Béla Heinrich Bánáthy (; December 1, 1919 – September 4, 2003) was a Hungarian-American linguist, and Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. He is known as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, established the International Systems Institute in 1982, and was co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group in 1984.
He grew up in largely rural Hungary and served in the Hungarian military during World War II. When Russia invaded Hungary in April 1945, he and his family fled to Allied-occupied Austria and lived in a displaced persons camp for six years. In 1951, they emigrated to Chicago, sponsored by the Presbyterian church. Within the year his former commanding officer suggested to the U.S. government that they hire Bánáthy as a Hungarian instructor at the Army Language School in Monterey, California. While living in Monterey, he founded the White Stag Leadership Development Program.
His program gained national attention, and the Boy Scouts of America conducted research into incorporating leadership training into its programs. The Boy Scouts of America's Wood Badge and junior leader training programs had until then focused primarily on Scoutcraft skills, not leadership. William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt among others resisted the change.
After 20 years, Bánáthy left the renamed Defense Language Institute and went to work for the Far West Laboratory for Research and Development in Berkeley and later San Francisco. He retired from Far West in 1989 but maintained an active interest in social systems and science, including attending many conferences and advising students and others in those fields. In 1992, he helped restart the Hungarian Scout Association within his native country. In 2003, Bánáthy and Eva moved to live with their son Tibor in Chico, California. After a brief and unexpected illness, Bánáthy died on September 4, 2003. Peter Bánáthy had earned the honorary title Vitéz for his service during World War I, and Béla, as his oldest son, inherited the title.
Military service during World War II
In 1937, Bánáthy entered the :hu:Ludovika Akadémia as was the custom for young men aspiring to military careers. The peacetime Hungarian Army received very little training. Bánáthy served two tours on the Russian front in World War II as an armored infantry officer. The Hungarian Army expanded rapidly from an initial force of 80,000, but when fighting started, the rank-and-file of the army had undergone only eight weeks of training. part of the larger force defending the drive by the German 6th Army against Soviet General Vasily Chuikov's 62nd Army, which was defending Stalingrad. Bánáthy was seriously wounded during the action, and he returned from the front to Budapest where he spent seven months recuperating. He married his fiancé, Eva Balazs, with his arm in a sling on December 5, 1942 in Budapest. Bánáthy became committed to training the young men in officer's leadership skills; he served as the voluntary national director for youth leadership development and a member of the National Council of the Hungarian Scout Association. On 15 October 1944, Farkas was named commander of the Pest bridgehead and Government Commissioner for Evacuation. In early November 1944, the first Russian units appeared on the southeastern edge of Budapest. As an associate of Farkas, Bánáthy likely had advance notice of the Russian advance. He also knew he would likely be executed if captured. Bánáthy was able to get his wife Eva, one-year-old son Béla and two-week-old son László out of Budapest. Bánáthy's family, along with other officers and their families, found shelter at first in farmhouses, and later in bunkers, caves, and trenches.
When the Hungarian Second Army was disbanded on 1 December 1944 due to a lack of equipment and personnel, the remaining units of the Second Army, including Bánáthy's, were transferred to the Third Army. The siege of Budapest began when the city was encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army. Bánáthy fought with the remainder of his unit against the Russians until after Budapest fell on 13 February 1945. The Axis was striving to protect the last oil fields they controlled in western Hungary around Lake Balaton. By late March 1945, most of what was left of the Hungarian Third Army was surrounded and destroyed about to the west of Budapest in an advance by the Soviet 46th Army towards Vienna. The remaining shattered units fought on as they retreated progressively westward through the Transdanubian Mountains towards Austria.
Bánáthy's family and others of the remainder of his and other military units made their way west, along with tens of thousands of other refugees, about into Austria, trying to stay ahead of advancing Russian troops. Temperatures through the time of their flight remained near .
Life in displaced persons camp
thumb|Refugee family in their quarters in Bavaria after the war ended in 1945.
