Magyar Warriors: The History of the Royal Hungarian Armed Forces 1919–1945

By Dénes Bernád and Charles K. Kliment

The first book in the comprehensive, two-volume reference covering all aspects of the Hungarian military from the interwar period through WWII.

During the First World War, Hungary lost territories containing sizable Magyar ethnic populations. In the years following the war—and especially in the 1930s—the country attempted to regain portions of these territories through a series of border wars. The corresponding buildup of armed forces, with assistance from Italy and Germany, positioned Hungary as a valuable, if secondary, member of the Axis powers.

This comprehensive reference provides a complete picture of the Hungarian armed forces between the years 1919–1945. It starts with a brief history of the Magyars, describes the political situation in Hungary before and during WWII, the building of the armed forces, the growth of domestic arms manufacturers, the organization of the armed forces units, and how they changed during the war. The various campaigns of the war are described in great detail, illustrated with more than 500 photographs, as well as numerous tables and maps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781912174492

Book preview

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A Brief History of Hungary up to the End of the Second World War

‘The sword shines brighter than the chain’*

The Magyar People

Hungary is a medium sized country that lies in the Danube Basin of the eastern part of central Europe. Its people, the Hungarians – who call themselves Magyar – came from beyond the Ural Mountains to the Carpathian Basin over 1,100 years ago. Now they live there spread across eight countries, the ‘mother country’ of Hungary and all seven of her neighbouring states.

They were organized in seven tribes, the strongest being the Megyer, or Magyari, from which it is believed the name of the Magyar nation originates. A group of people of Finno-Ugric descent, they consisted mainly of warriors, who followed a nomadic lifestyle and prayed to pagan gods. The conquering Magyars entered the Carpathian Basin through the Verecke (Veretskiy) Pass,¹ in the eastern Carpathian Mountains, in AD 895, and settled there. From their newly acquired homeland, the Magyar warriors raided the rest of Europe on several occasions over the next hundred years.² Under the wise leadership of King Szent István (Saint Stephen), the Magyars converted to Christianity in ad 1000 and formed the Hungarian proto-state. Hungary thus joined mainstream Europe, as Christians, instead of pillaging it as barbarians. The centuries that followed brought neither peace nor tranquillity for the Magyar people. The history of Hungary is defined by magnificent eras of great kings and their victories when the country prospered, but also by eras of internal dissension, repressive foreign rule, and grievous defeats.

‘Honfoglalás’ (Securing the Homeland), the monumental painting by one of Hungary’s most prominent artists, Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900). It shows Árpád, leader of the Magyars (845–907), accepting the allegiance of the local population. It was Árpád who led his people, made of several tribes, in 895 through the Verecke Pass (in Sub-Carpathia) into the Carpathian Basin, the land that would become Hungary, the final home of the wandering Magyars – an event known in Hungarian history as Honfoglalás.

The epic Battle of Nándorfehérvár of 1456, as depicted by a painting by an unknown artist from the nineteenth century. In the middle, the 70-year-old John of Capistrano, ‘the Soldier Priest’, with the cross in his hand, is seen.

For many hundreds of years, Hungary had been repeatedly invaded from the east. Time and again, Tartars, Turks and other conquerors swept across the country. Fierce resistance was put up by the warrior Magyarok (plural of Magyar), who were often the last defenders of Christian Western Europe. A shining moment in the anti-Ottoman resistance was the victory at Nándorfehérvár (present-day Belgrade, capital of Serbia), of 1456. The defenders of the besieged border fort (végvár) in the south of the Kingdom of Hungary, led by John Hunyadi – a Hungarian nobleman and skilled warlord – beat back the numerically superior enemy. They eventually compelled the wounded Sultan Mehmed II (also known as ‘Mehmed the Conqueror’) to lift the siege and retreat. To commemorate this resounding victory of the Christian forces, 555 years ago at the time of writing, the bells toll at noontime all over the Christian world, as ordered by Pope Callixtus III.

