Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956: Between the United States and the Soviet Union (review)

Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956 is a dense, well-researched book exploring Hungary’s role in the Cold War. László Borhi’s thought-provoking study gives some historical context but is primarily intended to provide new historical research and details for an audience already knowledgeable about Hungarian history.

The book is well structured. Chapter One (“We Do Not Wish to Move a Finger”) sets the stage for Borhi’s discussion of Hungary’s Cold War fate, which was sealed by interactions between Hungary and the Allies and among the Allies themselves during World War II. The title of the chapter comes from British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden’s memorable remark summarizing the Western position: “‘We do not wish to move a finger’ for the Hungarians” (p. 32). The chapters that follow describe Hungary’s dismal postwar situation and ripe conditions for exploitation, detailing how the Soviet Union and the Hungarian Communists steadily infiltrated positions of authority. Borhi also discusses the official Communist takeover in the election of 1947 in which an estimated 466,000 people were disenfranchised. More than 50,000 fraudulent votes were cast for the Hungarian Communists. To guarantee the Communists’ victory, the Soviet Union did not release Hungarian prisoners of war (POWs) until after the election. Once Soviet officials took control in 1945, they used economic expansion as a tool of domination in Hungary and Eastern Europe. The book’s accounts of Soviet economic rule and of Hungary as a client state are a notable contribution, particularly because most academic studies on the topic approach it from either the political or the military perspective. The book concludes with a description of U.S. policy toward Hungary and other satellite states from the end of World War II through the Hungarian revolution of 1956.

Hungary’s only significance to the Americans and British during the war was to distract the Germans from the D-Day landings in Normandy. Hungarian leader Miklós Horthy sought and signed a preliminary armistice with the Allies in the (vain) hope that U.S. and British forces would occupy Hungary before the Germans invaded. He knew that a German presence would seal Hungary’s fate because it would provoke a Soviet invasion in response, and then Soviet occupation and domination. An Anglo-American occupation was not as far-fetched as it sounds in retrospect. Churchill in fact repeatedly considered bringing Allied troops up the boot of Italy and heading east to Hungary, but eventually was convinced by the Americans to reach only as far east as Austria. Horthy asked that the negotiated armistice be kept secret, but the terms of the armistice were leaked to The Times of London by U.S. representatives in Hungary who evidently believed that Horthy’s fear of the Soviet Union was irrational and obsessive.

Hungary was the site of heavy fighting toward the end of the war. The Soviet Union sustained 80,000 deaths and 240,000 wounded in the siege of Budapest alone. Hungary lost 340,000–360,000 soldiers, 80,000–100,000 non-Jewish civilians, and as many as 490,000 Jews. Roughly 600,000 Hungarians were taken to the USSR as prisoners of war, and as many as 200,000 did not return. In short, Hungary lost 10 percent of its population. In addition, some 50,000–200,000 Hungarian women were raped by Soviet troops. Moreover, 40 percent of Hungary’s national wealth was destroyed, including damage to 90 percent of industrial plants and 40 percent of the rail network.

Hungary also lost most of its pro-Western political elites, who either were persecuted by the Germans or became refugees fleeing the Soviet occupation. Hungary no longer had the political elites to withstand pressure from the Soviet Union and Hungarian Communists who seized positions of authority in order to tighten the noose at a later date.

After the war...