Liberty Square, Budapest: How Hungary Won the Second World War

Abstract

After more than sixty years of almost complete silence about its role in the Second World War, Hungary managed to find an officially satisfactory and morally uplifting story of the country’s involvement in the war. One of the central squares of Budapest offers a vivid, sensual, and tangible demonstration of both the futile past efforts of coming to grips with a difficult past and the unexpected recent solution. The square, its monuments and artefacts provide a spatial trace of historical and historiographical contentions and controversies of the past decades and the future to come.