the airline’s relationship with the Defense Ministry. “In view of the fact that these secret instructions are only verbal,” the letter ran, “major responsibility rests on the company’s directors in the event that if for some reason the books are called into question. In light of this, we request that Your Excellency provide a secret transcript to our company for the accountants.” Csáky provided the requested memorandum.72
The tribulations and ultimate failure of the Szebeny-Fejes design sapped the air service’s confidence in domestic production and forced the resignation of Colonel Petróczy. He had insisted that the Hungarian aviation industry was capable of independent production, but he had underestimated both the extent of German and Austrian involvement in earlier Magyar manufacturing, and the effect of the three-year-long enforced suspension. Furthermore, it was suspected that his indiscretion about the tender had drawn the attention of the IMCC. Petróczy was replaced on May 18, 1923, by Colonel Károly Vassel, a nonflying officer of the VKF. Vassel shared the concern of many of the service’s pilots about the quality of the domestic aircraft, but he did not oppose the VKF chief’s decision to order Oravecz’s high-wing trainer.73 By the end of 1924, Lieutenant Colonel Waldemár Kenese’s flight school at Szombathely operated six Oravecz machines, along with the modified Szebeny prototype (even a poor design was too valuable to waste) and a Brandenburg B.I.74 Nearly a hundred pilots learned to fly at Szombathely in the Oravecz airplanes, but after a pair of fatal crashes in September and October 1925 related to flight control and wing failures, the school withdrew the remainder from service and destroyed them. Thus ended the Hungarian experiment in aerial autarky. There would be further attempts to build indigenous designs, but never with the hope that domestic manufacture could fill the country’s entire need.75 The thirty-three grounded student pilots were sent to Budapest for a four-month academic course that included instruction in tactics, weapons, radio familiarity, aerial photography, air defense, meteorology, and aerial law.76 The LÜH then dispatched officers to Austria, Britain, and Germany to search for suitable aircraft for import. Their efforts paid off: five Bristol School and five Udet 12a trainers were delivered to Szombathely by summer 1926. The WM factory on Csepel Island began producing the Udet aircraft under license in 1927.77 Pilot training and flight time more than doubled after the arrival of the Bristols and Udets, with total hours increasing from fewer than 1,600 in 1925 to over 3,700 in 1927.78
The LÜH’s turn to imported aircraft and licensed production might have created long-term problems for the Hungarian aviation industry, but it was a victory for Hungarian statecraft, which had sought since 1918 to reintegrate Hungary into European commercial and diplomatic life. Early isolation as a defeated power had been followed by quarantine behind the cordon sanitaire that protected the West from the contagion of communism. Still, the HSR’s collapse did little to improve Hungary’s international position. Anticipating the rise of treaty revisionism in Hungary, Czech foreign minister Eduard Beneš (Hungary’s bête noire) had begun to form an alliance to hem in the Magyar state. In August 1920, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia signed a treaty of mutual defense against Hungary, and spurred by fears of Habsburg restoration, Bucharest joined the alliance through bilateral treaties with Prague and Belgrade in 1921. The Little Entente had the full backing of Paris, which had resumed its anti-Magyar orientation after an apparent thaw in Franco-Hungarian relations in 1920 proved illusory.79 Relations with Austria remained strained after the Burgenland dispute, and Italian rapprochement with both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia had closed the door, at least momentarily, to Rome. Weimar Germany was hostile to the counterrevolutionary Horthy government, which itself was implacably opposed to the Soviet Union. Talks aimed at diplomatic recognition and trade agreements with the Soviets had begun in 1922 and recommenced in 1924, but they fell apart in 1925 after Admiral Horthy became aware of the previously secret negotiations. Hungary’s only friend in the early 1920s was Poland, with whom it had shared monarchs in the past, and to whom it offered military support in the 1920 Russo-Polish War.80 The economic situation was no less dire. Foreign investment had dried up, loans were hard to come by, inflation was on the rise, and Trianon had disrupted historic trading patterns and levied reparations.
Prime Minister Bethlen recognized the debilitating weakness of Hungary’s international position, and he knew that financial assistance could only follow the breaking of the diplomatic impasse. In his first speech as prime minister, Bethlen declared that his government’s primary goal was “the raising of the foreign policy horizon of the nation,” and Foreign Minister Miklós Bánffy submitted Hungary’s application to join the League of Nations soon after.81 The Little Entente countries opposed Hungary’s accession, as expected, but opposition also came from hard-line Trianon rejectionists within the country, who considered it an implicit endorsement of the hated treaty. The government pointed out that Trianon had already been signed once, and that by joining the League Hungary incurred no additional obligation. Moreover, the Covenant allowed for revisiting accords that threatened peace, and thus could pave the way for peaceful revision. Domestic objections were finally ignored, but international resistance proved harder. Czechoslovakia tried to attach specific reparations requirements to the admission, but after a motion by Poland, Hungary was admitted to the League. For a defeated power, admission to the League amounted to a “political rehabilitation” that allowed the new member to stand as an equal, at least formally under international law, with the victors.82 Hungary planned to use that legal equality to address its reparations obligations, improve its financial situation, and loosen Allied military control.
