6

Independence: 1938–1940

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL LIFE BEGAN TO SPEED UP IN 1938. This year would see the effective end of Trianon, the disintegration of the Little Entente, the recognition of armament rights, and the reoccupation of lands lost to Czechoslovakia. The next two years would bring more prosperity, pride, and population, as a second German mediation resulted in significant territorial gains from Romania. For the Hungarian armed forces, the period was one of growth in both quantity and quality. The air service was officially acknowledged and granted bureaucratic independence from the army, the holy grail of airmen everywhere. There was war in 1939—for Hungary a short border fight with Slovakia—but Budapest managed to remain a noncombatant in the fight that began between Germany and Poland. Even as the government basked in its triumphs, however, there were serious concerns that the alliance with Germany, the mechanism that had produced such wonders in two years, was fatally flawed.

The breakthroughs of 1938 seemed unlikely in early 1937. Although the Defense Ministry had set its cap at Germany, the government’s general drift toward Berlin had been checked by Gömbös’s death and Horthy’s appointment of Kálmán Darányi to be prime minister. Darányi was one of Bethlen’s men who had been brought into the cabinet to moderate Gömbös’s worst impulses. He was known as a traditional Hungarian conservative, “quite untinged by any radicalism, or even active anti-Semitism,” and so his accession to the premiership was seen both inside and outside Hungary as a turn away from Germany.1 This turn was motivated by the sense that Germany was beginning to dominate Italy in the Axis, and that Gömbös’s internal policies threatened dictatorship. Darányi set about strengthening the Italian relationship as well as increasing the power of the regent and the Upper House. He also made public overtures to Britain and France. Germany responded with indirect warnings about excessive revisionism. There was a “perceptible freeze in German-Hungarian relations after Gömbös’s death.”² The Little Entente felt the chill and sought to exploit it. They approached Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya, an extremely experienced, if high-handed, career diplomat, with proposals to tie rearmament to nonaggression. Kánya declined to sign any agreements, but he played the Little Entente along while trying to entice Germany to greater levels of support for Hungarian claims at the expense of Yugoslavia and Romania. László Bárdossy, Hungary’s minister in Bucharest, was invited to the August 1937 Little Entente conference in Sinaia, Romania, where he repeated Kánya’s refusal to negotiate with the Little Entente as a whole. Bárdossy instead proposed that each state “voluntarily” recognize Hungary’s right to rearm, and then improve the status of their Hungarian minorities, after which Hungary would announce a policy of nonaggression. It was important to Hungary that the Little Entente’s concessions come first and that its declaration of nonaggression be seen as a result, and not a condition, of its neighbors’ goodwill. The Little Entente ignored the Hungarian proposal for a year, taking it up seriously only the following summer.³

In the second half of 1937, relations between Berlin and Budapest began to warm again. Kánya gained little from his feelers toward the West, which seemed determined to grant Hitler’s direct demands. Small states survive through their ability to read the changes in the international balance of power, and the sense in Hungary was that German ascendancy would continue. The West was not interested at the moment in a subtle attempt to wean German clients from their patron. And although the Little Entente was trying to do exactly that through its diplomatic initiatives, Hungary realized that more was to be gained through consolidating ties with Germany than in trying to forge new bonds with former enemies. British openness to revision in Central Europe served only to strengthen Hitler’s hand in the region, since it was clear that his pen would draft any new borders.

Meanwhile, growing German power was making the Anschluss appear inevitable. Mussolini’s earlier fervent opposition had softened considerably. There had been fears of a war with Germany after the abortive Nazi putsch in Vienna in 1934, but by January 1936 Mussolini could tell Hitler’s ambassador that he would not object if Austria became a German satellite. He voiced similarly agreeable sentiments to Hungary’s military attaché, Colonel László Szabó. In May 1937, Mussolini considered Austria “a German state” and in November he suggested that things should “take their natural course.”4 German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop used similar language with Döme Sztójay, Hungary’s minister to Berlin, on March 4, 1938. It was the West that was opposed to a “normal development of the situation,” Ribbentrop said, while Germany “was hoping for a peaceful solution.”⁵ By this time Hungary was resigned to German absorption of Austria, and its leaders were unwilling to risk Berlin’s ire by intervening directly to try to save a doomed Vienna. This was also the Italian stance. Baron Villani, Hungary’s minister in Rome, reported that Italian foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano had confided to him on March 2 that “the Anschluss or complete Gleichschaltung is unavoidable, and sooner or later must happen. Italy cannot renounce its friendship with Germany; it would, however, provide her some security and permanence if Italy and the states close to her formed a horizontal axis, which would run from Rome through Belgrade and Budapest and lead to Warsaw.” Ciano also predicted that “Czechoslovakia as an independent country would soon disappear from the map of Europe,” and that the resulting common border between Hungary and Poland would aid their cooperation.6 Kánya took up the idea of the “horizontal axis” that same day with Polish foreign minister Joseph Beck, writing, “Italy already takes into account the danger of a shift in the balance of power in Central Europe.” Hungary, according to Kánya, “should prefer the maintenance of Austria’s independence rather than the neighborhood of an 80-million strong Germany. Being familiar with the related very resolute intentions of the German National Socialist Government, however, we have to be prepared for the event that the union of the two German states will sooner or later be consummated.”⁷

Consummation came on March 12, 1938. Austrian troops, in accordance with the last order given by Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, offered no resistance to the German soldiers pouring across the border. Schuschnigg had resigned under intense pressure from Hitler and Hermann Göring, who were infuriated by his having called for a plebiscite to be held on March 13. Hitler convened key generals and pulled from the shelf an old operation plan intended to respond to an attempted Habsburg restoration. He ordered Operation Otto to be put into effect before the plebiscite could be conducted. The Wehrmacht began massing on the frontier on the morning of March 11. Austrian president Wilhelm Miklas initially refused Hitler’s demand that Schuschnigg step down in favor of the quisling Arthur Seyss-Inquart.⁸ But when Austrian Nazi mobs took to the streets at Berlin’s command in the evening, Schuschnigg announced his resignation and the policy of nonresistance over the airwaves. Seyss-Inquart’s first duty as chancellor was to request German intervention to restore peace, which gave Hitler a most transparent fig leaf to cover the invasion. Mussolini, to whom Schuschnigg had appealed earlier in the day, declined to help, saying Austria was “immaterial” to him. Hitler was ecstatic over Italian passivity, promising that he would always remember Mussolini’s help. “If he should ever need any help or be in any danger,” Hitler told Prince Philipp of Hesse, the Führer’s personal representative then in Rome, “he can be convinced that I shall stick to him whatever may happen, even if the whole world gangs up on him.”9

The fact of the Anschluss was no great surprise to Hungarian leaders, although the timing caught some off guard. It did cause a minor uproar among the Hungarian population who heard on radio broadcasts the news that German troops were at the frontier.¹⁰ Many people feared that the Germans would continue east, and some on the extreme right hoped that would be the case. Admiral Horthy attempted to calm the nation via a radio address on April 3, putting the best possible face on the German occupation of Austria, and assuring the country that very little had changed. “It is hard for a sober-minded person to understand exactly what the reason for the unrest and excitement is, for in fact, there is no basis for it whatever,” he said. Only the uninformed were agitated:

For anybody with an open mind and seeing eyes who judges the situation must know that the union of Austria and Germany means only one thing for our country: that an old friend of ours who has been dragged by the peace treaties into an impossible situation has united with another old friend and faithful comrade-in-arms of ours, i.e. with that Germany which in the testimony of history always was a trustworthy ally of her friends, and has kept her pledges for life and death. This is the whole thing. Nothing else happened from our point of view.¹¹

Even as he portrayed the Anschluss in anodyne terms, Horthy included a veiled warning to right-wing radicals who sought to take advantage of the situation. “Those who prefer fishing in troubled waters,” he said, “have availed themselves of the opportunity to bring about discord to suit their own purposes. Yet this attempt is futile. For by spreading rumors, excitement lasting a few moments may be brought about, yet I can assure everybody that in this country nobody will disturb order and tranquility unpunished.” Horthy then issued another warning, less veiled, to restive army officers:

Although this significance of the Army is recognized by everybody today, they also should know that an army engaged in politics is not only worthless but harmful too. To the nation as a whole, and to each citizen. Nevertheless, of late there were some who believed that this body of officers could be got near to, and this free-of-politics unity broken up.

I feel quite certain that the attempt of these persons will come to naught. Still I warn those who, although shrouded in the mantle of ideals, nevertheless, to ensure their self-assertion, are experimenting: hands off the body of officers! The commissioned officers know that the Army is above parties and is the nation’s own.12

Near the end of the speech he returned to the theme of appropriate spheres of influence: “In this country an end must be put to everybody claiming the right of directing foreign policy and of daring to disturb the internal peace in whatever manner.” Horthy’s words were intended to quell the excessive partisanship growing among the officer corps led by General Jenő Rátz, the chief of staff. Gömbös had groomed Rátz, who was a friend of Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi, although his appointment as chief of staff had come on Darányi’s watch.¹³ Rátz had recently circulated a memorandum in which he advocated an intensification of the furtive rearmament effort. The government naturally wanted to expand and modernize the army, but Rátz strayed beyond his area of responsibility in suggesting the country needed “political and moral rearmament,” along with land reform, income redistribution, and antisemitic laws.¹⁴ Kánya opposed Rátz, as did the more financially cautious in the government party. Horthy was approached with these ideas by Károly Soós, himself a former chief of staff and defense minister. Horthy rejected Soós’s recommendation that he abandon constitutional methods and take the country in a more autocratic direction.

