Return to Article Details Royall Tyler and His Evaluation of the Treaty of Trianon

After World War I, the future of the countries that had been defeated was defined by the Paris peace treaties. After exhaustive negotiations, the peace conference, which had started in January 1919, produced the Treaty of Versailles for Germany in June 1919, the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria in September of that year, the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine with Bulgaria that November, and the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary in June 1920, while the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey was only signed in the summer of 1923. Although countless books and articles have focused on the history of the peace conference and the individual peace treaties, there are still fresh angles and approaches to them. The following paper revisits the Treaty of Trianon and an American official’s attitudes to and thoughts on that treaty and its ramifications. The study introduces Royall Tyler, who served in an official capacity in Hungary for many years as a League of Nations official, his ideas on Hungary in the interwar years, and his take on the post-World War I structure and the viability of the new borders in Central Europe.

Royall Tyler

There were few Americans who knew Hungary more intimately in the interwar period and beyond than Royall Tyler. His capacity as a League of Nations official from 1924 allowed him to work and stay in Hungary for a total of eleven years before he left in 1938. His rich insights into Hungary and Hungarians during the turbulent era of financial reconstruction, depression, political tension, and then the war years makes Tyler a unique observer of Hungarian affairs in the period under discussion. Since Hungarian political and cultural life in the interwar period can be defined as one revolving around the trauma of Trianon, it is intriguing how an American living in Europe for most of his life and spending so many years in Hungary saw this issue and Hungary’s place in postwar Europe.

Royall Tyler was born in 1884 and came from a well-established New England family—his great-grandfather with the same name was the first chief justice of Vermont and was sometimes referred to the “first American playwright” for his play The Contrast, which he penned in 1787. His father, a well-known teacher of his time who specialized in classical studies, taught Greek and Latin at Adams Academy in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he later served as principal between 1893 and 1897, until his untimely death. After Tyler’s father died, his mother, the daughter of a Slovak immigrant, moved to Europe, and took young Royall with her. Royall Tyler therefore carried both traditional New England blood and a Danubian immigrant strain—a combination that he put to good use in his mature years. He went to school in England but then spent considerable time in Spain, France, and Germany. He learned to speak the major western languages fluently, which proved to be a great advantage later on in his life and profession. In the fall of 1914, Tyler married Elisina Palamidessi de Castelvecchio, a woman born in Italy—who first had to divorce her husband, but their son had already been born by that time. Although Tyler would work in finance, banking, and later in intelligence as well, the intellectual love of his life was art history, especially Byzantine art, of which he became a renowned expert.

In many ways, Royall Tyler did not fit the general characterization of an American citizen. Despite the fact that he was born in the United States and spent the first fourteen years of his life in New England, he never returned except for short visits much later after he moved to Europe in 1898. Not much after relocating to England, he confessed that “I don’t believe in American moral breadth, and I don’t like Americans.” The comparison was especially stark with England: “I do love England. I can’t forget how intolerant everyone was to me in America and how kind in England.”1 Tyler felt no real belonging to any particular country; he was a drifter between the American and European cultures, and he had the sense of being an outsider, a stateless outcast.2 Later, looking back on his life, he noted: “Vagrancy has been my lot, and I am not sorry I did not draw another” (Tyler 2017, 99).

After educating himself and becoming an unofficial historian, Royall Tyler entered international life in earnest in World War I. From the beginning of the war, he wanted to serve in some capacity, and he soon joined the army when the United States entered the war in April 1917. He was commissioned and eventually served as an intelligence officer. His main task was to provide information on various matters tied to the war effort and the war situation itself. In the spring of 1918, due to his language skills, Tyler became the leader of the Inter-Allied Bureau, a group in charge of sharing information among the Allied and Associated Powers on the war. Tyler was only a small cog in a sometimes grinding machine that often showed signs of incompetence and childish bickering.3 In late 1918, he was appointed a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, and, as a participant at the Paris Peace Conference, Tyler gained considerable international experience in diplomacy. A few months later, he was employed at the Military Information Division and placed in charge of military personnel. He forwarded intelligence reports on Germany to higher levels, and later he was the American representative on the Liaison Commission with the German Delegation. After the peace treaties had been signed, he worked as an unofficial American representative on the League of Nations Reparation Commission.

The Treaty of Trianon

The Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, was a fatal blow to Hungary and its aspirations for the present and the future, and it defined the country’s fate and possibilities for the next two decades.4 Perhaps no Hungarian held too rosy a view of the final outcome of the peace treaty, but the extremely harsh measures often went against the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination, which the Hungarians hoped would prevail in Paris. As a result, large ethnic Hungarian blocs were detached from Hungary, which served strategic purposes and strengthened the successor countries. Hungary lost two-thirds of its former territory, and about 3,000,000 ethnic Hungarians found themselves in other countries. As a further consequence, Hungary lost most of its raw materials and industry and became a tattered country economically.5 A stream of refugees arrived from the now separated regions, which represented an extra burden on this war-, revolution-, and treaty-ridden country. The Treaty of Trianon contained the war guilt clause, and Hungary also faced reparations commencing from 1921. Article 180 of the treaty declared that “the first charge upon all the assets and revenues of Hungary shall be the cost of reparation” (Temperley 1921, 235). Hungary reluctantly accepted the new reality, but the next twenty years of Hungarian foreign and domestic policy largely aimed at a peaceful revision of the Trianon Treaty. Basically, every foreigner visiting the country witnessed the determination on the part of the Hungarians not to accept the treaty as final. As an American diplomat noted, “this idea germinated and fermented in the blood stream until it developed into a well-defined disease whose first symptom was the passionate ‘Nem, Nem, Soha’ [No, No, Never! – the Hungarian interwar slogan tied to the Treaty of Trianon].”6

