Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

We demand the immediate solution of the Hungarian question. The Hungarians failed the historical test because all of them, with few exceptions, accepted the policies of the feudal lords. We demand that the resettlement of Slovak farmers from the poor and mountainous regions begin right away to the lands in the South of the Hungarian landlords, settlers, and Fascists, who have no business here in Slovakia! We want a Slovakia without Hungarians!⁴⁰

A Slovakia without Hungarians meant deportation, the use of force against Hungarian workers, peasants, artisans who constituted 90 percent of Hungarian minority society.

No wonder the Hungarians showed no enthusiasm toward the "national and democratic revolution" in liberated Czechoslovakia. Writing in a "liberalized" mood in 1965, even the Slovak historian Samuel Cambel appreciated the reasons: "The [Slovak] settlers acquired their cattle and their equipment from the poor Hungarian peasants by means of confiscation . . . It is understandable that in the areas of colonization the [Hungarian] inhabitants greeted the [Slovak] newcomers with hostility."⁴¹ A few years later, the same historian became less understanding. Writing in 1972, he scolded the Hungarian peasants for their hostility: [They] did not greet the liberation and the restoration of Czechoslovak independence . . . it is a historical fact that in they years 1945 and 1946 the Hungarian population behaved antagonistically towards the Republic, sabotaged the program of the government, and terrorized the [Slovak] settlers . . . "⁴² Confronted with open distrust of the Hungarian population - Cambel's colleague Jozef Jablonicky, wrote indignantly-the government representative in charge of domestic affairs ordered to "intervene most harshly against all those persons who bear an irredentist or chauvinist attitude in Slovakia."⁴³

The decisions of the Potsdam Conference of the Big Three, published on August 2, 1945, caused disappointment to the Czechoslovak nationalists bent on expelling both the Germans and the Hungarians in order to make Czechoslovakia into a purely Slav state. Potsdam approved the transfer of the Germans from the Czech lands, but not the transfer of the Hungarians from Slovakia. Yet, despite disappointment, Potsdam did not slacken the Czechoslovak effort to get rid of the Hungarian minority. In fact, Potsdam was not altogether a defeat for the Czechoslovak policy to expel the Hungarians.

On of the Potsdam decisions was the transfer of Hungary's German population to Germany. This decision, in a roundabout way, was to promote Czechoslovak policy since the Germans expelled from Hungary were to make room for the Hungarians marked for expulsion from Slovakia. This strategy (whose author behind the scenes was most likely President Benes himself in collusion with the Soviet Union) became clear for everybody only during the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 when both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union were trying hard to win endorsement for the transfer of 200,000 Hungarians from Czechoslovakia to Hungary. According to Czechoslovak Strategy, the "transfer" would have been the final stage of liquidating the Hungarian minority, following "re-Slovakization," and the population "exchange" agreement with Hungary which was expected to be concluded before the Peace Conference.⁴⁴

Although Potsdam failed to approve the transfer of the Hungarians, the campaign for the expulsion of the Hungarian minority from Czechoslovakia continued unabated after Potsdam. Concurrently with the publication of the Potsdam decisions, Presidential decree 33/1945 was issued on August 2, 1945 depriving the Germans and Hungarians of their citizen-ship. On August 7, 1945, the Bratislava Pravda published a front page banner in large type: "The Germans and Hungarians have been deprived of Czechoslovak citizenship." The subtitle offered the promise: "Those who fought against Fascism will remain Czechoslovak citizens." The news story itself stressed that in Slovakia the Slovak National Council would decide on the return of citizenship.

The details of the Pravda report mostly rehashed the Kosice government program, but in a new context which is worth quoting as an illustration of the Czechoslovak perception of the situation after Potsdam:

The program of the National Front of the Czechs and the Slovaks declares, among other things, that for the sake of purification of the Czechoslovak Republic from the unfriendly German and Hungarian minorities, the Germans and the Hungarians have to be deprived of Czechoslovak citizenship, with the exception of the explicitly anti-Fascists. It was also mentioned in the government program that the other Germans and Hungarians will have the possibility to apply for the restoration of their citizenship. These applications will be adjudicated on an individual basis . . . The presidential decree 33/1945 of August 2,1945 signed by the President has now converted these principles into law. It is necessary to underscore that this decree appeared simultaneously with the conclusion of the Potsdam conference. In its decision the Potsdam conference accepted in principle the stand taken by the Czechoslovak government from the beginning.