Bánáthy reunited with his family in Austria. As the war ended and Austria was occupied in April 1945 by the French, British, Soviet and US military forces, the family was placed in an Allied displaced persons camp. They were housed in a single room in a wooden barrack; it served as their bedroom, kitchen, living room and firewood storage area. Food was extremely scarce and at times they subsisted on around 600 calories per person per day. They were among 1.4 million displaced persons in Austria at the time during a worldwide food shortage as a result of the war. Food was also severely restricted by punitive U.S. policies including directive JCS 1067. In 1947 German citizens were surviving on 1040 calories a day, but the Allies were also suffering from food shortages.
Bánáthy later traded for milk to give two-year-old Béla and one-year-old László enough protein. As extremely little food was available in the camps, in early 1947 his wife's twin sister came from Hungary to take their older two sons back to live with the older sister. The Pallendal family, Bánáthy's in-laws, was well-educated and relatively wealthy, so they had access to more food than what was available in the camps. They intended to return the Banathy boys to their parents within a year. Beginning in early 1948, when the Cold War ensued, it became virtually impossible for refugees or displaced persons to cross from the border of one country into another, or even from one Occupation Zone to another. The Pallendal family could not return the two boys from behind the Iron Curtain. He was ordained by the World Council of Churches and became minister for youth among Hungarian refugees. Banathy served as director of religious education of the Protestant Refugee Service of Austria, was editor of a religious youth service and of a Scout publication. In 1949, with help from a Swiss foundation, Bánáthy assisted in establishing and was selected as the President of the Collegium Hungaricum, a boarding school for refugees, at Zell am See near Saalfelden, Austria.
In 1951, in what was a common practice during this time, the Hungarian Police arrived at dawn to seize the Pallendal family home and arrest and deport the family from Budapest. Seven-year-old Béla and six-year-old László Banathy, along with their Pallendal grandmother and two aunts, were put aboard a freight train and sent toward Russia. The train stopped occasionally and a few hundred people were forced off at rural towns. The Pallendal family was ejected in eastern Hungary. There an uncle located them and hid them from authorities in a small village.<!--SEE NOTE AT "Saalfelden" ABVE.-->
Emigrates to the United States
In January, 1951, the student body of the Presbyterian McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago sponsored Béla, Eva, Tibor and Robert Banathy as refugees to the United States.
Begins teaching Hungarian
Bánáthy moved to Monterey in June 1951, a pivotal change in his life. At the Army Language School, he met Joseph Szentkiralyi (Americanized as St. Clair), the founder of the Hungarian Department. They soon figured out they had met at the 4th World Scout Jamboree in 1933. The wives of the two men also realized they had been girlhood friends in grammar school in Budapest. He was finally able to arrange for 13-year-old Béla and 11-year-old László to emigrate to the United States The boys were greeted by their parents at San Francisco International Airport at 1:10 a.m. The boys' release marked the first time since the Cold War that anyone under 65 years old had been allowed to leave Hungary to be reunited with family.
As part of his master's degree program in counseling psychology at San José State University, he wrote a thesis titled "A Design for Leadership Development in Scouting". This book described the founding principles of the White Stag program, which was later adapted by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Prior to Bánáthy's work, the adult Wood Badge and the junior leader training programs had focused on teaching Scoutcraft skills and some aspects of the Patrol Method. His research and findings on teaching principles and competencies of leadership had a huge impact on these two programs, shifting their focus to leadership skills.
Some individuals on the national staff and many volunteers across the nation resisted the idea of changing the focus of Wood Badge from training leaders in Scoutcraft to leadership skills. Among them was William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt, who had been the first United States Wood Badge Course Director in 1948. Although officially retired, he had many loyal followers. He was adamant that Wood Badge should continue to teach Scoutcraft skills and tried to persuade the national council to stick to that tradition, but his objections were ignored. (In 2008, the White Stag program celebrated its 50th anniversary.) In 1960, the Monterey Bay Area Council recognized Béla for his exceptional service to youth and awarded him the Silver Beaver.
In the 1970s, due to the success of the White Stag program, Bánáthy was appointed to the Interamerican Scout Committee and participated in three interamerican "Train the Trainer" events in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. He was also honorary editor of three international systems journals: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, the Journal of Applied Systems Studies, and Systems. He was on the Board of Editors of World Futures, and served as a contributing editor of Educational Technology.