Hungary and Slovakia declare war on the USSR

On 26 June 1941, shortly after one in the afternoon, three unidentified twin-engined bombers flew in low over Kassa (Košice), a city that had belonged to Hungary since 1938, and dropped bombs on the city centre. They hit the post office building, the artillery barracks and nearby houses. That same day the Regent, Miklós Horthy, declared the raid an act of Soviet aggression, and the government of Prime Minister László Bárdossy decided that a state of war existed between Hungary and the Soviet Union. The next day Bárdossy announced this in parliament. Thus another of the Reich’s allies joined the war that Germany had begun on 22 June with its attack on the USSR. To this day it is not known whose aircraft bombed Kassa.

It is often said that Hungary and Slovakia declared war on the Soviet Union on 26 June. This needs correcting. Slovakia joined the German invasion as early as 23 June, although its parliament never passed the formal declaration of war that its constitution required. Hungary was bombed on 26 June and the government took the decision on a state of war that same day, but announced it publicly on 27 June. Under 28 June, in turn, one often finds the statement that Albania declared war on the USSR. That declaration was a formality, since Albania, as part of the Italian empire, had been at war since 22 June, together with Italy.

Allies nobody asked for

In his plans for the war against the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler had provided for the participation of only two states: Romania and Finland, which had territorial scores to settle with Moscow and lay on the flanks of the future front. Ion Antonescu’s Romania entered the war on 22 June. That day Antonescu issued his famous order to the army: “Soldiers, I order you: cross the Prut!” The aim was to recover Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which Romania had been forced to cede to the USSR a year earlier after a Soviet ultimatum. Finland went into action a few days later, when after the Soviet air raids of 25 June its government concluded that the country was at war with the USSR. That same day Sweden agreed to let a German division pass from Norway to Finland.

Italy, too, declared war on the Soviet Union on 22 June. Benito Mussolini learned of the German attack only from a letter from Hitler delivered on the night of 21–22 June, but he immediately offered the Germans his troops. The Führer accepted the offer without enthusiasm, but the Duce insisted: he believed that Italy could not be absent from the “crusade against Bolshevism” if it wanted a say in the shaping of post-war Europe. The foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, informed the Soviet ambassador in Rome of the declaration of war. On 10 July the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (CSIR) was formed: three divisions – the “Pasubio”, the “Torino” and the fast division “Principe Amedeo Duca d’Aosta” – numbering some 62,000 men in all. Its first commander, General Francesco Zingales, fell ill on the way and was replaced on 14 July by General Giovanni Messe. The corps travelled to the front by rail through Hungary from 10 July to the beginning of August and went into action in southern Ukraine in August.

Hitler had not let his other allies into his plans in advance, nor had he sought their help. He was distrustful of Hungary: he considered its army poorly armed and the Hungarians themselves an awkward partner who demanded new acquisitions at the expense of their neighbours – Romania or Slovakia – for every share in a war. It was precisely for this reason that a race began in Budapest and Bratislava over who would stand at the Reich’s side faster and more eagerly.

Slovakia: Tuka’s haste

Slovakia, a satellite of the Reich since the proclamation of the state in March 1939 and a participant in the war against Poland in September 1939, had joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940. Its leaders learned at the last moment that it was to take part in the new war. According to the Slovak military historians Igor Baka and Matej Medvecký, as late as 19 June the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Franz Halder, passing through Bratislava by air, told the head of the German military mission that Hitler wished the Slovaks to take part in “some action”. On 21 June the German envoy, Hans Ludin, on his own initiative, passed this wish on unofficially to President Jozef Tiso and Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka. Both welcomed it.

On the morning of 22 June Ludin informed Tuka of the outbreak of war and that the Reich was counting on Slovakia’s support. The prime minister did not wait for details: he asked for word to be sent to Ribbentrop that Slovakia was breaking off diplomatic relations with the USSR, and made a formal offer to take part in the war with an appropriate military contingent. Tiso, who as a priest was spending the Sunday in Bánovce nad Bebravou, agreed by telephone to the call-up of reservists, but did not proclaim a formal mobilisation, because that required a prior declaration of war, on which parliament had to decide. After the war he explained in court that he had wanted to keep Slovak participation to a minimum. Historians note that this course of events allowed him to shift responsibility onto Tuka and the defence minister, General Ferdinand Čatloš. That same day the interior minister, Alexander Mach, had some 1,100 suspected communists arrested, and a crowd in Bratislava smashed the windows of the Soviet legation.

On 23 June the Slovak envoy in Berlin informed the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt, Ernst von Weizsäcker, that within a few hours Slovakia would be at war with the Soviet Union. Most chronologies of the war take this as the date of Slovakia’s entry into the war. To get round the constitution, the authorities merely proclaimed a state of military readiness, and on 24 June issued an appeal to the nation signed by Tiso, Tuka and Čatloš: in “full solidarity with the Greater German Reich” the Slovak nation would take its place in the defence of “European culture”, and army units had already crossed the border to join the fighting German army. Tiso assured Hitler of this by telegram. Tuka’s main concern was to get ahead of the Hungarians and earn Berlin’s gratitude, and in Bratislava it was hoped that loyalty would one day be rewarded with the return of the lands lost to Hungary after the First Vienna Award.

