The Role of the United States in Hungary’s Trianon Tragedy

Lord Rothermere once said that Trianon had begun in the United States, and would end there too. Surprising as this affirmation may seem, there is some truth in it. The extremely influential pan-Slavic movement and the idea of dismantling Austria–Hungary emerged in Cleveland and Pittsburgh after a long period of Germanization in the nineteenth century, while the quasi-declaration of independence of the Czech–Slovak Republic appeared in New York City and Washington, DC, well before the dramatic political events unfolded at the Paris peace conferences in 1918–20. In the following brief analysis of intellectual and political history, I shall highlight some factors that played a significant but less direct role in shaping the decisions and final outcomes of the peace treaties. Primarily, I will focus on the impact and importance of the personal charisma and high social status of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and his similarly influential compatriots, Eduard Beneš and Milan Ratislav Štefanik on the top French, British, and especially American decision-makers. Within the narrow constraints of this paper, I will also briefly examine the workings of President Wilson’s ‘private think tank’, The Inquiry. Those few dozen selected scholars were in charge of preparing all the necessary background materials for the American President and the Peace Conference delegates, for the sole purpose of helping the top decision-makers arrive at just and objective peace treaties in Paris.

However, given the controversial outcome of the dramatic events in Paris, we can also conclude in advance of our analysis that those peace treaties fundamentally failed to meet either President Wilson’s initial expectations, or his sophisticated principles on a just peace for Europe. In fact, they ushered in a national tragedy for Hungary in particular, and resulted in an utterly reshaped, chaotic power structure in Central and Eastern Europe. The reasons for the rather punitive treaties and events, which culminated in Paris were, of course, diverse, though there were some less striking, secondary elements which, along with other power factors, were neglected by Hungarian political leaders during the Great War. It later transpired, as the dramatic events unfolded and escalated around Hungary, that the short-sightedness of the Hungarian political elite had proved a fatal political miscalculation, and indirectly contributed to the fall of ‘historical’ Hungary in Paris.

Historical hindsight and several foreign political analyses – disappointingly enough for Hungarian aspirations – reveal that the contemporary political environment in the United States proved to be much more complex and pragmatically realistic than had been imagined in Hungary. The various American administrations before and especially after the Great War and into the Roaring Twenties pursued a foreign policy of passive isolationism on the global scene, with merely a few years of more active interventionism towards the end of the World War between 1918–21. However, despite the rather positive global image linked to President Woodrow Wilson, as the protector and advocate of the right of self-determination for smaller oppressed nations, or even a sort of new, omnipotent arbiter mundi, the US seemed to act like an unwilling new sheriff in a chaotic global saloon of clashing nations.

Covertly, the governing political elite of the US seemed to be aligning predominantly with the geopolitical realities and directives of the Paris peace treaties – dismembering Austria–Hungary and creating several new ‘half’ nation states – rather than meeting the expectations of Hungarians for fair treatment in Paris, or fulfilling their dreams and hopeful aspirations for treaty revisions well afterwards.¹ As we shall note, regarding the American attitude in Paris, we can assume that it was not aimed against Austria–Hungary, but had instead been influenced by high political concerns and ideas, and in particular by the very assertive Slavic lobby group, directed by the ‘grand masters of propaganda machinery’, Masaryk and to a lesser degree Štefanik, during their stays in the US.
 

