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Habsburg empire Within the modern period this term covers the various forms of imperial structure through which, until 1918, AUSTRIA exerted its power. Although the branch of the Habsburgs that once ruled over Spain and its possessions did not survive beyond 1700, the Austrian part of the dynasty continued to be pre-eminent in the Germanic lands until supplanted by PRUSSIA in the 1860s. The family had already secured control over Austria itself during the late thirteenth century. Thereafter the dynasty greatly enlarged its domains in central Europe, on a scale which enabled it to sustain (apart from one brief interruption) a continuous hold upon rulership of the “HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE of the German Nation” from 1438 until the ending of that increasingly nebulous concept in 1806. By then, with effect from 1804, the Habsburg regime had formally redesignated itself as the Austrian empire. It undertook yet further relabeling at the time of the 1867 AUSGLEICH, and thus remained known as the Austro-Hungarian empire (or Dual Monarchy) for another half-century.

When the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 erupted as a threat to the established order in Europe at large, the Habsburg empire contained more than 20 million subjects. This multi-national agglomeration covered not only HUNGARY (including TRANSYLVANIA), BOHEMIA, and the AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS but also the more recent acquisitions of Tuscany (1737) and the southern portion of Polish GALICIA (1772). Declaration of hostilities from Paris in April 1792 turned the Habsburg regime into one of the leading continental belligerents pitted against “1789” during much of the course of the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS and the NAPOLEONIC WARS. It was, however, the growing difficulties arising from such conflict that caused Francis II (who had succeeded Leopold II in 1792) to rebrand himself in 1804 as FRANCIS I, Emperor of Austria, and soon also to relinquish the Holy Roman version of the imperial title. During this epoch of protracted warfare the Habsburg ruler settled for peace with France from time to time, most notably after the defeats suffered at AUSTERLITZ in 1805 and WAGRAM in 1809. In 1810 he agreed the marriage of his daughter Marie Louise to NAPOLEON I, and even contributed military assistance to Bonaparte's disastrous campaign of 1812 against Russia. Nonetheless Austria then became in 1813 part of the Fourth Coalition that achieved the final downfall of the Napoleonic empire two years later.

The VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15, held in the Habsburg capital, allowed the hosting power to annex Lombardy, Venetia, and Dalmatia and to extend its Galician territory. The settlement did not, however, restore the former Austrian Netherlands which had been seized by France in 1792 and were now transferred directly to a new Dutch kingdom (see THE NETHERLANDS; BELGIUM). Though the peace negotiations disappointed the Habsburg regime on that point, they served to confirm the emergence of Austria's principal negotiator, METTERNICH, as a major figure on the European diplomatic scene. He had been appointed foreign minister in 1809 and would become chancellor too in 1821, then retaining both posts until the outbreak of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. He supported Francis's reliance on autocratic CONSERVATISM as the dynasty's best means of maintaining control over its multi-ethnic subject populations. Some of these (Magyars, Croats, Slovenes, Czechs, and Slovaks) were concentrated within the empire, while others (Germans, Italians, Poles, Serbs, Romanians, and Ruthenes) belonged to peoples whose areas of settlement extended also beyond its borders.

This was the context in which, through the CONGRESS SYSTEM, Metternich set out to contain the forces of LIBERALISM and NATIONALISM that the legacies of French Revolutionary ideology were helping to strengthen across much of Europe. He consolidated Austrian primacy within the new GERMAN CONFEDERATION, where passage of the CARLSBAD DECREES of 1819 set the tone for stricter censorship over the press and universities and for tighter policing powers. Within the broader Habsburg empire (only part of which came within the scope of the Confederation), Metternich's efforts to exercise firm central control from Vienna were reasonably successful. These also extended to general supervision of the affairs of the Italian peninsula, where Austrian military intervention suppressed disorders in 1820–1 and again during the REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2. However, when Emperor Francis died in 1835, the mental frailty of his successor, FERDINAND I, led to a weakening of dynastic authority. This proved all the more damaging as the ministerial rivalry between Metternich and the Bohemian magnate, KOLOWRAT, became ever more marked and the imperial finances worsened. When the 1848 revolutions broke out, Metternich was promptly forced to flee abroad. By the end of that year the briefly dominant (and no less conservative) figure of SCHWARZENBERG had procured Ferdinand's abdication and his replacement by the 18-year-old FRANCIS JOSEPH I. The reign of the latter, which would last for nearly seven decades, thus began amid a revolutionary crisis that directly threatened Habsburg authority not only in Austria itself but also in Hungary, Bohemia, and Italy. The Magyar revolt led by KOSSUTH proved to be the most dangerous, and its eventual suppression during the summer of 1849 owed much to the military assistance of tsarist Russia.

During the following decade, marked by BACH'S efforts at administrative modernization, the unity of the empire continued to be tested especially by pressures for both ITALIAN UNIFICATION and GERMAN UNIFICATION. By the later 1850s Austria's inept handling of the diplomacy of the CRIMEAN WAR had left her without ready allies and compounded her international vulnerability. The first decisive upshot was the loss of Lombardy (to PIEDMONT-SARDINIA) as a result of the FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR of 1859. Meanwhile, Austria's leadership of the German Confederation was also coming under renewed challenge from Prussia. Although these powers combined in 1864 to seize SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN from Denmark, they came directly to blows a mere two years later. Despite a majority of the German states siding with Vienna in 1866, the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR proved swiftly disastrous to the Habsburg cause. The dynasty was now forced not simply to cede Venetia to the new kingdom of Italy but also to accept, after centuries of primacy in the German lands, its own exclusion from the particular version of unified statehood that BISMARCK was plainly bent on forging from Berlin under the leadership of Prussia's upstart HOHENZOLLERN DYNASTY.