The Rátz-Soós memorandum made its way to Béla Imrédy, a skilled financier and president of the National Bank. Imrédy embraced the plan, although he had previously shown no illiberal inclinations, and took it with Rátz to the prime minister. Darányi approved the scheme, without the dictatorship, and agreed to put forward anti-Jewish measures and to embark on an ambitious rearmament program.¹⁵ Such a buildup could only be considered after the end of League of Nations financial oversight on January 28, 1938, however.16 Imrédy drafted the two bills secretly, and on March 5 Darányi floated the ideas in a speech at Győr. The speech went over well in Hungary, and elicited no response from the Little Entente, so Darányi carried on, appointing Imrédy to the cabinet on March 9 as minister of economic cooperation.¹⁷ In April, the Lower House approved the bill that included a five-year expenditure of 1 billion pengős on defense—60 per cent on direct military purchases, the remainder on infrastructure improvements related to defense. The Upper House passed it without change in May, and the following month the “Győr program” became Law XX of 1938.¹⁸ Six hundred million pengős would be raised through a one-time tax on property exceeding 50,000 pengős in value, and the rest would come from an internal loan underwritten by large companies and banks.¹⁹

Law XX authorized the billion pengős in defense spending, but it did not dictate the Honvéd’s organization. That was the responsibility of Defense Minister Vilmos Rőder, who presented a proposal to the Crown Council one month before Darányi’s speech in Győr. Rőder’s “Huba plan” was based on the 1932 scheme that had gone unrealized, and aimed to maximize Hungary’s ability to mobilize its forces at short notice.²⁰ The army’s peacetime strength under Huba would be 107,000 men, growing to 250,000 after mobilization of reserves. It was organized into three armies of seven corps. The corps were composed of twenty-one infantry divisions, two motorized and two cavalry brigades, one air division, plus border guards, artillery, and support forces. According to its designers, only an armed force that could be concentrated quickly would be effective against the “overrunning strategies” (lerohanás hadászatok) of Hungary’s neighbors. This dictated that the four motorized and cavalry brigades should receive the highest priority. After the passage of Law XX, the Defense Ministry decided to proceed with Huba in three tranches. Huba-I would consist of the mobile brigades, the core of the infantry divisions (21 two-regiment brigades), some artillery, and a significant increase in the flying corps. Huba-II would add armor and more aircraft, and Huba-III would fill out the infantry divisions’ missing brigades. By the end of March the Defense Ministry had worked out the details of the plan, and Rőder instructed the VKF to order the necessary prototypes and acquire production licenses.21

At the beginning of 1938, the LÜH was organized into the 1st Aviation Brigade, composed of three air regiments, along with an independent long-range reconnaissance group operating from Mátyásföld. There were twenty-three understrength squadrons in all. The 1st Flying Regiment was made up of two fighter groups of three squadrons each, based at Börgönd, Veszprém, and Kecskemét.²² The 2nd Flying Regiment was composed of two bomber squadrons at Szombathely, and the 3rd Flying Regiment consisted of three light bomber squadrons at Tapolca, Veszprém, and Pápa. The short-range reconnaissance squadrons were aligned with and subordinate to the seven mixed brigades, and were based at Budapest, Székesfehérvár, Kaposvár, Pécs, Szeged, Debrecen, and Miskolc.²³ Until autumn 1938, these designations were for internal reference only; in public the units were still known by their cover names (e.g., 2/I Bomber Group was the “Airmail Company”).

Fifty-five million of the Győr program’s 600 million pengős were designated for aviation equipment and stores. The first domestic beneficiary was WM, which received in July an order for thirty-six WM 21 short-range reconnaissance aircraft. The Defense Ministry insisted on decentralizing airplane production (a tactic advocated by Szentnémedy in 1935), and so ordered an additional twelve WM 21s each from Magyar Állami Vas-, Acél- és Gépgyárak, MÁVAG) and Magyar Waggon- és Gépgyár (MWG).²⁴ The WM 21 “Sólyom” (Falcon) was an adaptation and improvement of the Fokker C.V-D. A two-seat, open-cockpit biplane, powered by the WM-14 870-horsepower engine, the Sólyom was faster and more robust than its German stablemate, Heinkel’s He 46, but it was not blessed with easy handling characteristics, and the lower wing restricted the observer’s vision.²⁵ Nevertheless, WM, MÁVAG, and MWG built 128 Sólyoms and they performed satisfactorily until 1942. The WM 21’s best attribute was its native origin. Being constructed entirely within Hungary meant no hard currency left the country, and it stimulated MÁVAG and MWG aircraft production at a critical time for the industry.

Figure 6.1. These WM 21s wear the yellow invasion band and white cross adopted in summer 1942. Courtesy of the Péter Zámbori Collection.

Despite the air corps’ growing preference for German airplanes, the LÜH could not count on Berlin to fill the additional aviation requirements of the Huba plan owing to excessive delays in deliveries. From the 1936 order of 190 aircraft, only the eighteen He 70s had arrived by the end of 1938. In the summer of 1938, the LÜH placed a contract for thirty-six He 112s, a design that had set a world speed record and had narrowly lost the German fighter competition to the Bf 109. A single airplane was delivered in February 1939, followed by two additional prototypes, before the German Aviation Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, RLM) canceled the contract.26 The RLM always prioritized production for domestic needs, and in 1936 Göring had introduced a Four-Year Plan that aimed for self-reliance in the aviation industry. The Four-Year Plan forced manufacturers to fill orders for the Luftwaffe first and to curtail the variety of models produced. This meant that Hungary would take a back seat to the Luftwaffe in delivery of airplane types, like the He 46, that were in use by both services, and that manufacture of models not adopted for series production for the German force, such as the He 112, would be discontinued.²⁷ Hungary was the single largest customer for German combat aircraft in the period 1936–1938, accounting for over a quarter of all sales in 1937, but the export market represented less than 5 per cent of the 1.3-billion-Reichsmark industry. The rest of the 7,500 aircraft produced in Germany from 1934 to 1939 were dedicated to the Luftwaffe.²⁸

Hungarian airmen therefore had to look again to Italy for assistance. Italy had extended another substantial arms credit in 1937, this time of 120 million liras, of which 18 million went for purchases of aviation equipment. The LÜH used this grant to finish paying for the 1936 order of fifty-two CR.32 fighters, all of which had arrived by the end of 1938.²⁹ The VKF did not support further purchase of the CR.32 because of its approaching obsolescence, but the LÜH persisted.³⁰ Due to the ready availability of the Fiat, it formed the backbone of the Hungarian fighter force for two years. The CR.32 would have looked at home on a First World War aerodrome, with its open cockpit, fixed landing gear, and fabric wings, although its service ceiling of 25,000 feet and maximum speed of 210 knots far exceeded the performance of 1918 airplanes. The He 112, the other fighter the LÜH ordered in 1938, belonged to the future. It was an all-metal, low-wing monoplane with retractable gear and an enclosed cockpit; it could reach 31,000 feet and 275 knots and was armed with two 20-millimeter cannon in addition to its pair of machine guns. But Heinkel could not deliver the He 112, and Fiat could supply CR.32s, and so Hungarian fighter pilots flew the aging Italian design.

Much the same scenario played out in the acquisition of a suitable light bomber. The LÜH saw the need for a multirole airplane capable of reconnaissance, daytime bombing, and low-level attack. The Ju 86 was known to be “clumsy” and ill-suited to low-level operations, and the RLM did not offer any other models for export.31 Caproni did make available its new Ca.310, which promised to fulfill the LÜH performance criteria as well as the production requirements: it would accept the WM-14 engine and could be manufactured under license in Hungary. The LÜH therefore ordered thirty-six Ca.310s in late June 1938, with delivery in three batches to be completed by October. The final aircraft did not arrive until June 1939, but given the lengthy delays to which the LÜH had grown accustomed, the Ca.310’s tardiness was not a major drawback. Its poor performance was, however, and resulted in the air service returning the entire lot to Italy for replacement by a different model. Although the trial machines had been equipped with a 700-horsepower, 14-cylinder engine, the production airplanes Caproni sent to Hungary came with weaker 7-cylinder engines of only 460 horsepower. The engines tended to overheat at low altitude, and their lower power significantly degraded the airplane’s capability. In autumn 1939, the LÜH sent Caproni a list of fifteen flaws to be rectified to keep the type in service. Yugoslavia had reported similar problems with its Ca.311s, and the Italian Air Ministry’s inspector validated the Hungarian complaints. With no reasonable prospects of correcting the design’s shortcomings, Caproni instead offered to exchange the remaining Ca.310s for a slightly newer and more powerful twin-engined bomber, the Ca.135. The Ca.135 also suffered from a number of deficiencies. Even with the WM-14 engines, it was too slow. Its defensive armament was light in comparison with other similar designs (e.g., Bristol’s Blenheim IV, which was exported to Romania and Yugoslavia, sported six machine guns to its three), the hydraulic system was prone to failure, and the propeller had a disturbing tendency to fall off. Nevertheless, its payload and bombing accuracy were deemed acceptable, and the Ca.135 served with the Hungarian air service until late 1942.³²

Figure 6.2. Caproni Ca.135 bomber, 1942. Courtesy of the Péter Zámbori Collection.

LÜH officers did not know in 1938 that the Ca.310 order would be such a disaster, but they were aware of the technological challenges facing their service, even with access to German and Italian exports. In the January 1938 MKSz roundup of the previous year’s aviation developments, Szentnémedy printed a comparative chart that showed one Czechoslovak and four French machines with performance exceeding that of the ordered, but never fielded, He 112, along with a pair of French four-engine heavy bombers far surpassing any planned Hungarian capability.33 Through the course of the year, material defects and production delays made the situation more bleak. The LÜH staff recommended comprehensive trials be conducted before any orders were placed, but this was ignored, with predictable results. In October, the situation was brought to the attention of Admiral Horthy, through a report by Lieutenant Colonel László Háry, the long-serving fighter pilot appointed in May to head the LÜH. Háry’s assessment of the technical state of the air service began with a critique of the procurement process before taking up the problems of particular aircraft. Horthy’s extensive handwritten notes on Háry’s report reveal the regent’s interest in aviation and establish his working knowledge of the air service’s challenges, and therefore merit lengthy citation:

Today countless ministry sections share the portfolio for aviation material. Responsibility for motorized and armed airplanes, cannon, and technical parts is established and organized far from the flying. Thus the fliers, without experts and inquiry and in the absence of basic battle-trials, in the recent past spent 27 million marks on aviation equipment which is not suitable for combat.

The procured bombers (Junkers Ju 86) are not suited to low-altitude attack.

Our long-range reconnaissance machines are bad because the observers cannot see anything out of them.

The short-range reconnaissance machines have to be improved at home. (The ailerons break away.)

The heavy bombers are not suitable, because they can carry only a 1000 kg bomb load 400–450 km distance. We have to carry out a reconstruction on them. Who is responsible for the errors? The technical service is not composed of experts. The losses spoil the corps’ spirit and corrupt confidence in leadership.

