Internment of Mackensen

On 16 December 1918, at Budapest’s Ferencváros station, the special train of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, returning to Germany from occupied Romania, was stopped. The victor of Gorlice and conqueror of Bucharest, until recently one of the most respected commanders of the Central Powers, had to accept the conditions of the Hungarian government, which was acting under French pressure. According to the Hungarian military history, two days later Mackensen was already interned in the Károlyi counts’ palace at Fót near Budapest.

Retreat from Romania

The Armistice of Compiègne obliged the Germans to withdraw their troops from Romania immediately, and the day before it Romania had re-entered the war on the side of the Entente. Mackensen and his staff left Bucharest on the evening of 11 November. According to Romanian studies, he had about 160,000 soldiers and officials under his command, many of them from second-line units, and the only way home led through Transylvania, Hungary and Austria. The railways could not cope, the roads were almost impassable in winter, and the French General Henri Berthelot accused the Germans of destroying bridges and stations and of requisitioning. Only in the first half of December did most of Mackensen’s troops reach Hungary.

There a new problem awaited them. The Armistice of Belgrade of 13 November obliged Hungary to break its ties with Germany and remove German troops, and the Entente demanded that they be disarmed and interned. Mackensen resisted for a long time, and according to József Bánlaky, the Hungarian military historian, he agreed to disarmament on 2 December. He nevertheless tried to drag out the negotiations so that as many soldiers as possible could get through to Austria. The Hungarian government of Mihály Károlyi, which had recently come to govern an independent republic, was counting on French goodwill and gave way when the head of the Allied military mission in Budapest, Lieutenant-Colonel Fernand Vix, passed on the demand that the field marshal himself be interned.

Stopped in Budapest

When Mackensen’s train pulled into Ferencváros station on 16 December, it was stopped on his own initiative by József Pogány, chairman of the Budapest soldiers’ council. Armed soldiers surrounded the platform, and cameramen came too. According to the accounts recorded by Bánlaky, the field marshal refused to leave his carriage and protested that such humiliating treatment was Hungary’s thanks for his having saved it three times from enemy invasion. He then met Károlyi, who put the matter plainly: either Mackensen would give himself up and his troops would be disarmed, or the Hungarians would stop all German military trains. Mackensen gave way so that his soldiers could continue on their way home. On 18 December he arrived at Fót, where he and his entourage took up residence in Count László Károlyi’s palace. Over the following weeks the last transports of his army passed through Hungary; according to Romanian studies the last train reached Austria on 1 January 1919.

Hungarian public opinion was divided. The Social Democrats and Communists welcomed the detention, but for many Hungarians Mackensen was the hero of the 1916 campaign in which the Romanians, who had invaded Transylvania, were beaten and pushed back beyond Bucharest. When in the following months Romanian troops advanced ever deeper into Hungary, critics accused Károlyi of ingratitude towards the country’s former defender.

A prisoner of the French

The stay at Fót did not last long. On 31 December the palace was surrounded by French spahis, and according to Bánlaky, on 4 January 1919 the French, despite the protests of the Hungarian government, took Mackensen south via Gödöllő. Some Hungarian sources state that Károlyi handed him over to the Entente only in March 1919. The field marshal was then held as a prisoner at Futog near Novi Sad and later in Salonika. He was released at the end of November 1919 and returned to Germany in December.