The Pravda story was deliberately slanted because the Potsdam conference did not approve the Czechoslovak request to expel the Hungarians along with the Germans. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak government, assuming an ultimately "favorable solution," applied to the Hungarians all laws regarding general deprivation of minority rights and confiscation of minority property. And this led to a total discrimination for years to come.

Historically, more interesting than the headline story of the Bratislava Pravda for August 7, 1945, was the report in the same issue on a statement made by Minister of Interior Václav Nosek. It supplied some missing information from official sources on what went on at Potsdam:

On Friday, Minister of Interior comrade Nosek informed the representatives of the press about the diplomatic note which the Czechoslovak government sent to the three Great Powers at Potsdam requesting approval in principle of the expulsion of the Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. The Potsdam conference accepted this measure in principle. Now the President of the Republic issued a decree regarding the citizenship of persons of German and Hungarian nationality, according to which these persons lose their citizenship. This measure is justified by the cruelty of our experiences in the past and in the present. Those who were responsible for the disintegration of the Republic may not remain without our borders. The realization of this government program is guaranteed by the decree presently signed. The Minister of the Interior has already worked out the plan for the expulsion of the Germans and Hungarians in complete accord with the Potsdam decision. According to the Prague correspondent of Èas, the expulsion of the Hungarians will take place mostly in the form of an exchange of populations.

The Czechoslovak strategy, as it soon became clear, was to force the democratically-elected Hungarian coalition government to accept an "ex-change" of populations agreement, and then to achieve the expulsion of the so-called "remaining 200,000 Hungarians" at the Peace Conference. (The actual number of the "remaining" Hungarians should have been by any fair count closer to half a million.)

The Potsdam decision that the Germans should be resettled from Hungary came as a surprise to the Hungarian Government. Hungary did not ask for it, nor were other defeated satellite states Italy, Rumania, Finland, or Bulgaria - obliged to carry out similar measures. It did not take long for the Hungarians to recognize that the intention behind the Potsdam decision to remove the Germans from Hungary was to make room for the -Hungarians of Czechoslovakia.

Contemporary Communist Hungarian historiography too recognizes that the resettlement of the Germans served no Hungarian interests. According to Ágnes Ságvári, the Potsdam decision had "harmful consequences for the Hungarians. "She also reminds us that the Hungarian Social Democratic Party Objected to it because organized labor in Hungary included many Germans. Furthermore, the resettlement would hurt disproportionately the poor peasants who had been misled by Fascist demagoguery. At the same time, the right wing of the Hungarian coalition government argued against the transfer, mainly because expulsion of Germans from Hungary, when Hungarians were threatened with expulsion from Czechoslovakia, was simply regarded as irresponsible from the point of view of national interests. Nevertheless, the weight of the Communist-dominated "Bloc of the Left" prevailed over the majority opinion in the Cabinet. The Hungarian Government grudgingly obeyed the Potsdam decision of the Great Powers on the resettlement of the Germans.⁴⁵ Not all of Hungary's German population, though, had been transferred - as Czechoslovakia would have wished, "to make room" for the Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. Yet, contrary to the national wish and interest, Hungary joined the postwar totalitarian movement of population transfers, compromising thus some of the new regime's truly democratic and socialist achievements.

The Hungarian Communists, presumably in collusion with their Czechoslovak and Soviet comrades, tried to turn the transfer of Germans from Hungary into an ideological issue. They pretended to take a "progressive anti-Fascist" stand in support of the Potsdam decisions. In reality, they obediently supported the Soviet policy which, in turn, gave full support to postwar Czechoslovakia's Slav nationalist objectives, including the expulsion of the Hungarians from Slovakia.

In the context of East-West diplomacy, the Potsdam decision to transfer the Germans from Hungary was, to all evidences, a compromise. The Western Powers vetoed the transfer of the Hungarians from Czechoslovakia, whereupon-presumably as a compromise, and in support of the Czechoslovak strategy at the forthcoming peace conference-the Soviet Union proposed the transfer of the Germans from Hungary.

