On The Periphery of The Bloodlands Hungarian Troops at War Against Soviet Partisans

1
IAKH HIS4090 UiO
ON THE PERIPHERY OF THE BLOODLANDS:
Hungarian Troops at War against

Soviet Partisans
Tamás Farkas
Spring 2020
2
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
1.1. Historiography and the Current State of the Art 5
1.2. Theory and Method 8
1.3. The Scope of the Thesis 9
1.4. Outline 9
2. Visions of the East
2.1. The Central Powers’ Occupation of Ukraine in 1918 11
2.2. Germany’s War Aims in the East: The Second World War 12
2.3. The Military Occupation Zone 14
2.4. Hungary Enters the War 16
3. The Soviet Response
3.1. The Development of the Partisan Forces 17
3.2. The Strategy of the Partisan Forces 20
3.3. The Brutalization of the Partisan War 21
4. Preparation for the War of Annihilation
4.1. Abysmal Conditions in the Occupation Forces 24
4.2. Orders and Instructions 27
4.3. Experiences Preceding the First Combat Engagements 31
4.4. Wehrmachtsangehörige 33
4.5. The Complexity of the Operational Area 35
5. War on the Jews
5.1. The Fate of the Jewish Population until the Arrival of the Hungarian Troops 37
5.2. Putting the Pieces Together 40
5.3. The Cooperation between the Hungarian Troops and the SS 44
6. War on the Partisans
6.1. Interpreting Combat Reports 46
6.2. Early Cooperation between the Hungarian Troops and the German Command 48
6.3. The Barbarization of the Anti-Partisan War 50
6.4. German Attempts to Revise Anti-Partisan Tactics 55
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7. War on the People?
7.1. The Anti-Partisan Guidelines of the Hungarian Army 58
7.2. Draining the Water 63
7.3. Towards the End in the East 65
8. Free Will
8.1. The Scope of Independent Action: The Officer Corps 68
8.2. Volunteering: Rank-and-File Soldiers 72
9. Motivations
9.1. Ideology 75
9.2. Race 78
9.3. Comrades in Arms: German and Hungarian Officers 84
9.4. World of War 86
Conclusion 89
Bibliography 95
Appendix: Map 102
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1. Introduction
From November 1941 until October 1943, three Hungarian Light Infantry Divisions carried out
occupation tasks subordinated to the German Army Group South. According to his wartime diary,
Gyula Daróczi, a soldier in one of the three divisions who came from a simple peasant family, was
enlisted on 15th November 1941 at battalion 40/I about to be deployed in the Soviet Union. There was
nothing extraordinary about Gyula Daróczi. After having received his call-up, he got drunk, and the
next morning he walked to the train station with his sister and crying mother. He soon left for the
Soviet Union with his battalion on a train. In January 1942, he arrived at the area of deployment
northeast of Kiev in the occupation zone of Army Group South. A couple of months later, around Easter
time in 1942, Darózi’s diary was already packed with incidents of the war behind the front lines that
was raging between Axis troops and the Soviet partisans with the most extraordinary brutality: the
burning of villages, the shooting of civilians, including women and children, torture, no prisoners taken
by either side, and executions.1
The brutality of the war was reflected in the disparity between the casualties suffered by
Hungarian troops and the Soviet partisans. Occupation Group East lost 800 soldiers between November
1941 and July 1942. In the same period, 15,970 "partisans" were reported to have been killed.
However, about 30% of the reports are missing.2 Assuming fairly consistent casualty rates and combat
engagements for the missing reports, around 20,000 people could have been killed during this period in
the anti-partisan war. In 1945, Soviet authorities claimed that during the entire period of occupation,
from September 1941 until October 1943, the Hungarian units had killed 38,611 Soviet citizens in the
territory of Chernigov oblast.3 However, Soviet reports and investigations were apparently unable to
differentiate between the deeds of German troops and the Hungarian units. In many judicial documents,
the Soviets used ‘Germans,’ ‘fascist occupiers,’ ‘Hitlerites and their lackeys’ interchangeably.
1
Gyula Daróczi, „A 40/I. zászlóalj megszálló tevékenysége Ukrajnában,” HL TGY 3220, entry for 15th November 1941.
2
Krisztián Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok a Szovjetunióban, 1941-1944: Esemény – elbeszélés – utóélet, (Budapest:
Osiris, 2015), p. 398.; Krisztián Ungváry, A Magyar honvédség a második világháborúban, (Budapest: Osiris, 2004), p. 225.
3
Document 83 in Tamás Krausz and Éva Mária Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok a Szovjetunióban: Levéltári
dokumentumok (1941-1947), (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2013)
5
The deployment area of the Hungarian divisions laid on the periphery of the historical
landscape described by Timothy Snyder in the Bloodlands. As Snyder points out, between 1933 and
1945, 14 million people died in the Bloodlands as victims of murderous policies rather than casualties
of war.4 In this thesis, I seek an explanation as to why there were so many civilian casualties in the anti-
partisan war waged by the Hungarian troops. Did these civilians lose their lives due to the Hungarian
troops’ implementation of murderous policies, or were they rather collateral damage in the anti-partisan
war?
1.1. Historiography and the Current State of the Art
Historical works written before the fall of Communism on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain barely
mentioned the topic. Western works did not venture beyond short generalizations, usually claiming that
the treatment of the local populations by Axis troops, such as Romanian or Hungarian units, was more
lenient than that of German troops.5 One of the earliest studies of the question anchored in substantial
archival research was Truman Anderson’s Hungarian Vernichtungskrieg, published in 1999. Another
one of Anderson’s later works about the combat around Yeline also holds much relevant information
about the activities of Hungarian units.6 The first substantial study on the topic published in Hungary
were the relevant chapters of Krisztián Ungváry’s history of the Hungarian Army during the Second
World War (2004), as well as an article by the same author published in 2007.7
The interest of the broader public was awakened in 2013 by a collection of primary sources
from Russian archives, published by Éva Mária Varga and Tamás Krausz. Krausz, who penned the
introduction, argued that the atrocities committed by the Hungarian troops were partly due to the racist
indoctrination to which the soldiers were subjected in Hungary between the two world wars.8 A
response to Krausz’ and Varga’s work is Ungváry’s book about the Hungarian occupation forces
(2015), which emphasizes situational factors in its explanation of the atrocities. 9 To this date,
Ungváry’s book remains the most informative secondary source on the topic by a wide margin. The
4
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. ix-x.
5
Alexander Dallin, John Armstrong, Peter Gosztonyi. in Truman O. Anderson, „A Hungarian Vernichtungskrieg?
Hungarian Troops and the Soviet Partisan War in Ukraine, 1942,“ Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Vol. 58 (2), (1999), p.
346.
6
Truman O. Anderson, Ch. 7: “Yeline: A Case Study in the Partisan War, 1942.” In Grimsley, Mark and Clifford J. Rogers
(ed.). Civilians in the Path of War, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2009)
7
Ungváry: A magyar honvédség a második világháborúban; Krisztián Ungváry, “Hungarian Occupation Forces in the
Ukraine 1941-1942: The Historiographical Context” in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 20(1), (2007).
8
Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok a Szovjetunióban: Levéltári dokumentumok (1941-19473
9
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok a Szovjetunióban
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debate about the participation of the Hungarian troops in the anti-partisan operations under the
command of the Wehrmacht culminated in a two-hour-long debate between Ungváry and Krausz in
2016.10
Truman Anderson’s studies do a great job uncovering the details of selected combat
engagements between the Hungarian forces and the Soviet partisans. In his studies, he claims that the
civilian losses were largely due to collective reprisals carried out by the Hungarian troops who often
failed to directly engage the elusive partisan groups. The loss of civilian life is presented in the
framework of the anti-partisan war, and the collective reprisals are directly linked to military
engagements. The implicit suggestion is that had it not been for the partisan war, the people who were
killed might well have survived as far as the Hungarian commanders were concerned. Although
Anderson duly notes that Occupation Group East had “its own Vernichtungskrieg mentality,” he does
not attempt to find the roots of such mentality.11
Yet, in Anderson’s studies, the Hungarian forces are agents acting in a vacuum. They appear out
of nowhere to find themselves in the Soviet Union engaged in the anti-partisan war from December
1941. In Anderson’s presentation, the chief cause of the suffering of the local population was that they
were “caught in the path of war” between two merciless regimes, Nazi Germany and the Communist
Soviet Union, neither of which tolerated a “middle road” for the locals.12 The population was forced to
support either one of the two sides, which led to their punishment from the other side. Subsequently,
Péter Szabó and Norbert Számvéber, too, assessed the behavior and the deeds of the Hungarian troops
in the occupied area in the context of the anti-partisan war without providing context about the
Hungarian Army before the Second World War.13
The crucially needed context was provided by Tamás Krausz. He drew a direct line from Adolf
Hitler through Miklós Horthy and the Hungarian General Staff down to the commanders and soldiers in
the field.14 In addition, Krausz claims that situational factors were important as well, such as the elusive
nature of the enemy, the frustration of soldiers over the death of their comrades, the feeling of revenge,
and the impunity of crimes committed against the civilian population.15 The reason that the
10
Krausz-Ungváry discussion in Kossuth Klubb, Budapest, February 18, 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJjPUB7O-04, accessed 25.05.2020.
11
Anderson, „Hungarian Vernichtungskrieg,“ p 365.
12
Anderson, „Yeline,” p 212.
13
Péter Szabó, “A Magyar királyi honvédség és a tudatos népirtás vádja,” in Történelmi Szemle Vol. 55 (2), (2013); Péter
Szabó, “Adalékok a magyar királyi honvédség megszálló alakulatainak tevékenységéről a keleti hadműveleti területen
(Rejmentarovka, 1941. december 21.),” in Hadtörténelmi Közlemények Vol. 124(2), (2011); Norbert Szamveber, “Egy
forráskiadvány margójára,” in Hadtörténelmi Közlemények Vol. 126(2), (2013).
14
Tamás Krausz, “Előszó: Az elhallgatott népirtás,” in Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok, p.13.
15
Tamás Krausz, “Előszó: Az elhallgatott népirtás,” in Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 34.
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introduction penned by Krausz elicited such a response among historians and also among the public is
that Krausz politicized the question.
Krausz and Varga are of an older generation of historians who started their careers in
Communist times. The most important characteristic of Krausz' writing is that he accepts the Soviet
narrative on the Second World War. This is discernible already on the very first page of the introduction
in which he calls the Axis war against the Soviet Union “the looting war of the Hitlerites and their
lackeys,”16 which was an official description of the war in post-war Communist Hungary.
In contrast, Krisztián Ungváry belongs to a younger generation. He is a representative of an
intellectual and public current that emerged in Central Europe after 1990 and which considers the
Soviet Union and Communism almost as bad as Nazi Germany – or even worse. By emphasizing the
totalitarian, dictatorial and brutal nature of Stalinism, Ungváry comes close to equating the two major
sides of the Eastern Front.
The debate about the participation of the Hungarian military in the atrocities of the Second
World War is eerily similar to the German Historikerstreit of the 1980s. Ernst Nolte was accused of
relativizing the Holocaust by claiming that National Socialism was a reaction to Soviet Bolshevism.
Jürgen Habermas claimed that this is nothing but the whitewashing of Germany's past.17 Ungváry's
secondary sources implicitly show that he was inspired by the German Historikerstreit; he does his best
to present the Soviet partisans in a negative light. He almost exclusively relies in his presentation of the
guerillas on historians whose books go a long way to discredit Soviet partisans, chiefly the Polish
historian Bogdan Musial and the Russian researcher Alexander Gogun. Regardless, Ungváry’s book has
been groundbreaking.
Ungváry makes use of many theories from social sciences and from social psychology
pertaining to the matter of why groups and individuals end up murdering people. Applying the findings
of Stanley Milgram and Christopher Browning is an essential part of Ungváry's quest to explain the
phenomenon of mass murder. In contrast, it is conspicuous that historians who sought to explain the
Wehrmacht's atrocities with ideology (for example, Omer Bartov) are absent from his list of literature.
It is necessary to consider if the authors are using these stories and narratives to achieve a
purpose unrelated to historical research. Krausz directly accuses many of the contemporary historians
in East-Central Europe, including Hungary, of whitewashing national history. 18 On the other hand,
Krausz is sometimes accused of whitewashing Soviet history in order to legitimize Communist rule
16
17
Leidulf Melve, Historie: historieskriving frá antikken til i dag, (Oslo: Dreyers, 2010), p. 190.
18
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until 1990. Krausz wants to protect the myths associated with the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet
Union; Ungváry wants to destroy these same myths. However, for all their disagreements, both Krausz
and Ungváry are first and foremost historians and not ideologues. At the end of the day, their arguments
do not go beyond what can be supported and defended by facts.
Both sides are proponents of empiricism in research. In particular, Krausz seems to believe that
the credibility of his claims is proportional to the volume of primary sources he presents. Ungváry
pursues a positivist approach, as well. His arguments for the justification of the anti-partisan war (but
not the massacres of civilians) stem from a positivist interpretation of contemporary international law.
He claims that the Axis armies had the right to execute partisans because the Soviet Union had not
ratified the Hague protocols. For Krausz, the very fact that Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the
Soviet Union to kill and enslave its people makes everything else pale in comparison and he believes
that anything was justified to stop the "primordial evil."19
Truman Anderson's case studies do not even concern ideology, just like the works of Szabó and
Számvéber. These works look at the problem at a strategic-military level. Krausz' point of view is that
of a political historian unconcerned with military details. Meanwhile, Ungváry uses theories about
human behavior to explain the same phenomenon.
1.2. Theory and Method
Social theories concerning human behavior under stress or in extreme circumstances are relevant to the
present research. Milgram’s experiments and findings have been utilized by Christopher Browning and
Ungváry in case studies of mass executions. Chiefly, I rely on Harald Welzer’s and Christopher
Browning’s works in explaining the situational factors that led to participation in murders.20 Omer
Bartov’s writings about the importance of the de-modernization of the battlefield, as well as ideological
indoctrination, has also been an inspiration and a framework for comparisons.21
I found a copious amount of relevant material in the military archives section of the
Bundesarchiv (BA-MA) in Freiburg. For wartime Hungarian documents and diaries, I consulted the
collection at the Military History Archive in Budapest (Hadtörténelmi Levéltár, HL). Files of postwar
trials conducted by Soviet authorities were published by Krausz and Varga, and the documents of trials
19
20
Harald Welzer, Gjerningsmenn: Hvordan helt vanlige mennesker blir massemordere, (Oslo: Forlaget, 2013); Christopher
Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, (New York: HarperCollins,
1992).
21
Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich, (New York: Oxford University, 1991).
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conducted in Hungary are found in the Historical Archive of the Security Services (Állambiztonsági
Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, ÁBTL) in Budapest.
Soviet sources need to be checked against German and Hungarian sources to arrive at definitive
conclusions. As much as possible, I tried to uncover events utilizing both types of sources combined:
wartime documents and postwar documents.
1.3. The Scope of the Thesis
Geographically, the scope of the present study is the area between Kiev, Gomel, Bryansk, and Kharkov;
mostly, the Chernigov area under Army Group South (see map in the appendix).
Hungarian troops were deployed in this area from December 1941 to September 1943. Within
this period, the first half of 1942 is covered best by archival sources. The source base for 1943 is so
one-sided (mostly Soviet sources) that only a sketch of the anti-artisan war in 1943 could be developed.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus-shutdown has limited my access to relevant literature in the most
crucial, finishing period of writing the thesis.
1.4. Outline
Following the introduction, the second chapter gives a broad overview of what Germany and Hungary
wanted to achieve in the Soviet Union. The occupation of Ukraine in the First World War is used as a
comparison. Establishing a connection with the First World War is essential because many of the actors
on both sides had their first war experience in the First World War, and they considered the Second
World War as round two.
Chapter three describes the Soviet response to Operation Barbarossa behind the front lines. This
chapter also aims to address the question of the Soviet partisans’ contribution to the brutalization of the
war.
Chapter four describes how the Hungarian units got their education in violence even before they
arrived in the operational area, as well as how they were torn out from the Magyar Királyi Honvédség
(Royal Hungarian Army) and had become Wehrmachtsangehörige, members of the Wehrmacht. This
chapter also presents the ethnic complexity of the operational area.
In chapter five, a thorough investigation of the evidence is presented about the treatment of the
Jewish population by Hungarian troops.
The sixth chapter provides an overview of the anti-partisan war and the cooperation between
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German and Hungarian troops. This chapter also presents the brutality of the war behind the front lines,
as well as how some German officers attempted to rationalize anti-partisan warfare.
Chapter seven discusses how the scope of the anti-partisan war expanded to include an ever-
growing part of the population, following the lack of success of Axis troops against armed partisan
groups.
Chapter eight discusses to what degree soldiers could make a decision about their level of
participation in murders and executions.
Chapter nine presents the motivation of soldiers to commit atrocities.
The thesis ends with a concluding chapter in which the pieces fall into their place.
2. Visions of the East
Operation Barbarossa started on the 22nd of June, 1941. War arrived in the forested region between
Bryansk and Kiev in September. In October, the Wehrmacht managed to encircle most of the 13 th and
the 3rd Russian Armies in a pocket south of Bryansk. The outcome of the battle of Bryansk was
catastrophic for the Soviet troops; after heavy losses, most of the remaining soldiers in these two
armies surrendered and became prisoners of war (POW), while parts of the troops managed to break
out and hide in the forests and villages.22
By the end of October, the Wehrmacht had taken the entire region in which later Axis troops
and Soviet partisans fought their war behind the front lines. But these autumn days of 1941 were not
the first time that the German military marched into or through the villages of these borderlands
between Ukraine and Russia. Older residents might have recalled the time of a chaotic, bloody turmoil
that embraced the region following the Russian revolution of 1917. Decades before any national
socialist or fascist indoctrination, German and Austro-Hungarian military leaders were engaged in 1918
in anti-partisan warfare in Ukraine that appears to be similar in its methods and its ruthlessness, even if
not in its scale, to what German and Hungarian military leaders were doing in the Eastern Front in the
Second World War. The Wehrmacht’s counter-insurgency guidelines issued in October 1941,
Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, partially drew from the German troops’ experience in Ukraine
in 1918.
22
David M. Glanz, Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941, (Stroud: History, 2011), p. 135-147.
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2.1. The Central Powers’ Occupation of Ukraine in 1918
When the First World War broke out, Germany’s limited goals in the East were territorial annexation in
the Baltic area and the weakening of Russia. The long-term utility of Russia for Germany was that
Russia was a source of raw materials and agricultural products, as well as providing a market for
German products.23 Austria-Hungary’s war goals against the Russian Empire were defensive.
Following the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, Ukraine was cast into turmoil as well with a
civil war between Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian Bolsheviks, the latter supported by Russian
Bolsheviks. In February 1918 Ukrainian nationalists were already on their last leg in the civil war. To
save themselves, they asked for armed support from Germany and Austria-Hungary.24 The quickly
advancing German troops took Kiev from the Bolshevik forces without much resistance and
established what amounted to German military occupation, although not formal, over Ukraine. An
Austro-Hungarian army followed suit to secure its own zone of influence and occupation.
The treaties at Brest-Litovsk did not set the exact borders between Ukraine and Russia, and
neither were the zones between the German and Austro-Hungarian military occupation agreed upon.
This led to the continuation of the guerilla war between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers as well
as their Ukrainian allies even after Russia signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3rd March 1918.25
Also, frictions between the occupying German and Austro-Hungarian troops were frequent. The area
between Kiev and Bryansk remained contested between Ukrainian nationalists and Bolshevik forces
(both Ukrainian and Russia) and the German occupying troops as well as their Ukrainian allies.26
The two Central Powers had somewhat different goals. Austria-Hungary was in the midst of a
severe food crisis and the country’s only interest was to pump as much grains and other material out of
Ukraine as possible in the shortest period of time without any kind of consideration to the political
situation or the future of Ukraine.27 As far as Austria-Hungary was concerned, once they stripped
Ukraine of its valuables, the Russians could have it back.28
Germany, too, was eager to exploit Ukraine economically, but Ludendorff had long-term
23
Fritz Fisher, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschand 1914/1918, (Düsseldorf:
Droste, 1964), p. 128.
24
Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its People, (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2010), p. 516.
25
Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, p. 515.
26
Plah S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917-1918, (New Brunswick: Rutgers,
1971), p. 170.
27
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 99.; Fisher, Griff nach der Weltmacht, p. 715.; Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche
Ostpolitik 1918: Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges, (Wien: Oldenburg, 1966), p. 122-123.
28
Telegram between the Austrian leaders, Count Czernin and Prince Gottfried zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst. 25.03.1918.
Quoted in Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 120.
12
visions as well that required Ukraine to remain in the grasp of Germany, preferably as a nominally
sovereign country. First and foremost, it was important that Russia was never to control this
“breadbasket” again.
Despite having plans since 1914 for establishing German dominance over Ukraine, when the
land eventually fell to the Central Powers in 1918, German leaders did not possess a set of occupation
policies. The German and Austrian generals, with their armies stationing in Ukraine, received a free
hand in conducting not only military operations but also local political affairs insofar they impacted the
security of the armed forces.29
For the moment though, the singular concern of the generals on the ground was to supply their
motherlands with grains. Due to its lack of interest in the future of Ukraine, Austria-Hungary quickly
turned to forced grain requisitions. When the peasants resisted, collective punishment measures were
introduced.30 The Chief of Staff of the German military in Ukraine, Wilhelm Groener, recalled that it
would have been advisable for Germans to follow the Austrian example, which they soon did.31 As
Groener wrote in his memoirs, during the entire occupation period there was a constant state of low-
level warfare between the occupiers and the locals.32
It is unlikely that these peasant revolts were centrally organized and led by Bolshevik leaders
because at that time Ukrainian Bolsheviks were not organized enough to have possibly coordinated
such a resistance.33 It seems that the chief reason for the isolated pockets of peasant resistance and
guerilla warfare was first and foremost the policy of forced grain requisitions, and then also the impact
of the collective punishments.
2.2. Germany’s War Aims in the East: The Second World War
The Third Reich’s war aims were more far-reaching from Germany’s goals in the First World War.
According to the Nazi leadership’s plans, the geographic, demographic, and economic development of
the Soviet Union were to be rolled back to pre-modern times. In addition to separating and annexing
vast territories from the Soviet Union, the European part of Russia was to be occupied and organized
into the Reichkommissariat of Muscovy. Hitler’s long-term visions also included pushing the border
between the Germanic and the Slavic people to the Urals to provide a Lebensraum for Germans and
29
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 113.; Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik, p. 118-119.
30
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 119., 125., 145.
31
Wilhelm Groener quoted in Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 114.
32
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 259.
33
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, p. 144-145.
13
other Germanic peoples of Europe.34 The first step to realize these visions was Operation Barbarossa
whose aim was the destruction of the Soviet armed forces and the Soviet state, the conquest of territory
until roughly the Astrakhan – Arkhangelsk line, and then building up defensive positions on the
Volga.35 The territory to be conquered during this campaign included Moscow and the surrounding
industrial regions, but not the area between the Volga and the Ural Mountains. Had the operation been
successful, there would still have remained a “Russia” on the map, although one robbed of most of its
European territories.
Economically, German leaders in the First and the Second World War assigned the same role to
"European Russia:" to provide agricultural goods and raw materials for Germany, in exchange for
finished products. During the First World War, Russia was still an overwhelmingly agricultural country.
However, between 1918 and 1941, the country went through a period of industrialization at a truly
astounding speed, forced on by Stalin. Letting economic developments continue would have meant the
German industry would have had to face down the extra competition in the occupied Soviet
territories.36 Therefore, according to the initial Nazi plans, the Soviet industry was going to be brought
back down to sustenance level.37 This had gruesome consequences for the population living in
industrial areas.
In Nazi plans, the European side of the Soviet Union was divided into two major zones: the
southern zone which was capable of producing agricultural surplus due to its “black earth” regions, and
the Northern zone, dominated by forests, in which the maintenance of the population required the
import of agricultural goods from the south. Had Operation Barbarossa succeeded, this movement of
grains and food from one part of Russia to the other would have been stopped. The agricultural
production of the southern zone was to be maxed out, and all the surplus was going to go to feeding the
German military and the Reich.38 Due to this arrangement, millions of people in the northern zone were
to starve to death in the industrial regions. However, as the war went on much longer than expected, the
plans for the destruction of the Soviet industry were gradually abandoned.39
Villages inside the Bryansk forests could only produce enough for themselves. Based on a study
34
Jürgen Förster, Ch. VII.: “Securing ‘Living-Space’,” in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p.
1236.; Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies, (London: Macmillan, 1957),
p. 284.
35
Norman Rich, Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion Vol. I., (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1973), p. 212.
36
Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 307.
37
Rolf-Dieter Müller, „From Economic Alliance to a War of Colonial Exploitation” in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second
World War Vol. IV., p. 177-181.; Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 305-307.
38
Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 310-311.
39
Kim Christian Priemel, “Occupying Ukraine: Great Expectations, Failed Opportunities, and the Spoils of War, 1941-
1943” in Central European History Vol. 48. (2015).
14
conducted by the Wehrmacht High Command in early 1941, even within Ukraine, only the southern
part of the land was capable of producing an agricultural surplus, the rest had to rely on imports due to
higher levels of industrialization and population density. From an agricultural point of view, the locality
was neither a deficit nor a surplus area.40 On the other hand, it was not an industrial region either. In the
entire territory in which Hungarian troops conducted security tasks in 1942-1943, only a handful of
references to factories and industrial production could be found in wartime German or Hungarian
documents.41 The region’s most important raw material was timber which was to be exploited as much
as transportation allowed it.42 However, the Bryansk region's transportation system had to be utilized
by the Wehrmacht to the degree that it did not allow for large-scale timber operation. Roads were
unreliable, and keeping open the railway system for the Wehrmacht posed great difficulties due to the
partisan activities.43 Thus, the region fell on the wayside in German economic plans.
However, the Bryansk forests did not fall under the purview of a civilian administration whose
primary focus would have been economic exploitation. The Wehrmacht occupied these lands in
October 1941, and as the front moved eastwards, civilian administration was supposed to be extended
to the territory. However, the front never moved that much eastward. What was originally planned as a
temporary measure, became permanent. The Bryansk forests remained in the zone of military
administration until Soviet troops came back in October 1943. Therefore, the methods and policies
applied by the occupying Wehrmacht troops were more consequential for the locals than any economic
plan crafted in Berlin.
2.3. The Military Occupation Zone
Operation Barbarossa was started by three massive clusters of infantry and panzer armies with their
supporting troops: Army Group North (Heeresgruppe Nord) was to capture Leningrad, Army Group
Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) was aiming towards Moscow, and Army Group South (Heeresruppe Süd)
was to conquer Ukraine and the oilfields of the Caucasus. The border between Army Group Centre and
Army Group South bisected the Bryansk forest right in the middle.
The territories closest to the front were occupied by the front-line fighting troops. Every Army
(Armee) had a territory behind its front-line troops in which it was responsible for security and the
40
Müller, „From Economic Alliance” in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 175., 178.
41
Diary of László Ráskay, p. 2., HL TGY 3659.; Korück 580 Feindlage im Eaum Chomutowka-Chinelj, 09.03.1942, BA-
MA, RH20-2/323.; H.ptm. Krauss VO. bei 105. le. Div an Bfh.H.Geb.B. Chef des Stabes, 29.11.1942, BA-MA RH22/90.;
PzAOK2 an Heeresgruppe Mitte, 03.09.1942, BA-MA RH21/2/343
42
Rich, Hitler’s War Aims Vol. I., p. 338.
43
Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia, (Oxford: Berg, 1989): p. 42-53.
15
unimpeded supply of materials to the troops. The area around the city of Bryansk and the northern side
of the Bryansk forest was under the control of the Second Panzer Army of Army Group Centre. The
territories south of the dividing line between Army Group Centre and South were either directly under
the control of the Second Army (AOK2), or under the control of Army Group South itself, when the
front-lines were so far to the east that the Second Army was no longer in the area. Both the commander
and the territory of an Army’s rear area was designated as Korück, an abbreviation for Kommandant
rückwärtiges Armeegebiet (the title of the commander) and also for Kommandantur rückwärtiges
Armeegebiet (the name of the administrative unit). Each Korück had three or four security divisions for
security tasks, such as guarding railways, in addition to SS units, local gendarmerie, and staff from the
Wehrmacht’s secret police, the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP). To control the entire territory of a Korück
580, where the Hungarian units stationed, such forces were inadequate.44
Jürgen Förster shows that Hitler’s decrees about the persecution of the Soviet campaign were
run past the Wehrmacht leadership and that the highest-ranking generals had no objections to them.45
For the civilians, perhaps the most consequential of these decrees was that the Wehrmacht was
absolved of the obligation to prosecute offenses committed by soldiers against civilians.46 In particular,
"indignation over atrocities" committed by the enemy was accepted as a justifiable cause that would
annul a soldier's criminal offense.47
In 1942, the difference between the civilian administration’s areas and the military occupation
zone was that in the military zone the practical interests of the Wehrmacht enjoyed primacy over the
long-term ideological and economic goals of the Nazi Party.48 When the partisans of the Bryansk forest
raided villages for food, they were not directly hurting the Reich’s economic interests; they took food
that could only have been used by Wehrmacht. When they destroyed trains, they blew up supplies that
were on the way to front line troops.49 When they sabotaged timber felling, they directly hurt the
interests of the front-line troops who were supposed to receive that timber for heating.50 Due to severe
manpower shortages, the Wehrmacht prioritized front-line operations and only used a number of
divisions that just about did the job at an acceptable level. The primary role of the security divisions
was to secure the transport of goods and the supply of food to the front. The permanent occupation of
44
Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies, p. 69.
45
Jürgen Förster, „Hitler’s Decision in Favour of War against the Soviet Union” in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second
World War Vol. IV., p. 35-38; Jürgen Förster, “Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation” in MGFA, ed.,
Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 481-513.
46
Förster, „Operation Barbarossa,“ p. 502.
47
Förster, Operation Barbarossa,“ p. 504.
48
Rich, Hitler’s War Aims Vol. I., p. 337.
49
For example, Hptm. Krauss VO bei 105. Fernschreiben, 16.12.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
50
For example, Hptm. Letzmann an AOK2, 02.11.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
16
every corner of the region was not possible in the short term.
Overall, for the Wehrmacht, the people who lived in the forests, let it be stragglers, villagers or
partisan bands, were not worth more alive than dead; neither were they worth more dead than alive.
The Wehrmacht did not have a reason to go into these villages and execute as many as possible but it
did not have a reason to spare anybody’s lives either if matters came to that.
2.4. Hungary Enters the War
Hungary’s main foreign policy goal in the interwar era was the revision of the Treaty of Trianon of
1920 which stripped the country of 72% of its territory. In the changing international scene from the
mid-1930s, closer alignment with Germany opened doors to a partial revision between 1938 and 1941.
Similarly to Hungary, Slovakia and Romania as well aimed to secure Germany’s support for their
respective territorial demands against Hungary. The price to be paid was an ever-closer alignment with
Germany’s foreign policy.
When Operation Barbarossa began, Hungary did not immediately send troops to assist
Germany. Hitler did not ask for such assistance. However, Romania and Slovakia took part in the
campaign from the beginning and Chief of the General Staff Henrik Werth was pressing Governor
Miklós Horthy to offer military assistance to Germany, pointing out that Hungary’s territorial rivals
were going to gain Germany’s favor while the Hungarians would be left behind. On 26 June 1941,
unmarked warplanes dropped bombs on Kassa (present-day Kosice) which was at that time part of
Hungary. On 27 June, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union referring to the incident as casus
belli. Thus, from 27 June, Hungary was at war with a country with whom it had no territorial
disagreements and in alliance with other Axis members, Slovakia and Romania, with whom it did have
territorial disputes. The initial strategy of the Hungarian General Staff was large-scale mobilization for
the war effort in order to secure Germany’s support for postwar territorial demands.51 Hungary thus
mobilized its most modern troops for the war, an Army Corps including mechanized forces.
However, as the war progressed, German victory no longer seemed so sure. In October 1941,
Governor Horthy appointed a new Chief of the General Staff which marked a turn in Hungary’s
strategy in the war. The new Chief of General Staff, Ferenc Szombathelyi, did not believe in the
certainty of German victory and aimed at limiting Hungary’s participation in the Soviet campaign to
the bare minimum still acceptable for Germany.52 The pillar of this new approach was the preservation
51
Sándor Szakály, Volt-e alternatíva? Magyarország a második világháborúban, (Budapest: Istar, 1999), p. 62-68.
52
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 218-220.
17
of forces. The change in strategy had a great impact on the Hungarian troops that were still in the
Soviet Union and also on those that were about to replace them. With Szombathelyi at the helm,
training and equipping forces sent for occupation duties in the Soviet Union received a lower priority.
To replace the regular troops of the Hungarian Army Corps still stationing in the Soviet Union as
occupying forces, Szombathelyi promised to send five infantry brigades in October.
In terms of equipment and manpower, these brigades were subordinated to the Hungarian
Occupation Group which was established in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, on 6 October 1941. Three of these five
brigades were to be deployed northeast of Kiev to provide security in the rear of Army Group South.
The Hungarian Occupation Group was divided into Occupation Group East and West in February
1942, as well as the infantry brigades were renamed “light infantry divisions” to make the Hungarian
contribution appear larger on paper. In reality, the name-change did not bring any qualitative or
quantitative improvement.53
3. The Soviet Response
3.1. The Development of the Partisan Forces
The Soviet authorities in the interwar period had a mixed experience about guerrilla or partisan warfare
emanating from the Russian Civil War. On the one hand, irregular forces fighting on the side of the
Bolsheviks in Siberia and elsewhere contributed to eventual Bolshevik victory. 54 On the other hand,
commanders of such irregular forces had a tendency to act independently from central authorities.55
Therefore, the Soviet authorities concluded that organizing a large-scale partisan movement had
operational potential in war, but it was a weapon that was very difficult to control. Therefore, it should
only be used when other options had been exhausted.56
From the mid-1930s, after the Soviet Union went through a massive state-led industrial
development and the Red Army was modernized, the concept of partisan warfare was abandoned. Now
the Red Army was considered capable enough to stop any attack right on the Soviet borders, after
which it was supposed to launch its own counterattack and take the fight to the enemy's territory. 57
53
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 189-191.
54
Leonid D. Grenkevich and David Glantz, ed., The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1944: A Critical Historiographical
Analysis, (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 51.
55
John A. Armstrong, Soviet Partisans in World War II, (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1964), p. 11.; Kenneth Slepyan,
Stalin’s Guerillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II., (Lawrence: University Press, 2006), p. 18.
56
Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, p. 52-57.
57
Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 20.
18
Advocating for the necessity of training partisan forces did not only become unnecessary but even an
act of defeatism. A situation in which partisan troops would be conducting sabotage behind enemy lines
on Soviet territory became politically too uncomfortable even to contemplate.58 Many officers who
previously worked with preparation to conduct irregular military operations had to learn this during
Stalin's purges, along with those who in different capacities took part in the Spanish civil war.59
Thus, when the Wehrmacht's first troops crossed the Soviet border on the 22nd of June, 1941,
many of those with expertise in this particular type of warfare had been dead already. Although the
accumulated institutional memory and experience of waging irregular warfare had been purged from
the Red Army and the Party, there were a few individuals who survived the purges. One of them was
Sydor Kovpak, a veteran of the First World War and the Russian Civil War who had considerable
experience with partisan warfare.60
Within a week of the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, partisan war was back on the
Soviet leaders’ agenda. Stalin issued a directive on 29th June, in which he commanded local Party
officials to assist the Red Army in any possible way. For example, assistance included organizing
irregular partisan forces in order to “create unbearable conditions for the enemy.”61 The execution of
this order fell to the partisan units about to be organized by local Party officials, as well as the NKVD’s
boarder-guard troops.62 Because the personnel of these NKVD detachments had not received any
special training beforehand, the operation and the organization of these units ignored geography and
local circumstances, and popular support was also missing, by the end of 1941 most of these units
behind the lines had dispersed or had been annihilated.63 However, in some territories where the terrain
was favorable to irregular warfare, surviving members of these territorially organized units became the
trusted functionaries of partisan bands that developed in 1942. Such was the case in Chernigov oblast
northeast of Kiev where Aleksei Fedorov, a party member since 1927, headed a territorial band in
1941.64
The Wehrmacht destroyed one Soviet army after another in encircled pockets. Many Red Army
stragglers were stuck behind the front lines trying to decide what to do next. Soviet soldiers were
becoming increasingly aware of the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war (POW) by the German
58
Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, p. 59.
59
60
GFP Bericht 14.07.1942, BA-MA RH 22/47.
61
Alex J. Cummins, ed., Documents of Soviet History, Vol. 9.: Great Patriotic War, 1941-1943, (Gulf Breeze: Academic
International, 2016), p. 87.
62
Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, p. 79.
63
Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 27-28.
64
Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, p. 85.; Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, p. 71-72.; Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p.
30-31.
19
military. At the same time, returning to the Soviet lines was not a good option either because that
would have entailed getting executed as a deserter.65 Therefore, many Red Army soldiers had been
hiding in the massive forests south of Bryansk following the battle of Bryansk in October 1941 where a
handful of local party officials and NKVD officers began to organize them into partisan detachments in
the closing months of 1941.66
The nascent partisan groups managed to equip themselves by finding weapons, including heavy
weapons, that the retreating Red Army left behind scattered around in the countryside (including
artillery pieces and even a couple of repaired armored vehicles) or by capturing weapons from various
Axis military formations. The locals also helped the partisans to obtain arms and supplies. Weapons
and ammunition were also airdropped by the Soviet army.67 Far from being amateurs at the art of war,
the earliest partisan groups were well-led former soldiers who represented a potent, highly mobile
force, molded under the leadership of competent commanders.68 The main logistical challenge of the
partisans was the securing of food supplies.69
The Bryansk forests’ location was strategically important. The forests themselves were large
enough to provide shelter for many partisan groups. At the same time, the approaches to Kursk and
Kharkov were in the vicinity, making it possible to conduct sabotage against rail lines transporting
supplies to the Wehrmacht, and also against communication lines.70 The geographic conditions were
ideal for irregular warfare. In addition, the region was also close enough to the front lines so that the
isolated islands of partisan-controlled territories could maintain connection with the Soviet “mainland,”
receiving regular airdrops.
65
Stalin's Order 270, 16.08.1941 in Cummins, ed., Documents of Soviet History, Vol. 9., p. 140-143.; Captured Soviet radio
message about starvation of POWs: Fernspruch von Lt. Burkhardt 17.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/174. On punishment for
getting captured by Germans: GFP 730 Tätigkeitsbericht 27.03.1942, BA-MA RH22/199.
66
Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, p. 90., 94.; Anlage 3. Zu Kdt.r.A.G.580 24.02.1942, BA-MA RH20/2/323; Auszug aus dem
Bericht der Baugruppe Strobl 17.03.1942, BA-MA RH23/173; Anruf O.K. Sewsk 10.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175.
67
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 263, 265.; Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, p. 163-165.; Korück 580
Abendmeldung an A.O.K.2. 10.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175; Anlage 13 Meldung von L.Sch.Batl.544. 10.04.1942, BA-
MA RH23/173; Meldung von 102. Le. Division an Korück 580 17.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/174; Korück 580 Bericht
über Gefechtstätigkeit vom 1.5. bis 8.6.42, 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH23/176; Anlage zu Korück 580 no. 266/42
13.03.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
68
Ltd. Feldpolizeidirektor H.Geb.B, Partisanenlage und bekämpfung nördlich der Linie Konotop-Rylsk 12.08.1942, BA-
MA RH22/31; Korück 580 Bericht über Gefechtstätigkeit vom 24.2. bis 31.3.42, 04.06.1942, BA-MA RH20/2/323; Kdo.
Major Seizinger an Korück 580 23.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175.
69
Abs.Stelle „Ludwig“ Situationsmeldung an Korück 580 28.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176; Captured radio message from
partisans: „Ludwig“ an Korück 580 01.06.1942, BA-MA RH23/176; Stab Art.Rgt. Abt. Ia. Stimmung bei den Partisanen,
