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Károly Bartha

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Vitéz Károly Bartha de Dálnokfalva (18 June 1884 – 22 November 1964) was a Hungarian military officer and politician, who served as Minister of Defence between 1938 and 1942.

Károly Bartha
Born18 June 1884 (1884-06-18)
Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Died22 November 1964(1964-11-22) (aged 80)
Linz, Austria
Allegiance
Service years
1904-1945
Rank
Colonel General[1]
UnitHungarian Red Army, National Army
Conflicts

Officer

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During World War I, he had several high commander offices in Budapest and Trieste. In 1919, he fought against the armies of Czechoslovakia and Romania. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Bartha joined the National Army led by Miklós Horthy.

Minister of Defence

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The Prime Minister Béla Imrédy appointed him as Minister of Defence and Bartha kept his position in the ensuing governments until 1942. While he was in office, a number of major events took place: the First and Second Vienna Awards, the occupation of Bácska and Prekmurje, and the bombing of Kassa.

In January 1941,, Bartha visited Berlin where he was received as a guest by Adolf Hitler at the Reich Chancellery.[2] Hitler did not mention to Bartha that he already decided the previous month upon an invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa.[2] The backwardness of Hungary had persuaded Hitler that the Honved (Royal Hungarian Army) would be a liability instead of an asset on the Eastern Front.[2] Hitler lied to Bartha by claiming that the German troop build-up in Eastern Europe which already started was only for defensive reasons to prevent the Soviet Union from taking advantage of Germany being engaged in war with Great Britain and he denied that Germany was going to invade the Soviet Unio later that year.[2] Hitler told Bartha that all he wanted of Hungary was to have the Honved reinforce the eastern passages into the Carpathian mountains because as Hitler told Bartha "if Russian Bolshevism breaks through this barrier, they would advance perhaps as far as Vienna or even further".[2]

At a meeting of the Council of Ministers in Budapest on 1 April 1941 to discuss the question of invading Yugoslavia, the Foreign Minister László Bárdossy and the Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer spoke in favor of a limited invasion of Yugoslavia independent of the German invasion of Yugoslavia with the aim of occupying certain Magyar majority districts in the Banat.[3] Bartha, supported by the Chief of the General Staff, General Henrik Werth (who was also attending the meeting) spoke for Hungary joining forces with the Reich in a full invasion of Yugoslavia.[3] The prime minister Pál Teleki was opposed to the invasion, warning that to invade Yugoslavia would mean a break with Britain that he would predicated would lead to a disaster as he believed that Britain would win the war.[3] Teleki argued that since the American Congress had just ratified the Lend-Lease agreement that Britain had the full support of the United States and that the Anglo-American alliance would ultimately defeat Germany.[3] When the majority of the council decided for an invasion of Yugoslavia, Teleki committed suicide in protest and was succeeded by Bárdossy.

Bartha (second on the right) reviewing Wehrmacht troops in Jena during his visit to Germany in January 1941. The man second from the left is the Hungarian minister to Germany and future prime minister Döme Sztójay.

Bartha was a strong advocate of having Hungary fight on the Eastern Front.[4] On 23 June 1941, Bartha told the council of ministers: "I think that having defeated the Poles in three weeks, having finished off the French in about as much time, and having beaten the Yugoslav Army in twelve days and occupied the entire Balkans in three weeks, in six weeks the Germans will be in Moscow and completely defeat Russia".[4] The bombing of Kassa was used as the pretext for having the Hungary entered the Second World War in 1941. After received the reports of the bombing of Kassa on the morning of 26 June 1941, on the afternoon of the same day Bartha went with Werth went to see the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy.[5] Both Bartha and Werth were categorical in insisting that the Soviet Union had bombed Kassa and demanded an immediate declaration of war.[5] Horthy believed the claims of Bartha and Werth and ordered Bárdossy to issue the declaration of war.[5] On 27 June 1941, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union.

Werth saw the war as the ideal occasion to execute a plan for expelling all of the Jews, Romanians and Slovaks living under Hungarian rule into Galicia.[6] Ámon Pásztóy, a civil servant who haded the Public Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior testified at his postwar trial for war crimes: "the decree of expulsion was initiated by Henrik Werth, who was not a member of the Council of Ministers, but at that time was also present. On the basis of his suggestion, this proposal was presented to the Cabinet as a motion by Károly Bartha, then minister of defense".[7] Bárdossy vetoed the Werth-Bartha plan, but did agree to a scaled down version under which any foreign Jew living in Hungary was to be classified as an illegal immigrant and expelled into Galicia.[6] The plan was approved by the Council of Ministers with only the Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer voting against the plan.[7] To counter Keresztes-Fischer's objections, Bartha told the Council of Ministers that "resettlement from a military point of view is well-prepared and the displaced persons, with the support of the Hungarian military administration, will be supplied all the prerequisites which is necessary for the reconstruction of a devastated territory and the launching of their new existence."[7] Bartha added that the expelled Jews would be provided with abandoned farms so that "they can engage in agriculture" and gave his word that the "these Jews will not be exposed to any danger because they will be under the protection of the Hungarian army stationed in Galicia".[7] The American historian George Eisen wrote that Bartha's "egregious claims" were all lies and in fact the Jews deported into Galicia were subjected to systematic mistreatment as a prelude for their extermination.[7] On 10 July 1941, Miklós Kozma, the government commissioner for Ruthenia, told Bárdossy: "Next week I will put across the border non-Hungarian citizens, infiltrated Galicianers, exposed Ukrainian agitators, and Gypsies. The details have already been finalized with Bartha, Szombathelyi, and the commander of the army corps in Debrecen".[8] The Honved under Bartha's leadership was deeply involved in the deporations of Jews into Galicia in the summer of 1941.[8]

