Until 1920, the Magyars had considered the Mongol invasion (tatárjárás)
that almost annihilated Hungary in 1241-42 and the Battle of Mohács in
1526 which exposed the nation to 150 years of devastating Turkish
occupation, as the two darkest events in Hungarian history.

In 1920, however, the Treaty of Trianon became the third, and worst,
catastrophe to hit thousand year-old Hungary. This treaty took its name
from a small palace in Versailles, the scene of the Peace Conference
following World War I.

The Dismemberment

The terms sanctioned by the Peace Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4,
1920, cut Hungary to pieces.

Before the war, Hungary had a territory of 125,600 square miles. Under the
terms of the Treaty she lost 89,700 square miles, or 71.4% of her former
territory. Of her population of almost 21 million 63.6%, including more
than 3.5 million Magyars, was detached.

The Hungarian Kingdom, a perfect geographical and economic unit, was
dismembered on the basis of the "liberation of the nationalities." As a
result of this "liberation":

1,702,000 Slovaks together with 1,874,000 persons of other nationalities,
including one million Magyars, were "liberated" by being subjected to
Czech rule.

2,800,000 Rumanians were "liberated" at the cost of subjecting 2,465,000
persons of other nationalities, including about two million Magyars, to
Rumanian rule.

1,029,000 Serbians were "liberated" at the cost of subjecting to Serbian
rule 1,727,000 Croatians and 1,366,000 persons of other nationalities,
including about 600,000 Magyars.

232,000 Germans were "liberated" at the cost of subjecting to Austrian
rule 126,000 persons of other nationalities, including 50,000 Magyars.

Of the 3.5 million Magyars cut off from their motherland, more than 1.5
million were living along the new frontiers in a contiguous ethnic block
with their brethren in mutilated Hungary. The crassest violation of the
ethnic principle occurred on the Hungarian-Czechoslovak frontier along the
Danube. The 415,000 Magyars in this territory of about 7,000 square
kilometres made up about 95% of its population. This territory was annexed
to Czechoslovakia simply because the Czechs wanted to have the Danube as
their frontier and they wished to be close enough to Budapest so as to be
able to bombard it with long-range artillery fire in case of war.

Economically, Hungary was hit just as hard. She lost 61.4% of her arable
land, 88% of her timber, 62.2% of her railroads, 64.5% of her hard surface
roads, 83.1% of her pig-iron output, 55.7% of her industrial plants, 67%
of her credit and banking institutions and her entire gold, silver, copper
and salt deposits. Looking back on what was done to Hungary at Trianon,
the Czech Lt. Colonel, F.O. Miksche, stated in his work, the Danubian
Federation:

The following examples illustrate the confusion which arises when
peacemakers accept statements without first having them checked by
unbiased authorities.

During the Peace Conference in Paris, Prime Minister Lloyd George asked
Benes how many Hungarians would fall under Czech rule if his territorial
demands were granted, and the reply-according to David Hunter Miller (My
Diary at the Conference in Paris) – was that the number would be about
350,000. But in fact the Czech census of 1926 counted nearly 800,000
Hungarians. In pleading for a natural frontier, Benes described a small
brook as a navigable river.

Bratianu, the Rumanian delegate, claimed the whole of Transylvania with
about "one million Hungarians," although the real number was nearly two
million, which drew a vigorous objection from Lansing, Wilson's Secretary
of State, who was silenced by André Tardieu, the French delegate, who said
that the subcommittee had considered this award with great care…

In 1919-20, the defeated were not even allowed to prove that some of the
new statesmen from Central and Eastern Europe had produced false maps and
forged statistics in order to filch more territory from Austria and
Hungary…

The inhabitants of what was left of Hungary numbered only 7.6 million in a
territory of 35,900 square miles. Rumania alone was granted 39,800 square
miles, including Transylvania, or more than what was left to Hungary.
Czechoslovakia was given 23,800 square miles and Yugoslavia got a similar
slice, including Croatia which had stood in partnership with Hungary for
800 years. Even Austria was alloted 1,500 square miles of Western Hungary
as a ploy to poison relations between the two countries.

