Governor of Hungary (1 March 1920 to 16 october 1944) Borned in Kenderes, Hungary 18 june 1868 and died in exile Estoril, Portugal 9 february 1957.
A scion of Hungarian landed gentry, Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (1868-1957), served Austria-Hungary as diplomat and naval officer, emerging as the decorated admiral of the joint navy by the First World War’s end. Horthy led conservative “White” officer detachments during the post-war upheavals and was tapped by the British to be the Regent (Kormányzó) of the Kingdom of Hungary (1920-1944), functioning as an authoritarian constitutional monarch, in conjunction with parliament, the latter elected by limited franchise.
The Regent’s nationalistic ambition of recovering lands lost in the Treaty of Trianon (1920) drew him close to resurgent Italy and Germany, with whose help Hungary regained a slice of the Uplands, Ruthenia, and Northern Transylvania during 1938-1940. German passage through Hungary and a joint invasion of Yugoslavia in April, 1941, ended Budapest’s claim of neutrality, but resulted in the recovery of Bácska province. A professed anti-Communist, in June, 1941 Horthy plunged Hungary into the German-Russian theater of the Second World War, expected by many observers to be a victory-march to Moscow. Instead, in the ensuing colossal military conflict, the Regent was pressed by Hitler for many additional troops, leading to hundreds of thousands of Hungarian casualties. After the collapse of the Don front in 1943, the Hungarian army, in the epic Battle of the Carpathians, stopped the Red Army for three months in 1944. Other fierce battles followed, now against the Romanian army as well: the defense of Erdely (Transylvania), fiery tank conflicts on the plains, and a stand on the Tisza river. Seeking a way out, in October, 1944, Horthy sought a separate peace from Stalin, however, a palace revolt by pro-war military elements and German intervention stifled his haphazard attempt, opening the gates to a right-wing Arrow-Cross takeover, followed by a horrendous three-month siege of Budapest. Ironically, the heavy losses Stalin had suffered in Hungary convinced him of the need to return the country to her small Trianon size.
In Horthy’s Hungary, private industry functioned unhindered, wages were low despite union activity, nobles owned most of the land, while landless laborers scraped by. Speech and the press were controlled, but not religion – Catholics, Protestants, and Jews worshipped in peace. As the middle class grew, it included many Jews, who made countless contributions, functioning as loyal, well-integrated, Hungarian-speaking citizens. Small wonder that for years Hungary served as a safe haven for Jewish refugees in Hitler’s Europe. But the Regent’s record was not lily white. Jewish entry into higher education was regulated and Jews were conscripted into wartime labor battalions. After the German occupation of the country in March, 1944, the SS deportation of the Jews began, also involving the Hungarian gendarmerie, but to Horthy’s credit, in July he ordered loyal military units to halt deportations from Budapest. After Horthy’s German deposition and capture in October, the Arrow-Cross regime resumed the shameful transports to Auschwitz.
All told, in the European international arena, comprised of quarrelsome nationalistic states, options available to Hungary were limited. While attempting to make the best of a difficult situation, it must be noted in the end that the honorable and patriotic Horthy’s political failures outweighed his accomplishments. Seeing the suppression of the Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising of 1956, while scraping by as an exile in Portugal, the heartbroken Horthy died at age 88. In 1993, his remains found a final resting place in free Hungary.