On this day exactly 99 years ago the WW1 treaty dealing with the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, the Treaty of Trianon, came into effect.
This video is sponsored by World of Tanks.
Which is giving new players some extra benefits to play around with but more on that later.
Before watching this video I suggest you watch my previous two videos on the break up of
Austria-Hungary and the Treaty of Saint Germain.
Also before we talk about the main events I want to have a few quick side notes about
some extra things that happened during this time but don’t connect well to the main
story of the video.
So the area in the East Carpathian mountains and a bit south of it mostly populated by
Slavic speaking Rusyn people is today known as Ruthenia.
During the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire Rusyns didn’t just stand idle by
and in fact they formed several councils to try to figure out what should be the future
for Ruthenia.
Of these councils there were 4 main ones each with a different idea of what they wanted.
First was the council in Presov which was at the beginning divided among people wanting
to unite with Czechoslovakia or with Russia, but at the time they were unaware of the whole
scope of the actual civil war happening in Russia and when they became aware of it the
council fully decided to unite with Czechoslovakia.
The second council was in Uzhorod this council decided on trying to push for self autonomy
within the new state of Hungary.
The last two councils were in Máramaros Sighet and Yasinya, both of these councils initially
wanted to unite with Ukraine but when it became clear that wouldn’t be possible due to the
Ukranian defeat by the Bolsheviks and the Poles, the Máramaros Sighet council agreed
to uniting with Czechoslovakia all while the Yasinya council declared independence proclaiming
the Hutsul Republic.
As post war negotiations dragged on and it started to become clear that Karolyi’s government
in Hungary wasn’t going to give a lot of autonomy to Ruthenia, the council in Uzhorod
also agreed on a unification with Czechoslovakia.
So the last hold out at this point was the Hutsul Republic which over all governed only
around 20 thousand people and existed only thanks to the help of troops from the WUPR.
So when the WUPR ended in 1919 they also had no choice but to accept unification with Czechoslovakia.
The Presov council during these negotiations also unified with the Lemko Rusyn council
which declared independence in southern Poland and hoped for unification with Czechoslovakia.
Their argument being that rather than remaining in Poland they wanted to join the country
which many of their brothers in Ruthenia have decided to join as well.
However, the Lemko Rusyn Republic got conquered by the Poles and Czechoslovakia didn’t want
to sture up anymore problems with Poland after the whole war over Tesin, so the Lemko Rusyn
republic wasn’t allowed to join Czechoslovakia along with its brothers in Ruthenia.
In the end outside of a few disgruntled Rusyns most of Ruthenia joined Czechoslovakia willingly
hoping to benefit from the strong post war economy of Czechoslovakia and gain more autonomy
than it had under the Hungarians.
Whether this will happen is a story for another time.
We also have to talk about southern Hungary.
Here not as much happened as elsewhere within the crumbling Empire mostly because actual
allied troops were stationed in Serbia since that’s where the front line ended in 1918.
Plus Hungary already going into the Belgrade negotiations gave up any idea of trying to
retain control over Croatia and parts of Slovenia so there was no major fighting there.
But all this is not to say that nothing happened.
For one Yugoslav troops overstepped their demarcation lines occupying border towns like
Pecs that were supposed to remain demilitarized by both sides.
Then there was the Banat Republic that was declared in the confusion of the break up
of Austria-Hungary, however, this republic even though officially ending on February
20th 1919 didn’t really have much power since the allied occupation of the area in
November 1918.
There was also a Serbian-Hungarian Baranya-Baja Republic centered around Pecs that was established
14 of August 1921 when Yugoslav troops withdrew from the area but it only lasted for 6 days
before Horthy came in and took control.
Those were my extra side notes now back to Hungary.
By January 1919 when the Paris Peace conference started every single Hungarian was furious
because on top of having no coal for the winter as Czechoslovakia blocked coal shipments to
Hungary, there were also food shortages, uncontrollable inflation, shrinking economy, etc.
By some accounts people said that the year after the war was worse than the years during
the actual war.
But despite all of this nothing made the Hungarians more furious than the high loss of land they
have suffered under the allied occupation demands.
