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First World War Soldiers in theInter‐War Hungarian ParliamentThomas Lorman aa University of Cincinnati , United StatesPublished online: 06 Aug 2010.

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 11, No. 1, 89–101, March 2010

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/10/010089-13 © 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14690764.2010.499673

First World War Soldiers in the Inter-War Hungarian Parliament

THOMAS LORMAN*

University of Cincinnati, United StatesTaylor and FrancisFTMP_A_499673.sgm10.1080/14690764.2010.499673Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis1110000002010ThomasLorman

ABSTRACT This article examines how the entry of former First World War veterans intothe inter-war Hungarian parliament shaped the ideological tendencies of the parties repre-sented in that institution. On the basis of research into the biographies of every MP electedto Hungary’s parliament between 1920 and 1939, it considers whether the shifting propor-tions of veterans within the various parliamentary fractions and the parliament as a wholereflected and influenced the ideologies both of the groups they joined as well as of the widerparliament. It concludes that veterans were more strongly represented in the parliamentaryfractions of rightist parties and that the dramatic increase of veterans into parliamentduring the 1930s coincided with a ‘turn to the Right’ in Hungarian parliamentary politics.Overall, this study provides evidence that in Hungary, as elsewhere in Western Europe,First World War veterans were radicalised by their experiences in the war and gravitatedtowards more extremist parties and ideologies, especially the parties of the right.

Introduction

Amidst the extensive literature that deals with the impact of the First World Waron post-war society, a body of work has emerged that examines the extent towhich the war-time experiences of veterans shaped inter-war politics. In particu-lar, owing to the explosive growth of (radical) rightist parties across Europe in theinter-war period, a series of studies have considered whether veterans of the warwere inevitably ‘on the right’ and, if so, whether this was due either to the effortsof rightist parties themselves to win the veterans’ support, or whether it was dueto an overlap between the ‘veteran’s spirit’ and the rightist ideology.1

These questions are especially pertinent to Hungary in the inter-war period.Between 1919 and 1945 Hungarian politics was dominated by increasinglyradical, rightist parties while at the same time approximately one-fifth of the

*Email: lormanta@gmail.com1See, for example, Davis Ross, Preparing for Ulysses, Politics and Veterans During World War II (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp.6–33; Stephen Ward (ed.), The War Generation: Veterans ofthe First World War (London: Kennikat Press, 1975); Nigel Jones, The Birth of the Nazis: How the FreikorpsBlazed a Trail for Hitler (London: Running Press, 2004). See also James Diehl, “No More Peace. TheMilitarization of Politics” in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds), The Shadows of Total War(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Andres Kasekamp, The Radical Right in InterwarEstonia (London: MacMillan, 2000).

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adult population of Hungary had served in the war, veterans always occupied atleast a third of the parliament’s seats and by 1939 almost 60 per cent of all sittingMPs recorded that they had served in the First World War.2

Hungarian historiography has, however, persistently underestimated, orentirely overlooked, the role veterans had in influencing political developmentsin the inter-war period. The series of studies that were published in the 1960s byleading historians which examined the social composition of Hungary’s rulingelite paid attention to only one group of veterans: the professional army officers‘who performed no other activity after retirement, and first and foremost livedfrom their [military] pension’.3 Moreover, proper consideration of the attitudes ofeven this small group of veterans was hindered by a tendency to lump these armyofficers, together with the gentry and state officials, into what was then termedthe ‘Christian middle class’.4

This narrow focus on career officers, and the insistence on categorizing them aspart of a broader social class, was informed by a conviction that all ideological atti-tudes are a consequence of social status and class conflict. These officers, whosewages, social status and family occupations were superior to those of the regularinfantrymen, could most easily be defined as ‘middle class’ and thus their supportfor rightist parties could be explained through conventional class-based analysis.5

Regrettably, however, even recent Hungarian historiography continues to relyon this ideologically skewed analysis. Levente Püski’s study of the Horthyregime, published in 2006, once again only pays attention to the career army offic-ers, asserts that they never comprised more than 5.2 per cent of the governmentparty’s parliamentary fraction and concludes that these officers ‘never became thegovernment party’s most influential group’.6

Only occasionally have Hungarian historians considered whether the actualexperiences of army officers were as important as their membership of a socialclass in shaping their ideological affiliations, and even these rare exceptions havecontributed little to our understanding of the subject. We can certainly dismiss theamateur psychology offered by György Ránki with his claim that the formerofficers’ rightist ideology stemmed from their having become, during the war,‘adjusted to a carefree life, to the giving of orders, and to financial liberties’ but,afterwards, ‘were unwilling to work for a living’ and ‘unwilling to becomenonentities after a return to civilian life’.7

