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The Trial of László Bárdossy. The Second World War and Factional Politics in Contemporary Hungary

Rhode Island College

On New Year’s Day 2000, the Crown of St Steven, the symbol most central to the founding legends of the Hungarian kingdom c.1000 AD, was moved from the National Museum of Hungary to the parliament at the behest of the centre-right coalition government of Victor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary 1998-2002. Proponents of the crown’s move looked back to the medieval kingdom and its former glory as a major power on the European continent as a source of national inspiration. Those opposed to the crown’s move worried that the political symbolism of the crown would vivify memory of Hungary’s alliance with the Axis powers during the second world war and the accompanying history of repression and genocide.

The opposition’s fears seemed to be realized with the Hungarian Justice and Life Party’s (MIEP) decision to call for a re-examination of the trial of László Bárdossy, Hungary’s prime minister from 1941 to 1942. Bárdossy had been tried by the Hungarian People’s Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in November 1945 and executed on 9 January 1946. Immediately after 1989 factional debates in Hungary tended to centre on each party’s association with neo-liberal ideology set in contrast to the various post-second world war regimes. Always in the background, however, were factional issues centred on collaboration with Hungary’s two second world war regimes.

What seems at first glance to be a matter of recidivist politics is actually a much more complicated matter; in fact, it lies at the heart of transition politics in Hungary. Histories of this period raise questions about the former prime minister’s role in the politics that led Hungary into the second world war and about the legitimacy of the war crimes trials that were held in Hungary following the armistice on 20 January 1945. This article investigates the various factional interpretations of Hungary’s role in the second world war under the regime of Miklós Horthy, using the trial of László Bárdossy as an exemplar and further, it examines its broader significance in the development of civil society in the twenty-first century.

Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 40, No. 3, 465-481 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0022009405054567


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