The successful repulsion of the invading Ottoman Turks brought respite for only another sixty-five years, when Nándorfehérvár eventually fell. Outnumbered, often marred by dissension, the warrior Magyars were ultimately defeated, their country repeatedly plundered and the people massacred or forced into slavery. In place of the large proportion of the Magyar population who had perished, subsequent Hungarian kings settled foreign peoples in the ravaged areas. The deserted lands had to be cultivated and defended by these settlers, irrespective of the language they spoke and the religion they believed in.³

The rock bottom, or the nadir, of that turbulent late medieval era culminated in the Battle of Mohács, in 1526. The cream of the Magyarok and King Louis (Lajos) II himself fell on the battlefield, under the repeated strikes of the all-conquering Ottoman army of Sultan Suleiman (Süleyman) the First.⁴ That disastrous moment in Hungary’s history was followed by the dividing of the country into three parts and submitting to foreign rule most of their country’s national territory. The central and southern areas endured over a century and a half of oppressive Turkish occupation. The eastern area, known as Erdély (Transylvania), became a vassal state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, mostly headed by local Hungarian rulers. The northern and western areas were taken over by the Holy Roman Empire (the Habsburgs). It took many years to finally drive out the last Ottoman troops from the farthest corner of the Hungarian Kingdom, namely southern Banat. On 27 August 1717, the last Turks still on Hungarian soil were cut down, or driven into the River Danube, at Orsova, by hussars of Baron Gen. Gábor Splényi.

The long lasting Ottoman rule over Hungary resulted in over one and half million deaths or deportations, and a pillaged country. About one third of the territory became depopulated. The repopulation of Hungary with foreign people in the subsequent century resulted in the percentage of ethnic Magyars being reduced to about only half of the total population. The reshaping of the ethnic map of the Hungarian Kingdom would eventually lead to the disintegration of ‘Greater Hungary’, following the First World War.

When the Ottoman Empire’s grip on central Europe weakened, its army retreated from the area in the early eighteenth century. The Holy Roman Empire – known as the Austrian Empire from 1804 – took over power in the weakened and divided Kingdom of Hungary.⁵ The Austrians occupied and separated Transylvania from Hungary, and imposed their own overall control.

Huszár (Hussar, or Hungarian light cavalryman), as depicted by the painting of Alexander Pirk, dated 1895.

A faded and tattered combat flag of the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence from the Austrian Empire of 1848–1849, carefully preserved in Kézdivásárhely, in the heart of the Székelyföld (Seklerland), eastern Transylvania. Almost 100 years later, it was unfurled to welcome the Hungarian troops marching in, once again, in this traditional Székely (Sekler) region, in September 1940. ‘Éljen a haza!’ – a popular slogan of the Revolution – means ‘Long Live the Homeland!’

Several revolts were sparked against renewed foreign rule. The first significant attempt to topple the rule of Habsburg Austria over Hungary, and also the longest one, was ‘Rákóczi’s War of Independence’, led by the aristocrat Francis Rákóczi II (II Rákóczi Ferenc), supported by King Louis XIV of France, the ‘Sun King’.⁶ It lasted from 1703 until 30 April 1711, when the last ‘kuruc’ forces surrendered to the Austrians at Nagymajtény (today Moftinu Mare, Rumania), and 150 battle flags were stuck into the ground, as a sign of surrender. This marked the end of the failed uprising, which had left 100,000 dead and 50,000 wounded in Hungary, further weakening the country’s indigenous population, already decimated by the long Turkish rule. Additionally to man-made calamities, natural disasters struck Hungary as well (e.g., the plague of 1708–1713 killed an estimated 410,000 people, who were then replaced by foreign settlers). However, on a positive note, the agreement at Nagykároly (today Carei, Rumania) of 1 May 1711 was the first official ‘Compromise’ (kiegyezés) between the Austrian court (the Habsburgs) and the Hungarian nobility (nemesség). This would last almost 137 years, up until 1848.