Details of the actual proceedings leading to the compromise at Potsdam on Czechoslovakia's demand to expel the Hungarians are still unknown. The published documents on the Potsdam conference do not cover this aspect of the Hungarian-Czechoslovak conflict. Yet, from Czechoslovak sources we do know that the question had been discussed at Potsdam at Czechoslovakia's request and that the Government of Czechoslovakia actually submitted a request for the transfer of the Hungarians to the conference of the Great Powers.⁴⁶

For a while after Potsdam, a certain confusion got hold of the Czechoslovak government regarding the transfer of Hungarians. I. Pietor, Minister of Domestic Commerce, expressed in a Cabinet meeting his doubts about the realism of such a measure. His doubts were shared by Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk and his Communist Undersecretary Vladimir Clementis. As reported, their reasoning was as follows:

Czechoslovakia had attempted to win over the Potsdam conference in the matter of the Hungarians, but the United States promptly rejected the [Czechoslovak] point of view, whereas Great Britain remained silent. The Soviet Union was now establishing diplomatic relations with the Hungarian Government, thus it seems probably that it will be able to modify the situation in favor of the Czechoslovak view. VI. Clementis informed the [cabinet] meeting that he had sent a proposal to Marshal Voroshilov, Chairman of the Control Commission at Budapest, that he would like to discuss with him the matter of the exchange of population and resettlement, and might even negotiate with the Hungarian Government, but so far has received no answer. According to confidential information, the Hungarian Government is willing to consider only an exchange of population. Nevertheless, the majority of the cabinet held that the projected law (on the confiscation of Hungarian property] be discussed in its original form. Clementis proposed that the decree be issued, but that those Hungarians who emigrate voluntarily or who will be exchanged should be promised restitution of part of their property.

The Cabinet accepted the Clementis proposal and, along with the confiscation decree, issued instructions suspending further confiscation's of Hungarian property in order to facilitate negotiations with Hungary and, also, in order to "interest the Hungarian population in the reconstruction -of Czechoslovakia."⁴⁷

In the fall of 1945, Czechoslovakia's chances for negotiations with Hungary's democratically-elected government were problematical. The Potsdam decision regarding the Germans of Hungary could only benefit Czechoslovakia. This must have been clear to the new Hungarian Government if it examined the question, as it no doubt did, from the point of view of Slovakia's Hungarian minority under the threat of expulsion. The democratically-elected Hungarian government, in a stronger position to defend Hungarian interests than the provisional one, showed no inclination for negotiations which would benefit only Czechoslovakia.

In face of Hungarian tactical resistance, the Czechoslovak press demanded negotiations without delay. However, there were skeptical voices too:

The Berlin decision gave Hungary the opportunity to rid itself entirely of the German minority. It is difficult to predict today whether or not they will take advantage of this opportunity and to what extent. According to law, they would have to deport some 430,000 Germans to the West. The first attempts, however, remained unsuccessful. Of 12,000 deported persons, 4,000 are presumed to have turned back even before they reached the border. It seems the measure will be sabotaged. . . . The Hungarians shilly-shally because they are afraid that by expelling the Germans they are creating room for the Hungarians from Slovakia and Yugoslavia. They want to leave the Hungarian minority with us at any price.⁴⁸

The Hungarians avoided the Potsdam trap by procrastination and by open opposition. They were helped, too, by the growing European disgust with the mass transfers of populations. Also the secrecy surrounding the Potsdam decision regarding the Germans of Hungary was thought to be distasteful. Anyway, the Hungarians did not cherish the idea of "exchanging 650,000 Hungarians from Czechoslovakia for 100,000 Slovaks from Hungary." (The figures are based on the last prewar census of the two countries.)⁴⁹

By the time of Potsdam in the summer of 1945, the Slovaks had evicted all the Hungarians who settled in Southern Slovakia after November 2, 1938, the date of the Vienna Award. Every one of them (31,780 according to Czechoslovak sources⁵⁰) had been transferred across the border to Hungary with whatever they could on a short notice carry with them. Their deportations carried out by the Czechoslovak Settlement Bureau, was completed by July 1, 1945.

The Presidential decree of August 2, 1945, depriving almost all Hungarians of their citizenship rights was designed to continue the process of expulsion. It is estimated that the decree terminated the citizenship of about 97 percent of Slovakia's Hungarian population. Also, it ushered in a whole series of anti-Hungarian measures, such as the cessation of retirement payments, the prohibition of any kind of welfare services to them, including public health care, etc. The evil spirit of the dreaded "Decree 33" poisoned the life of the Hungarian minority for over three years to come.⁵¹ (The decree was revoked in October 1948, following the Communist take-over in February.)

