Date
3-10-2026
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Chair
Seth James Bartee
Keywords
Hungarian Partisans Movement
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Boros, Gergo, "The Hungarian Partisans Movement in World War 2" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8010.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8010
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on partisan warfare in Hungary during the Second World War. Contrary to the established stereotype which describes the movement as an insignificant, external and Soviet-backed resistance, the study locates the Hungarian partisan movement in the historical, political, cultural and social milieu of interwar and wartime Hungary which includes the national trauma of the Trianon Peace Treaty, the domestic authoritarian regime led by Miklós Horthy and the German occupation of the country in 1944. For this purpose, the dissertation utilizes primary sources of documents and personal interviews from archives, partisan journals, memoirs, and historiographies of other European resistance movements. The partisans are presented as a diverse political and social group of communists, social democrats, nationalists, members of ethnic and religious minorities and demobilized or renegade soldiers, who fought against the fascist and Axis powers in an attempt to sabotage the enemy forces and infrastructure, gain tactical advantage through unconventional warfare and espionage, and to signal their defiance through acts of symbolic resistance. The study explores the movement’s political and ideological fragmentation, the practical challenges of recruiting, logistics, geographical limitations, and the limited direct assistance it received from the Soviet forces. The partisan movement and its members were subsequently remembered, politicized, rehabilitated, mythologized, and sometimes forgotten after the war, in a changing political environment and shifting regime priorities, as the example of contested wartime memory in Hungary. The research topic is an important contribution to the historiography of European resistance during the Second World War, as it also raises questions about the interplay between armed partisan warfare, state-building, and national and local identity formation. As the study spans political, cultural, and military aspects of resistance and guerrilla warfare, it may be relevant to the research fields and general interest of the European History Network, the Network on Small States, and the Network on Asymmetric Warfare.