2István Haeffler (ed.), Országgy [udblac]lési almanach az 1939–1944. évi országgy [udblac]lési almanachr [odblac]l (Budapest:Akadémiai Kiadó, 1939).3Péter Sipos, Miklós Stier, István Vida, “Változások a kormánypárt parlamenti képviseleténekösszetételében 1931–1939,” Századok 3–4 (1967), p.603.4See, for example, György Ránki, “Gondolatok az ellenforradalmi rendszer társadalmi bázisánekkérdéséhez az 1920-as évek elején,” Történelmi Szemle, V/3–4 (1962), p.355; Miklós Lackó, “Vázlat aszéls [odblac]jobboldali mozgalmak társadalmi hátterér [odblac]l Magyarországon az 1930-as években,” TörténelmiSzemle, V/3–4 (1962), p.450; Károly Turóczi, “Az Imrédy-kormány kísérletei 1938 nyarán a reakciósnemzeti egység megteremtésére,” Történelmi Szemle, XI/1–2 (1968), p.60. Sipos (note 3), pp.602–20.5See, for example, Miklós Lackó, Arrow-Cross Men, National Socialists, 1933–1944 (Budapest, 1960),pp.5–13; György Ránki (ed.), Magyarország története, 1918–1919, 1919–1945, two vols (Budapest, 1984),i, pp.777–81; Romsics Ignác, “The Hungarian Aristocracy and its Politics,” in Karian Urbach (ed.),European Aristocracies and the Radical Right, 1918–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.196.6Levente Püski, A Horthy-Rendszer (1919–1945) (Szekszárd: Pannonica Kiadó, 2006), pp.236–7.7György Ránki, “The Problem of Fascism in Hungary,” in Peter Sugar (ed.), Native Fascism in theSuccessor States, 1918–1945 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC–Clio, 1971), p.66.

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Scarcely more plausible, however, is J. Erös’s explanation that these officers’rightist attitudes were forged by ‘the same experience of war service’, by the‘humiliating and stringent economic difficulties’ that confronted them when theyreturned home, and by their shared experience of ‘persecution at the hands ofrebellious soldiers and revolutionary workers and intellectuals’.8 It is, after all, byno means certain that all former officers had shared ‘the same experience’ in thewar, or that the ‘humiliating and stringent economic difficulties’ affected formerofficers more than any other section of society. Nor is it the case that formerofficers were universally despised by the leftist revolutionaries of 1918–9; somehad played an active role in helping the ‘Red Count’, Mihály Károlyi, and hisBolshevik successor, Béla Kun, seize power, while many more had enthusiasti-cally served in Kun’s Red Army (Vörös Hadsereg), which had received the enthu-siastic support of ‘rebellious soldiers and revolutionary workers andintellectuals’.9

There are, however, plausible reasons to assume that the rightist ideology helda particular attraction to Hungarian war veterans. First, the leftist coalition thathad governed Hungary in 1918–9, under the premiership of Mihály Károlyi, hadantagonised veterans by overseeing the rapid and demoralizing demobilizationof much of the regular army, by its adherence to pacifism, and by its inability todefend the national borders. Secondly, the values of duty, order and patriotisminstilled by the army were at the core of rightist rhetoric but were either down-played or rejected by the left. Thirdly, the value of the sacrifices endured by theveterans during the war were lauded by the rightist parties and implicitly deni-grated by the leftist parties that regarded the entire war as an imperialist folly.

Conditions in Hungary after the First World War also encouraged veterans tosupport the parties of the right. Amos Perlmutter asserts that the typical society inwhich soldiers seek a political role is one that has endured a ‘failed social, politicalor modernizing revolution … [and is] largely agrarian or transitional or ideologi-cally divided’.10 These factors all occurred in inter-war Hungary, which hadendured failed revolutions in 1918–9, remained a largely agrarian country, wasengaged in a painful transition from a flourishing part of the Habsburg monarchyinto a defeated and dismembered national state and was still bitterly dividedbetween leftist and rightist ideologies.

In addition, the political activism of veterans was encouraged by the broader‘militarization’ of Hungarian politics (and society) which was evident throughoutthe period. The armed forces, for example, exerted significant influence on thecivilian administration. The supreme commander of the armed forces, AdmiralMiklós Horthy, was, as regent, able and occasionally willing to impose hisfavoured persons and policies on the government of the day. The general staff(vezérkar), acting through, or in concert with the defence minister (honvédelmiminiszter), persistently intervened in government decision-making, even when

8J. Erös, “Hungary,” in S. J.Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968),p.119; see also Andrew Janos’s brief comments in Andrew C. Janos, East Central Europe in the ModernWorld (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp.169–70.9On the armed forces’ support for the Károlyi and Kun regimes, see Rudolfné Dósa, A MOVE. Egyjellegzetes magyar fasiszta szervezet, 1918–1944 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1972), pp.32–6; see alsoMárton Farkas, Katonai összeomlás és forradalom 1918-ban (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1969), pp.320–418.10Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times: On Professionals, Praetorians and Revolu-tionary Soldiers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), p.12.