AMERICA, THE DREAM OF ‘OPPRESSED NATIONS’: THE POWER OF CZECH–SLOVAK PROPAGANDA
 

Almost four million people left the Habsburg Empire for America during the half century before the First World War,² most of whom were of Slavic ethnicity, and naturally hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, too, who were eager to start new lives and careers in the challenging New World, where both freedom and great opportunities awaited. Though many of them ended up working hard for quite decent wages in the mines of Pennsylvania, the furnaces of Ohio, and the docks of New York or Chicago, the free democratic political environment also affected their aspirations and attitudes in various ways. Several charity organizations and grassroots national cultural groups emerged, mostly organized by the ethnically defined American Catholic or Protestant denominations. Consequently, the idea, for the Czechs, of re-establishing their own state, or, for the Slovaks, of either gaining autonomy or joining the Slavic brothers in statehood, was evidently a very attractive concept and cause for political activism within the safe haven of American democracy. Professor Masaryk (together with Štefanik, Beneš, Kramař, and the Young Czechs) launched their successful campaign for Czech statehood during the prelude to the World War, and soon afterwards they left Prague to spread their political ideas and objectives in the Western world. Nevertheless, their vast living and travelling expenses were primarily covered from the funds provided by the American Czech and Slovak immigrant diaspora, amounting to almost $1.5 million by the end of the war in 1918.³ Masaryk himself, well over sixty, eagerly and energetically travelled around the world on a long propaganda campaign from London to Norway, Sweden, and through Russia towards the US by mid-1918.

Moreover, Masaryk could also rely on the devoted friendship (and significant material and political support) of two influential British journalist scholars, namely W. R. Seton-Watson and Wickham Steed, who were well-known for their ardent Slavophile enthusiasm and rather anti-German (anti-Semitic) and Hungarophobic sentiments. Their contribution to the hostile, anti-Hungarian attitude and atmosphere which was endemic at the Paris peace treaty salons, as well as to the establishment of Czechoslovakia and the southern Slavic state of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, was undoubtedly significant, particularly through their influential propaganda campaign in Britain and France.⁴ Their new journal, New Europe functioned as a popular herald and influential mouthpiece of the anti-Hungarian agitation and propaganda of the ‘oppressed nations’ of the Monarchy, often making totally false and distorted claims about the ethnic ratio and political conditions which prevailed in historical Hungary. Probably one of the most alarming and significant of the ‘authentic studies’ published in the journal emerged in the March 1918 issue, which made the absolute false demographic claim that the majority of the population of Eastern Hungary, stretching right up to the River Tisza, were of Romanian ethnicity.⁵

Thus, though Lord Rothermere’s statement exaggerated somewhat, it was nevertheless in the US that the primary documents concerning the above-mentioned Czech–Slovak statehood and separation from the detested Habsburg Monarchy were elaborated and publicly proclaimed by the Slovak League, the Sokol movement organizational network, as well as through the extensive local American branches of the Czech National Council and Catholic Association. The political operational centre of the network had been headquartered in Paris since 1916, and was largely directed by Beneš. Obviously, the famous Cleveland Agreement of 23 October 1915 and the Pittsburgh Proclamation of 31 May 1918 were both organized at very appropriate venues, with many similarly outstanding events for the Czech and Slovak cause,⁶ since the region had a very numerous Slavic population, and they could avoid the political and legal repercussions which would have befallen events held at home in the Monarchy.

Masaryk and his well-known fellows from the Secretariat, namely, his university disciple and jurist Eduard Beneš, and Ratislav Štefanik – the Slovak pilot, who also served in the French legion as a colonel (later general) – had two important diplomatic skills in abundance: influencing people and speaking foreign languages. Also, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the well-known head of the Czech propaganda campaign – an iconic figure of the Slavic cause – would eventually become the first president of the newly established Czechoslovakia. However, he was born into a poor family in a small town in Moravia, with a father who was a common Czech waggoner and a mother who was a Slovak charwoman. How did that poor boy from Hodonin end up, half a century later, as the first president of Czechoslovakia, and become one of the favourite conversation partners of the American president? Enormous ambition and steadfast perseverance, thorough education, and the power of ideas and political movements, are all part of the short answer.

The very skilful and ambitious young Masaryk, with the generous help of the Catholic Church and a prestigious Viennese grammar school, managed to elevate himself from his low social rank by education. He became deeply acquainted with classic cultural studies, history, the major European languages, and during his long summer holidays at Lake Balaton he even managed to learn some basic Hungarian.⁷ After finishing his higher educational studies at the University of Vienna, he wrote a doctoral thesis examining the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle in German, Latin, and Greek. As we learn from his own works, Masaryk greatly appreciated the reformist Czech nationalistic ideas of František Palackў as well as the new discipline of sociology of August Comte, but rejected the revolutionary, utopian totalitarianism of Marx.