Royall Tyler and His Reflections on the Treaty of Trianon and Revision

This was the milieu in which Royall Tyler found himself after he was named Deputy Commissioner General for the League-orchestrated Hungarian financial reconstruction program between 1924 and 1926.7 When the program was successfully concluded, he stayed on another three years embodying the loose control carried out by Geneva. After the Great Depression hit Hungary as well, Tyler was once again sent to Budapest as a League of Nations adviser to the Hungarian government. Coming from a neutral country (Switzerland) and representing an international organization, Tyler avoided every possible thought of approaching political questions too closely, strictly focused on the financial matters at hand, and remained as impartial as could be expected of an American. Naturally, he maintained contacts with a wide variety of people, including politicians, but he did not involve himself in Hungarian politics. He obviously had an opinion on politics, but he kept that to himself. Instead, he endeavored to pursue his intellectual interests both in Hungarian culture, mainly the language, and his art history passion, which was his lifelong calling. Still, indirectly at least, the Treaty of Trianon cast a shadow on his work all throughout his years in Hungary and beyond.

From the moment people were aware of the peace treaty, Hungary as a whole wanted to retrieve its lost territories. Though opinions varied as to how much territory was due the mother country, the overarching sentiment still remained stable and the same. For foreign policy reasons, Hungarian governments under Prime Minister István Bethlen proceeded very pragmatically and talked of a more distant and limited territorial revision if at all. That, however, does not mean that the question was on the back burner. This was the issue that defined Hungary in the interwar years: how to change the borderlines separating the new Hungary from the other territories of the old kingdom. Still, there were events that can be highlighted on the path to a hoped-for revision. Such events sometimes forced Tyler to reflect on this intricate problem that created tensions throughout Central Europe and beyond.

In hindsight, it is easy to discern that Tyler did not agree with the harsh peace terms forced on Germany and the other defeated countries. He believed that a much more modest change and rupture should have taken place in Germany. The Western Powers ought to have perhaps saved the earlier form and characteristics of their main enemy “with its traditional institutions, including its monarchies and its army, rather than drive into outlawry a class which had served the state for centuries”.8 However, even then, he considered the Treaty of Versailles too severe, along with other such treaties signed by the defeated countries as well. From firsthand experience, he could see what negative material and psychological consequences these peace treaties had caused in the defeated countries, and he was proud to play even a small role in helping Hungary to reorganize the country. Tyler did so not only out of pity or altruism, but out of strategic considerations and a firm belief in the League of Nations and its agenda in the international sphere. He was convinced that through the financial reconstruction efforts conducted by the League in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, a politically and economically more stable continent would emerge with the hope of lasting peace.

The spring of 1927, for example, brought about the dissolution of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control in Hungary, a tangible remnant of the Treaty of Trianon, and no wonder Hungarians were jubilant that after regaining their financial freedom the year before on account of the successful financial reconstruction, now they were politically and militarily freed from outside control as well. Such warnings that, for instance, the Hungarian practice of military recruitment provoked really a minor disturbance compared to the free hand Hungary had been given.9 This was, after all, the recognition of good and constructive work over the past few years: Hungary was accepted as a stable country, not threatening the peace concluded in Paris after World War I. Also, parallel to the lifting of military control, Italy signed a treaty of friendship with Hungary, which was important because it was the first time that a European power had elevated the importance of Hungary in the field of diplomacy. For Hungary, this meant that there might be an important supporter of its revisionist claims in the future, while the Italian perspective was to hasten the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and thus disrupt French hegemony in Central Eastern Europe. Naturally, any weakening of the Little Entente automatically raised the hope of partial territorial revision for Hungary.10

This year was also important for other reasons as regards European peace and Hungary. The press magnate Lord Rothermere wrote an editorial in The Daily Mail in which he favored returning some of the lost territories to Hungary.11 Although the article naturally “was received with the greatest enthusiasm throughout” Hungary, most European countries found it dangerous to an already precarious situation, where many dissatisfied voices vied for greater recognition.12 After so much blood had been shed and wealth lost, so much diplomatic wrangling had been experienced, and most of Europe was compelled to live under the thin veneer of a workable system, no one wished to revise the status quo, especially not for a small country like Hungary. It is also questionable if the Lord’s article facilitated Hungary’s goals of reaching a hoped-for revision at all. It is true that the issue had a large readership, but not necessarily responsive attention. The Bethlen government realized the potential harm as well and was quick to declare that it had nothing to do with Rothermere’s article and that at that time it did not think treaty revision was a realistic option.13 Tyler, as always, never touched on such political questions but focused on his own work instead.