A field army numbering, by various counts, from about 45,000 to more than 50,000 men set off for the front under Čatloš’s personal command. The most mobile units were gathered into the so-called Rapid Group of Colonel Rudolf Pilfousek (PL), subordinated to the German 17th Army. Assembled in the area of Medzilaborce, it crossed the border, according to Slovak sources, on 25 June, a day after the first Slovak units, and first clashed with the Red Army at Wojtkowa in the Bieszczady Mountains, on the territory of the Second Polish Republic occupied by the USSR since 1939. The Slovak army, however, was poorly equipped and, without motor transport, could not keep up with the Germans. In July Čatloš sent some of the reservists home, and after the bloody battle of Lipovec on 22 July only two divisions were left in the East: a fast division fighting at the front and a security division serving in the rear.

Hungary: the generals want war

Hungary was in a more difficult position. It too belonged to the Tripartite Pact, and in April, after the suicide of Prime Minister Pál Teleki, it had taken part in the partition of Yugoslavia. The new prime minister, who was also foreign minister, Bárdossy, pursued a policy of close cooperation with the Reich, but neither he nor Horthy was eager for war with the USSR, with which Hungary had shared a border in Carpathian Ruthenia since 1939. The military thought differently. The Chief of the General Staff, General Henrik Werth, a German by origin, had already in May ordered plans for an “offensive defence” in the East to be prepared and argued that if Hungary stood at Germany’s side, Hitler would let it recover all the lands lost at Trianon. He was backed by the defence minister, General Károly Bartha. Both were counting on a short, victorious war, and they also feared that Romania, fighting from the first day, would be rewarded with the return of northern Transylvania, which Hungary had received in 1940 under the Second Vienna Award.

Moscow, meanwhile, was courting Hungarian neutrality. On 23 June the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, assured the Hungarian envoy József Kristóffy that the USSR had no hostile intentions towards Hungary and would not oppose Hungarian claims against Romania. That same day the Council of Ministers met in Budapest. Bartha called for a declaration of war, assuring his colleagues that the Germans would be in Moscow within six weeks. Bárdossy rejected the motion but decided to break off diplomatic relations with the USSR. According to Hungarian historians, he did not present Kristóffy’s telegram about Molotov’s offer to the ministers.

Bombs on Kassa

At about noon on 26 June an aircraft bearing Soviet markings strafed an express train near Rakhiv in Carpathian Ruthenia. At about 1 p.m. three bombers appeared over Kassa. Observers did not recognise their type; they noticed only yellow markings on the wings and fuselages, similar to Hungarian ones. The aircraft flew low over the city, dropped about 30 bombs of about 100 kilograms each and disappeared into the clouds before Hungarian biplane fighters could catch them. Two bombs failed to explode; according to Hungarian findings they were of a Soviet type. Sources differ on the number of casualties: Hungarian studies give 32 dead, including several postal workers and soldiers, together with several dozen seriously and more than two hundred lightly wounded, while other authors write of a dozen or so dead and wounded.

The news reached Budapest before two in the afternoon. In the General Staff’s war diary a later note was added, in a different hand, that according to a report received later these had been Russian aircraft painted yellow. Werth and Bartha went at once to Horthy at the castle and, using the language of wounded honour, demanded a declaration of war. The Regent, a hot-tempered man and a fervent anti-Bolshevik, believed that Kassa had been attacked by Soviet aircraft and ordered retaliatory air raids. Bárdossy did not object. In the evening the Council of Ministers, with one dissenting vote – that of the interior minister, Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer, who believed that war could at most be declared at Germany’s demand – resolved that a state of war existed between Hungary and the USSR. The former prime minister István Bethlen warned the Regent in a letter that the bombing had probably been a mistake and that war would bring Hungary heavy losses, but Horthy read it only after the event.

At dawn on 27 June Hungarian bombers attacked Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivsk), then Soviet, a pre-war provincial capital of the Second Polish Republic. Before noon Bárdossy announced in the lower house of parliament that Hungary was at war with the Soviet Union. He did not put the decision to a vote, although according to many historians it required parliament’s prior consent. Most deputies greeted his speech with an ovation. Only a few Social Democrats and deputies of the Smallholders’ Party protested. That same day the first Hungarian units crossed the border, and on 1 July the Carpathian Group of General Ferenc Szombathelyi, numbering by various accounts 40,000 to 60,000 men, went over to the offensive. Its strongest element was the Rapid Corps of General Béla Miklós, which fought at Uman in August.

An unsolved mystery

Who bombed Kassa has still not been established. The official Hungarian version of 1941 spoke of Soviet aggression, and the war was presented as defence against it. The circumstances, however, contradict this version: three days earlier Molotov had been courting Hungarian neutrality, and the TASS agency’s communiqué on Hungary’s declaration of war was surprisingly mild. Soviet historiography maintained that it had been a German provocation using captured aircraft. Horthy, in his post-war memoirs, also wrote of a raid “staged” by German airmen and blamed Werth for taking part in the plot. The commandant of Kassa airfield, Captain Ádám Krúdy, is said to have identified the attackers as German Heinkel He 111s, but his report has not been found. Against this theory stands the lack of a motive: on the fifth day of their offensive the Germans did not need Hungarian help and could have obtained it by ordinary political pressure.

Some historians, including the American Thomas Sakmyster and the Hungarian Lóránd Dombrády, believe that the raid may have been the work of Hungarian officers linked to Werth themselves – Sakmyster pointed to the envoy in Berlin, Döme Sztójay, and the Hungarian military attaché there, Sándor Homlok. They point out that as early as 1938 the Hungarian General Staff had prepared a similar plan to provoke a war with Czechoslovakia, and that in April 1941 Bartha had proposed in Berlin a staged Yugoslav air raid on a Hungarian town. The British historian Carlile Aylmer Macartney attributed the attack to Czechoslovak airmen serving in the USSR; other authors to Slovaks or Romanians who wanted Hungary drawn into the war. Many modern scholars, such as Ignác Romsics, lean towards the simplest explanation: Soviet bombers mistook Kassa for nearby Slovak Prešov, since Slovakia was already at war with the USSR. Mistaken bombings of neutral towns happened many times in this war. The difference, as Romsics wrote, was that the government in Budapest was looking for a pretext, and Werth, Bartha, Horthy and Bárdossy regarded the raid as a direct threat because they wanted to regard it as one.

Albania, and those who stayed at home

War chronologies record Albania’s declaration of war on the USSR under 28 June. Since the Italian invasion of April 1939 the country had been joined to Italy in a personal union: the King of Albania was Victor Emmanuel III, his lieutenant governed in Tirana, and Rome had taken over foreign policy. The Albanian declaration, announced by the puppet government of Shefqet Verlaçi, was thus a formal gesture: as part of the Italian empire Albania had been at war since 22 June, together with Italy, and it sent no troops of its own to the East.

Not all of the Reich’s allies went down this road. Tsar Boris III’s Bulgaria, which had joined the Tripartite Pact in March and let German troops onto its territory, did not declare war on the USSR and maintained diplomatic relations with Moscow until September 1944. Sofia explained that Bulgarian society, grateful to Russia for liberation from Turkish rule in 1878, would not understand a war against it, and that the army was needed to watch Turkey and the occupied territories in Macedonia and Thrace. Volunteers, on the other hand, were sent by states and occupied countries that had not formally declared war on the USSR: in Spain the Blue Division began to be formed as early as the end of June, and in the following weeks volunteer legions were raised in Croatia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and France. German propaganda presented this assortment as a “European crusade against Bolshevism”.

Its place in the war

At the end of June 1941 Germany was waging war against the Soviet Union at the head of a coalition in which Romania and Finland were fighting to recover lost lands, Italy for prestige, and Hungary and Slovakia largely against each other, counting on Berlin’s gratitude in future border disputes. Hitler accepted this help with mixed feelings, but as the war dragged on he needed it more and more. In 1942 whole allied armies set off for the front: the Hungarian Second Army, the Italian Eighth Army and two Romanian armies, which covered the flanks of the German advance on Stalingrad. In the winter of 1942/1943 they were shattered, and on the Don the Hungarians suffered one of the greatest defeats in their military history.

Entry into the war also brought crimes in its wake. As early as August 1941 the Hungarian authorities expelled more than ten thousand Jews deemed foreigners to German-occupied territory in Ukraine, and most of them perished in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. Slovakia, which in 1942 paid the Germans to deport its own Jews, and Romania, whose troops and gendarmerie murdered tens of thousands of Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina, took part in the Holocaust on their own account. In December 1941 Britain declared war on Hungary, Romania and Finland.

The decisions of June 1941 sealed the fate of all who took them. After the war Bárdossy stood trial before the People’s Court in Budapest and was executed in January 1946; one of the charges was precisely that he had unlawfully drawn Hungary into the war against the USSR. Tuka and Tiso were sentenced to death by a court in restored Czechoslovakia. Horthy, who in the summer of 1941 had believed in a swift victory over Bolshevism, tried in 1944 to take Hungary out of the war, but it was too late: the country was occupied first by the Germans and then by the Red Army, which reached Budapest and Bratislava in 1945. The bombs that fell on Kassa on 26 June 1941 proved for Hungary to be the start of the road to catastrophe.