19.06.1943, HL Korück Kriegstagebuch N. 23., HL filmtár 749.
70
For example, the Konotop – Kursk rail section was the target of Kovapk’s group: Bfh.H.Geb. B Abt. Ia. 19.08.1942, BA-
MA RH22/31.
20
3.2. The Strategy of the Partisan Forces
The psychological impact of the successful defense of Moscow in the winter of 1941/1942 was critical;
this was the first time that the Wehrmacht suffered a serious setback in the course of the war. Soviet
civilians stuck behind enemy lines were no longer sure that Germany would win the war. 71
Partisan detachments operated under the leadership of three Soviet agencies: the NKVD, the
Communist Party, and the Red Army. At the beginning of the war, it was chiefly the NKVD that
attempted to organize and lead partisan groups consisting NKVD personnel and local functionaries.
The Communist Party was caught off-guard by Operation Barbarossa, and despite Stalin's orders in
June and July 1941,72 the Party did not manage to organize and foster effective resistance out of
Communist cadres. The role of the Red Army was initially only to provide the muscle for the units in
the form of soldiers stranded behind enemy lines.73
In order to centralize the forming partisan war, Stalin created the Central Staff in 1942 to
coordinate operations. Panteleimion Ponomarenko became its head, a Party official with very little
practical experience in military affairs but someone who understood the political significance of the
partisan war. With Ponomarenko at the helm, the role of partisan detachments was no longer only to
make life as unbearable as possible to the Germans behind the front and to assist the Red Army, but
also to be the extended arm of the Soviet regime in the occupied territories: to remind everyone that the
German occupation was only temporary, as well as to show that the Soviet regime had popular support
among the people.74 Over the summer of 1942, Moscow aimed to turn the partisan war waged by a
small cadre of professionals into a mass movement.
It was a tendency throughout the war that when the Red Army suffered some serious setbacks,
considerable assets and efforts were allocated to create a popular struggle behind enemy lines. This is
illustrated by the rise and fall and rise of Ponomarenko's Central Staff. Stalin first reviewed
Ponomarenko's plan to establish the Central Staff in December 1941 when the Wehrmacht was closing
in on Moscow. Then in January, following the Red Army's victory, such plans were put on hold.
However, in the end of May 1942, after the Red Army's attacks in Crimea and at Kharkov were
repelled, Stalin finally gave the green lights for the establishment of the Central Staff, thereby
embracing the idea of a popular struggle. After Stalin’s negotiations with Churchill for the opening of a
71
72
Cummins, ed., Documents of Soviet History, Vol. 9., p. 86., 115., 118., 121.
73
74
Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 43-46.; Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, p. 298-299.; Ltd. Feldpolizeidirektor H.Geb.B,
Partisanenlage und bekämpfung nördlich der Linie Konotop-Rylsk 12.08.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
21
second front had amounted to nothing, Stalin airlifted from behind the frontlines several partisan
leaders to take part in a conference in Moscow in August 1942 about the future of the partisan war.75
Clearly, Stalin only considered creating a truly popular mass struggle when all other options had been
exhausted.
As part of the new concept of the partisan war, the most capable detachments in the Bryansk
region were given the order to bring the war to Western Ukraine, a region that at that time was safely
under the control of Germany. Partly, this was economically motivated: The Third Reich had been able
to use the resources of Western Ukraine almost undisturbed. However, the political aspect of this
strategic decision was just as important. Ukraine was a populous republic within the Soviet Union, as
well as having great economic and geopolitical significance, and it was crucial for Stalin to show that
the Ukrainians were firmly in the Soviet fold.76 Exporting the Soviet partisan war to Western Ukraine
was supposed to turn the population against the German occupiers and, at the same time, provide an
alternative against Ukrainian nationalism that appeared to have more appeal in the western regions than
Communism.
The most important consequence of this strategy for the Hungarian divisions stationing in the
Bryansk area was that the most capable partisan units were no longer in the forests from the autumn of
1942. Kovpak and Saburov's partisan complexes left their forests on the 26th of October and reached
right-bank Ukraine in November. In the following spring, Fedorov's detachments too moved
westward.77 For the partisans who did remain in the Bryansk forests, another consequential strategic
change was that instead of harassing the enemy troops behind the front lines, sabotage against railroads
and Wehrmacht supplies became the absolute priority.78 The partisans were commanded to avoid large
clashes with enemy troops.79
3.3. The Brutalization of the Partisan War
The Stalinist regime had no qualms about killing its own citizens if that served the purpose of the state.
After the occupation of the western part of the Soviet Union, Soviet citizens were now, in effect,
“working” for the Third Reich. According to the descriptions of Statiev and Gogun, it became part of
75
76
Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 214-215.
77
78
For example, a captured Soviet message from the central operations to a local partisan group: Abschrift des Fernschreiben
von V.O. bei 105. Le. Div., 16.12.1942, BA-MA RH 22/31.
79
Alexander Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos: Ukrainian Partisan Forces on the Eastern Front, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), p.
88.
22
the duty of the partisans to kill collaborators and to convince people of the disadvantages of
collaboration by killing the family members of collaborators.80 In Statiev’s view, the culture of viewing
the relatives of their enemies as legitimate targets was ingrained in the partisans due to the brutalizing
experience of the Russian Civil War.81 Torture was also liberally applied by the partisans.82
In his description of the partisans’ reprisals against the family members of collaborators in the
Bryansk forests’ region, Gogun relies on primary sources in the Central State Archive of Civic
Organizations of Ukraine, as well as on interviews conducted with locals more than 60 years after the
war.83 However, only one reference in BA-MA documents can be found about partisans killing the
family members of collaborators. In the end of January 1942, the partisans around Kholmy executed
the mother and the father of a teacher, as well as killed 17 family members of local policemen in
Orlovka.84 It is possible that the occupiers simply did not know of the deeds of the partisans. The
evidence remains inconclusive about how widespread the killing of family members of collaborators
was in the region between Bryansk and Kiev.
In Statiev's and in Gogun's works twenty-four incidents can be found when Soviet partisans
partially or fully burnt down villages and killed some or all of their inhabitants.85 Of these twenty-for,
seventeen incidents were directly related to fighting against Ukrainian nationalist guerillas in Western
Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of village burnings took place in 1943 in Volhynia, the northern
part of Western Ukraine. Four of the twenty-four village burnings happened in 1942 in the Bryansk
area (Sopych, Pereliub, Zemlianka, and Zernovo), perpetrated by Saburov and Fedorov. In Zemlianka,
according to the testimony of a resident in 2008, the village was burned down by drunk partisans after
somebody fired a shot at them. However, due to the nature of the only source about the atrocity, an
interview with a local who was twelve at that time, as well as the time that passed between the events
and the testimony, this incident cannot be used as proof in historical research. In the other three cases
80
Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 79-82.; Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos, p. 95.; Abs. O.K. Dmitrowsk an Korück 580
30.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
81
Statiev, “Soviet Partisan Violence against Soviet Civilians: Targeting Their Own” in Europe-Asia Studies 66(9), (2014), p.
1543-1542.
82
Statiev, “Soviet Partisan Violence,” p. 1540-42.; Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos, p. 100-101.; K.u. 1. Le. Div. an Korück
580, 09.08.1943, Kriegstagebuch Nr. 26a., HL filmtár 750; Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 100.. On the mutilation
and torture of captured soldiers by the partisans in Belorussia: Hoffmann in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second World
War Vol. IV., p. 881.; Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford: Berg, 1989), p.
122. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, 1 July 1941: “In annihilating the enemy do not shrink
from using any means: strangle, chop up, burn, poison the Fascist scum.” Quoted by Hoffmann in MGFA, ed., Germany and
the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 881.
83
Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos, p. 95-96.
84
FK 194 Lagerbericht, 11.02.1942, BA-MA RH22/22.
85
Statiev, “Soviet Partisan Violence,” p. 1543-1547.; Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos, p. 94-97., 103-112.
23
the sources are documents from the Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine.86
In the cases above listed by Gogun (Sopych, Pereliub, and Zernovo), setting fire to the villages
happened during combat engagements with Ukrainian police units serving the Wehrmacht. As Gogun
describes the siege of Pereliub based on the journal of a Soviet partisan in Fedorov’s detachment, after
capturing the village, the partisans “rushed to set fire to the animals’ nests.” Then the description
continues: “at the same time, people for whom we had long been searching often jumped out of the
burning buildings. We made short work of them.”87
In addition, Ungváry mentions seven settlements (Kamen, Korop, Orlovka, Lemjesoko,
Krasszicsba, Krasznij Rog, and Iskut kolkhoz) that German and Hungarian wartime documents claimed
were burnt down by Soviet partisans. According to Ungvary, these atrocities were part of the partisans’
collective punishment of collaborators. No details were provided about the circumstances of these
atrocities by Ungváry.88 At least some of these village burnings were combat-related. In the village of
Mars (or Ischut) the partisans set fire to a kolkhoz and windmills in April 1942, and in Lemjeschok the
entire village was burnt down the same day.89 In both cases the partisans were retreating from the
advancing Hungarian troops. Setting fire to buildings could have had tactical reasons, such as to
provide cover so that the partisan groups could safely break engagement with the Hungarian troops
while retreating, or to deny enemy troops the opportunity to use dwellings for rest and cover. Another
combat-related incident was the attempted burning of Schepetlewo in which the partisans wanted to set
fire to the village because Hungarian soldiers were occupying it, but only managed to set fire to a
couple of buildings before they were beaten back.90 In the three cases above, collective punishment was
not a likely motive of the partisans to destroy these settlements.
In the village of Kamen, collective punishment of local collaborators was a possible reason for
burning down the settlement because the partisans set fire to the village after they captured it.91 Yet, the
burning of Kamen could have had tactical reasons too. No details emerged about what happened to the
locals of Kamen after their village was destroyed. The suspicion for collective punishment is the most
overwhelming in the case of Orlovka that was already mentioned in relation to killing seventeen family
members of collaborators. In Orlovka, thirty-four houses were burnt down as well, with no Axis troops
anywhere near.92
86
87
88
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 101.
89
Meldung von 102. Le. Div., 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/173.
90
I.R. 53 Morgenmeldung, 06.06.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
91
K. megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés 06.04.1942, HL VKF mikorfilmek B243, 277/2343.
92
FK 194 Lagerbericht, 11.02.1942, BA-MA RH22/22.
24
As the evidence suggests, the destruction of settlements and dwellings by fire was an accepted
tool of war at the tactical level. The destruction of dwellings that the Axis troops were using or could
potentially use was entirely in line with Stalin’s orders issued in June 1941. However, collective
punishment doled out by the partisans did not extend beyond the families of people accused of
collaborating with the Axis troops.
4. Preparation for the War of Annihilation
4.1. Abysmal Conditions in the Occupation Forces
Between 1938 and 1941, Hungary’s territory almost doubled with territories annexed with the help of
Germany from Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Thus in 1941, Hungary had a sizable
Slovak, Romanian, and Ukrainian minority. Although a major war between Hungary and its neighbors
was avoided, territorial disputes were not settled permanently.93
The three infantry brigades sent by the Hungarian General Staff for occupation duties to Army
Group South predominantly consisted of poorly trained reservists.94 The brigades were established in
an ad-hoc manner on a short notice, scraped together from many different units.95 By Wehrmacht
standards, the level of training that these soldiers received, as well as the quantity and quality of
equipment were abysmally low.96 When the Hungarian High Command sent these troops to serve as
occupation forces in the Wehrmacht’s rear, the expectation of the General Staff was that the brigades
would only have to perform guard and patrol duties in a generally pacified area. A part of the heavy
weaponry that would normally be the equipment of an infantry brigade was replaced with infantry
rifles.97 The troops were also underprovided in terms of adequate winter clothing and boots.
Complaints began coming in almost immediately after the troops had arrived in Ukraine.98 The dire
situation was obvious to German liaison officers on assignment at Hungarian regiments who continued
to voice their concerns to their superiors for months to come.99
93
Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 248. Lóránd Dombrády and Sándor Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség 1919-1945,
(Budapest: Zrínyi, 1987), p. 180-181., 290.
94
102nd brigade: 30% Romanians with almost no training: Megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés 24.01.1942, HL VKF
mikrofilmek 277/2340; Megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés 28.1.1942, HL VKF 277/2340; 105th brigade 50% reservists:
105. le. Div. Ia. 7.4.1942 Zusammenfassende Meldung, BA-MA RH 22/34.
95
105. le. Div. Ia. 7.4.1942 Zusammenfassende Meldung, BA-MA RH 22/34.
96
For example, Korück 580 25.4.1942 Fernspruch von Ltn. Burkhardt, BA-MA RH 23/174.
97
Megsz. csop. pság. Jelentés 23.11.1941, HL VKF 277/2337.
98
Megsz. csop. pság. Jelentés 19.11.1941, HL VKF 277/2337.
99
105. le. Div. Ia. 7.4.1942 Zusammenfassende Meldung, BA-MA RH 22/34; Anruf von Ltn. Burkhardt, 5.4.1942, BA-MA
RH 23/173.
25
Ethnic minorities in Hungary, such as Romanians, Slovaks, and Ukrainians were
overrepresented in these units. In 1941, between 20 and 25% of Hungary’s population consisted of
people who were not considered to be ethnically Hungarian (Romanians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Serbs,
Germans).100 In August 1942, about 50% of the soldiers of Occupation Group East were Romanians,
Slovaks, and Ukrainians.101 The reason for the overrepresentation of national minorities in these units
was that Hungary’s leadership did not trust them. In so-called “protected units,” such as aviation,
artillery, tank and mechanized infantry troops, or the intelligence services, strict limitations were
applied on how many minority soldiers were allowed to serve. 102 Consequently, in units deemed less
important in Hungary’s national security strategy, minority soldiers were overrepresented. As the war
went on, more and more minority soldiers were sent to the occupation forces as reinforcement and their
training was ever more inadequate.103 The General Staff, considering the presence of minority soldiers
as a national security risk, was effectively dumping these soldiers on Occupation Group East.
The consequences of these measures applied by the General Staff were dramatic on the overall
performance of the troops. For example, as the commander of the 105th Division remarked in August
1942: The newly arrived recruits “do not add any value to this kind of heavy, guerilla-like warfare. If I
cannot get anything better than this, then I would rather not receive any reinforcement at all!”104
The multi-lingual nature of the troops led to serious communication challenges. Yet, the
problem of communication did not seem to have been discussed at any great length in the upper
echelons of the military leadership until the summer of 1942. Eventually, Romanian and Ukrainian
dictionaries were issued to the troops in September 1942.105 The case of the Ukrainian soldiers in
Hungarian military formations was special insofar as they could communicate with the locals and they
could read books and other material about the war published by the Soviets. Consequently, they were
more immune from the Axis propaganda spread about the Soviet partisans.106 The evidence suggests
100
Reference to gov. Statistics in Gazsi, "Politikai megkülönböztetés," p. 521., 528; Romsics, Magyarország története, p.
189., 251.
101
K. megsz. csop. Ia. Irányelvek a K. megsz. csop. alakulatai részére, 26.8.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box
22, 46/III.
102
Gazsi, "Politikai megkülönböztetés," p. 536.
103
Gazsi, "Politikai megkülönböztetés," 526-532; Anlage 14 Ltn. Burkhardt, 13.5.1942, BA-MA RH 23/175; K. megsz.
csop. pság. helyzetjelentés, 19.5.1942, HL VKF 277/2345.
104
K. megsz. csop. pság. helyzetjelentés, 9.7.1942, HL VKF 277/2347; Another example from the 108th div.: K. megsz.
csop. pság. helyzetjelentés, 20.5.1942, HL VKF 277/2345.
105
K. megsz. csop. pság 21.9.1942 86. sz. parancs, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1.
106
K. megsz. csop. pság 28.3.1942 14. sz. parancs, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1. Written recollections of László
Hamburger 30.11.1959, HL SZU 133/1.
26
that there were some Ukrainians who deserted their Hungarian military formations and joined the
partisans.107
In November 1942, only 53% of soldiers (not including officers) in battalion 46/III were
ethnically Hungarian.108 As the commander of the 9th company of battalion 46/III claimed in December
1942, not one among the officers or non-commissioned officers in the company spoke any Romanian,
Slovak, or Ukrainian. As he described, “the combat deployment of soldiers belonging to the national
minorities is almost completely impossible due to lack of knowledge of the Hungarian language and
inadequate tactical training.”109 Other commanders too claimed that the Romanian soldiers in their
units could not be used for anything due to communication problems.110
Some casualty figures appear to support the claim that the minority soldiers were not deployed
to serious combat duties in battalion 46/III. In the 8th company of the same battalion, there were four
officers and 135 rank-and-file members as well as non-commissioned officers. Of these 135, only 37%
were Hungarian. According to a report, in the period between 25 October 1941 and 9 September 1942,
the 8th company suffered ten fatal casualties (of which nine were Hungarian and one German), and
eight wounded (of which seven were Hungarian and one Ukrainian). At the same time, there were only
two soldiers missing or captured, both of them Ukrainian.111 Lack of casualty figures broken down to
ethnicity is missing from other units, and thus there is not enough data. There might have been
significant variations at the individual battalions. Besides, official documents probably exaggerated the
lack of abilities of minority soldiers. Gyula Daróczi, an ordinary Hungarian soldier, described
Romanians as his comrades through numerous positive remarks in his diary. 112
Sometimes, Hungarian commanders’ complaints about minority soldiers were entirely
unreasonable. For example, in mid-May, the 108th division was involved in front-line war with regular
Soviet troops. When a batch of reinforcement consisting of Romanian soldiers arrived, they were
immediately deployed against Soviet armored troops, with catastrophic results. The commander
107
Compared to German troops, there were relatively many MIA in Hungarian troops after combat activities. For example:
Korück 580 8.9.1942 Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der le. Div. 102, der le. Div. 6, des J.R. 46 under der Gruppe Kocsis,
BA-MA RH 20-2/323; Korück 580 30.5.1942 Abendmeldung für 30.5., BA-MA RH 23/176; Korück 580, Das rückwärtige
Armeegebiet der 2. Armee vom 10.11.1941 – 8.6.1942, BA-MA RH 23/176; Some of the partisans could speak Hungarian:
105. le. Div. Ia. 7.4.1942 Auszug aus der Meldung Nr. 269 / 32 Inf. Regt., BA-MA RH 22/34; A Ukrainian soldier deserting
his troops and shooting two Hungarians: Dr. Zárai Ervinné dosszié 1948, ÁBTL V-86577; “Taking care” of a Ukrainian
soldier accused of spying in a Hungarian unit mafia style (shooting him in the head while walking together in the forest):
Kovács Ferenc dosszié 1950-1951, ÁBTL V-82992.
108
46/III. zlj. Kimutatás: részletes létszám, felszerelés, és anyagi helyzet, 01.11.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945,
box 22., 46/III.
109
46/9. szd. jelentés, Távmondatkönyv 29.12.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.
110
K. megsz. Csop. Ia., Irányelvek a K. megsz. Csop. alakulatai részére, 26.08.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945,
box 22., 46/III.
111
Veszteségek nemzetiség szerint, 08.09.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.
112
Entries for 22.6.1942 and 10.7.1942, Daróczi, HL TGY 3220.
27
concluded that it was better not to deploy the newly arrived Romanians at all because they did more
damage than good.113 How could an experienced field commander expect a bunch of new recruits with
little training to perform well against the regular units of the Red Army? In this case, the Hungarian
division commander threw these Romanian soldiers under the bus and then when they (predictably) did
not perform, blamed them for the defeat.
The presence of different nationalities, especially the Romanians, provided a readily available
excuse for Hungarian commanders when their units did not perform. The statement of a Hungarian
commander from the 9th company of 46/III about nobody being able to communicate with minority
soldiers sounds rather dubious. These soldiers and officers had been on deployment together for several
months. Besides, many of the officers and the rank-and-file came from mixed areas in Hungary.
Therefore, this statement does not show the actual language abilities of the soldiers in the 9th company;
it shows that many, including officers and the rank-and-file, were willing to use communication
challenges as an excuse to shirk military duty. However, even after taking possible (or probable)
exaggerations into account, the fact still remains that when a typical Hungarian battalion received an
order to perform combat duties, many of the rank-and-file could only be deployed to the simplest tasks
due to reasons pertaining to language and reliability.
4.2. Orders and Instructions
German historian Joachim Hoffmann stated in 1998 that the Hague Conventions of 1907 “invariably
obliged both belligerents, regardless of the question of guilt,” to observe the laws of war.114 At the time
of Operation Barbarossa, the protocols of the Hague Conventions of 1907 were in force. According to
these, the laws, rights, and duties of war applied not only to members of regular military units but also
to those of irregular forces under certain conditions: Irregular forces had to be commanded by a person
who was responsible for his subordinates; members of such groups had to wear a distinctive badge
recognizable from a distance; they had to carry arms openly; as well as they had to conduct their
operations in accordance with the laws of war.115 As Hoffmann points it out, the Soviet partisans
fulfilled only the first criteria.116 On the other hand, not even one wartime German or Hungarian
document mentioned the laws of war laid down at Hague. Similarly, postwar Hungarian and Soviet
trials too are completely absent of references to the Conventions.
113
K. megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés 20.05.1942, HL VKF 277/2345.
114
Hoffmann, “The conduct of the war,” p. 880.
115
Full text of the Hague Conventions available at Yale Law School: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp
116
Hoffmann, „The conduct of the war,“ p. 881.
28
I have also not seen any definition of “partisan” or “guerilla” in German and Hungarian primary
sources. The most relevant Wehrmacht instruction about the principles of anti-partisan warfare,
Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, details the tactical principles according to which the Wehrmacht
had to fight against the partisans without defining who the “partisans” actually were.117 The Hungarian
Army’s manual about the anti-partisan warfare described the “partisan movement” as a way of warfare
defined by its characteristics and the tactics it uses. The manual did not give a legal definition of who a
“partisan” was.118 In the postwar Soviet trials, Major General Géza Ehrlich who was the commander of
the 46th Infantry Regiment 1942-1943 claimed, quoting from memory, that the Hungarian High
Command considered “those who fought against us with a weapon in their hands” as partisans.119
Ehrlich did not refer to any written order or instruction. Therefore, this short and vague description
cannot be accepted as a ‘definition.’ Similarly, terms such as ‘partisan helper’ or ‘partisan suspect’ were
not defined either.
Administratively, the three Hungarian light infantry divisions were subordinated to the
Command of the Hungarian Occupation Group which was established in Ukraine on 6 October, 1941.
The Occupation Group was responsible for training, reinforcement, and equipment. However,
operationally and tactically, the troops were subordinated to the rear area command of the German
Second Army, Korück 580, within Army Group South, or served directly under the rear area command
of Army Group South (Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd). For shorter periods of time, the
Second Panzer Army of Army Group Centre also commanded some Hungarian units. Although from
the summer of 1942 there was a frontline Hungarian army deployed at the Don, the occupation forces
between Kiev and Bryansk always remained under direct Wehrmacht operational command. Thus, all
of the orders and instructions that the German troops of Army Group South received were also
transmitted to the Hungarian occupation troops who were expected to act accordingly just like German
units.
The framework of the anti-partisan war was established by the Wehrmacht High Command
(Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) in the Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung which was
issued to the Hungarian troops in late November, 1941.120 These guidelines about the anti-partisan war
drew on the experience of the German anti-partisan warfare in the First World War on the Eastern
117
OKW 25.10.1941. Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, BA-MA RH2/3700.
118
M. Kir. Honvéd Vezérkar Főnöke 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése: Partizánharcok, (Budapest:
Attila, 1942).
119
Document 15 in Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 92.
120
105. gy. dd. Ib., Irányelvek a partizánok leküzdésére, 26.11.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.
29
Front, the Bolsheviks’ partisan war during the Russian Civil War, as well as on instances of anti-
partisan operations in the first couple of months of Operation Barbarossa.
The OKW’s guidelines were plagued by a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, the aim
of anti-partisan operations was the merciless, complete physical annihilation of partisan units. Partisan
suspects were to be sent to a camp or “handled” by the GFP (Geheime Feldpolizei) which was the
secret field police of the Wehrmacht. The Richtlinien also noted that the partisans used children,
women, and the elderly for information gathering. On the other hand, military commanders were
required to build up good relations with the local population and to gain their trust. This seems
grotesque. Did the OKW really believe that gaining the locals’ trust could go hand in hand with the
deportation of “partisan suspects,” presumably including all those partisan informants who also
happened to be the locals’ children, wives, and mothers?
The OKW’s assessment of the Russian and Ukrainian partisan groups in the First World War
was deeply flawed. The Richtlinien claimed that the partisans had been directly led and organized by
the Communist Party at the end of the First World War.121 But the chief reason behind the widespread
though sporadic peasant uprisings in Ukraine against the German and Austro-Hungarian troops in 1918
had not been the Bolshevik leaders in Moscow, who at that time had been unable to exercise any
control over much of Ukraine, but the German and Austro-Hungarian policy of forced food
requisitioning, as well as collective punishments and land issues.
By seeing the situation through the ideological prism of anti-Bolshevism, the OKW officers
believed that the Ukrainian partisan groups in 1918 had not been rooted in the population and, by
analogy, concluded that they were not in 1941 either. Based on this faulty assessment, the OKW’s
implicit assumption was that it was possible to separate the partisans from the local population – i.e., to
kill all the partisans and deport the partisan suspects while gaining the trust of the population. It is
possible though that the OKW understood the impact of the forced food requisitioning on the peasant
uprisings in 1918, but for political reasons chose not to mention it. From an economic point of view, in
1941, Germany wanted the same thing from Ukraine as it had done in 1918; agricultural products and
mineral resources. Had the OKW chosen to reflect on this in 1941 and address the strategy of anti-
partisan warfare out of economic considerations, they would have had to conclude early on that the
Nazi policies themselves would produce a partisan movement rooted in the local population. This
would have given the perception that the Wehrmacht’s leadership were challenging the Nazi policies
121
OKW Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, p. 26., 25.10.1941, BA-MA RH 2/3700.
30
pursued in the conquered Soviet lands, or attempting to soften up such policies. Whatever the reason,
the Richtlinien required field commanders to accomplish goals that were utterly incompatible.
According to the Richtlinien, intelligence and information gathering was a key to anti-partisan
war and these areas remained within the domain of the GFP and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the
intelligence agency of the SS). Establishing and managing informant networks in the local population
was the responsibility of the GFP. Throughout the occupation period, the cooperation between the
Hungarian troops and the GFP was close and Hungarian commanders appreciated the intelligence
provided to them by GFP officers.122
Surprisingly, the Richtlinien did not even mention the Jews. No differentiation was made in the
document between Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews either. These “gaps” were filled in by German field
commanders’ orders and instructions. Of these, the order of General Walther von Reichenau,
commander of the 6th Army of Army Group South, was the most infamous which was transmitted to
Hungarian troops on 17 November 1941.123 In this, Reichenau scolded Wehrmacht soldiers that they
failed to take the war against the partisans seriously. The order also requested that draconian measures
be applied in case of sabotage, such as collective punishment against the civilian population that “could
have stopped” partisan attacks. Reichenau emphasized that the aim of the war was the destruction of
the Judeo-Bolshevik system. He also pointed out that so far, rebellions in the rear had “always” been
incited by Jews.124 The order of the Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber Ukraine in December was in line with
this, recommending that whenever hostages were taken from the population by the troops, if possible,
at least 50% of those hostages should be Jews.125
Compared to Jews, Ukrainians were to enjoy preferential treatment. On 27 November 1941, the
105th division received the instructions of the Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, in which
the troops were instructed that the newly conquered territories of Ukraine were considered to be the
“Lebensraum of an allied people” (“baráti nép élettere”).126 Truman Anderson explains such pro-
122
Auszug aus dem Tagebuche der kön. ung. 108. Infanteriebrigade, (no date), BA-MA RH22/19.
123
M. Megsz. Csop. Pság. 3. sz. parancs, 17.11.1941, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1.
124
Full text in German: https://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/untermenschen/reichenau-befehl.php#begleit
125
M. Megsz. Csop. Pság. 6. sz. parancs 12.12.1941 and 27. sz. parancs 31.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1. The
same order to German troops was issued on 10 October 1941 in the wake of the massacres in Kyiv at the end of September:
Yitzhak Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2009), p. 176. The preference for
Jewish hostages by Wehrmacht generals is supported by further examples in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews Vol. I., (New Haven: Yale, 2003), p. 309-310.
126
The instructions were written in Hungarian and I could not find the original German order. The most suitable translation
for the word “élettér” is the German Lebensraum: 105. gy. dd. Ia., Együttműködés a német katonai hatóságokkal,
27.11.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.
31
Ukrainian preferences by suggesting that Rosenberg’s ideas about Ukrainians were widespread and
popular among the staff and some commanders of Army Group South.127
In December 1941 and in the first months of 1942, Hitler’s addresses and speeches transmitted
to the Wehrmacht confirmed for the soldiers that the purpose of the war was the crushing of Judeo-
Bolshevism to save Europe. According to Hitler, the enemy were “not soldiers but mostly just beasts,”
and the carriers of the virus of Bolshevism were “the Jews and only the Jews.”128 The picture of the
enemy as “red beasts” controlled as puppets by their Jewish commissars was also used by the
commander of Army Group South.129
4.3. Experiences preceding the first combat engagements
Lieutenant-Colonel László Pap and his soldiers, the crew of a pioneer company in the 108th
Brigade, were transported to Berdichev from Hungary on rail in early November 1941. Until the train
reached Berdichev, the Lieutenant-Colonel’s description of what he saw and what he gathered from
Germans sitting on the same train did not give the impression that they were indeed going to be
deployed in a war of annihilation. It might as well have been a journey to the Eastern front in the First
World War. The true nature of the war against the Soviet Union revealed itself first after the troops
disembarked the train in Berdichev on 8 November 1941. This is how Pap described what they heard
and experienced:
“They say [Berdichev] changed hands five times [during the campaign]. Once when the Russians took it
back, they killed 300 wounded German soldiers in the hospitals… During the German occupation, a
storehouse exploded. Then the Germans executed 200 hostages and Jews. The SD squads were working as
we arrived.”130
127
Truman Anderson, „Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October-
December 1941,” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 71. 3. (1999).
128
46/III zlj. 15.11.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III; 105. gy. dd. pság. 2. sz. tisztiparancs 18.1.1942
and 16. sz. parancs 6.2.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop., box 2.
129
M. Megsz. Csop. Pság. 2. sz. Parancs 6.1.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1.
130
Entries for 8.11.1941 in László Pap’s diary: László Pap, „A megszálló 108. dandár alárendeltségében lévő 38.
árkászszázada parancsnokának harctéri naplója 1941.09.26 – 1942.06.02.,” HL TGY 4100. The execution of hostages and
Jews he referred to was probably the execution of 300 Jews on 10 July under the pretext of killing a German officer: Shmuel
Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, Vol I., (New York:
New York University, 2001), p. 112.
32
The liquidation of the ghetto in Berdichev was concluded only five days before the arrival of
the Hungarian soldiers. By the time the Hungarian troops had arrived in Berdichev, 15-16,000 Jews had
been slaughtered.131 As Pap’s diary indicates, communication between the German and Hungarian
officers was frequent and informal. There was also a permanent Hungarian staff stationed in Berdichev,
coordinating the movements of the troops. In all likelihood, there were many other officers and
soldiers, too, who learned of what happened to the Jews in the city.
Even before Pap’s unit reached Kiev, he had gathered from SD officers that in the city, “all the
destruction was done by the Jews.”132 Arriving in Kiev on 23 November, the diary continued:
“People are starving in the city. No Jews here, the Germans executed 27,000. There are still explosions in
the city, and many places are mined… A German officer said that yesterday a school exploded and a
German company with 81 people perished. Allegedly, the Germans are already on the trail of the secret
organization, the partisans.”133
These two short diary entries above show that in the mind of Lieutenant-Colonel Pap sabotage
activities were already associated with the presence of the Jews. About a week before Pap arrived in
Kiev, Hungarian troops had gotten the transcript of the Reichenau order which explicitly linked the
presence of the Jewish population to security threats and encouraged collective punishment against the
local civilian population. Informal conversations with SD officers, as well as the mass execution of
Jews in Kiev and Berdichev showed the Hungarians what this order meant in practice. Once in the area
of deployment, Pap’s diary described further instances where Hungarian soldiers tumbled upon,
sometimes literally, traces of the murder of the Jews committed not long before.134
Horrifying stories about the brutality of the war were abundant among the arriving Hungarians:
the Soviet army killing 300 wounded German soldiers in a hospital, Soviet POWs dying in large
131
David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-49, (London: Macmillan, 2016), p. 403.; Arad, The Holocaust
in the Soviet Union, p. 169-170.; Jürgen Matthäus, Ch. 7.: “Operation Barbarossa and the Onset of the Holocaust, June –
December 1941” in Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,
September 1939 – March 1942, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2004), p. 292.
132
Entry for 15.11.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
133
Entry for 23.11.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100. On the famine in Kiev: Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of
Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, (Cambridge: Belknap, 2004), p. 164-174. On the massacre of 33,771
Jews on 29-30 September: Hilber, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 300.; Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The
Holocaust as History and Warning, (New York: Tim Duggan, 2015), p. 173-174.; Document 189 in Yitzhak Arad, Israel
Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, ed., Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of
Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union, (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999), p. 416.; Förster, “Securing Living-
Space,” p. 1207.; Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p 32-33.
134
Entries for 7.12.1941 and 12.12.1941 in László Pap’s diary. A part of skeleton was also found in the forest on 29
December, as well as five corpses of Jews in a building on 29 January. HL TGY 4100
33
numbers in German camps, Stalin allegedly vowing that no prisoners would be taken, the “beastly
Communists” gouging out the eyes and cutting out the tongues of captured German soldiers, or “many
Bolshevik soldiers and Jews,” including children, being thrown into a lake by Germans.135 “The life-
and-death struggle between Christianity and Bolshevism has arrived,” remarked Pap.136
German reprisals against partisan attacks occupied a special place in Hungarian war documents.
The most well-known of these instances was when a German Colonel and two other soldiers had been
killed in their sleep in the village of Baranivka on 4-5 November, 1941.137 On the order of the
Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, all troops of Occupation Group East were informed that
as a reprisal, the German units executed ten locals in Baranivka, burnt down the village, and “wiped it
off from the face of the Earth.”138 The paper trail shows that the announcement was further transmitted
to the Hungarian soldiers in the different brigades.139 They probably discussed it at length which is
indicated by the fact that the Baranivka incident was mentioned in two different places in Pap’s diary.
Pap wrote first that the entire population of Baranivka was wiped out, then three days later he only
mentioned that ten people were beaten to death.140 This incident also shows that soldiers were prone to
exaggerate if they had not yet received written information.
4.4. Wehrmachtsangehörige
All this had been witnessed, heard, and received by the Hungarian soldiers before most of them saw
actual combat against the partisans. The first instance a soldier from the 105th Infantry Brigade was
wounded by a shot fired by partisans happened on 1 December. 141 Then the first deadly casualties
befell the brigade two weeks later, on 16 December, during a reconnaissance mission when two
soldiers got killed, and five more were wounded.142 Around the same time, two soldiers from the 108th
Brigade lost their lives in a skirmish with partisans.143
135
Entries for 8.11.1941, 30.11.1941, 9.12.1941, and 12.12.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
136
137
Truman Anderson, “Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October-
December 1941” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 71(3), (1999).” Another instance of German units not taking
prisoners among partisans: 105. Inf. Brig. Auszug aus dem Operations-Tagebuch der 105 Honved Inf. Brig., 7.12.1941, BA-
MA RH 22/182. German reprisal against another village after seven soldiers were ambushed and killed: Entry for 2.12.1941
in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
138
M. Megsz. Csop. Pság. 18. sz. Parancs 5.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1.
139
105. Inf. Brig.: 14. sz. zlj. napiparancs 22.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III; 108. Inf. Brig.:
entries for 10.12.1941 and 13.12.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
140
Entries for 10.12.1941 and 13.12.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
141
Auszug aus dem Operations-Tagebuch der 105. Honved Inf. Brig., 1.12.1941, BA-MA RH 22/182.
142
Auszug aus dem Operations-Tagebuch der 105 Honved Inf. Brig., 16.12.1941, BA-MA RH 22/182.
143
34
To the Hungarian soldiers, it seemed that the leader of their own country, Governor Miklos
Horthy, took less interest in their lives than Hitler. Hitler told them that they had to lay down their lives
for winning the war – Horthy did not tell them much of anything at all. Hitler’s addresses to the
soldiers of the Wehrmacht, transmitted through the Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, were
made the subject of thorough education among the Hungarian soldiers. 144 At the same time, apart from
commemorating Horthy’s birthday,145 there was almost no connection between the troops and the
political leaders of Hungary.
To illustrate the point, in July 1942 the General Staff of the Hungarian army had to issue a
decree that banned the use of the Nazi arm-salute and the "Heil Hitler" greeting which some soldiers
adapted to greet German officers when traveling individually without their units. 146 Among some
Hungarian soldiers, the desire to emulate and copy members of the Wehrmacht was apparently
spontaneous.
Occupation Group East was responsible for supplying recruits and weapons to the Hungarian
divisions. Meanwhile, the local Wehrmacht administrative units supplied them with food and
ammunition, as well as provided sanitary services and took care of the wounded. Even the weapons
sent from Hungary were transferred through Korück.147 On 27 June 1942, the Hungarian General Staff
informed the troops under Occupation Group East:
“Among some in the officer corps, an incorrect perception began to gain foothold, according to which the
motherland does not care about supplying the troops that fight in the Soviet operational areas, and that the
country had left them to their fate, handing them over to the Germans.”148
In reality, Hungary was paying for the provisions of ammunition, fuel, and food provided by the
Wehrmacht through deliveries in kind to Germany in advance and, to a lesser degree, in cash.149
However, this happened in a way incomprehensible for the troops. As the instruction of the General
Staff indicated, not even officers were clear about this. As far as most of the soldiers in the Hungarian
units were concerned, they were Wehrmachtsangehörige.
144
105. gy. dd. I.a. 1. sz. parancs, 8.1.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 2.
145
105. gy. dd. I.a. 15. sz. parancs, 4.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 2.
146
K. M. megsz. csop. pság. 25. sz. parancs, 4.7.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop., box 1.
147
Korück 580 Besondere Anordnungen für die Versorgung der Kgl. Ung. 6. Le. Div., 11.05.1942; and, Besondere
Anordnungen für die Versorgung während der beginnenden Operationen im Raum Schichow-Seredina Buda-Ssewsk-
Komaritschi-Nawlja, 11.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175;
148
9. sz. Tisztiparancs, 11.09.1942, HL 46. gyez. II.1519, box 21.
149
9. sz. Tisztiparancs, 11.09.1942, HL 46. gyez. II.1519, box 21.
35
4.5. The Complexity of the Operational Area
The area where the Hungarian 102nd, 105th, and 108th Brigades were deployed roughly between Kiev,
Gomel, Bryansk, and Kharkov was bisected today by the border between Russia and Ukraine. The
southern part of the area was mostly Ukrainian inhabited and the norther part, especially in the vicinity
of the Russian city of Bryansk, had a predominantly Russian population. Jews were the most numerous
in the south, near Kiev. No straight lines could be drawn between the localities of particular ethnicities.
Much of the area, especially in the middle, could best be described as ethnically mixed.
Since in late 1941 the core of the Bryansk partisans were Red Army stragglers, their national
makeup initially represented that of the Red Army: mixed with many Russians. Although Kovpak's and
Saburov's detachments were identified as “Ukrainian,” in 1942 they recruited most of their members in
Russia's Bryansk forests. In contrast, in Fedorov's units over 80% of the partisans were Ukrainian.150
Regardless of their national makeup, the partisan groups had the support of a significant part of the
local population which made them able to blend in and disappear when necessary.151
In practice, the rear area of Army Group South corresponded to the Ukrainian-inhabited lands,
and the rear of Army Group Middle to the territories with a predominantly Russian population.
Throughout the occupation period, the Hungarian units were subordinated to either Army Group South
or Army Group Middle. In the first half of 1942, all Hungarian units fought under Army Group South
where most of the locals were Ukrainians.
The relations between occupiers and occupied ran along various, often conflicting (and also
moving) fault lines. Unlike in Western Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalist guerillas were never active in the
Bryansk forests. In fact, these forests were a home base of Soviet partisans in Ukraine and this is the
area from which they launched their campaigns and raids to other parts of Ukraine. Nevertheless, there
were Ukrainians who took up arms as Axis auxiliaries against the Soviet partisans.
Some of these pro-Axis Ukrainian militia commanders were ideologically motivated.
Konstantin Dobrovolsky was the son of a major landowner whose estates laid in the area under formal
German rule in 1918. Dobrovolsky was attending a military education institution when in 1917 the
Russian Civil War broke out. After the revolution, he was exiled to Siberia. In 1941 he organized a
Ukrainian militia in support of the Axis occupation and attempted to take control of his old family

