The Second World War

Proximate Antecedents and Causes

The most direct antecedent of the war (even if it cannot be

considered a cause) is that the map of Europe had been radically

transformed by the peace treaties that closed the First World War,

Satisfying the demands of newly-formed nation states at the expense of

the old empires. This intensified the feeling of defeat already present

on the losing side, adding further sentiments of frustration. This

scenario set the stage for the emergence of far-right dictators who

militarized and terrorized their own populations – who in turn tolerated

this in their expectation that the old national glory would thereby be

restored.

Nazi Germany was not like other militarist dictatorships;

practically from the very outset, its leaders developed a body of

propaganda claiming the existence of a strict hierarchy of races in the

world, with the Aryans at the top and the Jews at the bottom. At first,

the mentally ill in Adolf Hitler's Germany were sterilized, then killed in a

euthanasia program, but this early action was met by protests from the

churches. Later, Gypsies, political dissidents and homosexuals began to

be persecuted, but the bleakest fate of all was the one that awaited

the Jews. Although for a while, Hitler proposed forced emigration or

deportation of German Jews from the country, the Wannsee Conference

of 1942 opened the way for the annihilation of the Jews, suffered

primarily by Jewry in those countries that fell under the boot of Nazi

tyranny: The Jews of Europe were taken off to extermination camps.

Other European powers had no response to the rise of Germany

and Italy, and allowed a Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-

39). Nazi Germany was continuously expanding its power: in 1938, it

annexed Austria in the Anschluss, then in September of the same year

managed to acquire (with the Munich Accord) the Sudetenland, an

ethnically German area of Czechoslovakia.

In 1939, Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia and created the Czecho-

Moravian Protectorate and a Slovak Nazi puppet government. He had

territories "granted" to Hungary as well. Hitler also neutralized the

Soviet Union on August 30, 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact –

originally a non-aggression pact between the two countries, but

containing a secret clause that allowed the division of Poland between

them. On September 1, 1939 (the "official" beginning of the Second

World War) Hitler attacked Poland (without a declaration of war) and

occupied part of the country, while the rest was occupied by Soviet

troops who attacked on September 17. Western countries declared war

on the Germans, but did not yet begin military operations.

The First Years of the War

At the end of September, 1939, the Soviets attacked Finland,

which resulted in their exclusion from the League of Nations. Then,

after the Soviet victory in March of 1940, the Germans attacked

Denmark and Norway, followed by the Benelux countries.

Hitler attacked France as well; part of the country then became

a protectorate, while a puppet state was established in the rest of the

country (so-called Vichy France). The Germans were "active" in the

Balkans too, attacking Greece and Yugoslavia as well. Romania and

Bulgaria became allies of the Germans, hence there was no need for

their occupation. The Germans and their allies were brutal in

exterminating local Jewish populations and partisans. The Nazis put the

Jews into concentration camps where, in several occasions, they were

executed by gas, and their bodies burned. The camp at Auschwitz-

Birkenau was one of these.

On June 22, 1941, Germany unexpectedly attacked the Soviet

Union. This attack so surprised the Soviets that the Germans

encroached deep into the country. Leningrad resisted, however, and by

blockading that city from September of 1941 to 1944, the Soviets

managed to stop the Germans, though at a cost of many lives. The

Germans could not take Moscow either, and it became clear to them in

December 1941-January 1942 that they had an enduring war to reckon

with.

During this time, the western powers woke up. The British

government, led by Churchill, created the Atlantic Charter with the

Americans (August 12, 1941); later, the broader antifascist coalition was

formed.

The Japanese attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor on

December 7, 1941, which marked the Americans' entry into the war.

England, the United States, and the Soviet Union were now on one

side, casting fundamental doubt on the prospects of a German victory,

given the insuperable power advantage on the Allied side. In Teheran

in December of 1943, leaders of the great western powers and the

Soviet Union were discussing possible settlement scenarios for the end

of the war.

A great turning point during the war was the Battle of Stalingrad

(July 1942 - February 1943), at the end of which the Soviets encircled

three hundred thousand troops, forcing the surrender of the German

troops led by von Paulus. The Anglo-American forces had their own

breakthrough: beginning in October of 1942, they gradually squeezed

German and Italian forces out of North Africa, then landed on the shores

of Sicily in July of 1943. The Germans stepped in, but Italy withdrew

from the war. The turning point was complete when, on June 6, 1944,

Anglo-American forces landed on the beach in Normandy, beginning the

liberation of France and the Benelux countries. Though the Germans

put up stiff resistance (and even mounted a counterattack in the

Ardennes), the great majority of military action had now moved to

Germany itself, sealing the outcome of the war.

The War's Final Phase and End

The landing at Normandy in the summer of 1944 decided the

outcome of the Second World War; the Soviets, too, launched a

counterattack. Romania and Bulgaria seceded from the Axis powers

while the Soviet Army was moving ever deeper into eastern Europe.