All the same, he regarded the mid-nineteenth-century concept of a Central European confederacy (partly drafted by Kossuth and Mazzini) as the ideal roadmap for the future of twentieth-century Europe. Decades later, as a renowned scholar and reformist political thinker, he was invited to Budapest in 1910, where he held a popular lecture in the progressive leftist Reform Club. At the gala dinner, also attended by Oszkár Jászi, Rusztem Vámbéry and George Lukács, Masaryk covertly referred to his vision of a free and independent Czech state and Slovak autonomy either within or without the framework of the crumbling monarchy. As he later recalled, he was impressed by Hungary, yet in a way was also offended by the pompous Hungarian aristocracy and the ostentatious ethnocentric cultural supremacy of the political elite.⁸ The first time he could openly mention his most cherished political goal in this matter, namely the dismemberment of the obsolete and pompous empire of Austria–Hungary, occurred only four years later during a secret meeting with Seton-Watson and other British supporters of the Czech cause during his exile in Rotterdam, Holland, on his way to Britain.⁹

Based on many accounts, and without sharing biased presumptions, we can acknowledge that the great efficiency and success of professor Masaryk’s political activity stemmed largely from his outstanding articulacy and cultural assuredness, and his sense of diplomacy and language skills. Those who met him and had the chance to indulge in serious discussion with him were generally amazed by his vast and deep knowledge of European and American history, literature, and philosophy, as well as of his impressive and eloquent fluency in English, French, German, Russian and Polish. His fame, scholarly reputation, great style, and charisma, supplemented with influential friends, unlocked for him and his associates the doors of many affluent gentlemen’s clubs, masonic lodges, ministerial and presidential offices in Paris, London, Saint Petersburg, and Washington. Several top decision-makers such as Colonel House, President Wilson and various British and French dignitaries who were on quite close terms with Masaryk described him as a charming gentleman of great intellect and integrity, who did not directly push his political propaganda during conversations, but rather held the attention of his partners and won them over for his cause with his bright intellect and storytelling skills.¹⁰ With a charming French-American wife, Charlotte Garrigue, Professor Masaryk also acquired French and American citizenship, which provided him with a much larger scope and efficiency in international manoeuvring, and for protecting his nation’s interests.

Besides confidential discussions and secret diplomatic meetings, the triumvirate of the Czech–Slovak cause had also been involved in organizing mass events, rallies and even a domestic underground intelligence service (the famous Czech Mafia), which together greatly contributed to setting the agenda for their goals in the conference rooms where the fate of states would be settled. Colonel Štefanik’s outstanding achievement must also be noted. He set up the strategically important Czech Legion battalions, comprising more than fifty thousand Slavic prisoners-of-war in Italy and Russia, which proved a significant strategic and political asset for the advancement of the Czech cause in both Washington and Paris.¹¹ It was the Siberian expedition of the Czechoslovakian Legion, along with American, British and French task forces in 1918 and 1919 against Russian Bolshevik troops, which proved a game-changer for President Wilson. Grateful for the military contribution of the Czech battalions in Siberia, Wilson abandoned the stance he had held well into the summer of 1918 on preserving the territorial integrity of Austria–Hungary, and shifted towards the idea of establishing a Czech–Slovak state led by Masaryk, and acquiring, in the process, a loyal and grateful ally of the United States against the Central Powers.¹²

Colonel Štefanik, the ardent Slovak–French military pilot and skilful army organizer, also demonstrated his skills of diplomatic persuasion when – according to Masaryk’s memoirs – he managed in 1917 to win former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt’s support for the Slavic cause of nationhood. He essentially persuaded Roosevelt to abandon his well-known enthusiastic support for historical Hungary.¹³ This proved to be a truly outstanding diplomatic feat, given that former President Roosevelt had conducted an extremely popular and successful three-day visit to Hungary in the summer of 1910. Roosevelt was considered a devoted supporter of Hungary, a friend of Count Albert Apponyi and, as a legendary Rough Rider army horseman, also a great admirer of the Hungarian hussars’ military traditions.¹⁴

With the symbolic, yet much popularized American Czech–Slovak mass events of 1918 from Chicago to Pittsburgh, to New York City’s Carnegie Hall and finally to Washington, DC, celebrating the festive Declaration of Independence of Czechoslovakia on 18 October 1918, the dismantling of the Habsburg Monarchy became a fait accompli. A few days later President Wilson once more welcomed Masaryk to the White House, and in effect recognized him as an official representative of the Czechoslovak National Congress. As of 28 October, the new country became an ally of the US against the Monarchy and the German Empire.¹⁵ The Czech Legion forces had captured Prague and most of the country from the Austrians by the end of the year, including the Upper-Hungarian Slovak counties. The de facto dismemberment of the Habsburg Monarchy became effectively de jure for the US State Department well before the Paris treaties were signed.

