The Trouble With Seminal Books on Topics Previously Unexplored

Kristzian Ungvary’s claims that his book, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II, is the first and best complete study on the siege of Budapest in World War II.[1] Ungvary had access to many sources previously inaccessible due to the propaganda machine of the Soviet Union. Further, he interviewed as many people as possible who experienced the siege of Budapest (both from the German, Hungarian, and Soviet soldiers as well as Hungarian civilians). His book then balances the formal sources with the first hand accounts of the events. I do not disagree that the book is the first and best description of the siege of Budapest (though in all fairness, I do not have the academic background in the history of World War II to truly weigh in on this). It is also engaging and thought provoking. However, what is striking about it, to me is the problem of these types of books which see themselves as seminal works in the field. While the book is well done and accurate, it has the weaknesses that any book has that tries to “tell you everything about a situation.” Further, my being a historian of the ancient world who tries to reconstruct the social world of a community using theory and pieces of evidence notes some of the strange character of a story that is one third military history, one third social world, one third expose, and somehow nearly no theory.

First, it is important to take a few minutes to describe the scope of the book. The  chronology of the book covers the immediate leading up to the siege of Budapest, the actual siege, and a brief conversation about the immediate aftermath. The scope of the book then, tries to cover “everything that happened” thin this time period. To do so, there are several topics that need to be considered. First is the military decisions and actions of the Nazi army, the Hungarian allies (or subordinates, depending upon how one thinks of it), and the red army. The discussing then discussed in detail how the city came to be encircled, the ensuing battles while the siege continued, and the eventual collapse of Budapest and the planned, but never executed evacuation attempts until the final one when it was far too late. Second, the book needs to cover the political decisions leading up to and explaining the siege of Budapest such as the strange relationship between the Hungarian government and Hitler (including the Hungarian government attempting to surrender to which Hitler responded by occupying Hungary itself and the government being replaced by the Arrow Cross government run by the S.S.). Further, political discussion is necessary for prolonging the siege when the city was already lost – with Hitler’s larger strategy of the war with Russia. Third, the book attempts to describe the social situation of the larger population in Budapest. This includes the awkward relationship Hungarians found themselves in during the siege – the vast majority of the people wanted nothing to do with the Nazis (and especially not the Arrow Cross government), but they wanted even less to do with the incoming Red Army and the consequences of the annexation to the Soviet Union. Further, it includes a strange place for Jews in any area occupied by Germans in World War II – while being persecuted heavily, the situation of Hungary for Jews was different than that of the larger empire governed by the third Reich. It was not until the Arrow Cross government arrived that there was any final solution being executed (and by this time in the war, the Nazis did not have the resources to deport them). Behind these last two points includes the background of the relationship with the Hungarian government with Nazi Germany in World War II. Hungary was one of the countries to ally to Germany with the idea that this war would restore some of their land lost at the end of the first world war. As a result, they were never occupied by the Nazis and the relationship was most amenable. Further, the fighting on the Eastern front mostly was not in Hungary itself and a strange type of isolation from the rest of Eastern Europe was developed. As one can see from this brief description (and it is about as brief as possible), this book is incredibly complex due to the breadth of its scope.

The first major critique of this genre of seminal books on a topic is that the arguments in them are not clear. Usually historians write books that argue a particular point. However, this book did not do that. It seems as if what it wanted to express is “this is what really happened.” As a historian of the early Church, this type of inquiry is often done when considering the life of Jesus. The study of the historical Jesus is making an argument as to what really happened in Jesus’ life rather than how it was portrayed later. However, in order to do that, good books on the historical Jesus then present a thesis of their picture of Jesus and then prove it. For example, John Dominic Crossan, one of the most famous (or possibly infamous depending upon the group) scholars of the historical Jesus in his big book on the topic argues that Jesus is primarily a social reformer.[2] His book then is to prove this point and shows the data at hand and why that picture is more accurate than others which he also produces. Ungvary, in his book on the siege of Budapest, does not do this. His picture of “what really happened” seems to revolve around what he happens to put together with no discussion of opinions and data to the contrary.

