Margarethe company

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Company Margarethe was the German code name for the military operation to occupy Hungary during World War II , which was carried out on March 19, 1944. A planned “Operation Margarethe II” for the occupation of Romania did not take place.

Occupation of Hungary

In 1943 the Allies had finally gained the strategic upper hand in the war against the Axis powers . The prospects of a successful outcome to the war for the allies of the German Reich, the Kingdom of Italy , Hungary, Romania and Finland , who increasingly abandoned their connection with Hitler, were all the more diminished. This development reached its first climax with the departure of the most important ally Italy through the armistice of Cassibile in September 1943.

The Hungarian government of Kállay had been conducting secret explorations about an armistice with the western allies for some time, something that was not hidden from the German intelligence services. It was suspected on the German side that both Hungary and Romania would soon follow Italy's example, possibly in connection with an Allied landing on the Balkan Peninsula.

Edmund Veesenmayer , who visited Hungary several times in 1943 on the secret mandate of Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to investigate the political situation there, in his reports repeatedly referred to Hungarian Judaism as the main problem responsible for “defeatism” in Hungarian society, and concluded :

“The Reich [...] is fighting its struggle for existence today and I cannot imagine that, as the war becomes increasingly severe, it can in the long run afford the luxury of leaving such a center of sabotage untouched. A grateful and compelling task opens up here for the politics of the Reich, in that they tackle this problem [ie the Jews] and bring it to an end. "

- Veesenmayer's report on Hungary of December 10, 1943

In addition, the previous government would have to be replaced by a compliant one, leaving Imperial Administrator Miklós Horthy as head of state. The new Hungarian leadership was supposed to decline to mere orders from their German allies. Veesenmayer suggested Béla Imrédy as a suitable head of government .

The Wehrmacht command staff in the High Command of the Wehrmacht had already completed a draft for the planned enterprise in September 1943 and was keeping troop units on standby. Due to the development of the situation on the Eastern Front , among other things , it became clear towards the end of the year that a simultaneous occupation of Romania ( Margaret II ) would not be feasible in the near future due to a lack of available troops. After the resolutions of the Tehran Conference (November 28 to December 1, 1943) became known, an invasion of the Balkans was no longer expected on the German side, which temporarily eased the situation.

In February 1944, Hitler ordered the undertaking to be carried out in the first half of March. The line should lie with the Commander in Chief Southeast ( Maximilian von Weichs ). Depending on the situation, Romanian and Slovak troops should take part in the occupation, which was later refrained from. The Red Army's spring offensive , which began at the beginning of March, also overturned the OKW's original plans. These had intended to simulate a "troop transfer" over Hungarian territory in order to then occupy the most important centers of the country. As a result, Hitler decided to invite Horthy to a meeting on March 18 at Klessheim Palace near Salzburg . The aim was to intimidate him into agreeing to the stationing of German troops in Hungary and a change of government. Horthy refused to sign the protocol presented to him, but was convinced in a one-on-one conversation with Hitler that resistance was pointless.

In the early morning hours of March 19, during the return of the Hungarian delegation, the German troops began their invasion. The associations involved were the XXII. Mountain Army Corps ( Hubert Lanz ) from Serbia and Slavonia, the LXIX. Army Corps ( Ernst Dehner ) from Croatia, the LVIII. Reserve Panzer Corps ( Walter Krüger ) from the Vienna area and the LXXVIII. Army Corps z. b. V. from the Krakow area. Von Weichs' chief of staff Hermann Foertsch coordinated the action from Vienna. The action was a complete surprise; it went quickly and without fighting. Some German memoirs report that they were greeted with flowers. The disarmament of the Hungarian army had been ordered in the operational orders. Some German units did this because they could not be informed about the new situation in good time. The chief of the Hungarian armed forces, Ferenc Szombathelyi , who had also been in Klessheim, had instructed the train to greet the Germans as allies. Horthy's special train was deliberately delayed several times on the return journey, so that it was greeted by a German formation of honor when it arrived in Budapest.

Veesenmayer was introduced to Horthy on the return trip by Dietrich von Jagow as the new representative in Hungary. General Hans von Greiffenberg , who had previously been a military attaché at the Budapest embassy, ​​was appointed commander of the German troops in Hungary . The occupation also went hand in hand with the appointment of Otto Winkelmann as Higher SS and Police Leader for Hungary. The Eichmann Special Task Force was set up for the planned deportation of the Hungarian Jews . Between April and July 1944, this deported almost 440,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps and extermination camps. The majority of them were murdered in Auschwitz. After protests by neutral governments and the Pope, the deportations were stopped.

On March 22nd, after lengthy negotiations, Horthy appointed the previous envoy in Germany, Döme Sztójay, as the new head of government - contrary to the original German wishes . In the meantime, around 3,000 people who were considered hostile had already been arrested by the German security authorities. This action was personally coordinated by RSHA boss Kaltenbrunner .

Horthy's final break with Hitler came in the fall of 1944, when Horthy personally campaigned for an armistice with the Soviet Union. Hitler had Horthy interned and set up an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi .

Margarethe II - the planned occupation of Romania

Enterprise Margarethe II was the planned occupation of Romania in the event that the Romanian government should capitulate to the Soviet Union. This actually happened in August 1944; but the operation was not performed:

From August 20, 1944, the Red Army achieved great success in an offensive against the Army Group of Southern Ukraine . In view of this, Marshal Antonescu was arrested on August 23 and a radio statement was read out towards evening in which Romania announced the end of its fight against the Soviet Union (see also: Royal coup in Romania 1944 ). Two days later, under pressure from Stalin , Romania declared war on Germany.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Earl F. Ziemke: Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East , Army Historical Series, US Army Center of Military History, 1987. pp. 207 ff.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Igor-Philip Matić: Edmund Veesenmayer: Agent and diplomat of the National Socialist expansion policy. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2002. ISBN 3486566776 . P. 208 f.