150
Der K.Gen. der Sic.Truppen und Bfh.H.Geb. B Weisung für die Partisananbekämpfung 19.06.1942, BA-MA RH22/31;
151
Wach-Batl. 703. Erfahrungsbericht und Einsatz des Bataillons 07.06.1942, BA-MA RH22/40; GFP Bericht 14.07.1942, BA-
MA RH22/47.
36
estates.152 According to a postwar testimony, several Hungarian officers, including the commander of
the 32nd Infantry Regiment, were on friendly terms with Dobrovolsky and appreciated his mercilessness
and effectiveness in the anti-partisan war.153
There were many parallels between the life courses of Dobrovolsky and Aladár Töttösy, whose
32/II battalion sometimes fought side by side of Dobrovolsky’s militia. They were both on the counter-
revolutionary side in the civil wars of their respective countries after the First World War. They both
spent time in Siberia as POWs. Both of them were ready to act without mercy and to apply any
extrajudicial methods against Communist insurgents even in their own country (Tottosy in Hungary in
the early 1920s).154 What they were doing to the locals in 1942 was, in their eyes, a direct continuation
of the civil war in their respective countries in the early 1920s. The Second World War was round two
of the First World War, and within the context of these world wars, the local war waged against
Communism and Jews was a continuation of the post-First World War civil wars. In this case, political
loyalties and ideological commitment were far more consequential than national belonging.
The presence of Ukrainian soldiers from Carpatho-Ukraine (annexed by Hungary in 1939)
added another layer of complexity to the relations between locals and the Hungarians. On numerous
occasions, Hungarian commanders decided to isolate the Ukrainians in their units from the locals. They
were only supposed to be deployed if they could be fully controlled by Hungarians; for example, at
easy guard duties.155 Over and over again, the soldiers were warned not to trust the locals, not even the
ones working for the troops, and not even members of Ukrainian militias.156 The cooperation between
the Hungarians and the Axis auxiliary Ukrainian militias was problematic at best which, in turn, posed
difficulties to and caused mutual frustrations about the cooperation between Hungarian units and their
German superiors.157
152
Töttösy Aladár kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve 31.10.1950, 02.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166, p. 12., 18.
153
Kövesi Jenő kihallgatási jegyzőkönyv 03.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166, p. 64.
154
Töttösy was a member of the Prónay squads: Töttösy Aladár kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve 31.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166, p.
12.
155
33. számú Keleti magyar megszálló csoportparancsnoksági bizalmas parancs, 10.11.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop.,
box 1.; Krauss Verb. Offz.bei 105. Le. Div. 22.11.1942, BA-MA RH22/90; K. megsz. csop. Helyzetjelentés 14.04.1942, HL
VKF 277/2343.
156
33. számú Keleti magyar megszálló csoportparancsnoksági bizalmas parancs, 10.11.1942, HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop., box
1.; K. megsz. csop. Ia. Irányelvek a K. megsz. csop. alakulatai részére, 26.08.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség, box 22., 46/III.;
8. Számú zászlóaljnapiparancs, 04.03.1942, HL 46. gyez. II.1519, box 21.; Anlage Nr. 3. Auszug aus der Meldung N.
269/32. Inf. Regt., 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH22/34.
157
Fernspruch Kgl. ung. 6. le. Div. Ia., 26.05.1942, BA-MA23/176.
37
5. War on the Jews
5.1. The Fate of the Jewish Population until the Arrival of the Hungarian Troops
Based on the 1939 population census, 2,134,000 Jews lived in the parts of the Soviet Union that were
captured by Germany in 1941 and 1942. In Ukraine, they constituted about 5% of the population and in
the Russian Federal Republic 2.23%.158
The Soviet authorities made an attempt to evacuate a part of the civilian population deemed
useful for the Soviet war efforts before the area fell under German rule. This was far more difficult in
towns and villages on the Western side of the Dnepr because there were only a few bridges across the
river, and the needs of the Soviet army were prioritized over the needs of the civilian population. 159 It
was entirely different on the Eastern side of the Dnepr where the first German forces arrived months
later. By that time, the locals had a chance to learn of the fate of those less fortunate, and there were far
fewer logistical obstacles to fleeing. Therefore, a majority of the Jewish people managed to leave
before the area came under German occupation in October 1941.160
Following the battle of Bryansk, the 1st SS Infantry Brigade assumed occupation duties from the
end of October until 9 December 1941 from Romny in the south to Seredina-Buda and Semenivka in
the north.161 During Operation Barbarossa, German policies and practices regarding the persecution of
Jews became more and more radical. At the time the first Hungarian troops disembarked from the train
in Berdichev at the end of October, the SS was already aiming to exterminate the entire Jewry of the
Soviet Union, not only specific groups of it. Only those were exempted whose work was vital for the
German war machine.162 At the same time, the equation of Jews with partisans became the official line
of the SS to justify the murders.163
158
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 25.
159
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 181.
160
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 83., 196-199.; Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah: Die Waffen-SS, der
Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939-1945, (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellshaft,
2005), p. 206.; Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 61.
161
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 192.
162
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 52-53., 56., 131.; Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in
Ukraine, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005), p. 70-72.; Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 134-135.;
Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 386.; Matthäus, “Operation Barbarossa and the Onset of the Holocaust,” in Browning, The
Origins, p. 281-282.; Christian Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews, (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
2016), p. 69-70.
163
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 129., 215.; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 305.;
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 140.; Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 385.
38
A number of Wehrmacht commanders initiated the annihilation of the Jews by asking the SS to
take action in their respective area. Sabotage activities provided the justification for this. 164 The most
infamous of these incidents were the massacres at Babi Yar, in Kiev. On occasion, Wehrmacht
commanders ordered their own troops to kill Jews.165 For example, in Mirgorod, close to the
deployment area of the Hungarian 108th Infantry Brigade a month later, in November 1941 the 62nd
German Infantry Division shot the entire Jewish population of the town due to alleged links to
partisans.166
The company-strong Sonderkommandos of Einsatzgruppe C were active in the larger cities of
the region from October 1941. For example, an Einsatzgruppe report claimed that in the city of
Chernigov only 260 Jews remained after the evacuation, and all were executed by Sonderkommando
4a. Other reports stated that by the end of November, there were no Jews left in the districts of Niezhin
and Priluki.167 Also, the German military administration district operating from Konotop reported that
the “Jewish question” has already been solved in October and November in the district by the 1 st SS
brigade.168 Additionally, a Soviet document claims SS troops liquidated in December 1941 the entire
Jewish population of Semenivka village, 55 people.169 Examples of the annihilation of Jews shown by
Cüppers include several places, such as Konotop and Novgorod-Severskij where Hungarian troops
would often fight Soviet partisans in 1942.170 However, reports that claim that there were no more Jews
left in a certain area have to be taken with skepticism. An SS officer might have wanted to exaggerate
to show his competence to his superiors, or the Jews might have hidden or temporarily fled to the
neighboring forests.
On the other hand, many executions were not reported at all.171 For example, a report of the 1st
SS brigade states that between September 10 and November 10, 5397 people (4146 men, 1033 women,
164
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 305-311.; Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 220.;
Ronald Headland, Messages of Murder: A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Service, 1941-1943,
(Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1992), p. 143.; Matthäus in Browning, The Origins, p. 259., 292.; Lower, Nazi Empire-
Building, p. 56.; Förster in MGFA, Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 1201.
165
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 220-221.; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 310.
166
Förster in MGFA, Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 1218.; Spector and Wigoder, The Encyclopedia Vol.
II., p. 830-831.
167
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 190. As for Chernigov, Hilberg’s number for Jews found by
Sonderkommando 4a is 309. The difference is due to the SS report claiming that 116 plus 144 Jews were shot on two
occasions (260), and at a later time in October another 49 – which adds up to 309: Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews Vol. I., p. 299.; Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 190.
168
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 205-208.
169
Document 105 in Krausz, Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.
170
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 207-208.
171
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 207-209., 212.
39
and 218 children) were shot.172 Explain what he term means However, when checking individual
reports from this period, the numbers that could add up to 5397 are simply not there.173
The three-volumes English version of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the
Holocaust edited by Shmuel Spector, lists locations in Europe where Jewish life had been impacted by
the Holocaust. These volumes have approximately 50 entries for the region where the Hungarian troops
of the Eastern Occupying Group conducted operations and occupation duties in late 1941 and in 1942.
These are towns and villages roughly between the Kiev–Dnepropetrovsk line in the south and the
Gomel–Bryansk line in the north. All of these places are on the Eastern bank of the Dnepr and were
captured by the Wehrmacht between August and October 1941.
The roughly 50 entries in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life written about settlements in the area
that were occupied by Hungarian troops from late November also confirm the pattern. 174 Compared to
Central and Western Ukraine, there were fewer Jews living in the area. The majority of the Jews
managed to flee or were evacuated before the Wehrmacht captured their towns and villages. The
majority of those remaining were annihilated by the time the Hungarian divisions took over occupation
duties from the Germans. Despite the uncertainty of SS reports that claim that entire areas became “free
of Jews,” the overall “success” of the Einsatzgruppen and the 1st SS brigade in pursuing the
annihilation of Jews remains a fact.
172
Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes Reichsführer-SS: Tätigkeitsberichte der 1. und 2. SS-
Inf.-Brigade, der 1. SS-Kav.-Brigade und von Sonderkommandos der SS, (Wien: Europa, 1965), p. 164.
173
Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch, p. 142-157.
174
Relevant entries in Spector, Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Life, Vol. I-III.: A list of those places where the
Hungarian divisions were frequently engaged in anti-partisan warfare in late 1941 and 1942 follows. As explained
previously, the numbers cannot be considered accurate without cross-checking with other sources. Still, they provide an
indication as to how many Jews typically lived in these smaller towns and villages. In places that are underlined, there was
almost continuous war between the partisans and the Hungarian units.
Horodnia: 1939 Jewish population 731, over half of Jews fled before captured. Kholmi: 1939 Jewish population 95 (total
4838), few who neither fled or evacuated murdered on 23 August. Khutor Mikhailovskii: 1939 Jewish population 205, no
details about their fate. Konotop: 1939 Jewish population 3941, early November all who not fled were executed.
Koriukovka: 1939 Jewish population 745 (total 9744), 246 murdered (time not specified, “after” capturing town). Mena:
1939 Jewish population 586, on 15 October 124 murdered. Novgorod-Severski: 1939 Jewish population 982, when town
captured 200 remained, on 7 November 174 murdered, then 50 more in the following days. Putivl: 1939 Jewish population
152, most probably fled before town’s capture. Rylsk: the few Jews who remained murdered “after the arrival of the
Germans.” Semionovka: 1939 Jewish population 402 (total 7465), "some of the Jews" fled, rest confined to the ghetto. In
December, 58 murdered outside the town. A Soviet source about the results of investigations conducted in October 1943 in
Semionovka itself confirms that the SS executed 55 Jews in December in the town. Document 105, Krausz, p. 368.
Seredina-Buda: 1939 Jewish population 463 (total 7134), 100 murdered of those not fled in December 1941. Shostka: 1939
Jewish population 370, those not fled murdered in the winter of 1942 and on 19 July 1942. Trubchevsk: 1939 Jewish
population 137, in February the few dozen who had neither fled nor been evacuated murdered.
40
5.2. Putting the Pieces Together
Out of these 50 settlements, I found 17 in which murders of Jewish people took place at a time when
Hungarian troops could have been present. The editors did not attempt to differentiate between various
Axis units, the perpetrators were always “the Germans.”175 Apart from these 17, there are many more
entries that merely state that a Jewish community was annihilated “after” the Germans occupied the
place, without mentioning when that happened.
I used the entries of the Encyclopedia as a guide and looked up these 17 locations in primary
sources. The aim was to find confirmation and details about events in different types of sources. Thus,
the list of the 17 locations was narrowed down to five: Bakhmach, Horodnia, Poddobrianka, Priluki,
and Shchors. Due to the widely different agendas behind producing the primary sources, such as
wartime Axis documents and post-war documents of Soviet and Hungarian trials, it is essential to
evaluate different types of primary sources before a conclusion can be drawn about who committed the
murders of Jews in specific locations. The example of the liquidation of the ghetto in Priluki on 20 May
1942, during which 1290 Jews were annihilated, is perfect to illustrate why establishing that a certain
military unit was billeting in the area at the time of the atrocities is not sufficient to support the claim
that these troops in question did indeed commit the acts.176
A short entry about Priluki on Yad Vashem’s website ties executions of Jews in the locality to
the GFP, although mentioning a much earlier date.177 Checking the relevant GFP district’s reports from
May and June 1942 yields nothing in the way of understanding what might have happened there.178
However, these reports did mention Hungarian units nearby securing the rail lines, as well as the
presence of SD units and a local Ukrainian police force. Maps produced by the Hungarian military
confirm that a Hungarian company with an additional two machine gunners were securing the rail lines
just north of Priluki at the time of the murders.179 Yitzhak Arad asserts that the liquidation of the ghetto
was carried out by “some” soldiers of the German Security Police (SiPo) with the help of the local
Ukrainian police.180 Hilberg, relying on the documents of the local German military administration,
175
Bakhmach, Berezna, Bielopolie, Glukhov, Gorodyshche, Horodnia, Korop, Kremenchug, Lebedin, Poddobrianka,
Priluki, Romny, Shchors, Shostka, Starodub, Sumy, Trubchevsk.
176
Spector and Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia Vol. II., p. 1027.
177
Entry for Priluki at Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories:
https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/index.asp?cid=506
178
GFP 721 Tätigkeitsbericht für den Monat Mai 1942, 26.05.1942; and, Tätigkeitsbericht für den Monat Juni 1942,
27.06.1942, BA-MA, RH 22/199
179
Maps: 105 kho. csoportosítása 17 May 1942; and 105 kho. csoportosítása 1942 végétől, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-
1945, box 22., 46/III.
180
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 272. The Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo) was not the same thing as
the SD (Sicherheitsdienst). There were many police agencies in Germany with confusing and overlapping functions. The
41
confirms that the annihilation of the Jews in Priluki was carried out by the Security Police. 181 Although
the presence of a Hungarian military unit at the time of the murders in the location can be confirmed,
none of the primary or secondary sources indicate that Hungarian soldiers assisted in the liquidation of
the ghetto.
The Encyclopedia claims that in Poddobrianka, 105 Jews were executed on 24 January 1942 at
the local cemetery with the help of the local police.182 Both the interrogation by Soviet authorities of a
soldier from the 9th company of battalion 46/III and wartime maps produced by the Hungarian military
confirm that Hungarian soldiers stationed in Dobryanka throughout January 1942. 183 (The settlement
on the Belarussian side of the border is called Poddobrianka, on the Ukrainian side it is Dobryanka.)184
Independently, the post-war testimony of Dobryanka’s police chief during the Axis occupation also
confirms the presence of the 46th Infantry Regiment, of which battalion 46/III was a part. According to
the testimony, Colonel István Baumann, the commander of the regiment, was engaged in a campaign
against partisans and the persecution of the members of the Communist party. The former police chief
also mentioned that Soviet citizens were executed en masse by the soldiers of Baumann’s regiment.
The testimony did not specify the reason for the mass executions but claimed that hundreds of people
were executed by the Hungarian soldiers in the villages and the forest around Dobryanka. The aid
provided by the local police was also confirmed by the former police chief: there were “some Russian
citizens” who were “forced” to assist, and they became “the blind tools of the Hungarians.”185 The
evidence is compelling that the 105 local Jews mentioned in Spector’s Encyclopedia were executed by
Hungarian units.
The Encyclopedia’s entry about Bakhmach states that the town’s prewar Jewish population was
295 out of the total of 10,226. Most Jews had fled before the Wehrmacht captured the town. Six
remaining Jewish families were murdered (specific date not provided).186 Large towns in the vicinity
included Niezhin (75-80 km) and Konotop (30 km) where Einsatzgruppe C or D and the 1st SS Infantry
Brigade claimed that the "Jewish question" was solved by the end of November 1941. 187 From early
SiPo was a state agency that the Nazis inherited; meanwhile, the SD was originally the intelligence agency of the Nazi
Party. The main thing to remember that at this time, both agencies were under the Reich Main Security Office, effectively
functioning as departments. In 1942-43, Heinrich Himmler was the chief of both the SiPo and the SD.
181
Situation reports of Feldkommandantur 197, 20.04.1942 and 19.06.1942: Quoted at Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews Vol. I., p. 387.
182
Spector and Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Vol. II., p. 1007
183
Document 34 in Krausz and Varge, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 149., 158.; Maps: 102., 105. es 108. dandárok
helyzete 1942 jan 25-én, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
184
JewishGen: https://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/community.php?usbgn=-1948026
185
Document 37 in Krausz and Varge, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok.
186
Spector and Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Vol I., p 80.
187
Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 190. As for Chernigov, Hilberg’s number for Jews found by
42
December 1941, battalion 32/II of the 105th Infantry Brigade operated within a 60 km radius around
Bakhmach.188
The commander of battalion 32/II, Aladár Töttösy, claimed in 1950 during his interrogation
conducted by the Hungarian authorities that, according to the instructions of the local German military
administration, the task of the battalion included securing of the rail lines, as well as “cleaning up” the
surrounding areas of partisans through continuous patrolling. After interrogation, captured communists
and partisans were to be executed.189
Due to the previous activities of the 1st SS Infantry Division and the Einsatzgruppe C or D,
there could not have been many Jews left in the region when the Hungarian troops began their
occupation duties. However, a few had probably evaded capture by escaping to the countryside or
living in small settlements that were not searched by the SS due to limited manpower resources. The
1950 interrogation of the Hungarian officers did not mention anything about Jews, but it is almost
certain that when the battalion did find Jews, they were automatically considered enemy elements to be
interrogated and then most likely executed. One instance of Hungarian soldiers executing Jews was
uncovered by a Soviet interrogation in 1943: a Hungarian Lieutenant admitted that he had 25 Jews
executed in Makosino on 8-9 December 1941.190 Another soldier from the same battalion who was
interrogated on the same day signed a postcard in 1942 as “executioner of partisans and murderer of
Jews.”191 Today, Makosino is called Makoshyne and the village lays within a 60km radius of
Bakhmach, along a rail line. Maps produced by the Hungarian army confirm that the nearest unit to
Makoshyne was battalion 32/II.192 The evidence suggests that battalion 32/II was involved in the
persecution and the annihilation of the remaining Jews who were still in the area after December 1941.
On 20 September 1942, a few dozen Jews were transported to Shchors for execution from the
neighboring villages.193 Shchors functioned as a local hub for Hungarian troops, and the town also
housed a jail. Several witnesses who lived in Shchors testified in 1945 that they saw the soldiers
transporting people from the jail to the nearby forests for execution. Several mass graves, each
Sonderkommando 4a is 309. The difference is due to the SS report claiming that 116 plus 144 Jews were shot on two
occasions (260), and at a later time in October another 49 – which adds up to 309: Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews Vol. I., p. 299.; Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 190.; Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 205-208.
188
Töttösy Aladár vallomása 27.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166, p. 14.; Map: Anlage zur Nr.21./105. Inf. Brig. Ib., 03.01.1942,
BA-MA RH22/182.
189
Töttösy Aladár vallomása 27.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166, p. 13-14.
190
191
192
Makoshyne is between Mena and Bakhmach along the Desna river. Map: Anlage zur Nr.21./105. Inf. Brig. Ib.,
03.01.1942, BA-MA RH22/182.
193
Spector, Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Vol. III., p. 1169.
43
containing 50-150 bodies, were found in 1945 and investigated by Soviet authorities.194 A Soviet
witness claimed in 1947 that Hungarian soldiers transported people from the jail on covered trucks to
the forest in the Autumn of 1942. This witness also talked about “hundreds of Jewish families shot” in
Shchors who were then buried by the Hungarians in ditches.195 The time of the murders mentioned by
the witness above corresponds to the date of the murder of dozens of Jews described by the
Encyclopedia. However, the Wehrmacht’s and the Hungarian army’s documents from this time period
had not been well preserved, there is nothing relevant in them about what happened in Shchors. Due to
the one-sidedness of the source material, no conclusion can be made about who committed these
murders on 20 September 1942.
According to the Encyclopedia, on 20 December 1941, 75 Jewish families were imprisoned and
then murdered in Horodnya.196 Soviet sources about Hungarian units stationing in the town at the time
of the murders contradict one another.197 Wehrmacht documents show that according to the schedule,
battalion 46/II of the 46th Infantry Regiment was supposed to arrive from in Horodnya and to assume
military duty on 25 November.198 It can be confirmed that on 25 January 1942, a battalion of the
regiment was still around Horodnya.199 No information was found regarding what happened between
these two dates. Although independent sources suggest the presence of Hungarian military formations
at the time of the murders, as shown by the example of Priluki at the beginning of this section, this is
not sufficient to draw any conclusions.
In one case, the Hungarian military leaders explicitly admitted the massacring of Jews allegedly
supporting the partisans by supplying food. According to the Encyclopedia, the town of Koriukovka
was home to 745 Jews in 1939, out of total 9744 inhabitants. Then the entry only mentions that after
the Wehrmacht captured the town in September 1941, 246 Jews from the area, including Koriukovka,
were murdered by German troops.200 On 20-22 December 1941, Hungarian troops were fighting
against a partisan group led by Fedorov in the area, in Reimentarovka. Following the battle and the
capture of Reimentarovka, the troops executed 90 Jews who were allegedly supplying the partisans
with food.201 In addition, the anti-partisan guidelines of the Hungarian army stated in one of the
examples about anti-partisan combat that following the battle at Reimentarovka, 264 partisans (“most
194
Document 83 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 279-280.
195
Document 56. Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok p. 188-189.
196
Spector and Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Vol I., p. 529.
197
Document 33 and 34 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.
198
Anhang Nr. 1. zu 37/105. Inf. Brig. Ia. 10.11.41., BA-MA RH22/182.
199
102., 105. es 108. dandárok helyzete 1942 jan 25-én, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
200
Spector and Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Vol. II., p 658.
201
Megsz. csop. pság. Partizán harcokról jelentés 22.12.1941, HL VKF 277/2339; Anhang Nr. 1. zu 37/105. Inf. Brig. Ia.
Auszug aus dem Operations-tagebuch der 105. Honvéd Inf. Brig. 10.11.41., BA-MA RH22/182.
44
of them Jews”) were captured and after an interrogation, they were executed.202 Given the relatively
small share of Jewish inhabitants in Koriukovka and the available opportunities to escape from the
advancing Wehrmacht troops before the capture of the town, as well as the Encyclopedia’s claim of
German troops murdering Jews, there could not have been many Jews left in the town by December
1941. Those who remained and survived, whether or not connected to the partisans, met their tragic
fate by the hands of Hungarian soldiers.
5.3. The Cooperation between the Hungarian Troops and the SS
Although the number of SS troops in the area was low after the 1st SS Infantry Brigade left, there is
evidence of cooperation between the few remaining SS units and the Hungarians. Often, these SS
soldiers were staff officers of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst).203
On 12 February 1942, an SD staff was assigned to the regiment staff of the 46th Hungarian
infantry regiment of the 105th division.204 There is no statement in the Wehrmacht documents whether
this was a temporary or a permanent arrangement. Then in March 1942, General Karl von Roque
promised to deploy an SD Kommandantur to Chernigov, the largest settlement within the Hungarian
divisions’ occupied territory.205 The establishment of a command post in Chernigov was a permanent
deployment, and the SD headquarters here had a number of smaller Gendarmerie units in various
locations under their disposal.206 Furthermore, the SD produced a report about Kovpak’s and Fedorov’s
partisan groups in August 1942 which was the most accurate and comprehensive intelligence report
about these partisan formations produced either by the German or the Hungarian army.207 These
partisan groups were operating in the area to which the SD staff members were sent in February to
assist the 46th regiment. The degree of detail in the report indicates that in some form, the SD had a
continuous presence in the field between February and August which would have inevitably entailed
some form of cooperation between the SD and the Hungarian troops. These examples above also show
202
M. Kir. Honvéd VKF. 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 56.
203
Participation of an SS platoon or an armored train with a Pak in the anti-partisan operations of Hungarian regiments:
Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. Ungar. Le. Div. 102 v. 24.2 bis 31.3.42 u. Des Kgl. Ungar. I. R. 46 v. 1. bis
31.3.42, 06.04.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323. Cooperation between GFP and SD in April 1943 in Koruck 580: Lagerbericht
für den Monat April 1943, 27.04.1943, HL Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 23., filmtár 749. Cooperation between the
German 707th Infantry Division, the 102nd Hungarian light infantry division, and a smaller SS unit in anti-partisan
operations in April 1943 in Koruck 532: PzAOK2 Befehl für die Bandenbekämpfung südl. Brjansk, 03.04.1943, BA-MA
RH21/2/541.
204
Korück 580 (Abschrift), 12.02.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
205
Bericht über die Besprechung am H.Q. der ungarischen Besatzungsgruppe am 4.3.1942, 09.03.1942, BA-MA RH22/182.
206
Gliederung des Höh. SS und Pol. Führers, 03.07.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
207
Bericht über das Ergebnis der Erhebungen über die Banditengruppen ans dem Einsatz des SD-Kommandos im
nördlichen Teile des Heeresgebietes B., 15.08.1942, BA-MA RH22/66.
45
that communication channels to coordinate operations between the SD and the Hungarian troops
existed and could be opened whenever deemed necessary.
The most detailed account of cooperation between SS soldiers and Hungarian soldiers is a
report describing the activities of a Sonderkommando (a company-strong section of an Einsatzgruppe)
in July and August 1942 in the area.208 The task of the SS unit was the “cleaning up” (Bereinigung) of
the Northern part of Army Group B’s area, including the screening of several county districts and an
internment camp for enemies of the Reich.209 However, when Kovpak’s partisans set upon the SS
soldiers, reinforcements from the Wehrmacht had to be called in (a battalion recruited from Soviet
POWs) and the search operations were delayed. It was at this point that Hungarian units first
notified.210 Later on, one section of the Sonderkommando had three combat engagements with partisans
in a group led by a high-ranking Hungarian officer. In these skirmishes, the small SS section was
subordinated to the Hungarian commander.
Although Jews were not mentioned in the report even once, it can be assumed that the
Sonderkommando executed Jews whenever they were found. On the other hand, the partisan war in the
rear was dangerous enough for the Sonderkommando to be reinforced with Wehrmacht soldiers and the
SS mission to be delayed. It was during these anti-partisan operations that the SS troops were in contact
with Hungarian units. The difficulty of the Wehrmacht with dealing with Fedorov’s and Kovpak’s
partisan groups indicate that in this area, under military administration, the institutional goals of the SS
regarding the annihilation of the Jews were put on standby for the sake of dealing with the much more
immediate task of fighting actual partisans.
According to an agreement between the SS and the Wehrmacht, the SS had the right to request
military support in rear areas during its anti-Jewish actions if the request went through the proper
channels. However, in the front-line zones the Wehrmacht had the right to request SS troops to take
part in regular military duties under Wehrmacht command, if deemed necessary.211 In the rear of the
Wehrmacht, the partisans were often dangerous enough to create situations akin to front-line combat. In
the case described above, it was not the Hungarian soldiers who assisted the SS units in the persecution
of Jews, but rather it was the Sonderkommando that assisted the Hungarian military formations in the
208
Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Einsatzkommandos der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD anlässlich der Bereinigung des
nördlichen Teiles des Heeresgebietes., 15.08.1942, BA-MA RH 22/66.
209
Army Group B was established when Army Group South was divided into two parts for the summer offensives in 1942.
In February 1943, Army Group B was combined with Army Group Don to create Army Group South again.
210
Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Einsatzkommandos der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD anlässlich der Bereinigung des
nördlichen Teiles des Heeresgebietes., 15.08.1942, BA-MA RH 22/66.
211
Jürgen Förster, Ch. VII. In Part I.: „Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation” in MGFA, ed.,
Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV., p. 494.; Förster in MGFA, ed., Germany and the Second World War Vol. IV.,
p. 1208.
46
war against real partisans. Due to the lack sources about cooperation between the SS and the Hungarian
troops, it is not possible to establish if such an arrangement was typical.
Later on, SS leaders in Kharkov and Kiev had to temporarily assign police battalions to assist
Occupation Group East in November 1942.212 At the end of 1942, General Erich Friderici,
Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, had to ask the Higher SS and Police Leader of South
Russia to send a police battalion from Chernigov out to another town to take part in the anti-partisan
war under the command of the leader of the 105th Infantry Division.213 In the summer of 1941, the SS
troops were pretending to be fighting an anti-partisan war. In 1942, this pretense had become reality.
6. War on the Partisans
6.1. Interpreting Combat Reports
A summary report of the combat between the partisans and the Hungarian 6th Infantry Division (13500
men) consisting of the regular troops of the front-line Hungarian Second Army, the 102nd Light Infantry
Division (5600 men 7.6.42), the 46th Infantry Regiment (2120 men 7.6.42),214 as well as various
German units and Ukrainian formations serves as an illustration of the disparity between own an enemy
casualties, as well as the disparity between the number of the captured weapons and the number of
people killed. These were the results of two weeks of operations between 13 May and 30 May 1942:
- Enemy losses: 4375 dead, 135 captured