In order to be exempt from the discriminatory measures, Hungarians had to prove "anti-Fascist" activities. Slovaks, of course, needed no proof of anti-Fascism in order to enjoy full citizenship rights. The Hungarian population at large did not even petition for exemption, viewing such procedures as useless. Most of those who did, in particular dismissed civil servants, were turned down anyway. They received a resolution signed by local heads of the Slovak National Council that read: "I feel no justification for considering you exempt from the provisions of the 3rd paragraph of the regulation 99/1945 issued by the Council. I hereby so inform you."⁵²

Yet, after Potsdam, one last hope sustained the Hungarians, and everyone clung to it: The peace conference! Meanwhile, they were naive enough not to notice the new menaces closing in on them.

The determined Czechoslovak policy to eradicate the Hungarian minority continued with the Presidential decree 108/1945, issued on October 25, 1945, regarding the confiscation of German and Hungarian property. The decree legalized the confiscation of "all movable and immovable property" belonging to Hungarians unless they were exempted by virtue of the hypocritical anti-Fascist clause.⁵³ Considering that 67 percent of the Hungarians were living from agriculture, 14.5 percent from industry and mining, the projected measures would have confiscated primarily the belongings of the workers and peasants.

Talks began, in the meantime, with Hungary on population "exchange," and an order of the Minister of the Interior, dated February 14, 1946, instructed the Slovak authorities that "in case of Hungarian persons it will -be necessary to wait for further instructions." However, the order did not suspend confiscation of property. Whenever a Hungarian was declared a War criminal it was possible to confiscate the goods of Hungarians administratively, without judicial procedures. And the number of Hungarian "War criminals" was growing unchecked to about a hundred thousand! Not until after the signing of the population exchange agreement on March 31, 1946, did the Minister of the Interior issue an order which stopped the practice of indiscriminately declaring Hungarians administratively "war criminals."

While negotiations were going on between the governments of the two countries, a lively war of words was taking place between the Czechoslovak and the Hungarian press. Grievances were aired on both sides, invectives exchanged, mutually declaring each other's charges as exaggerated or unfounded. A particular favorite theme of reciprocal accusation was the questioning of each other's democracy. The Hungarians kept attacking the Czechoslovak policy persecuting the Hungarian minority as anti-democratic while the Czechoslovaks kept repeating that accepting the principle of population transfer alone could prove the Hungarians' devotion to peace and democracy.

In Czechoslovakia, the slogan branding the Hungarians a "Fascist nation" continued to be broadcast relentlessly by all means of public communication. Members of the highest state authority referred to the Hungarians as "Fascists." Said Karol smidke, Chairman of the Board of delegates in charge of administration in Slovakia: "It would be in the interest of further coexistence between the peoples of Central Europe if the question of minorities would be solved by deportation of the Fascisized German and Hungarian population."⁵⁴ At the same time, the Czechoslovak State authorities continued their lenient attitude towards the Fascist Slovak past. Only a few Slovaks were held responsible for establishing and supporting the Fascist Slovak state during the war. To this very day, distinction is made between Hungarian "popular Fascism" and Slovak "political Fascism." The Slovak Fascists supposedly were merely a political sect, "a narrow stratum of L'udák collaborators."⁵⁵ The Slovak Fascists are never identified with the Slovak people.

In the fall of 1945, the Slovak press was greatly dissatisfied with the insufficiency of anti-Hungarian measures. It advocated measures similar to those applied in Bohemia against the Germans.⁵⁶ Perhaps the best description of the Slovak aspirations was the speech on November 7 by Karol smidke.

Historical facts prove that it was precisely the Hungarian minority which appreciated least the democratic rights and opportunities in Czechoslovakia and, in the difficult days of 1938, it became a fifth column on behalf of Hungarian imperialism, the purpose of which was the disintegration of the Czechoslovak Republic and the subjection of the Slovak people. Historical facts also prove that during the six year occupation of our southern territories the Hungarians had ruthlessly and crudely deprived this area of its Slovak character, chasing the Slovaks away from the towns and villages. And, it should be added, that it was not merely the Hungarian intruders who behaved thus, but the overwhelming majority of the local Hungarians as well; they became a reliable support for any [Hungarian] regime, including the Fascist Arrow-Cross rule; they were willing tools of the policy of denationalization directed against the Slovaks. If we now insist that Slovakia be freed of this irredentist [Hungarian] minority, which had always been a tool of the conspiracies directed against the Slovak people and the Czechoslovak Republic we are not only following the interests of the sovereign rights of our state and of our nation, but also the interests of peace and consolidation in Central Europe. Thus I propose the truly democratic solution, that the Hungarian minority of Slovakia be exchanged for the several hundred thousand Slovaks in Hungary who want to return to their own home. If the Hungarian side slyly and stubbornly rejects this worthy solution, which is in accordance with the principle of national self-determination, then the accusation of being anti-democratic cannot be leveled at us. Undaunted, we insist on this demand of ours because it is of prime importance to us. We also believe that after its realization no obstacle will remain to friendly and good-neighborly relations between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.⁵⁷