Though the Habsburg empire had survived the turmoil of 1848–9 partly by playing off its various nationalities against one another, the defeat of 1866 triggered a major recasting of this strategy. The 1867 Ausgleich, or compromise, involved an imperial restructuring that privileged the position of one particular non-Germanic ethnic grouping. It instituted a form of “dualism” that conceded to the Magyars a considerable degree of power-sharing with the traditional Austro-German elite. While Austria and Hungary would continue to have the same sovereign and to conduct and finance their military and foreign policies in a unitary manner, each of these halves of the empire would henceforth possess its own prime minister, cabinet, and parliamentary assembly. The new arrangement was symbolized by Francis Joseph's willingness now to receive a separate coronation as King of Hungary. For their part, however, the non-Germanic and non-Magyar subject peoples, and particularly the Slavic ones, were right to see in this re-invention of the empire as “Austria-Hungary” (see Map 6) a new threat to their own aspirations concerning greater autonomy or even independence. During the remaining decades of Habsburg rule, the reluctance of Francis Joseph to enlarge the concept of Ausgleich – towards accommodating some form of “trialism” that might have been more successful in retaining the loyalty of Slav subjects – persisted as one of the major features of imperial policy. After 1867 the Hungarian portion of the Dual Monarchy continued to suffer from relative economic backwardness. It was also strongly marked by campaigns of Magyarization vigorously pursued at the expense of the other nationalities. However, the policies followed on the Austrian side were generally less illiberal. There the Vienna government introduced compulsory EDUCATION, on a free and secular basis; allowed TRADE UNIONISM to operate; instituted old-age pensions and schemes of workers' insurance; legislated about other improvements to laboring conditions; and even weakened the Austro-Germans' own parliamentary ascendancy by conceding universal male suffrage in 1907. By the early years of the new century Vienna, despite a heightening of its ANTISEMITISM, was seriously rivaling Paris as Europe's pre-eminent capital of culture. In the meantime, however, there were growing pressures coming particularly from the Czechs for improved status within the Austrian part of the empire, as well as rising Hungarian demands for greater autonomy in military matters. The imperial family had also suffered tragedies that included the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 and the assassination of the Empress Elisabeth in 1898.

By 1910 the empire ruled some 50 million subjects (45 percent of whom were Slavs, 23 percent Germans, and 19 percent Magyars). Its internal problems might have been more readily contained if the conduct of Austria-Hungary's external affairs had been less fraught. The Habsburg regime did manage to achieve a degree of reconciliation with the new GERMAN EMPIRE through the DUAL ALLIANCE of 1879. Thereafter this agreement remained central to Austria-Hungary's efforts to check Russia's growing influence over the Slavic peoples of the BALKANS. Here Vienna's anxieties focused particularly on the rise of SERBIA, not least as a new magnet for the loyalty of southern Slavs discontented with their marginalization by the Habsburg system. Though the Austro-Hungarian empire refrained from intervention in the BALKAN WARS of 1912–13, its integrity was plainly threatened by the resulting Serbian gains. The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand (the emperor's nephew, and Rudolf's successor as crown prince) by Bosnian Serb nationalists in Sarajevo at the end of June 1914 then triggered the JULY CRISIS that marked the immediate prelude to WORLD WAR I. By that point Francis Joseph was no longer in a position to resist the pressures, coming not least from his allies in Berlin, to take a decisive stand against Serbia even at the risk of provoking a general war.

When that conflict began, the Habsburg dynasty was still capable of rallying to its cause most of the nationalities within the empire. Even at this stage, what these peoples expected to gain from an eventual victory was practical recognition of their aspirations towards greater autonomy. During the later stages of the war that situation changed. Following the death of Francis Joseph at the end of 1916 and the weakening of Austria-Hungary's military prospects, the increasingly desperate efforts of the old emperor's great-nephew and eventual successor, Charles I, to negotiate a compromise peace proved unavailing. By the autumn of 1918, with defeat imminent, the empire was in dissolution and the competition to shape a series of new and independent nation-states had already become unstoppable. When Emperor Charles effectively vacated the throne early in November, the imperial system of the Habsburgs had already passed into history. How to fill the void that it left behind, without imperiling the future stability of central Europe, then became one of principal issues confronting the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT of 1919.

Hague Conferences International gatherings of 1899 and 1907 devoted to considering armament limitations and other issues bearing on the causes and conduct of WARFARE. Their designation as “Peace Conferences” was remarkable insofar as the phrase had previously referred only to negotiations about the terms that might formally conclude specific conflicts. The first meeting at The Hague was initiated by NICHOLAS II of Russia and attracted representation from 26 states. Though it made little headway on the arms question, it succeeded in establishing certain mediation procedures prior to resort to war, including the creation (from 1901) of a “Permanent Court of Arbitration” between states. It also made some progress on codifying the laws of warfare (see also GENEVA CONVENTIONS). The second conference, attended by 44 delegations, was similarly convened by the tsar. Here again proposals for reduction of armaments foundered, not least because of resistance from the GERMAN EMPIRE. The discussions managed, however, to register some further advance on matters such as arbitration, the duties attaching to NEUTRALITY, and rules about the proper conduct of hostilities on land and at sea. Such limited international agreements as emerged from the two conferences became generally known as the Hague Conventions, and these would soon be sorely tested during WORLD WAR I.

Hague Tribunals These were established by the UNITED NATIONS in 1993–4 to deal with problems thrown up by the dissolution of former YUGOSLAVIA and by civil war in Rwanda. They were the first international criminal courts to be formed since the NUREMBERG and Tokyo trials at the end of World War II. Each had its headquarters at The Hague (even if the proceedings on Rwanda operated in practice from a base in neighboring Tanzania). Though some Croats and Bosnian Muslims became defendants in front of the tribunal for Yugoslavia, most of those prosecuted there were Serbs (charged for example over the SREBRENICA MASSACRE that occurred in 1995 after the court's inauguration). The most important prisoner was MILOŠEVIĆ, Serbia's former head of state, whose trial commenced in February 2002 (only to drag on until abruptly terminated by his death in custody four years later). In July 2008 one of his principal associates, Radovan Karadžić, was also at last captured and indicted. The events that had triggered the hurried ad hoc creation of these Hague tribunals soon injected new urgency into negotiations about creating a permanent International Criminal Court (see ROME STATUTE).

Hallstein, Walter (1901–82), President of the Commission of the European Economic Community (1958–67). During the early history of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, he had a major influence on the development of its external policies. In 1950 he led its negotiations on the Schuman Plan (see SCHUMAN), and in 1951 became West Germany's foreign minister. He used this position to generate the “Hallstein doctrine,” which prevailed from 1955 to 1973. Under it the FRG refused to conduct diplomatic relations with any state (other than the Soviet Union) that recognized the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Meanwhile Hallstein was also securing West Germany's deeper involvement in promoting (e.g. at the MESSINA CONFERENCE of 1955) the project of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. After THE SIX concluded their ROME TREATIES, they appointed him to be first president of the EEC. Here his insistence on the logic of progression towards greater political unity produced conflict with DE GAULLE in particular, as was evident from the deep disagreements that the LUXEMBURG COMPROMISE of 1966 served to mask rather than solve.

