VERSAILLES DECISION UNDER SCRUTINY

László Botos

Numerous important decisions, which have altered the borders of the countries of Europe, have been kept secret for a generation.  These secret decisions, made behind closed doors, cut into pieces an ancient sovereign state which, goes back more than 1000 years. 

 Soon after the Magna Carta came into effect in England, King Endre II. of Hungary signed the Arany Bulla (Golden Bull) in 1222, giving Hungary a written code of laws.  In AD. 896, at Ópusztaszer, the leaders of the seven nations of the Magyars and the ancient populace whom they found in the Carpathian Basin, together with the Avars, made a Blood Union which provided democratic rule for the people of the Carpathian Basin.  This unification, at the time of the ancient Hungarian County system, gave rise to the concept of statehood and created a unified nation.  Such a unifying power came into existence only centuries later in the other European countries.  In Austria, France, Italy and Germany, the principalities were fighting against each other to obtain dominance.  The Hungarian Blood Union, which was in effect a federation, predated the unification of the other European countries by 500 years.  Louis XI (1461-1484) unified France; Bismarck (1815-1896) unified the Germans and Garibaldi (1807-1882) unified Italy. In 1920, the historic Hungarian state was divided in order to create artificial states, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which had never before existed and whose ethnic groups were hostile towards each other.  In the case of Czechoslovakia, the people of the world were led to believe that the Czechs and the Slovaks were related peoples with an identical language.  They realized that this was false information when the Slovaks separated from the Czechs in 1993 because they could not bear the Czech oppression. 

Modern historians write that the Magyars, at the time of the 896 Homecoming, conquered the Slav and Wallachian peoples in the Carpathian Basin.  Yet if we take the time to look into earlier sources, there are no references to Slav, Serb or Wallachian (Romanian) peoples or nations. There may be references to scattered primitive Slav or Wallachian settlements isolated from each other.  On the contrary, there are many references to the Avar, Palots, Jazygian, Sarmatian and Szekler populace.   

Now we are going to examine the accusations against Hungary, on which the decision to carve up Hungary was made, at the Treaty of Versailles, at the Trianon Palace in 1920.  Among the huge number of accusations, I mention the unreasonable Wallachian allegation that King Béla IV., after the destruction caused by the Tartars, did not give the Wallachians in Transylvania the same rights as the Szeklers, Hungarians and the Saxons.  At that time, the Wallachians could not receive these rights because, before the French Revolution of 1789, the duty of the Home Defence was entirely in the hands of the Szeklers and the Hungarian aristocracy.  Not even the common Hungarian people had this political right.  Under the Hapsburg rule, the serfs had no say in political decisions. Since the Hungarian peasants did not have the right to vote, the Wallachian serfs who had infiltrated into the country, had no right to demand it. 

The Serb territorial gains in Hungary were based on the writings of the Greek Catholic Patriarch Rajics, who wrote the history of the Serbs, in the old Slavic language.  He stated that every place where the Serbs lived under the Patriarch of Ipek  was Serb territory.  This work is counted as a reputable source of information for the Serb historians. 

Since 1920, the Hungarians have become the largest “minority” in Europe.  This is a false distortion because the Hungarians make up the largest group in the Carpathian Basin.  The Hungarians did not migrate into foreign territories but it was foreigners who came to seek refuge among the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin.  The multi-national characteristic of the Hungarian territory is the result of the Tartar and Turkish destruction and the settlement of foreigners by the imperialistic Hapsburgs in the Carpathian Basin.

At the time of the 1848 Freedom Fight against the Hapsburgs, the Hungarian government was not able to agree to the over-ambitious nationalistic demands of the Slovaks living in the northern territory of Hungary (Felvidék). They were demanding that the government decide on the border of the Slovak territory, and the use of the Slovak language in the Hungarian National Assembly and in the Hungarian National Defense.  At the same time, the Slovak politician, Hurban, organized an anti-Hungarian uprising, which was supported by the Hapsburgs.   After the Russians came to the aid of the Austrians against the Hungarians, the Hungarians laid down their arms to the Russians and the infamous Bach era followed.  At this time it was impossible to settle the problem of the minorities in Hungary.

