The History of a Hungarian Rearmament (?) Program – The History of the Economic and Political Background of the Győr Program in 1938
The History of a Hungarian Rearmament (?) Program – The History of the Economic and Political Background of the Győr Program in 1938

Summary/Abstract: The speech delivered by Hungarian Prime Minister Kálmán Darányi in Győr on March 5, 1938 has been usually considered as a milestone in Hungarian economic history. We, however, must be aware that the announced „investment program of a billion”, besides direct military investments, also included civilian projects. What later became widely known as the „Győr Program” was not only the idea of the military lobby of the time, which was meant to be implemented by the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense. Leading actors of the Hungarian economic community agreed that the Hungarian economy was in need of a substantial program of incentives, in which obviously the state should have been the primary consumer. While, on the one hand, the leadership of the National Confederation of Industrialists was clearly motivated only by economic considerations, leaders of the governing party and of the Government, on the other, also saw the Program as an opportunity to resolve the increasingly pressing issues that emerged in the area of social policy and „racialism”. Although the Program, which undoubtedly delivered some specific short-term results, was originally designed to be implemented during a five-year period, but what was actually completed in two years, even in the beginning of its implementation experts raised several doubts, the majority of which then became reality. Because of World War II defense expenditure finally and openly obtained clear priority in 1944 and 1945.

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