This year’s order of Italian aircraft also occurred with no connection to battle-trials or expert opinion. For low-level attack we have to use such airplanes which are neither maneuverable nor fast, and are equipped with high-altitude engines. If every tool does not advance the corps’ work, then we cannot expect results.34

Háry addressed the inability of the air service to take in sufficient numbers of new officers and fresh recruits, and identified one of Hungary’s fundamental barriers to becoming a regional air power: its agrarian nature and the attendant obstacles to training suitable young men as mechanics and engineers. He then described the difficulty in conducting combat flight training on a peacetime calendar. Admiral Horthy offered no disagreement with Háry’s analysis, and paid particular attention to the recruiting deficits:

It is a mistake that the replacement of active officers (so far) has not been addressed by the flying corps. During academy training it is not possible to recognize the prospective flying corps’ officer. If he comes to the flying corps, he is forced into the thankless role of a student for one to two years of training.

In 1935, twenty-one lieutenants were commissioned into the flying corps, and although since 1935 seventeen, and since 1936, twenty-five flying squadrons have been formed, in 1937, thirteen, and in 1938, eight officers have come to the flying corps from Ludovika, when in this year our casualties are already twice that. Thus the present situation, in which there is a shortfall of 60 men from the established officer strength, that is, 1/6 of the officer corps. The officer shortage is temporarily filled with reserve officers, who bring with them to the staff the seed of discontent and agitation, and regard the air service as just a last employment refuge. We fill the gap (as always), but the idea of the unified officer corps suffers (such are the replacements). It is hard to make up for the absence of the nursery [gyermekszoba, i.e., cadet training].

The qualification of replacement enlisted men is principally completed—on paper. The new recruit intake is not sufficient to provide our agrarian country with industrial training. It is not possible to train a farmhand to be an airplane mechanic, etc., in 2 years. The squadron technical service rests on the shoulders of 5–8 chief engineers, together with expensive machinery and security staff. Flying training is weak because there is not enough time. Fifty-two Sundays and Saturdays, twenty holidays, Christmas, Easter, harvest holidays, bad weather, guard duty, etc.35

Horthy’s note about the year’s casualties exceeding officer accession was not an exaggeration. From October 1937 until mid-July 1938, the LÜH had suffered sixty-four aircraft accidents at a cost of twenty airmen’s lives. The accident rate had so alarmed the Army High Command (Hadsereg főparancsnokság, HFP) that it had commissioned an investigative panel, led by General Elemér Novák-Gorondy. The report was damning. It found the entire structure—organization, equipment, training, material support—unsuitable.³⁶ Regarding the rash of accidents, the panel observed the increased sophistication of the new aircraft in the inventory and doubted that the pilots had sufficient experience in the recent types.³⁷ To increase overall effectiveness and efficiency, it recommended the aviation authority be placed directly under the defense minister and have its own budget. The panel also criticized the speed at which the LÜH had attempted to expand, arguing that slower and more methodical growth would lead to better capability. “The Hungarian air force is a young service with immature organizations and equipment,” wrote Novák-Gorondy, “which from the beginning has struggled with thousands of difficulties.”38 There is no evidence that Admiral Horthy saw the Novák-Gorondy report himself (Háry made no reference to it in his presentation), but some of its elements were incorporated into Háry’s presentation.

A fix for the pilot training shortfall was already underway when Horthy received Háry’s report. The Defense Ministry had accepted in June an Italian offer to provide training for 200 Hungarian pilots. The contract was for two years at a total cost of 18 million liras (roughly equivalent to one squadron of Italian airplanes), and would take place at Grottaglie airfield near Taranto. The South Italy Flying Course (Dél-olasz Repülő Tanfolyam, DRT) followed the earlier, small-scale pilot training scheme in which the Batáry brothers took part. It was conceived before the recognition of arms equality, and was expected to be conducted with some discretion, if not complete secrecy. That accounts for the choice of Grottaglie, an isolated outpost and the site of a short-lived secret training program for German pilots in 1933, instead of the established Italian training facilities at Perugia.³⁹ After the acknowledgment of Hungarian armament rights, the newly hatched training program was able to proceed without the legal complexities required a decade earlier. Instruction began for the first class on October 19, 1938. The eight-month course was conducted under the Italian curriculum, with each student pilot receiving eighty hours of flight time, of which sixty were in a primary trainer and the rest in an operational type. Captain Pál Batáry returned to Italy to command the bomber training squadron; Captain Jenő Forró led the fighter unit.⁴⁰ Hungarian officers handled the classroom instruction, while Italians conducted the in-flight training on Breda Br.25s and Romeo Ro.1s. After their initial solo flights, pilot candidates were sorted into fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance tracks.41 The DRT was a complete success for Hungary. The program provided instruction for 200 pilots above Hungary’s own training capacity and at virtually no cost, since even the 18-million-lira expense came out of an Italian credit line.

Two domestic training programs were established the following year, both of them bearing the regent’s name. The first, the Miklós Horthy National Flying Foundation, was an umbrella organization that helped underwrite the university and sport clubs through a public funding scheme. The proceeds of certain cinema tickets and stamps financed civilian gliding and flying training, and promoted aviation through the foundation’s magazine, Magyar Szárnyak.⁴² Horthy was enthusiastic about the foundation because he saw it as a path to “create numerous trained and current young pilots suitable as reservists.”⁴³ The second institution was an aviation academy established on the grounds of a former Habsburg cadet school in the Felvidék town of Kassa. The regent presided over the school’s first matriculation on November 9, 1939, and it was known thereafter as the Royal Hungarian Miklós Horthy Military Aviation Academy. Its first class consisted of fifteen cadets, but the number had increased tenfold by 1944. By that time the course had been shortened to meet the wartime demands for air force officers, and no longer granted a diploma equivalent to a civilian college.⁴⁴

The DRT and the indigenous flight schools increased the number of new Hungarian pilots, but they did not address concerns about competence raised by Novák-Gorondy. Lieutenant Colonel Háry recommended the reduction of LÜH pilots’ participation with the national airline. Háry acknowledged the role of MALERT in sustaining Hungarian aviation during the period of Allied inspections, but he suggested it no longer performed that critical role, and in fact was a drain on manpower that the country could not afford. “The military vestiges in the air traffic company,” Horthy recorded, “which until now have offered a good disguise for the possibility of flying, cannot go any further…. It is not possible that when we have a 60-officer shortage, we should attach to the airline (three or four machines) ten active officers with the highest flying training, not in their officers’ uniforms but in the airline’s livery.” Both Horthy and Háry looked forward to the time “after the recognition of our military emancipation, when further covering is not necessary,” and the air service would be freed from the budgetary and administrative concerns of civilian aviation.45

After enumerating the air service’s problems, Háry reached the paper’s conclusion. “This report shows,” he wrote, “that the current situation of aviation is not healthy, and is in need of remedy. For twenty years land forces leaders have experimented with aviation…. The outcome of that well-intentioned experimentation is today’s sad personnel, material, and training situation.” Háry then declared that on November 1 he would “throw out 160 airplanes as worthless rubbish, because for six to ten years they have been mortal dangers.” Finally came the proposal, which by this point would have been no surprise: “Under the name Royal Hungarian Aviation Bureau or some other name, an organization should be established that brings independent responsibility for Hungarian aviation under a single individual.”⁴⁶

The regent took Háry’s report to heart. “Without the knowledge of the theory and application of flight to a minute level of detail,” he wrote, “it is not possible to lead, and because of this, in my opinion, we must have aviation experts.” Horthy’s last page of notes included an organizational sketch that showed a single agency in command of all aspects of military aviation, subordinated to the chief of the VKF, the Defense Ministry, and the HFP) for planning, programming and operational purposes. Under the diagram and above his signature, Horthy described the air service as being “cut out of the Honvédség…. It should work autonomously to achieve the organizational and operational goal. To reach independence (Önállósítani).”⁴⁷

The degree of independence that the air service ought to enjoy had been debated throughout 1938. Everyone involved recognized that the growing and barely disguised flying corps needed a more efficient structure, but Hungarians were not immune from the normal administrative affliction that makes bureaucrats eager to accumulate authority and reluctant to relinquish it. Therefore the various proposals from the Defense Ministry and VKF featured new titles and updated reporting requirements, but did little to improve the air service’s effectiveness. Since the beginning of the year, responsibility for aviation activities had been shared among three offices within the ministry: a chief of the Aviation Group (Légügyi csoportfőnök), an Aviation Inspectorate (Légügyi szemlélő), and an Air Force Headquarters (Légierő parancsnokság, Lepság). In addition to these was the chief of the air staff post on the VKF. After some shuffling of personnel within the ministries, by May 1938 Major General Waldemár Kenese had been confirmed as the head of the inspectorate, and Colonel Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner appointed chief air officer of the VKF. Ferenc Szentnémedy was promoted to colonel and made chief of the aviation group, while Lieutenant Colonel Háry was given operational control at Lepság. The installation of competent individuals did not resolve the organizational muddle, and after internal attempts failed, the Defense Ministry invited an Italian expert to study the situation. RA lieutenant colonel Gallo arrived in Budapest in August 1938 and submitted his proposal on September 1. He recommended an independent air force composed of six regiments amounting to 309 aircraft, reporting directly to the Defense Ministry. Given Gallo’s status as an officer of an independent air force himself (Mussolini had given the RA equal status with the army and navy in 1923) and a representative of the primary supplier of aircraft to Hungary, it would have been surprising indeed for him to have returned a proposal in favor of a small air service that functioned as a branch of the Honvédség. The VKF opposed the Gallo plan on the grounds that it would be too difficult and expensive to create the new organizations and acquire additional airplanes.48

General Henrik Werth, previously the commandant of the War College, was by this time the head of the VKF. A change of government in the spring had caused ripples through the defense establishment. Prime Minister Darányi’s opponents had succeeded in forcing him out of office because of his secret collaboration with Szálasi’s Arrow Cross in connection with the anti-Jewish law. Law XV of 1938, as it became known upon passage, restricted the number of Jews in the professions, and had been introduced as part of the same grand bargain with the radical right that had brought forth the Győr program. Horthy was so strongly opposed to Szálasi at that time that he would have demanded Darányi’s resignation for entering into negotiations with him. Faced with exposure, Darányi stepped down on May 13. Béla Imrédy was asked to form a government, and as a sop to the right, he named Jenő Rátz to replace Rőder as defense minister. General Lajos Keresztes-Fischer, the former chief of the regent’s military cabinet and brother of the interior minister, filled Rátz’s vacated position as chief of the VKF. Keresztes-Fischer held the post only until early October, when Horthy asked him to step aside in favor of Werth.⁴⁹

So it was that Horthy called in Defense Minister Rátz, Chief of Staff Werth, and head of the HFP Hugó Sónyi on October 28 to discuss the future of the air service. The VKF had prepared a memo describing the four competing proposals, arranged on a continuum from Gallo’s full independence to a First World War-style field aviation corps. Two days later, Horthy endorsed the Gallo plan. The decision was communicated in a terse note that read, “Supreme decision: the first option [Gallo’s] is desirable. This must be implemented immediately!”⁵⁰ The evidence suggests it was Háry’s paper, delivered on October 26, that galvanized Horthy into opting for an independent air force. But the impetus for an organizational modernization of the service must have been largely provided by the course of events in international affairs, which from August had picked up momentum.