To refine the previous point, the problem is not necessarily that seminal books do not have a thesis, but that they have far too many. Upon reflection, Ungvary tries to prove all of the following theses in the book: 1). The naïveté of the Hungarian government in relations with Nazi Germany, 2). Why the siege of Budapest was different than other sieges in World War II, 3). Why the Hungarian populace fought so hard for the Germans for whom they were not supporters, 4). Why defenders had so little chance of succeeding while at the same time taking so long to complete, 5). Why Hitler did not allow any chance of a breakout and evacuation, 6). Why the liberators of Budapest were not very liberating, 7). The status of Jews in World War II Hungary, and 8). The odd isolation of Hungary as a whole for the major portion of World War II. As one can see, any one of  these topics would take an entire book to prove. Ungvary’s attempt to prove all of them doomed many to fail.

The second critique of the book is its seemingly unqualified use of data. As a historian of the ancient world, I often get amused when modern historians bemoan the lack of data for a project they are studying. Often, they are discussing evidences for a particular day or hour in time. In the ancient world, we simply do not have hardly any data at all for a particular region and we are left to reconstruct based on a number of circumstantial pieces of evidence to come to a conclusion. Ungvary does not have this problem – he has a tremendous amount of data for the siege of Budapest. There is not a day in the siege for which he does not know every military move that was made. Further, there is not any day for which he has not obtained either personal papers of survivors (or in many cases doing interviews himself with them). However, his weight of sources becomes a weakness for him when he does not critically use them. He presents so much of the source material he is “sure of” that the book begins to become a simple compendium of pieces of data rather than an argument about a particular social world. The data does not seemed to be judged or qualified in the manner that gives the reader the relevant data that completes a clear thought. If a book had less data, it might actually be more convincing (in a paradoxical seeming way). As an example for this phenomenon, consider Eberhard Bethge’s famous biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.[3] The book, being over 1100 pages is the best-researched biography of Bonhoeffer likely to ever be produced. Recently, Eric Metaxas wrote a new biography of Bonhoeffer which was far shorter and in some cases had far wilder claims.[4] Bethge’s book should be the superior one by far (and in many ways it is), but Metaxas’s is more compelling to a reader who wants to be convinced of who Bonhoeffer is and why he became involved in the plot to kill Hitler. Much like Ungvary’s book, Bethge’s uses too much detail and includes so much data that it counteracts from the book’s main purpose.

The error of the weight of data is most illustrated by the special emphasis on the military operations of the period. A rough estimate finds at least 65% of the book to be the precise movements of the military during the siege. As the book does discuss a moment in a theatre of war, it might not surprise that so much of the book emphasizes this aspect, but in doing so, the data of the book on the social world is lost. The book’s strength are the personal papers and interviews of the actual people. In discussing military operations in such detail, it takes the time that could have been spent doing careful discussion of the development of life in the siege. The book becomes interesting to those who enjoy military strategy, but not as much for those who want to understand the other 7 theses that the author is trying to prove.

The final and most concerning critique of this book – and many books like it in modern history – is its lack of stated theoretical framework. As stated above, in ancient history the theory one uses determines how one presents one’s conclusion. This is due doubly to the integrity of admitting that theory determines data as well as a simple lack of data so that a theory has to tie together disparate elements. This book, like many works in modern history and theology, never states a theory at all. There is no real discussion about which personal papers ought to be trusted and which not (after all, eyewitness accounts are almost never consistent with each other). It seems as if Ungvary has simply put together “what makes sense” but that alone is a theory – only in this case it is not being done deliberately and thus the unstated theory has more of a chance of obscuring data than for those which are card carrying.

In all, the book is excellent and deserves to be read. There are portions that simply need to be skipped and frustrations with the genre of the book. However, Ungvary’s work will hopefully be some type of “entrance” into the field (being a seminal book) so that more careful histories can be developed and real dialogue put forward about some of the aspects of the siege in a more academically acceptable format.   

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[1] Kristzian Ungvary, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II trans. Ladislaus Lob (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).

[2] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (HarperOne, 1993).

[3] Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000).

[4] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson, 2011).