Starting at the present and moving backwards, the Cliff's Notes are thus: For what is now, but always wasn't, the smallish sized country, Hungary, has been invade, taken over, ruled and then the invaders overthrown at long last, for millennia.
With the fall of and disruption of the USSR, Hungary finally, once again, got her freedom. The early years weren't much better, because of the extant Commies who managed to win the elections. But Orban is a pretty good guy/leader.
There was the Hungarian Revolution, in 1956, when the valiant Magyars attempted to overthrow the stinking USSR stronghold over them and sadly failed.
Hitler invaded and took over and the Hungarians were, once again, stuck in the middle of another WORLD WAR, persecuted, and many killed in that war or in the concentration camps ( thanks to that POS Soros and others ), with swaths of the population dispersed.
Between the World Wars, Hungary had had pieces of it chopped off and either pieces made into separate nations, or given to others, because of the stinking French, the lousy English PM, and that F'in' MORON, Woodrow Wilson. Also due to the Treaty Of Versailles, they were sunk into a morass of penury, because of the dreadful war reparations.
WW I was caused by the assassination of the Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand and his Morganatic wife. He was Emperor's Franz Joseph's nephew, and came to be the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, due to the suicide of the Criwn Prince Rudolf.
The Hapsburgs take over, after many centuries of the Hungarians battling the damned Ottoman Turkish invasions, take overs, being finally kicked out, spin, repeat.
And please DO look up Petofi and Kossusth!
The Wiki history of Hungary isn't bad, but won't give you all of the "juicy" details that you'll read in books. OTOH...you'll learn some startling and very inertesting facts. :-)
Very interesting! Thank you. Eastern Europe holds a special fascination for me, probably because that is the origin of my own bloodlines.
I definitely will do more research!