            The accusation which is most often brought up about the Hungarians is that they oppressed their minorities and magyarized them over a period of centuries.  If this were true, there would not remain any Slavs, Slovaks, Romanians, Croatians, Ruthenians, or Germans in Hungary because for centuries there was the opportunity to assimilate them and take away their language and customs.   In order to refute this accusation, I will quote Paragraphs 57 and 58 of the Hungarian Education Law passed on June 23, 1868, which stated that every student was to be educated in his mother-tongue, in the language of the village.  In the villages of mixed population, teachers had to be hired who spoke the languages of the village. [1]

            The Deák-Eötvös lawXE "Deák-Eötvös law" was passed on December, 5, 1868. (1868. XLIV tc.) The law was based on three basic principles:

1.      The doctrine of the political nation, which in this case is Hungary.  Hungary had existed as a state since A.D. 898.   Many ethnic minorities had found refuge in Hungary, fleeing from the Tartars and the Turks and, in some cases, their own leaders.  They had always been allowed to use their own language and customs. 

2.      Within this frame, the administration secured for every citizen equality before the law, religious freedom, freedom to chose the language of instruction, the right of assembly, and general cultural, political equality.

3.      The third principle originated from the first one. This law recognized only one political nation, Hungary, and declared that Hungarian should be the official language of the National Assembly.  The later paragraphs of the law explain the rights provided by the second principle.  The protection of individual rights and the freedom of opinion are automatically provided by the law.[2]

            From this we can see how divergent were the mental processes of the Hungarians and the minorities.  From the use of the vernacular in the churches came the idea of national politics.  The endeavor to protect the individual developed into the liberal idea of nationalism, which spread worldwide when the minorities everywhere tried to obtain their self-rule.  Is it possible for a nationality group to form a state in the heart of a nation?  Is there any country, which would allow this?   The United States has many ethnic groups but none of them is allowed political autonomy and English is the official language of the nation.

 According to the Law of 1868, the churches could establish their own parochial schoolsXE "parochial schools" and freely choose the language of instruction.  In actuality, the parochial schools were 95.4% of the schools in Hungary.  Because the churches received religious autonomy, in practically all the schools, the children were able to learn in their own mother-tongue.  „The churches had the right to prescribe the language of instruction in the schools controlled by them.”[3]   This system was accused of being chauvinistic and oppressive.  Between 1879 and 1883, when the new law was introduced by which all instruction had to be in Hungarian, the parochial schools were exempt from this law and could continue to use the language of their choice.            .  In 1906, in Historic Hungary, 492 elementary schoolsXE "elementary schools" and 13 secondary schools were German.  In 1907, 76% of the schools were parochial schoolsXE "parochial schools", therefore the „Magyarization” was no more than a false accusation against the Hungarians. 

            According to Andrew Burghardt, instruction in Hungary was bilingual. How much the Hungarian language was used depended on the teacher.  German reading books were used regularly.  „The amount of Magyar used in the teaching of the other subjects varied with the teacher.  In some villages, it appears that everything else was in Magyar; in others evidently both Magyar and German readers were used.  So that instruction was actually bilingual.”[4]   In Ruthenia, which was a part of Hungary, the language of instruction was Ruthenian

The first time that the anti-Hungarian racial hatred came to the fore was at the time of the “Drang Nach Osten”, push towards the east.  The goal of the Germans became very clear in the tenth century.  They adopted as a slogan, the words of King Louis the Child:  “ The Magyars must be annihilated”  (Ugros Boiaire Regno eliminades esse.)  The Hapsburgs took this as their motto and put it into practice when they became Kings of Hungary.