- Own losses:
o Dead: 90 Hungarian, 87 militiamen, 31 German, 11 Turkestani, Cossacks and Ukrainian
(altogether 219)
o Wounded: 314 Hungarian, 50 militiamen, 69 German, 21 Turkestani, Cossacks and
Ukrainian (altogether 454)
o Missing in action: 32 Hungarian, 1 militiaman, 3 German, 1 Turkestani, 1 Cossack
(altogether 37)
212
Entwurf zu Ziffer an der Morgenmeldung v. 5.11.42 (K.T.B.), (no date), BA-MA RH22/99.
213
Der Kommandierende General der Sicherungstruppen und Befehlshaber im Heeresgebiet B Ia. Nr. 12 010/42 g,
16.12.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
214
Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. ung. le. Div. 102, der Kgl. ung. le. (sic) div. 6 und des Kgl. ung. J. R. 46 in
der Zeit vom 1.5. bis. 8.6.42. und der Gruppe Kocsis vom 26.5. bis 7.6.1942., 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
47
- Captured weapons: 7 artillery pieces, 6 grenade launchers, 20 submachine guns, 42 machine
guns, 16 automatic rifles, 449 rifles, a large amount of ammunitions and hand grenades, 300 kg
explosives, 1 field kitchen, 2 bicycles or vehicles, 23 horses, and 70 cows
- Destroyed weapons: 15 cannons, 20 grenade launchers, 2 submachine guns, 10 machine guns,
around 1000 rifles, and a large amount of ammunition and hand grenades.215
The disparity indicates that the proportion of non-combatants among the enemy casualties were
high. Many were either killed as collateral damage during military engagement or were executed
following the cessation of combat. This was admitted by Hungarian commanders in their postwar
trials.216
The casualty report above is unusually detailed. Most of the times destroyed weapons were not
reported at all, and there were irregularities in reporting functioning weapons.217 The partisans often
tried to hide their weapons before fleeing so that they might come back to pick them up again.218
However, the least reliable part of the report is probably the number of enemy losses. On the one hand,
commanders might have exaggerated the enemy casualties. On the other hand, losses suffered by the
enemy were sometimes not reported at all.219 In addition, whenever it was possible, the partisans took
their own wounded and even their dead with them.220 Therefore, individual combat reports should
never be taken at face value in establishing how many unarmed civilians were among the victims.
However, when hundreds of such reports are taken into consideration, on aggregate, the picture is
clearer. According to the report above, almost twenty times more people died on the side of the
partisans than on the side of the Axis troops. This casualty ratio was actually typical of the
engagements in the spring of 1942.221
The 102nd Light Infantry Division reported 23 dead, 42 wounded, as well as 19 frost injuries as
own casualties for March 1942. Meanwhile 1050 “partisans” had been “finished off” (erledigt) by the
215
Entry for 30.5. in Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. ung. le. Div. 102, der Kgl. ung. le. (sic) div. 6 und des Kgl.
ung. J. R. 46 in der Zeit vom 1.5. bis. 8.6.42. und der Gruppe Kocsis vom 26.5. bis 7.6.1942., 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH20-
2/323.
216
Document 8 and 72 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok.
217
41. számú Keleti Magyar Megszálló csoportparancsnoksági parancs, 28.04.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 1.
218
Kgl. Ung. 8. A.K. Ia. Tagesmeldung vom 12.7.43., BA-MA RH 26/221/64; Lt. Burkhardt Lage am 22.4.1942, BA-MA
RH23/174; 105. k.ho. Ia. Gsz-ok, nehézfegyverek létszámának emelése. Lövegszakasz felállítása., 30.05.1942, HL M. Kir.
Honvédség 1919-1945, box 2., 46/III.
219
Agricola an Kgl. ung. le. Div., 21.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175; Number of dead and wounded partisans “cannot be
established:” 6. ung. le. div. Abendmeldung, 22.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175.
220
Document 21 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszállócsapatok; Erfolg des Unternehmens „Zigeunerbaron“ (no
date), BA-MA RH24/47/234.
221
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 281., 290-291.
48
division.222 The partisans’ losses were 45 times higher. In addition, the term “erledigen” has an
unofficial connotation which supports the assertion that many of those 1050 were not killed in combat
but murdered in cold blood.
6.2. Early Cooperation between the Hungarian Troops and the German Command
Throughout the entire deployment of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade from late October to the beginning of
December 1941, there was an almost continuous string of skirmishes, such as attacks against POW
camps, blowing up bridges and rail lines, mining roads, ambushing SS patrols, or attacking German
military installations.223 The amount of weapons captured by SS soldiers testified that these partisan
groups were well armed.224 Indeed, most of them were Soviet soldiers who did not surrender after the
battle of Bryansk. The SS units were unable to suppress these partisan incursions and answered with
collective punishment against civilians. For example, after an SS post was overrun by partisans, the
infantry brigade burnt down two villages nearby and executed 41 locals. The troops also tried to get a
handle on the partisan war by increasing efforts to interrogate captured partisans and communist
functionaries before their execution.225
The institutional continuity on the ground between the Wehrmacht and SS troops, as well as the
arriving Hungarian troops was provided by the different agencies of the German military
administration. From the point of view of anti-partisan warfare, the intelligence provided by the local
GFP units was crucial. The same GFP formations that previously assisted the 1 st SS Infantry Brigade in
its activities over the summer and fall in central Ukraine also worked together in the territories east of
the Dnepr.226 These GFP units now made their accumulated knowledge and experience available to the
Hungarians who arrived in their occupation zone with zero idea about what the situation on the ground
was like.
222
Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. Ungar. Le. Div. 102 v. 24.2 bis 31.3.42. und des Kgl. Ungar. I. R. 46 v. 1. bis
31.3.42., 06.04.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323. 30-to-1 and 40-to-1 casualty ratios from 6th Division: Bericht über die
Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. ung. le. Div. 102, der Kgl. ung. le. (sic) div. 6 und des Kgl. ung. J. R. 46 in der Zeit vom 1.5. bis.
8.6.42. und der Gruppe Kocsis vom 26.5. bis 7.6.1942., 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
223
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 225., 233.
224
Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch, p. 54., 57-58., 62., 64., 68., 79., 150., 153-157., 170.
225
Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah, p. 225., 233.; Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS 29.10. "9 Partisanen und 20 Funktionare
verurteilt,“ 9.11. „53 Partisanen und 29 Kommunisten verurteilt“ in Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch, p. 51., 60.
226
GFP 708, 721, and 730: Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 56. From 1 March 1942, the cooperation between the
GFP and the SD was formalized. See Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 384. Cooperation in murders
between the Einsatzkommandos, Wehrmacht units, and the GFP in Baranovichi, Belorussia and elsewhere: Arad, The
Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p. 220.; Headland, Messages of Murder, p. 141.
49
When the Hungarian troops replaced the 1st SS Infantry Brigade, the hunt after the partisans and
political functionaries, as well as the increased efforts of interrogations, was continued by the newly
arrived units. Out of order, however, was the fact that it was Hungarian troops who were supposed to
interrogate and then execute the captured elements.227 This stood in contradiction with the instructions
of the Richtlinien which required that suspicious elements (“Wanderer” and “Ortsfremden”) were to be
handed over to the GFP or the SD for interrogation, or to be transported to the nearest dulag.228 A
likely explanation is that the GFP and the SD simply did not have enough manpower to be everywhere.
A perfect example of the possible consequences of insufficient cooperation between the GFP
and the Hungarian units was an incident in December 1941 around Dobryanka. The GFP managed to
turn a local low-ranking partisan commander. He was then sent back to his old unit with the purpose of
convincing people to desert and surrender to the Germans. He managed to convince 35 of them to leave
their unit. However, as they were coming out of the forest, Hungarian soldiers arrested them, and
despite their assurances that they were acting on behalf of the GFP, all 35 of them were executed by the
Hungarian troops.229 Subsequently, both Occupation Group East and the German authorities requested
the Hungarian troops to collaborate more closely with the German military administration and the
GFP.230
The handling of the captured was also an unresolved issue between the German administration
and the Hungarian troops. Occupation Group East prohibited taking prisoners as early as January 1942:
"the captured must be executed on the spot.” This order followed an incident when four soldiers of the
105th Brigade were tasked to bring back a group of prisoners to their command post and were set upon
by partisans who killed at least two of them. All the prisoners escaped. 231 The brigade commander,
Kolossváry, added that if time allowed, prisoners should be interrogated on the spot before the
execution.232
Inflicting collective punishment on the civilian population was also in the toolbox of Hungarian
commanders. Feldkommandantur 194 informed the 105th Brigade that in case of sabotage or attacks, if
the perpetrator’s identity was unknown, reprisals were to be introduced against the local civilian
227
Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása, 27.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.
228
OKW Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, p. 11-12., 15., 25.10.1941., BA-MA RH2/3700.
229
Stab Sich. Reg. 57. Betr. Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung, 27.08.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
230
Verfügungen zur Abänderung der bisherigen Sicherungsräume der Brigaden 105. und 108. zum Einsatz der Brig. 102.,
27.12.1941, BA-MA RH22/11; Ltd. Feldpolizeidirektor Partisanenbewegung im Räume ostwärts Snowsk, (no date), BA-
MA RH 22/182.
231
Megsz. Csop. Pság. Helyzetjelentés, 28.01.1942, HL VKF 277/3241.
232
105. gy. dd. Ia. 12. sz. bizalmas dandár parancsnoksági parancs, 29.01.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
50
population, including mass executions. FK 194 merely requested that the Hungarians asked for
permission from the German military administration in advance.233
6.3. The Barbarization of the Anti-Partisan War
Omer Bartov described the brutalization and radicalization of the war on the Eastern Front as
“barbarization.”234 Incidentally, the Hungarian General Staff considered partisan warfare “the barbarian
way of war.”235 By April 1942, Korück and the Hungarian units were desperate just to hold the
partisans at bay. The 102nd division had been in continuous combat since February and its fatigue
reached dangerous levels. The division was on the verge of collapse.236 On the one hand, the war
behind the front lines looked very much like frontline war with artillery shelling on both sides, partisan
fortifications, and bunkers. The 102nd division asked for aerial support against the partisan villages and
camps.237 István Baumann, commander of the 46th IR recommended the firebombing of five villages,
including Staraja Guta where the partisans stored much of their food and munition.238 Between 16 April
and 24 April, 15 partisan places were bombed with the result of killing around 1000 “partisans.”239
However, every German bomber in the rear destroying villages was a German bomber not
destroying Soviet regular troops or Soviet industrial installments elsewhere. Dropping bombs on
peasant cottages was a staggeringly inefficient way of utilizing air power in which the costs of the
operation (fuel and bombs) might have easily exceeded the value of objects that were destroyed. At the
same time, fighting the partisans from house from house would have cost the Hungarian troops too
many lives of their own soldiers. As the commander of the 105th described an incident:
“At Schostka, shots were fired at a Hungarian patrol from a Ukrainian house. The patrol, with disregard to
the danger, courageously swang into action against the assassins. Due to the exemplarily brave but
insufficiently cautious actions of the soldiers, the patrol suffered two dead and one wounded… With
appropriate precautions, they could have reduced or altogether avoided the casualties. Referring to the
case above, let me again call the attention again that valuable Hungarian blood must be spared with the
233
105. gy. dd. Ia. 11. sz. bizalmas dandár parancsnoksági parancs, 27.01.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
234
Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front 1941-45: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare, (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2007).
235
VKF. 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 5.
236
Fernspruch von Lt. Burkhardt, 02.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/173; Korück 580 an A.O.K.2., 06.04.1942, BA-MA RH
23/173.
237
Meldung von 102. Le. Division, 17.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/174.
238
Honv. Rgm 46 (Abschrift), 12.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/174.
239
Agricola Fernschreiben an A.O.K.2., 26.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
51
proper application of the appropriate precautionary measures. The most effective method to break
resistance, especially from buildings, is the use of hand grenades or setting fire to the building.”240
The same principle was applied at large scale as well. Several battalions, including 43/III of the
nd
102 Light Infantry Division, were at the end of their rope in early April. Sandor Raiter, the
commander of 43/III suffered a nervous breakdown. There was an increasing number of cases of
typhus in the unit. The “complete exhaustion” of the battalion and the enemy’s superiority in heavy
weapons reduced the fighting spirit of the crew to dangerously low levels. To restore the spirit of the
troops and to save these units from total disintegration, the commander of the 102nd division requested
the bombing Berestok and Borissowo.241 The bombing missions were not forthcoming and the battalion
eventually captured these two towns while setting fire to them. This time, no own losses were
reported.242 At his trial in 1947, Raiter testified that during his time as battalion commander, he
received five or six orders from the regiment to burn down a village or town if the partisans resisted.243
The presence of soldiers in battalions who could not understand Hungarian created
communication challenges that severely limited the effectiveness of units. An account of one of the
soldiers from the 9th company of 46/III illustrates the simplicity of indiscriminate orders the soldiers
received prior to combat:
“Early in the morning we encircled the village, and then we received the order from the company
commander to set fire to it, and shoot everybody we see, regardless of age and gender. He literally told us
to shoot everyone out on the streets. We opened fire at Jelino with machine guns and submachine guns
setting it afire with incendiary ammunition because the rooftops of most buildings were made of straw.
Then we began shooting the people who were running out of the houses. This way, we killed about 500
people during the operation, women and children among them. Then we gathered those who were still
alive in the village (around 100 people) and carried them to Horodnya where we handed them over to the
German Kommandantur.”244
240
105. k. ho. Ia. 43. sz. hadosztályparancsnoksági parancs, 04.12.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
241
Meldung von 102. Le. Division, 17.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/174.
242
K. megsz. csop. Helyzetjelentés, 22.04.1942, HL VKF mikrofilmek 277/2343.
243
Document 73, Raiter Sándor kihallgatása, 08.04.1947 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok.
244
Document 34, Boros József kihallgatása, 23.10.1947 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok.
Conflicting account on the number of victims, 296 and 450 also claimed: Document 38, Afanasenko Ny. G. Kihallgatása,
01.11.1947; and Document 83, A Csernyigovi Terület Együttműködési Bizottság jelentése, 10.03.1945 in Krausz and Varga,
ed., A Magyar megszálló csapatok.
52
The death or the suffering of their comrades could radicalize the soldiers’ willingness for
extreme brutality. Battalion 40/I of the 102nd division, in which Gyula Daróczi served, captured two
villages on 22 April. The soldiers were searching the places house by house in small groups for
parisans and weapons, when suddenly hand grenades were thrown at them from one of the houses. The
ensuing combat lasted until late at night, during which the partisans managed to receive reinforcements.
Six Hungarian soldiers were wounded. Eventually, the battalion burnt down the entire village.245
Two days later, Daróczi's battalion had seen its heaviest fighting yet when it was tasked to
capture and occupy the village of Lepeshino from a well-armed partisan group without aerial
assistance. Apparently, the battalion commander's conclusion from the previous engagement was that
the safest way to capture and occupy a place was to level it and kill its entire population. This time, no
one bothered with searching for partisan suspects or taking prisoners. The reports of a German liaison
officer and Korück simply stated that battalion 40/I suffered casualties of three dead, one heavily
wounded and one lightly wounded in the combat, during which the village was burnt down. The
enemy's losses were unknown and nothing was said about prisoners.246
The same event is covered in detail in Daróczi's diary. It is not clear if he personally took part in
the combat, or whether he only heard about what happened from another soldier four days later.
Regardless, the description is accurate when it comes to the number of dead and the heavily wounded
from the battalion, as well as the time of these events. Hence, it is a reliable source regarding the
circumstances of the siege of Lepeshino. Daróczi’s diary explains what happened there:
"On 24 April, our battalion assaulted a village which was full of partisans… When they [the soldiers of
the battalion] got to the village, they received machine-gun fire from the first houses. They tried to seek
cover in the ditches as much as possible, of course. This was when our company suffered its first deadly
casualty, a good kid… Then the advance squad moved forward with the machine gunner in front. The
partisans were firing from the ditch, our machine gunner fell. Headshot; he was dead right away. He was
the second one who fell, a decent Hungarian fella… One more of our comrades fell, a carpenter from Pest.
He was married, since we had been out here, his child was born… The wounded comrade was a poor chap
from Pusztaecseg… He is going to make it, but his left leg is gone. His left knee was destroyed by the
245
Lt. Burkhardt Lage am 22.4.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
246
Lt. Burkhardt Lage am 22.4.1942, BA-MA RH23/174; Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der kgl. ung. 102 le. Div. und
das Kgl. ung. I. R. 46 vom 1.4. – 30.4.1942., 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
53
bullet of a partisan. Not even an animal could escape from the village, let alone a human. As I heard,
already 17 villages have been leveled to the ground.”247
One of the most horrifying documents in the Koruck files is a short, half-page report that merely
states matter-of-factly the condition in which five Hungarian soldiers were found after a battle with the
partisans in 1943:
„1 case eyes gouged out and eyelids sewed together
1 " hands chopped off
1 " skin on feet peeled off
1 " castrated
248
1 " stomach cut open”
It is difficult to imagine what kind of emotions were masked by the purportedly impersonal,
official tone of the report. Even second-hand knowledge of atrocities like this had a brutalizing effect
on soldiers. Again, Daróczi’s diary is consulted:
"[The partisans] were doing a horrific butchery job. There are no prisoners here, if they capture a
Hungarian or a German, they mutilate him before they execute him. A Lieutenant who was taken by them
was unclothed, and then they cut up his thighs as if they were pockets, and they put his hands [in the
wounds]. They cut off his genital and put it in his mouth like a cigar. They did all this while he was alive.
There were many things like this. Of course, there was retribution. Our soldiers surrounded the village
where the partisans were, and without any mercy, set fire to it while the people were still in the houses,
and then butchered its inhabitants. There are many such desolated villages."249
In turn, the destruction of villages with their inhabitants further brutalized the Soviet partisans;
a vicious cycle of escalating violence began. As partisan commander Sydor Kovpak described the
247
Entry for 24.04.1942 in Daróczi’s diary, HL TGY3220. Daroczi's remark about the 17 destroyed villages was probably
incorrect, but the summary report of the activities of the 102 nd division and the 46th regiment for April month does mention
numerous incidents of villages burnt to the ground. The hearsay about the number of destroyed villages was not wide off the
mark: Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der kgl. ung. 102 le. Div. und das Kgl. ung. I. R. 46 vom 1.4. – 30.4.1942.,
08.09.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
248
K. u. 1. L. Div. Fernspruch, 09.08.1943, HL Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 26a., filmtár 750..
249
Daróczi’s diary, p. 48-49., HL TGY 3220.
54
effect of a massacre committed by the soldiers of a Hungarian regiment and a German panzer
company:
"Our scouts reported that there remained in Novaya Sloboda many seriously wounded people who had
managed to crawl out of the corpse-filled cottages and hide in the kitchen gardens, ditches, and ravines.
Our medical workers were sent, under cover of a group of tommy-gunners, to render assistance… What
they saw in blood-drenched Novaya Sloboda literally stupefied them. In the past we had tried to take care
of the girls, not to take them on very dangerous operations, but after they had been in Novaya Sloboda, it
was impossible to do so… We had with us Galina Borisenko, a remarkable nurse. After Novaya Sloboda
this tall, energetic, courageous girl would cry bitterly if she was not taken into action. It was thus that
peaceful Soviet men and women became terrible avengers of the people.”250
Throughout April and May, Hungarian units were continuously involved in fighting real and
alleged partisans, in the process inflicting staggering casualties on their opponents. Officially, Korück
continued to express its satisfaction with the operations of the Hungarian troops and even asked the
temporarily assigned 6th Infantry Division of the Hungarian army to continue to demonstrate the
harshness they had shown so far.251 In fact, Korück also embraced the “body count” as the measure of
success when reporting to its superiors, the Second Army Command (Armeeoberkommando 2, AOK2).
In a summary report about the anti-partisan war in the area belonging to Korück 580 between
December 1941 and June 1942, General Kurt Agricola, commander of Korück 580, even claimed that
the majority of the 8500-loss suffered by the partisans was delivered by German troops. It was very
unlikely, given that the majority of Korück 580 troops were Hungarian units. Apart from the body
count, no information or remark was reported to AOK2 about enemy losses.252
One level up in the hierarchy, AOK2 also expressed its appreciation to the Hungarian units. 253
However, reporting to Army Group South, AOK2 remarked that unfortunately, the Hungarian troops
did not manage to kill all the partisans in their territory. It asked the Army Group to send German
divisions to finally achieve the complete annihilation of the local partisan forces. 254 Further instructions
and remarks given by the General Erich Friderici, Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, only
250
S. A. Kovpak, Our Partisan Course, (London: Hutchinson, 1947), p. 71.
251
Korück 580 Ia. an Kgl. ung. 6. le. (sic) Div., 26.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
252
Korück 580 an A.O.K.2., 28.06.1942, BA-MA RH 23/176.
253
Bericht über die Gefechtstätigkeit der Kgl. ung. Le. Div. 102, der Kgl. ung. Le. Div. 6 und des Kgl. ung. J. R. 46 in der
Zeit vom 1.5.bis 8.6.42. und der Gruppe Kocsis vom 26.5. bis 7.6.1942., 08.09.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
254
A.O.K.2. Fernschreiben an Ob. Kdo. Hgr. Süd, 20.05.1942, BA-MA RH 20/2/401.
55
stressed the utmost importance of the complete annihilation of the partisans without commenting on the
loss of civilian life.255
However, the annihilation of the partisans in combat operations was just one of the pillars of the
Wehrmacht’s anti-partisan strategy; the other one was to gain the local population’s trust. What had
happened in the spring of 1942 was obviously incompatible with this.
6.4. German Attempts to Revise Anti-partisan Tactics
In the spring of 1942, several reports were filed to Korück by low-ranking German officers regarding
problems at Hungarian military units, as well as the negative impact of those issues on the anti-partisan
war. These situational reports were written by German liaison officers on assignment at Hungarian
regiments. Evidently, the barrier to criticizing soldiers was much lower when those soldiers were of a
different nationality. Their assessments and situation reports provided an important insight into military
units Wehrmacht commanders were not knowledgeable about. Hence, these reports were appreciated
by these officers’ superiors, and the files made it up the German command of chain. It is unlikely that
low-ranking Wehrmacht officers would have dared to criticize their own troops the same way. If they
had done so, it had not been preserved in a written form. The reports penned by the liaison officers
provide a unique insight not only into the conditions at the specific Hungarian units but also into the
general problems of the anti-partisan war.
However, the reports written by these officers should be interpreted with skepticism. Relations
between German liaison officers and Hungarian commanders were plagued by mutual frustration which
sometimes reached levels where the communication broke down. In some of the battalions of the
frontline 2nd Hungarian Army, the German liaison officers were called “commissars” and “politruks”
by the Hungarians. As for the German officers themselves, they could hardly wait for their assignment
to come to an end.256
In early April, two German liaison officers on assignment at the regiments of the 102 nd division
complained to Korück that the Hungarian interrogators did not try to differentiate between guilty and
innocent, and sometimes even locals working for the Germans fell victim to such methods. The
German officers recommended that the interrogation of partisan suspects should be firmly placed in
255
P.z.A.O.K.2. Fernspruch an Heeresgruppe Mitte, 21.06.1942, BA-MA RH 21/2/406; Der Kom. Gen. der Sich.-Truppen
und Bfh. im Heeresgebiet B, Die Partisanenlage im Nordgebiet, 27.08.1942, BA-MA RH 22/66.
256
Bericht des Verbindungs-Offiziers zum Kgl. Ung. J. R. 46, 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/173; Document 18: Ámon Ferenc
kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 19-20.03.1946 in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok; 6. k. ho. Ia.
Helyzetjelentés V.23-tól 25-ig, 26.05.1942, HL 2. hadsereg., box 5. On Korück blaming the Hungarians for the tense
situation with the locals: Korück 580 an A.O.K.2., 05.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
56
German hands, namely the GFP.257 Battalion commander Aladár Töttösy’s trial in 1950 confirms the
assessment of the liaison officers (although Töttösy served in a different division than the two German
officers). When Töttösy received 80 Soviet citizens from the German Feldkommandantur for
interrogation in December 1941, he ordered a subordinated officer not to waste much time with the
interrogation “because they will be executed anyway.”258 Soon after the liaison officers’ report, Korück
appointed two German officers to act as GFP staff in the area and demanded that for the sake of the
consistency of information gained from interrogations, all partisans and partisan helpers must be
handed over to the GFP.259 However, handing over suspects to the GFP had largely remained
dependent on whether there was a GFP officer nearby.
It was also pointed out by low- and mid-ranking German field officers that the plundering and
the indiscriminate brutality of the Hungarian troops damaged the Wehrmacht’s popular appeal among
the locals and helped the recruitment efforts of partisans.260 According to the description of German
liaison officers, if it hadn’t been for the Hungarians, the Germans would have good relations with the
locals.261
The indigenization of the anti-partisan struggle was closely connected to the issue of popular
appeal. Apart from dealing with the lack of manpower, indigenization was recognized already in the
spring of 1942 by some German field commanders as a way to increase the efficiency of the war.
Locals had a superior knowledge of the terrain and the enemy and they were less likely to run into traps
and ambushes laid by the partisans. According to some German officers, including the liaison officer at
the Hungarian 46th Infantry Regiment, the most efficient way of dealing with the partisan groups was to
foment a civil war, in which the occupying powers would have their “own partisan units” fighting on
behalf of the Wehrmacht.262
At the same time, Koruck 580 made a feeble attempt to convince the partisans to surrender to
German troops. According to Korück instructions, if they surrendered with their weapons, their lives
would be guaranteed and they would be treated as ordinary soldiers who were POWs. 263 This
257
Wesentliche Punkte aus Ferngespräch mit Obltn. Crüwell und Ltn. Dulle betr. ungar. 102. le. Div., 06.04.1942, BA-MA
RH 23/173.
258
Töttösy Aladár vallomása, 27.10.1650, ÁBTL V-73166, p 14.
259
Agricola, 06.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/173.
260
Hptm. Bergmeister Feldgend. Abt. 581 Lagerbericht vom 21.5.42., 22.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175; O.K. Sewsk
Meldungen von Dorfältesten und O.D. Männern, 28.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
261
Wesentliche Punkte aus Ferngespräch mit Obltn. Crüwell und Ltn. Dulle betr. ungar. 102. le. Div., 06.04.1942, BA-MA
RH 23/173; Bericht des Verbindungs-Offiziers zum Kgl. Ung. J. R. 46, 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH 23/173; Oberleutnant
Crüwell Erfahrungsbericht, 29.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
262
Oberleutnant Crüwell Erfahrungsbericht, 29.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176; Auszug aus dem Bericht der Baugruppe
Strobl, 17.03.1942, BA-MA RH23/173.
263
Korück 580 Ic.10.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/173; Document 73, Raiter Sándor kihallgatása, 08.04.1947, in Krausz and
57
instruction had no discernible practical effect.264 Being promised to be treated as a POW was not very
convincing to Soviet partisans after Soviet POWs had been decimated in German camps over the
winter. As a captured Soviet radio message showed, the local partisans were aware of German leaflets
promising treatment as POWs in case of surrender. However, the partisans did not find such promises
convincing at all because they “did not want to starve to death in the POW camp.”265
An early example of what Korück was trying to achieve were the actions of a combat group,
Gruppe Möckel, on 30 May 1942. The group, led by the German Lieutenant Colonel Möckel, consisted
of a Hungarian infantry battalion, a battalion recruited from Soviet POWs (“Turkestan” battalion), and
a local auxiliary unit (Feldgendarmerie-Abteilung 581). In these actions, the group claimed to have
killed 108 “real partisans” (“wirkliche Partisanen”) and deliberately abstained from burning down
villages and shooting people who were not, “without doubt,” partisans or partisan helpers. The local
auxiliary unit then ventured deep into the forest, where it managed to destroy much material amassed
by the partisans. Later it captured a partisan leader as well, who became a useful source of
information.266 Agricola of Koruck 580 expressed his satisfaction with the results. His report went
beyond the usual short notes thanking the Hungarian troops. Clearly, Agricola considered this as the
ideal way of fighting the partisans.267 The most useful part of the combat group was the auxiliary unit
recruited from local people. Incidentally, this case also showed that Hungarian soldiers were capable of
conducting operations without indiscriminate killings, if led properly.
One should not read too much into this one raid, though. This was the only occasion when a
German or Hungarian report used the words "real partisans." From a military point of view, this assault
was conducted professionally. However, in the overall picture, this raid was just a blip on the screen
whose significance disappears once it is looked at from a bird-eye's view. This small-scale operation
was part of a two-week-long campaign whose summary report is analyzed at the beginning of this
chapter. Overall, the huge disparity between own and enemy losses shows that many unarmed people
were also killed during those two weeks.
Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.