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such decision-making was formally the prerogative of other ministries. Thearmed forces own extensive domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering opera-tions had an impact on all aspects of policy formation, and from the 1930sonwards the entire government’s activities were increasingly subordinated to therequirements of the Ministry of Defence.11

We should also note that the armed forces were larger, and more closelyenmeshed with the administration, than official statistics revealed. Althoughformally reduced by the post-war Trianon peace treaty to 35 000 men, ‘covert’soldiers were placed in areas of the bureaucracy where they could influence thecivilian administration.12 Moreover, ‘semi-military’ organizations, such as theofficially sanctioned Levente Intézmenyek (Levente Institutes), for school chil-dren and the voluntary Bajtársi Egyesületek (Comrades’ Associations), forstudents in higher education, provided a pool of future soldiers for the newlyexpanded armed forces who were inculculated with a military ethos.13

Furthermore, a number of veterans’ organizations were established with thespecific intention of influencing political developments. The most prominent ofthese organizations were the ultra-rightist Magyar Országos Véder [odblac] Egyesülete(Union of the Hungarian National Defence Force, hereafter MOVE), initiallycomprised exclusively of former army officers,14 the Vitézi Rend (Order ofHeroes), which awarded selected veterans plots of land15 and the less ideologicalOrszágos Frontharcos Szövetsége (National Association of Front-Line Soldiers)16

and Hadirokkantak, Hadiözvegyek és Hadiárvák Szövetsége (Association ofWar-Wounded, War-Widows and War-Orphans), which represented both mili-tary and civilian victims of the war.

There was also a plethora of semi-secretive, politically active organizations,such as the Fehérház Bajtársi Egyesület (White House Comrades Association),which played a key role in overthrowing the socialist government in November1919, and the notorious Ébred [odblac] Magyarok Egyesülete (Union of AwakeningHungarians, hereafter ÉME), which while not explicitly established to representveterans’ interests was, nevertheless, dominated by former soldiers.17 All of theseorganizations, operating in a culture shaped by the legacy of the war (extensivewar memorialization, the physical presence of the wounded and the psychological

11See, for example, Tibor Hetés and Morvané Tamás (eds), Csak szolgálati használatra!Iratok a Horthy-hadsereg történetéhez, 1919–1938 (Budapest: Zrinyi Kiadó, 1968); Gyula Vargyai, A hadsereg politikaifunkciói magyarországon a harmincas években (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1983); Loránd Dombrady,Army and Politics in Hungary 1938–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).12See Loránd Dombrady and Sándor Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, 1919–1945 (Budapest: ZrinyiKiadó, 1987), pp.26–33; István Pataki, Az ellenforradalom hadserege, 1918–1921 (Budapest: Zrinyi Kiadó,1973), pp.230–83.13Dósa (note 9) , pp.15–31; Ferenc Gergely and György Kiss, Horthy leventei, A leventeintézmeny törtönete(Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1976).14C. A. Macartney, October 15th. A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, two vols (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 1961), i, p .30. See, also, Dósa (note 9), pp.32–132.15Loránd Dombrady, A legfelsöbb hadúr és hadserege (Budapest: Zrinyi Kiadó, 1990), pp.43–45.16The Országos Frontharcos Szövetsége did, however, briefly form its own political party, the Fronthar-cosok Egyesült Nemzeti Pártja (Unified National Party of Front-Line Soldiers), in 1931. For excellent casestudies of veterans’ groups, and former soldiers, in the inter-war period in a West European context,see Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War. ‘Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society, 1914–1939 (Oxford:Routledge, 1992) and Graham Wootton, The Politics of Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1963).17See Tibor Zinner, Az Ébred [odblac]k fénykora, 1919–1923 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989), pp.15–19.

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consequences of mass casualties and mass killing), contributed to the ‘militariza-tion’ of public life and the civilian administration in inter-war Hungary.18

This ‘militarization’ also manifested itself, and was reinforced by, those formersoldiers who (primarily) sought to influence political developments not throughtheir membership of the aforementioned organizations but through theirmembership of political parties and their espousal of various politicalprogrammes. When we consider that approximately one-fifth of the totalpopulation, and one-half of the adult male population, had served in the armedforces during the First World War, it should not be surprising that every tier oflocal and national government was subsequently permeated by former soldiers.19

The briefest overview of Hungary’s most prominent politicians immediatelypoints to this permeation by veterans of the entire political class. At the very apexof the regime, for example, stood the former admiral, Miklós Horthy, whoderived much of his prestige and authority from his military rank and war-timeexploits. Moreover, between 1919 and 1944, 11 prime ministers (István Friedrich,Károly Huszár, Pál Teleki, István Bethlen, Gyula Károlyi, Gyula Gömbös, KálmánDarányi, Béla Imrédy, Döme Sztójay, Géza Lakatos and Ferenc Szálasi), everysingle Minister of Defence and at least 27 additional cabinet ministers had allserved in the armed forces during the First World War.20

To examine further the permeation of veterans into the political elite and theimpact that this permeation had, this article will examine the composition of theHungarian parliament in the inter-war period. The Hungarian parliament didnot directly appoint the government, that was the prerogative of the Regent.Neither did it scrutinise or authorise all government legislation while the use ofdecrees remained an essential part of the government’s legislative armoury.Neither did it fully represent the ‘will of the people’ for less than 30% of theadult population actually had the right to vote. Nevertheless, the parliament didserve as the highest visible forum in which former soldiers could influence polit-ical developments. Also the parliament contained a range of parties from acrossthe political spectrum that will allow us to consider the relative attraction toformer soldiers of the ideologies these parties represented.21 Moreover, unlikeany of the other political organizations operating in the inter-war period,

18Unfortunately no study of this organization or of the enduring social and cultural impact of the waron Hungary’s civilian population has been hitherto published. See, however, the brief comments onthe ‘war generation’ in István Bernát, “Adalékok a népi ideológia el [odblac]történetéhez,” in Miklós Lackó(ed.), A két világháború közötti magyarországról (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1984), p.405. For WesternEurope see, for example, Menno Spiering and Michael Wintle (eds), Ideas of Europe since 1914: TheLegacy of the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); Deborah Cohen, The War ComeHome: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,2001).19For an excellent introduction to the question of the armed forces’ influence on wider society, seeMichael Howard, “The Armed Forces as a Political Problem,” in Michael Howard (ed.), Soldiers andGovernments (Connecticut: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1957).20Ágnes Dús (ed.), Magyarország miniszterelnökei, 1848–1990 (Budapest: Cégér, 1993), pp.94–153; TiborÁcs (ed.), Honvédelmi miniszterek, 1848–1990 (Budapest: Zrınyi Kiadó, 1994), pp.80–124; József Bölönyand László Hubai, Magyarország kormányai, 1848–1992 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004), pp.93–102;see also the brief comments on former Habsburg soldiers in inter-war Hungary and the successorstates in István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps,1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp.205–12.21For a specific study of the transformation of former soldiers into politicians, see Thomas Mitchell,Indian Fighters Turned American Politicians (Westport, Conneticut: Praeger, 2003).

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biographical information exists for each MP, which frequently contains details ofmilitary service.22

Veterans in Parliament

In the six national elections held during the inter-war period (1920, 1922, 1926,1931, 1935, 1939) a total of 884 MPs were elected to parliament.23 The best sourceof information on the backgrounds and war-time experiences of these MPs werethe short biographical sketches (nemzetgy [udblac]lés tagjainak életrajzi adatai), that werepublished in a series of parliamentary almanachs after each set of national elec-tions. In these sketches, 43% of all MPs, or more than twice the national average,asserted that they had served in the armed forces during the First World War.24

That almost half of all inter-war Hungary’s MPs chose to mention that they hadserved in the war, in biographical sketches that rarely took up more than a singlepage and were often only a paragraph in length, is itself suggestive of the impor-tance they attached to their war-time service. Not all veterans, however, chose tomention their war-time record in these almanachs. For example, although neitherCount Pál Teleki nor Count István Bethlen recorded that they had served in thewar, Count Teleki had served in the army before his discharge in 1916 and CountBethlen was promoted to first lieutenant in 1915 ‘for his performance at thefront’.25 Thus, we can be certain that the figure of 43 per cent of MPs under-esti-mates the actual number of ex-servicemen who were elected to the inter-warHungarian parliament.

We have also chosen to exclude from our analysis veterans of the inter-warconflicts that took place in 1918–9, such as Communist Hungary’s invasion ofCzechoslovakia, the ill-fated defence of Transylvania, the clashes betweenHungarian and Austrian irregular forces in the Burgenland, and the advance ofAdmiral Horthy’s counter-revolutionary army across Trans-Danubia intoBudapest. Although most of the veterans of these conflicts had previously served

22For these biographies, and for all additional information presented here on MPs, see the followingparliamentary almanachs: Gyula Vidor (ed.), Nemzetgyülési almanach, 1920–1922 (Budapest, 1921);Gyula Baján (ed.), Parlamenti alamanach az 1922–1927. évi nemzetgy [udblac]lésre (Budapest, 1922); Andor Kun,László Lengyel and Gyula Vidor (eds), Magyar Országgyülési Almanach, 1927–1932 (Budapest, 1927);László Lengyel and Gyula Vidor (eds), Magyar Országgyülési Almanach, 1931–1936 (Budapest, 1931);István Haeffler (ed.), Országgy [udblac]lési almanach az 1935–1940. évi országgy [udblac]lési almanachr [odblac]l (Budapest,1935); István Haeffler (ed.), Országgy [udblac]lési almanach az 1939–1944. évi országgy [udblac]lési almanachr [odblac]l (Budap-est, 1939). These almanachs are also available on-line at http://www.ogyk.hu/e-konyvt/ mpgy/alm/ almanach.html23This total does not include MPs who were elected in by-elections and then failed to win re-election atthe next national election.24Of all the MPs who avoided war-time service, 89 did so because they were too old too serve, 50because they were too young, three because they were women. Of the remaining 360 MPs who weretheoretically eligible to serve in the armed forces but did not do so, 125 were probably exemptedbecause they performed ‘essential tasks’ in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, six because theywere senior aristocrats able to use their social and political connections to avoid military service and16 because they were already MPs in parliament. We should, however, note that while MPs were notsubject to conscription a number of them did serve and one MP (Zoltán Désy) was killed in action.25See Balázs Ablonczy, Pál Teleki (New Jersey: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp.34–6; IgnácRomsics, István Bethlen, A Great Conservative Statesman of Hungary (Boulder: Columbia UniversityPress, CO, 1995), pp.68–9.

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during the war, four MPs who were too young to serve in the war recorded in theparliamentary almanachs that they had seen conflict in 1919.26

There is, of course, a significant difference between the experiences of thosewho served in the armed forces in an administrative capacity behind the frontlines and those who experienced actual combat. Regrettably, most MPs did notspecify in the parliamentary almanachs whether they had actually seen activecombat. Nevertheless, two-thirds of the MPs who had served in the war alsorecorded that they had been wounded, taken prisoner or decorated for theirservice, all indications that these MPs had indeed experienced front-line combat.27

In addition, at least 63 per cent of the MPs who had served had also reached therank of officer.28 While the disproportionate amount of officers among these MPsappears to support Perlmutter’s claim that ‘the higher the officer’s rank, the morepolitical he becomes’,29 the over-representation of officers may also be due tospecific Hungarian factors, especially the continuing exclusion of the lowerechelons of society from the franchise. As over 70 per cent of the adult populationwas disenfranchised (formally due to their lack of educational qualifications), theelectorate was dominated by precisely the same class of voter that had producedthe pre-war officer class.30 Moreover, the vast majority of these officers were notthe career officers upon whom Hungarian historiography has concentrated itsattention. Rather, they typically entered the army following the outbreak of thewar and either resigned their commissions after the war’s conclusion or wereinvoluntarily demobilised in the early 1920s to comply with the post-war peacetreaty’s limitation on the size of the Hungarian armed forces.

Proportions of Veterans per Parliamentary Cycle

Demographic changes should have ensured that the proportion of veterans inparliament would have gradually increased with each national election (as thoseMPs who had been too old to serve in the war retired) until the mid-1930s, when

26Károly Megay was decorated for his service against the Romanians, Austrians and Czechoslovaks,while Dénes Oetl-Pálffy, Antal Kunder (who was taken prisoner) and Lajos Gruber (who waswounded) fought against the communists.27Statistics on the numbers of Hungarians who fought in the First World War are inadequate and/orinconsistent. Approximately 20 per cent of the total population of the Kingdom of Hungary hadserved in the armed forces, and of those veterans who survived the war, 24 per cent had beenwounded, 23 per cent taken prisoner and 14 per cent had been decorated for their service. In contrast,22 per cent of the veterans in parliament had been wounded, eight per cent had been taken prisonerand 21 per cent had been decorated for their war-time service. For statistics on Hungary’s contributionto the Austro-Hungarian army, see István Deák, “The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy,1914–1918,” in Iván Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution, 1918–1919 (Lincoln, NB: University ofNebraska Press, 1971), p.18; see also, “A Magyar király központi statisztikai hivatal,” in Magyar statisz-tikai évkonyv (Budapest: Babits Kiadó, 1925, p.8); István Kollega Tarsoly (ed.), Magyarország a XX.Században, 5 vols (Szekszárd: Csokonai Kiadó, 1996), i, pp.300–1; Mária Ormos, Magyarország a kétvilágháború korában (1914–1945) (Budapest: Petit Real, 2006), p.22; Jolán Szijj, Magyarország az els [odblac]

világháborúban (Budapest: MTA Történettudomány Intézet, 2007), p.782.28Only four per cent of the ex-servicemen in parliament recorded that they were never promoted toofficer-rank and a third of the ex-servicemen did not record their rank in the parliamentary almanachs.29Perlmutter (note 10), p.12.30On the social background of the Habsburg army’s officer corp, see Tibor Hajdu, “Hivatasos éstartalékos tisztek a Monarchia hadseregében,” in Tibor Hajdu (ed), A magyar katonatiszt, 1848–1945(Budapest, 1989); Deák (note 20), pp.156–64.

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representatives of the generation which had been too young to serve in the warbegan to be elected to parliament. In fact, the precise opposite occurred.

In the 1920s the proportion of MPs too old to serve did decline (from 25 per centof all MPs in 1920 to 13 per cent in 1926), yet the proportion of veterans in parlia-ment also declined. Just over a third of those MPs elected in 1920 had served inthe war, but that number decreased following the 1922 elections and would not besurpassed until 1931 when the proportion of veterans rose to 38 per cent. Then, inthe latter part of the 1930s when the generation which had been too young toserve in the war entered parliament (five per cent of all MPs elected in 1935 and14 per cent of all MPs elected in 1939), the proportion of veterans in parliamentactually dramatically increased. Following the 1935 elections, the number of ex-servicemen in parliament leapt to more than one in every two MPs and followingthe 1939 elections almost 60 per cent of the entire parliament had served in thefirst world war.