The most important pro-independence war erupted on 15 March 1848, when the Twelve Point Proclamation was read out by Hungary’s most celebrated poet and revolutionary, Sándor Petőfi. It was inspired by the French Revolution of February 1848, which was followed by a strong liberation movement across most of Europe, in a series of political and military upheavals often called the ‘Spring of the Nations’. The ‘truncated Hungarian Parliament’ had control over less than half of Hungary’s actual territory. Pest-Buda (today Budapest) declared independence from Vienna under the command of Lajos (Louis) Kossuth. It called for the dethronement of the Habsburg Dynasty in Hungary and moved to reunite Transylvania with the homeland. However, the Austrians disapproved of their eastern neighbour’s independence movement and sent the army to crush the revolution. During a year-long series of bloody battles, the Austrian forces were largely defeated. Nevertheless, the Hungarian revolutionary army thus far victorious, was eventually crushed by the overwhelming force of the Russian Army of Czar Nicholas I, called in by the desperate Austrian Emperor, the young Franz Joseph I. Russia’s armed involvement in Hungary was a taste of things to come on the central European stage.

Near Segesvár (now known as Sighişoara, in Rumania), in the heart of Transylvania, in one of the last desperate battles, the young Sándor Petőfi was presumed killed in action while fighting the invading Russians on 31 July 1849, aged twenty-six. Sándor Petőfi was the nation’s voice and conscience and arguably the most brilliant and widely acclaimed Magyar poet ever.

Under Russia’s might, the 1848–1849 Hungarian Revolution eventually failed. It was the first in a sinister chain of three defining events, in which the Russians would directly interfere in Hungary’s history. History would repeat itself in 1944–1945, and then in 1956.

Portrait drawing of the young Sándor Petőfi by Miklós Barabás (1810–1898). Petőfi was the Magyar nation’s voice and conscience, and arguably the most popular and widely acclaimed Magyar poet ever. He was presumed killed in action fighting the invading Russians in central Transylvania, on 31 July 1849.

The retaliation was dreadful. The prime minister and thirteen senior generals of many nationalities, including Magyar, Austrian, Croatian, Serb and Slovak, were executed by the victorious Austrians. The top-ranking Hungarian Revolutionary Army officers were deemed to be traitors by the Austrians, having previously been members of the Austrian Army; they were still considered to be bound by their oath to the Austrian Emperor. Many hundreds of soldiers and civilians were also killed by the callous victors for their role in the revolution. The overall human loss was over 200,000. The country slipped back again under foreign domination and exploitation. The leader of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth, barely escaped capture. Together with many members of his deposed government and a handful of faithful followers, he eventually found a new home in the United States where he succeeded in rousing widespread support for the Hungarian cause.⁷

Military defeat and bloody result notwithstanding, the 1848 Revolution was a shining moment in the military history of Hungary. Arguably, it was the most important military campaign of the modern Hungarian nation.

In September 1848, for the first time, the National Defence Committee of the Revolutionary Hungarian Diet named their soldiers Honvéd (home defender). The embryonic revolutionary armed force, established in April 1848 under the name of Nemzetőrség (National Guards), was also referred to as the Honvédség (literally, corps of homeland defenders). The name was kept for the next one hundred years, until the Communist takeover.⁸

Austria’s harsh rule ended in 1867 with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. The majority of the progressive 1848 laws were re-instated. The country’s unity was restored, with Transylvania rejoining Hungary. Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, was also crowned King of Hungary, and a dual state was formed, called the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Each country enjoyed a semi-autonomous status, only the finance, foreign and defence ministries were shared. The people living in the Hungarian Kingdom became Hungarian citizens – not ‘Austro-Hungarian’ as it is commonly believed.

One of the important measures involving the military was the establishment in 1869 of the first Magyar Királyi Honvédség (MKH, Royal Hungarian Home Defence Force). It was based on the XLI Law issued in 1868. The MKH existed alongside the joint kaiserliche und königliche (k.u.k.) Heer (Imperial and Royal Army), of the newly created dual state. A separate Austrian armed force, the Landwehr, was reorganized in 1887. Service length was increased from six months to two years. Additionally, ‘people’s revolutionary units’ were also created separately in both countries. In Austria, it was called Landsturm (Territorial Army), consisting of infantry units only. In Hungary it was called Magyar Királyi Népfelkelő Hadsereg (Royal Hungarian Territorial Army), and consisted of both infantry and huszár (hussar)units.⁹ Both entities were to be activated during wartime only.