.            Early last century, Seton-Watson, a British historian, with his book: The Racial Problems in Hungary,  became the main source of anti-Hungarian propaganda.  Several Slovak politicians, such as Hurban, Vajansky and Srobar, provided data for the book.

Another never mentioned cause of the encouragement of anti-Hungarian feelings and racial hatred, which finally led to the First World War, was the Pan-Slavism, incited by Czarist Russia. What was Pan-Slavism?  Karl MarxXE "Karl Marx" said: “Pan-Slavism is not only a goal for the unification of the Slav people but it is also a goal to destroy a thousand years of history in Europe.  In the interest of this, we have to erase Turkey and half of Germany from the maps of Europe.  When Pan-Slavism has reached this goal then the Slavs will begin to subjugate Europe.  Europe has only two choices, to accept Pan-Slavism or to conquer Russia and eradicate the center of Pan-Slavism.”[5]

  The strongest advocates of Pan-Slavism were the Czechs who spread this philosophy throughout the Danube valley in the 18^th century and they persuaded the Tóts, who later became known as Slovaks, to adopt Pan Slavism and to hate the Hungarians because of their racial origin.  Benes and Masaryk used the anti-German politics of the Great Powers for their own benefit.  Benes, in his work: “Détruisez l’Autriche-Hongrie” (Destroy Austria-Hungary) writes among other things that  “ The Hungarians are the pillars of the gang who oppresses the Central European people. . . The Hungarians are the obstacle to the unification of the Serbs and the Croatians.”  Tamas Masaryk stated that it was Hungary who caused the First World War. (Svetové Revolucia – Prague, 1920)  According to Benes, God created the Czechs to be the pillars of democracy against the barbaric German, Hungarian, Avar, Mongol and Tartar tribes, the defenders of the West and the guardian of peace.  From these propagandist writings stem the racial hatred against the Hungarians which has continued to the present.  Kennan writes „This Peace Treaty was written by the hand of the Devil and in it is the tragedy of the future.”[6]

In 1945, the Czechs voluntarily gave to the Soviets Kárpátalja (Carpathian Ukraine), which they had obtained in 1920 in Trianon.  By doing so, they proved that they were unable to play the role, which they had accepted.  Therefore Europe was unable to defend herself from the East.  Europe requires a strong, reliable nation in the Carpathian Basin upon which they can depend.  It has always been stated that the Trianon borders may not be changed.  Since it was done in 1945, a revision of the borders is still possible.

On the subject of the Peace Treaty of Trianon, Professor Archibald Cery-Coolidge on Jan. 19, 1919 stated: “. . . more than three and three quarter million Hungarian citizens would be subjected to alien rule and to compel what has been since a thousand years a unified country to accept such an arrangement as permanent would be only to condemn it to a future of hatred and strife with every probability of violent outbreak before many years have elapsed.”[7]

On December 1, 1918, at Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia), at the Romanian National Assembly, the Romanian leaders of Transylvania expressed their desire to join the Romanian Kingdom.  On December 13, this decision was repeated by the Consileul Dirigent.  According to the International Law, this was an illegal decision because the International Peace Conference had not yet been called into session.[8]  At this Assembly about 100,000 Transylvanian Romanians took part.  The other inhabitants of the territory, Saxons and Hungarians were not allowed to take part.  This is another reason that it was illegal. 

The decision of this session of the Romanian National Assembly is also unacceptable because, out of 26 counties there were only 43% of Romanians present.  Therefore we demand revision of the Treaty of Trianon.  In recent years, the Successor states have ignored the consequences of their continued poisoning of the waters of the rivers which flow into the Carpathian Basin. They are slowly poisoning the Hungarian people.  This is another important reason for revision.