The following year with its diplomatically motivated events, however, forced Tyler, if not to become involved in such a dangerous territory as politics, to reflect on larger issues of Hungary’s place in Europe and the League of Nations. The cases of the Hungarian optants and the Szentgotthárd affair were on the Council’s agenda when that body met in early March, which Tyler labeled “the most interest­ing I’ve ever attended there.”14 Although the Hungarians seemed to suffer no diplomatic defeat, Tyler, with the skill of a sharp observer, noted that this was “due far more to the general conjunction of planets than to the exertions of the lone little Magyar star.”15 What he meant was that the French interpreted certain moves on the part of the Little Entente countries as steps against France’s interests in the region, and, as a warning, the French only half-heartedly supported the Romanian and Czech attacks on Hungary. However, the almost unqualified Hungarian success may very well only have been a pause in the French–Romanian axis, so the Hungarians had to play it safe. Due to the Romanian balking at accepting a mixed arbitral tribunal as competent in the case of the optants, the League of Nations hesitated and showed dangerous incompetency in solving an issue of relatively minor significance. The whole idea of arbitration, an important point in the League’s effort to settle possible international disputes, was dealt a serious blow. Tyler accurately perceived the underlying difficulty. As a man who believed in internationality and the League as a proponent of it, he found it “shocking” that Romania could “paralyse the procedure contem­plated by the Treaty by simply threatening to withdraw from the League if the Treaty is allowed to function against her.”16 People in England and France rightly fretted over this and asked themselves “what chances there are of ever getting a big power to submit to arbitration, if Rumania, on a question on which she pledged herself, when she signed the Trianon Treaty, to accept ar­bitration, can buck the whole machinery because she thinks arbitration would go against her?”17 Obviously, in view of Germany, Japan, and Russia, the example Romania was setting was disquieting. Still, to put things in proper perspective, Tyler wrote that the Hungarian questions were only a sideshow to the most essential issue of the year, since “really the Kellogg note over-shadowed everything else.”18

This idea of renouncing war as an instrument of settling disputes, in fact attempting to make it illegal, appealed to many at that time, and Tyler shared the enthusiasm. The Kellogg–Briand Pact was initially signed by the United States, France, and Germany in August 1928. However, dozens of other countries soon joined, and it came into force in the summer of 1929. This idealistic moralistic-legalistic approach to international relations was questioned and outright ridiculed by a number of people. Hungary signed the Pact in 1929, but it was more of a gesture than an indication of deeply shared idealism. A telling example is Albert Apponyi’s opinion, which he shared with a Reichstag committee in Berlin in November 1928. He attacked the otherwise “sympathetic” approach with the mistaken interpretation of international problems and particularly war “with a dazzling, I am nearly inclined to say naïve, simplicity.”19 The conclusion of a Hungarian paper’s editorial also clearly illustrated that even this Pact was interpreted through the lens of revision: “The Kellogg Pact may be made a blessing to the world by one means only—the just revision of the peace treaties. By this Coolidge and Kellogg will become heroes of history. Without it the whole thing will turn into a Wilson program.”20 The Kellogg Pact was not part of the League of Nations’ efforts but shared many of the same idealistic international hopes: maintaining the peace, disarmament, and diplomatic handling of any crisis. Unfortunately, there were too many have-nots around in the world for such an outcome. The defeated countries still felt cheated by the peace treaties: too much territory and too many ethnic subjects of theirs were detached—all this in the name of self-determination. Many of them hoped and expected to achieve treaty revision in one way or another. In fact, Hungary was attempting to increase the size of its armed forces to the maximum, partly because it was surrounded by much more powerful enemies and partly because of the hoped-for future revision.

In light of such affairs, no wonder Hungary did not find what it had been looking for in the League of Nations, while it often seemed that Geneva was a good platform for other countries, especially members of the Little Entente, to attack Hungary. Of course, anything that did not aid in Hungarian revision was judged accordingly. A good indication of how the official Hungarian political establishment looked at the League of Nations can be found in various government publications. One such example is the Külügyi Szemle, the magazine of semi-official foreign policy views of the Hungarian government. It was not surprising to read of a “stern, inflexible, and one-sided League of Nations,” which “in its composition and work as of today is the insurance company of the winners and their prey, which institution keeps at bay every rightful complaint, every attempt at reform, and every effort to change the peace decrees in a more just and reasonable way.”21 Although this opinion may have been too harsh and one-sided, the charges of belatedness and ineffectiveness well document the Hungarian perception as well as possibly that of other small countries, namely, that the League’s bureaucratic multilateralism was maladapted to the most pressing political challenges of the new order in Central Europe. The small, fragile states that filled this region were the most sensitive to this problem; therefore, it is understandable that to some of them internationalism—along with corresponding issues and interests—was part of the problem, and not the solution. Obviously, the Hungarian political leadership and the public at large, as the opinion noted above attests, were dissatisfied with what the League might offer Hungary. At the same time, Hungary was helped immensely by the League in the financial sphere nonetheless, and, even though in the background, Tyler was an everyday reminder of that help. Paradoxically, Hungary’s improved situation also pushed the country towards treaty revision. Once the country enjoyed a more robust economy and better financial performance, outside control disappeared, and many Hungarians in and outside of government thought that such circumstances soon might pave the way for revision.

In the meantime, however, Bethlen’s pragmatism prevailed. Hungary had improved its relations with Czechoslovakia, Romania, and especially Yugoslavia and informed them, and the rest of the world, that insofar as it was in its power, treaty revision would not be on the Hungarian wish list. This was important for the stability of Hungary because only in a stable international environment and with normal working relations maintained with its neighbors could Hungary expect that the improved but still vulnerable Hungarian economy and finances might develop further. Tyler appreciated Bethlen’s political acumen and went so far as to call him “a great man.”22

