Hungary

Welcome to the third dev diary on Death or Dishonor and 1.4 Oak update! I hope you are hungry for more info because today we will be talking about... Hungary (ugh that joke didnt really work now did it?)

A landlocked Kingdom run by an Admiral, Hungary had without a doubt one of the more unusual political systems of the interwar period. At the end of the Great War, Hungary had broken away from the disintegrating Habsburg Empire, and after a brief period as a communist republic, was occupied by the Entente. Subsequently, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, which reduced Hungary to a rump state. In the Treaty, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and a third of its population. Harsh restrictions were placed on the Hungarian military. Hungary was banned from having a Navy (a crushing injustice, to be sure) or an air force. The Army was limited to 35,000 troops, what military factories existed were under strict observation. In many ways, it was the Treaty of Versailles of Hungary.

In game this state is represented by Hungary being a Disarmed Nation, with no available manpower, and a crippling 50% construction speed penalty for military factories. Getting out from under the treaty is your first objective. There are several ways to do this: At the far right of the tree, you have the Bled Agreement, which historically was signed in 1938 and which allows you to rearm freely. But the surrounding nations must approve it. Should they refuse, you can still abolish the treaty through other means. After you have gotten the right to bear arms back, the tree opens up and you can choose how to rebuild your military. On the Army side, you can choose between the infantry heavy Home Defense branch and the offensive-focused Mobile Focus. In the Air Force branch, you can select how to procure new planes - you can develop them yourself or get them through license deals with other countries (the licenses in these focuses are free). Politically, one of the obvious goals is to regain your territory. Fans of intricate event chains will be happy to know that you can gain all of these territories through peaceful annexation - if the other side agrees. The AI will call your bluff if it believes you are weaker than it, and things can quickly spiral out of control (the Demand Transylvania event chain is possibly the most extensive event chain we have ever done in HoI history, with 25 events and 16 different outcomes), which can even bring in other European countries. If you want to take the country down a somewhat less historical path, you can decide to murder Horthy and restore the Hungarian People’s Republic, either to join the Comintern or to make your own faction. On the other end of the political scale, we worked with the idea that Hungary was, in principle, still a monarchy. Two attempts by the deposed Carl IV in the early 1920ies failed to put the Habsburgs back on the throne, with the Hungarian parliament passing a law banning him from ever returning. The rejection broke poor Carl’s heart, and he died soon after (some say it was the pneumonia he contracted while flying to Hungary in an open plane to regain his throne, but we know better). This left his son Otto von Habsburg in charge of the house.

The monarchist faction in Hungary was split over whether the Habsburgs should be forever banned