Czechoslovakia broke apart because it was built on lies.  At the time of the establishment of Czechoslovakia, a referendum was not taken and the reason for this was given by Tardieu in his memoirs: „We had to chose a plebiscite or the establishment of Czechoslovakia.”[9]

How was Felvidék, the present Slovakia, annexed from Hungary?  On October 30, 1918, at the Slovak National Council, at Turócszentmárton, 90 Protestant and 15 Roman Catholic Slovak representatives announced that Felvidék (Slovensko) was annexed from Hungary.   This declaration of Slovak independence was recognized in 1920 as “the will of the people”.  How could they say that it was the will of the people, when only the Slovaks were present and not the Hungarians living in Felvidék?  This is another reason for negotiations for a revision of the treaty of Trianon. 

The Corfu AgreementXE "Corfu Agreement" which the Serb government effected on July 27, 1917, and which brought Yugoslavia into existence, supposedly states that the south Slav minorities desired to join with Serbia.  Henri Pozzi, a French politician and diplomat, says: „This is a barefaced lie and one of the greatest frauds of the age.” [10]  It was not the leaders of the Southern Slavs who negotiated this annexation, but three individuals, Wickham-Steed, editor of the political section of the London Times, Seton-Watson, member of the London Committee of Slav Propaganda and Dr. Trumbics, the former mayor of the city of Zara in Dalmatia. These three people held themselves out to be the spokespersons for the “will of the people”.  Because of them, five million Austrians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Croats became second-class citizens in Yugoslavia.

In Cleveland on May 17, 1915 the Tót (Slovak)-Americans demanded an independent Slovakia within Czechoslovakia.  Only the Tót (Slovak) emigrants to America were allowed to vote. How could the Corfu and Cleveland agreements have been accepted?  What happened to the Hungarians who lived in Felvidék?  Why were they not allowed to vote?  The Hungarians at that time made up 30% of the population.  How could an emigrated league vote in the name of a people in the Carpathian Basin?

On November 3, 1918, Seton-Watson submitted a note to the British Foreign Office on behalf of the Czechs that they obtain Felvidék.  On the next day, Benes, in the London Times and in Le Matin, declared that Czechoslovakia was the Bastion of Europe against Communism.

Twenty days later, the Czechs would not allow the Hungarians to transport arms through Czechoslovakia to aid Poland, which was fighting against Communism.  Then they informed the Russians that the Slovak border was open for them to advance into Europe after they had taken Poland.[11]   

Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, 1916-1922, and one of the representatives of the Allied Nations who were responsible for the decision, later stated: „Some of the proofs, which our allies provided, were lies and distortions.  We made decisions on false claims.”[12] 

The Czechs, in the interest of influencing people in their favor, falsified statistics and published them in the newspapers.  The 1910 Census indicated that there were 1,069,978 Hungarians in Felvidék.  In 1921, the Czech census reported 744,620 Hungarians.  In the census of 1930, there were 719,569.  In 1941, when a part of Felvidék was returned to Hungary, there were 896,677 Hungarians in that small part alone. 

In Masaryk’s newspaper, Új Európa, Seton-Watson stated that the number of Slavs living in Felvidék was 1,900,000, and that Pozsony was a Hungarian and German city. On December 6, 1918, Masaryk demanded the annexation of Felvidék, on the basis that there was a Slav population of 1,900,000, just as Seton-Watson had stated.   On February 18, 1919, in his meeting with André Tardieu, Masaryk raised the number to 2,900,000.  It is obvious that one million Hungarians are included in this number.  Sonnino, Lord Balfour and Masaryk accepted the plan for ethnographic borders but Benes, Osusky and Seton-Watson were demanding the strategic borders for Czechoslovakia.  The most important considerations for Hungary’s survival were disregarded.[13]

The state of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1993. Before Trianon, Kárpátalja did not belong to  the Czechs, the Tóts or the Soviets. Kárpátalja (Ruthenia or Sub-Carpathia, later called Carpathian Ukraine) had belonged to Hungary for a thousand years.  After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, who has a rightful claim to this territory?  Before the formation of Czechoslovakia, a plebiscite was not held, otherwise the people would have voted to remain with Hungary. 