In the interwar years, when Hungary was mainly interested in revision, it was attempting to find help far away from her immediate surroundings, where the successor states wanted to contain Hungarian revisionist aims. The main hope was Great Britain and the United States. Therefore, even if it was a grand illusion that these countries would help in any way, when a citizen of either country made a friendly gesture toward Hungary, it was always interpreted as help with the intention of rectifying the injustice committed against Hungary in Trianon in 1920. These people, including Harry Hill Bandholtz, Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Lord Rothermere, and Tyler, were without exception labeled as “a friend of Hungary,” which was rather a psychological gratification than anything else, since these people had no power to effectively help Hungary with treaty revision. Nor did they wish to do so, even if they admitted that the treaty might have been too harsh. Nonetheless, their kindness to Hungary was translated—mainly by revisionist propaganda—into an illusory hope that revision was approaching. And since Tyler had learned the Hungarian language, this was seen by many—because they wanted to see it in that light—as de facto American interest in Hungarian issues, and few looked at the situation realistically. Most of all, in this wave of propaganda, the fact that Tyler, just like Jeremiah Smith, Jr., before him, was working for the League of Nations and not in any way for the American government, did not seem to matter for many.

With the coming of the Great Depression, however, Hungary found itself prostrate and had to fight for economic and financial survival. During these years, the question of revision seemed to be dwarfed to a certain extent. In the midst of the Depression, the weaknesses of the postwar Central European order came to the forefront, especially in the economic dimension. The strategic considerations that lay down the foundations of the region could survive only as long as these countries’ economies more or less prospered. When economic performance worsened in Central Eastern European countries, it became more obvious that there were deep underlying problems with the political and economic structures of the region. Tyler’s insightful observation reflected the impossibility of the situation created by the peace accords and the answers to the crisis rearing its head in former parts of the Empire. It is worth quoting his words at length:

"It’s a question of holding the internal frame work together somehow until certain things happen—those certain things including the realization by the outer world that the money lent to the Danubian countries in order to make each one of them self-sufficient economically (thus fulfilling the promises implied in the peace-treaties) is lost: and also the realization of the fact that, in some form or other, the customs frontiers put up in the former territory of the Habsburg Monarchy have got to go. But what will be left when these things have been understood? Something, certainly, and one’s business is to see that it’s as much as can possibly be preserved."23

Here one can see the reflection of the American thinking that was palpable until 1918 and gained strength again in the wake of the problems in Central Europe, namely, that the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with all its shortcomings, may have been a more viable entity than the many mutually antagonistic successor states. These newly formed countries time and again proved that they followed only narrow nationalistic interests by failing to comprehend the larger context of a peaceful European continent. For that vision to work, the defeated countries had to prosper as well; otherwise, their discontent grew. Trying to block their way to greater wealth and failing to ensure their minorities more rights, these successor states therefore produced a more unstable region in the end.

As an adviser to the Hungarian government between 1931 and 1938, Tyler needed to focus mainly on finance, which could not be separated from political questions. As the economic depression deepened, voices in the defeated countries started clamoring more openly for treaty revision. As regards this line of thinking, Tyler held a middle-of-the-road view—naturally, only in the private dimension. Although the path these countries followed was not really new; the conditions were. The Depression years proved exactly how fragile the system established in Paris in 1919 really was. Tyler, who naturally was exposed to revisionist propaganda in Hungary, held a somewhat distanced view of the issue. He did not think rewriting those treaties would automatically solve problems—political or financial. His take on the issue was the following: “I’m not very keen on revision, myself; I fear it would create as much trouble as it would settle, and I’d rather see progress on the economic plane—bigger units and lowering of barriers.”24 In other words, he also considered the Austro-Hungarian Empire (or a political entity similar to it) a much healthier economic unit that proved to be capable of functioning than the successor states with their fair share of hatred of one another. This large-scale animosity among the countries of the Danube Valley stifled rational trade policies between neighbors, and economically hard times only made them follow more protectionist measures. Therefore, economic cooperation was kept to a bare minimum, very far from what would have been needed to achieve a general return to earlier levels. Politically, however, the genie was released from the bottle, and there was no way back to pre-1919 days. The peace system creating many new states in the Empire’s place produced many problems as well, especially in the economy. Tyler was not the only American with local knowledge who arrived at the same conclusion on the historical role of the Empire. The long-time American minister to Budapest, John Flournoy Montgomery, also echoed the sentiment to the State Department: “personally, I am not of the opinion that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a political monstrosity. Everything I have learned since I have been here convinces me to the contrary.”25

Just a few days after Tyler concluded his second long mission in Hungary, the Anschluss, Germany’s occupation of Austria and the union of the two countries, took place on March 12, 1938, and it shook the European continent.26 This issue had been a vital question in the past twenty years in European diplomacy, but most of the time it had been ignored. The peace treaty with Austria forbade such a union with Germany, since the victorious powers feared an enlarged German-speaking country, but the forces that were behind such an outcome never ceased to assert their agenda. With Germany becoming a considerable power, the question was propelled to the forefront again. A forced union of the two countries not only meant that one of the peace treaties had been openly broken, but this move can be seen as the first nail in the coffin of the Versailles peace structure—with others following in rapid succession. Tyler, for whom it was “sickening to think of Austria,” saw in the event a mistaken policy of France and Great Britain.27 “I’ve been gloomily reflecting on the fatal linking up of blunder after blunder after blunder that constituted the Western powers’ policy in central Europe & particularly on the Danube, ever since the armistice,” wrote Tyler at that time.28 Assessing the past almost two decades, Tyler saw the problem that Austria was left on its own, and the Czechs, largely because of Edvard Beneš, together with the French, did not allow that to become a reality. Tyler considered the Czech politician “able, clever, industrious, and with as much vision as a mole.”29 And while the Anschluss created a less stable continent for most of Europe, for the neighboring countries, especially for Czechoslovakia and Hungary, it was clearly seen as a possible existential danger on account of Nazi Germany. Tyler clearly understood both this Hungarian predicament and his own inability to do anything in even the most modest way. “Well, with all my affection for them, the present juncture is one at which I don’t think I could help them, and my presence would be more of an embarrassment to them than anything else. I’m glad I got out when I did.”30