264
I found only one occasion when partisans surrendered with their weapons to a German regiment in the region. They
explicitly referred to the guarantee promised to them in a leaflet issued by Army Group Middle: Sich. Reg. 57.
Gefechtsbericht für die Zeit vom 5.10. – 6.10.1942., 11.10.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
265
Ernspruch von Ltn. Burkhardt, 17.04.1942, BA-MA RH23/174.
266
Ltn. Dulle, 30.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176; Korück 580 Abendmeldung an A.O.K.2., 30.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
267
Agricola an Oberstleutnant Möckel, 30.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/176.
58
7. War on the People?
7.1. The Anti-Partisan Guidelines of the Hungarian Army
From late 1941 until the autumn of 1943, the Hungarian war documents dealing with anti-partisan war
in the region were absent of the kind of recommendations that came from several German field officers
in 1942 who were trying to think outside of the box. Nearly the only substantial instruction that
required Hungarian soldiers to treat the personnel of the Ukrainian militias serving as the Wehrmacht’s
auxiliaries better was an order issued by István Baumann, the commander of the 46th Infantry Regiment
in June 1942:
“In general, the members of the militia should be treated with decency… This much-suffered people can
only be fully reassured about our intentions if we treat them humanly but with strictness… In the future, I
will punish any arbitrariness and excesses [against the militiamen committed by Hungarian soldiers] with
the utmost severity. Every soldier must understand that all of our efforts and sacrifices will be wasted if
these kinds of instructions are not followed.”268
It is possible that there were Hungarian officers who arrived at similar conclusions, but the
Hungarian wartime documents simply do not contain any of their writing. The huge disparity between
the amount of German and the amount of Hungarian war material that had been preserved partially
explains this phenomenon.
While some German officers were attempting to revise anti-partisan tactics and strategy in order
to convince a larger part of the local inhabitants to support the Axis occupation, the Hungarian military
leadership came to an altogether different conclusion regarding the connection between the population
and the partisans. Comparing the recommendations of German liaison officers with the instructions
issued by the Hungarian General Staff would not be like comparing apples to apples because these
German and Hungarian officers occupied very different positions at altogether different levels in their
respective military hierarchy. Comparing the Hungarian General Staff’s instructions to the anti-partisan
guidelines (Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung) of the Wehrmacht High Command yields more
insightful observations. Even so, it needs to be taken into consideration that at the time of issuing the
Richtlinien, in October 1941, a serious Soviet partisan activity was yet to develop. Whereas, the
268
46. gye. pk. Miliccel és lakossággal való bánásmód, 16.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.
59
Hungarian leadership worked out its anti-partisan manual after the Hungarian troops had barely been
able to hold the line against the Soviet partisans in the first half of 1942.
Training manual No. 10., titled “Presenting the Experiences of the Ongoing War: Partisan
Warfare,” was a widely circulated document issued by the Chief of the General Staff in May 1942.
Over the course of June and July 1942, copies of the manual were distributed at company level among
the troops of Occupation Group East.269 Later, it was captured during the war by the Red Army and
used in postwar trials to indict Hungarian military leaders.
There were marked differences between the Richtlinien and Manual No. 10. While the German
guidelines explicitly stated that the partisan war was “not a popular movement” (keine
Volksbewegung), the Hungarian anti-partisan guidelines claimed in 1942 that “the partisan movement
had already reached the scale of a popular movement” (népmozgalom).270 Both the German and the
Hungarian guidelines used the term “partisan movement” to describe the phenomenon. However,
according to the Richtlinien, the partisans fought only for Bolshevism. Meanwhile, the Hungarian
manual was not shy to admit that the Soviet leaders were promoting the partisan movement “ultimately
to defend their country.”271 Implicitly, the Hungarian military leaders accepted the Soviet partisans'
claim for legitimacy; that in the occupied areas, these groups were the representatives of the Soviet
government which was the legitimate ruler of these lands. 272 This stood in stark contrast to the German
propaganda about the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, the view of Soviet partisans expressed in the
Hungarian anti-partisan manual stood much closer to the postwar Soviet officialdom than to the
Wehrmacht’s views.
The manual also described that the success of the partisan groups largely depended on the
inhabitants’ “Communist attitude, reliability from a red [Communist] point of view, as well as its
fanaticism.” Fear of the return of Soviet power also played a rule, and many only supported the
partisans due to this. The manual claimed that, ultimately, regardless of anything the occupiers did, the
Germans and the Hungarians would never mean anything but “foreign occupation and another ruler”
for patriotic Ukrainians.273
269
50. sz. Keleti Magyar Csoportparancsnoksági parancs, 08.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box.1.; 105. K. ho. Ia.
3. sz. hadosztályparancsnoksági parancs, 21.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.; 46/III. zlj. pság. 44. sz.
zászlóaljnapiparancs, 10.07.1942, HL 46. gyez., box 21., II.1519.
270
OKW Richtlinien für Partisanenbekämpfung , p. 8., 25.10.1941, BA-MA RH2/3700; VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború
tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 5.
271
VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 1-2.
272
In Western Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalists had their own underground organization, the OUN. However, the OUN was
not yet active as a military force in the first half of 1942. The only type of partisan group Hungarian units were fighting at
the time of issuing the anti-partisan manual were the Soviet partisans in the territory of Koruck 580.
273
VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 16., 35., 34.
60
Manual No. 10 recommended several administrative measures, such as job creation, the orderly
provision of food and goods, even land privatization, to better the quality of life for the local population
with the purpose of turning them away from the partisans. The manual pointed out that if the
population saw the presence of the occupying troops as a guarantee for its personal and material safety,
it would turn its back to the partisan movement.274 However, local administration was in the hands of
the Germans. It was pointless to note in a Hungarian manual that land reform could help the cause of
the Axis. Besides, expecting the occupying troops to provide security was completely unrealistic;
throughout March and April, they could barely provide security for themselves. Given the precarious
supply situation and the never-ending problems with the lack of discipline and plundering, it was
extremely unlikely that anyone among the locals could conceive of the occupying Hungarian troops as
guarantors of property rights. For one reason or another, none of these positive recommendations were
realistic.
The manual also recommended the heavy use of the stick. The punishment doled out for
supporting the partisans was to be extreme:
“The defeat of the partisan detachments must be followed by the most ruthless retribution. There is no
room for leniency here! Unyielding strictness is going to make everyone think twice about joining or
supporting the partisans. Meanwhile, mercy would only be perceived as a weakness. The captured
partisans, after the occasional interrogation, must either be executed on the spot, or a terrifying example
must be made out of them by publicly hanging them in villages nearby. Uncovered partisan helpers who
fall into our hands must also be treated in the same manner. It is paramount that as many as possible
among the inhabitants would learn about the reprisal.”275
In addition, the manual noted that “fighting the partisans is not limited to the annihilation of the
individual partisan units and organizations. They have to be deprived of all opportunities to reorganize
and supply their ranks, as well as of the opportunities of any human and material resupply.”276 This was
a logical conclusion of the belief that the partisan warfare had grown to the level of a popular mass
movement. In itself, this instruction was vague and did not specify any measure to be taken.
274
VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 28-29., 30.
275
VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 39.
276
VKF 4. oszt., A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 34. Also quoted at the 1947 trial of Álgya-Pap: Document
1, Álgya-Pap Zoltán kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 26.10.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.
61
“Depriving” the partisans of their human resource and their supply base could have entailed a variety of
different methods.
Zoltán Álgya-Pap (commander of the 105th Light Infantry Division from October 1942 to
October 1943) claimed in 1947 that the Hungarian anti-partisan guidelines “required” the liquidation of
settlements with their inhabitants that could supply the partisans with recruits and food. 277 Sándor
Zachár (Chief of Staff of Occupation Group East from April 1942 to June 1943) asserted that manual
10. allowed commanders to burn down villages, shoot people who were suspicious and to confiscate
the locals’ animals.278 Meanwhile, Béla Sáfrány (commander of the 53rd regiment of the 102nd Light
Infantry Division from December 1942 until March 1943) confirmed to have received orders to destroy
villages by artillery fire and instructions from Occupation Group East that “demanded” violent reprisals
against the population.279 Thus, there were contradicting accounts of what the manual “required.”
Manual 10. did not actually say anything about burning down villages and it definitely did not
“require” the annihilation of settlements with their population. The vague guidelines of the General
Staff were translated into murderous orders by Occupation Group East.
In late June 1942, Károly Bogányi, commanding general of Occupation Group East, issued an
order to burn down several villages northeast of Putivl, and also to exterminate the entire male
population between the ages of 15 and 60 in those villages. In addition, he empowered the commander
of the 34th Infantry Regiment to determine what other settlements were to be burnt down. According to
the order, the reason for such brutality was the lack of success of a previous mopping-up operation in
the area during which the partisans had avoided combat with the Hungarian troops by simply blending
in among the locals.280
When the partisans suffered a tactical defeat or were wounded, they were able to disperse in
small groups to different locations where they would get support from the local citizens, and the
wounded would receive treatment.281 However, this time at least, the chief cause of the lack of success
of the Axis troops against Kovpak’s partisans was probably not the help the partisans could receive
from the locals but rather the rugged, forested, marshy terrain and the partisans’ intimate knowledge of
it. It seems that they could always slip out of grip, even when encircled. The partisan groups could not
277
Document 4, Álgya-Pap Zoltán kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 06.11.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló
csapatok.
278
Document 17, Zachár Sándor kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 03.11.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló
csapatok.
279
Document 22, Sáfrány Béla kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 28.10.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló
csapatok.
280
Bes. Gr. Ost. Ia. Verfügung zur weiteren Säuberung der Umgebung von Putiwl, 25.06.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
281
FK 194 Tagesmeldung, 12.07.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
62
be found by the Hungarian troops because they were simply not where the Axis units were looking for
them. As Kovpak described:
“By morning all the combined detachments had disengaged from the enemy and were in the Maritsa
forest. We could have gone farther north to the Bryansk forests, the way was open, but we were bound not
to move away from the Konotop-Kursk railway along which German military trains were once more
moving, one after the other, towards the front. The combined detachments moved eastward from the
Maritsa forest to the boundary of the Kursk province towards the trunk railway in order to continue there
the work of blowing up important sections.”282
Thus, the partisan group continued its sabotage activities as if nothing had happened and the
Hungarian commanders lost face in front of their Wehrmacht superiors and colleagues. In Bogányi’s
infamous order above, the village of Nova Sloboda was specifically mentioned:
“Nova Sloboda is to be burnt down. A [German] panzer company, a light Flak battery, as well as adequate
infantry troops must be sent here on 26th June. At the slightest resistance, the entire male population is to
283
be exterminated.”
On the 26th of June, the day after Bogányi’s order, the commander of the 34th Hungarian
infantry regiment sent the required forces to occupy the village. Even before they reached Nova
Sloboda, they encountered strong resistance and suffered several casualties. With the help of the
German panzer company, they overcame the resistance and then moved on to burn down three villages,
including Nova Sloboda.284 The Soviet and the Hungarian accounts provide roughly the same
information about the number of people who were killed there on that day (407 and 350, respectively).
The difference is that Soviet sources claim that those killed were villagers; meanwhile, in the
Hungarian and German records, they were all "partisans."285
Occupation Group East’s status within the Axis military complex was much less well defined
than the status of the Hungarian field commanders. While Occupation Group East could issue whatever
282
Kovpak, Our Partisan Course, p. 65-66.
283
Bes. Gr. Ost. Ia. Verfügung zur weiteren Säuberung der Umgebung von Putiwl, 25.06.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
284
Bes. Gr. Ost. Ia. Meldung über Säuberungsaktion gegen Partisanen im Raume von Putiwl, 04.07.1942, BA-MA RH
22/46.
285
63
order they wished, whether or not in line with German guidelines, the Hungarian division commanders
were strictly subordinated to Korück in all operational matters. Their position within the German
military administration’s hierarchy was unambiguous. As the war progressed, the Germans tried to
keep Occupation Group East out of the loop altogether. The desperation of Occupation Group East over
the gradual loss of its authority reached a boiling point in September 1942 when the Group forbade the
participation of the 102nd Division in German operations unless the Group command had the
opportunity to approve the operation plans beforehand.286 On 1 October 1942, the OKH formally
subordinated the command of Occupation Group East to the Kommandierenden General der
Sicherungstruppen und Befehlshaber im Heeresgebiet B.287
It remains unclear how much the Wehrmacht knew about the instructions the Hungarian
divisions were receiving from the Hungarian General Staff and Occupation Group East. No references
are found about to manual 10 in German documents. However, the Hungarian anti-partisan guidelines
were widely distributed and it is very likely that German officers serving together with their Hungarian
comrades were informed of the document’s content, at least orally. Occupation Group East continued
to distribute the content of manual 10 even after the Group had been subordinated to the chief-in-
command of the rear areas of Army Group South.288 The vague instructions of manual 10 themselves
were not problematic to Wehrmacht officers; it was the radical interpretation of the guidelines which
was objected by some of them.
7.2. Draining the Water
Mao Zedong said that the support of the population is as important to partisans as water is to fish. By
the summer of 1942, both German and Hungarian military leaders had concluded that they could not
catch the fish and so decided that something had to be done about the water. As seen, taken to its most
extreme, “depriving” the partisans of the support of the population could mean the annihilation of
villages with their inhabitants. The removal of a part of the population could also function: deporting
the locals from within a 10 km zone along certain sections of the rail lines was already recommended
by Kolossváry in May.289
Apparently, in late July some Wehrmacht commanders arrived at the same conclusion and they
recommended that all males between the ages of 15 to 60 be deported to camps from key areas so as to
286
P.z.A.O.K.2. Fernschreiben an Heeresgruppe Mitte, 11.09.1942, BA-MA RH21-2/343.
287
OKH betr. Ung. Besatzungsgruppe Ost, 01.10.1942, BA-MA RH21/2/345.
288
Document 4, Álgya-Pap Zoltán kihallgatása, 06.11.1947, in Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok.
289
105. k. ho. Ia. Vasútvonalak fokozottabb biztosítása, 11.05.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.
64
deprive the partisans of their food supplies and support base.290 Once the population was “evacuated,”
– that was the euphemism used in official documents – the area could be destroyed.291 In September,
deportations combined with burning down the empty villages, as well as deforestation were embraced
by the Befehlshaber Heeresgebiet B. The tactical aim of such operations was the creation of dead zones
between the partisans and the occupying forces with the purpose of stopping partisan raids.292
In Operation Dreieck and Viereck conducted under German command in July, 15,000 people
were deported in total. Also, the category of "with a weapon in their hands" appeared in the statistics
about enemy losses. It indicates that by this time, there was not only an understanding in Korück 580 of
the negative impact of the indiscriminate killings, but a willingness and capacity as well to address the
problem in practice.293
This was a tacit admission of the failure of the OKW’s anti-partisan strategy which was based
on the assumption that the partisans were only acting on behalf of the centrally led Communist Party
without having much support in the population. It had become clear even for the higher echelons of the
German military apparatus that the partisans could not be surgically separated from the body of the
populace. The assumption that the Soviet partisans were just a malignant tumor caused by the virus of
Bolshevism and the locals would be thankful if this tumor was removed, had proven to be false.
On 1 December 1942, the OKW issued a new anti-partisan instruction, titled Kampfanweisung
für die Bandenbekämpfung im Osten, in which the creation of the dead zones was embraced, although
at a much smaller scale than recommended by Kolossváry. Along rail lines, a 100 m wide security zone
was to be created in which anybody could be shot without warning.
When it came to the treatment of the population, the new OKW guidelines did not overhaul
existing German anti-partisan practices. The meaningless "harshness but justice" principle was
stressed. On the one hand, the utmost harshness was required from the troops in order to annihilate the
partisans and to intimidate the local population. On the other hand, justice had to be applied to make
sure that the population felt better treated by the Nazis than by the Bolsheviks. Unjustified punishments
and arbitrary procurement of food were banned. Collective punishments against villages were only to
take place when the population “voluntarily” supported the partisans and the partisans who defected
290
Truman Anderson suggests that the removal of part of the population was a compromise between Hungarian and German
anti-partisan methods. If correct, this would be remarkable. However, I found no evidence pro or contra and Anderson does
not support his claim with primary sources. Anderson, “Hungarian Vernichtungskrieg?” p. 363-365.
291
For example, Gruppe Gilsa Abt. Ia. Nr. 181/42 g. vom 18.7.42., 10.07.1942, BA-MA RH21/2/403.
292
Bfh. H. Geb. B Abt. Ia. 9818/42g, 10.09.1942, BA-MA RH 22/66. On dead zones: Hannes Heer, Tote Zonen: Die
deutsche Wehrmacht an der Ostfront, (Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 1999).
293
Korück 532 Ia. Abschliessender Bericht über Unternehman “Dreieck,” 23.09.1942, BA-MA RH 21/2/403.
65
had to be treated as regular POWs.294 The interpretation of the new guidelines depended on the context.
In the winter of 1942-43, the crucially important context were the frontline battles by the Don river,
first and foremost the battle of Stalingrad.
7.3. Towards the End in the East
In December 1942, the 102nd and the 108th divisions were providing occupation duties in the rear of the
Second Panzer Army, part of Army Group Centre. These units were not redeployed. In the end of 1942,
the border between Army Group South and Army Group Centre were moved more to the south while
Hungarian units remained in the same area. In the closing days of 1942, the Second Panzer Army was
already exploring the possibility of withdrawing all Hungarian troops from active anti-partisan warfare
and only to deploy them for guard duties at railways and other objects. The Army Command also
ordered the troops in its rear to cease the “senseless” destruction of villages and the shooting of
residents who did not belong to the partisan units. It was stressed that collective punishments could
only be applied with the authorization of a division commander when the locals "voluntarily" supported
the partisans. Such collective measures included deportation and, in the case of areas that were not
economically useful for Germany or the Wehrmacht, the destruction of settlements.295
Although the Second Panzer Army Command did not specifically mention the Hungarian units
when talking about the “senseless” destructions and shootings, as well as the arbitrary requisitioning of
food, it was clear from previous reports by the economic offices submitted to Army Group Centre that
the activities of Hungarian troops were damaging the Wehrmacht’s and Germany’s economic interests.
For example, in one area, Hungarian military leaders plundered the population and then sold the
requisitioned goods and food back to the locals at a higher price. Here, an orderly procurement of
resources and food for the Wehrmacht was impossible.296
Following the Axis defeat at Stalingrad, the front reached the region in March 1943 and many
of the Hungarian troops were deployed to frontline duties to fill the gaps. The divisions, that were in
the previous assessment of the Second Panzer Army only suited for guard duties, were no match for the
Soviet frontline units and suffered great casualties.297 In late March, when the Wehrmacht was
struggling to keep the frontline from collapsing, an order by the command of the German XX. Army
294
Oberkommando der Heeresgruppe Mitte and P.z.A.O.K.2., 11.12.1942, BA-MA RH 21/2/489; Der Kom. Gen. der Sich.-
Truppen und Bfh. im H.Geb. B Ia. Nr. 12 200/42 g, 23.12.1942, BA-MA RH22/122.
295
P.z.A.O.K.2. Abt. Ia. Betr. Kampfanweisung für die Bandenbekämpfung im Osten, 24.12.1942, BA-MA RH21/2/489.
296
Wi In Mitte Erfahrungsbericht über Zusammenarbeit in den Bandenbekämpfung mit den militärischen Dienststellen,
11.12.1942, BA-MA RH22/122.
297
66
Corps required the creation of a “dead zone” between the XX. Army Corps and the southern edges of
the Bryansk forest. In this zone, along the rail lines, every town or village was to be burnt to the ground
and the “hostile population” either deported or slaughtered (Evakuierung oder Niedermachung). In
addition, this order required the eradication of all inhabited areas in a zone along a 150 km long section
of rail lines running through the Bryansk forest.298 At this point, no consideration was given to the
economic exploitation of the area.
According to the 1947 testimony of Sándor Zachár, the LV. Army Corps gave similar
instructions to the Hungarian units in March 1943.299 After the war, Soviet investigators established
that in April 1943 the Hungarian divisions conducted large scale anti-partisan operations. At his trial,
Zachár stated that these operations were executed with great mercilessness, numerous villages and
towns were burnt down, many unarmed citizens were killed, as well as much food and other goods
were requisitioned. He also claimed that these extreme measures took place on the direct orders of
Field Marshal von Kluge, head of Army Group Centre.300
At the same time, compared to the rear areas of Army Group Centre, the security situation more
to the south in Korück 580 was not very challenging. Two divisions newly deployed from Hungary to
the East did not have to engage in any heavy combat or the execution of measures of extermination.
For example, one of the divisions reported only 83 killed, 24 wounded, and 25 captured partisans, as
well as 65 captured weapons for a five-week period in March and April.301
By May 1943, the Wehrmacht managed to stabilize the front in the northern parts of the
occupation area. Between 15 May and 6 June, the 102nd Light Infantry Division took part in the largest
anti-partisan operation the region had seen so far, Operation Zigeunerbaron. A total of five German
infantry divisions and one panzer division were deployed for three weeks to finally mop up the entire
region. The sheer numbers betray how important this was but also how much things had gotten out of
hand. In these operations, the 102nd Division had no freedom of action and functioned merely as
auxiliary troops. By this time, the best partisan leaders with their well-trained troops, including
298
Generalkommando XX. Armekorps Bandenlage Brjansker Forst., 25.03.1943, BA-MA RH 21/2/541. I did not find
corresponding Soviet sources that would show to what degree these instructions were executed and which Hungarian units
took part in these actions. The documents in Krausz’ collection were produced in Chernigov in 1947, and those trials
concerned only war crimes committed in Chernigov oblast. Most of the territory where the XX. Army Corps demanded such
severe measures were situated in the Bryansk oblast.
299
Document 17, Zachár Sándor kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 03.11.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló
csapatok.
300
Document 17, Zachár Sándor kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 03.11.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A Magyar megszálló
csapatok. I did not find the relevant German war documents from this time about the specific area.
301
Kgl. ung. 1. le. Div. Fernspruch, 23.04.1943, HL Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 21b, filmtár 748.
67
Kovpak, were no longer in the region: on Stalin’s orders, they had taken the Soviet partisan war to
Western Ukraine.302
Devoid of their most experienced leaders and formations, the partisans suffered great losses.
This time, the execution of prisoners on the spot, as well as the destruction of the villages, was
forbidden. The "evacuation" of the population emptied the area of more than 15,000 people who were
placed in camps. Later on, new settlers were to be sent to the empty villages. 303 The aim of the
“pacification” policies was to make the former partisan territories economically accessible and
exploitable for Germany. Peasants loyal to the occupiers were to be settled here to replace the deported.
According to the plans, this would allow for the self-organization of defense and, ideally, the Germans
would only need minimal forces to maintain the occupation.304 Due to the success of Operation
Zigeunerbaron and the fact that the best partisan troops had already left the region at the end of 1942,
the security situation south of the Bryansk forests stabilized. Between May and October, partisan
activity in the area was minimal.305
Elsewhere too, whenever the development of the front-line situation allowed, economic
considerations were prioritized. The involvement of the Hungarian troops in the occupation of the
Soviet territories was not limited to Ukraine. Hungarian units were deployed in Belarus as well in 1943.
Here too, their German superiors ordered them to refrain from the indiscriminate destruction of villages
and of disproportional reprisals. A Hungarian battalion had to ask for permission from a German
security division if it wanted to burn down a village.306 This was motivated by economic
considerations. For example, during Operation Csaba, economic staff accompanied a Hungarian
battalion to ensure that anything valuable would be removed prior to destruction. If, based on the
recommendations of the local German agricultural administrator, the place was suitable for
resettlement by new peasants loyal to Germany, its burning down was forbidden.307
Operation Zigeunerbaron and Operation Csaba illustrated the different economic interests that
German and Hungarian troops had. The situation was akin to the occupation of Ukraine in the First
World War when Austria-Hungary had no long-term economic interests in the region, as opposed to
Germany. In the campaign against the Soviet Union more than twenty years later, the difference
between the economic interests of the Wehrmacht and the Hungarian Army was even larger. Following
302
303
P.z.A.O.K.2. Unternehmen „Zigeunerbaron“, hier Evakuierung und Beuteerfassung, 11.05.1943, BA-MA RH24/47/234;
Ungváry, Magyar megszálló csapatok, p 338.
304
P.z.A.O.K.2. Befriedung der ehemaligen Bandedgebiete, 26.05.1943, BA-MA RH 21/2/558.
305
306
221. Sich.-Div. Ia. Fernspruch an FK549, 13.07.1943, BA-MA RH 26/221/64.
307
221. Sich-Div. Unternehmen des Kgl. Ung. VII. A.K. im Raum südlich Nowosybkoff, 02.07.1943, BA-MA RH
26/221/64.
68
the battle of Kursk, several Hungarian units were deployed in defensive operations against regular
Soviet troops, suffering massive casualties in September.308 As the front continued to move westward,
the Hungarian troops were gradually removed from the region.
8. Free Will
8.1. The Scope of Independent Action: The Officer Corps
Due to the different levels of authority officers as well as rank-and-file and non-commissioned officers
had in the army, addressing the matter of scope of officers requires a separate section.
An informant working for the Hungarian intelligence services was placed in the same cell with
former Lieutenant Peter Fejes in 1953 to aid an investigation. The informant reported that Fejes had
dreaded the execution of eight prisoners that was to be carried out under his command in 1941 during
the campaign against Yugoslavia. As Fejes told him during one of their conversations in the cell, he
often had nightmares over the years about one of the prisoners, a one-legged man. In addition, several
of the to-be-executed were not real partisans. According to the informant’s description, Fejes was
considering that he should suddenly pretend to feel ill in order to step down from the task. As Fejes
explained, he would have been able to avoid the task but chose to carry it out despite his aversion
because he was worried about his future prospects in the army.309 However, the next examples indicate
that under certain circumstances, in various times of the war in the East, there were Hungarian officers
who did the unexpected.
In July and August 1941, various Hungarian units of the regular army came into contact with
practices of Nazi policies against the Jews. Individual commanders reacted in different ways to their
experiences. As Ungváry points out, given the lack of available documents, it cannot be determined if
Hungarian soldiers assisted in the murder of Jews at this time, but they certainly knew about these
atrocities. There were officers who approved of the executions of Jews and there were also some who
tried to help the victims. For example, Ferenc Szombathelyi, at that time head of the Army Corps,
prevented an SS platoon to carry out the execution of 400 Jews in Kolomea where the headquarters of
the Hungarian Army Corps stationed.310 Raul Hilberg gives further examples of Hungarian military
units stopping the native police to conduct an action against the Jews in Zhitomir, as well as a report by
308
309
Bozsó István jelentése Fejes Péter zárkai magatartásáról, 21.08.1953, ÁBTL V-116753/2, p 67-68.
310
69
Einsatzgruppe D that stated that it had “cleared of Jews” in the area along the Dniester from Hotin to
Yampol, except for the small area occupied by Hungarian troops. 311 These examples above indicate
that in July and August 1941, Hungarian commanders still had enough freedom of independent action
to repeatedly deny the SS and the local Ukrainian police the execution of murderous anti-Jewish tasks
in areas occupied by Hungarian troops.
Later in the war, on some occasions, Jews were arrested by Hungarian troops and handed over
to the local administration. On 11 February 1942, a company of the 105 th brigade arrested 40 partisan
suspects (“most of them Jews”) in Kholmy and delivered them to the local Ukrainian police.312 This
was preceded by an instruction of the 105th Infantry Brigade in which Kolossváry informed his troops
of the order of Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd, according to which every German
Ortskommandantur in the territory of Feldkommandantur 197 was to arrest the Jews and deliver them
to the nearest dulag.313 This example seems to be an outlier but it shows that individual commanders
did have some freedom of action, if only for the confusing web of orders that sometimes contradicted
one another. Even so, this had probably no overall impact on the fate of the Jews who were arrested.
Killing all partisan suspects was not a foregone conclusion either. On 28 June, about a week
after manual 10 was distributed to the battalions in the 105th Division, division commander Imre
Kolossváry issued his instructions on fighting the partisans. Effectively, this was a commentary on
manual no. 10. Similarly to Bogányi, head of Occupation Group East, Kolossváry too emphasized that
the majority of the partisans were from the local population, and they could easily blend in. He pointed
out that most of the people living in the area’s villages were women, children, and elderly people.
Therefore, if many men between the age of 16 and 45 were found in a specific village, a search for the
partisans there was “going to yield results.” Effectively, any man aged 16 to 45 automatically became a
partisan suspect. However, Kolossváry stopped short of commanding his men to kill these “partisan
suspects;” he ordered that they be arrested.314
The disparity between Bogányi’s kill-all order and Kolossváry’s order to arrest partisan
suspects shows that division commanders had considerable freedom to interpret guidelines and
instructions received from their Hungarian superiors. Apparently, individual officers made different use
of the scope of action they had. Another possible explanation for the difference between these two
Hungarian commanders’ orders is that there were GFP staff attached to Kolossvary’s division. As
311
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews Vol. I., p. 311-312.
312
Megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés, 11.02.1942, HL VKF 277/2341.
313
105. gy. dd. Ia. 15. sz. bizalmas dandár parancsnoksági parancs, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
314
105. K. ho. Ia. Utasítás a partizánok leküzdésére, 28.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.; 105.
Le. Div. Ia. Richtlinien zur Bekämpfung der Partisanen, 02.07.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
70
indicated in his instruction, the GFP assisted the Hungarian soldiers in the field to investigate and
interrogate locals.315
The instructions given to the Hungarian units by their immediate superiors in the Wehrmacht’s
hierarchy left a considerable room for independent action. What was to be done was not up for
interpretation: only the complete annihilation of the partisans was satisfactory. For example, in the end
of February 1942, the Hungarian 53rd Infantry Regiment was ordered by Korück 580 to conduct large-
scale pacifying operations. All partisans not killed in combat had to be executed, and everybody who
“verifiably” supported the partisans by supplying food or information also had to be executed.
Communists and party functionaries had to be thoroughly investigated and “if their connection to the
partisans were proven, shot.”316 To whom these draconian measures were applied was a matter of
interpretation. Hungarian officers in the field could conduct interrogations, and in practice it was often
them who decided who lived and who died.
The contradicting instructions about the handling of prisoners, also shown in statements at
postwar trials, as well as the relatively large room for interpreting who was a partisan or a partisan
helper allowed even lower level Hungarian commanders in the field to decide the fate of the captured
based on logistical and security circumstances.317 In many cases, the captives were handed over to the
GFP.318 The most straightforward were the occasions when GFP staff took part in a military operation
along with the Hungarian soldiers. In such cases, the GFP could quickly assume control of those
arrested.319 When circumstances allowed, a gendarmerie unit nearby could send vehicles to transport
the captured to the nearest dulag.320 In urban regions, suspects could easily be brought in after capture
without endangering the combat readiness of the Hungarian troops.321
However, in the forested regions in winter conditions, much of the area of deployment was
inaccessible by vehicles. Troops had to face almost insurmountable difficulties in getting regular
ordinance and supply. To illustrate the situation, if a soldier from the 105th brigade was wounded in the
315
105. K. ho. Ia. Utasítás a partizánok leküzdésére, 28.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.; 105.
Le. Div. Ia. Richtlinien zur Bekämpfung der Partisanen, 02.07.1942, BA-MA RH22/46.
316
Anweisung für die durchzuführende Befriedungsaktion, 24.02.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323.
317
Document 72 in Krausz and Varga, A Magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 228.; Bácsfalvy Ferenc vallomása, 08.06.1948,
ÁBTL V-115811; Miklós János vallomása 30.11.1953, Tamási Sándor 22.09.1953, ÁBTL V-116753/2; Document 34 in
Krausz and Varga, A magyar megszálló csapatok, p 149.
318
K. megsz. Csop. Pság. Helyzetjelentés 27.03.1942, HL VKF mikrofilmek 277/2342; 105. Le. div. Gefechtsbericht über
Unternehmen “Rex”, 07.09.1942, BA-MA RH 22/31; 102. Le. Div. Lage am 16.4.1942, BA-MA RH23/174; Auszug aus
dem Tagebuche der kön. Ung. 108. Infanteriebrigade, (no date), BA-MA RH22/19; GFP 708 Tätigkeitsbericht für den
Monat Mai 1942, 25.05.1942, BA-MA RH 22/199; Abschliessende Meldung über die vom 21.3. bis 2.4.1942. gegen das
Partisanenlager im Walde von Jelino durchgeführte Unternehmung, 04.04.1942, BA-MA RH 22/34.
319
For example: Abschliessende Meldung über die vom 21.3. bis 2.4.1942. gegen das Partisanenlager im Walde von Jelino
durchgeführte Unternehmung, 04.04.1942, BA-MA RH 22/34.
320
Entry for 02.06.1943 in M. Kir. 19. honvéd gyalogezred naplója 1943, HL 19. gyez. II.1537, box 8a.
321
For example, Auszug aus dem Tagebuche der kön. Ung. 108. Infanteriebrigade, (no date), BA-MA RH22/19.
71
winter of 1941/1942, it typically took days to carry him to the nearest railway station. The fact that
some of the Soviet rail tracks had not yet been made compatible with the German train standards only
added to the logistical difficulties.322
When a unit took a large group of prisoners in the middle of nowhere during an ongoing
operation, a choice had to be made. If the prisoners were to be transported somewhere, a group of
soldiers had to be assigned the task. For example, on 13 February 1942, Befehlshaber rückwärtiges
Heeresgebiets Süd ordered one company from the 108th brigade to bring a group of POWs to Lubny to
a dulag.323 This meant that while carrying out the task given by the Befehlshaber, an entire company
was missing from the brigade’s area of deployment. Given the distances and the quality of roads, it
must have taken a while until that company stood again at the disposal of the brigade commander. For
a commander who would temporarily "lose" an entire company from the brigade's forces, the existence
of a large group of prisoners was a burden from a logistical point of view, apart from posing a serious
security risk. It was tempting to just not take any prisoners.
In another theatre of the war in Northern Yugoslavia, in the city of Újvidék (present day Novi
Sad) 3309 persons lost their lives during a punitive raid of the Hungarian military and police on 21-23
January 1942. Újvidék was part of the partially Hungarian-inhabited territories that were annexed by
Hungary during the Axis powers’ campaign against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941. The raid at
Ujvidek was the culmination of a campaign the Hungarian forces were waging against Serb partisans in
the area. Immediately after the atrocities, an investigation was started which had only covered up the
crimes. (references) One of the commanders responsible for the atrocities, Colonel József Grassy, was
even promoted to Major General not long after the atrocities.324
However, the massacres at Újvidék were investigated anew in 1943. On 14 December 1943, the
Military Tribunal of the Hungarian General Staff opened the case against fifteen military and police
officers who were accused of being responsible for the death of the 3309 civilians. The subsequent
cover-up by these officers in 1942 was also investigated. According to the assessment of the Cabinet
Office, the accused deliberately misled the authorities and artificially created situations that led to
“unprovoked bloodshed.” In Újvidék, the officers on trial gave their troops free rein to plunder while
letting their forces to “desultorily” kill people from the Serb and Jewish population.325 The accused
322
105. Le. div. Ia. 5. zusammenfassende Meldung, 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH22/34.
323
Fernschreiben von Bfh. rückw. H. Geb. Süd Ia., 13.02.1942, BA-MA RH22/22.
324
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 228., 232.
325
This unsigned document seems to be a reminder that the Cabinet Office sent to the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin on 16
December, 1943. It was archived in 1958. “Emlékeztető az 1942. év januárjában Zsablya-Újvidék területén elkövetett
túlkapásokról,” 16.12.1943, in A Horthysta kabinetiroda dokumentum anyagai (1958), ÁBTL A-415.
72
received prison sentences of up to fifteen years. However, four of them fled to Germany before they
could have begun to serve their sentences.
The very fact that there was a trial at which high-ranking officers were handed down prison
sentences for the atrocities they committed shows that the murder of Jews and other civilians was not
accepted universally by everyone in the military and political elite. Along with examples of Hungarian
officers preventing executions and anti-Jewish pogroms in 1941, this indicates that the decision-making
elite in Hungary had a choice as late as December 1943. It is probably instructional that the Chief of the
General Staff at the time of the trials was Ferenc Szombathelyi, the officer who stopped the SS from
carrying out a mass execution in Kolomea in 194. Szombathelyi continued to serve as Chief of the
General Staff until Hungary’s eventual German occupation in March 1944.
8.2. Volunteering: Rank-and-File Soldiers
In the postwar trials of Hungarian officers conducted by the authorities in Hungary, a frequently
recurring question was if the rank-and-file soldiers who had executed partisan suspects and civilians
had taken part in these atrocities voluntarily. There is substantial evidence in postwar documents that in
many cases soldiers volunteered for executions or “partisan-hunting.”326 Erich Friderici of Army Group
B sent out a commentary in September 1942 in which he encouraged German commanders to think of
partisan-hunting as a “sport” to increase the enthusiastic participation of members of the local Axis-
allied militias and German troops. Night-time “partisan-hunts” were to be organized from soldiers who
volunteered.327
A Hungarian soldier drafted into battalion 55/II in late 1941 described his first day in the area of
deployment:
“After we arrived, the next morning before breakfast at the line-up Imre Csendes [battalion commander]
appeared accompanied by three German officers, and then he told us the following: »The Germans have
here 30 labor conscripts, Ukrainians, who must be executed. Whoever volunteers to do that, step
326
Godó József kihallgatása, 09.01.1951, ÁBTL V-35965; Szilágyi Sándor kihallgatása, 09.07.1951, ÁBTL V-111846; Joó
Imre vallomása, 28.06.1948, ÁBTL V-36604; Nényei Zoárd kihallgatása, 17.10.1958, ÁBTL V-145403; Köszegi Sándor,
03.07.1956, ÁBTL V-14324; Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása 31.10.1950, Kövesi Jenő vallomása 25.10.1950, Horváth János
András kihallgatása 10.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166; Kovács Mihály kihallgatása 09.07.1953, ÁBTL 116753/3; Budapesti
Hadbíróság Hb. I. 36/1954., 17.02.1954, ÁBTL V-116753/2.
327
Although I could not find reference to this order in Hungarian documents, I can only assume that this was sent out to
many units in the rear of Army Group B, probably including the Hungarian divisions. Der Kom. Gen. Der Sich.-Truppen
und Bfh. Im Heeresgebiet B Kommandeurbemerkungen Nr. 2., 23.09.1942, BA-MA RH22/31.
73
forward!« Nobody stepped forward to this call. Then when Csendes saw that there were no volunteers, he
left with the German officers. Later we saw that the Germans and the local Ukrainian policemen led these
Ukrainians away in a group to the forest nearby, where they shot them.”328
In the case above, Hungarian soldiers were apparently able to avoid participation in executions
without any significant repercussion. Participation in “partisan-hunting” was not only a matter of
merely ordering people either.
There were practical reasons to why officers tried to convince soldiers to volunteer for these
kinds of tasks. Executions represented a situation when the psychological barriers of pulling the trigger
were much higher than in regular combat situations. During an execution, the victim represents no
immediate danger to the killer, the close range of the kill severely hampers the shooter’s ability to
dehumanize the victim, as well as the denial of personal responsibility for the killer becomes far more
difficult than in the frenzy of combat.329 The following example from the testimony of a Hungarian
soldier about an execution near Voronezh in August 1942 illustrates why officers preferred to rely on
volunteers rather than trying to assert their authority on the unwilling or the incapable:
"First Lieutenant Vilmos Jénai ordered the civilians [sic] to dig their own graves. When they were ready
with this… the First Lieutenant commanded Sergeant Báródi to ask them in Russian if they had a last
wish. Sergeant Báródi offered them cigarettes, but they did not accept any. Sergeant Báródi then asked
them if they were afraid of death. The older civilian answered that he was an old Communist, and he
would always be one and that he was not afraid of anything. Vilmos Jénai got angry and issued the order
for the execution… [One of the soldiers] carried out the order to fire right away, but the other soldier
could not fire, his hands were shaking. Therefore, Vilmos Jénai shouted at him that he was a coward, and
Sergeant Báródi took the rifle out of the hands of the frightened soldier. He handed it over to me and I
shot the 65 years old man in the back of the head. I recall that my shot didn't kill the person I targeted, so I
asked Vilmos Jénai for permission to fire again. That's when Sergeant Báródi pulled his revolver and shot
the victim in the forehead, which led to his immediate death." 330
328
Joó Imre vallomása, 28.06.1948, ÁBTL V-36604.
329
Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, (New York: Little, Brown,
2009), p. 203.
330
Belső Károly kihallgatása, 30.11.1949, ÁBTL V-34417.
74
From the commanding officer’s point of view, many things went wrong with this execution.
Apparently, the officer on the spot was not the most experienced, and things began to spiral out of
control. He let his emotions dictate the pace of the events. The entire episode began to spiral out of
control when one of the soldiers could not bear himself to shoot. Then the officer lost his composure
again when one of the soldiers defied his order. In the end, even the Sergeant challenged his authority
when he, on his own initiative, took charge of the events. As a result, First Lieutenant Vilmos Jenai lost
face in front of his soldiers.
In light of these considerations, I find the description the credible above when the commander
of battalion 55/II, Imre Csendes, did not attempt to force his newly arrived recruits to carry out the
execution of thirty Ukrainians. Who knows how many soldiers would have lost their nerves and would
have been unable or unwilling to carry out the orders? The damage done to Csendes' reputation as a
commander in the eyes of the accompanying German officers, as well as the likely loss of his authority
over his soldiers, would have been very considerable.
Another for relying on volunteers was that such atrocities were against the military rules, as it
was understood by some of the participants.331 Often, commanders did not give clear orders but only
told their subordinates to “take care” of the prisoners.332 Some of the officers used these instances to
claim at their trial after the war that they never explicitly commanded anybody to execute prisoners.333
It seems that commanders relied on their subordinates' understanding of what "taking care" of people
meant, as well as on their commitment to execute the task without the personal supervision of the
officer.
Harald Welzer provides an explanation for why officers apparently gave up a part of their
formal authority and allowed informal groups to carry out tasks within military units. Welzer examined
the activities of the German Reserve Police Battalion 45 that took part in the annihilation of Jews in
Berdichev and in Kiev in 1941, among other places. The battalion had a smaller informal group of
executioners/killers that centered around one of the company commanders who was particularly driven
and enthusiastic about the tasks of the battalion. The situation was similar in other police battalions;
there were regulars who "always" volunteered. As Welzer explains, these sub-groups within the formal
military units served as a negative frame of reference to the rest of the soldiers who could maintain the
semblance of a higher moral status, in comparison with those who shot the Jews in the pits. The non-
shooters “just” secured the perimeter or “just” transported the Jews to the pits or “just” loaded the
331
Bezső István jelentése, 10.08.1953 and 21.08.1953, ÁBTL V-116753/2;
332
For example, Határozat Fejes Péter házkutatásáról, 09.10.1953, ÁBTL V-116753/2; Among German commanders, see
Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 122.
333
Tamási Iván szembesítési jegyzőkönyv, 22.08.1953, ÁBTL V-116753/2.
75
magazines with ammunition for the shooters to use. On the other hand, the shooters also felt morally
superior to the rest of the unit consisting of “cowardly” and “unmanly” soldiers who did not have what
it took.334
Such an informal arrangement made Reserve Police Battalion 45 more efficient and its staff
more compliant. Besides, if everybody in the battalion had become brutalized through carrying out
mass shootings, it would have become increasingly difficult for the commanders to maintain
discipline.335 Certain tasks attracted bloodthirsty soldiers, meanwhile other tasks required a detached,
more disciplined attitude. By allowing the soldiers to establish informal groups within military units,
commanders ensured that the battalion as a unit would remain functional and effective. The
disadvantages of forcing the unwilling to shoot people in the pits would have outweighed the
advantages.336
Several accounts confirm that the soldiers who took part in smaller anti-partisan actions and
executions were carefully selected to form squads assigned for such special tasks. Jozsef Boros of the
9th company in battalion 46/III claimed that for the purpose of arresting partisan suspects during
smaller operations, as well as for carrying out their eventual execution after interrogation, a squad (the
smallest military unit, consisting of 10-15 soldiers) was selected from the crew of the company, made
up from the most reliable soldiers.337 Volunteering played a great role in such selections and there
were regulars who “always” volunteered for such tasks.338 This means that the majority of the 9th
company’s rank-and-file may never have taken part in executions as active shooters.
9. Motivations
9.1. Ideology
As enacted by the Treaty of Trianon following the defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War
One, Hungary had lost 72% of its territory and about half of its population. The revision of the peace
treaty was a central goal of the national-conservative state in Hungary between the two world wars and
one of the motivations behind joining Operation Barbarossa. Therefore, one would expect continuous
334
Browning, The Path to Genocide, p. 180. Some officers did not take on “Jew hunts” those who stepped out of the lines in
the first killing. They said they only wanted “men” on “Jew hunts” and firing squads: Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 143.
335
Bartov, Hitler's Army, p. 66-67.
336
Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 155-158.
337
Document 34, Boros József kihallgatása, 23.10.1947; and Document 37, Pilipenko M. Ny. Kihallgatása, 15.10.1945, in
Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok; Kövesi Jenő kihallgatása, 20.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.
338
Executions: Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása, 31.10.1950, Kövesi Jenő vallomása, 25.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166. Regular
volunteers for partisan-hunting: Szilágyi Sándor vallomása, 09.08.1951, ÁBTL V-111846.
76
references to the revision of the post-First World War territorial settlements in instructions issued to
Hungarian troops. Yet, the absence of such references is conspicuous. As the staff officers of the 2 nd
Hungarian Army later pointed out, the “masses” did not understand why the Hungarian Army fought in
this campaign. In their analysis, the country did not support the Army and did not identify with its
goals. These staff officers also remarked about the lack of propaganda efforts in Hungary before
Operation Barbarossa to prepare the country mentally for the war.339
The consequence of the complete lack of mental preparedness was that probably only a few
soldiers in the Hungarian Army stationed in occupied Ukrainian in 1942-1943 understood that they
were fighting in a total war for the limited goals of securing Hungary’s territorial gains achieved
between 1938 and 1941. I found only one instruction issued by any commander to troops that
established a vague connection between the Hungarian troops’ efforts in the recent war and Hungary’s
role in the new post-war order. It was only three lines buried in a five-pages long instruction.340
Of the written instructions issued to the soldiers, Imre Kolossváry’s material has been
preserved. From late 1941 to late 1942, his instructions contained the same motives over and over
again. In Kolossváry’s wording, the campaign against the Soviet Union was a war on Bolshevism, a
sacred mission against an ungodly enemy that aimed to destroy not only Hungary but Europe in its
entirety. It was a preventive war to secure the survival of Hungary that was protecting Christianity a
common trope also featured in other commanders’ speeches. The rhetoric was the most desperate in
April 1942 when the Hungarian troops were going through a critical period. In Kolossváry’s terms, the
fate of nothing less than humanity was at stake, if the “Red Beast” destroyed European culture.341
The continuous references to the danger of Bolshevism in Kolossváry’s instructions were akin
to Reichenau’s orders to German troops. It is clear that Hungarian military commanders’ societal
background as part of the ruling elite in a conservative-nationalist state aided the acceptance of
Germany’s anti-Bolshevik war rhetoric. Miklos Horthy and his national army were sworn enemies of
the Communist regime that preceded them, the Hungarian Soviet Republic. 342 Apart from irredentism,
339
Kovács Gyula vörgy. 2. hds. vkf. A 2. hadseregnél tapasztaltak magyarázata és a hozzáfűzött javaslatok, 17.08.1942, HL
2. hadsereg, box 15b.; Tóth-Halmay József vk. őrgy. A magyar hadsereg összeomlásának okai, 20.02.1943, HL 2. hadsereg,
box 15c.
340
105. k. ho. 7. sz. Bizalmas könnyű hadosztályparancsnoksági tiszti parancs, 04.04.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport,
box 2.
341
Kolossváry: 105. k. ho. 7. sz. Bizalmas könnyű hadosztályparancsnoksági tiszti parancs, 04.04.1942, HL M. Kir.
Megszálló Csoport, box 2.; 105. gy. Dd. Ia. Partizán vállalkozásokban résztvett alakulatok dícsérete, 27.12.1941, HL M. Kir.
Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.; 105. k. Ho. Ia. Utasítás a partizánok leküzdésére, 28.06.1942, HL M. Kir.
Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.; Hadosztályparancsnoksági külön parancs, 17.10.1942, HL M. Kir. Megszálló
Csoport, box 2. Commander of the 19th regiment on fighting for Christianity: Entry 20.08.1943, HL M. Kir. 19. gyez.
naplója II.1537, box 8a.
342
Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 222.; Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 12.
77
anti-Bolshevism was the ideological bread and butter of the officer corps of the Royal Hungarian
Defense Forces.343 In particular, the General Staff of the army moved significantly to the right between
1932 and 1936 when right-wing prime minister Gyula Gömbös, a former General Staff officer,
attempted to use the army’s leadership as his power base to further his political ambitions, replacing
many officials in higher positions with people loyal to him because of their shared military background
and ideology.344
The above-mentioned report written by the staff officers of the 2nd Hungarian Army also
concluded that the soldiers did not hate the enemy enough. “An army can only bear the psychical and
psychological burdens associated with modern warfare if it had been fanaticized by an idea… and it is
consumed by bottomless, glowing hatred towards the enemy.”345 Without such hatred, commanders
could not demand resilience, daredevil spirit, and mercilessness from their soldiers.346
However, taking a closer look at the people who volunteered for execution details and
“partisan-hunts,” it is possible to see a strong ideological commitment in some cases. In Töttösy's 32/II
battalion, there were ten soldiers and non-commissioned officers who, according to post-war testimony,
were on the execution detail in Bakhmach regularly.347 Of these ten, there was one former member of
an irregular paramilitary formation that consisted of volunteers conducting sabotage activities
connected with Hungary’s territorial gains before 1941. Another one was a volunteer in the Spanish
civil war fighting on Franco’s side, and yet another one was both a former member of the above-
mentioned paramilitary group and also volunteered to serve on the fascist side of the Spanish civil war.
Sergeant Béla Skivraha of battalion 32/II, who ran the jail in which prisoners were kept and
interrogated in Bakhmach, stated in front of the Hungarian jury after the war that he believed in the
German victory until the very last minute. Skivraha was captured in combat by Soviet troops in
Budapest in 1945.348
Among younger officers and non-commissioned officers, experience on the Délvidék (present
day Vojvodina) which was annexed by Hungary following the Axis campaign against Yugoslavia was
well appreciated by their superiors. These men were considered reliable and ideal candidates for anti-
partisan hunts or execution details.349 Even those who did not have previous military experience, were
343
In the Hungarian society: Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 180-181.
344
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 69-70., 86., 95-96.
345
Tóth-Halmay József vk. őrgy. A magyar hadsereg összeomlásának okai, 20.02.1943, HL 2. hadsereg, box 15c.
346
Kovács Gyula vörgy. 2. hds. vkf. A 2. hadseregnél tapasztaltak magyarázata és a hozzáfűzött javaslatok, 17.08.1942, HL
2. hadsereg, box 15b.
347
Kövesi Jenő kihallgatása, 25.10.1950, Horváth Jűnos András vallomása, 09.11.1950, Skivraha Béla kihallgatása,
15.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.
348
Kövesi Jenő kihallgatása, 25.10.1950, Skivraha Béla kihallgatása, 15.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.
349
Bihary László kihallgatása, 16.01.1951, ÁBTL V-116753/2; Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása, 27.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.;
78
vetted for political reliability before they were selected for special tasks. For example, one of the
regular shooters at battalion 32/II was an old friend of a non-commissioned officer who regularly put
together squads for anti-partisan operations and house searches.350
9.2. Race
As a result of the treaty of Trianon the socioeconomic sphere had shrunken dramatically.
Within the new post-Trianon Hungary, Jews were overrepresented in administrative and public
positions. To help the prospects of the struggling low- and middle-class Hungarians, Hungary’s new
nationalist-conservative state introduced a percentage cap on the number of Jews that could serve in
public offices (the so-called numerus clausus law).351 After the Great Depression, the changing
international scene of the 1930s began to radicalize Hungary’s policies towards its own Jewish
population. In 1938 and 1939 “Jewish laws” were introduced to deprive Jews of the opportunity to
serve in public and state officers altogether. They were also barred from many intellectual jobs. The
new laws had a negative impact on the lives of 200,000 Hungarian Jews, directly or indirectly. In 1938,
the law still defined Jews by their religion. However, the Jewish law of 1939 gave a racial definition of
who was to be considered Jewish.352 Then on 8 August 1941, the third Jewish law was passed which
prohibited marriage and sexual relationship between Jews and non-Jews. Miscegenation became a
punishable offense.353 The language of manual 10 reflects that the racial, rather than religious definition
of what it meant to be Jewish was dominant in the General Staff in 1942.354
Considering race to be a decisive factor in military effectiveness and success had entered the
mainstream military circles long before the Second World War. For example, about a dozen articles
written by officers of all ranks were published in the Hungarian army's official periodical, the Magyar
Katonai Szemle (Hungarian Military Review) between 1933 and 1936. These articles explored the
concept of the so-called “race-based tactics” (faji harcászat).355 According to Lóránd Dombrády, there
Ajtony Artur kihallgatása, 16.01.1951, ÁBTL V-35965.