I will quote the words of the French Foreign Minister, Delcassé: “A nation is not humiliated by the fact that she was defeated or because she signed a peace treaty with a knife at her throat but she will become dishonored if she does not oppose it and even contributes to her own ruination. It is not defeat which causes the ruin but renouncement.”[14] 

In December 21, 1918, Hungary gave autonomy to Kárpátalja (Ruthenia).  The SOYM (Ruthenian parliament) at Munkács, declared that they would remain united to Hungary.  On May 8, 1919, Benes accepted the December 21, 1918 Hungarian declaration of autonomy for Kárpátalja.   On May 9, 1919, at another sitting of the SOYM, the Ruthenians again declared that they remained with Hungary.  In September, 1919, the Peace Treaty of St. Germain was rejected by the Czechs and as a result of further negotiations, the Allied powers gave them Kárpátalja.  In 1926, the Czech language became the official language in Kárpátalja.  In the census of 1910, there were 234 Czechs living in Kárpátalja. 

Another anti-Hungarian accusation was that Hungary started the First World War.  The official proof to the contrary was Count István Tisza’s letter of July 1, 1914 to the Emperor, the King of Hungary, which was published in the Red Book of the Austrian revolutionary government.  István Tisza wrote: “Count Berchtold, with whom I discussed the matter, was well aware that I thought his plan to go into war was a mistake and that I did not want to have anything to do with it.  Till now we do not have enough evidence that Serbia is to be blamed for the Sarajevo assassination.  If Belgrade provides a satisfactory explanation, then we cannot make Serbia responsible. We certainly cannot make war against her.  If we did that, the whole world would regard us as warmongers and we would go into war under the most unfavorable circumstances.”[15]

On July 4, 1914, Tisza changed his opinion.  Pozzi writes: “Today we know why he did so.  We know that Sazonov, in the name of Czar Nicholas II, sent a circular telegram, to inform all the governments: ‘Russia rejects in advance every intervention which comes to the knowledge of St. Petersburg, which attempts to prevent the war.’ Now the Hungarians had no alternative.  They were forced to join Austria and Germany, and everyone who could help them to defend their territory from the threatening invasion of the Russians. . . . In the Red Book, it is noted that Tisza was willing to accept the ultimatum to Serbia if all the powers sent a memorandum stating that Austria-Hungary, in the case of a victory over Serbia, would not take any territory from the defeated Serbia.”[16]

            Already in December, 1914, when France wanted to create a separate Peace Treaty with the Monarchy, Sazonov said, „Not at any price, never.  Austria and Hungary have to be carved up and must cease to exist.”[17]  It is obvious that, before 1920, there was plan to carve up Hungary.  The Hungarian delegation was not even allowed to take part in the negotiations at the Palace of Trianon, in Versailles, in 1920, where Hungary’s fate was finally decided. Count Apponyi, the leader of the Hungarian delegation, was detained for three days in a room at the Chateau Madrid.  He was allowed to speak only briefly at the end of the negotiations, after the decisions had been made.  This is a major violation of International Law.[18]

            In 1917, the Russian government informed the French government that the Germans had offered them a separate peace treaty in which the conditions were so favorable for Russia that they could not refuse it.[19]  When Clemenceau was informed of the text of the telegram, which stated that Russia had gone over to the side of the enemy, he said: “We fell into a trap. We should not tell anyone about it.  The nation should not learn of this!”  At the same time Sazonov informed the French that Russia was willing to continue to fight on the side of the Allied Forces and, in the case of victory, would agree that Alsace-Lorraine be returned to France, and also the left side of the Rhine River, Koblenz, Mainz, and the Pfalz territory. In exchange, even if the British and Italians were to oppose it, France would commit herself to assuring that Russia would receive Ruthenia, Galicia, Constantinople, the Bosporus, Armenia, Asia Minor and the Holy Land.  By agreeing to this, France made Russia the greatest power in Europe and betrayed the rest of the Allied Forces. [20]  