A few weeks later, Tyler submitted a comprehensive report on Hungary to the US State Department. Since in all likelihood the request for the paper came from Washington, it is an indication that there was a growing interest in Hungary in the United States, which was mainly due to the country’s geographical location. Now as a neighbor to Germany, the country’s strategic importance had suddenly grown from the perspective of the White House. Since Tyler had spent eleven out of the last thirteen years in Hungary, there was no better expert on this question in Western Europe. Not only was he absolutely familiar with the economic and financial side of the situation in Hungary and Central Eastern Europe, but he basically knew everybody that held an important position in Hungary. He was personally acquainted with a cross-section of the middle and upper middle class, as well as the Hungarian aristocracy, to rely on and gain information from. Also, he had a deep knowledge and understanding of the Hungarian culture and way of thinking. This report was also timely because the country found itself on its way out of economic and financial straits, but in the middle of a quickly changing Central European power structure as a result of the Anschluss as well as Hungary’s growing economic, financial, and political commitment to an ever more aggressive Germany. Tyler summarized his views in his paper titled “Prospects for Hungary.”

The central question of the eight-page memorandum was the repercussions of the Anschluss for Hungary. Tyler argued that Hungary found itself in a serious predicament. On the one hand, the Anschluss, which arrived sooner than Hungarian leaders had expected, “gave Hungary a profound shock” and an overwhelming sentiment of “dismay.” Still, the German takeover of Austria foreshadowed Czechoslovakia possibly being next, and it was obvious that the avenue to regain some lost territories in the north would be open to Hungary. As Tyler put it, “[n]o Hungarian Government could survive one hour if it neglected an opportunity of recovering Slovakia.” In his analysis, the sad reality was that Hungary was in an impossible situation. Its leaders clearly saw the German threat, which for the time being meant inferiority to Germany, and they worked to ensure as much independence for the country as possible. On the other hand, Hungary needed strong international support in order to realize its revisionist aims. Since they sought this kind of help in vain in Western Europe, especially in Great Britain, they had nowhere else to turn but Germany, perhaps Italy. This constituted the Hungarian dilemma that would later turn into a national tragedy.31

Furthermore, the overturning of the postwar system seemed impossible to counter. The next momentous affair was the Munich Pact, which was signed on September 30, 1938. In an agreement among Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, the Sudetenland—an area on the borderland of western, southern, and northern Czechoslovakia with a disproportionally large ethnic German population—was annexed by Germany. Tyler, for his part, was not only not surprised at the outcome of the negotiations in Munich, since he had “expected a settlement,” but he was of the opinion that the Czechs had themselves to blame for the obstinacy that they had shown in terms of not giving any meaningful concession to large ethnic minorities in their country.32 Tyler realized that “these views aren’t very acceptable” in Geneva, but he confessed to being “more hopeful about prospects for international collaboration now than I have been at any time in the last 7 years.”33 Basically, he repeated his earlier thesis about the flawed peace treaties, and he must have seen some vindication in the Munich Pact.

The question on everybody’s mind was naturally what would come next. Well, one tangible result was the First Vienna Award on November 2, 1938, in which Hungary—by decision of Germany and Italy—regained some of its lost territories in the north.34 Two weeks later, Tyler summarized his vision of the future as the following: “When the great mountain ranges of world affairs have shifted as they have now, it may be expected that few of the features of the landscape as we have known it will remain unaltered.”35 Clearly, Pandora’s box had been opened.

With World War II soon under way, the question was not if there would be further revisions to the peace accords of Paris, but whether there would be a new world order under Nazi Germany or the Allies. It seemed quite clear indeed that there was no way to return to the immediate post-World War I scenario. In the beginning, Hungary remained a noncombatant if not really neutral country, and Tyler’s long reports, even if made in a private capacity, became increasingly important and valuable for the United States government. His latest report before the Christmas of 1939 came in the wake of his week-long stay in Hungary. Tyler focused on the financial and economic picture in Hungary, which was inseparable from the political one. The problem was familiar: Hungary was too closely linked to Germany, and since it had no access to a free exchange market, there was no real alternative to turn to. Also, German agents were busy buying up foreign assets held by Hungarians. These, on the other hand, made further German penetration possible, which Hungary was attempting to stave off as modestly as it could. Although a reality check did not leave much freedom and opportunity and this heavy-handed German influence was “unwelcome,” it was still “regarded as [a] lesser evil than invasion or [a] forced customs union.”36 Tyler’s week in Hungary convinced him that the general attitude in Budapest was hatred toward both Germany and the Soviet Union on account of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Russian attack on Finland.37 He had talked to officials in high circles, and he conveyed two important things: first, that Hungary would not become involved in any military adventure, and second, that “[t]hree Hungarians out of four expect and want German defeat and now seem to exaggerate German difficulties though before the war they overestimated Germany’s might.”38