I am quoting smidke's speech at length not only because of its relevance at the time he delivered it, but also because its concepts continue to dominate Slovak historiography on the subject.

Among many other distortions, smidke pretended as if all Slovaks had been chased away from "Hungarian occupied" South Slovakia. The fact is that no more than 5,000 were expelled while some 300,000 stayed. If smidke would consider as "expelled" those who left on their own as recent settlers, even so, the figure would not be higher than several tens of thousands. And smidke's statement that the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian population supported the Fascist Arrow-Cross rule is pure fabrication.

Toward the end of the year 1945, the Czechoslovak nationalist land reform ran into difficulties. Because of the halt in the expulsion of the Hungarians, ordered during the Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange negotiations, the land issue became a major concern of the central Government in Prague. J. Ïuris, Minister of Agriculture, expressed the Government's worries over expecting too much from Seizure of the minorities' land in general:

Even if it were possible to expel every German and Hungarian from the Republic, there wouldn't be enough land to ensure the adequate economic and cultural development of our farmers. In Slovakia, after the total deportation of Germans and Hungarians, only 6 hectares of land would be available for each agricultural unit, whereas in the Czech lands even less, 5 hectares in Bohemia, 4 in Moravia. Up to now, we have confiscated 150,000 hectares of land in Slovakia, and relocated 4,000 persons. There are difficulties with the resettlement of the Hungarians. If it were possible to speed up the confiscation of the estates of reactionary Hungarian landlords, in accordance with the provisions of regulations issued by the [Slovak National] Council, we would not have to wait for an exchange of populations and for deportations . . . The Fascist Hungarians should have been expelled long ago from their estates and transported to labor camps, or allocated as farm laborers.⁵⁸

Ïuris seemed to have been ignorant of the fact that the number of so-called Hungarian landlords in South Slovakia was relatively negligible. Ninety-nine percent of the Hungarian farmers were kulaks or poor peas-ants. The Czechoslovak land reform of 1945 was consistently nationalist favoring the Slavs. Large landowners of Slav nationality, as long as they had not compromised themselves publicly by collaboration with the Nazis, were exempted from land reform, whereas the estates of the non-Slavs were taken away regardless of class or past behavior.

Fortunately, at that time, the Communist Party had not been united in the demand for a radical and general land reform. In Slovakia, an additional obstacle to a sweeping land reform was the opposition of the Democratic Party, which was the more effective since a member of the Party, Dr. M. Kvetko, was the Minister of Agriculture. A situation, rare at that time, favoring the Hungarians was the result. The first round of land reform in 1945 protected many Slovak estates in mixed or purely Hungarian inhabited areas, thus making these regions safe against Slovak colonization by the familiar means of land distribution rigged by nationalist preferences. After the Communist takeover in 1948, when the second round of land reform came, the Slovak estates too were subject to division. But by then the Hungarians were entitled to receive land.

The first round of Hungarian-Czechoslovak negotiations on population exchange ended in a deadlock. The Prague meeting on December 3-6, 1945, was adjourned with no results. The Hungarian public opinion greeted the failure of negotiations with relief, hopeful that the peace conference may settle the conflict between the two countries in the spirit of fairness. The relief did not last long. Under pressure from the Allied Control Commission in Hungary, after eight weeks of recess, the Hungarian-Czechoslovak negotiations were resumed.

In the meantime, the discrimination against the Hungarians in Slovakia (still thought to be by many Hungarians only temporarily) was developing into a system. It became an established policy producing unending series of social and cultural blows against the Hungarian minority. But its theory and its practice resembled Nazism. Actually the two fundamental principles of the constitutional law of 1942 under Fascist Slovakia against the Jews were no different from those of the Presidential decrees of 1945 against the Hungarians-loss of citizenship and confiscation of property. Czechoslovak policy against the Hungarian minority from 1945 to 1948 became a political system which, not unlike Nazism, repressed all humanism and internationalism in the name of the purported interests of the Nation and of the State.