Hungarian soldiers of the joint k.u.k. Heer pose in front of an Albatros B.I unarmed reconnaissance aircraft, photographed on the Transylvanian Front, in late 1916.

Sarajevo was the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The fatal shots fired from the gun of the Serb assassin, Gavrilo Princip, on 28 June 1914, not only killed the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, but also triggered World War I. Hungary, as a partner of Austria, was obliged to enter the war. Albeit reluctantly, Hungary had to go to war, despite having no special interests or immediate goals to achieve.

The Hungarians, who subsequently fought and died on almost all the main battlefronts between 1914 and 1918, eventually emerged as one of the major victims of the Great War. The joint Austro-Hungarian Army lost a total of 3,477,200 men, including over 1.5 million dead and missing at the front. This amounts to 38.6 per cent of the total number of the approximately 9 million soldiers mobilised. It represented 31.9 per cent of the total Central Power losses. Out of that overall number, Hungary lost 660,000 killed and missing in action, representing 44 per cent of the joint Austro-Hungarian losses. That was a far larger percentage than the Hungarian Kingdom’s population within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Table 1.1 Losses of the Central Powers During WWI, Austria-Hungary

Source: Magyarország az első világháborúban (Hungary in the First World War), Lexikon A-Zs. Petit Real Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 2000.

The Kingdom of Hungary – before and after World War I. Hungary’s historic regions that remained outside the post-war borders are identified, in English and Hungarian (in brackets).

Tragically, the outcome of the so-called ‘Great War’ was to be extremely painful for Hungary. The biggest blow suffered by the Hungarians was not the enormous number of war casualties, but the harsh clauses of the following peace treaty. Clauses of the treaty that was signed at the Trianon Palace near Paris on 4 June 1920, detached approximately two-thirds of the country’s territory, and placed well over half of its population under foreign rule. In modern European history it was an unprecedented dismembering of a sizeable state.

Arguably, the disastrous outcome of the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920 is the biggest trauma the Magyar people have suffered throughout their turbulent one-thousand-year history, a trauma which strongly reverberates even today.¹⁰

Bitter Awakening

The end of the First World War found the Hungarian Kingdom – part of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Monarchy – dismembered by the victorious Allies. In all 67.12 per cent of the country and 58.24 per cent of its population, became subject to foreign rule. It has to be noted, however, that the majority of the population in the ceded territories was no longer ethnic Magyar.

Table 1.2 Ethnic Composition of the Kingdom of Hungary’s Population, Prior to and After World War I

Sources: Census of Hungarian Kingdom from 1910 (last one for A.-H.); census of Hungarian Kingdom from 1920; ethnics who ended up outside Hungary’s post-war borders, within the former borders, according to the 1920 census.

Large territories went to two newly created countries: the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the future Yugoslavia) gained 21,031 square kilometres; and the Czechoslovak Republic gained 63,004 square kilometres. However, the most rewarded country was the Rumanian Kingdom. It had only joined the Entente Powers in mid-1916, but had managed to obtain the largest area, namely Transylvania, northern Banat and the Hungarian Partium. That was a total of 102,181 square kilometres, on its own a larger territory than the remainder of post-war Hungary (initially, it covered 92,963 square kilometres and in the end increased to 93,073 square kilometres).¹¹ Smaller territories were also handed over to Poland and Italy. Even Hungary’s former ally, Austria, obtained a small part of western Hungary. Initially 4,321 square kilometres, it was later reduced by the sole plebiscite allowed by the victors (in the Sopron/Ödenburg area, inhabited by a majority of German-speaking population, which still voted in Hungary’s favour), to 4,026 square kilometres.¹²

