Index – Science – Clemenceau did not hate Hungarians

They mistook it for hating a Hungarian weasel, so their son committed suicide. Actually, they just got divorced and Clemenceau took care of Michnay Ida, who worked as a nurse.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) proved to be a strong and charismatic leader as the French political prime minister (1906-1909, 1917-1920). During World War I, he led a dynamic and determined leadership led by radical and center-left politicians, while retaining the post of Minister of War. By May 1918, the society’s faith in victory had been restored. At the end of World War II, the Senate voted that, along with Marshal Foch, he deserved the gratitude of the nation, and the people referred to him as “the father of victory.” He became so popular that even the French Academy wanted to reward him and elect him as a member of its medical department. Clemenceau already considered this an exaggeration and asked:

In which section do you want to be admitted? Among the patients?

As president of the Peace Conference and later as a member of the Quartet, he played a prominent role in the drafting of the peace treaties in Paris. According to a widespread misconception, the Trianon peace dictatorship was so unfavorable to the Hungarians because Clemenceau hated Hungarian weasels. According to legend, the woman left Clemenceau’s son, who committed suicide, and his father.

The prime minister’s son, named Michel, actually married the daughter of a Hungarian district judge in 1901, Ida Michnay. It is not clear whether Clemenceau visited Hungary. Some say she attended her son’s Galanta wedding and then visited relatives the following year. However, the French historian Alain Sobigou firmly states in a lexicon dedicated to Clemenceau that he has never visited Hungary (Dictionnaire Clemenceau. Paris, 2017, Robert Laffont. P. 362). He did not hate Hungarians in any way,

In 1906. Although his son divorced his Hungarian wife, it was not until after the Treaty of Trianon that, contrary to legend, he did not commit suicide, and Clemenceau took care of his former witch, who worked as a nurse.

During the war, however, seeing the suffering of his compatriots, Clemenceau was overwhelmed by a growing chauvinistic passion. He expressed that France was fighting for the truth, calling the Entente issue the cause of humanity, and therefore still

Of the Danes, for example, he claimed that they had no honor.

The Germans, on the other hand, do not

Raymond Poincaré spoke to the President of the Republic in 1914 about the contempt and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, probably due to its monarchical form of state, the great power of the clergy, and its alliance with the absolute enemy, Germany.

He, like many of his compatriots, deeply hated Germany. At the end of the 19th century, several French families had the custom of declaring after a good lunch or dinner: “Another party that the Boche (Germans) cannot get!” The French patriots could not forgive the annexation of Alsace and northern Lorraine in 1871. Already at the time of the ratification of the Franco-German Convention of 1911, which ended the second crisis in Morocco, Clemenceau declared the following in the Senate:

We are pacifists, more precisely peaceful, but we are not subject! (…) The dead created the living; and the living remain faithful to the dead (…) We still have something to say, we have something else to do, something we want!

He held German aggression responsible for World War I, and during the war hatred of Germans completely overwhelmed him.

In early 1918, due to the military situation, he needed as many allies as possible. He approved the establishment of a Czechoslovak army in France and promised support to the delegation of the “Congress of Nationalities Suppressed by Austria-Hungary” inaugurated in Rome in April.

That same month, he was deeply outraged that the monarchy’s common foreign minister, Ottokar Czernin, had claimed to have started peace talks. When Count István Burián, the joint chancellor of Austria and Hungary, proposed a peaceful peace on September 14, 1918, Clemenceau was already reacting with hostility:

It is not possible to negotiate between law and sin.

After the victory, he wanted to strengthen the friendly minor powers of France that opposed both Bolshevism and German influence in Central Europe, and this was more easily done at the expense of Hungary. He was also heavily influenced by emigrant politicians such as Edvard Beneš and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who thoroughly exaggerated the problems of Hungarian nationalities.

Nor did he like the Bolsheviks

The proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic further increased Clemenceau’s dislike for Germany’s former allies. He called the leaders of the Bolshevik government “accomplices of Lenin” and implicitly left the abolition of the system to neighboring successor states.

As French Defense Minister, he gave Hungarian soldiers permission to enter the Szeged occupation zone, joining Miklós Horthy. On June 13, he sent a list to the government of the Soviet Republic, in which he foresaw the withdrawal of the Romanian armies stationed in the Tisza in exchange for the withdrawal of the Red Army from the north. However, the latter did not take place and, after the failure of the Red Army offensive, the Romanian army marched on Budapest.

Although he was no longer prime minister when the Treaty of Trianon was signed, Clemenceau played an important role in preparing the terms of peace. Germany both

that he would never again be able to carry out military operations against France. He was present in Paris when Count Albert Apponyi gave an oral response to the peace terms on January 16, 1920.

As Mary Ormos put it in the Rubicon Columns:

He knew little about Hungary and eventually sacrificed this country for the interests of power … Where could he show strength? Apparently against the small losing powers, which were not an existential question from the French point of view anyway, while decisive action against them could secure the friendship and support of other small powers, which in turn became important by many reasons, but especially the loss. of the Russian alliance.
(Rubicon, special number 2, 2010, p. 14)

In other words, Clemenceau did not want revenge for his son’s failed marriage, when, together with other leaders of the victorious great powers, he imposed such severe punishments on Hungary lost in the peace talks around Paris.

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