Within just over two weeks of Hitler’s talk with Goebbels, Hungary had been invaded — the last German invasion of the war. The genesis of the decision to occupy Hungary reached back, in fact, as far as the defeat at Stalingrad. As we saw, Hitler had been scathing in his criticism of the Hungarian (and Romanian) divisions there. The Hungarians (along with the Romanians) had, for their part, begun tacitly to put out feelers to the Allies. Learning of these, Hitler had left Horthy and Antonescu in no doubt about the consequences of any treachery. He had been satisfied with Antonescu’s declarations of loyalty, but continued to harbour serious doubts about the Hungarians. Following Italy’s defection in September, he had in any case had operational plans — Margarethe I and Margarethe II — drawn up for the occupation of Hungary and Romania should the need arise to nip in the bud any looming dangers. A letter from Horthy on 12 February 1944 demanding the return of nine Hungarian divisions from the eastern front, needed, so he claimed, to defend the Carpathian border against a Soviet breakthrough, had set alarm-bells ringing. The urgency was all the greater because the Red Army was indeed advancing towards the Carpathians, which Hitler did not want to see defended only by the ‘unreliable’ Hungarians. More than that: German intelligence had learned that the Hungarians had attempted to make diplomatic overtures both to the western Allies and to the Soviet Union.74
From Hitler’s point of view, in full concurrence with the opinion of his military leaders, it was high time to act. The order for Margarethe I was issued on 11 March. German troops only — drawn in part from the western front — were to be used; the original plan had foreseen the deployment, in addition, of Slovakian, Romanian, and Croat units.75 The use of troops from their disliked neighbours to install a puppet government would have done little to encourage future Hungarian loyalty to Germany. In any case, at his discussions with Hitler in Klessheim on 26-8 February (at which he had once again, without the slightest prospect of success, suggested putting out peace-feelers to the west),76 Antonescu had refused to allow Romanian participation in the occupation of Hungary unless accompanied by the immediate return of the substantial tracts of territory which Romania had been forced to concede to Hungary in 1940. In wanting to avoid any alienation of Hungarian support after the occupation, Hitler had been unable to agree to this.77 He did, however, eventually concede, again going against the original intention, to the suggestion of Field-Marshal von Weichs that the Hungarian military should not be disarmed as long as Horthy was prepared to go along with the invasion and prevent any resistance.78 And, in a further attempt to avoid unnecessarily provoking resistance by the Hungarians, Horthy was to be given the opportunity to ‘invite’ the Germans into his country, along the tried and tested methods used in Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939.79
Thinking he was coming to discuss the issues raised in his unanswered letter to Hitler of 12 February, in particular, troop withdrawals from the eastern front, the seventy-five-year-old Hungarian head of state arrived at Klessheim, together with his foreign minister, war minister, and chief of general staff, on the morning of 18 March. He had walked into a trap.