In the early morning hours of 31 October 1918, with support of mutinous soldiers of the dismembering Hungarian army, wearing the Aster flower (hence the ‘Aster Revolution’), leftist protesters seized public buildings throughout Budapest. Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle resigned and the charismatic former Prime Minister István Tisza, the greatest threat to the populist Count Mihály Károlyi’s planned ascendance to power, was murdered. The brief three-day coup eventually succeeded – with eleven days of WWI officially still to go. By the end of the day, the leftist Count Károlyi was appointed Royal Hungarian Prime Minister by King Charles IV,¹³ the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The King ‘renounced participation’ in state affairs (and thus did not formally abdicate), thirteen days later. On 16 November, Károlyi’s pacifist government dissolved the truncated Parliament in Budapest, which had already been failing due to the sweeping geo-political changes of the country. Furthermore, many parliamentarians from the occupied territories, mostly non-Hungarian ethnic lawmakers, were neither able, nor willing to participate in the parliamentary sessions. That day, Count Károlyi proclaimed the independent Magyar Népköztársaság (People’s Republic of Hungary)¹⁴ – also known as the First Hungarian Republic – without legal grounds, however. This meant that after almost 400 years of Austrian rule, then co-habitation, Hungary had become a sovereign state again.

By that time, the power of the new government was limited to only a part of Hungary, since vast territories were already under foreign occupation. Following the path of the retreating Austro-Hungarian Army, the Allied South Army, under the command of French General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, entered southern Hungary practically unchallenged. Taking advantage of the chaotic and confused situation, the Rumanian and Czechoslovak forces rapidly advanced from east and north, respectively. The first Rumanian army units crossed Hungary’s eastern borders in the Székelyföld (Szeklerland) area of Transylvania on 13 November 1918, starting de facto the Rumanian–Hungarian regional war. The Czechoslovaks soon followed suit and advanced from north-west into Felvidék (Upper Hungary). Serbian armed units also took over large areas in southern Hungary. These foreign armed forces crossing into Hungary were practically unopposed by the disintegrating Hungarian Army and weak local law enforcement units. Local ethnic minorities rebelled as well, seizing power in large areas and thus assisting the advancing foreign armed forces.

Instead of mobilising the over one million Hungarian soldiers returning home from Europe’s main frontlines into a potent home defence army, well capable of throwing out the infiltrating foreign armies and defending the porous borders, they were instead demobilized by the leftist government in Budapest. Famously, the first War Minister of the Károlyi government, Béla Linder (who eventually turned out to be the Serbs’ agent), wearing a red tie, famously declared on 2 November 1918: a new, victorious era has come, born under the sign of pacifism. There is no need for an army any longer! I do not want to see a single soldier anymore! He then signed the decree disarming the troops and ordered the dissolution of the Royal Honvédség. Hungary became defenceless, at the mercy of the victorious Allies, particularly France, and their protégés outside and inside the borders, waiting to disintegrate the ailing country.

Defence Attempts

Initially, only the locally raised Hungarian defence groups, the police, gendarmes, railway personnel and other officials, put up some resistance to the advancing Rumanian, Czechoslovak and Serbian forces, but with little effect. Occasionally, there were heavy fights, particularly in Transylvania, with lots of casualties on both sides. But such ad hoc defence units were no match against foreign regular troops, who easily crushed them. Unfortunately, quite often the local civilians were those who paid the ultimate price. Under such unfavourable circumstances, the Károlyi government was constrained to sign an agreement with the Allies, known as the ‘Belgrade Convention’, on 13 November 1918, the very day the Rumanian troops had crossed the borders into Transylvania. The demarcation line imposed by the victors carved deep into Hungary’s territory, particularly in the south and east. The convention also drastically limited the size of the army, confining it to six infantry and two cavalry divisions, along with the available police forces. No naval or air forces were allowed. Hostilities between the Allies and Hungary were officially declared over.

The newly created Hungarian army, formed partly by war veterans, partly by recruits, was renamed Magyar Honvédség, renouncing the ‘Royal’ appellation. Simultaneously, there also existed a separate, ‘unofficial’ armed force, made up of right-wing volunteers who called their formation Magyar Királyi Nemzetőrség (Royal Hungarian National Guard). It operated mainly in northern Hungary. When the Czechoslovak troops advanced to the line of the River Danube, the Guard retreated to western Hungary.