This was then further exacerbated by the fact that in the following months of early 1919
the Romanian and Czechoslovak demarcation lines continued to be pushed further and further
into Hungary, these demarcation changes were sometimes purely as a further land grab by
the neighboring nations or sometimes because the French or British allied commanders felt
a strategically important railroad track or a vallie up ahead was a better defendable
position.
Hungary again had no choice but to concede to these new lines being established.
With all this happening almost every Hungarian started blaming Károlyi and his government
for the major loss of land.
In fact Károlyi is still blamed by Hungarians today for this entire situation, pointing
to his pacifist attitude, premature demilitarization and the fact that he sought out a seperate
armistice agreement in Belgrade, as the major points of his failure.
However that is completely unfair, the allies already promised land to the neighboring nations
of Hungary during the war, so no matter if the Belgrade armistice happened or not the
partition of Hungary would have happened either way most likely exactly the same way it did.
Plus Hungary lost the war, they were in no position to resist any allied demands/occupation,
if Károlyi wouldn’t have disbanded the army early on as he did and would have tried
to confront the allied demands with it, it would only lead to further unnecessary Hungarian
deaths with the outcome being exactly the same maybe even worse.
Therefore Károlyi shouldn’t be blamed for Hungary's situation after the Great War, no
matter who was in charge of Hungary during that time the outcome would have been the
same because the main factors wouldn’t have changed.
Hungary lost the war, allies promised land to the neighboring nations and minorities
across the country rose up establishing independent administrations, there’s no changing that.
However such thinking was outright non existent among the hungairan people in 1919, the thinking
that did prevail was that Hungary lost 2/3rds of its land and something had to be done about
it.
So when Károlyi’s government received yet another letter from Paris that increased the
Romanian demarcation line roughly to the area of where today’s borders between Hungary
and Romania are, he along with his government refused to accept it because they couldn’t
accept it without another major revolution happening in Hungary.
So they instead resigned in late March creating a power vacuum, a power vacuum which a man
sent by Lenin, Bela Kun along with his communist supporters quickly took advantage of in a
pretty much bloodless coup, forming the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Also at this point due to the government change in Hungary the Paris peace negotiations dealing
with Hungary were put on hold.
The new Hungarian Soviet Republic was universally welcomed by all Hungarians, not just the proletariat,
this was because the main stated goal of the communists was to regain control over all
of the lost land, a sentiment which was shared by all Hungairan people regardless of their
political views.
The Communists quickly started rearming and planning to first reconquer Transilvania before
turning to Slovakia.
Also during this time even though the coup was bloodless sadly the same cannot be said
about the regime itself which endorsed many killings of people who were deemed anti-communist,
they also supported attacks on minorities still living within Hungary.
These killings became to be known as the Red Terror in Hungary.
While this was happening Romania asked the allies for a permission to depose the new
communist government, but to the dismay of the Romanians the allies decided to play it
safe and before doing anything asked Kun to adhere to the same demarcation line that made
Károlyi’s government resign.
Kun obviously declined and so everyone started preparing for war, again.
On the 15th of April, Hungarians launched an unsuccessful preemptive attack on the Romanians
who then followed with a counter attack, after some heavy fighting the Romanians were able
to break the Hungarian lines and against the protest of the Allies pushed into Hungary
all the way to the Tisza river, here the communists were finally able to hold them.
During the continuation of the Hungarian Romanian war, Hungarians were hoping for a large soviet
attack on the Romanian controlled Bessarabia but considering the Soviets were preoccupied
fighting the Ukranians, Poles and White Russians, no major attack came and the smaller ones
that did come were repelled by the Romanians.
On the 20th of May 1919 with the Tisza line holding the Hungarians started a new offencive
into Slovakia successfully pushing back the unprepared Czechoslovak forces, the Romanians
tried a counter attack from the east to preserve a land connection with Czechoslovakia but
this was successfully repelled by the Hungarians who eventually split the connection between
the two countries while gaining control over much of South Eastern Slovakia by the 16th
of June.
On that same day Hungarians proclaimed the formation of the Slovak Soviet Republic which
was meant to be a communist puppet state of Hungary.
This was done mostly to try to get the support of Slovak communists and nationalists hoping
for independent Slovakia.
However this backfired tremendously with not many Slovaks supporting the state and many
Hungarians dispyising its very existence as they thought the Hungarian Communists would
bring all the former lands directly under Hungarian control, not create communist puppet
states.
