The four-pronged German invasion of Hungary

In March 1944, Hungary was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany troops as part of World War II. This invasion was formally known as Operation Margarethe (Unternehmen Margarethe).[1][2]

Course of events

German Bf 110s flying over Budapest in January 1944.

Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, who had been in office from 1942, had the knowledge and the approval of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy to secretly seek negotiations for a separate peace with the Allies in early 1944. Hitler wanted to prevent the Hungarians from turning against Germany. On 12 March 1944, German troops received orders by Hitler to capture critical Hungarian facilities.[3]

Hitler invited Horthy to the Palace of Klessheim, near Salzburg, on 15 March. On the evening of 15 March 1944, when Admiral Horthy was watching a performance of the opera Petofi, he received an urgent message from the German minister Dietrich von Jagow, who stated that Horthy had to see him immediately at the German legation.[4] When Horthy arrived, Jagow gave him a letter from Hitler saying Hitler wanted to see him at Schloss Klessheim in Austria on 18 March. As both heads of state conducted their negotiations at Schloss Klessheim, German forces quietly marched from Reichsgaue of the Ostmark into Hungary. The meeting served merely as a ruse to keep Horthy out of the country and to leave the Hungarian Army without orders.

Negotiations between Horthy and Hitler lasted until 18 March, when Horthy boarded a train to return home. On 19 March, the occupation of Hungary began.

When Horthy arrived in Budapest, German soldiers were waiting for him at the station. Horthy was told by Jagow that Hungary could remain sovereign only if he removed Kállay for a government that would co-operate fully with the Germans. Otherwise, Hungary would be subject to an undisguised occupation. Horthy appointed Döme Sztójay as prime minister to appease German concerns.

Being a complete surprise, the occupation was quick and bloodless. The initial German plan was to immobilise the Hungarian Army, but with Soviet forces advancing from the north and the east and the prospect of British and American forces invading the Balkans,[5] the German military decided to retain Hungarian forces in the field and so sent troops to defend the passes through the Carpathian Mountains from a possible invasion.

As a consequence of the German occupation, Adolf Eichmann arranged the transportation of 550,000 Hungarian Jews from wartime Hungary (including Jews from territories that had been annexed from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia) to extermination camps with Hungarian authorities' collaboration.[6]

Aftermath

Despite the occupation, Horthy regardless attempted to negotiate a peace treaty and surrender with the Soviet Union. A few months later in October 1944, Horthy made a radio broadcast that an armistice had been signed. The Germans were ready, however. Horthy was overthrown in Operation Panzerfaust, a coup that placed the Nazi-friendly Arrow Cross Party (NYKP) in power.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Andreas Hillgruber, Helmuth Greinert, Percy Ernst Schramm, Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtführungsstab) 1940-1945, Band IV: 1. Januar 1944 – 22. Mai 1945 (Bernard & Graefe, 1961)
  2. ↑ Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, 2 vols. (Edinburgh University Press, 1956–57), II, 226.
  3. ↑ Chant, Christopher (1 September 2020). "Operation Margarethe I".
  4. ↑ Cornelius, Deborah S Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011 p. 273
  5. ↑ Earl F. Ziemke. Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East, page 208. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. "In November [1943] the transfer to the Eastern Front of the divisions allocated for Margarethe and intelligence reports that the Rumanians and Hungarians had secretly ironed out their difficulties and might try to desert the Axis in conjunction with an American-British invasion of the Balkans, complicated the problem."
  6. ↑ Cesarani, David (2005). Eichmann: His Life and Crimes. London: Vintage. pp. 159–195. ISBN 978-0-099-44844-0.

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