Rückkehr nach Ungarn 1946—1950: Erlebnisberichte ungarndeutscher Vertriebener by Agnes Toth (review)

Shortly after the end of World War II, the Hungarian government deported some 239,000 ethnic Germans from their traditional settlement areas in the southern Transdanubia region of Hungary, between the Danube and Drau Rivers. After the Austro-Hungarian Empire defeated the Turks, resulting in the Peace of Passarowitz of 1718, Empress Maria Theresa and her son, Emperor Joseph II, called for emigrants to populate the almost empty war-ravaged lands. From 1722 through 1787, more than 150,000 German peasants and artisans, mostly from southwestern Germany, responded to this call to settle an area known as “Swabian Turkey.” The settlers came to be known as Danubian Swabians.

After World War II, the Germans slated for deportation were those who had declared themselves German or claimed German as their mother tongue in the last national census of 1941. Also subject to expulsion were Germans who had changed their surnames to Hungarian and then back again during the war, as well as members of the Volksbund or the Waffen SS. (The Volksbund was the cultural and political umbrella organization of ethnic Germans in Hungary. It was set up before the Nazi period, but once the Nazis came to power it rapidly came under their control and, in effect, became the political representative of the ethnic Germans in Hungary. Only a minority of the Germans in Hungary joined the Volksbund, however. The majority still felt loyalty to Hungary.)

Certain categories of ethnic Germans were exempt from the expulsion, including those who were active members of democratic parties (e.g., the Communist Party of Hungary) and labor unions. Subsequently, industrial workers in critical industries, miners, and certain craftsmen were also exempt. The ethnic Germans who had opted for Hungarian nationality in the 1941 census and who had claimed Hungarian as their native language were generally able to avoid deportation.

The expulsion of the German Hungarians was promoted and led by the Hungarian Communist party, with the vigorous backing of the Soviet Union. The purpose was to gain power in the next election by promoting land reform and expropriating the land of ethnic Germans, who were mostly farmers, thus receiving the support of the poor peasants who would benefit. The Communists also pressed for the expulsion of the Germans in order to appear as the principal defender of the Hungarian nation. The Soviet Union gave strong support by insisting at the “Big Three” Potsdam Conference of August 1945, that all ethnic Germans be expelled from Hungary, together with those from Poland and Czechoslovakia. U.S. and British leaders endorsed this initiative.

On 5 December 1945 the Hungarian Communists urged the expulsion of the Germans, relying on Imre Kovacs, one of the leaders of the National Peasants Party (allied with the Communists), to declare: “The Swabs (Germans) who came to this country with one bundle on their back, should leave the same way. They cut themselves off from the fatherland as they demonstrated with their actions that they sympathized with Hitler’s Germany. Let them now share the fate of Germany.” The majority of the Swabian Germans, about 170,000, went to the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany. Approximately 54,000 ended up in the Soviet zone after the U.S. government refused to accept any more, and 15,000 went to Austria. Some returned illegally to Hungary, and they are the subject of Agnes Toth’s Rückkehr nach Ungarn (Return to Hungary). Their return was surprising because the majority of them were strongly anti-Communist and dismayed at being expelled from what they considered their home country.

Toth estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 German Hungarians returned illegally from 1946 to 1948, when the expulsions officially ceased. This amounted to roughly 4 percent of the number expelled, though Toth considers the figure to be in the 5–6 percent range. Many were caught by the border police and expelled to Austria. Others repeated the attempt until they were finally able to find a...