Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations by Norman Davies Page B

has not perished yet’, borrowed from Poland’s, were aptly defiant. Since Uzhgorod was already occupied by Hungary, Khust was to be the state capital.
    Ethnic violence instantly spilled over into Carpatho-Ukraine from Slovakia. The Sich Guard became embroiled both with stranded Czechoslovak army garrisons and with Slovak and Hungarian irregulars on the frontiers. Three-sided skirmishes were in progress when unexpected news arrived in the afternoon. The Hungarian army, having condemned the civil unrest, had crossed the border from the south.

    Thanks to the close proximity of Hungary and Romania, Khust had been attracting an unusual crowd of foreigners. A substantial German delegation had arrived, and had persuaded German peasants from some of the nearby villages to come into town and wave their swastika flags. There was an elderly American missionary, Mrs McCormick and her husband, and a Polish photographer. There were at least two Britons. One of the Britons, Commander Wedgwood-Benn MP, spoke none of the local languages and left, but not before he was overheard (as reported by the other Englishman) telling someone in Latin, ‘ Adolfus Hitler bonus vir! ’ *
    Michael Winch, a travel-writer, claimed to be there conducting research. He was expecting the Sich Guards to come to blows with the police and army. He was able to present an eyewitness account of events from his hotel window, which is worth quoting at length:
In twenty-four hours we lived in three different states. We woke up in the Czechoslovak Republic. By the evening Carpatho-Ukraine was a free land. Next day the Hungarians came in…
At quarter-past six [in the] morning, Tuesday, [15 March] I was woken up by banging in the courtyard. At first, I had thought they were beating carpets… Jumping up, I looked out of the window… and dived straight under my bed. In the archway to the back street a boy was standing with a smoking revolver in his hand. Rifles were banging off, and from the other side came the rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun.
Then I realized that the Czech gendarmes and military were at last making the long-planned attack on the Sitch… Two tanks arrived and it seemed likely that gendarmes would soon come bursting up the stairs…
Suddenly there was an appalling noise of splintering glass, and a shower of bullets came whizzing through the windows… We were all lying flat on our stomachs on the cold cement floor, but the porter crept along and gingerly opened the door. All eyes were transfixed as the opening gradually widened. Across the threshold two legs were lying immobile. I thought their owner was dead. Then… a man came crawling out of the room, followed by two others. They were Slovak lorry drivers…
About half an hour later a messenger arrived from [Father-President] Voloshyn and ordered the Sitch to surrender. He said that the Hungarians had taken advantage of internal dissension to renew their claims… and all were to combine together to keep them out…
The square… was still absolutely deserted. All the heavy iron shutters were down… The only living things in sight were a horse, standing in an unattended cab… and a soldier looking very comic as he crouched behind the petrol pump and covered a nearby window with his rifle… In the hotel everyone’s nerves were getting strained. The little waiter took refuge in drink. ‘The Czechs are pig-dogs, the Poles are pig-dogs,’ I heard him shouting… The restaurant was a shambles; no furniture, the mirrors shattered, the curtains torn down, the walls pitted by bullets, dirt and paper everywhere…
Life at once returned to normal. In a few minutes I saw a peasant from Apeza, with a bundle of carpets over his shoulder, hawking along the street, and a Jew setting off with a chicken under his arm to be killed by the ritual slaughterer. The outside of the hotel [was] all pitted and blackened… The Sitch barracks had had every single window blown out…
Czech rule was shortlived. At one