By early 1919, the political, economic and military situation had continued to deteriorate. The previously fixed demarcation lines were disregarded and crossed by Rumanian, Czechoslovak and Serb troops, under the tacit encouragement of the French command. The lenient Allies then drew new lines, deeper in Hungarian territory. In turn, those were again disregarded and crossed by the same countries’ interventionist troops, interested in grabbing as much territory as possible, well beyond the ethnic borders, until the final peace treaty with the ‘truncated’ Hungary was to be eventually signed.

Territorial claims of Hungary’s neighbours right after World War I (including the little-known ‘Slavic corridor’, to be located in western Hungary). Most of these claims were eventually included in the Peace Treaty of Trianon, signed on 4 June 1920. At the end, the dismembered Hungary lost 67.12% of its territory and 58.24% of its population.

On 26 February 1919, the Paris Peace Conference pressurized by a strong Francophile Rumanian lobby, issued another decree (the ‘Vix Note’). It imposed on Hungary a new eastern demarcation line, meaning that further large territories had to be ceded starting on 23 March, and to be completed in ten days. The Hungarian leaders had assumed that the new military lines would be the new frontiers that would be established by the peace conference between Hungary and the Allies. Thus the Vix Note caused a huge outrage, and the Hungarians resolved to fight the Allies rather than accept the new borders. Even the weak leftist government in Budapest would not accept that latest major blow to Hungary’s territorial integrity. This was also in direct contradiction of the so-called Wilson Principles,¹⁵ that Budapest was hoping to refer to in its effort to preserve the territories predominantly populated by Magyar ethnics. Clearly being unable to militarily defend the country, Count Károlyi, by then president of the fledgling Hungarian People’s Republic, resigned on 21March 1919. He handed over power to the socialists. The de facto leader of Magyarországi Szocialista Munkáspárt – the Hungarian Socialist Labour Party, an alliance between the social-democrats and communists – was the Bolshevik Foreign Commissar Béla Kun (born Kohn). He quickly proclaimed a new Hungarian state, the Soviet-style Magyar Tanácsköztársaság (Hungarian Republic of Councils). He immediately began to form a new armed force, the Vörös Hadsereg (Red Army). A large number of ‘unemployed’ Hungarian officers and troops of the former k.u.k. Heer enlisted in the new Hungarian Red Army, which officially came into existence on 24 March. Most of those enlisting did not act driven by political beliefs, as military personnel were traditionally taught to steer clear of politics, but rather considered it their patriotic duty to take up arms to defend what remained of their country. The communists promised to act in this direction without delay.

A Hungarian Red Air Force Phönix C.I reconnaissance biplane stopped on its nose on Mátyásföld airfield, near Budapest, on 20 June 1919. Red Army soldiers and civilians look at the not uncommon scene. The international symbol of Communism – which had a brief stance in Hungary in 1919 – the five-point Red Star, is prominently displayed on the aircraft.

Aurél Stromfeld, a retired former k.u.k. colonel, now wearing no grade – as all military grades were abolished in the communist inspired army in late March – was named as Chief of Staff of the fledgling Hungarian Red Army. He envisaged a quick, one-front intervention against the weakest enemy force, the Czechoslovak one. His well-prepared plan put into action on 9 May worked. The first action of the new, 150,000-man-strong army, which also incorporated a small air force and river fleet, was directed against the Czechoslovak interventionist troops advancing from the north largely unchallenged. The new combative attitude of the Hungarians took the Czechoslovak Army by total surprise, which was forced to retreat more than 150 km.

The Hungarian Red Army’s initial triumphs surprised not only its direct enemies, but also the Entente. Georges Clemenceau, France’s premier, issued a firm notice to the Hungarians, calling them to immediately cease fire and retreat behind the latest demarcation lines. In exchange, he promised a limited acknowledgment of the Hungarian government and that no further territories would be taken away. In fact, the Entente had mainly been concerned with the spread of Communism into central Europe, as well as the concern that Hungary could eventually became a puppet Soviet-style state, under the direct influence of Moscow. The self-styled people’s commissar, Béla Kun, finally accepted the ultimatum, and the Hungarian troops reluctantly evacuated the recently retaken territories. In protest, Aurél Stromfeld resigned his Chief of Staff position, along with many disillusioned officers. Peace remained elusive, however.

