The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

to a rejection of the Anschluss (union) option. Days before this announcement,
the staff officers of the Austrian Military Office (Staatsamt für Heerwesen)
worked out the plan for the military occupation of Western Hungary. The secret
plan consisted of seven irregular columns advancing into Western Hungary
under the guise of providing assistance to a population revolting against
Hungarian authorities. The headquarters staff was instructed to forbid accepting
Communists, monarchists, Jews and Crown Council members as volunteers
into the seven bands. 106
Chancellor Karl Renner and Foreign Minister Otto Bauer notified Colonel
Thomas Cunningham, the head of the Entente mission in Vienna, on May 11 of
the plan. The colonel had previously linked the territorial gain in Western
Hungary with the repudiation of the Anschluss plan and specifically urged the
Austrian government to state its territorial claims. This the highest level of the
government officially registered on the same date. Colonel Cunningham urged
the Austrian government on May 16 to militarily occupy the Westungarn
territory, stressing that “the Entente will not object.” At the same time, he
repeatedly urged that German-Austria join in the war against the Hungarian
Soviet Republic on the side of the Czechoslovak, Romanian and South Slav
armies. 107 It was not, then, by chance that the other leading politicians of the
Entente Powers drew the attention of the Austrian government, confidentially
but not officially, that: because they cannot gain border adjustments for Austria
in the Italian and South Slav areas, it should lay a claim in western Hungary as
compensation. It thus became clear to Chancellor Renner, in Paris at the time,
that the right decision was made with regard to Austria’s standpoint: to seek
compensation in western Hungary in lieu of South Tyrol, given to Italy. For
Vienna, the Hungarian Proletarian Dictatorship came as an opportune event.
The Austrian delegates to the Peace Conference wasted no opportunity to raise
alarm over the dangers of Bolshevism – presenting the annexation of Western
Hungary as a defensive move. On top of it all, they did it with great skill,
raising the specter before the Entente decision makers, in turn, the dual
possibilities of Anschluss and Hungarian Bolshevism. Of the latter, they were
fully aware of its usefulness as an argument only as long as the Hungarian
Commune was in existence.
The fate of Westungarn, or Western Hungary, was decided at the Peace
Conference between May 27 and 31, 1919, although few notes remain in the
minutes of the discussions. We can only deduce from various sources the
loathsome and distasteful negotiations. The Hungarian Soviet Republic began
its northern campaign at this particular time (May 30-June 24) to recapture the
Hungarian populated areas of Northern Hungary and Sub-Carpathia, which
again favored Austria’s stand. The essence was that the annexation of Western
Hungary was ultimately linked with the South Slav country’s failure to make
gains of Austrian territory (Klagenfurt and area) and Belgrade was instead
106 Fogarassy, 1971, op.cit., p. 293.
107 Ibid, pp. 293–294; Ormos, 1983, op.cit., pp. 194, 275.
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