            The Russians had to keep secret their plan to dissolve the Monarchy because they knew that France would not help them achieve this goal.  The alliance between Russia and France would only be activated if Germany attacked Russia.  The Russian politicians hid their secret well and found only one way to pull the French into the war on the Russian side, and that was a secret mobilization without the knowledge of the French. They knew that when they mobilized the Germans would also mobilize.  According to French historians, the Russians only mobilized after July 30, after the mobilization of the Monarchy.  However, as early as July 24, the Russians had secretly mobilized the Baltic and Black Sea fleets.  This was kept secret from the French people and the French historians.  This meant that the Russians provoked the Germans to mobilize.  As soon as the Germans mobilized, the French did too. [21]

            Even now, the Russian mobilization is not public knowledge because, by keeping this secret, the Russians intended to put the blame on the Germans.  It is clear that the Russian mobilization on July 24, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, the Serb bandit, and the Serb mobilization against the Monarchy on the encouragement of Russia are to blame for the start of the war.[22]  Pragmatic historians are well aware that the Russian Pan-Slavists are responsible for the outbreak of the war.

            In 1916, the Serbs accused Austria and Germany of using every opportunity to start the war.  Benes, in his proclamation: „Detruisez Autriche et la Hongrie” published in Paris in 1916, blames Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza for causing Austria to enter the war and states that the Serbs only entered the war to help their allies the Czechs.  Furthermore, he says that Tisza knew of the Sarajevo plan to assassinate Franz Ferdinand and helped it to materialize. These lies were spread by Veznic, the Serb ambassador to Paris, for the first time in Le Temps.[23]  At the same time as this accusation was announced in Paris, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrievics, the leader of the Serb news agency, in his prison cell at Salonici,  made this declaration:  “I wanted it.  I did it.  I am boasting and I am proud because I wanted the destruction of Austria.”[24]  The school books and the historians have not yet corrected these lies.

            Since 1909, Germany had been aware of the Pan-Slav plan to expand to the West and the Germans were deeply concerned for themselves and also for their alliance with Austria.  Germany knew that soon Austria would be forced by the spread of Pan-Slavism to enter into a life and death war against the Pan-Slavists.  Therefore  Germany’s only solution was to join Austria. 

            France mobilized on August 1, 1914 at 3:45PM.  The Germans mobilized at 5:00PM on the same day.[25]  The French government knew by August 1 that their own allies, Russia and Serbia, were responsible for the start of the war.  This fact was also silenced by the French press because of the magnitude of the offense. 

            The press accused Germany of extensive war preparations and in schools it is taught that the Allied Forces were not ready for the war.  The reality is that the Monarchy mobilized one and a half million fewer soldiers than the French, yet their populace could have provided more.

            In 1913, France lent Poland one billion francs for war preparations.[26]

At the beginning of August:

            Germany was preparing for war but not against the French or to obtain world power, but to hold back the obviously approaching Pan-Slav danger.

            As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, the list of the bribed press became public knowledge.  We know from the Soviet information, how much the Pan-Slavists paid to bribe the French press.  In 1904, the press received 935,785 francs; in 1905, 2,014,161 francs;  between 1905 and 1911, 7,894,360 francs; in 1912, 882,140 francs; in 1913, 1,102,500 francs; of this the sum of 374,000 francs was personally handed over in an envelope by Izwolsky.  In 1914, they received 1,025,000 francs; in 1915, 931,000 francs; in 1916, 1,153,225 francs; of this 100,000 went to the Agence des Balkans.  Between 1909 and 1912, Serbia gave France 275,000 francs from the money that she received from Russia.[28] Stefanovics, the Serbian agent in Paris, believed that the above-mentioned numbers, during the time of the Peace Conference, increased tenfold.  In order to have the opportunity to annex FiumeXE "Fiume", the Serbians gave  Le Temps 3 million francs.

