After the First World War, as a result of the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost over 2/3 of her territories and almost as much of her population. Large Hungarian minorities now lived beyond the country’s borders: in southern Slovakia, Transylvania and Vojvodina (Banat and Bačka). This fact had a colossal impact on Hungarian foreign policy throughout the twenty-year interwar period, causing a constant search for solutions that would return to Hungary her previously significant position in Central Europe.

If during the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the authorities in Budapest tried to combat the aspirations of Slavic nations for independence, their policy towards the Jews, who for obvious reasons did not strive to create their own state, was generally tolerant. This situation changed in 1919, after the communist revolution, which was partly led by activists of Jewish descent. Soon, as a result of the armed intervention of Czech, Romanian and Serbian forces, which supported the National Army in its struggle against the communists, the so-called Hungarian Soviet Republic fell. After a period of repressions, which were a response to the ‘Red Terror’, the country was taken over by the army and a coalition of conservative political groups representing wealthy owners and the nobility.