Hitler had scarcely returned from his triumphal tour of Austria when he began to discuss with his generals the details of Operation Green, the planned invasion of Czechoslovakia. He expected that Hungary and Poland would participate in order to reclaim territory lost to the government in Prague, but both countries were determined to avoid active participation in a German attack. They were, however, prepared to insist that any concessions granted to the German minority in Czechoslovakia be extended to ethnic Hungarians and Poles. The Hungarian objection was entirely practical. The saber rattling had begun just weeks after Darányi’s speech in Győr, and the Defense and Foreign Ministries knew they would not be in a position to threaten Czechoslovakia militarily for many months, perhaps years. Furthermore, any Hungarian mobilization aimed north would leave it open to Yugoslavian or Romanian attack from the south. Imrédy and Kánya therefore pressed Ciano on the issue of Yugoslavian neutrality at a meeting in Rome in July. Ciano had weeks earlier taken up the matter with the Yugoslav prime minister, Milan Stojadinović, who promised that Yugoslavia would not intervene in a German-Czech conflict if Hungary also abstained. Hungary could benefit afterward from the German action, Stojadinović agreed, as long as it did not take the initiative.51 Ciano also reported to Villani at the same time that Germany had promised not “to take forceful measures against Czechoslovakia” but rather to “endure Czech provocations, anticipating that in time, the process of internal disintegration will make it easier to reach a solution.”⁵² The Hungarians were not satisfied with Italy’s assurances, and therefore sought guarantees from the Germans themselves, who elected to put off such weighty discussions until the regent’s state visit in August.

The official party, consisting of Admiral and Mrs. Horthy, Imrédy and his wife, Kánya, Rátz, and Sztójay, arrived at Kiel on the morning of August 22 for the launching of the new German cruiser, the Prinz Eugen. Mrs. Horthy commissioned the ship and the party observed maneuvers and a naval review. The fine atmosphere was spoiled later in the day by reports that Hungary had signed a treaty with the Little Entente. The Germans were furious, seeing the treaty as a renunciation of Hungary’s claims toward revision, and therefore weakening Germany’s own case. Ribbentrop tore into Imrédy and Kánya the next day. The Bled Agreement, he contended, was a stab in the back, “blocking the road to intervention in Czechoslovakia and making it morally more difficult for the Yugoslavs to leave their Czech allies in the lurch.”53 Hitler was more tactful with Horthy. He detailed Operation Green and asked Horthy if Hungary would participate, implying that it could keep any territory it subsequently occupied. Horthy, by his own account, declined on the grounds that the Honvéd could not mount such an operation. The admiral, a great respecter of British naval power, warned the Führer against an armed invasion that might lead to a world war, in which the Royal Navy would prove decisive. At that point Hitler shouted, “Nonsense! Be quiet!” and Horthy ended the conversation. Another discussion between the two toward the end of the visit was similarly unproductive. Hitler made a little headway with Rátz and Imrédy after he told them “he who wants to sit at the table must at least help in the kitchen.”⁵⁴ They conceded that Hungary could participate when it was militarily capable and when its southern flank was secured. Kánya also retreated a bit under pressure. He had told Ribbentrop on August 23 that it would take Hungary two years to prepare for conflict, but amended that time on August 25 to less than two months. The officials returned to Hungary somewhat dejected, but their reception at home was enthusiastic. Hungarians were revisionists almost to a man, but they were not eager to follow Hitler into war (yet), and the stories of Horthy and his ministers standing up to the Germans’ bluster raised the government’s standing considerably.

Regarding the negotiations with the Little Entente, the Hungarian position was that the Bled Agreement was in fact three separate accords, and that the pledge of nonaggression would not become operable until Hungary was satisfied with the condition of its national minority within the other state. The Foreign Ministry emphasized this distinction in a cable to all its embassies on August 23. It had concluded a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Romania and Yugoslavia concerning minority rights, but the “finalization of the entire agreement-complex” with Czechoslovakia remained an open question.55 In any case, the Bled conference left all sides temporarily satisfied. The Little Entente thought it had gained Hungary’s pledge of nonaggression in exchange for acknowledging a rearmament that was already under way. Hungary, on the other hand, saw the key enabling feature of Trianon—its forced disarmament—crumble, at the price of a promise not to attack two countries (Romania and Yugoslavia) that its patrons had already placed off limits. All four states were in retrospect hopelessly naive in believing that treaties among them would make any difference at all to the great powers that really controlled their fates. Romania and Yugoslavia were protected because they were useful to Germany and Italy, and Czechoslovakia was doomed because Germany had designs on it.

For Hungary’s armed forces, the Bled accords were a welcome relief from the burden of secrecy. Its rearmament program had been increasingly visible in the months since the Győr speech, but the need to cloak the prohibited branches was a drag on efficiency. New orders for airplanes and tanks did not spike in September 1938, because Italy and Germany had long been complicit in Hungary’s clandestine rearmament. But recruiting for the air service and armored corps could now begin publicly, and the organizational structures no longer needed to be distorted through disguise.

Among the most visible symbols of Hungary’s new status were the red-white-green chevrons that appeared from September 15 on the wings and rudders of airplanes that the day before had been part of an “Airmail Company,” “Meteorological Section,” or civilian flight school. The same Defense Ministry order that specified the national aircraft markings also adopted for the air force the uniform worn by LÜH officials.56 That date marked the end of the evasion of Trianon’s air clauses that had begun nineteen years earlier, when the Defense Ministry’s 37th Section had vowed to abrogate the treaty in order to maintain the nucleus of an air force. The LÜH in September 1938 comprised 196 combat airplanes organized in twenty-five squadrons: ten bomber squadrons, primarily equipped with Ju 86s; six fighter squadrons armed with CR.32s; seven short-range reconnaissance squadrons flying He 46s and WM 21s; and two long-range reconnaissance squadrons operating He 70s.⁵⁷ The air service had been officially acknowledged for only three weeks when it received its first mobilization order, in response to the crisis in Czechoslovakia.

The German High Command was prepared to execute Operation Green on October 1, the date that Kánya had told Ribbentrop the Honvédség would be ready for intervention.⁵⁸ Hitler’s plans were not dependent on Hungarian participation, but he hoped to use a Czecho-Hungarian border skirmish as his reason for abandoning negotiations and initiating military action. The Führer suggested just such an arranged provocation to Imrédy before the second round of talks with British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in late September. Imrédy had gone to Berlin to ask Hitler to endorse the same rights for the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia as he extracted for the Sudeten Germans. Hitler was in no mood to coddle Hungarians one month after the “stab in the back” at Bled, and he suggested to Imrédy that, if satisfactory agreement were reached on the Sudeten problem, he “would have no moral title to raise further demands either before the world or himself, and cannot make his standpoint subject to the treatment of other nationalities.”⁵⁹ A Hungarian invasion that offered Germany a casus belli, however, would be an entirely different matter, and Budapest could then expect to reap substantial rewards. Imrédy was unwilling to risk war alone against Czechoslovakia (and perhaps France and Britain as well), and he did not agree to Hitler’s scheme. The Foreign Ministry instead launched a diplomatic offensive against Prague, demanding the return of majority Magyar areas, and autonomy for Slovakia and Ruthenia.⁶⁰

Figure 6.3. Ju 86 and He 70s on the airfield at Kecskemét, 1939. Photo: Fortepan/Zoltán Hídvégi.

Although Imrédy did not intend open conflict with Czechoslovakia, he did initiate actions to improve Hungary’s military readiness. The LHT ordered a limited mobilization of two years’ recruiting classes, and Imrédy wrote to Mussolini to ask for the deployment of eight Italian fighter squadrons under Hungarian colors. Action on that request was delayed until German intervention obviated the need, but the remarkable change in circumstances is worth considering: just six weeks earlier a secret Italo-Hungarian aviation deployment would have been arranged so as to hide prohibited Hungarian capability. Now the concern was to reinforce Budapest’s air defenses without acknowledging Italian assistance. On September 23, the air service issued its own limited mobilization order for reservists to report for “maneuvers,” and three days later a restricted flight zone was established around Budapest. Aircraft that did not comply with published arrival and departure routes risked being shot down.61 A large air defense exercise was held in the capital on September 26. The Air Defense League simulated mustard gas and incendiary attacks, and firemen responded to a smoke pot on the roof of the stock exchange. Photographs of the event show families scurrying into shelters, decontamination teams trying to contain the spread of the mock gas, and what might have been the first overflights of the capital by airplanes bearing the new national chevrons.⁶²

When the terms of the Munich Pact were announced on September 29, Budapest found to its disappointment that its claims had not been settled by the four powers, but were to be reconciled through bilateral negotiations within three months. Imrédy decided to force the issue. The Foreign Ministry demanded plebiscites in Slovakia and Ruthenia, demobilization of Hungarian soldiers in the Czechoslovak army, and the release of Hungarian political prisoners.63 On October 6, irregular forces known as the Rongyos Gárda (Ragged Guard) began to infiltrate into Slovakia disguised as foresters, with orders to attack targets of military significance such as bridges and railroads, and to prepare ethnic Hungarians to support a possible armed incursion from Budapest.⁶⁴ The same day the entire air service, with the exception of the 4th and 5th Short-Range Reconnaissance Squadrons at Pécs and Szeged, was put on alert. Units were to disperse to their combat airfields and be ready for operations from noon on October 7. The squadrons did not meet the October 7 mobilization goal, but a report from October 10 showed the short-range reconnaissance units subordinate to the mixed brigades were in place, along with the four bomber squadrons of the 1st Aviation Brigade. The HFP initially retained control of fighter and long-range reconnaissance squadrons, but on October 24 those were released to the 1st Aviation Brigade.⁶⁵

Diplomatic negotiations continued while Hungary and Czechoslovakia mobilized. When officials from the two states met at Komárom on October 9, Prague was represented by Slovak separatists, who were ill prepared for detailed discussions and disinclined to bargain.⁶⁶ The talks made little progress and broke off after four days. Horthy also appealed to Hitler, Mussolini, and Chamberlain. Darányi went to Munich, Csáky to Rome, and Horthy invoked Chamberlain’s brother Austen (who had visited Hungary and met with Horthy in 1936) in his letter to the British prime minister.⁶⁷ Mussolini was supportive, Chamberlain noncommittal, and Hitler truculent. Darányi, who was no longer in the government but was thought to be well-regarded by Hitler, met the Führer on October 14 to secure German support of a Hungarian attack on Czechoslovakia. Hitler, not surprisingly, opposed this, and denounced Hungary for failing to act earlier at his suggestion. When Darányi showed him a map of the ethnic Hungarian regions that Budapest claimed, Hitler scolded him. “Once I offered you all Slovakia. Why didn’t you take it then?”⁶⁸ Hitler eventually agreed to consider arbitration, and Darányi, after telephone consultation with Budapest, offered to adhere more closely to the Axis line, and perhaps join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Hitler pushed: Would Hungary leave the League of Nations? Darányi did not commit to that course, but advanced the prospect of economic concessions. The Führer ended Darányi’s audience after agreeing that Hungary ought to receive additional German arms.