            Now we can see who was really the war criminal. They were knowingly falsifying material for payment and they destroyed a country which had defended Europe. for a millennium.  Pozzi writes: „We should feel nausea and contempt if we look at the editions of Le Temps, Le Journal, l’Éclair, le Matin, Le Journal des Debats, L’Echo de Paris, and Le Figaro in the year before the beginning of the war.   The press tendentiously formed the public opinion with lies.  The French people knew only as much of the events as the Serb and Russian agents allowed them to know.”[29]

            Five days before the assassination in Sarajevo, in June 1914, it was a known fact that Romania, instigated by Russia, would join the anti-Hungarian alliance.

Sazonov asked Prime Minister BratianuXE "Bratianu" of Romania what conditions the Romanians would ask for declaring war against Austria-Hungary.  Bratianu stated that they would demand the whole of Transylvania, the Hungarian territory of the Bánát and half of the Austrian Bukovina. They also demanded that Russia guarantee the territorial integrity of Romania and pay the cost of the war preparations.[30] 

Pozzi noted that the historians tried to prove that Romania entered the war because of linguistic relationship and sympathy with the French but on August 17, 1916, France, Britain, Italy and Russia made a secret agreement to accept the Romanian conditions for entering the war.

The Russian-Romanian alliance against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy existed well before the War.  Recognizing this we can see that the Russians were to blame for preparing the War.  It is obvious that the Romanians entered the war on the side of the Russians in order to obtain the territories they wanted.  They called this a “just war” when they claimed in Trianon that they should “reannex” the territories which were originally theirs. This was nothing other than an imperialistic conquest.

            Francesco Nitti, Italian Prime Minister stated: “The conditions which were forced upon the defeated nations were humiliating.  No Englishman, Frenchman or Italian would accept for his own country such conditions which were forced upon Hungary.  From a Cardinal Primate to a simple peasant there is no Hungarian, who is worthy of the name, who could accept these conditions.”[31]

On September 19, 1938, Chamberlain, Deladier and Bonnet in London accepted Hitler’s proposal for the new borders of Czechoslovakia.  On September 22, President Hodzsa of Czechoslovakia resigned and Benes succeeded him. General Jan Syrovy, on September 23, ordered a new Czech mobilization and declared a state of war. On October 5, Benes resigned and the Germans recaptured Sudetenland.  On October 9, Count Pal Teleki and Kálmán Kánya in Komárom began negotiations with the Slovak President Tiso.  On October 11, as a result of these negotiations, the Hungarian army occupied Ipolyság and Sátoraljaújhely, the territory of the Ronyva Creek.  On October 26, Czechoslovakia proposed that Germany, Italy and Poland decide the border question.  On October 30, they accepted the proposal.  On November 2, in the Belvedere Palace, foreign ministers Ciano and Ribbentrop agreed that Hungary should regain 11,912 kilometers with a populace of 1,600,000.  This agreement is known as the First Vienna Decision.  On March 17, 1939, Tiso, in the name of the Slovak government asked Hitler to be the supporter of Slovakia, which he accepted, and the Germans occupied part of Slovakia.  On March 23, Hitler guaranteed Slovakia independence for 25 years.  

            According to the statements of Benes, one of the causes of the Second World War was over-zealous nationalism, therefore he suggested that in the New Europe humanism should be advanced.  He accepts that, between the two World Wars, it was not the nationalism of the minorities that was the cause for the war but the extra-chauvinistic goals of some of the minorities, supported by Pan-Slavism. 

            It is a well-known fact that life under Soviet Communism was terrible.  Now, if we add to that the anti-minority laws in the Successor States, we will get an idea of what life was like for  the Hungarians who lived in these territories.