Soon, another of Tyler’s confidential reports landed at the American State Department. The summary report on the Hungarian situation, completed in early March 1940, picked up where his December telegram had left off. It spelled out Hungary’s economic woes due to German domination in the surrounding countries and the lack of free exchange markets, which it could partially access only through Italy. However, there was a general concern in Hungary that if Italy entered the war, “Hungary would be cut off from the rest of the world.” Also, Germany had been attempting to link Hungarian prices to German ones by various means, although so far Hungary had resisted such attempts because it was clear that the German efforts were meant “to absorb Hungary into her economic system.” What is more, this was seen as a stage along the road to the almost complete domination of Hungary. Looking ahead, the purely Hungarian part of Transylvania, the Szekler lands, was the obvious collective desire of the Hungarians, and, according to Tyler, it was assumed that this territory would be regained. However, to achieve this with German help—similarly to the First Vienna Award in 1938—might represent the loss of total Hungarian independence, while Soviet involvement was anathema to the Hungarians. Hungary, Tyler noted, did not believe in a Danubian federation that might be dictated by peace makers later on. It wanted to follow an organic development of such an idea; that is, the new borders should be worked out by the countries affected.39

Prime Minister Pál Teleki had sent notes to Tyler on various occasions to urge the American official to visit Budapest, so he traveled to Hungary in May 1940. The reason was, naturally, not to reminisce over past times, but to face the realities brought on by the war. Teleki and people close to him in Hungary wanted to embrace every possibility that Hungary might face, and they were especially afraid of Germany. At the same time, almost all Hungarians believed in revision—partial or whole—and the First Vienna Award proved that without Hitler’s good intentions this would not materialize. Teleki realized that further revision with German help would mean becoming a German vassal, while in the case of a German defeat, there was no real likelihood to recover any lost territories without western help, particularly Transylvania. Also, there was the Soviet Union in the east, a country with an ideology and political system that Hungarians generally loathed.

The Hungarian Prime Minister had been attempting to steer his country’s fate between forces beyond his control, although for some time he had been successful. On the one hand, with the Second Vienna Award on August 30, 1940, Hungary recovered a significant part of Transylvania with many ethnic Hungarians, although a large number of Romanians came under its rule as well.40 This, however, came one more time with the help of Germany and Italy; Hungary had therefore tied its fate to the Axis, which it joined in the fall of 1940. Teleki clearly understood the dilemma, but he fervently believed in revisionism, and that was what also was expected of him by most of the Hungarian people. Still, Hungary had managed to remain neutral in the war, which was greatly appreciated in Great Britain and other western countries. The German offensive against Yugoslavia, for which they wished to cross Hungarian territory, thus presented an insoluble dilemma for Hungary. Yugoslavia and Hungary had signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression in December 1940, and letting the Germans through meant breaking this pledge. The Prime Minister, who had been suffering from depression and other illness, saw no way out and committed suicide on the night of April 2, 1941.

Tyler understood that Teleki had to choose between helping Germany or being invaded by it, and that left no room for a person like him. Tyler, who saw the loss of Teleki as “an exceedingly heavy blow,” thought that “the irredentist education since 1919 bore its fruit. If a Govt. had tried to resist, it would have been swept away, and replaced by a Quisling.”41 He believed that a brave stand against Germany would have helped Hungary in western eyes, but he of all people must have understood that this was easier said than done. Moreover, he had also lost an important, confidential contact in the highest office inside Hungary, which country now proved physically almost impossible to visit. When the US entered the war and Hungary declared war on the United States at the end of 1941, it became completely impossible for Tyler to travel to Hungary.42

With the Hungarian army taking over some territory in Yugoslavia, the limit of revision was reached. It was only partial, and not everybody was satisfied. However, all in all, Hungary managed to recover most of the territories where Hungarians, who had been in minority status in the successor state, now formed an ethnic majority. However, with the Germans starting to lose the war and Hungary unable to leave its dominant partner, it seemed to be highly probable that Hungary—again a defeated country—would not be able to hold onto the newly acquired territories. Tyler was also pondering Hungary’s recent history and current situation, and found that the interwar years produced a military leadership that took missteps along the way. He identified the reason for the disproportionate influence of these high-ranking soldiers in the unsolved troubles of the interwar years in Hungary. The immediate postwar upheavals created a layer of military officers in a society that tended to conspire and adventure, and the League-orchestrated financial reconstruction managed to add only a veneer of lasting success, which was wiped out by the oncoming Great Depression. All this, of course, was saturated with the “Nem, nem, soha!” slogan of interwar Hungary, that is, revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Under the premiership of Gyula Gömbös between 1932 and 1936, the situation worsened still, with the old generation still playing a prominent role. “Gömbös’s vanity, love of pomp, uniforms and medals served to divert attention from the method and pertinacity with which he pursued his deeper designs,” which was “a gradual, systematic packing of the higher posts in the army with men who set loyalty to Gömbös’s person above all else.”43 He filled the General Staff with German- or Austrian-born people, or Hungarians who looked up to the German army as the example to follow. Under Béla Imrédy, the last chance to attempt to follow the West was lost, but, as Tyler pointed out, Great Britain and France allowing Germany to get away with the Czechoslovak adventure encouraged Imrédy to bet more and more on Germany. Teleki attempted the delicate dance between the two worlds, but the solution was beyond his, or anyone’s, ability, and the General Staff basically betrayed him. In February 1944, at the time of writing this part of the report, Tyler thought it was part of Hungary’s tragedy that the overarching rhetoric was still the same song, namely, that Hungary was fighting the Soviet Union out of self-defense.

