„Our people are inventive...” „Desk inventors” on the eve of World War II. 1938–1941

Abstract

In the wars of the modern era, civilian society provided the manpower for the mass armies, and thus became directly involved. In the case of World War I, this involvement was reinforced by the defeat in the war and the tragedy of Trianon, as well as the fact that these events became issues of concern to society as a whole. Official military thinking can be clearly traced in the military literature and archival sources of the era, but there are also traces of a “popular search for solutions.” A distinctive group of documents can be found in the records of Department 3b of the Royal Hungarian Ministry of Defence: descriptions of military-technical inventions submitted to this department, which typically originated from individuals outside the armed forces. This article presents and analyses such documents.