THE INQUIRY GROUP AND THE WILSONIAN IDEAS

President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theology professor, was a devout Christian with a background as a college professor of law and political history. He may as well be considered the first modern idealistic yet pragmatic political theorist in the White House. Interestingly, he was the first Southern politician (from Georgia) to be elected president after the Civil War, and also the first president to hold a PhD in political science, from Johns Hopkins University. Moreover, as a political theoretician he had the unique opportunity to accomplish and implement his visions in practice as the Democratic governor of New Jersey, and then as the two-term commander-in-chief of a rising new world power. His much-quoted ideas definitely survived him, and tend to be reaffirmed even after a century in the form of American value-driven missionary interventionism and democratic exceptionalism. Most importantly, his famous Fourteen Points, or the majestic Wilsonian principles proclaimed on 8 January 1918, and the idea of just, open, and scientifically formulated peace treaties altogether generated enormous popularity and impact among many (smaller) nations, and significantly reshaped the concepts and practices applied in international affairs.¹⁶

It is no surprise that after the US joined the war in Europe in the autumn of 1917, President Wilson had already foreseen the importance of future peace treaties and ordered the establishment of his ‘private’ think tank, or group of distinguished scholars and experts in history, geography, cartography, ethnography, and sociology, also known as The Inquiry. The core group of a few dozen scholars was directed by his adviser, Colonel Edward House, and was academically supervised by House’s brother-in-law, Sidney Menes, a philosophy professor who was in charge of distributing the professional work. The various thematic research groups were coordinated by the famous journalist and influential communication adviser to the president, Walter Lippmann, who was also a former board member of the American Socialist Party. Later, by the time of the crucially important Paris peace conference, Lippmann had been succeeded by geography professor Isaiah Bowman (a fervent antisemite) from the President’s alma mater.

The Inquiry’s primary task was to develop various background materials and geopolitical scenarios for the President and Secretary of State Robert Lansing on the belligerent parties, and to examine their proclaimed national objectives in relation to American interests. From the vantage point and theoretical assumptions of Wilsonian ideas on a just, fair peace we might presume that the findings of the expert group were supposed to be fair, objective, unbiased, and non-prejudiced against the opposing parties. Nevertheless, after a century of research in American archives¹⁷ we now know that the American geopolitical scenarios and map sketches of the new Europe developed by The Inquiry during 1918 almost totally correlated and overlapped with the rather biased and anti-Hungarian materials delivered and shown in the Paris peace treaties, resulting in the dismantlement of historical Hungary.¹⁸ This rather idealistic and benevolent preconception was – and in part still is – cherished by many Hungarians; namely that the US would have acted as a sort of just arbiter mundi, being an impartial and uncorrupted rising great power, which would not wish to dismantle a thousand-year-old country like historical Hungary.

But what kind of covert subjective or strategically important factors could divert the objective, impartial scientific inquiries and analyses of The Inquiry into elaborating prejudiced, biased, and anti-Hungarian materials for the President? Though a historian, President Wilson was not familiar with the historical features, demography or other important details of the diverse nations peopling the Balkans and Central Europe. Therefore, the materials compiled by the experts of The Inquiry about this complex region of Europe proved to be of outstanding importance. The head of the so-called Central European working group (covering Austria–Hungary and the Balkans) was Charles Seymour, a famous history professor from Cambridge University and Yale. His job was primarily aided by Clive Day, likewise from Yale, who was an economist and expert on Germany, and, most importantly, Robert J. Kerner, a historian from the University of Chicago.