The Finance Ministry attacked the reparations requirements in much the same way that the Defense Ministry had undermined the inspection regime. After having unsuccessfully objected to the institution of reparations, the Hungarian government allowed inflation to rise unchecked as a way of decreasing the value of its currency, and therefore reducing the burden of debt and reparations on Hungarian industry. Bethlen and Finance Minister Tibor Kállay then made the rounds of Western capitals, arguing that Hungary would be forced to default unless it received foreign loans.83 They secured 307 million gold koronas, somewhat less than half what had been solicited, at a rate of 7.5 percent. The money, although intended strictly for reparations, was also used to fund the government’s operating budget and to bring the deliberate inflation under control. This cash injection, along with reductions in government spending and increased tax revenues, allowed Hungary to end 1925 with its accounts in surplus. Hungarian financial stability fed international confidence, which led to dramatically increased private investment in the country, allowing strong growth through the rest of the decade until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.84
Hungary wasted no time in confronting the issue of the IMCC. The day after joining the League of Nations, its representative petitioned to have League members assume responsibility for the inspection mission. The Ambassadors’ Council prevailed on the League to decline the request, but Hungary had made its point regarding disparate treatment under international law and had served notice that it intended to use the League to further its own purposes.85 Budapest opened a new front in its war against the IMCC: day-to-day tactical harassment of the inspectors was joined by a long-term strategic campaign to subvert the commission’s authority. Hungarian emissaries worked to convert the standing permanent commissions into ad hoc bodies called by the League council to investigate possible treaty violations or threats to peace, and they strove to include the minor defeated powers and neutral countries as often as possible, while excluding the members of the Little Entente.86 This diplomatic offensive was underway at the same time that military officials in Hungary were busy thwarting the IMCC’s work at every turn. Petty persecution of inspectors has been described, but in one case an entire article of the military clauses was ignored. Article 115 required the consolidation of all munitions production in a single, government-owned factory, which was to be located at Csepel, an island in the Danube south of Budapest. After months of inaction, the IMCC brought the issue to the government’s attention in December 1921. The government did not respond until October 1922, when it informed the commission that construction was beginning at the new site. Consolidation of the Diósgyőr cannon factory, the Frommer small arms works, and the Balatonfűzfő powder plant were to be completed by the end of 1923, but late that year Defense Minister Károly Csáky asked the IMCC to consider instead an organizational consolidation, since actual consolidation would be too expensive. Later, the Finance Ministry appealed to have the costs deducted from the reparations requirement.87 The government continued to stall, and skillfully exploited the strength of its own public support and the weakening will of some members of the IMCC. The British minister to Budapest captured this dynamic in a cable to the foreign secretary in January 1925:
I have received your dispatch … in which you express concern at the attitude of calculated obstruction which the Hungarian Government are displaying towards the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control in Hungary and request my views as to what possible measures of effective pressure might be taken to induce the Hungarian Government to adopt a more conciliatory attitude. I have had the question constantly in mind since my arrival here in July last and it has been evident to me from the first that the problem is not an easy one. On the one hand there is the stubborn obstinacy of the Hungarian Government, or rather Military Authorities, who have the weight of public opinion behind them, in non-compliance with the demands of the Conference of Ambassadors, and on the other the Allied Powers are under obligation to enforce the military Clauses of the Treaty of Trianon. The difficulty lies in the mode of enforcement of the will of the Powers. Military sanctions are out of the question, for the reason that they could only be applied by Hungary’s neighbors, which would raise a storm here the consequences of which cannot be foreseen. And financial pressure, if too severe, might undo the good economic work already accomplished under the League of Nation’s reconstruction scheme.88
Hungarian stonewalling finally succeeded and munitions production was never centralized. The League’s final decisions on the IMCC accorded fairly well with Hungary’s wishes, although the degree to which credit should be given to Hungarian diplomats is unclear. Interested states (including the defeated and their antagonistic neighbors) were not invited to participate in the League council’s debates, which concluded that permanent military control ought to be phased out in favor of periodic inspections ordered by the council. In a turn disappointing to Budapest, it was determined that committee members would be drawn from all the League’s states, and could include neighboring countries.89 The Ambassadors’ Conference officially ended the IMCC’s mission in Hungary on March 31, 1927, and the last inspectors were withdrawn at the end of May.90
