Hungarian-italian relations in the shadow of Hitler's Germany, 1933-1940 [antikvár]

FOREWORD The politics of Budapest between the two wars show the nascent hope that Hungary, significantly crippled by the Peace Treaty of Trianon, could find suitable consideration in the plans of the European powers. It would seem that this assumption was evident in the relationship between Admiral Horthy's Hungary and Fascist Italy. One of the reasons for this was the long-standing reliance that Mussolini placed on "revisionism" as a political tool for creating a Danubian hegemony. This concept proved to be the source of considerable misunderstanding between the two countries. György Réti, the highly competent Hungarian historian, combines his historical expertise with the experiences of a successful diplomatic career when he examines Hungarian-Italian political relations at their most complex period, namely from the beginning of the 1930s to the outbreak of Worid War II. He offers significant documentation from the Hungarian and Italian archives together with material from the most recent publications thereby making a valuable contribution to the integration of previous research. The research of Réti demonstrates cleariy that during this period the Italian government was "interested" in Hungary but this did not mean the tight and cordial alliance that the Hungarian government would have liked to see. It did indeed appear in 1932 that Italian foreign policy, directed personally by Mussolini after Count Dino Grandi's resignation, would produce a turning point in the political and economic status of the Danube Basin and of the Balkans. At the same time, there was an increasing chance that the growing German dynamism would gradually displace Italy from this area where it had been so influential during the previous decade.