There were a few people in the highest government circles who saw the nationalist shortsightedness of this policy. Such was the case of Jan Masaryk. He anticipated difficulties in expelling the Hungarians even be fore his return from exile: 'It was clear from the beginning that the problem of the Hungarian ethnic group of Slovakia, although an insignificant matter in comparison with the resettlement of the Germans would mean a much more serious problem on international and diplomatic levels."⁵⁹ Jan Masaryk, unlike President Benes and the majority of those in leadership, was no prisoner of anti-Hungarian hatred. Yet dissent or even counsel of moderation had no chance to assert itself in an atmosphere of massive emotional nationalism. Thus it was easy all along to preserve the semblance of unanimity in support of Czechoslovak policy against the Hungarian minority.

From the moment of liberation, the Czechoslovak Government was determined to follow the same policy against the Hungarians as it did against the Germans. Yet, from the moment of liberation, it was obvious that popular sentiment was different in Slovakia from that in the Czech lands. Anti-German sentiments broke loose in Bohemia, whereas a certain calmness reigned for awhile in Slovakia. There were no lynchings of Hungarians. It took the harsh measures decreed from above to arouse mass nationalist hatred. In this respect, the situation in Slovakia was different too from other Danubian countries with Hungarian minority populations. In Rumania, in the fever of reprisals, the members of the Maniu guard carried Out a whole series of blood-baths against Hungarian communities. In Yugoslavia, it was with the murder of more than a thousand Hungarian peasants that the Yugoslavs evened the score for the mass murders perpetrated by the Hungarians at Ujvidék (Novi Sad) and Zablya during the war.⁶⁰

The hate campaign unleashed against the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia in 1945 has been stepped up, rather than allowed to subside, as the years went by. The literature of discrimination against the Hungarians has grown to enormous proportions. It would fill volumes to collect the laws, regulations, decrees, instructions, and guiding principles issued against the Hungarian minority. The Central Settlement Bureau at Prague has published a 700-page book merely to explain the measures dealing with property confiscation.⁶¹

Slovak historiography continues to indulge in anti-Hungarian interpretations. There is a noticeable effort to keep the anti-Hungarian edge of Slovak nationalism alive. Writing of the postwar years, V. Jarosová and 0. Jaros approvingly remarked in a study published in 1965: anti-Hungarian nationalism marked something special during those years-a significant portion of the Slovak nation, including the working class, fell under its spell."⁶² The authors failed to mention that it was the result of planned mass manipulation.

Only after the Communist takeover in 1948 has postwar nationalism come under criticism for a while as a "bourgeois" aberration. However, anti-Hungarian Slovak nationalism was rehabilitated by the end of the l960s and became unassailable by the 1970s. (See the works of Cambel, Vietor, Purgat, and others.) Some Slovak historians go even beyond mere rehabilitation of postwar nationalism. Approving the legal measures as well as the illegal methods of persecution, they elevate postwar mass discrimination against the minorities to a respectable status be treating it as an organic part of "anti-Fascism. ⁶³

In the postwar drama of minority persecution, the survival of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia had hung by a hair on five occasions.

The Hungarians were first threatened with destruction when it seemed that the Red Army's front, moving from north to south, would sweep them out of the country. The second danger of annihilation came at the time of Allied armistice negotiations with Hungary. Had the United States not vetoed the expulsion of the Hungarians as a condition of the armistice, the Hungarians of Slovakia might have shared the fate of the Sudeten Germans.

Potsdam signaled the third danger. The Czechoslovak request for the liquidation of the Hungarian minority by expulsion was shipwrecked, thanks again to an American veto. The fourth fateful threat was the Hungarian government's acceptance of the Potsdam decision on the expulsion of half a million Germans from Hungary, "to make room" - according to Czechoslovak plans-for several hundred thousand Hungarians from Slovakia. The fifth danger was the peace conference. Once again, the veto of -the United States prevented the expulsion of the "final" two hundred thousand Hungarians, according to Czechoslovak plans, in addition to those hundred thousands who were supposed to be transferred according to other Czechoslovak-Hungarian agreements on "exchange" of populations.

It is safe to say that without the help of the United States, the Hungarian minority would not have survived in Slovakia.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority