Eighty years ago this week Hungary gets back its gold

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Thirty tonnes of gold then worth $32m was returned from Frankfurt to the Hungarian National Bank in Budapest. It had been held by the US Army which had taken it (with Hungarian agreement) from  a Benedictine abbey in Austria to which it had been smuggled by train in January 1945 to hide it from the German and Soviet armies. This allowed the Hungarian government to bring to an end the hyperinflation which had ravaged the economy for months.  The Pengo was abolished as a currency and replaced by the Forint, backed by gold. 

The Tribunal set up as part of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act ruled that the former owners of Britain's coal mines should receive the then colossal sum of £164m (4% of all government expenditure) in compensation for their assets. The industry was chaotic and badly in need of rationalisation and investment; the mine-owners were getting a bargain.

The British government asserted the integrity of Austria, then occupied by the four victorious powers. The Soviets had already plundered their zone but had been checked in a scheme to install a puppet communist government. The Soviet creation of a communist zone in occupied Germany gave a strong clue as to their ultimate aspirations for Austria.


 

 


 

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