For three days there were no diplomatic advances, but during this time both sides increased their mobilization. Hungary announced the call-up of five more classes of recruits, bringing its total force to near 300,000, and Czechoslovakia reinforced its position in the east to nineteen divisions. The period October 19–28 was filled with cables and consultations, as the final composition of the arbitration conference was debated (would Poland and Romania be included to help dispense with Ruthenia?) and likely outcomes were mooted. Finally, on the October 29, Hungary and Czechoslovakia officially invited Germany and Italy to resolve the dispute, agreeing ahead of time to accept the Axis decision.69 That decision was announced on November 2, 1938, in Vienna’s Belvedere Palace, and awarded Hungary over 4,500 square miles and roughly a million inhabitants, the majority of whom were Magyars (57 per cent according to Prague’s numbers, 86 per cent according to Budapest’s). Hungary received the disputed cities of Kassa, Ungvár, and Munkács, but did not gain Pozsony or Nyitra. Critically, Czechoslovakia also retained Ruthenia, disposition of which was not taken up by the arbiters. Hungary and Poland were intent on joint seizure of the area in order to obtain a common border, which would improve each country’s strategic position and enhance military and economic cooperation between them.⁷⁰

No major military confrontations erupted between Hungarian and Czechoslovak forces during the time of the First Vienna Award, but along with the activities of the Rongyos Gárda there were a number of minor aerial incidents, including one that resulted in the destruction of a Czech reconnaissance airplane. From the middle of October, aircraft on both sides had committed border incursions, conducting reconnaissance, propaganda leaflet drops, and strafing attacks. On October 25, Lieutenant László Pongrácz of the 1/2 Fighter Squadron was on a routine patrol along the Danube when he and his wingman violated standing orders and crossed into Czechoslovakian airspace in their CR.32s. Approaching the Érsekújvár airfield, they attacked and shot down a Czech Letov Š-328. The Letov crashed and burned, killing the observer.71 Pongrácz’s action was controversial among other Hungarian pilots. According to the memoirs of Mátyás Pirity, a CR.32 pilot in the 1/1 Fighter Squadron, Pongrácz’s victim was a trainer in the landing circuit. Because of that, Pirity recalled, “Opinion was divided regarding this feat of arms, but the majority of pilots condemned both the effect of the action and the downing of an unarmed training airplane.”⁷² Pongrácz was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing by a military tribunal. He was awarded the Bronze Medal for his “energetic and forceful activity that greatly helped to decrease the Czech intrusions” during the period from September 23 to November 25. The actual downing of the Letov was not mentioned in his citation, but no other pilots received decorations for patrols in this time.⁷³ Despite the award, his fighter group commander, Major János Schwager, regarded the incident as a failure of flight discipline.⁷⁴

This incident, although inconsequential in light of the carnage to come, is nonetheless intriguing. Not only was it the first air-to-air victory in two decades for the newly acknowledged Hungarian air force, but it also parallels Hungary’s conduct of foreign policy in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. Like Lieutenant Pongrácz (whose political views are unknown), the radical rightists were aggressive in pursuit of their adversaries, and were willing to overstep the bounds established by higher authorities. Much of Hungary’s political center reacted to these tactics as did Mátyás Pirity and his squadron mates: not opposed to the action in principle, but put off by the whiff of dishonor in the particular circumstances. When tried by the tribunal of public opinion, however, the radicals’ results (among them the Vienna Awards) won acclaim. The regent nonetheless came to distrust them, and, as Schwager did to Pongrácz, sought to shunt them away as soon as possible.

But first the regent would lead the ceremonial reinvestment of the Felvidék. It was a time of national celebration, capped by the procession into Kassa on November 11. Admiral Horthy entered Kassa astride his white horse, just as he had entered Budapest in 1919. This time he was followed by members of the cabinet and the entire legislature. Thousands turned out to cheer the event, including Lord Rothermere, Hungary’s favorite foreign son. Parliament incorporated the awarded areas back into the country the following day.75 The problem of Ruthenia remained, and Hungary determined to launch an attack, preferably with Polish assistance and Axis approval, as soon as one week hence. Poland, however, declined to offer regular troops for the endeavor, and Italy deemed Ruthenia outside its area of interest. Berlin was strongly opposed, and even warned Budapest that such an act risked invalidating the First Vienna Award. Horthy was unwilling to take the step alone, and so the plan was shelved and troops demobilized. There were, as always, political consequences of the debacle. Imrédy offered his resignation, but Horthy declined to accept it, fearing the dismissal of a prime minister well liked in Berlin would further strain relations with Germany. Instead, he asked Kánya to go, and appointed Kánya’s deputy István Csáky, held in higher esteem by the Germans, in his place.⁷⁶ The aborted occupation of Ruthenia was a diplomatic disaster for Hungary, and also had unfortunate domestic consequences, weakening the conservative dissidents and pushing Imrédy, formerly thought to have a pro-Western orientation, closer to the Nazis.

The most obvious result of Imrédy’s increasing fidelity to the Nazi line was his introduction in parliament of the second anti-Jewish law. This measure drew the definition of a Jew more broadly than the earlier bill, and further reduced the percentages of Jews permitted in the professions. Ironically, Imrédy’s political opponents used his own antisemitic law to force him out, by producing documents unearthed in Bohemia purporting to show that one of his great-grandmothers was Jewish. Horthy was therefore able to secure Imrédy’s resignation on grounds that Berlin could not fault. The regent appointed Count Pál Teleki to the premiership on February 16, 1939.77

Teleki was Hungary’s fifth prime minister in the eight years since the end of Bethlen’s decade of consolidation. Like Darányi and Imrédy before him, Teleki owed his appointment in part to Horthy’s hope that he could maintain the country’s free hand in foreign affairs. The esteemed geographer and chief Scout ultimately fared no better in this regard than did his predecessors, though his dramatic suicide following Hungary’s 1941 decision to assist the German invasion of Yugoslavia did much to salvage his political reputation. In early 1939, Teleki left Csáky in place at the Foreign Ministry, and did not repudiate Imrédy’s announcement that Hungary would join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Nor did he dismiss parliament or replace the Imrédyists in the government. Against the Arrow Cross, however, Teleki took decisive action, dissolving the party, arresting some of its leaders, and confiscating its records and assets.⁷⁸ He continued to press Hungary’s claims on Ruthenia, adding economic and geopolitical rationales to what he considered flimsy ethnic justifications. As it became more evident that a German invasion of Czechoslovakia was looming, Teleki was determined that Hungary would be the first to occupy Ruthenia. Matters came to a head one month into his tenure. On March 12, Hitler informed Hungary’s minister to Berlin Sztójay that the operation was imminent, and that Hungary would have twenty-four hours after it began to settle its case in Ruthenia. Hungary agreed to provide a pretext for the invasion, which was planned for March 18. The Slovakian declaration of independence on March 14 rushed events ahead, and on March 15 Hungarian troops moved north into Ruthenia at the same time as the Wehrmacht headed toward Prague.⁷⁹

The mobilization initiated by Budapest in March 1939 included a new element: the independent Royal Hungarian Air Force (Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légierő, MKHL). The MKHL was established on Admiral Horthy’s orders as supreme warlord along the lines agreed in October 1938. Effective January 1, 1939, the Defense Ministry’s Aviation Group was disbanded, and its responsibilities assumed by the LÜH and the MKHL headquarters commanded by László Háry, recently promoted to full colonel. This new Lepság was subordinate only to the Defense Ministry, “operating independently and autonomously” (függetlenül, önállóan működik) of the HFP and VKF.80 This arrangement meant that the HFP must seek permission from the Lepság on matters of air-ground cooperation—a situation that surely would limit the “frittering away” of air power feared by Szentnémedy. The Lepság also gained its own budget, officer promotion and assignment authority, and discretion in building airfields. General Károly Bartha, who replaced Rátz in November as defense minister, retained control over the deployment of MKHL squadrons, and insisted that Háry consult the ministry on organizational matters.⁸¹

Not everyone was pleased by this initiative. The VKF went on the record with its dissent on January 5. It argued that the HFP must have a direct relationship to the LÜH director, or else the office of aviation inspector would be superfluous. Regarding the LÜH, the VKF also contended that the role of air force commander was a sufficient challenge in itself, and therefore the direction of civilian aviation should be separate from the Lepság. Furthermore, to ensure military readiness, there should be an aviation section established within the VKF, and a VKF officer should head the Lepság’s mobilization division.⁸² These objections of the VKF were not sufficient to overturn the regent’s decision, but they did signal the its displeasure with the organizational change.