Hanover Region of northwestern Germany which, during the eighteenth century, was constituted as an Electorate of the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE in a personal dynastic (rather than effective governing) union with the British monarchy. During the NAPOLEONIC WARS it was occupied by the French in 1803, then given to PRUSSIA in 1805, and eventually incorporated into the Kingdom of Westphalia under Jérôme Bonaparte in 1807. At the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 a Kingdom of Hanover was established within the new GERMAN CONFEDERATION. Its royal title remained with British monarchs until 1837, when the Salic Law against female succession required Queen VICTORIA to give way to her uncle (the Duke of Cumberland) who ruled as King Ernest Augustus until 1851. Under his son and successor George V, Hanover's unavailing support for the HABSBURG EMPIRE in the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR of 1866 caused it to lose its status as a kingdom and to become thereafter a mere province of Prussia. After that latter state was itself finally dissolved in 1947, the city of Hanover became the capital of Lower Saxony, one of the Llsquänder newly created through the 1949 constitution of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.

Hardenberg, Karl August von (1750–1822), Prussian reformer and statesman. He entered the civil service in 1770, first of his native Hanover and subsequently of Prussia, displaying a flair for administration. During the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS he served FREDERICK WILLIAM III as an able diplomat, and latterly as foreign minister (1804–6, 1807). His talents were most severely tested after the overwhelming defeat of Prussia by NAPOLEON I in 1806–7 (see JENA-AUERSTLSQUÄDT; TILSIT TREATIES). Together with SCHARNHORST, GNEISENAU and above all STEIN, Hardenberg was an architect of the reform movement that helped to rebuild and preserve the Prussian state. Appointed chancellor in 1810, he embarked upon a series of liberal reforms to education, trade, agriculture, administration, finance, and the social structure. Although he hoped to foster the spirit of German NATIONALISM under Prussian leadership, he was outflanked by METTERNICH at the VIENNA CONGRESS. Hardenberg's plans for constitutional reform were effectively thwarted while the GERMAN CONFEDERATION ceded primacy to Austria, and in 1819 he acquiesced to the reactionary CARLSBAD DECREES.

Haussmann, Georges Eugène, Baron (1809–91), French administrator from Alsace who, as prefect of the Seine (1853–70) under NAPOLEON III, was responsible for rebuilding much of Paris. The emperor was determined to satisfy national and dynastic pride by providing France with a modern capital. New public buildings and parks were constructed and Haussmann's program also improved the city's transport, provisioning, water, and sewerage systems. The broad, straight boulevards that replaced the medieval labyrinth of streets in central Paris were partly designed to improve crowd control in the aftermath of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. Ironically, the displacement of the workers from the center to the suburban “Red Belt” may have helped to promote increased working-class consciousness (see also PARIS COMMUNE). Haussmann, who adopted the title Baron, was forced out of office by accusations of financial irregularities.

Havel, Václav (1936–), playwright and intellectual dissident who became President of CZECHOSLOVAKIA (1989–92), and then of the CZECH REPUBLIC (1993–2003). Born into a bourgeois family, the young Havel was encouraged to pursue his literary and humanitarian tendencies, though he experienced communist Czechoslovakia as an unforgiving environment. Denied a place at university, in the 1960s he established a reputation as a dramatist. Two of his most famous early works were The Garden Party (1963) and The Memorandum (1965), both of which satirized state BUREAUCRACY and championed the need to speak the truth. He was prominent in the PRAGUE SPRING of 1968, which was repressed by Soviet tanks. In the 1970s, he became one of the founders of the human rights organization Charter 77 that supported the cause of the rock band Plastic People of the Universe, which had been repeatedly hounded by the authorities. Havel himself was under constant state surveillance and was imprisoned on several occasions. In 1989 he established a new opposition group, Civic Forum. During the “velvet revolution” of that year (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91) he was elected president of Czechoslovakia, in which capacity he swiftly steered his country away from COMMUNISM. To his great chagrin, he could not prevent the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1992. As leader thereafter of the Czech Republic, he did much to embed liberal democracy, though his health was deserting him, as was his popularity. On standing down as president in 2003, he again devoted his efforts to promoting human rights across the globe.

Heath, Edward (1916–2005), British Prime Minister (1970–4). Elected a Conservative MP in 1950, Heath held a variety of ministerial offices from 1959 to 1964. While his party was out of power, he assumed its leadership in 1965. Initial failure in the 1966 general election was reversed four years later. After a single term as premier he then lost out again to his great Labor rival, Harold Wilson, in both of the elections called during 1974. As prime minister Heath had found himself struggling with incomes policy and industrial strikes (which led to his temporary imposition of a three-day working week), with worsening difficulties in Ulster (see also IRELAND), and latterly also with the impact of the first of the OIL CRISES of the 1970s. His most positive achievement, however, had stemmed from a depth of commitment to EUROPEAN INTEGRATION unmatched by any other British premier (see also BRITAIN AND EUROPE). Back in 1961–3 he had been responsible for conducting negotiations with “THE SIX” about possible UK participation in the European Community. Though frustrated at that stage by DE GAULLE'S veto, ten years later Heath led his often reluctant fellow-Conservatives towards the successful conclusion of a renewed bid for membership, effective from January 1973. Early in 1975, shortly after the third electoral defeat under his party leadership, Tory MPs rejected him and put THATCHER at their head. Thereafter Heath became increasingly resentful about his successor's Euroscepticism and about her scorn for the kind of “one-nation” CONSERVATISM that he had sought to promote.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), German philosopher. He was born in Württemberg, but achieved his greatest influence in a Prussian context, while teaching at Berlin University from 1818 onwards. His complex metaphysics belongs to the “idealist” tradition, where “the external world” is deemed to be somehow created by the prior workings of mind. Hegel followed this approach in an endeavor to understand the whole of reality, manifest in the form of absolute Spirit (Geist) that covers growth in consciousness, reasoning, freedom, and morality. His demonstration of its progressive nature (see, for example, The Phenomenology of Mind dating from 1807) is linked to a dialectical method. This involves viewing each phenomenon as a thesis containing internal contradictions that are destined to manifest themselves as an antithesis. He then goes on to assert that the resulting conflict, within which both those elements become superseded and transcended, will eventually generate a higher synthesis – one that provides the starting-point for the next triadic progress. Historians have wrangled with such metaphysics mainly at the points where Hegel applied this dialectic to political processes and to the study of the past. The central theme in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821) was the enlargement of rationality reflected in the growth of the modern state, as a construct capable of transcending all merely particularized duties or loyalties. What inspired the enthusiasm of the Prussians were Hegel's hints that the version being molded by the HOHENZOLLERN monarchy came closest to the desirable ideal. His Lectures on the Philosophy of History (published in 1833–6, on the basis of notes posthumously edited) traced “the progress of the consciousness of freedom” in terms that offered much the same findings about its contemporary realization. Here was a view that, contrary to classic LIBERALISM, gauged the freedom of individuals not according to their ability to keep the state at bay but, rather, according to their willingness to merge themselves into its higher purposes as an embodiment of Geist. The upshot was something that often seemed to equate right with might. Hegel's legacy exerted a powerful influence on ideas of German NATIONALISM. But it also strongly affected left-wing radicalism. During the 1830s and 1840s the so-called Young Hegelians redirected his philosophy into potentially revolutionary channels far less supportive of Prussian monarchism. MARX in particular would draw inspiration from the all-encompassing ambitiousness of the Hegelian vision, and, even more specifically, from its underlying methodology. Although he stripped out the metaphysics (and with it, according to his critics, most of the mind as well), he nonetheless preserved and exploited Hegel's dialectical approach so as to elaborate a wide-ranging – but now essentially materialistic – philosophy of past, present, and future social development.