Due to this the Communist Control over Hungary started wavering, losing support from most
people other than proletariats in major cities.
Large desertion also started to happen within the Hungairan army and soon the Slovak Soviet
Republic fell as the Hungarians were pushed out of Czechoslovakia.
Also during this time Yugoslavian forces occupied more of southern Hungary.
In late July 1919 a last ditch offensive was conducted by the Hungarians trying to break
the Romanian Tisza line.
This proved to be unsuccessful and the Romanians counterattacked with the goal of reaching
Budapest which they did the 3rd of August, ending the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
What followed next was a complicated set of diplomatic and political negotiations between
the multiple counter revolutionary rightist administrations and the allies, all while
a largely Romanian occupation of most of Hungary outside of the Balton area took place.
The Romanian occupation wasn’t civil and the Romanians looted pretty much anything
from large mechanical industrial installations to train engines, cattle, horses, etc. basically
anything that could benefit the post war Romanian state.
It was during this political uncertainty that a former admiral of the Austro-Hunagrian Navy
Miklós Horthy started to gain a very strong power base in the Balaton area.
He helped form and became the military leader of the new Hunagarian army and onse Romanians
due to an order from the allies withdrew from Budapest Horthy along with his army entered
the city 16th of November 1919.
Eventually from all this instability and after a lot of negotiating with the allies a monarchist
government was able to get into power re-establishing the Kingdom of Hungary.
The problem was even though the allies were at this point willing to tolerate the new
monarchist government over the communist one, they still were firmly against any return
of a habsburg rule in central Europe.
So the monarchist government did the second best thing they could and elected a universally
liked war hero Horthy who also had control over the country's military as the regent
to the Kingdom of Hungary in March of 1920.
Also during this time reprisal attacks for the red terror started to be conducted by
fascists members operating within Horthies’ army and the new monarchist government.
These killings became to be known as the white terror and they reached a far bigger height
and death toll than the red terror attacks ever did.
Targets included former communists, jews and intellectuals deemed to be too much on the
left.
To what extent Horthy was involved or knew about these killings is a matter of debate
and far beyond the scope of this video.
But now finally with a new government in Hungary that wasn't in an active war with the allies,
the peace negotiations in Paris that dealt with Hungary could resume.
As you would imagine most of the allies were pretty fed up with Hungary at this point.
Not only did they actively try to go against the post war terms imposed on them but then
formed a soviet republic and engaged in another war against the allies.
Therefore the Hungarian delegation didn’t really have much good will during the drafting
of the peace treaty and pretty much had to sign anything the allies gave them.
When it comes to the peace negotiations themselves the most sighted point today is the use of
the 1910 ethnic census.
From which this map was made.
However just like with the Austrian map this map doesn’t show ethnic boundaries.
The Hungarian 1910 census only asked for a person's “native language”.
From this data it was then assumed that one's native language defines also their ethnicity
and so an ethnic map was made.
Now asking for someone's “native language” is still a better strategy to define one's
ethnicity than asking for a “Umgangssprache” but it isn’t perfect.
For example 65% of German speakers in today's Slovakia spoke a second language natively
and there were many native bilingual or even trilingual people in the kingdom.
Therefore people like let's say natively bilingual Romanians sometimes reported Hungarian as
their native language since that was the main language of the kingdom even though they considered
themself as Romanian not Hungarian.
However, this discrepancy isn’t huge like some Romanian or Slovak nationalists would
have you believe and this map is largely accurate if we try to use it to define ethnic boundaries,
even though the map itself shows people’s self identified native language not ethnicity.
Another thing to watchout for is that this map even though very detailed shows just the
majority native language in an area.
The fact that a random province in Transilvania has a majority Romanian speaking population
doesn’t mean there were no Hungarians.
Therefore this map, which does look weird, is actually a better representation of the
native language divisions in the kingdom.
But such a map is hard to use on a geographical scale so let's go back to the other one.
When looking at this map few things come to light.
One is that it’s obviously impossible to draw borders in such a way that there wouldn’t
be any people living outside of their country.
Two if you roughly averaged it out the borders of new Hungary should look somewhat like this
if you go by ethnicity as a deciding factor.
However the borders of Hungary ended up looking like this.
This was because ethnicity was a factor in the peace negotiations but not the only factor
as many people make it out to be.
