Henrik Werth (26 December 1881 – 28 May 1952) was a Hungarian military officer, who served as Chief of Army Staff during World War II.
Officer Henrik Werth was born in Rezsőháza, Hungary (Knićanin, today in Serbia), on 26 December 1881. He became a military cadet in the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1897 in Vienna, and rapidly advanced in rank during World War I. By 1918, he was a lieutenant colonel. He later served the Hungarian Soviet Republic after the collapse of Austria-Hungary as the commander of the Hungarian Red Army's I Army Corps before being given command of the 7th Infantry Division. The Vyx-note of March 1919 which had called for Hungarian forces to pull back had created much revulsion in Hungary as it was believed that the new military lines called by the Vyx note would be the new frontiers of Hungary. Béla Kun had came to power by promising the aid of Soviet Russia in resisting the Allies against the Vyx note. Werth served the Hungarian Red Army of the Hungarian Soviet Republic not out of an attraction to Communism, but to fight against the projected loss of Hungarian territory to Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In June 1919, Werth defected over to the National Army based in Szeged led by Admiral Miklós Horthy that had been established to fight against the Soviet Republic.
Werth continued serving after the fall of the communist regime, being promoted to colonel in 1920, and to major general in 1926. He taught at the general staff academy and briefly served as the chief of operations on the general staff during that time. Werth was given mandatory retirement at age of 55, which he reached in 1936. However, he was recalled up into service in 1938 and became the chief of general staff. Chief of the General Staff The decision to appoint him Chief of the General Staff was taken by the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy and the prime minister at the time, Béla Imrédy, was not consulted. As a condition for accepting the appointment, Werth asked for the post of Commander-in-chief of the Army to be abolished, making him the sole head of the Honved (Royal Hungarian Army), a request that was granted by the Regent with Horthy retaining the post of Supreme Commander-in-chief of all the Hungarian armed forces for himself. Werth was a "Swabian" as the volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living in the Banat region were known as their families were believed to have originated in the Swabia region of Germany and through he was fluent in Magyar, his first language was German. He was married to a German woman, and Werth had such extreme Germanophile views to the point that in the 1941 census he listed his nationality as "German" instead of Hungarian. Other Honved officers accused Werth of having divided loyalties with many feeling he was more loyal to his ancestral homeland of Germany rather than to Hungary. The majority of the Honved generals were Swabians. Of the 27 two-star and three-star Honved generals in 1941, 21 were volksdeutsche. The dominance of the Swabians in the officer corps was due to the tendency of the Swabians to apply to be officers out of all proportion to their numbers in the general population. Furthermore, the language of command in the Imperial Austrian and Royal Hungarian Army had been German, a requirement that favored the Swabians over the speakers of Magyar who had to learn German.
During his time as chief of the General Staff, Werth had pressed very strongly for an alliance with the Reich. Along with the Defense Minister, Károly Bartha, Werth was the leading advocate in Budapest of an alliance with Germany, whose government he greatly admired. Werth had close ties with the German military and Horthy retained him as chief of the general staff largely because of close friendships with a number of leading Wehrmacht generals, which was felt to be useful for making Hungary's case in Berlin. He was greatly disappointed when the pro-Nazi radical prime minister Béla Imrédy was forced to resign because he inconveniently turned out to be the descendent of Jews who had converted to Christianity and expressed much opposition to Imrédy's conservative successor Pál Teleki. In March 1939, he oversaw the invasion and annexation of the recently proclaimed Carpatho-Ukraine, which just broken away from Czecho-Slovakia. Werth wanted a week to prepare to invade the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, but received a message from Berlin that Hitler wanted the Hungarians to invade Carpatho-Ukraine before there was any chance of diplomatic recognition, forcing him to launch a hastily prepared invasion. Despite the hastly invasion, the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine did not much of an army, and the Honved rapidly overrun the new republic. In Ruthenia as the Hungarians renamed Carpatho-Ukraine, martial law was in effect and Werth carried out "a through cleaning" as he called it, imprisoning Ukrainian nationalists in concentration camps.
In May 1939, prime minister, Pál Teleki had created labour service battalions in the Honved to which Hungarian Jews and other "unreliable" elements in Hungarian life such as the Roma, members of "non-national" churches such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, leftists and homosexuals were to serve instead of serving in the regular battalions of the Honved. The labour service battalions engaged in construction work for the Honved and were not issued arms. In April 1940, Werth changed the rules for the labour service battalions to make life harsher for those drafted into the labour service such as increasing the work hours while decreasing their rations. The men serving in the Labour Service Battalions were slaves in everything but name, and were treated with much brutality by their officers with many serving in the Labour Service battalions being allowed to stave to death or dying of exhaustion.