Admission to the League of Nations hardly improved Hungary’s relations with the Little Entente. Budapest generally declined to deal with the other capitals, preferring instead to fuel discontent among the national minorities of the “artificial” states—Magyars in the first place, but also Slovaks, Ruthenes, and Croats. Bethlen and Beneš shared a deep distrust of each other’s motives and had no desire for cooperation. The situation was similar in the southeast. “Hungary never seriously considered rapprochement with Romania: the mutual dislike between the two peoples was too acute, the numbers of Magyars in Transylvania too large, the possibilities of local revision too nearly non-existent.”91
Since it was in Hungary’s interest to chip away at the solidarity of the Little Entente, and no common ground could be found for negotiation with Czechoslovakia or Romania, Bethlen made overtures to Yugoslavia. The opening for negotiations came after the embarrassing disclosure of Hungarian support of Croat separatists emboldened Belgrade to press Budapest for arbitration of outstanding disputes. Despite being a member of the Little Entente and enjoying the patronage of the West, Yugoslavia had prickly relations with its neighbors and was jostling with Italy for ascendancy in the Adriatic. Easing tensions with Hungary over the Bánát and its inhabitants would strengthen Yugoslavia’s hand in all its other disputes. Low-level consultations between the two countries proceeded through the summer of 1926, and in August the regent supported reconciliation during his speech commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács.92 He praised the “good friend” who had in the past joined Hungary in mutual defense, and bemoaned the recent and unfortunate adversarial relationship. “I believe and hope,” Horthy said, “that soon we can reinstate the old friendship and understanding.”93 A deal seemed imminent, but the two sides could not agree on what sort of deal it would be. Hungary, whose primary goal was the disruption of the Little Entente, wanted a declaration of neutrality in conflicts with a third party, while Yugoslavia sought a treaty of nonaggression that would not violate its agreements with Czechoslovakia and Romania. Foreign Ministers Lajos Walkó and Momčilo Ninčić met in Geneva in September 1926 to begin high-level negotiations, but the bilateral talks ultimately went nowhere because Italy, which had earlier blessed the initiative, abruptly withdrew its support.94
Although Italy and Yugoslavia had signed the Rapallo Treaty in 1920 and a friendship and cooperation accord in 1924, the situation between them remained fractious. The tension increased as Benito Mussolini, in power since 1922, gained confidence and exercised more control over Italian foreign policy. In the years immediately following the war, the Italian orientation had been pro-Little Entente, and a pact with Czechoslovakia had followed the 1924 treaty with Yugoslavia. But Mussolini soon came to believe that the degree of French influence in central and southeastern Europe was incompatible with his vision of Italian supremacy in the region, and began to build a bloc to oppose the Little Entente. The new alliance was to be called the Quadruplice, and its members were to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria—all, of course, under Italy’s leadership. In the end Mussolini was not able to reconcile the differences between Romania and Hungary over Transylvania, and between Romania and Bulgaria over Dobruja, so the planned four-way pact was cut in half.95 Bethlen met with Mussolini in Rome in the spring of 1927, and on April 5 they signed the Treaty of Friendship, Conciliation, and Arbitration. Perhaps the most interesting text of the short, five-article treaty is in the preamble, which notes “the concordance of numerous interests common to both nations.”96 Numerous they were: besides their common hostility toward the Little Entente and its French patron, both leaders were committed to treaty revision and shared an intense aversion to and suspicion of the Soviet Union.97 Hungary and Italy also saw eye-to-eye on Germany. Both countries were concerned about its potential resurgence and the implications for their own freedom of maneuver, while at the same time recognizing the need to harness German industrial might to their revanchist schemes. The problem of gaining German assistance while avoiding German mastery would bedevil Hungarian and Italian leaders for most of the next decade.
In the early summer of 1927, however, things were turning up roses for Hungary’s leaders. Thanks to foreign loans and investment accompanied by domestic austerity, the country’s accounts were in the black. Allied military inspectors, whose work Magyar officials had tried to hobble at every turn, had ended their mission in March. The treaty with Rome was a double victory, as it both provided Hungary with an ally among the major Western powers and denied the same to the Little Entente. Finally, in late June the British press baron Lord Rothermere began a propaganda campaign on Hungary’s behalf in his paper, the Daily Mail. Earlier in the year at Paris, the four Allied powers—France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan—had rescinded the restrictions on Hungarian production of civilian aircraft, although manufacture of military airplanes still was forbidden.