Helsinki Conference Known also as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), this attempt at reducing COLD WAR tensions produced its so-called Final Act on August 1, 1975. Representatives from 33 western and eastern European states, and also from the USA and Canada, recorded their agreement on three broad “baskets” of action. They committed themselves, firstly, to reducing the dangers of escalating military confrontation between NATO and the WARSAW PACT; secondly, to increasing the economic and technological cooperation between East and West; and, thirdly, to improving the protection of human rights. The last of these topics was soon to have more importance for the regeneration of a critical civil society in eastern Europe (e.g. via the SOLIDARITY movement in Poland, and HAVEL'S Charter 77 group in Czechoslovakia) than skeptics had supposed in 1975 itself. More generally, the Final Act's effects were monitored through later CSCE meetings (Belgrade, 1977–8; Madrid, 1980–3; Vienna, 1986–9). These culminated, amidst the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, with a Paris gathering in November 1990. Four years later, under new post-Cold War circumstances, the CSCE (now comprising more than fifty states) reconstituted itself as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Helvetic Confederation (see SWITZERLAND)

Helvetic Republic (see under SWITZERLAND)

Herriot, Edouard (1872–1957), Prime Minister of France (1924–5, 1926, 1932). After a brief but distinguished academic career, he entered public life, becoming in 1905 the mayor of Lyon (which remained his political base thereafter), senator for the Rhône in 1912, and minister of public works in 1916. As a leading member of the RADICAL PARTY, he formed in 1922 the CARTEL DES GAUCHES through which the parties of the left combined to fight the general election of June 1924. Though he won a majority, Herriot's ensuing 10-month premiership was a struggle. Regarding foreign affairs, his government accepted the DAWES PLAN for the rescheduling of Germany's REPARATIONS payments, and generally sought to ease the tensions between France and its former enemy. At home, he attempted to extend the anticlerical legislation (see ANTICLERICALISM) of the THIRD REPUBLIC to the newly recovered provinces of ALSACE-LORRAINE. That earned him the reproach of the church (see CATHOLICISM), yet more damaging was the opposition of the business community. With the value of the franc plummeting in 1926, Herriot's second term as premier lasted less than a month. After his resignation, he took over the education portfolio in the POINCARÉ government. He held the premiership again in the latter half of 1932, and in 1936 became president of the chamber of deputies. In 1940, having been an opponent of APPEASEMENT, he abstained in the vote giving full powers to Marshal PÉTAIN. He lived an uncomfortable existence under the VICHY REGIME which viewed him as a symbol of the discredited Third Republic. From 1942 he was held in forced residence, and later deported to Germany. After returning to France, he resumed his mayoral duties in Lyon and became president of the National Assembly. Elected to the Académie Française in 1947, he never recovered his pre-war political influence, partly because his ideas on political institutions conflicted with those of DE GAULLE, who took charge of France in the Liberation period, and partly because the Radicals were in long-term decline.

Herzen, Alexander (1812–70), Russian revolutionary writer. Born into a wealthy noble family, Herzen became involved in radical politics while studying at Moscow University. After two periods of enforced provincial exile, he left for the West shortly before the outbreak of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 and remained there (principally in London, Geneva, and Paris) for the rest of his life. As a champion of individualism, Herzen launched attacks on tsarist repression that were also inspired by the SOCIALISM of SAINT-SIMON, FOURIER, PROUDHON, and BLANC. Herzen centered his hopes for Russia's relatively imminent socialist future upon a pattern of development different from the long-drawn-out Western experience of CAPITALISM and INDUSTRIALIZATION. Thus he stressed that the existing village peasant communes (see MIR) might provide, quite directly, the basis for egalitarian microcosms that would operate independently of centralized authority. Herzen was a prolific propagandist, whose works were smuggled into his homeland on a scale that made him one of the leading influences upon such peasant-orientated POPULISM. His autobiography, My Past and Thoughts (1861), remains a particularly rewarding source for historical understanding of mid-nineteenth-century intellectual radicalism both in Russia and in his sphere of Western exile.

Herzl, Theodor (1860–1904), Hungarian-born founder of ZIONISM as an effectively organized movement. As a liberal journalist operating primarily in Vienna, he had originally accepted assimilation as the proper goal for his fellow-JEWS across Europe. But in the mid-1890s the continuance of tsarist POGROMS, the start of the DREYFUS AFFAIR in France, and his own observations of rising ANTISEMITISM in the Austrian capital prompted second thoughts. In Der Judenstaat (1896) he publicized the view that, in an age of NATIONALISM, Jews too might need to protect themselves by establishing their own territorial state. During the brief remainder of his life Herzl devoted his remarkable organizational energies to promoting this cause, initially by planning the Zionist Congress of 1897 at Basel.

