During World War II, Hungary was an ally of the Third Reich. At the same time, the government in Budapest did not declare war on Poland and, due to the tradition of brotherhood, provided assistance to the thousands of Polish civilian and military refugees who had been crossing the Polish-Hungarian border since 18 September 1939. The greatest test of brotherhood, however, was to come in the summer of 1944.
At the end of 1941, Hungary became fully involved in the war. As expected by the German ally, more than 200,000 Hungarian soldiers were sent to the Eastern Front. The Hungarians lost thousands of soldiers in battles, including at Voronezh. The Germans treated the Hungarian forces as “cannon fodder”, failing to properly replenish the equipment the Hungarians were losing. The defeat at the Don became an impetus for the government of Miklós Kallay to enter into talks with the Allies about the possibility of leaving the alliance with the Third Reich and joining the fight on the side of the Anglo-Saxons. The Germans, knowing the uncertainty of their ally, entered Hungary on 19 March 1944.
Soon, another mobilization of the Honveds was ordered to fight the Red Army and they were sent to the Eastern Front. They were stationed, among other places, in the occupied Polish territories. While devotedly fighting against the Red Army, they refused to allow the Germans to fight Polish troops, and established friendly contacts with civilians, often protecting them against attacks by the occupiers.
A group of Polish Army officers interned after the 1939 defensive war in the camp in Ujedörek-puszta (Hungary), February 1940. Print provided by Wanda Cichoszewska from Nowy Sącz, a teacher at the school for Polish refugees in Kadarkut (Hungary) during the war. Photo from the AIPN collection
Despite this, the Germans constantly tried to instigate a Polish-Hungarian conflict. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, more than 30,000 Honveds1 from the 2nd Reserve Corps and the 1st Hussar Division, subject to German orders, were stationed in the Warsaw District. Some continued to fight with the Soviets in the area from Wołomin to the Praga outskirts of Warsaw, while others waited to return to their homeland. The Germans demanded that their command participate in the suppression of the uprising. The then head of the Hungarian troops sent to the eastern front, General Antal Vattay, categorically refused to fight against the Poles. The Hungarians were then withdrawn to the outskirts of Warsaw to reinforce the so-called "ring of death" and not to allow partisans wishing to support the insurgent struggle to enter the fighting city, nor to let civilians out of the city. In both cases, what happened was exactly the opposite of what the Germans wanted. Seeing the attitude of the Hungarians, the representatives of the Home Army decided to discuss the possibility of the Honveds joining the insurgents. In mid-August, General Béla Lengyel became the new commander of the II Reserve Corps.
General Pole
General Lengyel was born in 1897. According to his genealogy, he had Polish roots and came from the Zajączkowski family. During the partition period, the Zajączkowski family fled to Transylvania. They settled in Szarvas and changed their surname to Lengyel. In Hungarian this word means Pole. Béla Lengyel graduated from infantry school in Budapest. He fought on the fronts of both world wars. In the 1920s he was employed in the command staff. He also studied at the Military Academy. His career was thriving. In the 1930s, he worked directly in the circle of Regent Horthy.
He also began a career in diplomacy. Between 1934 and 1939, Lengyel was the military attaché of the Kingdom of Hungary in, among other places, the Second Republic of Poland. During his diplomatic service in Poland, he became known as a man who was active and open to developing cooperation with the Poles. He sought to explore the history and mentality of his Polish brothers. It was also thanks to his commitment that the Polish-Hungarian border was re-established in 1939. Taking into account Lengyel's knowledge of Poland and the Polish mentality, he was entrusted with command of the II Reserve Corps from mid-August 1944. He was promoted to the rank of Major General on 1 September 1944.
Béla Lengyel (1897-1988)
Negotiations without a chance
Representatives of the Home Army Headquarters. seeing the favourable attitude of the Hungarians, had been trying to establish talks with them since mid-August. The arrival of General Lengyel boosted the insurgents' hopes of real help from the Honveds in the fight against the Germans. Takin into account that there was a change of power in Budapest and Géza Lakatos, who was seeking an agreement with the Allies, took over as prime minister, helping the Poles could be welcomed after the end of the war while re-establishing the post-war borders. Official talks between the Home Army and the Hungarian command soon followed.
During the negotiations, which lasted from mid-August to 8 September 1944, Jan Stępień “Szymon”, head of the Home Army's Information and Propaganda Office in Mokotów, and General Lengyel, from the Hungarian side, worked out the points of future military cooperation. It was assumed that the Hungarians would join the side of the insurgents as the Royal Hungarian Volunteer Legion.
Hungary's Extraordinary MP and Minister Plenipotentiary in Poland Andre de Hory (in the middle) at the Hungarian Embassy before submitting letters of credence to President Ignacy Mościcki. He is accompanied by the Hungarian military attaché in Poland, Major Lengyel (first on the left), the aide-de-camp to the President of the Republic of Poland, Captain Józef Hartman (second on the left), the Head of the Diplomatic Protocol of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Count Karol Romer (second on the right), and the Secretary of the Hungarian Embassy in Poland, Renyey (first on the right). Warsaw, 2 May 1935. Photo from the NAC collection)
Hungarian Extraordinary MP and Minister Plenipotentiary in Poland Andre de Hory, accompanied by Hungarian Military Attaché in Poland Major Lengyel (first on the right) and the Secretary of the Hungarian Embassy in Poland Renyey (first on the left) at the Royal Castle. Warsaw, 2 May 1935. Photo from the NAC collection
Unfortunately, the talks failed - for several reasons. Firstly, they were undertaken too late, when the Hungarians already knew that the Poles were alone in the fight. Secondly, Hungarian demands in return for military aid were impossible for the Polish side to meet. The Hungarians wanted the Poles to guarantee them that, if the Soviets entered Warsaw, the Soviets would not attack the Hungarians. During a conversation with Stępień, Lengyel asked:
"What will happen to us (...) when the Russians enter Warsaw?"2.