With such short notice, the LHT had to execute the Ruthenian operation with only the forces already positioned near Upper Hungary. General Ferenc Szombathelyi’s Carpathian Group consisted of VIII Corps (three brigades) and the Rapid Corps (one cavalry, one bicycle, and one motorized brigade). Lepság assembled a provisional Aviation Group under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Sándor Illy, a future commandant of the Kassa aviation academy and MKHL general. Illy’s group was composed of Ju 86s from 2/II and 3/II Bomber Groups, and the three CR.32 squadrons of 1/I Fighter Group. He 70s from the 1st Independent Long-Range Reconnaissance Group at Kecskemét and Budaőrs also participated in the action, as did the He 46s from the 6th and 7th Short-Range Reconnaissance Squadrons at Debrecen, Miskolc, and their forward operating base at Ungvár. The Carpathian Group met little organized resistance and advanced quickly. On the March 16, He 46s attacked Czechoslovak troop formations, and the following afternoon, a pair of Ju 86s bombed defensive positions from high altitude. In both cases, Hungarian ground forces reported that the raids were successful. Szombathelyi’s troops reached the Polish border on March 17, suffering only 220 casualties in the attack. The northern border secured, Szombathelyi turned his attention to the west. Hungary had recognized the new Slovakian state, but its eastern boundary was not yet agreed, and Budapest was eager to seize as much territory as possible before Berlin intervened. There were compelling strategic reasons as well, since the critical railway link with Poland lay near the frontier claimed by Slovakia and could be subjected to harassing attacks. On March 23, the VKF ordered the Carpathian Group to advance westward up the Ung Valley.83

Slovak reconnaissance aircraft spotted the Hungarian advance at midday. Several flights of Letov Š-328s and Avia B.534 fighters were launched from airfields south of Kassa with orders to attack Szombathelyi’s force. Two B.534s from 45 Squadron were shot down by the machine gun detachment of the Hungarian 9th Light Artillery Regiment, and seven other Slovak airplanes were damaged in action on March 23. The Slovak attacks killed one Honvéd soldier. MKHL air activity on March 23 was limited to a few reconnaissance sorties. The following day, the Slovaks again sent three-ship formations of Avias and Letovs on low-altitude attack sorties. Three B.534s from 49 Squadron met three CR.32s of the 1/1 Fighter Squadron over the town of Szobránc. The Hungarians from the “Íjász” (Archer) squadron, led by Lieutenant Aladár Negró, had been scrambled from Ungvár airfield after ground observers reported the inbound Slovak aircraft. Negró and one of his wingmen, Sergeant Sándor Szoják, each scored a victory against the Slovak B.534s. Another Avia was downed by Hungarian AAA. Later in the day, the entire Íjász squadron was airborne with its commander, Lieutenant Béla Csekme, in the lead. They spotted and attacked three Š-328s that had just completed an attack against a Hungarian battery. The CR.32 pilots destroyed two of the Letovs in that engagement, and subsequently downed three more Avias. Negró and Szoják claimed their second victories of the day. The Slovak air force lost eight airplanes in combat on March 24, although their attacks were more effective than the day before, resulting in fifteen Honvéd deaths.84 No MKHL fighters were lost to enemy action, but one CR.32 was shot down by Hungarian AAA. The pilot, Sergeant Árpád Kertész of 1/1 Squadron, bailed out without injury.⁸⁵

The Hungarian bomber force conducted its first raid on March 24. Lepság ordered the 2/II and 3/II Bomber Groups to strike the airfield at Igló (Spišská Nová Ves), from which the Slovak attacks had been launched. The attack was a rushed affair, since the order arrived at 14:55, and the sun would set just three hours later. The MKHL’s Ju 86s were not equipped, nor their crews trained, for night-time operations. Major Elemér Kovács, the commander of 3/II Bomber Group, was to lead the attack, and he placed himself in a gunner’s position in the fourth bomber. Fourteen Ju 86s, six from 3/4 and eight from 3/5 Squadron, planned to attack in a column of three-ship V formations, each aircraft bearing 1,500 pounds of fragmentation bombs along with sixty-four 2-pound incendiaries. The bombers expected to rally with 2/II’s Ju 86s over Miskolc and join the escorting CR.32s before proceeding on to Igló. The plan was simple, but adequate for a first large mission against an unsophisticated opponent. Unfortunately, the strike group ran into difficulties on the ground that were compounded by errors in flight. The first flight of Ju 86s took off late from Debrecen due to the heavy bomb load causing the aircraft to sink into the mud. When the lead pilot, Lieutenant Edvin Joubert, caught up with the rest of the force over Miskolc, he could not reach them over the radio. Joubert assumed the formation would follow his flight, and he promptly flew into clouds. The other bombers did not trail the mission commander’s section, which was just as well, since Joubert got disoriented in the clouds and exited them heading south instead of north. Finding a huddle of buildings and a clearing, Joubert’s crew dropped its load. His wingman, Lieutenant Győző Lévay, recognized the area as being inside Hungary, and did not release his weapons. The flight made its way back to Debrecen and landed. One of the 3/5 Squadron airplanes experienced an engine failure and turned back. Another aircraft accidentally dropped its bombs en route to the target while still over Hungary. Captain Gyula Vághelyi led the remaining ten bombers (including the one with the empty bomb bay) north at 3,000 feet. They reached the target at 16:45 and dropped their bombs without receiving effective AAA fire. The attack damaged twelve Slovak aircraft and killed thirteen—five soldiers and eight civilians. One Avia fighter took off after the attack, but was unable to catch the southbound Ju 86s. None of the aircraft from 2/II Bomber Group participated. Conflicting information about bomb loads had delayed their take off from Szombathely, and on a refueling stop at Mátyásföld they were informed that the mission had been completed. There was little air activity on March 25, and the following day Hungary and Slovakia signed an armistice.⁸⁶

Figure 6.4. Fiat’s CR.32 (this one in RA colors) was the MKHL’s primary fighter during the 1939 war with Slovakia. Photo: Fortepan/Zoltán Hídvégi.

The public response to the MKHL’s initial foray into combat operations was enthusiastic. Admiral Horthy authorized a special order on March 25 that included the following:

On 24 March 1939, elements of our fighter and bomber units were ordered into combat for the first time. Our fighter forces annihilated the enemy air elements; our bombers performed their task—according to reports received so far—with ‘horrible’ effect. They achieved these results without any personnel or material losses despite the enemy’s efforts.

The Regent acknowledges the news of these events with great pride and pleasure, because they confirm to him our young Air Force’s outstanding quality.87

Magyar Szárnyak carried a full-page in-house advertisement that included the text of the telegraph agency’s March 25 report from the front above a poster-style celebration of “the young Hungarian Air Force’s glorious feats of arms.”⁸⁸ The Air Defense League’s magazine Riadó!, in keeping with its mission, focused on the damage done to Ungvár as a result of the Slovak attacks on March 23.⁸⁹ Colonel Szentnémedy called March 24 “Hungarian military aviation’s day of triumph,” and noted “the military actions attracted the attention of the whole world.”

Italian magazines recounted in detail the events on the Hungarian-Slovak border and the success of Hungarian fliers. Stampa’s Budapest correspondent declared that the Hungarian aviators’ first serious appearance was splendid, and they performed brilliantly.

The Messagero and Corriera della Sera stated the battle that was played out beside Ungvár showed the Hungarian fliers to great advantage.

Almost all the English papers published the news agencies’ reports about the Slovakian fighting. Reuters reported: “It was a time of great jubilation in Hungary because of the striking success of the Hungarian defense fighters.” On the editorial pages they write with great appreciation about the performance of the Hungarian fliers. The German papers are the same.

The Hungarian and Slovak battles were covered in detail in Der Bund and the Journal de Genéve. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung stressed the Hungarian pilots’ daring fights. According to the article: “Such was the drive with which the Hungarian fliers beat back the Slovak attacks that the Honvédség increased its prestige in the most significant way.”

… We can see that in the air we are no longer weak, and we can see the Hungarian aviators wing triumphantly in the spring sky, without opposition, with the wonder and acknowledgment of the whole world, accompanying our Honvéd as they take possession of the ancient borders!90

Szentnémedy viewed the actions as the realization of Horthy’s prophecy given a year earlier: “We were a riding nation; we will become a flying nation.”⁹¹ Eighteen fighter pilots and ten bomber crews were awarded medals for their deeds. Aladár Negró and Sándor Szoják received the title vitéz for their double victories, and in keeping with a time-honored martial tradition, the men changed their surnames to Szobránczy and Szobránci, reflecting the location of their triumphs.⁹²

The official assessment of the operation had quite a different tone. The HFP concluded that the Igló attack was characterized by “lax readiness and lack of discipline.”⁹³ Its report noted that the 3/II strike force took off without permission, failed to notice its command airplane’s navigational error, and suffered from deficiencies in reading maps and operating radio equipment. The panel recommended the MKHL’s training practices be modified to standardize the placement of the mission commander in the formation (Major Kovács, riding in the gunner’s compartment with a faulty microphone, could not communicate inside or outside the airplane), and to clarify the definitions of squadron readiness. The MKHL also established more stringent requirements for claiming aerial victories (the Hungarian fighter pilots claimed nine kills, but only seven Slovak fighters were lost in air-to-air combat).94 Colonel Háry took administrative and judicial action against a trio of MKHL officers. He removed Kovács from command of the 3/II Bomber Group, and confined Lieutenant Joubert and Warrant Officer Elsner, the pilot and navigator who mistakenly bombed the Hungarian hamlet, to garrison custody for fifteen days.⁹⁵

This brief conflict is worthy of extensive consideration because it was, as two authors named their studies, the “baptism of fire” for the MKHL. The existence of the force had only been acknowledged for eight months, and it had been independent from the army for just three months. It was Hungary’s first aerial combat, other than Pongrácz’s encounter in November 1938, since the Czechoslovak-Romanian interventions in 1919. An entire generation of Hungarian airmen had served without combat experience, and indeed with little sophisticated or large-scale tactical training. These factors give this single day’s battle a special significance. In the years that followed, there would be hundreds of days on which the MKHL would be engaged in more numerous and more desperate fights than it experienced on March 24, 1939. But those days would come in a different context, against a different enemy, and with a much higher cost. The short Slovak war was fought in direct support of the country’s primary foreign policy objective—regaining territory lost at Trianon—and its air battles, conducted by the arm explicitly proscribed by the treaty, were doubly relished by revisionists.