350
Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása, 31.10.1950, Kövesi Jenő kihallgatása, 25.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166.
351
Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 196-197.
352
353
354
VKF. 4. oszt., A folyó báború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 11., 56.
355
Mihály Ibrányi, “Faji tulajdonságaink megnyilatkozása a magyar háborukban,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1933.(III.);
Mihály Ibrányi, „Faji tulajdonságainkon alapuló ősi harceljárás,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1934.(I.); Mihály Ibrányi,”Faji
tulajdonságainkon alapuló korszerű harc,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1934.(I.); László Mérey, „Megjegyzések a magyar faji
harcmódhoz,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1935.(III.); Jenő Tömösy, „Magyar faji harcmód, magyar szellem;” Károly
Baranyi, „Faji harcmód;” Endre Szőke, „Faji tulajdonságaink,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1935.(IV.); Ferenc Feketehalmy-
Czeydner, „Faji harcászat;” István Sándor, „Faji harcászat” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1936.(I.); László Mérey, „Magyar
79
were officers in the Hungarian military who believed that the lack of modern equipment and the
inadequate number of soldiers and units could be partially compensated for by emphasizing and
building upon the innate, natural fighting abilities of the "Hungarian race." Increased racial
consciousness and drawing on ancient Hungarian military skills were supposed to give Hungarians an
edge over Romania which had a larger and better equipped military force.356
It seems that these authors used “race” interchangeably with nationality and culture. In its
simplest form the theory of "race-based tactics" meant that nations and peoples belonging to particular
cultures should not apply blindly the standardized military tactics developed in Western Europe but
rather, place emphasis on organizational and tactical methods that are particular to and compatible with
their own cultural and military traditions. An example of this was the notion that units consisting of
soldiers who came from the Great Hungarian Plains were sent to fight to the Carpathian Mountains in
the First World War without taking into consideration that most of those soldiers had never even seen a
hill before.357 Some of these authors also believed that the military virtues that made the Hungarian
nomadic horse archers of the Eurasian steppes successful a thousand years ago were, to some extent,
still in the blood of Hungarians of the mid-20th century.
The concept of “race-based tactics” only gained some foothold in military thinking and
publications after the economic depression of the early 1930s made the planned military reforms
impossible.358 Interest in it spiked during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1937) when it
appeared that the Ethiopian troops utilizing their superior knowledge of the terrain and traditional
martial virtues were able to defend their homeland against the technologically superior Italian troops.
This war was seen as a war between technology and "race,” and the Ethiopians were lifted as a positive
example of properly using “race-based tactics.”359 However, “race-based tactics” was the weapon of
the underfunded and underarmed. After the eventual Italian victory in the Ethiopian war, references to
“race-based tactics” disappeared from the pages of the Magyar Katonai Szemle.
However, Kolossváry’s instructions in 1942 prove that some ideas from the concept of “race-
based tactics” lived on in the military. The documents and instructions issued by him testify that he
believed that developing and utilizing such innate, ancient military skills was vital to the success of the
Hungarian troops in the anti-partisan war.360
faji harcmód,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1936.(I.)