Hess, Rudolf (1894–1987), deputy leader of the Nazi Party (see NAZISM) from 1933 to 1941. Hess joined the movement in 1920, and was arrested after HITLER'S failed BEER HALL PUTSCH of 1923. During 1924, when they were both jailed at Landsberg, the Nazi leader dictated to Hess the first volume of Mein Kampf. Upon their release he was made Hitler's private secretary, and, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he became the Führer's party deputy. In 1939 Hess was also nominated as second in succession, after GOERING, to the headship of state. However, in May 1941 shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Hess (who had ended World War I as a pilot) parachuted from a fighter-plane over Scotland hoping to negotiate a separate peace with the British authorities. Unmoved, they not only imprisoned him but prosecuted him at the first of the NUREMBERG TRIALS in 1945–6. Despite qualms about his deteriorating mental condition, he was found guilty of conspiracy and crimes against peace, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Largely because of Soviet opposition to any compassionate release, he was from 1966 onward the sole remaining inmate of Spandau jail. His death there was officially, but also questionably, recorded as suicide.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900–45), police chief and head of the SCHUTZSTAFFEL (SS) under HITLER'S regime. Himmler became a supporter of NAZISM in 1921, and participated in the BEER HALL PUTSCH of 1923. Having joined the SS in 1925, he became its leader in 1929. Three years later he and Reinhard Heydrich created the SICHERHEITSDIENST (SD). Following the Nazi assumption of power, Himmler took over in 1934 GOERING'S responsibilities for the Prussian police and GESTAPO. By 1936 Hitler had enlarged the SS chief's authority to the point where the latter ran the whole of Germany's policing system. As the Reich expanded during the late 1930s and into the period of WORLD WAR II, so too did the geographical ambit of Himmler's control by terror (see also TERRORISM). In 1939 he was appointed Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, with general responsibility for all occupied territories. Still working closely with Heydrich, who as his deputy chaired the WANNSEE CONFERENCE of January 1942, he sought to ensure that the SS would be the leading force in the execution of the FINAL SOLUTION, particularly through the development of new mass-killing centers within the wider Nazi system of CONCENTRATION CAMPS. Though personally squeamish about any direct observation of the ensuing horrors, he was obsessively meticulous about their administration. No other prominent Nazi believed more deeply than Himmler in the RACISM that underpinned Hitler's eugenic commitment not simply to a negative ANTISEMITISM but also to a complementary campaign for the positive creation of an “Aryan” NEW ORDER throughout Europe. In 1943 the Führer added the ministry of the interior to Himmler's other responsibilities, thus giving the SS ever tighter control over the courts and the civil service. After the JULY PLOT of 1944 the regular army too became vulnerable to the same scrutiny. Some historians have argued that, by then, the Third Reich had become essentially “the SS state” – one where the authority of the ailing Hitler was increasingly challenged by that of Himmler. Early in 1945 the latter, convinced that Germany now faced defeat, began to investigate the possibility of negotiation with the Western powers. Himmler fled from Berlin to escape the arrest that Hitler ordered in response. The SS leader, like his bitter rival Goering, was expelled from the party by the Führer's final testament. Himmler was captured by the British towards the end of May 1945, but managed to commit suicide only two days later and before any productive interrogation had commenced.

Hindenburg, Paul von (1847–1934), German general and second President of the WEIMAR REPUBLIC (1925–34). Born into an aristocratic family, he was a professional soldier, serving in both the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR and the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, before retiring in 1911. When WORLD WAR I began three years later, he was recalled to lead the German armies against the Russians. With LUDENDORFF as his chief of staff, he scored two notable victories at TANNENBERG and the Masurian Lakes, though planning for the campaigns had been the work of his predecessors. Directing the entire eastern front, Hindenburg enjoyed enormous popularity at home and in 1916 was appointed field marshal and commander-in-chief of all German forces, effectively taking charge of the entire war effort. In March 1918 he insisted upon the harsh settlement imposed on Russia at BREST-LITOVSK and came close to victory in the west at the second battle of the MARNE. By November, however, he recognized that the war was lost and advised the emperor to abdicate. He himself remained in charge of the German army until 1919. No lover of liberal democracy, in 1925 Hindenburg was persuaded to stand for the presidency of the Weimar Republic. Having won on that occasion as a conservative, he was re-elected under rather different circumstances in 1932 – now as the only candidate effectively available to those fearing the growing popularity of HITLER. Increasingly frail and senile, Hindenburg initiated little during his presidency. However, in January 1933 he took the fatal step of appointing the Nazi leader as chancellor, erring in the belief that he himself could keep control over “the Austrian corporal.” When the field marshal died in August 1934, Hitler assumed the headship of state.

Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), dictator of Germany (1933–45). His biography is tightly entwined with the broader history of NAZISM, as the movement that he dominated from the early 1920s onward.

Hitler was born in Austria, at Braunau on the frontier with the GERMAN EMPIRE. The son of a customs official, he was brought up in Linz. He came to Vienna in 1909, where he failed in efforts to enter the city's art academy, remained socially marginalized in casual employment, and deepened his attachment to ideas of PAN-GERMANISM and ANTISEMITISM. In 1913 he moved to Munich, thus avoiding recruitment into the army of the HABSBURG EMPIRE. When WORLD WAR I began, he volunteered for a Bavarian regiment of the imperial German forces. Having served on the Western Front and been temporarily blinded by a gas attack, he ended the conflict as a corporal, to whom the Iron Cross had been twice awarded. It was in the trenches, so he asserted, that he first developed a real sense of comradeship and social purpose. Goaded by the humiliation of defeat and soon by the punitive terms imposed on the WEIMAR REPUBLIC by the VERSAILLES TREATY, Hitler now actively identified with the extremist NATIONALISM that was still fermenting in BAVARIA, where it was partly an expression of distrust for continuing leftist influence in Berlin (see GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918–19) and partly a means of countering renewed local pressures towards regional separatism. He drew on hitherto untapped demagogic talents in a way that, by 1921, had propelled him into leadership of a small Munich-centered movement which, having begun as the German Workers' Party, now formed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). This was the “Nazi” base from which, with LUDENDORFF, he launched the BEER HALL PUTSCH of November 1923. Though its failure brought Hitler a jail sentence of five years, he actually served less than one. During his imprisonment he embarked on Mein Kampf (published 1925–6), a tendentious record of “my struggle” up to this point as well as a manifesto of future aims.