The defeat of Slovakia cannot, however, be seen as a vindication of the 1935 objective “to be able to act as a serious opponent against at least one of the Little Entente states.” The rump Slovak air service, although it retained frontline airplanes with the Czechoslovakia roundels, was patched together hurriedly and suffered particularly from a lack of experienced pilots. Fewer than 5 per cent of the officers of the Czechoslovakian armed forces were ethnic Slovaks, and hardly any Czech pilots remained to serve in the Slovak air force.96 The MKHL faced only two Slovak fighter squadrons; one-tenth of the number Szentnémedy had attributed to Prague in 1938.⁹⁷ It enjoyed a local numerical superiority that would not have existed in a fight with Czechoslovakia before the German dismemberment. On the other hand, Hungarian fighter pilots in Fiat CR.32s completely dominated the Slovaks flying Avia B.534s, in spite of the Avia boasting better performance and heavier armament than the Italian machine.

The MKHL’s lopsided victory in older and less capable airplanes made Hungarian claims of “glorious feats of arms” seem not entirely improbable. It must be noted, however, that an air defense scramble is a relatively simple maneuver that rewards individual initiative and skill, while a planned multigroup bomber attack requires a more sophisticated organization. Fighter aircraft are simpler to maintain and arm (one engine, one type of primary weapon), and defensive air patrol is essentially reactionary and requires little premission preparation. Multiengine bombers are more demanding to prepare for flight (more engines, multiple types of bombs to load in addition to the defensive armament), and the mission execution requires more preflight planning.

Satisfaction with the airplanes themselves reflected that dynamic. The MKHL was pleased with the CR.32s’ performance, and looked forward to the impending arrival of the newer Fiat CR.42s in the summer. It also was happy to take delivery in 1940 of thirty-six more CR.32s formerly of the Austrian air force for which the Luftwaffe could find no use. Even the Ju 86, which Háry and Horthy maligned in October 1938, acquitted itself reasonably well. Two Junkers aborted the mission for mechanical problems, probably due to malfunctioning spark plugs. The other difficulties encountered by the strike force could be traced to poor procedures and insufficient training. Captain Dénes Eszenyi, the commander of the squadron to which seven of the nine effective Igló bombers belonged, offered in MKSz concrete training techniques for all the duty positions in the Ju 86: gunner, radio operator, navigator, and pilot.98 The MKHL would wait two years for another test of its own bombing prowess, but in September 1939, Hungarian airmen watched closely the Luftwaffe’s devastating air campaign in Poland.

In the spring of 1939, the sine wave of Hungarian foreign policy brought the country closer to Germany. In addition to joining the Anti-Comintern Pact in February and accepting the German-brokered First Vienna Award in March, Hungary left the League of Nations in April. Csáky and Teleki accepted Axis leadership and promised to follow the Axis line, except regarding a possible German action against Poland. They delivered this message in person to Rome in April, and again to both Axis capitals via letter in July. Hungary’s refusal to facilitate a German invasion of Poland caused another rift in the Berlin-Budapest relationship. It left the Italians merely “disappointed”; the Germans were furious.⁹⁹ They froze armament deliveries and refused to discuss future purchases. Under pressure from Ribbentrop, Csáky relented and asked that the letter renouncing force against Poland be considered withdrawn.¹⁰⁰ Hungarian opinion turned strongly against Germany, as Csáky relayed to Ciano on August 18. “Ninety-five per cent of the Hungarian people hate the Germans,” Csáky asserted, before repeating the regent’s characterization of them as “buffoons and brigands.”¹⁰¹ Then came word of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Nothing could have hardened Hungarian attitudes more. The government was determined to maintain its common border with Poland and offer Germany no assistance. Teleki sent a private message to London to this effect. With the Soviet Union’s cooperation assured, Hitler did not feel the need to coerce Hungary in the matter, and therefore Teleki’s claim that Hungarian troops would resist German advances went untested.¹⁰²

Riadó! covered in photographs and print the devastating effect of the German combined-arms assault on Poland. The magazine even used the term “lightning war” (villámháború) to describe the tactic, following the example of the German press in coining the word Blitzkrieg, a word not seen in Luftwaffe doctrine. The pictures showed evidence of indiscriminate city bombing—Wehrmacht troops marching through Polish streets flanked by the charred walls of hollow buildings—as well as the results of highly accurate tactical strikes: an armored train destroyed by a bomb dropped expertly between two rail lines. Its correspondent acknowledged that the Luftwaffe had many advantages, including good weather, accommodating terrain, and a numerical edge. Those were external conditions, he contended, and did not account for the internal factors that contributed to the victory, such as “excellent leadership, a highly offensive-minded air fleet, and carefully produced aviation material, all the result of years of work.”

The fact is, the air superiority quickly established by the German air force … made possible the successful realization of the German leaders’ numerous large-scale strategic conceptions, and therefore brought the victory. This successful air campaign proved that what the Italian general Douhet and the German field marshal Göring had proclaimed in theory, and what had been demonstrated in the dozens of military and civil-military clashes since the World War, was in fact true: the air force has the capability to decide wars (a légi haderő a háború eldöntésére képes).103

That Blitzkrieg was offered as an example of Douhet’s wisdom shows how the understanding of the Italian’s thought had expanded to encompass any operational concept that included a significant role for air power. Douhet himself rejected the close air-ground cooperation that defined German doctrine in Poland. A Douhetian armed force would have had none of the potent German armor, and its air campaign would have seen Warsaw’s civilian population as the critical target. The Luftwaffe, in contrast, aimed first to destroy the Polish air force while it was still on the ground, before turning its attention to the rail network and then Polish army forces in the field.104 Hungarian airmen were drifting away from strict Douhetism without losing any faith in air power’s effectiveness. This shift was evident in a March 1940 MKSz article by a MKHL fighter pilot who discounted the idea of an independent air war, asserting instead that the air force was “the ground force’s most decisive instrument.”¹⁰⁵ Although this article did not specifically mention the defeat of Poland, the success of the German combined-arms campaign there was the best example of air power used to decisive effect in conjunction with the land component. The seamless cooperation (as it appeared to observers) between Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe could have made greater operational control of the MKHL by the VKF both more desirable to the VKF officers, and less alarming to Hungarian airmen.

The Polish armed forces in exile after 1939, including the Eagle Squadrons that contributed to victory in the Battle of Britain, owed their existence to the common Hungarian-Polish border established in the spring Ruthenian campaign, and to Hungarian obstinacy in keeping that border open in face of German pressure.¹⁰⁶ From September 17, Hungary allowed Poles into Ruthenia to escape German and Soviet troops. Some 140,000 refugees, nearly all soldiers, entered Hungary in this manner, and by June 1940, over 100,000 had made their way to Britain and France to serve in Western armies.¹⁰⁷

Once Poland’s fate was sealed, Horthy, Teleki, and Csáky tried to patch things up with Hitler. A war with Romania seemed ever more likely, and Budapest was eager for the resumption of German arms deliveries. The MKHL was especially keen to get its hands on the He 111 and Ju 87 bombers ordered earlier in the year. Both had performed very well in Poland, and they would fill a critical need in the Hungarian bomber force. The first examples arrived only in mid-1940.¹⁰⁸ The winter of 1939/1940 was rife with rumors of Soviet plans to invade Bessarabia and German plans to occupy the Romanian oil fields. Neither occurred, but they kept Hungarian statesmen and the VKF busy contemplating different schemes to secure Hungary’s flanks and achieve its revisionist objectives. Following the rout of France, the long-standing view among Hungarian conservatives that Britain would ultimately carry the day began to wane. Teleki felt that the matter of Transylvania should be settled before the war ended, and it looked as though the end could be in sight. So when the Soviet Union demanded in late June 1940 that Romania cede to it Bessarabia and Bukovina, the LHT ordered a general mobilization, with the intention of insisting on the satisfaction of Hungary’s claims.109 After the June 27 mobilization, the Lepság ordered forward deployment on July 2, and by July 6 the movement was complete. On July 9, the 1st Aviation Brigade’s chief of staff received the task order for attacks against Romania and the Soviet Union, but last-minute German intervention canceled the strikes. On July 12, the units received permission to send half of their enlisted personnel on leave, and three days later the deployed squadrons were ordered to return to their home bases.¹¹⁰ The air force continued to operate and train near the frontiers, however, which gave a Romanian pilot the opportunity to repeat László Pongrácz’s exploit. On August 27, a Ca.135 returning to Debrecen after a training sortie was attacked by a Romanian He 112 (the RLM released twenty-four of the type to Bucharest, although only three preproduction models ever reached Hungary) and forced to land. The next day, Captain János Gyenes tried to avenge the attack by bombing the Szatmárnémeti airfield in a WM 21. This incident, Teleki wrote to Horthy, “attested to the fliers’ lack of discipline,” and was “extraordinarily awkward for the Hungarian government’s promise to keep the peace.” Horthy agreed that “a single spark would have been enough for hostilities to flare up.”¹¹¹

Hitler called Teleki and Csáky to Munich, where he warned them openly not to attack Romania. Instead, he promised to bring the Romanians to the bargaining table to settle the territorial dispute. The Führer took a renewed interest in resolving the Transylvanian problem after he decided to invade the Soviet Union. To execute such an attack, Germany needed Hungarian railways and Romanian oil, and it did not want to have to fight either country in order to get them. Therefore a negotiated settlement was in the German interest. After bilateral talks ended in frustration, Ribbentrop and Ciano again dictated the terms in Vienna. On August 30 they were announced. Hungary received 17,000 square miles of territory and 2.5 million inhabitants, of whom nearly a million were Romanian. Almost 400,000 ethnic Hungarians remained in Romania. In return for what Teleki viewed as a poor deal, Hungary granted special recognition to the Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn (National Organization of Germans in Hungary), gave Germany additional economic concessions, and promised to pass certain internal measures. Among those measures were the release of Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi and the introduction of a third anti-Jewish law. Hungary acceded to the Tripartite Pact, which recognized the dominance of Italy and Germany in Europe and of Japan in Asia. It also agreed to the transport of German troops across Hungary into Romania, a concession that expanded until the Hungarian railways were essentially a part of the German military transportation network.112 These costs were not readily apparent to the Hungarian people (except those Jews directly affected), and they celebrated the Second Vienna Award as they had the First. Admiral Horthy led the parade into Nagyvárad on his charger to the delight of Magyar crowds, armored trains were draped in flowers, and flights of MKHL aircraft turned overhead.¹¹³ It was, according to Magyar Szárnyak, “the end of the Trianon captivity.”¹¹⁴

