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Admiral Horthy's conference with Hitler, April 16, 1943

 

Source, Andreas Hillgruber: Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler, vol. ii:

 

Page 239 (last line): [...] "With great pain he (the Führer) saw that the policies conducted by Hungary internally were bound gradually to result in a complete disintegration of the morale of Hungarian soldiers. The pro-Jewish attitude in Hungary was completely incomprehensible to him. How, after the experiences they had had, could they have such a policy? He didn't want somehow to interfere with Hungary's internal affairs but just state bare facts. Germany was standing today with her morale firm because she had removed the Jews, of which even those remaining would also soon have vanished to the East. Difficulties like those Germany had experienced through the Jewish influence in 1918 could now no longer arise. If one did not drive out the Jews now, then they would again just as then destroy the economy, the currency, and morale. The Duce and Antonescu had completely accepted this. If Germany was today the only country among her allies which was domestically completely intact, this was only because Jewish subversion had been rendered impossible. In the steps against the Jews one should not be too timid. Hungary had not had an antisemitic policy, but they had ended up with a Bela Kun. Nor had the Baltic states and Poland had antisemitic policies, but they had been overrun by the Jewish Bolsheviks. The conclusion from all this was that if one was going to have the unpleasant side of a fight, one had no need to be frightened of fighting the fight against the Jews energetically. And there could be no hesitating about it, and if anybody believed in compromising over this question, they were badly mistaken. Anyway, why should the Jews be handled with kid gloves? After all, it was they who had triggered off the Great War and they were responsible for the millions of victims it had cost. After that they had called forth the Revolution, and here too they had caused immense suffering. And for the present war, and the shape which it had taken, they were responsible particularly for the bombing of the civilian population and the countless victims among women and children. "All Europe must be razed to the ground," Ilya Ehrenburg, Roosevelt's [sic. Stalin's?] adviser, had written, and nor had he left Budapest out of that.

 

Page 245: [...] "To a comment of the Reich foreign minister, that two full-blooded Jews had again been elected to the Hungarian upper house, Horthy replied, that for constitutional reasons there was nothing that could be done against that, and that anyway in Hungary there was a large number of baptised Jews, among whom were many valuable human beings. He had done, he said, everything one decently could against the Jews, but one couldn't very well murder them or bump them off somehow.

"The Führer replied that there was no need for that either. Hungary could accommodate the Jews in concentration camps just like Slovakia. By the release of the positions occupied by the Jews, she would thereby open up for her own subjects many possibilities and in this manner create for the talented children of her people careers which had hitherto been barred for them by the Jews. If there was talk of murdering the Jews, then he (the Führer) must point out that only one person murdered, namely the Jew who started wars and who by his influence gave the wars their anti-civilian, anti-women and anti-children character. With regard for the Jews, there was always the possibility of having them work down the mines. But at all costs they must be cut off from any kind of influence on their host country." [...]

"The Reich foreign minister pointed out in this connection that every Hungarian Jew was so to speak an agent of the British secret service who possessed Hungarian nationality, and was furnished with considerable monetary resources. From that one could recognise how dangerous it was to allow the Jews to run around scot-free."

 

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