Informed that a major offensive was planned by the Rumanians, who had already advanced to the River Tisza, deep inside central Hungary, the Red Army decided to act first, even though the odds were against them. It is now believed that this hopeless attack, whose outcome was all but certain, was masterminded by the new Chief of Staff of the Red Army, Ferenc Julier, who had no other way to destroy the Bolshevik regime but from within. On 20 July 1919, units of the Hungarian Red Army crossed the River Tisza’s line and initiated a desperate counter-attack. Following initial successes, the outnumbered and outgunned Hungarians were forced to retreat behind the Tisza line after seven days of intensive fighting. Demoralization and confusion within the Red Army forces, with no clearly established chain of command, prevented an effective defence. It was further weakened by the lack of supplies and contradictory orders issued by the central government in Budapest. Morale was also low; entire units surrendered or disbanded. However, even under these circumstances, the first Rumanian attempt to cross the Tisza was stopped. Only after reinforcements had arrived could the Rumanian troops break the Hungarian resistance and land on the western bank of the river. Their advance on Budapest, their final goal, could not be prevented by the Red Army any longer, which was by then in a state of utter demoralization.

Realising that the cause was lost, Béla Kun resigned on 1 August 1919 and fled first to Austria and then to Soviet Russia. After only 133 days, the abortive Hungarian ‘Republic of Councils’ and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ came to an inglorious end. Power was passed to a short-lived interim government, headed by the social-democrat Gyula Peidl. After only six days in power, the new leftist government, made up of workers’ union leaders, was ousted by a right-wing group known as the Fehérház Bajtársi Egyesület (White House Association of Comrades-in-Arms), lead by István Friedrich. The switch of power was assisted by Rumanian interventionist troops, who had entered the outskirts of Budapest on the evening of 3 August. By the next day, the entire capital was occupied. On 7 August, the last Hungarian Red Army units, located east of the River Danube, were disarmed. Hungary was defeated again.

In the meantime, on 5 May 1919, an alternative right-wing Hungarian national government had formed at Arad, in eastern Hungary, under the leadership of Count Gyula Károlyi. The goal of Károlyi’s ‘counter-revolutionary’ government was to defeat Béla Kun’s Bolsheviks and put an end to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. At the end of the month, it moved south, to the French-controlled Szeged, where Károlyi unveiled his new government on 30 May. A week later, Vice-Admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, an illustrious naval officer, and famed fleet commander of the former Austro-Hungarian Navy, joined them. He secured the position of the would-be Minister of War.

On 6 June, a provisional armed force was also created at Szeged, under the title Nemzeti Hadsereg (National Army). The main bulk of the new army consisted of the ‘Lehár’ Contingent. That armed unit, made up of former Magyar soldiers of the k.u.k. Heer, had come into existence in eastern Austria, under the command of Baron Colonel Antal Lehár in early 1919. In order to avoid being disarmed, on 9 August Horthy ordered his army to cross the River Danube, to the mostly unoccupied western part of Hungary. They established their headquarters at Siófok, on the shores of Lake Balaton. On 13 August, Vice-Admiral Horthy flew from Szeged to Siófok, where he took control over the fledgling national army and established its headquarters. In six weeks, the new army numbered some 2,000 officers and 6,568 troops, but lacked any heavy armament.

Following repeated warnings by the Allies, uneasy with the reprehensible activity of their former protégé, the Rumanians were forced to eventually evacuate Budapest on 15 November 1919. They could not obtain international recognition of the annexation of the entire eastern area of Hungary, up to River Tisza, where ethnic Rumanians were in clear minority. Nor could they fulfil the alleged plan of Ferdinand I, King of Rumania, to also crown himself as King of Hungary. By 23 November 1919, the last Rumanian troops crossed the River Tisza eastwards. They slowly retreated into the Partium and Transylvania, the area promised by the Allies in 1916 to the then neutral Rumania as a reward, to convince it to join the war on their side. The last Rumanian troops evacuated post-war Hungarian territory on 28 March 1920. The Hungarian border guards took their positions on Rumania’s new western frontiers by 20