At the beginning of the 20th century the cultural efflorescence and sparkling energy of abundance and well-being of Budapest rivaled that of Vienna and its café society that of Paris, a belle époque extinguished by World War I. In the
aftermath of World War I which had led to the collapse of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, half of the Hungarian population was cut away from Hungary by the
Treaty of Trianon and made part of surrounding nations. In 1918–19, Budapest was shaken by two revolutions: the
Aster Revolution brought about the
Hungarian Democratic Republic, which was followed by the
Hungarian Soviet Republic, a short-lived Communist regime led by
Béla Kun, followed by two years of
White Terror. The
Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919 ended with the Romanian occupation of parts of Hungary proper, including Budapest in August 1919, and the establishment of the
Kingdom of Hungary, led by
Miklós Horthy, the self-appointed
regent for the exiled King
Karl IV (see the
conflict of Charles IV with Miklós Horthy). His domain and regency was characterized by gala balls as well as hunger marches by the poor, of nationalism and anti-Semitism by inheritance, again inherited by joining the wrong side (the Nazis), who promised the sweet reward of re-joining of the Hungarian nation as a whole in the post-Trianon era. Yet Horthy was considered a moderate compared to the fascist
Arrow Cross Party, whose power grew as World War II raged across Europe. , 1930 Anticipating and knowing about Horthy's communication with the Allies and possible defection from the Axis alliance in 1944, the Nazis staged “
Operation Panzerfaust”, a coup against Horthy, and installed an Arrow Cross government under
Ferenc Szálasi to make allowance for the unobstructed massacre of the Jews of Budapest. Before World War II, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Budapest was a safe haven for Jewish refugees. Before the war some 5,000 refugees, primarily from Germany and Austria, arrived in Budapest. With the beginning of deportations of Jews from Slovakia in March 1942, as many as 8,000 Slovak Jewish refugees also settled in Budapest. Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany. Despite discriminatory legislation against the Jews and widespread antisemitism, the Jewish community of Budapest was relatively secure until the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 (
Operation Margarethe). With the occupation, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish council in Budapest and severely restricted Jewish life. Apartments occupied by Jews were confiscated. Hundreds of Jews were rounded up and interned in the
Kistarcsa transit camp (originally established by Hungarian authorities), northeast of Budapest. Between April and July 1944, the Germans and Hungarians deported Jews from the Hungarian provinces. By the end of July, the Jews in Budapest were virtually the only Jews remaining in Hungary. They were not immediately ghettoized. Instead, in June 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered the Jews into over 2,000 designated buildings scattered throughout the city. The buildings were marked with Stars of David. About 25,000 Jews from the suburbs of Budapest were rounded up and transported to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Hungarian authorities suspended the deportations in July 1944, sparing the remaining Jews of Budapest, at least temporarily. Many Jews searched for places of hiding or for protection. They were aided by foreign diplomats like
Nuncio Angelo Rotta,
Raoul Wallenberg,
Giorgio Perlasca,
Carl Lutz,
Friedrich Born,
Harald Feller,
Angel Sanz Briz and
George Mandel-Mantello who organized false papers and safe houses for them. These actions saved tens of thousands of Jews. In October 1944, Germany orchestrated a coup and installed a new Hungarian government dominated by the fascist
Arrow Cross Party under
Ferenc Szálasi. The remaining Jews of Budapest were again in grave danger. The Arrow Cross instituted a reign of terror in Budapest and hundreds of Jews were shot. Jews were also drafted for brutal forced labor. On November 8, 1944, the Arrow Cross militia concentrated more than 70,000 Jews—men, women, and children—in the Ujlaki brickyards in Obuda, and from there forced them to march on foot to camps in Austria. Thousands were shot and thousands more died as a result of starvation or exposure to the bitter cold. The prisoners who survived the death march reached Austria in late December 1944. There, the Germans took them to various concentration camps, especially Dachau in southern Germany and Mauthausen in northern Austria, and to Vienna, where they were employed in the construction of fortifications around the city. In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews in Budapest into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took Jews from the ghetto in nightly
razzias, as well as deserters from the Hungarian army or political enemies, shot them along the banks of the Danube and threw their bodies into the river. Soviet forces captured Budapest on February 13, 1945. More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at time of capture. , 1985 The
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed, the Soviets, rather than appointing a Hungarian hardliner or a Soviet general, gave a chance to János Kádár, a former kidnapped minister of the revolution. He defeated the remaining rebel forces, then embarked on cautious reforms to create a "Goulash Communism" that differentiated Hungary from its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Due to the co-operative efforts of Kádár and huge loans taken from the West to offset the failing economy, Hungary became the favorite Communist state of the West by the late 1970s. A decade later, the city was the center of opposition activity, rallies, printing and selling of unauthorized material and secret-service surveillance. In addition the talks between opposition and government representatives (dubbed the "Round Table Consultations") were held there. Finally, the majority of the multi-sided regime decided to step over Gorbachev's line and open the borders (the first official break of the Iron Curtain), declared Hungary a Republic on October 23, 1989 then issued free elections. While communism was toppled in Berlin and Prague, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party was simply voted out of power in Hungary, initiating a peaceful transition from one political system to another. Hungarians simply refer to all that has happened since then as "after the System-change". ==After 1989==