As stated before, Hungary was far from a favorable place in the negotiations and the allies wanted
to make sure that it would never unify with Austria or be able to attack its neighboring
nations like it did a year prior.
This meant that land which had Hungarian majority but was strategically important like for example
the Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare), Nagyvárad (Oradea), and Arad railway line were given
to Romania despite having a Hungarian majority population.
Same thing with the south Slovak railway line or even the very valuable control over the
Danube river.
Effectively making Hungary weaker while strengthening the new entente allies in central Europe.
This statement from the French Prime minister Clémenceau (klémansó) summarizes the allied
intent with the treaty of Trianon and Saint Germain.
“Our firmest guarantee against German [and Soviet] aggression is that behind Germany,
in an excellent strategic position, stand Czechoslovakia, Poland [and Romania]”
So the new allied nations like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia were not only
given very favorable peace deals because they fought on the allied side but also because
the allies thought if these new nations were strong enough they would act as a deterrent
against German, Austrian, Hunagarian and now the new enemy Soviet aggression.
And so the Hungairans were forced to sign a very unfavorable peace treaty on the 4th
of June in the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles.
It would actually take a couple of years and few revisions before all the particulars of
the treaty would be in effect but for all intents and purposes this was the treaty that
defined with few exceptions the borders of modern Hungary.
However breaking up a centuries old empire doesn’t only present an ethnic issue but
also a giant economic one.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was one country and its industrial infrastructure reflected
this.
Due to completely new borders in central europe, domestic trade became foreign trade, and many
factories were cut off from their raw materials.
For example spinning mills remained in Austria while weaving mills in Czechoslovakia.
The grain mills in Budapest, at the time one the largest in Europe, after the break up
had to operate on only 20% capacity due to insufficient grain supply.
And even then post war Hungary still produced 500% more agricultural goods than it needed
since its industry was focused on being the breadbasket of the old Empire.
By 1925 the trade of common goods in central Europe fell by 54% when compared to 1914 and
that is with the inclusion of Austro-Hungarian internal trade of common goods during that
time.
The economies of these countries would eventually recover specially in Czechoslovakia that inherited
75% of the empire's industrial capacity and in Austria which had the highest infrastructure
development, standards of living and education in the former Empire and therefor was able
to by 1929 have the highest GDP per capita from all the former countries of Austria-Hungary.
But with all that said, despite the recovery the setbacks of the division of the empire
were ever present in all the former countries' economies.
In the end, in the age of nationalism Austria-Hungary tried to run a multicultural empire that refused
to reform (although not without a lack of trying), as such its breakup at the first
sign of major instability which came during the Great War was inevitable.
What people grumble about to this day is whether the way the break up happened was fair or
not, which really depends on who you ask.
But in the end a hundred years later, it doesn’t matter, because we have the EU now, another
multicultural country, however, hopefully this time we can overcome our idiotic triabilistic
tendencies and hold together.
But on a different topic did you know that an Austro-Hungarian engineer named Gunther
Burstyn, in 1911 proposed to the Austro-Hungarian military to build his design of arguably the
first ever tank which he called Motorgeschütz, literally meaning motor gun.
However, the Austro-Hungarian military declined his proposal and so Austria-Hungary wasn’t
the first country to build a modern tank but that shouldn’t stop you from playing around
in some tank battles in the World of Tanks video game.
The World of Tanks is a free to play online game where you can take command of a variety
of tanks and battle it out with friends and foe alike in over 40 different battle arenas,
these battles don’t only test your mechanical skills, pun intended, but also your strategic
ones so come prepared.
If this sounds like a game for you and you’re a new player before you rush off and make
your new account use the code TANKTASTIC or click the link in the description of this
video to get an extra T-127 Tank, 500 Gold and 7 days of premium access.
So what are you waiting for, join this massive community of online gamers and show them your
strategic intellect.
That is where I will conclude my video as always I am aware that there are so many more
things I didn’t have time to talk about like Vix’s mission in Hungary or Horthy’s
ascendance to political prominence but the video can only be so long.
This video also concludes my trilogy on the break up of Austria-Hungary, I hope you enjoyed
it and learned some new and interesting things from it.
Lastly this video was made possible thanks to my amazing Patreons, thank you to all of
you, as always my name is M. Laser and stick around for History.