English Translation

56 On February 10, 44th V-person No. ... 190 reports: "On February 8, 44 K e 1 e m b e r y drew the attention of me to the following: The Hungarian government sent a courier to Lisbon via Switzerland and Spain with a memorandum for the English and American governments. This memorandum explains the position taken by the Hungarian Government on the allies' interests or on their efforts to bring about a defeat of Germany. It is pointed out that Hungary was forced to wage a war against the Allies only by German threats and had long been striving to evade this obligation. Ideologically, Hungary had felt more and more attracted to England and America than to Germany. Hungary was a purely democratic state with a free parliament and free press, which, despite the state of war and the pressure of Germany, had not introduced a military dictatorship. Anti-Jewish laws had only been enacted on German pressure and threats, but had never been implemented dex. The Jews in Hungary live as freely as they do not live in any aboriginal European states and in fact still enjoy the same freedoms as all other Hungarian citizens. Through the mediation of a representative sent to Turkey (M e s z á r o s ), the Hungarian government tried to reach an agreement with the US ambassador in Ankara to open negotiations on a separate ceasefire, but this representative of Hungary had not had the opportunity to contact the ambassadors. He was only able to get close to the official of the English military attaché in Ankara, who had declared the meritoric negotiations for the time being and said that the right time for such negotiations would not come until the troops of the Allies had landed in the Balkans. This officer had further stated that the precondition for the opening of such negotiations would be an unconditional surrender of Hungary.