356
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p 58., 64-65. On Romania perceived by Hungarian military leader as
stronger: Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 159.
357
Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, „Faji harcászat,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1936.(I.).
358
On planned military reform: Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 241.
359
Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, „Faji harcászat,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1936.(I.), p. 25-26.
360
105. gy. dd. Ia. Partizán vállalkozásokban résztvett alakulatok dicsérete, 27.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945,
80
Parallel to developments in the society, Jews were discriminated against in the Hungarian army
as well. Throughout the interwar history of the Hungarian Army, Jews were considered politically
unreliable elements and there was a cap on how many Jewish officers could serve. However, the
political motivation to keep the number of Jews low had to be balanced with the reality that among the
well-educated and skilled, Jews were overrepresented in Hungary. Therefore, there were many Jews in
the potential pool of people from whom the Army could recruit to fill positions and jobs in the military
that required technical skills and education.361
In the end, the race of Jewish officers and soldiers became the sole factor determining the range
of army positions they were eligible for. A 1941 decree by the Prime Minister and the new defense law
in 1942 enacted that Jewish males were not allowed to provide armed military service; they could only
be enlisted for labor service. In Jewish “labor battalions” attached to Hungarian military units, Jews
were forbidden to bear arms.362
When Jews were mentioned in the documents of the Wehrmacht and of the Hungarian military,
the context was almost always the partisan war. Jews were either alleged to be partisans or they were
claimed to incite the population against the Axis powers. The remarks about Jews as partisans or
partisan supporters throughout the entire military machinery of Army Group South and the Hungarian
army shows that Jews were collectively perceived as a security threat, an enemy group. 363 Ádám
Gellért, Judit Pihurik, and Ákos Fóris also showed through various examples that Jews were equated
with partisans and considered a security threat by many Hungarian officers.364
box 22., 46/III.; 105. gy. dd. Ia 45. sz. parancs, 12.12.1942, HL Megsz. Csop., box 2.
361
Gazsi, “Politikai megkülönböztetés,” p. 506-520.
362
Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 259.
363
German military: Korück 580 Partisanen in Raum Rylsk-Chomutowka, 24.02.1942, BA-MA RH20-2/323; O.K. Sewsk
Anruf 10.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175; GFP 721 Tätigkeitsbericht für den Monat Juli 1942, 26.07.1942, BA-MA RH22/199;
FK 194 Lagebericht für die Zeit vom 14.1. bis. 10.2.1942., 11.02.1942, BA-MA RH22/22;
Hungarian army: Kgl. ung. 1. le. Div. Tagesmeldung, 03.05.1943, HL Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 23., filmtár 749.;
Auszug aus dem Tagebuche der kön. ung. 108. Infaneriebrigade (no date), BA-MA RH22/19; 46. gyez. pság. 17. sz.
ezrednapiparancs, 03.02.1942, HL 46. gyez. II.1519, box 21.; Entry for 22.12.1941, Auszug aus dem Operations-Tagebuch
der 105. Honvéd Inf. Brig., 03.01.1942, BA-MA RH22/182; 105. k. ho. Ia. Utasítás a partizánok leküzdésére, 28.06.1942,
HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.; Megsz. csop. pság. Partizán harcokról jelentés, 22.12.1942, HL VKF
277/2339; Megsz. csop. pság. Helyzetjelentés, 11.02.1942, HL VKF 277/2341; 105. gy. dd. Ia. 15. sz. bizalmas dandár
parancsnoksági parancs, 04.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Megszálló Csoport, box 2.; Entry for 29.01.1942 in László Pap’s diary, HL
TGY4100; VKF 4. oszt. A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 11., 14., 29., 30., 35., 56.
364
Ádám Gellért and János Gellért, “Partizánvadászat a zsidónegyedben: Munkács, 1942. Június 24.” In Betekintő 2016/2.;
Judit Pihurik, “Magyar katonák és zsidók a Keleti hadszíntéren 1941-1943” in Múltunk 2007/3.; Ákos Fóris, “Partizán- és
zsidópolitika a keleti fronton” in Gyula Szvák, ed., A mi ruszisztikánk: tanulmányok a 20/25. évfordulóra, (Budapes:
Russica Pannonicana, 2015).
81
The most explicit and most paranoid example of viewing Jews as a security threat was the anti-
partisan manual issued by the General Staff. Manual 10 stated that „rendering them [the Jews] harmless
is in our best interest.”365 Furthermore:
“Every Jew, regardless of age and gender, supports the partisans!... Most Jews who joined the partisans do
not take part in combat, but they are all the more active in other areas of the partisan warfare. They
agitate, incite, recruit, carry news, and spread false rumors. With indefatigable endurance, they keep
encouraging the partisan groups to remain active and to committ acts of violence. Filled with ruthless
bloodthirst and glowing hatred, they hysterically demand that those Russian soldiers, prisoners of war,
and members of the Communist party who do not want to join, be slaughtered. They demand that those
unfortunate members of the allied troops who fall into the hands of partisans, be massacred with special
cruelty, amidst humiliating torture. Therefore, there is no room for any kind of mercy for Jews!”366
Numerous negative remarks made about Jews can be found in instructions, diary entries or files
about the trials of Hungarian officers. On one occasion, Imre Kolossvary encouraged his disheartened
troops stating that there were many Jews among the partisans „whom we all hold with contempt.”
Therefore, the partisans “cannot possibly be our equals.” In his words, Jews were “the lowest elements”
among the partisans. Kolossváry also reprimanded his soldiers that they “should not act like Jews” and
sell goods for high profit.367 Lieutenant-Colonel László Pap’s diary also shows that Pap did not feel
compassion towards the Jews. His casual, matter-of-fact statement that “no Jews here [in Kiev], the
Germans executed 27,000” shows that he did not disapprove of handling matters this way. In addition,
he remarks that Kiev was “not pleasing to the eyes, it looks disorganized and dirty. It shows that there
must have been many Jews here.”368 In the Jewish labor battalion of the 53rd Regiment, several
Hungarian Jews were ordered to clear minefields during which.369 A Wehrmacht document described
365
VKF 4. oszt. A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 35.
366
VKF 4. oszt. A folyó háború tapasztalatainak ismertetése, p. 11-12.
367
105. k. ho. Ia. Utasítás a partizánok leküzdésére, 28.06.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.; 105.
gy. dd. Ia. Önhatalmú harácsolások, rablások és üzérkedések elterjedése, 09.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945,
box 22., 46/III.; 105. k. ho. 7. sz. Bizalmas könnyű hadosztályparancsnoksági tiszti parancs, 04.04.1942, HL M. Kir.
Megszálló Csoport, box 2.
368
Entry 23.11.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY4100.
369
Dombrádi Béla kihallgatása, 02.11.1948, ÁBTL V-35965. German document about Hungarian Jewish labor battalions:
A.O.K.2. Orientierung über ungar. Arbeits-Batallione, 11.05.1942, BA-MA RH23/175.
82
an occasion when ten Hungarian Jews from a Hungarian labor battalion were blown up while searching
for mines.370
There is some indication that a part of the rank-and-file soldiers too had a severe negative
disposal towards Jews. According to a Soviet investigation, an intoxicated soldier from the 105 th
division sent a postcard as a “joke” that he signed as “executioner of partisans and murderer of
Jews.”371 Some soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front were reprimanded by the Hungarian Minister of
Defense when these soldiers on leave back in Hungary disturbed the public order by talking too much
and too loudly about taking matters in their own hands regarding the problem of land distribution and
the “Jewish question.”372
From behind the officially adopted veil of mercilessness, sometimes, a bit of compassion shone
through. For example, there were Hungarian officers, veterans of the First World War, who kept in
touch with their Jewish comrades from the war and invited them to official commemorative gatherings.
Another example was when soldiers of the occupying Hungarian forces (probably in Western Ukraine)
carried letters between Jews deported to Ukraine from Hungary and their families back home.
However, it illustrates the official attitude of the Hungarian army towards Jews well that the higher
military authorities immediately and strictly banned such behavior in both cases. 373 There were also
high-ranking officers who were removed from their lucrative positions because someone in their
families turned out to have had Jewish ancestry.374 In addition, there is evidence that at least some
Hungarian officers felt deep compassion towards the plight of the Hungarian Jews in labor battalions
which came to expression in their diaries and memoirs.375
In army documents and officers’ war diaries, there was a clear differentiation between
Ukrainians and Jews. The best illustration of this is Colonel László Pap’s wartime diary in which the
difference in his attitude towards Jews and Ukrainians is striking. Throughout his diary, there is not a
single occasion when he was moved by the tragic fate of the Jews in Ukraine. On the other hand, he felt
compassion for the suffering of Ukrainians working under hard conditions for the Wehrmacht, and he
was also moved by the fate of some Soviet POWs.376 He had a conversation with a Ukrainian school
370
Partisanenbekämpfung im Unmittelbarem Bereich der FK 197 und gesammelte erfahrungen in der Zeit v. 1.8. – 31.8.42.,
BA-MA RH22/174.
371
Kovács Jakab nyilvántartási lapja, 19.05.1943, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.
372
M. Kir. honvédelmi miniszter Harctérről visszatérő honvédek magatartása, 04.12.1942, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-
1945, box 22, 46/III.
373
Ban on maintaining a social connection with Jewish veterans of the First World War: M. Kir. honvéd VKF. Tisztiparancs,
08.12.1941, HL VKF 277/2304. Ban on carrying letters: 4. számú Megsz. csop. pk. Parancs, 24.10.1941, HL M. Kir.
Megszálló Csoport, box 1.
374
For example, Hadácsy Rezső emlékirata (1973), p. 12., HL TGY 2975.
375
Pihurik, „Magyar katonák és zsidók,” p. 63-65.
376
Entries 20.11.1941, 01.02.1941, 03.02.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY 4100.
83
director hired by the Germans who told him about the mass-starvation in the mid-1930s when millions
of Ukrainians. “Meanwhile, not even one Jew starved,” added László Pap’s diary quoting the Ukrainian
director, apparently (and conveniently) confirming exactly what Pap already believed about Jews.377
Wartime diaries and writings from other Hungarian officers painted a similar picture of Ukrainians
towards whom they were either neutral or positively disposed.378
Hungarian officers also attempted to differentiate between Ukrainians and Russians. In their
understanding, Ukrainians were a people historically oppressed by Russians.379 As opposed to
Ukrainians, Russians were considered more dangerous, and many of them were viewed as "fanatical"
enemies of the Axis powers.380
Manual No. 10 shows that the Hungarian General Staff fully accepted the Nazi racial hierarchy
according to which Ukrainians were superior to Russians and especially to Jews:
"The Ukrainian people is racially different from the Russian; therefore, it cannot identify with its politics
either. The blood of the Ukrainians had been mixed to a great extent with the blood of Turani and
Germanic peoples. From this, it follows that they are more intelligent and more capable than the Russians.
Racially and due to their capabilities, Ukrainians are much closer to the civilized Western nations than to
the Russians… As opposed to this, the Russians, both during Tsarist and Communist times, have always
oppressed and exploited the Ukrainian people for centuries… [The Ukrainians] can only find a better and
happier future on the side of the Axis powers."381
This sounds like something Alfred Rosenberg would have said. As Truman Anderson claims,
Rosenberg’s ideas about Ukrainians as different from and superior to Russians and Jews gained some
following among the staff and commanders of Army Group South.382 It is possible that the Hungarian
General Staff had simply adopted these perceptions and preferences from Army Group South.
377
Entry 16.11.1941 in László Pap’s diary, HL TGY4100.
378
Ráskay László diary 03.11.1943 - 15.11.1943., In “A m. kir. Szt. István 3. honvéd gyalogezred történetéhez összegyűjtött
visszaemlékezések,“ HL TGY3659; Mészöly Elemér, “Háborús naplóm 1943 május 24 – július 9-ig,” p. 7-8., HL TGY3908.
379
380
105. le. div. Ia. 5. Zusammenfassende Meldung, 07.04.1942, BA-MA RH22/34.
381
382
Anderson, „Incident at Baranivka,“ p. 619-621.
84
9.3. Comrades in Arms: German and Hungarian Officers
Hungarian officers considered the German military as an example to follow, not only in this war, but
they had done so in the First World War too when Austria-Hungary and Germany had fought on the
same side. They shared experiences of the First World War.383 Those who were senior officers in the
Second World War often had been junior officers in the previous one.384 Such senior commanders in
1941-1943 included two Chiefs of the General Staff, three officers who were commanders of
Occupation Group East, five brigade or division commanders, and several regiment and battalion
commanders serving in the three Hungarian divisions. Many of these officers fought on the Eastern
front of both world wars. As far as battalion 46/III was concerned, in the spring of 1942, the battalion
commander and every single one of his superiors up to the Chief of General Staff were veterans of the
previous world war.385 Imre Kolossváry explicitly demanded that the soldiers in the 105th brigade
perform their duty in the war well because Hungary had been “Germany’s old comrade-in-arms and
friend.”386
Apart from being fluent in German due to their military education and war experience,
Hungarian professional officers also felt a close cultural connection to the German military which was
partly driven by nostalgia for a time when Hungary was a junior partner in an empire closely allied
with Germany and also partly because many in the Hungarian officer corps were ethnically German
383
For example, Boór Viktor visszaemlékezése, p. 20., HL TGY2698; Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p.
183-184.
384
Aladár Töttösy fought in the First World War then he was POW in Russia 1915-1918: Töttösy Aladár kihallgatása,
27.10.1950, ÁBTL V-73166; Ottó Abt: participation in First World War, POW in Russia 1915-1918, from 1 November 1941
to 15 October 1942 commander of the 108th Infantry Brigade. Zoltán Álgya-Pap: fought in First World War as an officer,
from 15 October 1942 to 1 October 1943 commander of the 105 th Light Infantry Division. Ferenc Ámon: fought in the First
World War as an officer, from 8 February 1943 artillery commander of Occupation Group East. Szilárd Bakay: fought in
First World War as an officer, from 1 August 1942 to 15 May 1943 commander of Occupation Group East. István Baumann:
fought in First World War, POW 1915-1919, from November 1941 to July 1942 commander of the 46th IR. Károly Bogányi:
fought in First World War as an officer, from October 1941 to May 1942 commander of the 102 nd Light Infantry Division,
then until August 1942 commander of Occupation Group East. Géza Ehrlich: fought in First World War as an officer, 1917-
1919 POW, 1942-43 commander of 46th IR. Dezső Horváth: fought in First World War as platoon and company commander
at the Russian and the Italian fronts, from September 1941 commander of battalion 46/III. Imre Kolossváry: fought in First
World War, wounded multiple times, from 1941 to 15 October 1942 commander of the 105 th. Károly Olgyay: fought in First
World War as a professional officer, from 10 February 1942 to 1 April 1942 commander of Occupation Group East. Sándor
Raiter: fought in First World War 1914-16 on the Russian, then on the Italian front, 1918-19 POW in Italy, from 20 March
1942 commander of battalion 43/III. Zoltán Somlay: fought in First World War in Serbia, from December 1941 to March
1942 commander of the 53rd IR, then from 6 March 1942 to 30 May 1942 commander of the 102 nd LID. Ferenc
Szombathelyi: fought in First World War as an officer, from September 1941 to 1944 Chief of the General Staff. László
Varga: fought in First World War, from December 1941 to August 1942 commander of battalion 44/III. György Vukováry:
fought in First World War, from 3 November 1942 to 1 July 1943 commander of the 201 st Light Infantry Division. Henrik
Werth: fought in ww1, from 1938 to September 1941 Chief of the General Staff. Dates and positions from Krausz and
Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok, p. 569-603.
385
Battalion commander: Dezső Horváth. 46th regiment commander: István Baumann. 105th Division: Imre Kolossváry.
Occupation Group East commander: Károly Olgyay. Chief of the General Staff: Ferenc Szombathelyi.
386
46/III. zlj. 1. sz. zászlóaljparancsnoksági parancs, 03.11.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.
85
(Volksdeutsche).387 In 1941, Germans (most of them Danube Swabians or Transylvanian Saxons) made
up 7.4% of Hungary's population, nearly 900.000 people.388 They were the only minority that did not
face any restrictions in the military. For instance, the Chief of the General Staff at the time when
Hungary joined the German campaign against the Soviet Union, Henrik Werth, was ethnic German, as
well as Gusztav Jany who commanded the 2nd Hungarian Army at the Don river in 1942-1943.389
At least some high-ranking officers in the Hungarian Army played to German audience which
mattered in terms of what decisions they made. Major General Ottó Abt, commander of the 108th Light
Infantry Division, was accused by Colonel Rezső Hadácsy in Hadácsy’s memoirs that he offered the
division to front services to receive a German Iron Cross. Hadácsy also asserted that the acquisition of
German insignia, especially the Iron Cross, was more appreciated by many Hungarian officers than
receiving Hungarian decorations.390 Although Abt’s motives cannot be confirmed, he did send a
request to the General Staff in March 1942 for his division to be deployed at the front for the “honor of
the Hungarian troops.”391 Between 12 and 26 May, the division suffered 40% casualties in battles
around Kharkov.392
Zoltán Álgya-Pap, commander of the 105th division, made an effort to insist on a correction in
the text that listed his German decorations incorrectly due to a minor translation mistake. 393 He did this
while standing in front of a Soviet jury, being tried for war crimes. Playing up his German connections
during a trial conducted by Soviet authorities shows how much pride Álgya-Pap took from having
received German military decorations. Other post-war testimonies from the occupation troops serving
in Western Ukraine also indicated that there were Hungarian officers who tried to be more Wehrmacht
than the Wehrmacht.394
For some of the veteran officers of the First World War, the trajectory from the imperial
Austro-Hungarian army to Hungary’s national army was not straightforward. Several high-ranking
officers in the Royal Hungarian Army of the interwar era who fought in the First World War, also
served in Hungary’s Red Army under the Communist regime in 1919. 395 These ex-Red Army officers
387
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 184.
388
Government statistics quoted at Gazsi, “Politikai megkükönböztetés,” p. 521. Around half a million Germans within pre-
1938 borders: Romsics, Magyarország története, p. 188.
389
Jány was born as Gusztáv Hautzinger in 1883. In 1924 he changed his family name to his mother’s last name, Jány.
390
Rezső Hadácsy, “Visszaemlékezéseim Hitler magyarországi szövetségeseire,” p. 42., HL TGY 2975.
391
Megsz. csop. pság. 11.03.1942, HL VKF277/2342. Ungváry claims it was László Stemmer who made this request:
392
393
Document 1, Álgya-Pap Zoltán kihallgatási jegyzőkönyve, 26.10.1947, in Krausz and Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló
csapatok.
394
Pécsi József kihallgatása, 17.12.1952, ÁBRL V-111827.
395
The Hungarian Soviet Republic was a Communist rump state between 21 March and 1 August 1919. During its short
86
included Kőroly Olgyay (commander of Occupation Group East between February and April 1942) and
the two Chiefs of the General Staff in 1941-1942, Ferenc Szombathelyi and Henrik Werth. However,
being former members of the Hungarian Red Army did not indicate ideological support for
Communism for most officers who served in it. They joined the military of the Hungarian Soviet
Republic because this was the only force at that time that attempted to defend Hungary against the
Rumanian and the Czechoslovak armies. Hungary’s conservative-nationalist state from 1920
understood this well, and the transition from the Red Army to the Royal Hungarian Army was smooth
for these officers.396 All three of the above-mentioned senior leaders were already serving in Horthy’s
national army in 1920.
9.4. World of War
For many soldiers, everything that helped the survival of men within one's unit was considered moral,
and every behavior that threatened this became immoral.397 Browning also remarks that for the
perpetrators in Reserve Police Battalion 101, the war was “another political planet” with its own set of
rules and norms.398
First and foremost, rank-and-file soldiers feared for their own lives, and almost as much as they
feared death, they were afraid of being captured by the partisans. As seen in the chapter War on the
Partisans, atrocities committed by one side fueled the brutalization of the other side. Eventually, Gyula
Daróczi, a soldier of battalion 40/I, became wholly desensitized about the suffering and death of the
people he fought against. His diary for the day of 29 of May remarked:
"Beautiful sunny weather. In the afternoon, seven partisans were executed again, in the evening we
received packages, these too were sent by the Red Cross. Today I bought 11 eggs; I had my stomach
full.”399
In several places in his diary, a description of something horrific is followed by the remark:
“This is what war is like.”400 Executions had become everyday trivial occurrences, the burning down of
reign, it controlled about a quarter of pre-1920 Hungary and was at war with both Rumania and Czechoslovakia.
396
Dombrády and Tóth, A Magyar Királyi Honvédség, p. 11.
397
Bartov, Hitler's Army, p. 70.
398
Browning, The Path to Genocide, p. 182.
399
Entry 29.05.1942 in Daróczi’s diary, HL TGY3220.
400
Similar expressions also turn up in German recollections: Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 14.
87
villages and killing people had become the reality of the world Daróczi and his comrades were part of.
Browning also describes this desensitization among soldiers of Reserve Police Battalion 101. The first
time when the crews of the German police battalion received the task of massacring the entire Jewish
population of a village in Poland, there were several men who could not carry out the tasks, and most
of those who did carry them out fully were shaken by the experience. However, after the first action,
subsequent anti-Jewish actions became easier, and the battalion became an effective unit of
desensitized soldiers.401
Daróczi wrote about the killings and mass murders in a matter-of-fact way, without trying to
hide anything or expressing guilt, which shows that he simply viewed these things as the accepted and
expected behavior in a time of war. A different frame of reference existed for wartime. Harald Welzer
has shown that dividing the world into two parts, war and peace, with their corresponding moral values
was a typical way for soldiers to interpret the gruesome events in which they were active
participants.402
Being part of a group made it possible to kill the innocent even for people who had no
sociopathic inclination and would have never committed such acts as individuals in their civilian life.
As Welzer remarks, the majority of the perpetrators in German police battalions were normal people
with healthy psychological makeup.403 As Konrad Lorenz tells us, "man is not a killer but the group is."
The diffusion of responsibility across the entire military unit de-individualized the killings, and the
group absolved the perpetrator from his sins.404 Personal responsibility no longer existed; the group
was responsible for the atrocities. In the case of Reserve Police Battalion 101, regardless of how the
individuals reacted to the orders to murder innocent people, the battalion always carried out the tasks it
was given, and that was the only thing that mattered.
A lot could be done in war that would have been punishable by civil courts in peacetime.
Getting away with all kinds of infractions and sadistic behavior seemed to be a motivating factor for
some people.405 German legal historian Herbert Jäger has described this type of motivation as
“unaccountable freedom of action;” soldiers got away with an almost limitless abuse of power so long
as the victims were categorically defined as the enemy and, by implication, had no rights.406
401
Browning, The Path to Genocide, p. 176-179.
402
Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 22-26., 86., 112.
403
Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 7-12.
404
Grossman, On Killing, p. 151.; Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 229. As a supplement to Browning’s individualized
explanation, see Stefan Kühl, Ordinary Organizations: Why Normal Men Carried out the Holocaust, (Cambridge: Polity,
2016).
405
Kövesi Jenő vallomása, 23.10.1950, 24.10.1950, Horváth János András vallomása, 10.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166; Nagy
Lajos vallomása, 09.01.1951, Godo József kihallgatása, 09.01.1951, ÁBTL V-35965.
406
Welzer, Gjerningsmenn, p. 153-154., 190.
88
Other types of incentives for the rank-and-file were of material nature. For example, soldiers
sent out to “hunt” partisans were issued extra food and alcohol before their mission. During house
searches, alcohol and belongings, such as carpets, furs, gold, or silver jewelry could be confiscated
from the locals. The victim’s clothes could later be sold to other civilians. For example, one of the
soldiers in battalion 42/III of the 102nd Division, that took part in the siege and subsequent pillaging in
Reimentarovka in December 1941, opened up his own carpet shop in Hungary in 1944. Apparently,
officers tolerated or encouraged pillaging and they too took a share of the booty.407 An article penned
by Ádám Gellért showed that there were soldiers who were ready to seize the opportunity to enrich
themselves from the property of Jews even during a military exercise in Hungary that got out of
control.408 There was also looting of predominantly Serb and Jewish property during the Újvidék raid
in January 1942, as shown in investigative reports of the Hungarian police following the atrocities.409
A special case was that of soldiers who lost their social status or their formal positions in the
army and attempted to regain it by volunteering. For example, one soldier stabbed a Hungarian citizen
with his bayonet during an altercation in a pub while on leave. He was sentenced to imprisonment, but
due to manpower shortages was sent to the Soviet Union in 1943. He volunteered for the interrogation
and execution of a prisoner, hoping that with this, his remaining prison sentence would be nullified.410
A member of the 53rd regiment had his rank taken away before the war. In 1943, he was keen on
volunteering for partisan-hunting in order to get his rank back.411
Browning also notes that those whose economic wellbeing and social status depended on the
military were more willing to participate in mass shootings. The few who refused to take part in the
atrocities from the beginning had a career to go back to after their military service.412
407
Ajtony Artur vallomása, 16.01.1951, ÁBTL V-35965; Csaba László vallomása, 09.01.1953, ÁBTL V-111827; Kövesi
Jenő vallomása, 24.10.1950, Horváth János András kihallgatása, 17.11.1950, ÁBTL V-73166; 105. gy. Dd. Ia. Önhatalmú
harácsolások, rablások és üzérkedések elterjedése, 09.12.1941, HL M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22., 46/III.; László
Ráskay diary, p. 7-8., HL TGY3659. On the crucial role of spoils in the murders in Eastern Europe, see the relevant chapters
(for example about Jassy) of Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
408
Gellért and Gellért, „Partizánvadászat,” p. 5-7.
409
Police reports: Jelentés Újvidék, 15.02.1942, ÁBTL P-306; M. Kir. rendőrség budapesti főkapitányságának politikai
osztálya, 07.02.1942, ÁBTL P-296; M. kir. rendőrség újvidéki kapitánysága Jelentés, 16.02.1942, 21.02.1942, 25.02.1942,
ÁBTL P-417; Memorandum by Cabinet Office: Emlékeztető az 1942. év januárjában Zsablya-Ujvidék területén elkövetett
tulkapásokról, 16.12.1943, ÁBTL A-415.
410
Pintér Lajos kihallgatása, 28.01.1959, ÁBTL V-145403.
411
Szilágyi Sándor kihallgatása, 09.07.1951, ÁBTL V-111846.
412
Browning, The Path to Genocide, p 182.
89
Conclusion
In the Second World War, the occupied territories in Central- and East Europe were marked by
complicated patterns of conflict and violence. Various perpetrator groups vied over dominance, and
individuals could be perpetrators one day and victims the next day. In this conflagration, Hungarian
military units had often been overlooked by observers outside of Hungary. Hungary entered Operation
Barbarossa on the side of Germany to secure the territorial gains it had acquired between 1938 and
1941 due to Germany’s support. While Germany was advancing deep into the Soviet Union with
expansionist goals, Hungary was primarily concerned with its nearest neighbors in the Carpathian
Basin.
To support the Wehrmacht’s campaign while giving as little as possible, in the autumn of 1941,
the Hungarian General Staff sent three infantry brigades (later renamed as light infantry divisions)
consisting of reservists to serve as security troops in the rear of Army Group South. In November and
December 1941, these troops received the instructions of the war of annihilation. They had also seen
plenty of examples of how the German military and the police forces were acting on those orders. To
the poorly trained reservists making up the Hungarian security forces, these instructions and examples
were more crucial than to front-line troops precisely because they had not received any proper military
training. It was through these instructions they heard and the examples of massacres and atrocities they
saw that they learned how to fight the war. Before getting off the train in Berdichev, they only had the
vaguest idea of what the war was all about – once in the field, they adapted quickly. They got an
education in violence and murder.
When these troops were sent to the East to fight under Army Group South, they were effectively
torn out from the body of the Magyar Királyi Honvédség (Royal Hungarian Army). The connection
between Hungary’s territorial ambitions and the price it was paying for those gains in the form of
sending troops to the Soviet Union was all too abstract and, for most, incomprehensible. The ordinary
soldier was getting everything that he needed for staying alive from the Wehrmacht and probably was
not even interested (or trustful) of the nuances of trade and diplomatic agreements between Hungary
and Germany regarding payment for goods used by the Hungarian troops. Not to mention that many
could not have possibly comprehended the General Staff’s explanation of the logistical arrangement
between the Hungarian army and the Wehrmacht due to the lack of Hungarian language skills, or did
not believe it due to distrust in the Hungarian leadership. As far as most of the soldiers in the Hungarian
units were concerned, they were Wehrmachtsangehörige, abandoned by their country.
The Hungarian officer corps had a particularly close cultural connection with the German armed
90
forces, which partly emanated from the fact that some of the highest-ranking Hungarian officers came
from Volksdeutsche families. Evidently, the shared experiences of the First World War had also left a
deep mark on many Hungarian officers. Historians so far have not adequately appreciated this real or
imagined comradeship between Hungarian and German officers as a motivating factor.
The matter of soldiers belonging to ethnic minorities in the Hungarian divisions was even more
complicated. From the point of view of ethnic Slovak or Romanian soldiers, they had been abandoned
twice. First, they were abandoned by Czechoslovakia and Romania without a fight when Hungary
annexed Southern Slovakia and Northern Transylvania; then, the Hungarian army dumped them in the
Soviet Union. These soldiers were truly in the middle of a no man’s land, but much closer to the
Wehrmacht than to the Magyar Királyi Honvédség.
The communication challenges regarding the presence of many soldiers who did not speak
Hungarian were real. However, accounts that claim that ‘nobody’ could communicate with the Slovak,
Romanian, or Ukrainian soldiers within a unit are not to be believed. It was comfortable for rank-and-
file soldiers to pretend that they did not understand instructions. The situation also served as a readily
available excuse for officers when their troops did not perform. It might also have served as a way to
avoid complicated military tasks.
Due to the communication problems and the low level of training of the vast majority, as well as
the lack of adequate equipment, the units of the occupation forces were only capable of carrying out a
limited range of military maneuvers and combat tasks. Pursuing partisan groups in the forest over
rough terrain on narrow paths would have required the proper coordination of smaller groups of
soldiers fighting in relative isolation. Even just keeping a line of advance in the trees would have
required effective mutual understanding, not to speak of directing fire. Villages were much more
accessible targets. Roads led to them that facilitated conducting maneuvers on open terrain where an
officer could have proper oversight of the soldiers’ move.
The most significant disadvantage of attacking a village as opposed to ambushing a partisan
camp in the forest was that advancing soldiers provided easy targets for partisans shooting from the
cover of buildings. However, this tactical problem could be solved by setting fire to the entire village or
to a part of it by artillery shells or incendiary bullets. Once the buildings were aflame, indiscriminately
shooting smoke-choked people running out of the burning houses was simple enough from a tactical
point of view, just as József Boros described it in his post-war testimony (see page xy). As long as
collateral damage did not matter, burning down buildings and settlements became the safest, most
straightforward way to combat the partisans. The destruction of settlements by fire was also a tool in
the partisans’ toolbox, although used less frequently than by the occupying troops.
91
However, the value in arguments positing that the weakness of troops in terms of equipment and
the quality of manpower had led the Hungarian divisions to commit indiscriminate violence has been
overestimated. Indeed, there were abysmal conditions to be found among most Hungarian troops and
these severely limited military effectiveness. However, the 6th Infantry Division, temporarily assigned
to Korück in 1942, consisted of the regular troops of the Hungarian Second Army, which performed
front-line service. But no marked differences were found between their treatment of civilians and that
of the other Hungarian light infantry divisions. The concept of the Hungarian army that it was fighting
a war against a partisan movement rooted in the local population, as opposed to groups of combatants,
was more consequential than the respective military capabilities of the troops.
Throughout the entire partisan war, two fundamental strategies existed in overcoming the
partisan resistance, expressed both in German and Hungarian anti-partisan guidelines. One was to kill
every one of the partisans down to the last man and those who supported them; the other was to gain
the trust and support of one part of the population. “Depriving” the partisans of their human base could
mean turning the local population away and get them to fight the partisans – which is precisely what
the German liaison officers were recommending. “Depriving” the partisan groups of their supply and
support could also mean erasing villages from the face of the Earth. Using the carrot would have
required having control over the administrative levers of local government, something the Hungarians
did not have.
Neither did Hungarian soldiers have economic incentives to rationalize their methods in the
anti-partisan war. While the Wehrmacht was fighting to win a war of colonial expansion, the units of
the Hungarian army just wanted to not lose while opportunistically taking whatever they could get hold
of immediately. While German economic offices took an interest in the long-term exploitation of the
conquered lands and its inhabitants, as far as Hungarian occupation forces were concerned, if there
were no people, there was no problem. Ultimately, solving the most crucial issues of the local
inhabitants, such as land privatization, would have required sweeping policy changes. German officers
on the ground were indeed aware of this point, yet whatever recommendations they made were
formulated and perceived within the larger context of the colonial war of annihilation and therefore
usually came to naught.
Some Wehrmacht officers complained about the behavior of Hungarian troops. However, when
the Wehrmacht deemed it necessary for the sake of security, German officers too fell back on
indiscriminate “kill-anything-that-moves” methods. Had the Hungarian forces managed to kill all the
real partisans, no reproaches would have come from the higher echelons of Wehrmacht leadership,
regardless of any collateral damage. The destruction of the partisans’ habitat became an accepted way
92
of waging the anti-partisan war. In the process, the destruction of people who were unfortunate enough
to live near the partisans, as well as the erasing of entire villages, were acceptable collateral damage.
Besides, German liaison officers were Lieutenants and First Lieutenants; meanwhile, Reichenau
was a Field Marshal. The liaison officers’ assessment was appreciated by their superiors but the upper
echelons of the Wehrmacht’s leadership had never embraced these officers’ recommendations
unambiguously. Following the new German anti-partisan guidelines issued in December 1942, a field
commander could still eradicate villages and towns if only he managed to show that the population was
‘voluntarily’ supporting the partisans. It all depended on how terms like ‘unjustified,’ ‘arbitrary,’ or
‘voluntary’ were interpreted by field commanders. The troops were still supposed to unleash terror on
the partisans and their local supporters while, at the same time, they were also tasked to build support
for the Axis cause in the occupied territories. The interpretation of the new guidelines depended on the
context.
Yet even Hungarian officers and rank-and-file soldiers did have some, although limited, scope
of independent action. The examples from early in the war when Hungarian commanders stopped
German SS units or the Ukrainian police from carrying out atrocities against Jews happened in July and
August when Hungary was taking part in Operation Barbarossa with regular army troops. Reichenau
had not yet given his infamous order, the massacre of Jews in Kiev and Berdichev had not yet
happened. The war had not been radicalized to the levels of late 1941. The occupation forces deployed
from December 1941 had enjoyed far less freedom of action than the Hungarian Army Corps over the
summer of 1941.
The contradicting instructions about the handling of prisoners, as well as the relatively large
room for interpreting who was a partisan or a partisan helper, allowed even lower level Hungarian
commanders in the field to decide the fate of the captured based on logistical and security
circumstances. The degree of choice even rank-and-file soldiers had when it came to taking part in
executions is remarkable. Although the primary source base about this is one-sided, the secondary
literature supported the picture drawn by the primary sources.
For many of the participants on both sides, the war became a personal affair where one was to
avenge one’s mutilated comrades or the death of one’s family members. Many of the killings took place
in close range, which further brutalized the soldiers and partisans. This stood in contrast to many other
military operations, such as air, naval operations, or even artillery units, where killing did not happen at
an almost intimate range. However, when Hungarian soldiers were led by officers who were trying to
wage war in a more discriminate, more rational way, then these already brutalized Hungarian soldiers,
too, abstained from indiscriminate violence.
93
Ideology occupies an essential place among the different factors that eventually led to the death
of so many civilians in the Eastern European Bloodlands. Had it not been for the ideological drive
emanating from the Nazi leaders of the Third Reich, the loss of civilian life in the Soviet Union would
not have reached such staggering levels.
As in other Central-European countries, the political landscape had been shifting towards the
right in Hungary after the Great Depression against a backdrop of widespread revisionism and
irredentism, in a militarized political environment in a fragile geopolitical spot where surrounding
powers were not to be trusted. Anti-Bolshevism had been the ideological bread-and-butter of the
national conservative state in Hungary since the end of the First World War. In the 1930s, the changing
international environment began to radicalize Hungary’s ‘domestic’ antisemitism. All this facilitated the
acceptance of the war of annihilation in the East. In particular, the obsession with Jews was not only
characteristic of the Wehrmacht but also shared by many in the Hungarian military leadership. Many
Hungarian officers had come to accept the definition of Jews based on race and their place in the Nazi
racial hierarchy even before the first shots of Operation Barbarossa were fired. According to the
description of manual no. 10 (see page xy), the Jews uniformly and fanatically stood behind their
ideology, they were in possession of indefatigable endurance, ruthless bloodthirst, and a ‘glowing
hatred’ towards their enemies. In other words, paradoxically, Soviet Jews were supposed to possess
precisely those qualities that the Hungarian soldiers were lacking, in the assessment of the staff officers
of the Hungarian Second Army. According to these staff officers' assessments, these were the qualities
that made the difference between victory and defeat. Thus, the General Staff further stoked the paranoia
among their own troops about Jews, which was already alive in many soldiers even before they had
arrived in the area of deployment.
While Tamás Krausz stated that these societal developments in Hungary in the interwar period
had a great impact on the way the Hungarian troops behaved in occupied Ukraine, he exclusively relied
on postwar Communist primary sources from Hungary and the Soviet Union to support his claim. In
this thesis, I systematically went through all the entries about locations in Spector’s Encyclopedia of
Jewish Life situated in or near the Hungarian troops' occupation zone. In several cases, there is
sufficient evidence that Hungarian troops committed the murder of Jews in a particular town or village.
Both wartime and postwar primary sources were utilized to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.
Soviet and other Communist sources can add valuable support and information to arguments if they are
used together with and verified by wartime sources. The degree of accuracy in the postwar primary
sources was a surprise to me whenever their content could be verified by wartime sources.
The annihilation of the Jews in the occupied areas was part of murderous Nazi policies,
94
inasmuch as equating Jews with partisans effectively sealed the fate of Jews. Even before Hungarian
soldiers saw even one Jew in their area of deployment, they had already come to ‘know’ that every Jew
was a security threat. The case of the Ukrainians was strikingly different; they were considered to be
potential allies and racially superior to Russians and Jews. The loss of civilian life among Ukrainians
was not the result of policy decisions, but rather it was collateral damage in the war against the
partisans.
Apart from being a valuable addition to Hungarian history, this thesis has also expanded
knowledge about the Soviet partisans. Perhaps because they often fought against Hungarians rather
than Germans, less is known about the partisans of the Bryansk forest than about partisans in Belarus.
For example, when describing the Soviet partisan war in the Bloodlands, Snyder almost exclusively
focused on Belarus to draw conclusions. At the same time, most of the horrendous atrocities committed
by Soviet partisans in Stalin’s Commandos by Gogun happened in Western Ukraine. In the Bryansk
forest, Soviet partisans had genuine support in the local population.
The study of German liaison officers’ assessments has further nuanced the picture of the
Wehrmacht’s anti-partisan tactics and strategies because these officers could afford to be more honest
and straightforward in their recommendations to revise the methods of war than German officers
serving at German troops.
Most perpetrator studies written about the Eastern Front focus on German troops. This thesis
has shown that Browning’s and Welzer’s findings are correct even when checked against an example of
members from a military force other than the Wehrmacht.
95
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archival sources:
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA)
OKH: RH2/3700,
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RH21/2/558
Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet: RH22/11, RH22/19, RH22/22, RH22/31, RH 22/34,
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TGY 2975 Hadácsy Rezső
TGY2698 Boór Viktor
TGY 3220 Daróczi Gyula
TGY3659 Ráskay László
TGY3908 Mészöly Elemér
TGY 4100 Pap László
SZU 133/1 Hamburger László
Csapatanyag:
2. hadsereg, box 15b.
2. hadsereg, box 15c.
M. Kir. Honvédség 1919-1945, box 22, 46/III.
HL M. Kir. Megsz. Csop, box 1.
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96
HL 46. gyez. II.1519, box 21.
19. gyez. II.1537, box 8a.
Mikrofilm:
Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 21b., filmtár 748.
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Korück 580 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 26a-25a., filmtár 750
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V-73166 Töttösy Aladár és tsai.
V-115811 Bácsfalvy Windischmann Ferenc
V-34417 Belső Károly
V-111827 Csaba László
V-111846 Szilágyi Sándor
V-145403 Bere Dániel
V-14324 Mészáros Lajos
V-116753/2 Szabó Ferenc
V-86577 Zárai Ervinné
Államvédelmi Hatóság:
V-82992 Kovács Ferenc
V-36604 Csendes Imre
V-35965 Ajtony Artur
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(Map: Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 92.)

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1

IAKH HIS4090 UiO

ON THE PERIPHERY OF THE BLOODLANDS:

Hungarian Troops at War against

1.1. Historiography and the Current State of the Art

1.2. Theory and Method

1.3. The Scope of the Thesis

2. Visions of the East

2.3. The Military Occupation Zone

2.4. Hungary Enters the War

3. The Soviet Response

3.1. The Development of the Partisan Forces

3.3. The Brutalization of the Partisan War

4. Preparation for the War of Annihilation

4.1. Abysmal Conditions in the Occupation Forces

4.2. Orders and Instructions

4.3. Experiences preceding the first combat engagements

organization, the partisans.”133

4.5. The Complexity of the Operational Area

Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerillas, p. 55.

5.3. The Cooperation between the Hungarian Troops and the SS

6. War on the Partisans

6.1. Interpreting Combat Reports

- Enemy losses: 4375 dead, 135 captured

6.3. The Barbarization of the Anti-Partisan War

already 17 villages have been leveled to the ground.”247

„1 case eyes gouged out and eyelids sewed together

1 " hands chopped off

1 " skin on feet peeled off

6.4. German Attempts to Revise Anti-partisan Tactics

Varga, ed., A magyar megszálló csapatok.

7.1. The Anti-Partisan Guidelines of the Hungarian Army

these kinds of instructions are not followed.”268

among the inhabitants would learn about the reprisal.”275

the work of blowing up important sections.”282

7.2. Draining the Water

7.3. Towards the End in the East

8.1. The Scope of Independent Action: The Officer Corps

8.2. Volunteering: Rank-and-File Soldiers

Ajtony Artur kihallgatása, 16.01.1951, ÁBTL V-35965.

faji harcmód,” in Magyar Katonai Szemle 1936.(I.)

happier future on the side of the Axis powers."381

9.4. World of War

Hadtörténelmi Levéltár (HL)

Vezérkari Főnökség mikorfilmek B243: 277/2337, 277/2339, 277/2340, 277/3241, 277/2342,

Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (ÁBTL)

Magyar Népköztársaság Belügyminisztérium:

Krausz-Ungváry discussion in Kossuth Klubb, Budapest, February 18, 2016.

(Map: Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 92.)

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