THE PERIOD OF BOMB OUTRAGES ARCHIVAL SOURCES TO THE WAVE OF POLITICAL TERRORISM OF THE FIRST YEARS OF THE HORTHY-ERA, 1922–1924 After World War I, in the 1920s, paramilitarism and paramilitary violence was an almost natural phenomenon...
moreTHE PERIOD OF BOMB OUTRAGES
ARCHIVAL SOURCES TO THE WAVE OF POLITICAL TERRORISM OF THE FIRST YEARS OF THE HORTHY-ERA, 1922–1924
After World War I, in the 1920s, paramilitarism and paramilitary violence was an almost natural phenomenon in Hungary, just like in many other countries of Central Europe. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the collapse of the Hungarian Republic of Councils, the new right-wing government establishing its power with the help of the Entente states could only difficulty rule the quasi anarchistic conditions of the country. In 1920–1921, Budapest and the Hungarian country were terrorized by irregular military formations that were formally part of the National Army, but often operated completely independently.
This 2-year-long wave of paramilitary violence which was committed by mainly detachments subordinated to influential paramilitary commanders First Lieutenant Iván Héjjas, Lieutenant Colonel Pál Prónay or Major Gyula Ostenburg-Morawek is called the White Terror. Radical right-wing irregular soldiers exploiting the weakness of the government committed several serious crimes like robbery, plunder and even murders, frequently by anti-Semitic motivations, and they did it in the disguise of law enforcement measures, since in this period the military authorities possessed police jurisdictions over civilians as well in order to restore the order.
The government led by Prime Minister Count István Bethlen gradually ceased the White Terror, and disbanded/regularized irregular/paramilitary troops and formations. The otherwise strongly right-wing Hungarian government really did its best to tranquilize the radical right-wing forces and create some kind of social and political peace at last, after the long years of war and civil war.
Although paramilitary violence finally ceased, and irregular military formations were formally disbanded, the radical right-wing Hungarian militia movements mainly consisting of World War I veterans, active and demobilised soldiers lived on the form of secret right-wing paramilitary organisations. The influential radical right-wing organisation Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete (ÉME) – Association of Awakening Hungarians which sometimes operated in a similar way to a political party still had a strong paramilitary character, and it had its irregular militia called Nemzetvédelmi Főosztály – Department of National Defence. The government, mainly the army and the Ministry of Defence still used up Freikorps-like militia units consisting of veterans for two reasons. On the one hand, the right-wing political and military elite was still afraid of another possible Communist takeover attempt, and used the radical right-wing militias as auxiliary political police forces, keeping them prepared; on the other hand, the countries of the losing side of World War I were subject to serious limitations of armament. Therefore, the government and the military leadership did its best to circumvent limitations, and treated free-corps-like irregular military formations as secret semi-official reserve forces of the army, preparing for a war in the near future in which the territories that were truncated from Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon were to be reoccupied. Hungarian anti-Communist and irredentist troops were coordinated by the secret military organisation called Kettőskereszt Vérszövetség – Double Cross Blood Union in the 1920s, and thousands of armed people were kept in secret military status, waiting for deployment. The military and the radical right-wing political movements had very strong relations these times due to the historical traumas, and hyper-nationalism and exaggerated patriotism nearly necessarily coupled with violent anti-Semitism.
Some secret irregular military formations, mainly related to the Department of National Defence of the ÉME and Double Cross Blood Union started becoming concerned in political terrorism, like the luckily prevented bomb outrage plan in Jászkarajenő in 1922, the bomb outrage of Erzsébetváros that required 8 casualties on 2 April 1922, or the bomb outrage of Csongrád in which 3 people died on 24 December 1923. All the third grave terrorist incidents were committed by the members of the Department of National Defence of the ÉME who were at the same time irregular soldiers of Double Cross Blood Union, and paramilitary commanders First Lieutenant Iván Héjjas and Lieutenant Commander Pál Prónay arose in all the three cases as possible instigators, together with Captain Gyula Gömbös, later Minister of Defence, then Prime Ministers, in this period the leader of the oppositional Party of Hungarian National Independence (popularly called race-defenders).
Although the police did its best to investigate the grave bomb outrage cases, and lower-ranking paramilitary commanders like István Keő-Kucsera, József Márffy or János Piroska (all informally subordinated to First Lieutenant Iván Héjjas) and their minions were committed to trial for their actions, it seems that influential military and political circles tried to save them from prison or capital sentence. It is very curious that in the end only the young veteran József Márffy, the mastermind of the bomb raid of Erzsébetváros who was responsible for the death of 8 people was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment. Although the evidences in all the three criminal suits seemed to be persuading, someone had the power to influence the judges and achieve that terrorists should be exempted from the charges or sentenced only to a couple of years in prison. Although Prime Minister Count István Bethlen did his best to create consolidation in Hungary in the political, social and economic sense of the word, radical right-wing political forces still had some influence, and for example Gyula Gömbös, the informal leader of the Hungarian radical right-wing movements of the 1920s, had a personal good relationship even with Regent Governor Admiral Miklós Horthy who had used to be a paramilitary commander himself in the civil war of 1919–1920 before elected by the parliament as Regent Governor with the strong support of the Entente Powers. The age of the bomb raids, as the press of the opposition sometimes called the period between 1922–1924 finally ended with the fact that murderous, radical right-wing, anti-Semitic terrorists remained at large, and many of them found their places in the authoritarian conservative, strongly right-wing regime of Hungary of the 1920s.
The present source publication makes an attempt to reconstruct certain serious, terroristic crimes committed by the members of irregular military formations that operated under the supremacy of the secret Hungarian military organisation Double Cross Blood Union via micro-historical case studies, mainly based on archival records of criminal suits in the custody of the Budapest City Archive and in the Central Archive of the National Archives of Hungary. Furthermore, beyond the introduction and analysis of the individual cases of three different, but interrelating bomb outrages from the period 1922–1924, it intends to draw general conclusions about the controversial and complex relationship between the early Hungarian paramilitary radical right-wing movements and the government/military.