Ideological Shifts and the Proportion of Veterans in Parliament

Mere demographics do not, therefore, explain the decline in the number of ex-servicemen in parliament in the 1920s and their dramatic rise in numbers in thesecond half of the 1930s. They do, however, correlate with the ideological shiftsthat took place in parliament. For example, the parliament elected in 1920, whichcontained the highest proportion of ex-servicemen of any parliament electedbefore 1931, also had a pronounced rightist, or what we may more properly termright-radical, character. This parliament banned the Bolshevik Party and passedinto law the Numerus Clausus (which limited the number of Jews in Hungary’sleading universities), enacted Hungary’s first ever land reform and massivelyexpanded the pre-war electoral franchise.31

From 1922 onwards, however, the new political parties formed after the warconsolidated their authority and favoured more moderate policies. For example,the so-called Government Party established by Count Bethlen, which won everyelection held during the inter-war period, established close links with the bureau-cracy, national and local elites. It thus sharply curtailed the influence of pressuregroups, including the various organizations representing veterans, which hadpropelled some of their members into parliament in the 1920 elections.32 Bethlen’sgovernment also enacted a classically conservative agenda which, among otherthings, struck down the Numerus Clausus, stifled the land reform, refused tocountenance a further expansion of the suffrage, offered various concessions tothe left, cracked down on right-radical agitation and countenanced improvedrelations with the Western European powers.

From 1932 onwards, however, Bethlen’s successors as prime minister formed aseries of governments which reflected the renewed influence of the right-radicalideology. Closer relations with Nazi Germany were matched by renewed effortsto expand the franchise, restore the secret ballot, accelerate the land reform and

31The term ‘right-radical’ applies to an ideology that was ultra nationalist, anti-Semitic, violently anti-Socialist and favoured radical social, economic and electoral reform.32István Mócsy, The Effects of World War 1: The Uprooted: Hungarian Refugees and Their Impact onHungary’s Domestic Politics, 1918–1921 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp.168–9. Thevarious right-radical organizations were, from 1921 onwards, gradually incorporated under a govern-ment-directed umbrella organization, the Társadalmi Egyesületek Szövetsége (Association of SocialUnions), and thereby effectively neutered.

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transform the economy and society by restricting the activities of Jews. Insummary, the ‘turn to the left’ in the 1920s was mirrored by a simultaneousdecline in the number of veterans in parliament and the ‘turn to the right’ in the1930s occurred concurrently with a rapid rise in the number of veterans inparliament.

To examine in more detail the correlation between veterans and the rightistideology we will group the various parties in parliament into three distinct ideo-logical fractions and then examine the proportions of veterans in each of thesefractions.33 The first fraction consists of the 634 MPs who were elected in the inter-war period under the banner of what contemporaries termed the GovernmentParty. This party, which operated under a variety of names, won every electionand formed every government between 1920 and 1944. It was generally conserva-tive and nationalist and, in power throughout the inter-war period, oversaw theturn to the left in the 1920s and the turn to the right in the 1930s.34

The second fraction consists of the 140 MPs who were elected to represent thevarious parties of the right that generally sat in opposition to the GovernmentParty. Although they formally opposed the government, they generally endorsedcore elements of its conservative and nationalist ideology and even occasionallyjoined various government coalitions. Included in this fraction are the ‘legitimists’,who favoured the restoration of the Habsburg family to the Hungarian throne, theChristian Socials who advocated moderate social reform on a ‘Christian’ basis, andthe various right-radical formations such as the Fajvéd [odblac] Párt (Race-DefendingParty) in the 1920s and the ‘Arrow Cross’ movement in the 1930s and 1940s.35

The third fraction in the inter-war Hungarian parliament consists of the 92MPs who were elected to the various parties of the left. These parties includedthe self-styled liberal parties that tended to advocate an esentialy anglo-saxonmodel of reform and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (MagyarországiSzociáldemokratikus Párt, hereafter MSZDP), which had broken from the Bolshe-vik third internationale and concurred with the moderate social-democraticmodel advocated by the German and Austrian social democratic parties.Although these parties were riven by ideological divisions and personalityclashes, they frequently cooperated in parliament and all stood in firm opposi-tion to both the conservative regime and the right-radical ideology.36

33We will not include in these fractions the 70 MPs who were elected on independent platforms and whoseideological affiliations remain unclear. Twenty-five of these independent MPs were ex-servicemen.34Included under this category are the Independent Smallholder Party (Független Kisgazdapárt) and theParty of Christian National Unity (Keresztény Nemzeti Egyesülés Pártja, hereafter KNEP) in the 1920–22parliament (which did form a ‘coalition’ government and for a period of time held joint party meet-ings), the Unified Party (Egységes Párt) (1921–35), forged out of its predecessors, the National UnityParty (Nemzeti Egység Pártja) (1925–39) and the Hungarian Life Party (Magyar Élet Pártja) (1939–1944),as well as the 10 MPs appointed by the government in 1939 to represent Slovakia and Ruthenia.35Included under this category are the rump of the KNEP, which broke from the government inNovember 1921, the Christian National Landworkers and Citizens Party (Keresztény Nemzeti Földmívésés Polgári Párt), the Christian Economic and Social Party (Keresztény Gazdasági és Szociális Párt) and theUnified Christian Party (Egyesült Kersztény Párt), the Race-Defending Party (Fájvéd [odblac] Párt), the ArrowCross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Front) and its various off-shoots and rivals.36Included under this category are the (National) Democratic Party ((Nemzeti) Demokratikus Párt) andthe Independent Smallholder (Landworker and Citizens) Party (Független Kisgazda (Földmívés ésPolgári) Párt), the ‘48-er’ Parties and the National Free-Principle Party (Nemzeti Szabadelvü Párt). Asolid, albeit dated, overview of the Liberal Parties and their ideologies is provided in Zsuzsa Nagy,Bethlen liberális ellenzéke, (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980).

