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John Flournoy Montgomery
John Flournoy Montgomery (September 20, 1878 - November 7, 1954) was an American businessman and U.S. Minister to Hungary from 1933-1941. This diplomatic assignment placed Montgome...view moreJohn Flournoy Montgomery (September 20, 1878 - November 7, 1954) was an American businessman and U.S. Minister to Hungary from 1933-1941. This diplomatic assignment placed Montgomery at the center of the seething intrigue and gathering storm that characterized 1930’s Hungary and Central Europe; in particular he was witness to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s influence in Budapest, and the complex struggle over the alliance between Hungary and Nazi Germany. His memoirs, entitled Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite (1947), are considered a valuable document of that era.
A native of Missouri, Montgomery was born and educated in the town of Sedalia. He built a successful career in the dairy industry and was the president of the International Milk Company in Vermont from 1925-1933. A loyal and generous supporter of the Democratic Party, after Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed the White House in 1932, Montgomery was rewarded with the promise of a diplomatic job.
In June 1933, Montgomery was sworn in as U.S. Minister to Hungary and, from his central location on the Danube, engaged to monitor the goings-on in Hungary’s neighbors (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) and other countries in the region, including Bulgaria, Poland, Germany and Italy. The most critical trend which Montgomery was required to monitor from Budapest was the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany, and Hitler’s growing influence in Hungarian political circles.
Montgomery was recalled from his posting Budapest in March 1941, three months before Hungary finally joined the Axis as a full war partner during the invasion of the Soviet Union. He remained committed to the well-being of the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, who was captured by American troops at the war’s end, using his influence in Washington to help extricate Horthy from indictment and the Nuremberg Trials.
Montgomery died in 1954 at the age of 76.view less