Despot who defied Hitler
QUESTION Did Admiral Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary, try to kill Hitler? Miklos HoRTHY (1868-1957) once exclaimed that he greatly regretted not killing Hitler. A former admiral in the AustroHungarian navy, in 1920 he took power in his recently independent homeland — ironically a landlocked country — and adopted the title ‘Regent’.
As a Right-wing dictatorship, it was inevitable that Hungary would ally itself with Nazi Germany in World War ii. But while Horthy brought in anti- semitic laws, Hungarian Jews were not sent to concentration camps. Nor did they wear the star of David or live in ghettos.
However, Hungary’s armed forces took part in the 1941 subjugation of Yugoslavia and were heavily involved in the invasion of the UssR.
By 1944, the Red Army was at Hungary’s borders. With Horthy’s approval, Prime Minister Miklos kallay made overtures to Britain and the U.s. and promised to surrender once their troops reached Hungarian territory.
An enraged Hitler summoned Horthy to a conference in klessheim Castle. He ordered the Admiral to deport more Jews. When Horthy refused, Hitler went into one of his famous rages where he announced he had already planned to annex Hungary the following day.
Horthy, in turn, lost his temper and stormed out. He later told the historian C. A. Macartney: ‘if i’d had my revolver with me, i would have shot the scoundrel. All my life i’ll regret i didn’t do it.’
in March 1944, the Germans launched operation Margarethe, a bloodless coup in Hungary.
ordered to replace kallay with a proNazi minister, Horthy appointed Dome sztojay, who began sending large numbers of Jews to the death camps.
Horthy protested, but when the Germans refused to remove sztojay, he announced that Hungary had declared an armistice with the Allies. Horthy was promptly imprisoned in Bavaria by the Germans and later freed by the Americans. Hungary Dictators: Hungary’s Admiral Horthy with Adolf Hitler before World War II was overrun by the Red Army, but local armed forces fought alongside the Germans until the last day of the war.
After appearing as a witness at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1948, Horthy lived in exile in Portugal. He remains a divisive figure in Hungary.
Peter Smith, Durham. QUESTION Instead of ‘cheese’, what do other nationalities say when they want to smile in a photo? AN EARlY proponent of this photographic trick was U.s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt: not only did it help give him a friendly facial impression, but as a grilled cheese sandwich was said to be his favourite snack, he was happy to say it.
saying cheese has become universal in English-speaking countries. in Chinese, they say qie zi (eggplant), which sounds similar to ‘cheese’.
in France, they exclaim souriez (smile). south koreans say kimchi, which is a traditional spicy cabbage dish.
The Danes yell appelsin, which means orange — sin is pronounced as ‘seen’, raising the corners of the mouth. in parts of spain, Mexico and latin America, they use the word whiskey!
David Lewis, Barnstaple, Devon.
QUESTION If evolution n depends on the survival of the fittest, why do we seem to be genetically programmed to like unhealthy foods? HUMANs are thought to have evolved from hunter gatherers on the hot, African plain. They were helped to survive by the
so-called ‘thrifty genes’, which optimised energy extraction from scarce food resources and stored it efficiently for later use.
The human body is designed to store energy as fat, which is energy-rich and lightweight. Fat yields nine calories per gram, double that of protein or carbohydrate. it weighs less than muscle and is easier to carry around.
sugar, historically only found in fruit and honey in the occasional beehive, is rapidly converted to fat. Fructose appears to activate processes in your body that make you want to hold on to fat.
our bodies are wired for survival in lean times. The body craves sugar and fat, which it will store until the next meal is found.
in prehistory, guzzling sugar and fat when food was scarce and lying it down as fat was an advantage. Today, it is a health risk. Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge. QUESTION Why was the musical movie Oklahoma! filmed in Arizona? FURTHER to the earlier answer, while it would have been cheaper to film in Arizona, that wasn’t the primary concern of composers Rodgers and Hammerstein and director Fred Zinnemann.
Up until 1954, oklahoma! was the most expensive film ever made.
i collect oklahoma! memorabilia and have a catalogue signed by stars Gordon MacRae, shirley Jones and Eddie Albert.
it includes an interview with Rodgers and Hammerstein in which they say: ‘Perhaps the most exciting part . . . was to go on location.
‘our particular area was up in the desert mountains on the Mexican border of Arizona (instead of oklahoma, to avoid anachronisms in the landscape and because of technical consideration of the production).’
This is corroborated by sheila MacRae, who was on location with Gordon, and shirley Jones, who wrote: ‘Zinnemann realised that present day oklahoma had far too many oil wells dotted about the landscape to pass for 1906, the year in which the story was set.’
Tony Lampert, Margate, Kent.