Hitler and Horthy conducted their talks in German, without interpreters present. Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter, was waiting with his colleagues outside in the hall when, suddenly, the door to the room in the palace where the talks were being held was flung open and Admiral Horthy, red in the face, rushed out, followed hurriedly by a furious Hitler, who eventually managed to catch up with his discomfited guest to accompany him to his rooms, as protocol demanded, before disappearing in a rage for urgent discussions with Ribbentrop.80
The meeting with the Hungarian head of state had, indeed, been tempestuous. Hitler had at the outset accused the Hungarian government, on the basis of information from the German secret service, of negotiating with the Allies in an attempt to take Hungary out of the war. Holding fast, as ever, to his notion that the Jews were behind the war, and that, consequently, the continued existence of Jews in any country provided, in effect, a fifth- column subverting and endangering the war effort, Hitler was especially aggressive in accusing Horthy of allowing almost a million Jews to exist without any hindrance, which had to be seen from the German side as a threat to the eastern and Balkan fronts. Consequently, the German leadership, continued Hitler, had justified fears of a defection taking place, similar to that which had happened in Italy. He had, therefore, decided upon the military occupation of Hungary, and demanded Horthy’s agreement to this in a signed joint declaration. Horthy refused to sign. The temperature in the meeting rose. Hitler declared that if Horthy did not sign, the occupation would simply take place without his approval. Any armed resistance would be crushed by Croatian, Slovakian, and Romanian as well as German troops. Horthy threatened to resign. Hitler said that in such an event he could not guarantee the safety of the Admiral’s family. At this base blackmail, Horthy sprang to his feet, protesting: ‘If everything here is already decided, there’s no point in staying any longer. I’m leaving immediately,’ and stormed out of the room.81
While Horthy was demanding to be taken to his special train, and Ribbentrop was berating Dome Sztojay, the Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, an air-raid alarm sounded. In fact, the ‘air-raid’ was merely a ruse, complete with smoke-screen covering of the palace at Klessheim, and alleged severance of telephone links with Budapest. This elaborate deceit was used to persuade Horthy to put aside thoughts of a premature departure and compel him to enter into renewed talks with Hitler. Ribbentrop let Schmidt know, in an aside, that if Horthy did not concur with German demands, he would not be returning with an honorary escort, but as a prisoner. The browbeating and chicanery, as usual, did the trick. When Horthy returned to his train that evening, it was in the accompaniment of Security Police chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop’s emissary in Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, endowed with plenipotentiary powers to ensure that German interests were served. And this was only once Horthy had finally agreed to install a puppet regime, with Sztojay as prime minister, ready to do German bidding.82
Next day, 19 March 1944, Hungary was in German hands. Not only could extra raw materials and manpower immediately be exploited for the German war effort; but, as Hitler had told Goebbels a fortnight earlier, the ‘Jewish question’ could now be tackled in Hungary.83
With the German takeover in Budapest, Hungary’s large and still intact Jewish community — some 750,000 persons — was doomed. The new masters of Hungary did not lose a minute. Eichmann’s men entered Budapest with the German troops. Within days, 2,000 Jews had been rounded up. The first deportation — a train with over 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children packed in indescribable conditions into about forty cattle-wagons — left for Auschwitz a month later.84 By early June, ninety-two trains had carried almost 300,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths.85 When Horthy halted the deportations a month later, triggering the events that would lead to his own deposition, 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been sent to the gas- chambers.86
V
On the day that German troops entered Hungary, a strange little ceremony took place at the Berghof.87 The field-marshals, who had been summoned from different parts of the front, witnessed the presentation to Hitler by their senior, Rundstedt, of a declaration of their loyalty, which they had all signed. The signatures had all been collected, on a tour of the front, by Hitler’s chief Wehrmacht adjutant, General Schmundt. The idea, characteristically, had come from Goebbels (though this was kept quiet, and not made known to Hitler).88 It had been prompted by the anti-German subversive propaganda disseminated from Moscow by the captured General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach and other officers who had fallen into Soviet hands at Stalingrad.89 In reality, the effect of the Seydlitz propaganda was minimal. But these were nervous times for the Nazi leadership. Schmundt’s main intention, in any case, was to remove Hitler’s distrust towards his generals, and to improve the icy relations which had been so much in evidence at the January meeting interrupted by Manstein. It was, nevertheless, both remarkable in itself and a clear sign that all was not well, if in the midst of such a titanic conflict the senior military leaders should see fit to produce a signed declaration of loyalty to their supreme commander and head of state. Manstein, the last field-marshal to sign the document, certainly thought so. He felt the declaration to be quite superfluous from a soldier’s point of view.90 Hitler seemed moved by the occasion.91 It was a rare moment of harmony in his dealings with his generals.
Normality was, however, soon to be resumed. Within a week, Manstein was back at the Berghof. The Ist Panzer Army, under General Hans Valentin Hube, was in imminent danger of encirclement by Soviet troops who had broken through from Tarnopol to the Dniester. Manstein insisted (against Hube’s recommendation that his army seek safety by retreating to the south over the Dniester) on a breakthrough to the west, in order to build a new
