Richard Schüller, Hungary, a Danubian Problem (February 1944)

Richard Schüller’s journal article treats Hungary as a test case for a postwar settlement capable of securing cooperation throughout the Danubian basin. Its two sections, “Political and Economic Background” and “Peace Problems,” connect interwar revisionism and economic dependence to proposals for redrawing frontiers after the anticipated Axis defeat. Schüller distinguishes the incorporation of predominantly Magyar districts into Hungary from the ruling elite’s ambition to recover all the lands of historical Hungary. His central contention is that restoring the pre-1938 boundaries would be diplomatically convenient but politically shortsighted: durable peace requires addressing Magyar grievances while ending Hungary’s claims to rule other nationalities.

The historical section begins with Trianon’s removal of more than half Hungary’s territory and population, including substantial Magyar communities. Schüller acknowledges the discrepancy between Hungarian and successor-state census figures, but regards the existence of these separated communities as an enduring political problem. Hungarian governments nevertheless pursued claims extending beyond Magyar-majority territories. The Little Entente defended the existing borders, while Hungary sought Italian and German support. Efforts at regional accommodation foundered on the conflict between recognition of those borders and demands for revision.

Axis intervention brought territorial gains at the expense of independence. Schüller presents Hungary’s alignment as combining revisionist hopes with fear of German occupation, without making either motive an exoneration:

But in return Hungary had to fight on the side of the Axis, to send auxiliary armies to Russia and Jugoslavia, and to submit herself to Nazi "protection."

The economic history explains why diplomatic dependence became so difficult to escape. Hungary had supplied agricultural produce to the protected Habsburg market, particularly Austria. After imperial dissolution, established trade initially survived, and League of Nations financial reconstruction supported stabilization and recovery. Yet this prosperity depended on markets in states with which Hungary maintained antagonistic political relations. Revisionism obstructed closer economic arrangements precisely where commercial interdependence remained strongest.

The Depression exposed that vulnerability. Agricultural prices and exports collapsed, while Italian-Austrian agreements and German clearing arrangements offered remunerative outlets. Recovery therefore redirected trade toward the powers sponsoring territorial revision. By 1939 Germany absorbed about half Hungary’s exports. Schüller’s distinction between improved trade figures and genuine economic security is crucial: Hungary surrendered freedom of action and financed its protector’s purchases through clearing credits. Limited land redistribution and industrial labor reforms also left rural poverty largely intact.

The second section challenges the assumption that defeating Hungary would settle the Hungarian question. Restoring the old borders would leave Magyar-majority districts outside the country, revive demands for revision, and preserve an opening for renewed German or Italian influence.

But this solution would not mean the establishment of order and a basis for cooperation in the Danubian basin, where two world wars started.

Schüller consequently examines frontier changes separately along Hungary’s eastern, southern, and northern borders. His method combines ethnic distribution with economic connections, railway access, and strategic objections. Along the Romanian frontier, he proposes transferring predominantly Magyar western districts to Hungary, while retaining predominantly Romanian districts in Romania. He recognizes that a new boundary could separate Romanian workers from employment and suggests labor agreements and an investigated exchange of populations. For the geographically detached Szekler population in eastern Transylvania, he considers a connecting strip to Hungary. This proposal exposes a difficulty within his ethnic principle: linking separated Magyar settlements could itself require passage through Romanian-majority territory.

In the south, Schüller excludes Croatia-Slovenia from restitution because its Magyar population is small, but considers transferring the northern Magyar concentration in the Backá and Bánát. In Slovakia, he favors an ethnic boundary leaving few minorities on either side, with Bratislava retained by Czechoslovakia. He recognizes that Slovak peasants benefited under Czechoslovak rule, while some industries suffered from Czech competition and disrupted Hungarian trade. Ruthenia, predominantly non-Magyar, falls outside Hungary’s legitimate ethnic claims. These distinctions make his proposal a selective revision of Trianon, not an endorsement of the Axis settlements.

Territorial adjustment alone, however, cannot produce reconciliation:

But whether that possibility then became a reality would depend on Hungary's attitude. The opportunity would certainly vanish if Hungary continued to claim her former Slav and Rumanian territories.

Schüller assigns expansive revisionism chiefly to the aristocracy and its gentry followers, linking their claims to traditions of rule and estates in the lost territories. He expects military defeat to weaken this oligarchy, enable land reform, and give peasants and workers greater political influence. His settlement thus depends on an explicitly prospective judgment: popular Hungary will prove more capable of cooperation than its governing elite.

The concluding argument joins domestic democratization, the temporary exclusion of German and Italian interference, and renewed regional trade. Austria and Czechoslovakia could again purchase Hungary’s agricultural surplus if they abandoned costly agricultural overexpansion. Political accommodation and economic reconstruction must reinforce each other; neither border restoration nor commercial recovery can work alone. Schüller’s article is significant as a wartime attempt to distinguish punishment from sustainable order, while acknowledging the complications within its own prescriptions:

In Central Europe, even more than elsewhere, a simple or doctrinaire solution means not a termination but a postponement.