            Since the end of the Second World War, several nations have received recompense for their losses, and some have received recompense several times over.  At the same time, the Hungarians are not allowed to mention the atrocities committed against them because immediately they are declared to be chauvinistic, which according to the press is the biggest crime today.  György Oberding, in 1930, estimated the property the Romanians took from the Hungarians to be more than 200 million dollars.  This is equal to the amount that Hungary had to pay as war damages for the Second World War.  This 200 million dollars is just what the Romanians confiscated and does not include the losses to the other Successor States.  It was stated that the return of territory to Hungary between 1938 and 1941, after the First Vienna Decision, was invalid because the decision was made with the aid of Hitler on the Hungarian request.  This accusation is false because it was not the Hungarians who requested Hitler to make the decision but there were two requests, one from the Czech government and one from the Slovak President Tiso, to Germany, Italy and Poland to decide on the borders.

            At the end of the Second World War, Hungary was not absolved from the decision made at the end of the First World War, but lost more territory to Czechoslovakia.  At that time the accusation was that Hungary remained till the very end on the side of Germany and that 200,000 Hungarian Jews were deported from Budapest.  The truth is as follows:             Jenõ Lévy, an expert from Hungary about world Jewry, explained, at the University of Jerusalem, how the Jews from the Budapest ghetto were saved from deportation to Germany.  Frederick Werber and Thurston Clarke in their book: Lost Hero, which was dedicated to Frederick Werber’s grandfather, Rabbi A.I. Jacobson, stated: “Eichmann intended to accomplish, in December, the deportation of 175,000 Hungarian Jews to Germany, most of whom were from Budapest, but this was prevented by the order of Szálasi in that same month.  Following Szálasi’s order, he put a stop to the enforced march to Germany and stated that he would lend to Germany only the strong, healthy Jewish men, but even that did not take place.  Veesenmayer reported to Berlin that Szálasi’s order meant that the deportation of Jews to Germany had stopped completely.”   According to Frederick Werber, in the time of Szálasi, October 15, 1944 to April 4, 1945, less than 50,000 out of the 600,000 Hungarian Jews, were deported to Germany and in this period the Jewish loss did not reach 2000.[32]  The deportations of the Jews from Hungarian cities and the prevention of the deportation of 200,000 Jews from Budapest, all took place at a most critical time, when Hungary was already under German occupation. 

            Notes of the British Foreign Office of October 13 and 14, 1943 by A.W. Randall: “Professor Namier of the Jewish Agency told me yesterday that his people were most seriously concerned at the possible consequences to the 800,000 Jews, who now enjoy comparative security in Hungary, of any premature desertion of Germany by the Hungarian Government.  The Jews here, he said, felt that Germany could not possibly tolerate Hungarian defection and, as long as the German army was in a position to react, would answer such a move by the Hungarian Government by German occupation of the country, the result of which would be extermination of the most important body of Jewry left in Europe.  I said that this possibility was already being put forward in public as a reason for Hungary not making any premature move to the Allied side.  Professor Namier said that the only hope, as far as the Jews are concerned, was that the Hungarians would choose not to move until it was practically certain that the Germans would not be able to react.”

            Another reason that Hungary remained to the very end on the side of Germany, was not her love of the Germans but the instinct to defend herself and her honor against the wild, barbarian Russian hordes as long as possible.  She wanted to gain as much time as possible to save the Hungarian girls and women from the ravaging of the Russians which even the most heroic defense was not able to prevent.  In August, 1945, the Hungarian government asked for the medicine called Salvarsan for 470,000 women to cure the syphilis they contracted from the Russians.   In Hungarian this is called the Lenin Sickness.

             Whether or not the Successor States and the Great Powers acknowledge their mistakes, in the present or in the future,  the Hungarian people have the right to a just border revision. 

            Can honorable and benevolent people tolerate a situation where the perfidious liars finally reach their goal and foreigners find the Hungarian question to be an embarrassing subject, which should not be talked about?