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The Government Party Fraction

Of the 634 MPs elected under the banner of the Government Party throughout theinter-war period, 46 per cent had served during the First World War. As in thewider parliament, the proportion of ex-servicemen in the Government Party frac-tion declined in the 1920s, then rose dramatically in the 1930s. Following the 1920elections, 36 per cent of the MPs who sat on the government benches were warveterans, and that proportion remained constant following the 1922 elections.Following the 1926 elections, however, the proportion of veterans in the fractiondecreased before rising slightly to 41 per cent following the last elections organ-ised by Bethlen in 1931. The sharpest rise in the proportion of ex-servicemen onthe Government Party’s benches occurred after the 1935 elections (organised bythe former army captain Gyula Gömbös) when their number jumped to 55 percent of the entire fraction; and their numbers increased again to 58 per cent of theGovernment Party fraction following the 1939 elections which were overseen byCount Teleki during his second stint as prime minister.

The disparity between the elections supervised by Bethlen and those organisedby his successors becomes even clearer when we consider the proportion of theGovernment Party’s new intake of MPs that were ex-servicemen. In 1922, 1926and 1931 approximately one-third of the new intake of MPs into the fractionconsisted of ex-servicemen, whereas in the 1935 and 1939 elections approximatelytwo-thirds of the new intake of MPs into the fraction were former soldiers.

This change in the proportion of ex-servicemen in the Government Party’sfraction was paralleled by a similar increase in the proportion of this fraction thathad been decorated, wounded or taken prisoner and had, therefore, certainlyserved on the front lines. Throughout the 1920s such men always comprised lessthan a quarter of the Government Party fraction. In contrast, after 1935 thesefront-line veterans made up 42 per cent of the fraction and 46 per cent of the frac-tion after the 1939 elections.

Even Hungarian historians who only paid attention to the career army officerswho were elected to parliament noted that their numbers increased from 1.9 percent of the government party fraction in 1931 to 5.2 per cent in 1935 beforeretreating back to 4.5 per cent after the 1939 elections. In reality both ‘militarist’prime minister Gömbös and his ‘scholarly’ successor Teleki presided over a rapidincrease in the number of veterans in the Government Party fraction.37

The same contrast between the 1920s and 1930s can be seen when we examinethe proportion of new Government Party MPs who had been exempted from war-time service due to their positions in the government bureaucracy or social elite.38

The conservatism of these MPs was sustained by their exemptions from war-timeservice. They had not been radicalised by combat and therefore acted as acounter-balance to their radicalised fellow parliamentarians.39

37Püski (note 6), p.236.38Of the 59 aristocrats elected to parliament in the inter-war period, 32 described themselves as veter-ans (18 of whom reported that they had either been wounded, taken prisoner or decorated for theirheroism), while a further 11 aristocrats were excluded due to their age.39For an overview of the bureaucrats’ influence on inter-war Hungarian politics and Eastern Europe asa whole, see Andrew Janos, “The One-Party State and Social Mobilization: East Europe Between theWars,” in Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore (eds), Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society. TheDynamics of Established One-Party Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp.204–36.

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With Count Bethlen as prime minister, in the 1922 elections, 37 per cent of thenew intake onto the Government Party’s benches had avoided military service,and that proportion actually rose to 49 per cent of the new intake of GovernmentParty MPs in 1926. Yet under Prime Minister Gömbös in 1935, only four per centof the new intake belonged to this un-radicalised elite, while in 1939, under PrimeMinister Count Teleki, they constituted a mere eight per cent of the new intake ofGovernment Party MPs.

This reduction of the old administrative and social elite in the GovernmentParty’s parliamentary caucus, in the 1930s, reinforces Andrew Janos’s argumentthat Eastern Europe in the 1930s witnessed the replacement of the ‘old style politi-cian … by a new type of leader … representing a new concept of politics’.40 Ouranalysis suggests, however, that one of the defining features of this new politicalelite, at least in Hungary, was that it was dominated by war veterans who fromthe 1930s onwards rapidly replaced the ‘old style politicians’ who had beenexempted from military service.

