Official Enemies, Secret Allies – Part I
Official Enemies, Secret Allies – Part I

Summary/Abstract: Asmall nation wedged between the Third Reich and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Hungary joined the Second World War in 1941 on the side of the former and against the latter. Seeing no alternative, some patriotic anti-Nazi Hungarians nursed two illusions. The first posited that Hungary could retain its independence with the help of the Western Allies and might even recover some territories lost to neighbours in the First World War. According to the second illusion, cherished by many of the larger Hungary’s eight hundred thousand Jews and their gentile friends, Jews might perhaps survive the Nazi campaign of extermination because Hungary was fundamentally different from its neighbours and because its Jews, with deep roots in the country and its culture, were also different from their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe – and perhaps even Adolf Hitler would agree that such facts were unalterable. The one Hungarian leader who had the courage of both illusions was blueblood Miklós Kállay.

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