During the Danzig crisis in the spring and summer of 1939, Horthy did not expect that Britain and France would declare war if Germany invaded Poland, which he believed would create an opening for Hungary to invade Romania with the aim of taking back Transylvania. Romania had signed a treaty of alliance with France in 1926 and on 13 April 1939 had its territory "guaranteed" by Britain and France, meaning that any Hungarian attack on Romania would result in Anglo-French declarations of war on Hungary. Horthy believed that if Britain and France did nothing if Germany invaded Poland, that would so discredit both nations that Hungary could invade Romania without fear of Anglo-French action and led him to direct Werth to begin preparations for a war against Romania to be launched in the near-future. As Adolf Hitler had only allowed Hungary to annex certain parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938-1939 in exchange for a series of economic agreements that turned Hungary into a German economic satellite, Horthy did not want German help in the planned war against Romania and directed Werth to hold talks with Italy on the subject. In early July 1939, Werth visited Berlin where his requests for German military aid in modernising the Honved was rejected. Frustratingly for him, the Reich was selling weapons to Hungary's enemies, Romania and Yugoslavia, in exchange for economic treaties that turned both nations into German economic satellites. Werth was told quite bluntly that Germany needed Romanian oil and wheat along with Yugoslav copper and bauxite and that took precedence over Hungary's desire to undo the Treaty of Trianon. On 18 July 1939, Werth arrived in Rome to hold staff talks with his Italian counterpart, General Alberto Pariani. On 3 August 1939, Werth returned to Italy for more talks with Pariani. During the Werth-Pariani meetings, the latter told the former quite outrageous lies about Italian plans for an invasions of the Balkans with Italian troops marching into Yugoslavia and Greece with the aim of linking up with the Hungarians, plans that were well beyond Italy's capabilities as Pariani knew quite well. The American historian Brian Sullivan wrote that Werth came as naïve and gullible as Pariani outlined increasingly outlandish plans for Italo-Hungarian joint operations in the Balkans that he refused to put into writing, ostensibly for reasons of security, that Werth seemed inclined to accept at face value.
When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Werth was bitterly opposed to Teleki's "zig-zag" neutrality of leaning first in the direction of a pro-Polish neutrality and then leaning in a pro-German neutrality. Werth was greatly upset at Teleki's refusal of German transit rights to invade Poland along with welcoming Polish refugees into Hungary. Werth told the German military attache in Budapest that his government should apply pressure to have a more "reasonable" government than the one headed by Teleki and at a meeting in October 1939 he threatened to resign in protest against Teleki's foreign policy. In June 1940, Teleki tried to persuade Horthy to sack Werth under the grounds he was meddling in political matters that were beyond his area of responsibilities. Werth was extremely harkwish about the prospect of a war with Romania during the Transylvania crisis of 1940, declared a total mobilisation of the Honved on 23 August 1940 and told the council of ministers that his forces would be ready to invade Romania on 28 August 1940.
Under the Hungarian system, Werth reported to the Defense Minister Károly Bartha and directly to the Regent, Admiral Horthy, who served as a "Supreme War Lord" as the office of Supreme Commander in Chief was titled in Hungary. Werth did not report to Teleki and conducted military affairs in a manner that was often opposed to Teleki's policy of maintaining a pro-Axis neutrality vs. Werth's expressed desire to have Hungary enter the war as a one of the Axis powers. Teleki complained that Werth was seeking to undermine his government's policies and in a resignation letter he sent to Admiral Horthy in September 1940 charged that Hungary had two governments, one civil and one military. Teleki went on to write that with the military government headed by Werth "the influence of which is growing in almost every branch of the administration and which the legal government is unable to supervise". In particular, Teleki noted that the Ministry of Finance had no control over the military budget and that Werth was constantly seeking to increase the level of military spending with no effort to consult the Finance Ministry at all. Likewise, Teleki complained that the military staff attached to the Ministry of Industry refused to take orders from the Industry Minister and made foreign trade and domestic labour agreements with Germany without consulting the Foreign Ministry or the Industry Ministery. Finally, Teleki charged that the military was conducting its own foreign policy as Werth signed agreements with Germany on military and economic matters without informing anyone in the Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade ministries, who only learned after the fact what agreements Werth had signed. Werth was keen to accelerate Hungarian rearmament from the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Trianon as quickly as possible, and was constantly in Berlin seeking to sign new contracts to supply German weapons to the Honved. In his pursuit of more German arms contracts, Werth was quite willing to sign economic agreements that were unfavorable to Hungary in exchange for more German weapons, a practice that greatly embittered the staff at the Foreign Affairs, Finance, Trade and Industry ministries who all charged that Werth would sign any sort of economic agreements in exchange for more German arms. Horthy refused Teleki's resignation and told the prime minister that he just needed to learn to co-operate more with Werth, whose leadership Horthy still supported.