The Soviets' offensive was complete in January of 1944, and on April 25,

American and Soviet troops met at the Elbe. Germany capitulated on

May 8, after the siege of Berlin and Hitler's suicide. The victors liberated

the concentration camps, where they were met by a horrible sight: the

true meaning of the world war and Nazism lay before them.

In February of 1945, the victorious powers met in Yalta and reached

agreements on the occupation of Germany and reparations, and took it

on themselves to see that the countries of Europe be transformed into

antifascist democracies, and national self-determination be the order of

the day.

The war had inflicted tremendously bloody losses on the world:

55 million people died (20.6 million of them citizens of the Soviet Union).

This long series of conflicts set off massive displacement of peoples.

Hungary in the Second World War

When Hitler, in December of 1940, approved plans for attacking

the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), this meant that Hungary had

no choice. Yugoslavia, under German pressure, joined the Nazi allies,

but the government that signed that agreement was then deposed by a

putsch. The Germans immediately wanted to move into Yugoslavia, but

Prime Minister Pál Teleki had signed a "Treaty of Eternal Friendship" with

that country. Nonetheless, on the night of April 3, 1941, he chose

suicide rather then break the treaty, and his successor had no such

scruples to deal with: Hungarian troops took part in the occupation of

Yugoslavia. Hungary's entry into hostilities was "justified" by the

"Soviet" bombing of Kassa – this later turned out to have been a mere

provocation. Because Hungarian forces moved into the Soviet Union

with the Germans, Hungary soon found itself in a military conflict not

only with the USSR but with England and the United States as well.

During this time, a new Jewish Law was passed – a race-based one this

time. Furthermore, the Hungarian Army, in "answer" to partisan

actions, killed nearly four thousand people in the Újvidék region. It was

only under Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, who sought to keep a greater

distance from the Germans, that the guilty parties were brought before

a military tribunal.

After the Battle of Stalingrad, the Hungarian Army was nearing

its end, with the Second Army, dispatched to the front, suffering a huge

defeat in Voronyezh. On September 9, 1943, the Allies presented a

preliminary plan for a cease-fire agreement in which they demanded

that Hungary break with the Germans and withdraw its troops from the

Soviet Union. The Germans, catching wind of these plans, occupied

Hungary on March 19, 1944, appointing Döme Sztójay, loyal to the

Germans, Prime Minister and arresting the leasing opposition

politicians. This was the beginning of intense persecution of Hungarian

Jews: a series of Jewish regulations was passed; they were forced into

ghettos. Later, in May and June, all Jews except those in Budapest

were deported to concentration camps outside the country's borders.

On July 6, Miklós Horthy, responding to strong international protest, and

with the evidence of Auschwitz register books in his possession,

stopped these deportations.

The German occupation, though, had other consequences. Not

only were the troops not brought home, but the First Army was also

sent into action, resulting in even greater casualties. August 29, 1944

was the date when the Lakatos administration formulated the goal of

exiting the war. This was all in vain though, as the Germans were

informed of everything – and at the end of September, the Soviets

crossed Hungary's Trianon border. On October 11, Hungary signed the

preliminary armistice with the Soviets, and on the 15th of that month,

Miklós Horthy announced he was exiting the war. The Germans, in

response, captured Horthy's son, occupied strategic points in Budapest,

and compelled the Regent to appoint Ferenc Szálasi as Prime Minister.

Szálasi immediately ordered a complete mobilization and

launched into an enormous campaign of terror. Arrow-Cross units shot

mass numbers of Jews into the Danube. The leaders of the most

important organization of the weak Hungarian resistance (the Liberation

Council of the Hungarian National Uprising) were arrested, and most of

them executed.

The victorious Soviets, still on the march, carried out three

waves of attacks in the Carpathian Basin: in Transylvania in September

of 1944; then in Southern Transdanubia in November, down to a line

with Lake Balaton, as well as the region lying between the Danube and

Tisza rivers. By Christmas of 1944, they had encircled Budapest as well.

The city's German command refused the call to surrender; the

third wave of Soviet attacks took place after the occupation of

Budapest, a response to the Germans who used great military force in

an attempt to recapture the Danube line and secure the oilfields around

Zala. The Soviets' counterattack was successful: the territory of

Hungary was liberated by April 4. More than 40% of the country's

national wealth was destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian

Jews were killed, and hundreds of thousands of others died

senselessly, both on the front and as civilians. Hungary's tragedy was

not merely being on the losing side once again, but that the revisionist

obsession took such hold in circles of power that they were capable of

fighting on the Nazi side, sacrificing Hungarian Jewry and the lives of

several thousand of the country's soldiers, then found themselves, at

the end of it all, unable to exit a losing battle. Hungary's war losses

number some 8-900,000, of which a large number (600,000) were

Hungary's Jews.