Tyler also focused on the postwar possibilities of the Danubian states. His thesis was that first the borders should be rectified—thereby implying that the peace treaties were in large part responsible for the present situation—while, on the other hand, the rivalry of the great powers must cease if people wanted to live in a peaceful world. Such rivalry would only lead to competing factions among the Danubian states, in effect sowing the seeds of future conflict. The crux of the problem was, as Tyler explained, the overarching French policy of containing Germany in the East, for which they needed Czechoslovakia, a country which contained too large blocs of other ethnic minorities. When the French withdrew from the area in the 1930s, Czechoslovakia sought possible protection against a more aggressive Germany by seeking out the help of the Soviet Union. This situation was rendered worse with the repercussions of the Treaty of Trianon, which led an isolated Hungary to wish to break out and regain some territories. For this it needed a great power and since neither Great Britain nor France was willing to consider such a step, it was perhaps inevitable that Hungary tied its fate to a resurgent Germany. In light of this, in the postwar settlement, Tyler argued that “any attempt to impose upon this region an order that is not recognized as substantially just by all the peoples inhabiting it would be as ill-fated as Trianon.” What he suggested was a moderate change in the borders with more conscientious acknowledgement of Hungarian minorities in the successor countries, but only after the two Vienna Awards had been disregarded. In the case of Transylvania, he favored autonomy as the only workable solution. In order to create stability, even Hungary’s war guilt should be treated mildly to avoid further trouble. He wanted the various nationalities in the region to choose freely as to the country they wanted to live in. He envisioned Czechia and Slovakia as two separate countries and also an independent Croatia. “But if any great power or powers attempt to force [these nations] into a pattern devised to serve the ends of the constellation that happens to prevail when this war ceases,” Tyler warned, “the prospects for Europe’s future will not be good.”44 Tyler’s vision can be called both naïve and far-sighted. He did not see the approaching Soviet Army posing any danger to a peaceful settlement in the Danubian region, but the situation that emerged after the Cold War proved his vision right.

Conclusion

In many ways, Royall Tyler embodied American foreign policy thinking in the interwar years: paying close attention to what was unfolding in Europe but remaining detached from European political problems, not taking responsibility for what was taking place on the continent believing that it was outside the realm of US interests. Since the United States did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles and signed separate treaties with the defeated countries, the new borderlines in Central and South-Eastern Europe were not of its making. Naturally, in a private capacity and as a League of Nations official, Tyler did participate in the financial reconstruction of Hungary, and experienced and watched closely how Hungary and Hungarian society reacted to the Treaty of Trianon and how fervently it believed in revision. He shared the attitude—together with many of his compatriots—that the peace treaties were not totally fair and sufficiently progressive to usher in and maintain peace in the long run. Since the United States remained uninterested in relation to the political questions of the region and Great Britain also grossly disregarded Central Eastern Europe in the 1930s, Hungary had no option but to turn to Italy and Germany with its revisionist claims. Tyler identified this Hungarian dilemma and helplessly observed how Hungary drifted onto an orbit closely around Germany in the hope of regaining the lost territories. Not only were these hopes merely half-satisfied, but the partial revision with the help of Germany foiled Hungary’s chance to retrieve any of its previous territories after the war. If the former Austro-Hungarian Empire could not be re-made—a recurring point in American thinking—Hungary’s joining the European Union sixty years after World War II at least to some degree rectified the many shortcomings of the outcome of a botched peace treaty signed in 1920.

 

Works Cited

Primary Sources
Secondary Sources


League of Nations Journal
Budapesti Hírlap
Magyarország
Pesti Hírlap
The Daily Mail

 

Notes

1 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes, August 19, 1903, Dinard, France, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,”
https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/1902-1908/19aug1903. Accessed October 4, 2015. ↩

2 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes, June 23, 1906, Paris, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,”
https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/1902-1908/23jun1906. Accessed October 6, 2015. ↩

3 Noah J. Delwiche, “Major Royall Tyler and Military Intelligence during the Great War” in “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence. An annotated transcription of the correspondence between Mildred Barnes Bliss, Robert Woods Bliss, Royall Tyler, and Elisina Tyler between 1902 and 1953.” by Robert S. Nelson and James N. Carder, https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/major-royall-tyler-and-military-intelligence-during-the-great-war-1. Accessed June 14, 2015. ↩

4 For the Treaty of Trianon in English see, for example, H. W. V. Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris (London: Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1921); Deák, Francis, Hungary at the Paris Peace Conference. The Diplomatic History of the Treaty of Trianon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942); Sándor Taraszovics, “American Peace Preparations during World War I and the Shaping of the New Hungary.” in Ignác Romsics, ed. 20th Century Hungary and the Great Powers (Boulder, Colorado: Social Science Monographs, Atlantic Research and Publications Inc., 1994), 73–97; Bryan Cartledge, Mihály Károlyi & István Bethlen: Hungary (London: Haus Publishing Ltd., 2009). ↩

5 See, for instance, Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 156, 167; C. A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors. The Treaty of Trianon and Its Consequences, 1919–1937 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 463; Derek H. Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, 1919–1929 (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books Ltd., 1977), 28; M. C. Kaser, and E. A. Radice, eds., The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 227. ↩

6 J. Butler Wright to Henry L. Stimson, May 10, 1929, 864.00 PR/18, M. 708, Roll 10, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter cited as NARA). Washington, D. C., USA. ↩