The changing composition of the Government Party’s parliamentary fractionwas a direct consequence of efforts by successive prime ministers to use thecandidate selection process to ensure the loyalty of their fellow party MPs. Sincethe Hungarian parliament did not possess an office tasked with enforcing partydiscipline, prime ministers sought to select candidates who could be relied on toremain loyal. Since, however, the ideology of the Government Party was gener-ally vague and malleable, and the party lacked local organizations which couldproduce confirmed party loyalists, reliable candidates had to be selected on thebasis of other evidence. One such piece of evidence was, presumably, whether aprospective candidate had served in the war. To ensure that the parliamentaryfraction would support his conservative policies, Prime Minister Bethlenfavoured candidates drawn from the administrative and social elite (to which hehimself belonged), and limited the number of (potentially radicalised) ex-service-men selected as candidates. In contrast, right-radical prime ministers such asGömbös and Teleki increased the number of ex-servicemen in the parliamentaryfraction on the grounds that these (potentially radicalised) veterans were likely tobe loyal supporters of their right-radical programmes.41 In summary, the Govern-ment Party’s parliamentary fraction in the 1930s contained significantly fewerMPs who were members of the old administrative and social elite, and signifi-cantly more MPs who had either served in the war or experienced intense combatin the front lines.

The Right and Left Opposition Fractions

Of the 140 MPs elected in the inter-war period to the various parties of the rightthat stood in opposition to the Government Party, just under 50 per cent hadserved in the armed forces during the First World War. Similar to the GovernmentParty the proportion of former soldiers in these parties rose from an average of 34per cent in the three elections in the 1920s to an average of 46 per cent in the threeelections in the 1930s. We should also note that a high proportion of the veterans

40Ibid., p.213.41Levente Püski recognises the importance that Gömbös attached to recruiting veterans into theGovernment Party fraction, although he underestimates the scale and thus the importance of thisrecruiting. See Püski (note 6), p.237.

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in the rightist opposition fraction were former officers (68 per cent) and a highproportion had certainly seen service on the front lines (59 per cent).

Compared with the Government Party, however, the opposition parties of theright contained a lower proportion of MPs who had used their membership of theadministrative and social elite to avoid military service. While 19 per cent ofthe MPs who were elected by the Government Party had been exempted fromservice through their elite positions, only six per cent of the MPs elected by theopposition parties of the right had been similarly granted such exemptions. Theparties of the right contained, therefore, a larger proportion of ex-servicemen, alarger proportion of former officers, a larger proportion who had seen service onthe front lines, and a smaller proportion of the old style politicians than theGovernment Party.

In contrast, of the 92 MPs elected to the liberal and social-democratic parties inthe inter-war period only 27 were ex-servicemen, 10 had been officers, 15 hadbeen decorated, wounded or taken prisoner, and five had avoided militaryservice though their positions in the administrative and/or social elite. Theparliamentary parties of the left contained the smallest proportion of veterans,the smallest proportion of officers, the smallest proportion who had served on thefront lines, and the smallest proportion who could be classified as old stylepoliticians.

Indeed if we consider only the most far-left of all the parliamentary fractions,the MSZDP, we find that of 31 MPs elected under the social-democrat banner,only five were ex-servicemen and only two had definitely served on the frontlines (one was wounded, and one was taken prisoner). The MSZDP, therefore,failed to elect either a single officer or a single decorated soldier to parliamentthroughout the entire inter-war period. Moreover, from 1926 until 1935, the veryperiod when the proportion of veterans among the electorate was at its greatest,not a single MSZDP MP had actually served in any of the armed forces.

Conclusion

In this article we have argued that the Hungarian parliament in the inter-warperiod provides a further indication of the radicalizing impact of veterans onHungarian politics. First, assessed on a fraction-by-fraction basis the greater theproportion of veterans in a parliamentary fraction, the further to the right thatfraction was positioned on the ideological spectrum. Secondly, a significantincrease in the number of veterans in parliament as a whole and in the governingparty’s fraction, during the 1930s occurred simultaneously with a ‘turn to theRight’ in Hungarian parliamentary politics.

That veterans of the war as well as soldiers, officers and decorated combatveterans can also be found in the parliamentary fractions of the parties of the leftnecessitates caution when we draw conclusions about the radicalizing legacies ofthe war on Hungarian politics. Nevertheless, the broader militarization ofHungarian society was gradually matched by the changing composition of theHungarian parliament. The entry of increasing numbers of ex-servicemen intoparliament helped produce a rightward shift in Hungarian parliamentary politicsas the veterans gravitated to the parties and politicians of the right. Along withthe decline of the ‘old-style’ politicians who had used their positions to avoidwar-time service, the increasing number of veterans in parliament in the 1930sensured that the Hungarian parliament would enter the Second World War

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dominated by men whose radical, rightist ideology had been forged in thecrucible of an earlier conflict.

Notes on Contributor

Thomas Lorman (PhD, University of London) is Field Service Assistant Professorat the University of Cincinnati, where he has taught European history since 2003.His primary research interests are the history of the Habsburg monarchy and theSuccessor States (Hungary, Slovakia and Austria) with a focus on political, diplo-matic and military history. Among his publications is Counter-RevolutionaryHungary, 1920–25: István Bethlen and the Politics of Consolidation (East EuropeanMonographs, 2006).

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