Magyar military leaders welcomed this progress. Senior officers had protected some of their critical personnel and staff organizations from the control commissions, but recruiting had diminished, and the limitations of Hungarian aircraft industry had been made clear. There was hope, however. In a later classified protocol to the Friendship Treaty, Italy pledged 300 million pengős in weapons credits, which meant that Hungarian rearmament could now begin in earnest, if still in secret. The air service had survived treaty restrictions, Allied inspectors, reparative confiscation, and rampant inflation. Its next years would be no less challenging. Military aviation around the world had advanced very little since the end of the First World War, but that lull was over. The pace of innovation in doctrine and technology was beginning to accelerate, and it would not slow down until the end of the Second World War. Could Hungarian military aviation adapt in time to the changing conditions?
NOTES
1. HL HM Eln. 16059/37.-1919.
2. Ibid.
3. The Romanians captured nearly 400 aircraft of all types and conditions, along with hundreds of engines and various parts and armaments. The total cost of the aviation equipment lost by Hungary to Romania exceeded 95 million koronas (1921 currency). Bernád, “A Román Királyi Légierő első magyarországi hadjárata,” pp. 44–45.
4. HL HM Eln. 21.688/37.-1920.
5. Olasz, “Lépések a honi légvédelem kiépítésére,” p. 643.
6. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. I/28.
7. HL HM Eln. 16059/37.-1919.
8. HL HM Eln. 21626a/37.-1919’ and Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. I/31.
9. MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 8–9.
10. Niehorster, Royal Hungarian Army, p. 55.
11. Révész, Repülőtér az Alpokalján, p. 94.
12. See “Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Hungary and Protocol and Declaration, Signed at Trianon June 4, 1920, Part V. Military, Naval and Air Clauses” (hereafter “Treaty of Trianon, Part V”).
13. Data from Magyar Statisztikai Zsebkönyv 1940 reported in Romsics, Hungary in 20th Century, p. 121; and Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:4. Numbers exclude Croatia-Slavonia.
14. “How Hungary Received the Treaty,” The Times, Jan. 19, 1920, p. 11. Viennese newspapers had reacted strongly against the terms of Saint-Germain-en-Laye seven months earlier, calling the terms “a crime against mankind” (Neuer Tag) and suggesting that Austria would become “a colony of the Entente” (Mittagszeitung), but “to the outward eye Vienna has taken her sentence quietly and with dignity.” See “Austria Stunned,” The Times, June 7, 1919, p. 11.
15. Romsics, Hungary in 20th Century, p. 124; and Cartledge, Will to Survive, p. 330.
16. Várdy, “Impact of Trianon,” p. 28.
17. Zeidler, Ideas on Territorial Revision in Hungary, p. 186.
18. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:4.
19. Ibid., 1:49–50.
20. Secret correspondence with French prime minister Aristide Briand had given Charles reason to think otherwise. Romania had apparently declared itself neutral in the matter as well, as long as the terms of Trianon held. Vas, Horthy, p. 755. Horthy undoubtedly was correct.
21. DBFP, First Ser., Vol. 22, No. 460; Junkers type: Mulder, “Magyar Aeroforgalmi Részvény Tarsaság.”
22. Sakmyster, Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback, pp. 112–113.
23. The government’s force at Budaőrs was led by Captain Gyula Gömbös, who in addition to his duties as an officer, was a member of parliament, and more importantly, the president of the Hungarian Association of National Defense (Magyaros Országos Véderő Egyesülete), one of the burgeoning far-right organizations. Lieutenant General Hegedűs was stripped of his rank and honors for his role in the uprising.
24. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 22, Nos. 412, 473, 501, 506.
25. Ibid., Nos. 423, 473, 501, 506.
26. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 12, No. 231. This was the assessment of a British diplomat, Wilfrid Athelstan-Johnson.
27. Csizmarik, “Magyar Tanácsköztársaság Légiereje,” p. 379.
28. Horthy, Memoirs, pp. 100, 103.
29. Csonkaréti and Sárhidai, Az Osztrák-Magyar tengerészeti repülői, p. 54.
30. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 2.
31. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 12, Nos. 307–308.
32. Ibid., No. 260. After ratification, the VKF would be prohibited under Article 105: “All other organizations [than those permitted for divisions] for the command of troops or for preparation for war are forbidden.”
33. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 9.
34. Révész, Repülőtér az Alpokalján, p. 96.
35. Petróczy, “A legyőzött Németország aviatikája” (HIK 5271), p. I/3.
36. Ibid., pp. I/4–5.
37. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe, pp. 11–12. Like Petróczy, Euler earned his country’s first pilot license. See his obituary in The Times, July 3, 1957, p. 12.