Though the NSDAP developed a nationwide structure during the 1920s, it remained only a marginal force in Weimar politics until the beginning of the 1930s, when the onset of the GREAT DEPRESSION[2] opened up new possibilities for both left-wing and right-wing extremism. In April 1932 the presidential election produced 13.4 million votes for Hitler, confirming him as the only significant rival to the victorious HINDENBURG. In each of the two Reichstag elections held later in 1932 the NSDAP emerged as the assembly's largest single grouping, and on January 30, 1933 the president finally yielded to promptings from old-style conservative nationalists such as von PAPEN that the Nazi leader should be appointed as chancellor at the head of a right-wing coalition cabinet. However, by the time of the ENABLING ACT (March 23), it was plain that Hitler was using processes of GLEICHSCHALTUNG to secure an absolute monopoly of power for his own movement. After Hindenburg's death in August 1934, the Nazi Führer (leader) combined the headship of state and of government in his own person. He used his unbridled authority to consolidate a regime centered on state terror (see TERRORISM), directed against all dissidents but with particular intensity towards JEWS and those suspected of COMMUNISM. In developing such repressive organizations as the GESTAPO and the SS (see SCHUTZSTAFFEL) Hitler was ably assisted by henchmen such as GOERING and HIMMLER, while the Führer's cult of charismatic personality was similarly facilitated by the propagandist skills of GOEBBELS. Meanwhile, the Nazi reich was also pursuing a foreign-policy program aimed not simply at reversal of the 1919 settlement but at the seizure of vast LEBENSRAUM and the creation of a NEW ORDER for Europe at large. These objectives reflected both the positive (Aryan-Teutonic) and the negative (antisemitic and anti-Slav) elements in the ideology of RACISM that was fundamental to Hitler's worldview. Through the NAZI-SOVIET PACT of August 1939 he achieved a cynical and temporary accommodation with STALIN, his greatest rival in tyranny, which permitted him to risk triggering the conflict that became WORLD WAR II. Only when Hitler broke that agreement in June 1941 by launching Operation BARBAROSSA against the SOVIET UNION could he accelerate his campaign to destroy “Judeo-Bolshevism” (see BOLSHEVIKS). To that end, he soon assumed personal control of overall military strategy. The Führer felt most deeply of all an urgent need to combine conquest (see Map 10) with his pursuit of the genocidal FINAL SOLUTION – a semi-secretive undertaking that involved both the geographical spread of the CONCENTRATION CAMP system originally established within Germany and also its conceptual mutation so as to encompass installations specifically devoted to mass extermination.

During the concluding stages of the war, and particularly after he came close to assassination in the JULY PLOT of 1944, Hitler increasingly withdrew into a bunkered existence where his orders became ever more detached from reality. On the eve of defeat the resulting tensions led him to denounce GOERING and HIMMLER – and indeed to record his disillusionment with a Volk that had failed him, rather than vice versa. Within his final underground Berlin refuge Hitler's relationship with his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, culminated on April 30, 1945 in a marriage that was swiftly followed by suicide and Wagnerian immolation. Thus ended a career of destructiveness which some have been tempted to interpret as the product of sheer derangement. However, though elements of obsessive fanaticism were certainly present in Hitler and in many of his followers, it would seem unwise for humanity to flatter itself with the belief that such a scale of wickedness must be attributable only to madness.

Hitler Youth Known to Germans as the Hitler Jugend (HJ), this organization was founded in 1926 under the auspices of the Nazi Party (see NAZISM). When HITLER came to power in 1933, it was still one of the many youth groups that reflected the diversity of political and confessional loyalties within Germany. By 1936, however, the Nazi policy of GLEICHSCHALTUNG had reached the point where the HJ now constituted the only legally recognized movement for young people. In 1938 its membership amounted to some 8 million, and participation was made compulsory for all boys during the following year. The organization was structured so that those aged 10 to 14 would start in the Jungvolk, and then progress into the uniformed HJ proper where preliminary training for military service was a major activity. The Bund deutscher Mlsquädel (BDM, or “League of German Girls”) fulfilled a complementary function, with programs focused on the duties of domesticity and motherhood.

Hoare–Laval Pact Abortive Franco-British diplomatic response (signed December 8, 1935) to the outbreak of the ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR on October 3 that year. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) had sparked international condemnation, led by the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. Yet the British and French governments were inclined towards the APPEASEMENT of MUSSOLINI. They were aware that they lacked the military wherewithal to thwart the dictator's ambition, and viewed him as a potential counterweight to HITLER (see also STRESA FRONT). Such considerations led to a meeting between the British foreign secretary, Samuel Hoare, and the French prime minister, LAVAL. They subsequently proposed that Italy be given two-thirds of Ethiopia, but that a residual independent nation should subsist, with access to the sea. However, details of the compromise leaked out to British newspapers, provoking a public outcry and Hoare's resignation. Thus the plan collapsed, and Mussolini completed his conquest despite sanctions from the League. He thereby provoked divisions between London and Paris, further exposed the weaknesses of the League, and probably made the prospect of a general European war more likely. Ominously, Hitler used the distraction of the Ethiopian war to press ahead with the remilitarization scheme that provoked the 1936 RHINELAND CRISIS.

Hohenzollern candidature (see EMS TELEGRAM)

Hohenzollern dynasty German royal family associated particularly with the rise and fall of PRUSSIA. With roots traceable back to the eleventh century, it took its name from the ancestral home of the Burg Hohenzollern at Hechingen (now in Baden-Württemberg). Two branches eventually emerged: the Franconian and Swabian. The latter governed the small principalities of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, which were absorbed into Prussia in 1850. This Swabian line later provided the princes, and then kings, of ROMANIA. In 1870 it was also associated with the abortive candidature for the Spanish throne that helped to trigger the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR (see also EMS TELEGRAM). Whereas at the Reformation the Swabian branch remained Catholic, the Franconian one converted to Lutheranism and then Calvinism. It provided the rulers for the Electorate of Brandenburg and what became the Kingdom of Prussia in the eighteenth century, as well as for some lesser German territories. Particularly under Frederick the Great, this part of the dynasty became associated with state-building, autocracy, and militarism. It eventually supplanted the rival Austrian Habsburgs (see HABSBURG EMPIRE) in the leadership of GERMAN UNIFICATION, as achieved in 1871 when the Prussian monarch WILLIAM I became ruler of the new GERMAN EMPIRE. However, defeat in WORLD WAR I spelled the end of Hohenzollern rule.

Holocaust (see FINAL SOLUTION)

Holy Alliance An agreement of 1815 springing, like the QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE, from the VIENNA CONGRESS. Signed on September 26 by the rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria, the Holy Alliance was the brainchild of Tsar ALEXANDER I who sought to commit Europe's rulers to governing by Christian ideals. So vague was the scheme (dismissed by METTERNICH as a “loud-sounding nothing”) that most of them felt able to subscribe in due course. Only Britain's prince regent, the pope, and the Ottoman sultan stood aside. The compact became, especially in the hands of Metternich, another pretext for the crushing of revolution – something plain enough from the proceedings of the TROPPAU CONGRESS of 1820. Alongside the more substantial Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, the Tsar's initiative is often viewed as part of the broader CONGRESS SYSTEM that sought to maintain the peace signed at Vienna.

