The research project seeks to analyze the interplay of the various German and Hungarian processes that led to the partial extermination of the Hungarian Jews in 1944.

I posit that the execution of the "Final Solution" in Hungary was a collaborative and joint endeavor of the German and Hungarian states with varying degrees of Hungarian cooperation and collaboration. The program of extermination was not a continuous but fragmented process, which can only be gauged properly with a thorough analysis of the often changing aims of and interplay between the main agencies. On both sides there were competing, internally divided actors with different interests and agendas that influenced their outlook on how to solve the Jewish question in Hungary. There was an inherent and evolving power struggle within German agencies and serious differences between Hungarian actors throughout 1944. The latter were vying for more power and eventually these power struggles determined the success or failure of the solution of the Jewish question in Hungary.

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The research lays particular emphasis on the evolution of and interplay between internal development and external contact. I seek to analyze why and how the accumulated knowledge of extermination was used so effectively in Hungary in the early phase (March and July 1944) and to what extent did local agendas influence this process. Through this analysis, I strive to probe the fault lines between competing actors and trace the process of radicalization (if any) in the framework of entanglements between institutions and persons.

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