Abstract
The book’s introduction offers a general historical introduction into Hungary’s situation after the First World War as far as women’s radical political mobilization was concerned. Another introductory section analyzes the forms, causes and consequences of women perpetrators’ invisibility.
“The Arrow Cross Party therefore differs from other parties as it has a spirit.”
Woman in the movement. A Nép, December 17, 1942. 4.
“We will veer Hungarian women back to the sacred duty of motherhood. The Hungarian nation emanates from the Hungarian mother. The mother is the first teacher of the nation, and she sows the seeds of Hungarian thought and spirit when together with a prayer she lets the Hungarist thought, the Arrow Cross idea pour into the child’s soul. Don’t let women wither at workplaces, don’t let them become victims of those who believe that money can buy everything, including morality.”
Politikatörténeti Intézet Levéltára = PIL 685. 1/4. April 25, 1940. 60.
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Notes
- 1.
For a comparison with the Netherlands see Matthée, Zonneke and Pető Andrea. 2008. A ‘kameraadskes’ és a „testvérnők”. Nők a holland és a magyar nemzeti szocialista mozgalomban: motiváció és akarat. In Határtalan nők, eds. Bakó Boglárka, Tóth Eszter Zsófia, 285–303. Budapest: Nyitott Könyvműhely. About motherhood see: Koonz, Claudia. 1994. Motherhood and Politics on the Far Right. In Politics and Motherhood, eds. A. Jetter et al., 229–246. Hanover: University Press of New England.
- 2.
Contemporary historians make the same mistake. See, for instance: “[Szálasi] clearly defined women’s place within the family.” says Rudolf Paksa. See Rudolf Paksa. 2009. Szélsőjobboldali mozgalmak az 1930-as években. In A magyar jobboldali hagyomány 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics, 275–304. Budapest: Osiris.
- 3.
Interview with Dr. Antal Lajos in A Nép, February 17, 1939. On eugenics and Turanism see Rudolf Paksa. 2009. Szélsőjobboldali mozgalmak az 1930-as években. In A magyar jobboldali hagyomány 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics, 275–304. Budapest: Osiris, especially 276–281.
- 4.
See Ginderachter, Maarten van. 2005. Gender, the Extreme Right and Flemisch Nationalist Women’s Organisations in Interwar Belgium. Nations and Nationalism, 11: 265–284; Nash, Mary. 1994. Pronatalism and Motherhood in Franco’s Spain. In Maternity and Gender Policies. Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States 1880s–1950s, eds. Gisella Bock, Pat Thane, 160–177. London: Routledge; Banac, Ivo and Katherine Verdery (eds.). 1995. National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies.
- 5.
Some people’s tribunals’ files suggest that the interrogators had access to membership fee payment lists. For example, ÁBTL V 81760, the case of Mrs. Farkas. The list itself is at BFL X. 5.
- 6.
The quantitative research took place at the Central European University in Budapest. Preliminary results were published in Barna, Ildikó and Pető Andrea. 2012. A politikai igazságszolgáltatás a II. világháború utáni Budapesten. Budapest: Gondolat.
- 7.
About the German cult of motherhood see: Weyrather, Irmgard. 1993. Muttertag und Mutterkreuz. Der Kult um die „Deutschen Mutter” im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag; Heineman, Elizabeth D.. 2001. Whose mothers? Generational Difference, War, and the Nazi Cult of Motherhood. Journal of Women’s History, 12: 140–163.
- 8.
On women in the SS see Schwarz, Gudrun. 1997. Frauen in der SS. Sippenverband und Frauenkorps. In Zwischen Karriere und Verfolgung. Handlungsräume von Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, eds. Kirsten Heinsohn, Barbara Vogel, Ulrike Weckel, 223–244. Frankfurt—New York: Campus. and Gersdorf, Ursula von. 1969. Frauen in Kriegsdienst 1914–1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1969; Maubach, Franka. 2005. Als Helferin in der Wehrmacht. Eine paradigmatische Figur des Krigesendes. Osteuropa, 4–6: 275–281.
- 9.
Stibbe, Matthew. 2003. Women in the Third Reich. London: Arnold., especially “Women as Agents of Racial Policy”, pp. 75–80., Manns, Haide. 1997. Frauen für den Nationalsozialismus. Nationalsozialistischen Studentinnen und Akedemikerinnen in der Weimar Republik und im Dritten Reich. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Verlag; Lower, Wendy. 2018. German Women and the Holocaust in the Nazi East in Women and Genocide. In Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators, eds. Elissa Bemporad, Joyce W. Warren, 111–136. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- 10.
See the debate: Fascism in East Central and Southeastern Europe: Mainstream Fascism or „Mutant” Phenomenon? East Central Europe, 37. (2010.) 331–371. Especially Roger Griffin: 338–339.
- 11.
See Barna, Ildikó, and Andrea Pető. 2007. A “csúnya asszonyok”. Kik voltak a női háborús bűnösök Magyarországon? Élet és irodalom, October 26. and Pető Andrea. 2009. Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants. Baltic Worlds, 2: 48–52. I am grateful to Ildikó Barna for her help with methodology. The data base does not contain the sentences received by those who were found guilty. The reason is that this information could be gathered only through the individual examination of each file of the 70,000 cases. See more on this research in: Barna, Ildikó and Pető, Andrea. 2015. Political Justice in Budapest after World War II. Budapest: CEU Press.
- 12.
See recent studies: Mailänder, Elissa. 2015. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–1944. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press; Heise, Ljiljana. 2009. KZ-Aufseherinnen vor Gericht. Greta Bösel. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
- 13.
Kretzer, Anette. 2009. NS-Täterschaft und Geschlecht. Der erste britische Ravensbrück-Prozess 1946/47 in Hamburg. Berlin: Metropol Verlag; Taake, Claudia. 1998. Angeklagt. SS-Frauen vor Gericht. Oldenburg: Universität Oldenburg; Schwarz, Gudrun. 1992. Verdrängte Täterinnen. Frauen im Apparat der SS (1939–1945). In Nach Osten. Verdeckte Spuren nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, ed. Theresa Wobbe, 197–227. Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik.
- 14.
Summary of the research results see Paul, Gerhard. 2002. Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und „ganz gewöhnlichen” Deutschen. Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung. In Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche?, ed. Gerhard Paul., 13–90. Göttingen: Wallstein; and: Gross, Jan. 2000. Themes for Social History of War Experience and Collaboration. In The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath, eds. Deák István, Jan Gross, Tony Judt, 15–35. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- 15.
For example: Bormann, Martin. 2000. Leben gegen Schatten. Gelebte Zeit, geschenkte Zeit. Paderborn: Bonifatius; Nissen, Margret. 2005. Sind Sie die Tochter Speer? München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt; Schirach, Richard. 2005. Der Schatten meines Vaters. München: Carl Hanser Verlag.
- 16.
Püski, Levente. 2006. A Horthy-rendszer (1919–1945). Budapest: Pannonica; Sipos, Balázs. 2011. A Horthy-korszak politikai rendszere. In Magyarországi politikai pártok lexikona (1846–2010), ed. István Vida, 137–147. Budapest: Gondolat—MTA–ELTE Pártok, Pártrendszerek, Parlamentarizmus Kutatócsoport.
- 17.
See Paksa, Rudolf. 2013. Szálasi Ferenc és a hungarizmus. Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó; Karsai, László. 2016. Szálasi Ferenc. Politikai életrajz. Budapest: Balassi.
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Pető, A. (2020). Introduction. In: The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51225-5_1
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