Holy Roman Empire Name given to the assemblage of territories in central and northern Europe under the authority of the “Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation.” At its height, this empire stretched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and included present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as parts of Poland, France and Italy. Its traditional dating begins with the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800. However, its modern constitution, which reflected the autonomy of more than 300 self-governing territories within a loose federal system (see FEDERALISM[1]) overseen by an elected emperor and Diet, dated from the late fifteenth century. The decision of the Habsburgs, who thereafter monopolized the imperial crown virtually without interruption, to concentrate on their Austrian lands weakened the Holy Roman Empire during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Following defeat during the NAPOLEONIC WARS, it was dissolved in 1806. Some of its constituent elements were then reorganized by NAPOLEON I into the CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE. Meanwhile, the last Holy Roman Emperor had succeeded in adopting another form of imperial title, restyling himself simply as “emperor of Austria” and becoming known as FRANCIS I instead of Francis II. (See also HABSBURG EMPIRE)

Honecker, Erich (1912–94), leader of the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (1971–89). As a supporter of COMMUNISM, Honecker was imprisoned under HITLER'S regime from 1935 to 1945. Thereafter he played a major part in promoting his party's youth movement among East Germans. He succeeded ULBRICHT as First Secretary in 1971, and in 1976 added to his portfolio what was effectively the GDR's presidency. His period in power witnessed continuance of oppression. Yet it saw also a degree of economic advance unmatched anywhere else within the Soviet bloc. This progress was partly attributable to the hard-currency and other benefits associated with Honecker's opportunistic responsiveness to the OSTPOLITIK adopted by the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY. He remained, however, firmly opposed to aspirations about GERMAN REUNIFICATION (see also ABGRENZUNG). He was also insufficiently flexible to deal with the broader challenges of change emanating from Moscow during the GORBACHEV epoch. Early in the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 the growing tensions between the new Soviet leader and Honecker reached crisis point. The latter's government became increasingly isolated, and indeed impotent in the face of hostile mass demonstrations. Honecker resigned in mid- October 1989, too late to rescue East German communism, or indeed to save its most notorious creation – the BERLIN WALL, which was breached a mere three weeks later. After the reunification of 1990 an intended trial of the GDR's ex-leader for violating human rights was abandoned due to his ill-health.

Horthy de Nagybánya, Miklós (1868–1957), Regent of HUNGARY (1920–44). This Calvinist acquired his title of admiral from his service in World War I as commander of the Austro-Hungarian navy. Horthy subsequently helped to overthrow Hungary's communist government of Béla KUN. Though he then nominally restored the monarchy, he refused to relinquish power to the king and governed dictatorially as regent. Like many other proto-fascists (see FASCISM) in eastern Europe, he espoused supposedly Christian principles allied to NATIONALISM, yet he was often outflanked by the more extreme ARROW CROSS movement of Szálasi. His anti-Bolshevism led him to join HITLER'S invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941. Arrested by the Nazis in 1944 for seeking a separate peace with the Allies, he was not put on trial by the eventual victors and died in exile in Portugal.

Hossbach meeting A conference on German foreign policy summoned by HITLER at his Reich Chancellery in Berlin on November 5, 1937. Its later labeling derives, oddly, from the name of the colonel whose unconfirmed minutes of the proceedings eventually became available to those who prosecuted Nazi conspiracy and aggression (see NAZISM) at the NUREMBERG TRIALS. Others who attended included the foreign and war ministers, GOERING as head of the Luftwaffe, and the equivalent army and navy chiefs. Though some historians have marginalized the meeting's importance, the dominant interpretation treats this conference as a crucial point of acceleration in Hitler's scheming for the implementation of expansionist ambitions and in his determination to override any remaining qualms amongst those to whom he addressed a virtual monologue. The details of what later came to pass certainly differed in some degree from Hossbach's memorandum. However, the broader strategic plans presented at this meeting – and particularly the prioritization of decisive action over Austria and Czecholsovakia – were indeed largely fulfilled through the course taken by events over the following two years or so.

Hoxha, Enver (1908–85), dictator of ALBANIA from 1945 to 1985. Having become a supporter of COMMUNISM while studying abroad in France, he led the Albanian party's RESISTANCE movement against the Italian and German occupation forces during WORLD WAR II. After the liberation he quickly secured a communist monopoly of power, pursuing policies that were entirely faithful to STALIN'S dictates even without the pressure of any RED ARMY presence. In 1948 he supported the Kremlin's condemnation of TITO for leading neighboring YUGOSLAVIA into “nationalist deviation.” The processes of destalinization within the Soviet Union led him to break with Moscow in 1961. His country was finally expelled from the WARSAW PACT in 1968, and the remaining friendship with communist China was similarly ruptured in 1977. Long before the time of his death in office Hoxha was already heading Europe's most repressive regime. He left it operating under conditions of extreme economic backwardness, of total intolerance for Christian and MUSLIM religious practice, and of almost complete political and geographical isolation.

human rights (see RIGHTS OF MAN; EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS)

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835), Prussian diplomat, writer, and educationalist. In 1792 he published his chief work of political theory, a treatise on The Limits of State Action that helped to influence the later LIBERALISM of John Stuart Mill. Its warnings about the dangers to self-development that were intrinsic to excessive governmental involvement in the promotion of general welfare did not prevent him from contributing to the Prussian reform movement associated with figures such as STEIN and HARDENBERG. As director of culture and EDUCATION within the interior ministry in 1809–10, he began an overhaul of secondary schooling and founded the University of Berlin (now the Humboldt-Universitlsquät). He then returned to his main career as a diplomat, going on to assist Hardenberg at the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15. Humboldt resigned from state service in 1819, protesting against the repressive CARLSBAD DECREES. He devoted the rest of his life to humanistic scholarship, including pioneering philological work on the distinctive language of the BASQUES. His brother Alexander (1769–1859) also achieved renown, principally as a scientist and as an explorer of South America and Siberia.