Kerner, who proved to be one of the most influential experts of the group, was from the populous Czech community in Chicago. As he himself said explicitly, he was an ardent and deeply biased supporter of the Czech–Slovak cause. He worked as an intelligence officer for the State Department in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, together with his doctoral thesis master, history professor Archibald Cary Coolidge from Harvard, who was also the acting deputy to Charles Seymour of The Inquiry. Kerner’s biased and pretentious notes were treated with reservations even by his colleagues, since he expressed quite alarming views, including, among others, that the Hungarians (and Germans) were anthropologically unsuited for democracy, unlike the Slavs. Kerner wrote that the Hungarians used methods similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan to oppress the Slovak minority.¹⁹

Besides the overtly pro-Czech lobbyist Kerner, The Inquiry also employed another external contributor, Professor Max Sylvius Handman. He was a political economist and sociology professor from the University of Chicago and the University of Texas, who was born and educated until the age of eighteen in Moldova, Romania, and became an American citizen only in 1917. Handman joined another historian, William H. Reed from Taft College, in The Inquiry cohort, and covered vitally important issues, in particular Transylvania and the claims of Romania. Judging from the studies he compiled for The Inquiry, Handman was a rather prejudiced, ethnically driven and biased professional. Under a superficial veneer of impartial scientific professionalism, his meticulous study falsely asserted and disseminated the idea that greater Transylvania, up to the River Tisza, had historically been populated by Romanians, and that out of the 1.95 million Hungarians in Transylvania as of the 1910 Hungarian census, only 600,000 could be considered purely ethnic Hungarians, with the rest being mostly either Jews, Gypsies, Saxons or statistically and nominally ‘Hungarianized Romanians’.²⁰ No wonder that a decade later, in 1932, he was awarded the Knight Order of Cultural Merit of Greater Romania First Class by King Carol II, for his outstanding professional contributions to the cause and interests of his motherland, and his scientific achievements in sociology.²¹

Considering this, along with the semi-professional prejudices of some of The Inquiry experts, it appears that the background materials (maps, demographic outlines, statistical figures, historical analyses) presented to the chief members of the American peace delegation were far from politically and ethnically impartial, scientifically objective or realistic. Moreover, it is noteworthy that, with the exception of a solitary Hungarian translator, there was not a single significant expert with either Hungarian roots or a reliable professional research focus and expertise in historical Hungary among the almost 150 scholars and aides hired by Colonel House and operating in The Inquiry between September 1917 and February 1919.²² After its dissolution, the core members of the groups merged with the Carnegie Peace Fund, and also founded an organization called the Council on Foreign Relations in February 1921, which became what was probably the most famous and influential American think tank on foreign affairs.

President Wilson, who was not really prepared for the realpolitik and European great power games in Paris, accepted as a necessity the dismemberment of the Habsburg Monarchy, and the filling of the great power vacuum with small but loyal new nation states (the Little Entente from 1921), which would oppose both Bolshevik Russia and revisionist Germany (and Hungary).²³ He did so despite the fact that, with the exception of Colonel Edward M. House, his closest aides left the Versailles negotiations in protest.
 

THE LONG SHADOW OF THE PAST
 

The centennial anniversary of the deeply controversial Trianon Peace Treaty of 4 June 1920 is evidently a cause for national celebration and festivity in the victorious successor states such as Slovakia, and especially Romania, which indulge in chauvinistic, predominantly anti-Hungarian sentiments. Nevertheless, in Hungary, understandably, it has been declared a day of national mourning, remembrance, historical retrospection, and, in order to attach some positive connotation to this dramatic event, in 2010 the Hungarian Parliament voted to commemorate the Trianon Treaty with a memorial day of National Unity.

It has been particularly burdensome and emotionally and politically challenging for those more than two million Hungarians who have been forced to live as second-class citizens in rather hostile, newly made states since the notorious dictatum. It is a truism that most historical decisions are causes of joy for some nations, and of mourning for others. There are very few, if any, mutually acceptable win-win peace treaties or end-of-war pacts in history. Towards the end of the First World War the famous idealist and visionary American President Wilson shared an ambitious plan to create a just, fair, and mutually beneficial peace for all parties, both winners and losers. Tragically for the world, and primarily for Hungarians, these ideas mostly remained a cluster of idealistic mirages, merely American and Hungarian wishful thinking, when faced with the ruthless counter-interests and realpolitik of the European great powers in Paris. It is remarkable, however, that the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles on 19 November 1919. Wilson himself physically collapsed while campaigning for the treaty, and on 2 October 1919 he suffered a near-fatal stroke.

