Background
Alexander von Uzsok was born to a bourgeois family at Boksanybanya in Krasso-Szoreny in 1860.
Alexander von Uzsok was born to a bourgeois family at Boksanybanya in Krasso-Szoreny in 1860.
He graduated from the Ludovika Academy in 1884 and joined the Hungarian defense force, the Honved. Five years later he attended the War Academy and thereafter was assigned to the General Staff s railroad section.
Next came further duty in the Ministry of the Honved as well as front service as battalion and regimental commander; from 1907 to 1914 Szurmay served as section chief in the Honvedseg Ministry.
The outbreak of war found the Hungarian in command of the Thirty-eighth Honved Infantry Division; shortly thereafter he was appointed chief of his own army group consisting of two divisions. With the latter he was stationed in the Ung River valley and entrusted with defense of Lupkov Pass against the invading Russian armies arriving from Galicia. Szurmay fought a number of unorthodox battles in the Carpathian passes, and in December 1914, Army Group Szurmay advanced through the Tylicz Pass in the Carpathians and stormed into Galicia; the Hungarian boldly assisted the Fourth Army in the strategic battle near New Sandez. Early in January 1915, Szurmay was recalled by his native government in Budapest, which was fearful of a Russian invasion, and given command of a new army group with instructions once again to defend the Uzsok Pass. From January to April 1915, Szurmay's troops held the pass in bitter fighting. Thereafter he took part in the general advance of the Austro-Hungarian armies after the breakthrough at Gorlice. Szurmay was then given command of a new Corps Szurmay to February 1917 and raised into the Hungarian baronage.
General Szurmay occupied the post of Hungarian Honvedseg minister from February 1917 to October 1918. In this capacity he participated in a crucial crown council convened on December 4, 1917, to discuss a possible division of the common army into separate Austrian and Hungarian armies. Szurmay pressed for such a division, asserting that "all groups in Hungary are united on the issue of a Hungarian army." Emperor Charles closed the council by stating that no solution to the problem could be found until the end of the war.
From February to August 1919, Szurmay was incarcerated in Budapest as one of the officials held responsible for continuing the war; the subsequent occupation of the capital by Rumanian units resulted in his release. The national government of Admiral Miklos Horthy later honored General of Infantry Szurmay von Uzsok as "savior of the fatherland," and voted him into the Hungarian Legion of Honor. This lofty recognition came to him for his deeds in March 1915, when he had been thrice ordered to abandon the Uzsok Pass and when he had an equal number of times rejected the order and held the pass as part of the overall front command under General Alexander von Linsingen of the German South Army. Szurmay died in Budapest sometime in 1945.