Hundred Days Term used by the Prefect of the Seine, Gaspard de Chabrol, in a speech welcoming LOUIS XVIII, to denote the period between the king's flight from Paris on March 20, 1815 and his return on July 8 and to suggest that it was a minor interlude in monarchical rule. During this time, NAPOLEON I attempted to recover power in France following his escape from exile on Elba. News of his landing near Fréjus on March 1 and of his gathering support (especially from members of the military, including Marshal Ney who had originally been sent to arrest the former Emperor) had prompted the king's flight. Napoleon energetically set about raising an army to defend his regime against the Allied forces assembled in Belgium. Rather less successfully, he also offered a parliamentary constitution in the hope of rallying political support. After an initial victory against BLÜCHER'S Prussians, Napoleon was defeated at WATERLOO on June 18. The Assembly, adroitly manipulated by FOUCHÉ among others, demanded his abdication, which was effected on June 22. Napoleon was then permanently exiled to St Helena.

Hungarian rising of 1956 Stimulated partly by anti-Russian strike action being pursued in POLAND, this attempted revolution against Soviet domination of HUNGARY began in Budapest on October 23. Street demonstrations by workers, students, and intellectuals grew rapidly beyond the control of the local police and even of the RED ARMY units present around the capital. Within a week the Soviet leader, KHRUSHCHEV, had signaled some willingness to accept the emergence of a more effectively independent Hungary and to recognize a new administration headed by the populist-communist Imre Nagy. However, when the latter sought to abandon one-party government and make a bid for his country's NEUTRALITY in the COLD WAR, the Kremlin moved swiftly towards counter-action. With the Western powers at odds over the SUEZ CRISIS, Khrushchev felt all the more secure about ordering a Soviet and WARSAW PACT invasion of Hungary on November 1. This crushed the rising within days, and enabled KÁDÁR to displace Nagy (who was eventually executed in 1958). During these events some 3,000 Hungarians were killed, and over the next six months or so some 200,000 more fled westwards into exile.

Hungary For the period up to 1918, the history of modern Hungary is best considered within the overall context of the HABSBURG EMPIRE. By 1711 all the territory once controlled by the Magyars (a people whose ethnicity and language distinguished them from both the Germanic and the Slavic populations of central Europe) had fallen under the rule of this Austrian imperial system. However, during the first half of the nineteenth century the rise of Hungarian NATIONALISM increasingly challenged the pre-eminence of Vienna, and the Magyar rebellion under KOSSUTH proved to be one of the most notable features of the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. Though this revolt was eventually defeated, it left the Hungarians in a sufficiently influential position to benefit from the outcome of the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR of 1866. In the year following that Habsburg defeat, they obtained from Emperor FRANCIS JOSEPH I the so-called AUSGLEICH – a settlement that enhanced the status of the kingdom of Hungary within the imperial structure and granted a large measure of Magyar autonomy. The resulting Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (see Map 6), which aimed at enabling Vienna and Budapest to cooperate in maintaining hegemony mainly over the Slav nationalities of the empire, survived until the end of WORLD WAR I.

As the Habsburg regime fragmented, an independent Hungarian republic was proclaimed in November 1918, initially led by the liberal reformer KÁROLYI. During March 1919 he was overthrown by Béla KUN, whose communist dictatorship then lasted for more than four months before succumbing to counter-revolutionary intervention from ROMANIA. By the end of the year the dominant figure in Hungarian politics was the reactionary nationalist HORTHY DE NAGYBÁNYA. This navy-less admiral assumed the title of regent early in 1920 (albeit only as a way of blocking any effective resumption of the Magyar kingship by Charles, the last Habsburg emperor), and thereafter he consolidated a right-wing dictatorship in broadly fascist style (see FASCISM). Horthy exploited his fellow-countrymen's resentment at their harsh treatment from the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT, and most particularly from the 1920 TRIANON TREATY which confirmed the loss of two-thirds of previous Hungarian territory and endorsed foreign rule over one-third of the Magyar people. Some of the Regent's revisionist claims against CZECHOSLOVAKIA were met as a side-effect of the 1938 MUNICH AGREEMENT. During the earlier part of WORLD WAR II, he increasingly aligned himself with Germany in the hope of promoting Hungarian IRREDENTISM concerning such other areas as TRANSYLVANIA and YUGOSLAVIA. Following Operation BARBAROSSA Horthy's regime formally joined the AXIS war effort. By late 1944, however, his futile attempts to strike a deal with the Soviet forces then advancing into Hungary led the Nazis to arrest him and to put Szálasi's antisemitic (see ANTISEMITISM) ARROW CROSS movement briefly in charge. Even under the eventual RED ARMY occupation, relatively free elections took place in November 1945 and produced a majority for the Smallholders' Party. Yet by 1948, as the COLD WAR deepened, STALIN had imposed a transfer of power to RÁKOSI'S communists. Thus began a long period of dominance from Moscow (see also WARSAW PACT) that lasted until the 1980s – doing so despite the brief, but intensely courageous and dramatic, HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956. After KHRUSHCHEV crushed this act of defiance, the country's communist leadership was assigned to KÁDÁR, who then remained in power until 1988. The latter's moves towards political liberalization and economic modernization were too limited and belated to insulate Hungary from the anticommunist pressures that eventually erupted across the Soviet bloc in the form of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91. Early in 1989 the ailing communist regime yielded to demands for multi-party politics, and also breached the Iron Curtain by dismantling the barbed wire running along Hungary's frontier with Austria. A return to free elections was achieved the following year. During the next decade, the processes of post-communist transition to privatization and a free-market system were often painful, and so too were ongoing anxieties about the fate of those many “unredeemed” Magyars still living under foreign rule. Nonetheless, by the early twenty-first century, Hungary (with a population of around 10 million) was becoming increasingly involved in the structures of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, most notably as a member of NATO from 1999 and of the European Union from 2004.

Husák, Gustáv (1913–91), First Secretary of the Communist Party of CZECHOSLOVAKIA (1969–87), and State President (1975–89). In the 1950s his career in the communist movement (see COMMUNISM) had been interrupted by a nine-year imprisonment, after GOTTWALD'S purge had judged him guilty of “Slovak bourgeois nationalism.” However, by the time of the 1968 PRAGUE SPRING, Husák had risen to become deputy premier. Although he seemed initially supportive of DUBČEK'S reforms, he was soon endorsing the WARSAW PACT invasion that crushed them later the same year. Rewarded by Moscow with the party headship, he was the main architect of the repressive “normalization” that then prevailed in Czechoslovakia until the later 1980s. In the GORBACHEV era, he remained resistant to the new Soviet leader's encouragement of less autocratic modes of governance across the Eastern communist bloc. Once the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 got under way, Husák (now head of state) found himself swiftly ousted by HAVEL, whom he had long persecuted as an anticommunist intellectual.