This shows the Hungarians' lack of orientation in the real situation of the Central European countries in the plans of the superpowers. The Hungarian general could not make such a serious decision without consulting Budapest, even though he sympathized with the Poles. Moreover, Regent Horthy, when sending Lengyel to occupied Poland, was to tell him:
"We have nothing to look for in Warsaw. The Poles are our friends, the Germans our comrades-in-arms. We must not be drawn into their conflict".
Despite this, General Lengyel forwarded the Polish offer to his superiors. He found himself in an uneasy position because, on the one hand, he knew that he could not get involved in the German-Polish conflict and, on the other hand, he could not stand by and watch the criminal actions of the Germans.
At the time, there was another factor that was detrimental to the success of the official Polish-Hungarian talks. On 23 August 1944, Romania left the Axis and supported the Red Army's operations, which directly threatened the integrity of Hungary's borders and made the government in Budapest anxious for Hungarian troops to return from the Polish territories as soon as possible and fight in defence of the homeland.
Words of appreciation for fighting Warsaw
The Germans became increasingly suspicious of their recalcitrant allies. Fearing fraternisation with the Poles, orders were given for German intelligence units to follow each of the Hungarian divisions stationed near Warsaw. Eventually, the Germans, who were increasingly suspicious of the Honveds, agreed to the Hungarians' requests and began to gradually send their troops back to Hungary. They decided that stationing Hungarians in the Warsaw District of the Home Army would have the opposite effect than they had planned. The Hungarians not only refused to fight the Poles but provided various forms of assistance to the fighting Polish soldiers and civilian population.
The IPN brochure: Poles are our friends. Hungarians and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (2017)
General Lengyel thus found himself in a difficult position: not only did he have to inform Budapest about the talks with the Poles, but also the German side, which - while spying on the Hungarians - was familiar with Polish-Hungarian contacts. Lengyel did not conceal these activities from the Polish side. Years later, he referred to the starting of talks with the insurgents as “toying with life”3. Thanks to the attitude of the Hungarian general, the negotiations conducted by the Home Army, took place in a friendly atmosphere. As Rev. Stępień recalled, the Hungarian general conveyed his “words of appreciation for fighting Warsaw”.
When it became clear that there was no possibility for the Hungarians to officially support the insurgents militarily, Lengyel was to try to enter into surrender talks with them as requested by the German side. As he himself pointed out, he was not doing it to comply with a German order. He wanted to work out the best possible terms of surrender for the Polish side. The command of the Home Army firmly rejected such a possibility.
General Lengyel was praised by members of the Underground State. When talks were held regarding the transfer of the Honveds to the Polish side, he resided in the villa of engineer Wojciech Chrzan in Zalesie Dolne. It is worth mentioning that the intermediary between the two negotiating parties was a Hungarian, Aranka Komáromi. Despite the failure of talks to include Hungarians in the insurgent forces, Budapest allowed other forms of assistance to the insurgents, which General Lengyel and his soldiers were keen to implement.
Many years after the end of the war, Stanisław Markowski, son of Władysław Markowski - a member of the Central European Desk in the Foreign Affairs Section of the Polish Government Delegation for Poland, with whom the Hungarian general was personally acquainted - conducted correspondence with Béla Lengyel concerning 1944. In his letters, the Hungarian described what assistance he had given to the fighting men. He pointed out that any form of assistance had exposed him personally to the wrath of the German generals. In his diary he wrote:
"The frequent visits of my Polish friends were frowned upon by the Germans to such an extent that they led to my transfer from Grodzisk Mazowiecki to Rawa Mazowiecka."5.
The general wrote down his memoirs in a publication entitled Európa forgószelében, devoting a lot of space to Polish affairs. Unfortunately, this publication has not yet been published in Polish. Lengyel's memoirs sometimes differ in their assessment and the steps he took when he stationed near Warsaw, compared to the Polish memoirs of Rev. Jan Stępień. Lengyel stressed that he had always tried to be a friend of the Poles, but during the Warsaw Uprising he was bound by the orders of his superiors. Stępień, on the other hand, claimed that he could not fool General Lengyel and told him that the Polish side could not provide the guarantees requested by the Hungarian side.
Despite the failure of official talks, those held at local levels often resulted in Hungarians deserting to Polish units, reselling/trading or giving away arms and ammunition for free, feeding civilians, attending church services and, above all, informing the Polish side of planned German pacification actions. The Hungarians also donated bandages and medicines to the Poles.
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Béla Lengyel died in 1988. After the war, he was persecuted in his country. In 1948, he emigrated to Australia. In 2019, a bilingual plaque commemorating the general was installed on the façade of the building where he lived in Szarvas.
Author: Maria Zima-Marjańska
1 Honved - (Hungarian: honvéd) - literally defender of the homeland, Hungarian soldier.
2 B. Lengyel, Európa forgószelében. Visszaemlékezések. Tapasztalatok és benyomások egy katona életéből, Szarvas 2011, p. 257, translated by M.Z.M.
3 B. Lengyel, Európa forgószelében…, p. 258, translated by M.Z.M.
4 UKSW archives, Rev. Prof. PhD with habilitation [Polish: dr hab.] Jan Stępień, pro-rector of ATK, Wspomnienia dotyczące II wojny światowej [Recollections of World War II], 1970, ref. N-I/7, recording 7-3
5 After: M. Ostoja-Mitkiewicz, op. cit. p. 47.