The First World War was not a fun time for multinational empires,
but in its aftermath, no country was punished more harshly than Hungary:
the Hungarian state lost 60% of its population and 70% of its land in the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
Why though was the relatively minor power of Hungary singled out for
such drastic dismemberment? What caused Hungary to be partitioned,
and looking back a century later, was Trianon justified?
Well, Hungary was dragged into WW1 (mostly) against its government's wishes.
Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary operated autonomously
but shared Austria’s monarch and foreign policy.
So, when the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand was assassinated,
and Austria-Hungary issued its infamous ultimatum to Serbia, beginning the war,
Hungary came along for the ride.
The Hungarian Prime Minister until 1917, István Tisza,
then became one of the war’s strongest supporters,
seeing it as a fight for Hungary’s very survival.
And he wasn’t entirely wrong, from a certain point of view.
Pre-war, less than half of the people within Hungary’s borders were ethnic Hungarians.
I’ll reiterate: over 50% of Hungary’s subjects
didn’t want to be Hungarian, and the government knew it.
They also knew that failure in the war, and a breakdown of central authority,
would mean an unstoppable nationalist outbreak among those minorities,
which is exactly what ended up happening.
The Paris Peace Conference, where Trianon was signed, was guided
(in theory) by the principle of national self-determination:
that different ethnicities should have their own states in which they could govern themselves.
Some shrinking of Hungary was inevitable, then,
from the moment it became clear that they would not be at the victor’s table,
but that principle of self-determination wasn’t exactly applied perfectly.
The three biggest concessions (land ceded to Czechoslovakia,
Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes)
mostly did contain Slovaks, Romanians, and South Slavs,
but significant portions of their populations were also ethnically Hungarian.
And obviously, if Hungarians ruling over minorities was a problem, then so would be
Hungarians, some 3 million in total, being made minorities by other nationalities.
Now, some spillover was just not possible to eliminate:
people don’t live in nice clean boxes. In many cases,
Hungarians lived side-by-side with Slovaks, or Romanians, or Serbs,
so exactly what state some regions should've ended up in was always going to be a matter for debate.
Take Northern Transylvania as an example: full of Hungarians but far away from Hungary proper.
There’s also the simple, undeniable fact that Austria-Hungary lost WW1,
and as a matter of standard practice,
countries that lose wars don’t tend to be favoured over the winners.
But that doesn’t really explain why so many Hungarians were left outside of their country.
First though, let’s be clear: on the whole,
Trianon and the treaty for Austria (both named for French châteaux) did their job well.
They put many millions of people who had previously been under the Dual Monarchy
in their own countries. (Either old ones that expanded, or totally new ones).
To those nationalities, Trianon wasn’t a harsh punishment at all;
it was an act of liberation that had come after, in some cases, centuries of subjugation.
On top of that, the Hungary that was left,
while it was smaller, kept the core Hungarian territories;
it was more of a Hungary for Hungarians, as they made up the vast majority of the population there.
So, the argument that suggests that Trianon was a fundamentally flawed or unjust exercise
is only really true if you believe in the righteousness of Hungarian empire-building.
Still, the millions of excluded Hungarians were a real fault in the plan,
and North Transylvania aside, most of them lived in land directly adjacent to,
and that could have easily remained a part of, Hungary. So why didn’t they?
Well, the situation on the ground leading up to Trianon was messy.
Hungary went from being a monarchy linked to Austria, to a liberal republic,
then to a Soviet republic, then back to a liberal republic, and finally
again to monarchy (though this time without a monarch) in the course of just two years.
In that chaos, a number of screw-ups by the many Hungarian governments
saw Hungary lose considerably more territory than they might've otherwise.
Most notably, the first republican government under Mihály Károlyi ordered the Hungarian army,
over a million men strong, to totally disarm,
despite the fact that Hungary’s armistice with the Entente only called for limited demobilisation;
apparently, he was under the impression that that would result in a fairer peace deal.
It did not, and vast swathes of Hungary’s territory (more than just land inhabited
by non-Hungarians) were occupied by the much smaller forces of Romania,
Czechoslovakia, and the Southern Slavs with hardly a shot being fired.
On the other hand, the complete opposite plan failed as well:
when the Communist government briefly took over,
it resisted any and all territorial changes with force
(whether the land was inhabited by ethnic Hungarians or not).
In response, Romania invaded, occupied Budapest, and forced the Communists out.
It also really didn’t help the Hungarians that their
main enemies were fiercely supported by France,
and tacitly by Italy and Britain, both on the field and at the peace conference.
The great powers didn’t necessarily have anything against Hungary per se,
but they (particularly France) were eager to let the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,
the new republic of Czechoslovakia, and Romania have whatever they wanted from Hungary,
so as to ensure their support in any future war against Germany or the Soviet Union. As for why
those countries were even interested in land with majority Hungarian populations: simple economics.
The areas were generally more urbanised, industrialised,
and productive than the surrounding countryside.
Hungary would try to “revise” Trianon with the help of the Germans during WW2.
That didn’t end up working out for them, but you can find out how Germany,
another defeated power, was carved up after that war in the video to the left.
And as always, I’ve been James and I’ll see you there.