He played a large role in the unfortunate occasions of Vojvodina massacres. In March 1942, Bartha changed that rule for conscription into the dreaded labour service battalions by announcing that 10%-15% of all the men serving on the frontline lines in the Hungarian Expeditionary Force on the Eastern Front would be men from the labour service battalions.[9] However, Bartha upheld the previous rule that men serving in the labour service battalions were not to be issued arms under any conditions, which in effect left the labour service battalions highly vulnerable and led to an extremely heavy death rate as the labour service men serving on the front lines had no means of defending themselves.[9] The same order also stated that identifying Jewish men to serve in the labour service battalions would be based upon their surnames along with their occupations.[9] On 22 April 1942, Bartha changed the rule for conscription into the labour service battalions by removing the age limit of 42, which allowed the Hungarian authorities to draft any Jewish men into the labour service regardless of their age.[9]

The prime minister Miklós Kállay and his cabinet dressed in the traditional clothing of Magyar noblemen, March 1942. Sitting to the left of Kállay is the Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer and sitting to his right is the Education Minister Bálint Hóman. Bartha is sitting to the right of Hóman.

In June 1942, Bartha changed the requirement for conscription into the labour service battalions of the Honved by announcing in a speech before the parliament that henceforward being considered Jewish was to be considered in racial terms.[10] Using the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 as the inspiration, Bartha stated that henceforward Jewish converts to Christianity as well as the sons and grandsons of Jewish converts of Christianity would be conscripted into the labour service battalions.[10] On 31 July 1942, Bartha stripped all Jewish servicemen of their ranks in the Honved, giving them the status of auxiliaries without rank who were below in status to even the privates serving in the Honved.[9] The same order also applied to Hungarian Jewish servicemen who had fought in World War One in the Honved who were stripped of all their ranks and any decorations that they might had won while fighting for Hungary.[9] In the summer of 1942, the prime minister Miklós Kállay commissioned a report into allegations of mistreatment of the men serving in the labour service battalions.[11] The report presented to Parliament in September 1942 categorically stated the allegations of mistreatment and starvation of the men in the labour service battalions were true and that "brutality, violence and corruption were permanent manifestations in all the front lines".[11] Horthy fired him from the government because of their pro-German stance. Bartha was replaced by Vilmos Nagy de Nagybaczon on 24 September 1942.[12]

Later life

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Admiral Horthy greets a Hungarian serviceman who has just returned from the Eastern Front. Bartha is the man in the rear on the left.

Károly Bartha did undertake either a political or military role after his retirement. After the war, he was considered responsible for entering the war by the People's Tribunal. The Military Court downgraded him and later fired from the Magyar Honvédség. After the communist takeover, he was harassed by the police services, so he chose to emigrate to Venezuela, where he worked as a railway constructing engineer. He died in 1964 during a visit to Linz, Austria.

References

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  1. ↑ "Biography of General Károly Bartha vités Dálnokfalva (1884 – 1964), Hungary". generals.dk. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Romsics 2017, p. 87.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Bán 2004, p. 120.
  4. 1 2 Romsics 2017, p. 91.
  5. 1 2 3 Romsics 2017, p. 94.
  6. 1 2 Eisen 2023, p. 51-52.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Eisen 2023, p. 52.
  8. 1 2 Eisen 2023, p. 55.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Harrison 2023, p. 108.
  10. 1 2 Kramer 2000, p. 118.
  11. 1 2 Kramer 2000, p. 119.
  12. ↑ Braham, Randolph L. (2000). The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. Wayne State University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-8143-2691-6.

Books and articles

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  • Bán, András (2004). Hungarian-British Diplomacy 1938-1941 The Attempt to Maintain Relations. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781135753924.
  • Eisen, George (2023). A Summer of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal for the Hungarian Holocaust. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
  • Harrison, Christopher (2023). Genocidal Conscription Drafting Victims and Perpetrators Under the Guise of War. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781978791930.
  • Kramer, T.D (2000). From Emancipation to Catastrophe The Rise and Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry. London: : Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780761817598.
  • Romsics, Ignac (2017). "Hungary". In David Stahel (ed.). Joining Hitler's Crusade European Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 79–106. ISBN 9781316510346.
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