The only scheme Benes and Masaryk failed to push through was their plan
for a Slav corridor through Hungary, connecting Czechoslovakia with
Yugoslavia. Such a corridor would have meant the complete encirclement of
Hungary by her enemies. This scheme was frustrated by the Italians who
felt that a Slavic corridor would be uncomfortably close to their country.

Altogether the "successor states" found themselves with 16 million persons
belonging to national minorities out of a total population of 42 million,
while Hungary's new border were far more restricted than the reach of her
nationality. In other words, out of the one mosaic-state that
Austria-Hungary had been, Trianon created three mosaic states. According
to Charles Seymour, an American delegate to the Peace Conference, the
boundaries of the successor states did not even "roughly correspond with
ethnic or linguistic lines." In short, "national self-determination" was
granted to all, without plebiscite, but denied to the Hungarians.

The Congress of the United States, disgusted with the spirit that
prevailed in Versailles and produced the Treaty of Trianon, refused to
sign the Treaty. America concluded a separate peace with Hungary on
August 29, 1920. The maps and statistics reproduced on these pages
illustrate what the French writer, Henri Pozzi, wrote in his book, La
Guerre Revient in 1933:

Of all the vanquished of World War I, Hungary had been the most cruelly
hit. In the name of justice she was literally quartered. The punishment
inflicted upon her was an execution… Never before had a peace imposed by
violence been more brutal in its bias, madder in destructiveness, more
forgetful of the lessons of history and better calculated to stir up old
hatreds to new flames of loathing, than the "peace of redress and reason"
born in 1920…

Injustice, abuses and illogicalities – worse than anything of the kind
experienced in the past – were thus sanctioned for the benefit of three
countries whose leaders, in order to better divide among themselves the
prospective spoils of Austria-Hungary, had in 1917, formed a conspiracy
proper of intrigues and appetites. They set to work in ministerial as well
as editorial offices, the latter including influenial newspapers of Paris,
Rome, London and New York, with their propaganda articles and chequebooks,
forging maps and statistics, mutilating documents and using all kinds of
horse-trading methods in general. When Clemenceau at last saw them, it was
too late, for what they really were at work, he called them "the jackals
of our victory…"

…For that peace has unfortunately created more injustice, disorder, and
arbitrariness than it pretended to eliminate, the most exalted and noble
formulae were used to camouflage the vilest appetites and the most
contemptible schemes combining conquest with business… And ethnic
minorities were being crushed by new oppressive practices, a hundred times
more cruel than had been those they replaced…

Hungarian Reaction to Trianon

And how did the Hungarians react? At first with deep shock and mourning.
And then, as the nation's mourning submerged and took a deep, permanent
place in its spirit, cries for justice began to surface. The drafters of
the Treaty of Trianon were charged with having made "the worst, most
absurd and most ruthless peace known to history." Not only did they feel
the full impact of having lost three fourths of their territory and two
thirds of their country's population, but they also felt aggrieved that
the ideal geographical and economic unit that was Hungary had been torn to
pieces, leaving them in the midst of an economic chaos in the valley of
the Middle Danube.

They resented the fact that so many of their brethren were now subject to
peoples possessing a lower standard of culture and a Balkan morality.

And they recognized with growing alarm that the conditions of the Treaty
had created a fresh hotbed of unrest far more dangerous than any that had
previously existed in this part of Europe. Instead of laying the
foundations for a lasting peace, the Treaty only showed the seeds of fresh
catastrophes.

In 1932 a pamphlet entitled Justice for Hungary! warned that:

"We must not forget that the territories on question are in the vicinity
of Russia, the most critical part of Europe today, and so lie in the path
of that advance of Bolshevism which must sooner or later ensue…"

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