From the vantage point of the successor states, known after 1921 as the Little Entente, the Trianon Peace Treaty was seen as historically and ethnically justified: a fair political act, carried out according to lofty Wilsonian principles, a culmination and reward for their struggles and commitments. Strangely enough, this rather nationalistically distorted and biased political paradigm has prevailed, with a few exceptions, in various ways for the last hundred years among the ‘rewarded’ states. There are very few Romanian, Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian or Serb historians who would dare contradict this dominant historical-political assumption.²⁴ Significantly, even the historiography experts seem unable to cooperate with their Hungarian counterparts on this matter, not to mention the political actors who still refrain from discussing this hotly debated topic, even after a century.

Recently, on 28 September 2020, in the centennial year of the Trianon Treaty, the Romanian Parliament, in a fit of anti-Hungarian piqui, decided to declare the anniversary of the Treaty Day a new day of national celebration.²⁵ This rather hostile parliamentary decision was intended to further widen the gap between the two opposing communities, instead of seeking reconciliation and an amicable twenty-first-century accord with Romania’s 1.3 million Hungarians. It is more than alarming and worrisome that even in the present century, the extremely influential and politically embedded Romanian intelligence services (SRI, the successor agencies of Ceauşescu’s feared Securitate), still tend to consider the Hungarian minority a significant national security risk, and even a domestic threat against territorial integrity, stability, and the nation-state concept of Romania.²⁶

Nevertheless, the unfulfilled promises of autonomy for Hungarian national communities, as well as the unlikely yet still glimmering prospect of border revision in favour of Hungary, still haunt the political elites of the Central and Eastern European successor states to the former Austria–Hungary. In addition to Romania, there are rather striking and controversial examples of hysterical anti-Hungarian attitudes related to the Trianon Treaty and its political heritage in some successor states. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, for instance, the notoriously anti-democratic Beneš decrees dating from 1946 are still partly in force and part of legislation, unjustly aimed against members of the Hungarian and German (non-Slavic) national communities who were collectively considered guilty nationals and deprived of their property and citizenship. Despite numerous human rights criticisms and strong Hungarian and European disfavour, the Slovak Parliament, when already within the EU, deliberately re-affirmed and re-enforced the infamous Beneš decrees in 2007. The effectiveness of the scandalous decrees has also recently been demonstrated in the legal dispute Miklós Bosits vs Slovakia. The case ended at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, with the widely publicized ruling of May 2020 against the defendant Slovakia for deliberately attempting to confiscate or nationalize the forested private property of Mr Bosits – only a ‘second-class’ Hungarian landowner in present-day Slovakia – in compliance with the legal directives of the discriminatory Beneš decrees.²⁷

CONCLUSIONS

The treaties signed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and 1920 were not formulated along objective and scientifically elaborated principles and just guidelines, as benevolently envisioned by President Wilson. The obvious ethnic bias of several experts on The Inquiry, as well as the outstanding propaganda campaign carried out by highly influential personalities such as Seton-Watson, Steed, Štefanik or Beneš, and particularly the personal charisma of professor Masaryk, proved to be crucial factors in the course of events between 1915–20, which shaped the future of Austria–Hungary and redrew the map of Central and Eastern Europe. Shameful and unfair as it may seem, Hungary was not consulted about its own fate in Paris. In Count Albert Apponyi’s bitter assessment of the dramatic historical moment, ‘we could choose between national suicide or death’ at Trianon.²⁸

Considering the anxious political and overheated emotional reactions of the neighbouring countries to the centenary, we can safely say that the legacy of the treaties signed at the Paris Peace Conference continues to loom over this part of Europe even today. We can only hope that the democratic advancement of political common sense and the belated implementation of Wilsonian principles may provide some remedies for the suffering of the oppressed Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin.

To be continued…

 

Notes: