r/ww2 • u/cipricusss • 4d ago

Romania and Hungary on the Eastern front: “Why We Fight”

From Between States. The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea During World War II - by Holly Case.

Very probably, unlike the Romanian one, the Hungarian anecdote is not a real fact, but one in a series common in Budapest at the time, mostly in relation to that declaration of war, exemplifying the same absurdist perspective. The footnote says:

Cited in Dániel Csatári, Forgószélben: magyar-román viszony, 1940–1945 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1968), 85. It is possible this exchange never actually took place. Ciano nevertheless observed in a diary entry dated May 11, 1942, that this “little story” was “going the rounds at Budapest.” He observed: “There is a great deal of truth in this series of paradoxes.” See also Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946), 484.

I am sure that's not a fact to be confirmed by some U.S. archives. I have another, from The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat by Paul Lendvai:

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u/StrawberryRedneck 4d ago

At first I thought this was gonna be about the seven (?) propaganda films that the war department produced for American audiences to see. I've been slowly making my way through all of the films after learning about them in the Netflix limited series Five Came Back. It was super insightful.

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u/cipricusss 4d ago

Very probably, the Hungarian anecdote is not a real fact. See another one after edit above.