38. Petróczy, “A legyőzött Németország aviatikája” (HIK 5271), p. V/20.
39. Quoted in Corum, Luftwaffe, p. 59.
40. Ibid.
41. Corum and Muller, Luftwaffe’s Way of War, p. 72.
42. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 24, No. 181.
43. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 146.
44. B. Juhász, “Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control,” pp. 50–51, 59n.
45. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 27, No. 13.
46. B. Juhász, “Military Control of Hungary,” pp. 50–51, 59n.
47. Ibid., p. 57.
48. Ibid., p. 59.
49. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 27, No. 13.
50. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 24, No. 362.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. B. Juhász, “Military Control of Hungary,” pp. 55–64.
54. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 159–164.
55. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 9–10; and Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 146. At the time the combined air forces of the Little Entente numbered over 400 aircraft; paltry by First World War standards, but a formidable threat against a country with no combat planes readily available. Olasz, “Lépések a honi légvédelem kiépítésére,” p. 672.
56. M. M. Szabó, A Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légierő a második világháborúban, p. 15, and MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 10. Date for LÜH: Révész, Repülőtér az Alpokalján, p. 97.
57. Davies, A History of the World’s Airlines, p. 26.
58. “The Fokker F III Commercial Monoplane,” Flight, May 26, 1921, pp. 355–356.
59. Moys, “Légiforgalmi irányításunk története (1920–1945),” p. 2.
60. Subsides: HL HM Eln. 16606/6.k-1927.
61. Trans-Europa line: Davies, History of the World’s Airlines, p. 26.
62. Irving, Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, p. 15.
63. Davies, History of the World’s Airlines, p. 21.
64. Dick and Patterson, Aviation Century, p. 51.
65. Davies, History of the World’s Airlines, p. 21.
66. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe, p. 11.
67. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 152. Single-seat planes with engines producing more than 60 horsepower were considered military aircraft, as were “machines that can fly without a pilot,” those with “any form or armor or protection or with fittings to take any form of armament,” and those whose capabilities exceeded the following: maximum ceiling 13,000 feet; useful load 1,300 pounds, including crew; speed 105 miles per hour. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 26, No. 901.
68. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 152–155.
69. Fehér, “Berepülő pilóta naplója, 1915–1927” (MMKM 988).
70. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 152–159.
71. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. II/44.
72. HL HM Eln. 16606 6.k-1927.
73. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 146–158.
74. Kenese, in 1920 a captain in the Vienna office charged with liquidating LFT assets, had been instrumental in arranging the delivery to Szombathely of eight Phönix C.Is purchased in Austria by István Bethlen. Révész, Repülőtér az Alpokalján, p. 93.
75. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, pp. 146, 158.
76. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. II/52.
77. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, 160–162.
78. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. II/53.
79. In the last months before the conclusion of the Trianon treaty, French negotiator Maurice Paléologue had offered hope for speedy border adjustments in Hungary’s favor in exchange for sweeping economic concessions. Britain and Italy opposed the French initiative, which they contended would violate the treaty’s terms, and they warned Budapest that Paléologue’s promises would likely be repudiated by the French government in any case. As expected, the secret negotiations became public and amounted to nothing except public disappointment in Hungary. See Kertesz, Diplomacy in a Whirlpool, pp. 21–23.
80. Hungarian aid to Poland was opposed by the countries of the Little Entente, although some 60 million rifle cartridges made their way from Csepel munitions factories to Poland via Romania. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy 1919–1945, pp. 55–57.
81. Quoted in ibid., p. 60.
82. Ibid.
83. Cartledge, Will to Survive, p. 341.
84. Romsics, Hungary in 20th Century, p. 132. Britain stood as guarantor for 50% of the loan.
85. B. Juhász, “Military Control of Hungary,” p. 63.
86. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 78.
87. B. Juhász, “Military Control of Hungary,” p. 53.
88. DBFP, Ser. 1, Vol. 27, No. 29.
89. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 78.
90. B. Juhász, “Military Control of Hungary,” p. 67.
91. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:84.
92. On August 29, 1526, the Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Great defeated the Hungarian army of King Louis II (who was himself killed in the battle). The defeat led to a century and a half of Turkish occupation and to the assumption of the Habsburgs to the Hungarian crown.
93. Quoted in Fülöp and Sipos, Magyarország külpolitikája a XX. században, p. 146.
94. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 77, 81.
95. Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy, pp. 37–40.
96. See “Treaty of Friendship, Conciliation and Arbitration between Hungary and Italy, signed at Rome, 5 April 1927.”
97. Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy, pp. 37–40.
