Österreich
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These austrian claims would mean war with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Austrian politicians were not that dumb to do that. The social democrats followed the entente orders as well, Austria was demilitarised, so Wien had no any significant military force to do anything. On the other side Hungary had 1 million troops, later it became smaller because slovak, romanian, serbian soldiers deserted, but the Hungarian Royal Army still was the second strongest military force in the region after Romania.Originally Posted by rothaer
The austrian claims in West Hungary caused big surprise in Budapest. The hungarian society saw it as a huge betrayal. At this time the hungarian government was fully aware the entente plans and new Trianon borders so everyone wanted to continue the war and the moral of hungarian troops was very high to defend Hungary. But the situation with Austria was difficult. Basically the austrian and hungarian government did not want hostility with each other, both country was surrounded by enemies. Wien had no army and Hungary had enough problem with romanians and czechoslovaks. So the local hungarian citizens created a small irregular army and they defeated the small numbered austrian police forces.
For hungarian conservatives, the entente plans and the dethronement of Habsburgs was of course unacceptable. There were plans to invade Austria to restore the Habsburgs and to remove the social democrats. They made contact with the bavarian right winger troops too who also disliked the leftist wiener government. The problem was the royalist hungarian conservatives were not so popular among hungarians, their leader István Tisza was the most hated person in Hungary, even nationalists hated him as hell, so the political influence of hungarian royalists was very limited.
The leftist social democrat leader Mihály Károlyi realized that his party is not able to defend Hungary from the invaders, and he gived the power to the communists who were the only real choice at this time. The hungarian nationalists did not have any allies unlike communists who had very good relations in Moscow. The new communist leader Béla Kun sent a letter to Lenin asking for help, the russian answer was very positive: Hold on, we are comming. The plan of communists was pretty similar to nationalist plans, defending the historical borders, except they did not want hungarian oriented state but they were internationalists. Good example when the hungarian Red Army defeated the czechoslovaks and after that they created the Slovak Soviet Republic it caused huge disappointing among hungarian troops, because they have fought for revisionist reasons and not for a communist Slovakia. Béla Kun also wanted to invade Austria along with russians, but the russians were stopped by poles and white forces so they never reached the Carpathian Basin.
When Horthy took the power, he wanted good relationship with Austria because Hungary did not had any allies in the region. Austrians invaded only a very small part of Hungary and Burgenland was populated by majority germans, on the other side austrians did not opress the hungarian minority, so this "Burgenland question" disappeared in the hungarian society, they focused to Transylvania mostly.
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