7 For the financial reconstruction of Hungary see, Mária Ormos, Az 1924. évi magyar államkölcsön megszerzése [Raising the Hungarian State Loan of 1924] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1964); György Péteri, Revolutionary Twenties. Essays on International Monetary and Financial Relations after World War I (Trondheim: University of Trondheim, 1995) and Global Monetary Regime and National Central Banking. The Case of Hungary, 1921–1929 (Boulder, Colorado: Social Science Monographs, 2002); Miklós Lojkó, Meddling in Middle Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006); Zoltán Peterecz, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. and Hungary, 1924–1926: the United States, the League of Nations, and the Financial Reconstruction of Hungary (London: Versita, 2013). ↩

8 Royall Tyler, One Name, Two Lives (Blue-Tongue Books, Charlie’s Forest, NSW Australia), 2017, 88. ↩

9 League of Nations Journal, 8th Year, no. 9 (September 1927), 1057–59. ↩

10 For more detail about the Italian-Hungarian treaty of friendship, see Petra Hamerli, Magyar-olasz diplomáciai kapcsolatok és regionális hatásaik (1927-1934) [Hungarian-Italian Diplomatic Relations and Their Regional Effects] (Budapest: Fakultás Kiadó, 2018), 25–64. ↩

11 Harold Sydney Harmsworth (Viscount Rothermere), “Hungary’s Place in the Sun,” The Daily Mail, June 21, 1927. Also see Ignác Romsics, “Hungary’s Place in the Sun: A British Newspaper Article and its Hungarian Repercussions,” in British-Hungarian Relations since 1848, László Péter and Martyn Rady, eds., (London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2004), 193–204; Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 154–157. ↩

12 Joshua Butler Wright to Frank B. Kellogg, June 30, 1927, 864.00/703, Austria-Hungary and Hungary, 1912–1929, Roll 8, Microcopy No. 708, NARA. ↩

13 Magyarország, August 6, 1927. ↩

14 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, March 13, 1928, Budapest, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/13mar1928, accessed December 12, 2015. ↩

15 Ibid. ↩

16 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, July 30, 1928 [2], Budapest, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/30jul1928-2, accessed December 13, 2015. ↩

17 Ibid. ↩

18 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, March 13, 1928. ↩

19 Budapesti Hírlap, November 25, 1928. ↩

20 Pesti Hírlap, January 18, 1929. ↩

21 Paikert 1929, 67. ↩

22 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, May 29, 1929, Budapest, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/29may1929, accessed December 16, 2015. ↩

23 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, August 15, 1932, Antigny-le-Château, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/15aug1932, accessed March 21, 2019. ↩

24 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, January 17, 1933, Paris, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/17jan1933, accessed March 22, 2019. ↩

25 John Flournoy Montgomery to Robert D. Coe, December 4, 1939, Folder 1, Box 3, John Flournoy Montgomery Papers, Yale Archives. ↩

26 Some of the best books on the subject are: Jürgen Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931–1938 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); Alfred D. Low, The Anschluss Movement (1918–1938) and the Great Powers (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs; distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1985); William L. Shirer, Rise and Fall of The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 287–317; Rolf Steininger, “12 November 1918–12 March 1938: The Road to the Anschluss,” in Rolf Steininger, Günter Bischof, and Michael Gehler, eds. Austria in the Twentieth Century (New Brunswick, NJ and London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 85–113. ↩

27 Royall Tyler to Robert Woods Bliss, April 5, 1938, New York, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/05apr1938, accessed April 20, 2019. ↩

28 Ibid. ↩

29 Ibid. ↩

30 Ibid. ↩

31 For the quotations, see Royall Tyler, “Prospects for Hungary,” May 10, 1938, R 4851/99/21, FO 371/22374, TNA. ↩

32 Royall Tyler to Robert Woods Bliss, September 30, 1938, Geneva, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/30sep1938, accessed April 22, 2019. ↩

33 Ibid. ↩

34 Hungary received about 4,600 square miles with about almost a million ethnic Hungarians. For a comprehensive study of the First Vienna Award, see Gergely Sallai, Az első bécsi döntés [The First Vienna Award] (Budapest: Osiris, 2002). ↩

35 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, November 18, 1938, Geneva, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/18nov1938, accessed April 23, 2019. ↩

36 Tyler’s Report to Morgenthau, December 21, 1939, Thompson Todd Collection. ↩

37 On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. Despite initial difficulties and incurring heavy losses, the Soviets prevailed after three months. As a backlash of their act, the Soviet Union was dispelled from the League of Nations. ↩

38 Tyler’s Report to Morgenthau, December 21, 1939. ↩

39 For the quotations, see, Royall Tyler, “Hungary’s Situation,” March 11, 1940, 864.00/983, M1206, Roll 2, Microfilm Publications, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Hungary, 1930–1944, NARA. ↩

40 On the antecedents, decision, and aftermath of the decision, see Béni L. Balogh, The Second Vienna Award and the Hungarian-Romanian Relations, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). ↩

41 Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, September 3, 1941, La Bourboule, “Bliss-Tyler Correspondence,” https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/03sep1941, accessed April 28, 2019; “Hungary,” n.d., Hungary 1 Sept. 1931, Thompson Todd Collection. ↩

42 On the Hungarian war declaration on the United States, see Peterecz, Zoltán. 2011. “‘A Certain Amount of Tactful Undermining.’ Herbert C. Pell and Hungary in 1941,” The Hungarian Quarterly 52, no. 202–203: 132–3. ↩

43 Royall Tyler, “Hungary’s Predicament and the Chances for an Enduring Peace,” March 17, 1944, Miscellaneous, Thompson Todd Collection. ↩

44 The quotations in the paragraph are from Ibid. ↩


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