Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA’ - A chink on the peace front: Frankfurt am Main
'THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA' Germany. During the War, he spent an extended period in Hungary “to oversee the transportation of agricultural produce to Germany.”181 After 1945, he was imprisoned in an internment camp for a few months, but a British officer called Griffin released him. It is likely one of the Allied intelligence services had hopes he would cooperate, so he made it back quickly to the field he had worked in previously.182 181 ÁBTL 3.2.4 K-472, p. 45 Study plan, 21 April 1952 182 ÁBTL 3.2.3 Mt-425/1. 87. Jungers report on the ministerial line, undated. 183 ‘Neither butter, nor cannons’ by István Bródy Haladás, p.9, 19 June 1947 The series of articles by Brody is a particularly important record, since it probably recorded the story of the first economic negotiations with the Germans, the opening act to a business relationship that lasted for decades and which defined the foreign trade opportunities of socialist Hungary. In the spring of 1947, the Communist Party sent an envoy to the Nazi officers, who had been posted to Hungary only a few years previously and were personally responsible for deporting Hungarian Jews and stripping the country of its economic assets. The envoy was a descendant of an old Jewish family, who lost numerous relatives to the horrors of the Holocaust. The author herself understands that one might ask how it could be that an antifascist journalist of a newspaper writing a striking amount on the Holocaust conducted trade negotiations in the zone of the former Nazi Germany occupied by the ‘Imperialists’ with persons who had been, without exception, serving the Third Reich. Brody’s response gives an opportunist explanation of the phenomenon, shedding some light on the moral background of the outlined collaboration for our benefit too: “The answer to this question is that the rule of life knows no other aspect than the material one, the natural one. Disobey this rule, as a single person or an entire nation, and you will die of its heroism, its emotions, its pride, its sorrow, its hatred or its love.”183 István Brody ’s mission in 1947 was before long followed by a delegation to Germany, where official negotiations began that resulted in annual trade agreements being concluded between the parties. Earmarked to continue to play a key role, Brody was transferred to Frankfurt in 1949 to head the trade 67