The mobilization also signaled the end of the Háry era for the MKHL. The VKF had opposed air force independence from the beginning, and László Háry, with his loyal following of MKHL officers and ability to influence Horthy, personified that organizational autonomy. Háry had rightly pointed out to Horthy in 1938 the multitude of problems facing the air service, and had suggested to the regent that airmen, if given the freedom, could solve them. That had not proved to be the case. Recruitment was still too low, airplanes too few, accident rates too high, and combat readiness too shaky. Háry and his staff had not caused any of these problems, to be sure, but neither had they corrected them as decisively as he had led the regent to expect. The VKF seized on the MKHL’s shortcomings during the July mobilization to undermine confidence in the organization. Air units had arrived at their wartime bases quickly, but they were not prepared to execute the VKF’s plan to reduce Romanian fortresses.115 The force was still plagued with technical troubles. The newly arrived Ca.135s could fly, but their bomb racks and bombsights were faulty; the short range of the Ju 86s meant they could not reach their intended targets deep in Transylvania; and the CR.42s could not have escorted them that far in any case.¹¹⁶ The MKHL therefore had no real offensive capability: the only bombers that could get to the VKF’s designated targets could not carry, or aim, bombs. In the days that followed this discouraging report, it also seemed that the MKHL had very little defensive capability, since one of its bombers was forced down inside the country, and was ill disciplined as well. With the prospects of the MKHL appearing rather grim, the VKF offered a proposal to bring it back under the control of the army and VKF. The air force, it concluded, was “struggling with an internal crisis that showed its leaders could not handle independence.”¹¹⁷ Chief of Staff Henrik Werth, originally a supporter of the autonomous air force, proposed to combine the MKHL with the air defense and civil defense functions under a reinstituted Defense Ministry Aviation Group. Horthy lost confidence in Háry, and on December 24 the regent removed him from the Lepság. Waldemár Kenese, formerly the inspector general, was brought out of retirement to head the MKHL.¹¹⁸ Kenese acted straight away to reduce flying accidents—by stopping all training flights.¹¹⁹ This had the immediate and obvious effect of lowering the loss rate, but it also substantially decreased the proficiency of MKHL pilots, a serious problem but one less apparent and easier to ignore.

As the year 1940 came to a close, Hungarian airmen had cause to worry for their service. In less than two years, it had gone from a clandestine branch of the army to an independent and modernizing force, and had played a dramatic role in a national triumph. But its leaders had been overly zealous in promoting the new arm, and the MKHL’s failure to address satisfactorily a range of equipment, training, and operational errors had put independence at risk. Still, there was much to celebrate from a national perspective. Trianon had been overthrown. The Hungarian flag flew over the Felvidék and substantial parts of Transylvania. Czechoslovakia had been dissolved, Romania forced to cede some of its ill-gotten gain, and Yugoslavia neutralized through a treaty signed at year’s end. The revisionist goals were almost completely fulfilled. And the price paid for these successes seemed quite low. Casualties in the border skirmishes were minimal, and Hungary had come out far ahead of its neighbors in each arbitration. The country had even maintained its honor by defying German requests for passage in its attack on Poland. This state of affairs was coming very quickly to an end. In the next few months, Hungary would violate its treaty with Yugoslavia, and embark on a disastrous war with the Soviet Union at Hitler’s side. The MKHL, like the rest of the nation, would lose many times over. It would lose first its independence as an aerial arm to the Hungarian army, then its national character to the Luftwaffe, and finally its very existence at the hands of the Allies.

NOTES

1. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:105–106.

2. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 128.

3. Ibid., pp. 130–131.

4. Quoted in Gooch, Mussolini and His Generals, pp. 320–321.

5. DGFP, No. 65.

6. DIMK, No. 120.

7. Quoted in Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 133.

8. Vidkun Quisling had not yet committed his perfidy in Norway at this time, but the term seems apt.

9. Quoted in Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 343. Entire paragraph based on Shirer’s account (pp. 337–344). Hitler fulfilled his promise to Mussolini on September 12, 1943, when German paratroops rescued the Duce from imprisonment.

10. Cornelius, Hungary in World War II, p. 64.

11. Szinai and Szűcs, Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy, pp. 96–100.

12. Ibid.

13. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:167, 174.

14. Sakmyster, “Army Officers and Foreign Policy in Interwar Hungary,” p. 26.

15. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:214.

16. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 132.

17. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:212–216.

18. Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 112.

19. Ránki and Tomaszewski, “Role of the State,” 41–42.

20. Huba was the name of one of legendary seven Magyar chieftains. Earlier plans had been named after Árpád and Előd.

21. Ibid., pp. 111–112.

22. From this point onward, the air service adopted a confusing two-part designation scheme. When discussing a group in relation to its regiment, the designation is given as regiment (Arabic)/group (Roman). Squadrons followed a group/squadron format, but both numbers were Arabic. Thus the 1st Fighter Group of the 1st Flying Regiment would be 1/I, and its second squadron 1/2.

23. Holló, A Galambtól a Griffmadárig, p. 60.

24. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 31.

25. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 183; vision restriction: MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 68.

26. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 59.

27. He 112 export orders in the queue ahead of Hungary’s did get filled: Spain received 19, Japan 12, and Romania eventually took over 24 former Luftwaffe machines.

28. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe, pp. 148–54, 205–206, 159.

29. Sisa, “MKHL olaszországi beszerzései,” p. 1059.

30. Winkler, “Magyar repülés története” (HL Tgy 3.327).

31. Clumsy: MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 55.

32. Sisa, “MKHL olaszországi beszerzései,” pp. 1068–1074. Bristol armament: MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 73.

33. Szentnémedy, “Visszapillantás a légügy mult évi fejlődésére,” p. 118.

34. MOL K. 589/8930-12. Emphasis in original.

35. Ibid.

36. MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 82–83.

37. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. IV/66.

38. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 83.

39. B. Juhász, “Olasz-Magyar vezénylések,” 163; German program: Eby, Hungary at War, p. 153.

40. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. IV/150.

41. Eby, Hungary at War, p. 154.

42. Kistelegdi, “A repülő akadémia története,” p. 177.

43. MOL K. 589/8930-12.

44. Rada, A Magyar Királyi Honvéd Ludovika Akadémia, pp. 345–354.

45. MOL K. 589/8930-12.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 78–84.

49. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:218–221, 274.

50. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 85.

51. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:234.

52. DIMK, No. 240.

53. Quoted in Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:240. This paragraph follows Macartney’s account (pp. 238–248), as do most descriptions in later works. In addition to the documentary evidence, Macartney made use of personal statements from many of the Hungarian diplomats involved, including his debrief of Horthy in detention in 1945, and is the most complete narrative of the events.

54. Quoted in Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 140.

55. DIMK, No. 298.

56. 40.028/Eln. B.-938 IX. 14, cited in Winkler, “Magyar repülés története” (HL Tgy 3.327).

57. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, p. vii.

58. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 377.

59. Imrédy, quoted in Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 141.

60. Ibid., pp. 142–143.

61. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), pp. IV/159–160.

62. Rakolczai, “Légvédelmi és légoltalmi gyakorlatok Budapesten,” pp. 294–298.

63. Ibid., pp. 142–143.

64. Dombrády, Hadsereg és politika Magyarországon, pp. 10–11; foresters: Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:279.

65. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), pp. IV/160–162.

66. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 143.

67. Szinai and Szűcs, Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy, pp. 104–110.

68. Quoted in Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:290.

69. Ibid., 1:293–302.

70. Cartledge, Will to Survive, p. 374, and Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, p. 144.

71. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, p. vii.

72. Pirity, “Visszaemlékezés” (HL Tgy 3.707), p. 100.

73. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, p. viii.

74. Pirity, “Visszaemlékezés” (HL Tgy 3.707), p. 100. Pongrácz continued to be an aggressive and unpredictable pilot. One year after the Letov shootdown, during a similar crisis with Romania, he crossed the border in an apparent attempt to confront Romanian fighters. He was subsequently posted to the Aviation Research Institute (Repülő Kísérleti Intézet) as a test pilot, and after further incidents forced to retire in 1943. Stenge, p. 114.

75. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:305.

76. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 147–148.

77. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:323–328.

78. Ibid., pp. 330–331.

79. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 151–154.

80. Order quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 86.

81. Ibid.

82. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), pp. V/5–6.

83. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, pp. 19–22. Casualty numbers: Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:341.

84. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, pp. 40–44.

85. Pirity, “Visszaemlékezés” (HL Tgy 3.707), p. 109.

86. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, pp. 60–66; Gaal, “Baptism of Fire,” pp. 42–44; Dénes, “Igló bombázása,” pp. 5–7.

87. Cited in Stenge, Baptism of Fire, p. 84.

88. Magyar Szárnyak, no. 4 (1939), p. 25.

89. “Slovák légitámadás Ungvár és környéke ellen,” Riadó! 3/4 (Apr. 1939), pp. 102–103.

90. Szentnémedy, “A magyar légierő első diadala,” pp. 115–117.

91. Ibid., p. 118.

92. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, pp. 109, 85.

93. Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), pp. V/206–207.

94. Ibid.

95. Stenge, Baptism of Fire, p. 85.

96. 5%: ibid., p. 23.

97. Two fighter squadrons: ibid., p. 21: Szentnémedy, “Visszapillatás a légügyi múlt évi fejlődésére,” p. 124.

98. D. Eszenyi, “Támpontok a bombázó hajózó személyzet kiképzéséhez,” pp. 422–431.

99. Ciano, Ciano’s Diary, 1939–1943, p. 118.

100. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:360.

101. Ciano, Ciano’s Diary, p. 129.

102. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:360–363.

103. “Az első légi hadjárat,” Riado! 3/12 (Nov. 15, 1939), p. 314.

104. Corum, Luftwaffe, pp. 272–273.

105. Csukás, “Az önálló légiháború,” p. 706.

106. Kasparek, “Poland’s 1938 Covert Operations in Ruthenia,” p. 372.

107. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 1:368. Gy. Juhász suggests the refugees numbered only half of Macartney’s claim.

108. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 59.

109. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 172–173.

110. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 198.

111. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 121–125.

112. Gy. Juhász, Hungarian Foreign Policy, pp. 172–176.

113. Photomontage: Magyar Szárnyak 3/9 (Sept. 15, 1940), pp. 15–16.

114. Ibid., p. 1.

115. Bonhardt et al., A Magyar Királyi Honvédség fegyverzete, p. 248.

116. MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 125.

117. Quoted in ibid., p. 96.

118. Nagyváradi et al., Fejezetek a repülés történetéből, p. 203; MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 96.

119. Bonhardt et al., A Magyar Királyi Honvédség fegyverzete, p. 248.