Between the Two World Wars

Troublesome Developments in the World

We have already mentioned that one consequence of the Great

War was the emergence of new states. The Monarchy was broken up,

Germany ceded Alsace (among other things) to France, Turkey lost a

string of colonies, and the losing states were compelled to pay

significant restorations. England and France divided between

themselves regions formerly under Turkish rule; in fact, these two

countries had already agreed during the course of the war on a division

of zones of influence, which is how, for example, Palestine came under

British control. Hungary was hit particularly hard by this loss, compelled

to cede two-thirds of her territory. The Treaty of Trianon of June 4,

1920 meant that Transylvania, Subcarpathia, Upper Hungary and the

Southern Provinces joined the surrounding rising nation-states. Loss of

the war and of these territories created an atmosphere of particular

frustration in the losing countries, whose revisionist ambitions,

unflaggingly maintained, would provide the background for the next

great war to come.

The victorious powers created the League of Nations, from which

the losers were initially excluded. New states were formed: Finland,

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Poland was reunified, which was an

enormous step, particularly if we consider that the Polish nation had

lived its entire previous existence squeezed between two great

powers. The League of Nations opened up somewhat when, as an

outcome of the Kellog-Briand pact of 1928, the signatories (the United

States and France) pledged to settle their differences through peaceful

means. The Germans and the Soviets also signed.

The Rise of Totalitarian Regimes: Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union

In the summer of 1919, the Weimar Constitution was ratified in

Germany, establishing a parliamentary democracy. Though the country

was sinking into instability and economic crises were compounded by

political ones, American loans would come to ensure the country's

economic recovery. A fragile democracy was formed, though one

threatened by dangerous forces from the Left and the Right.

In the Soviet Union, the NEP (New Economic Policy) was

implemented with the blessing of the Bolshevik leader Lenin. In

contrast to the basic Bolshevik approach, though, this allowed a certain

level of market forces to operate in the economy. As Lenin's health

progressively weakened, though, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin came to

the fore and began to squeeze his rivals out of political life. As Chief

Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Stalin gradually isolated or

drove into exile members of the Party's opposition, and at the end of

the 1920s forced an unprecedented wave of collectivization on the

populace, followed by a series of Five-Year Plans. This marked the

beginning of an unprecedented dictatorship in the USSR, more brutal

than any that had preceded. Paradoxically, though, this was

accompanied by a great drive toward modernization.

Fascism par excellence developed first of all in Italy. Benito

Mussolini, who had begun his political career as a social democrat,

organized a movement that later marched into Rome (the marcia su

Roma), where the King empowered him to form a government. The

response of the Duce was to disband parliamentarianism in 1926, and

implement corporate systems in its place.

Adolf Hitler, leader of the far-Right German Nazis, was appointed

by the Chancellor in 1933. He outlawed political parties and burned the

Reichstag. He became Führer and Chancellor on June 30, 1934, after

Hindenburg's death. He then withdrew from the League of Nations and

instated the draft, then entered the Rhineland in 1936. His popularity

among the citizens was consistently growing.

Political revenge was the order of the day in Stalin's Soviet

Union, where a personality cult was established and anyone's life, in a

society controlled by the secret police, could be in danger if the Leader

considered them a threat to his power. Until Stalin's death in 1953,

seven hundred thousand death sentences were issued in millions of

political trials. At the same time, the Soviet Union (following the

tradition of the region) became an empire; following the principle of

"Socialism in one country," Stalin broke with the practice of exporting

revolution employed by the Bolsheviks. In its place he created a

dictatorship by terror to the borders of the Soviet Union. There was

radical persecution of religion, mass relocation of citizens and entire

peoples from one place to another, the creation of a concentration camp

system – the Gulag – throughout the country, where not just criminals,

but also millions of political prisoners were interned. They did not suffer

a planned extermination but were "merely" worked to death on minimal

rations, and brutally treated while doing so. Stalin's Soviet Union and

Hitler's Germany were the darkest chapters in history: never had

murderous dictatorships and totalitarian states arisen over such a large

area (and in the case of the USSR under Stalin, for such a long time).

Hungary between the Two Wars

The period after the First World War was one of crisis for

Hungary. The loss of territory resulting from the Treaty of Trianon took

its toll not only on the nationalist feelings of the population, but also cut

off from one another territories which throughout history had been

connected and interdependent; Hence there was a negative effect on

the economy as well. The situation of the Hungarians who had

suddenly become minorities in the surrounding countries was varied: it

was not so good in Romania, and somewhat better in Czechoslovakia.

In both countries, though, the state attempted to isolate whatever

groups it could from the main population of Hungarians. Hungary itself,

though, was incensed about the lost territories, and a Revisionist

League was created there; no Hungarian administration ever forgot the

obligation someday to reacquire these lands. An important

consequence of events to this point was that Jews were made

scapegoats by right-wing circles, who pointed to the Jewish members of

the Commune. Members of various units of the military murdered

several thousand Jews during the "White Terror."

The country was consolidated by Pál Teleki, then István Bethlen;

relations with the League of Nations were taken up, though this also

involved compromises with the Hungarian right-wing and

"counterrevolutionary" regimes. In 1927, for example, came the repeal

of the anti-Jewish numerus clausus law of 1920, and

counterrevolutionary military units were disarmed. All in all, the country

under Regent Miklós Horthy was an unusual kind of semi-democracy:

there were functioning parties, although communists were expelled from

the political system; although there were elections, they were held with

open ballots – unique in Europe – which opened the door to all kinds of

manipulation. Nonetheless, the press was more or less free, and

Hungarian culture flourished during these decades. The political limits in

Hungary were largely determined by Hitler's rise to power and war aims,

as well as the aforementioned revisionist efforts. Yet this does not

explain for everything. Hungary found itself in an alliance with Germany,

Japan, and Italy; the country began its downhill slide in 1932, and

passed three Jewish Laws between 1938 and 1941. At the same time,

with Hitler's assistance Northern Transylvania, Northern Hungary, and

Subcarpathia were rejoined to the country.

Meanwhile, the country's agrarian nature remained unchanged, despite

the progress of industry. But there were enormous differences of social

status, with millions living in the greatest poverty, while certain

feudalistic structures persisted: the Church and nobles possessed

enormous estates, yet to redistribute land in a way that would infuse

life into the agricultural sector and the structures of ownership would

have been out of the question.