Dream's End

Up the winding road from Berchtesgaden surged Adolf Hitler's six-wheel staff car. At the bronze gates beneath the brooding Berghof, Hungary's Regent Nicholas Horthy climbed stiffly out, entered the rock, rode 300 feet straight up through granite to the aerie's hushed reception hall where the Fuehrer waited. Russian soldiers plunging toward the Carpathians had made the summons urgent. Briefly, now, and harshly, Hitler outlined his demands: the time had come to "coordinate" Germany's eager little ally. Full military occupation would be necessary, and a more tractable government; henceforth, too, more Hungarian workers for German industry, more Hungarian food for German mouths, would be required. Hungary, in short, was within the inner fortress (Festung Deutschland now, not Festung Europa); the time to play at being a sovereign ally had gone by.

Fading Light. The 75-year-old regent for a nonexistent king, the admiral of a nonexistent fleet, stood with his host at the outsize picture window, looking down toward Salzburg and the Ostmark, once called Austria. It was in the Austro-Hungarian Navy before World War I that horse-loving Horthy got his admiral's stripes. It was from the hands of this onetime fellow subject of Kaiser Franz Josef that Horthy got the territorial plums which had made World War II so far so profitable. As he listened now to the Fuehrer's rasping voice, Horthy knew a dream was ended. He shook his head. Hitler pounded the big table. Enraged, Horthy pounded right back, as he had in years gone by, when Upstart Hitler had wanted concessions from Hungary's proud Magyars.

Suddenly Hitler switched, graciously allowed his guest to think matters over. That night, while the old man dozed and thought, Nazi paratroopers dropped silently on dark Hungarian airfields. Before the early morning mists had lifted on Monday, March 20, German infantry motored into Hungary, deployed to seize every important rail and road center and all communications. Abruptly Budapest Radio ceased using as a theme the Rakoczi March with its impudent first line: "God of the Hungarians, destroy the German Army."

Bleak Dawn. Feebly the Budapest Government resisted. Premier Nicholas Kallay had asked the meaning of troop concentrations along the Austrian border, but the troops were over the line before the official answer came through. By the time the new German plenipotentiary, Dr. Edmund Veehsenmayer, called at the Foreign Office to explain suavely that Germany could not risk the rise of a Badoglio, German SS men were already stopping trains and hauling out Jews for "questioning." The Germans had long enjoyed the right to send 40 military trains a day through Hungary, fly their planes wherever they chose. Thus, when the rude awakening came, occupation was complete before those who might have tried to fight knew it had begun.

By midweek, Hungary's brief spasm of confused resistance was over. Horthy had returned to the empty, echoing Royal Palace in Buda. Hitler's choice for Premier, Dome Sztojay (pronounced approximately Sto-yah'-y), a major general suddenly turned marshal, brought his colleagues up the hill to take the oath of office in Horthy's presence. They were a dismal lot. After Sztojay. who had been Hungarian Minister in Berlin since 1935, came Denoe Racz, Deputy Premier. Antal Kunder, Minister of Trade, and Andor Jaross, Minister of Internal Affairs, all followers of the Nazi-worshipping Premier Bela Imredy, who had to resign in 1939 when it turned out that he. had Jewish blood. The rest were bank clerks, bureaucrats and run-down landlords. Horthy listened drowsily to the ceremony, agreed to come to cabinet meeting the next day.

Full Swing. The new government ordered the parliamentary "incompatibility committee" to get busy. Composed of dependable stalwarts, its function is to pass upon the outside activities of all Parliament members, revoke the immunity to arrest of those the committee considers out of line. Soon arrest of prominent Hungarians, in & out of Parliament, was in full swing. Concentration camps were enlarged and new ones established. Word got round that Heinrich Himmler had paid Budapest a visit, stopping at the Hotel Szent Gellert, now Gestapo headquarters.

A few Hungarians went south toward Yugoslavia where Marshal Tito offered a chance at organized resistance to the invader. A few headed northeast, where there were signs that night-flying Russian planes may have dropped exiled Hungarian Communists in the long Carpathian valleys. But the vast majority kept still and hoped that Hungary would not become a battleground.

Said the careful London Times last week: "No sympathy need be wasted on the rulers of Hungary who thus meet the Nemesis of opportunism and greed that have served them for a policy during so many years. They have been the jackals of the Nazi beast of prey. . . . They have no right to complain."

Said one incurable Hungarian: "Are we not helping the Allies? Look! We are pinning down 100,000 Nazi occupation troops."

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