Miklós Horthy

Regent of Hungary (1920-1944)

Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya
Date of birth	June 18, 1868
Date of death	February 9, 1957
Political Party	Independent
Political positions

''Horthy redirects here. For other uses, see Horthy (disambiguation).

Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, Duke of Szeged and Otranto (Hungarian: Vitéz"Vitéz" refers to a Hungarian knightly order founded by Miklós Horthy ("Vitézi Rend"); literally, "vitéz" means "valiant". nagybányai Horthy Miklós, Szeged és Otranto hercege; , German: Nikolaus von Horthy und Nagybánya; Kenderes, June 18, 1868 – Estoril, February 9, 1957) was a Hungarian Admiral and statesman and served as the Regent of Hungary from March 1, 1920 until October 15, 1944. He was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" (Ő Főméltósága a Magyar Királyság Kormányzója'').

Horthy had commanded the Austro-Hungarian fleet in World War I. After Béla Kun seized (1919) power in Hungary, the counterrevolutionary government put Horthy in command of its forces. With the consent of the Triple Entente, Romanian forces invaded Hungary and defeated Kun, but also caused depredations of their own. When they evacuated Budapest (Nov., 1919), Horthy entered it and in 1920 was made regent and head of the state. He checked two attempts (March and Oct., 1921) of former Emperor Charles I (Hungarian King Charles IV) to regain his throne in Hungary — once by persuasion and once by armed force. Charles was then formally barred from the throne and exiled, and Horthy found himself regent of a kingless kingdom. A conservative who was distinctly inclined toward the right, he guided Hungary through the years between the two world wars. After the suicide (1941) of the premier, Pál Teleki, Hungary entered World War II as an ally of Germany. Despite Horthy's opposition, German troops occupied Hungary in Mar., 1944. When Russian troops entered Hungary, Horthy sent an armistice commission to Moscow and announced (Oct., 1944) the surrender of Hungary. The Germans immediately forced Horthy to countermand his order and resign. He was taken to Bavaria and later was freed by U.S. troops. After appearing as a witness at the Nuremberg war-crimes trial (1946), he settled (1949) in Portugal, where he died. His memoirs appeared in English in 1956.

Early Life and Naval Career

As a young man Horthy traveled around the world and served as a diplomat for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Turkey and other countries. From 1908 until 1914 he was an aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Joseph, for whom he had a great respect.
During World War I, Horthy distinguished himself first as a captain and later as an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. During the war he defeated the Italian Navy several times, and was wounded at the battle of the Otranto Straits. Due to his success on behalf of the Dual Monarchy, he was promoted to Commander in Chief of the Imperial Fleet in March, 1918, and held that position until he was ordered by Emperor Karl to surrender the fleet to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on October 31.

Dates of rank and assigments

1896 Fregattenleutnant (fregatthadnagy - Sub-Lieutenant)
1900 Linienschiffleutnant (sorhajóhadnagy - Lieutenant)
Jan 1901 SMS Sperber (commander)
1902 SMS Kranich (commander)
Jun 1908 SMS Taurus (commander)
Aug 1908 SMS Kaiser Karl VI (GDO-Gemeindienstoffizier-First Officer, temporary)
1 Jan 1909 Korvettenkäpitan (korvettkapitány - Lieutenant-Commander)
1 Nov 1909 aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Josef
1 Nov 1911 Fregattenkäpitan (fregattkapitány - Commander)
Dec 1912-Mar 1913 SMS Budapest (commander)
20 Jan 1914 Linienschiffskäpitan (sorhajókapitány - Captain)
Aug 1914 SMS Habsburg (commander)
Dec 1914 SMS Novara (commander)
1 Feb 1918 SMS Prinz Eugen (commander)
27 Feb 1918 Konteradmiral (ellentengernagy - Rear Admiral)
27 Feb 1918 appointed (last) Commander in Chief of the fleet (over 11 admiral and 24 senior linienschiffskapitän) by Emperor Karl I
30 Oct 1918 Vizeadmiral (altengernagy - Vice Admiral)

Interwar Period, 1919-1939

The end of the war saw Hungary turned into a landlocked nation, and hence the new government had little need for Horthy's services. However, he was still regarded by his people as a war hero, and this status paid off in 1919, when the Communist Béla Kun seized power in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Horthy became head of the armed forces of the counter-revolutionary government established on April 10 in the southern city of Szeged (occupied by French forces). As the head of the newly organised National Army, he decided to spare his forces and avoided all combat. On August 6 Romanian forces entered Budapest, deserted by the Communists three days before. During the Romanian military control of Budapest, counter-revolutionaries and Romanian forces launched the White Terror against communists. The Romanian army retreated from Budapest on November 14 leaving Horthy in command of the city. Following the orders of the Entente, Romanian troops finally evacuated Hungary on February 25 1920.

In March, 1920, the National Assembly of Hungary re-established the Kingdom of Hungary, but elected not to recall Charles IV of Hungary from exile. Instead, they proclaimed Horthy as Regent for an indefinite period of time. The Admiral without a fleet, in a country without a coastline, ruled for the next 24 years as the Regent for a Kingdom without a King.

Horthy decided not to participate in everyday politics after having been elected as the regent.

A staunch conservative, Horthy eventually began to sympathize with Fascism and appointed several pro-fascist officials to cabinet posts in the late 1930s. However, his government was more of conservative authoritarian government rather than a fascist one. Eventually, when the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler began to rise to power and put pressure on neighboring states to return territories lost after the war, Hitler became Horthy's patron. In November 1938, the Vienna Arbitrage enabled him to annex nearly one-third of Slovakia, mainly populated by Hungarians. Five months later, when Hitler took over what remained of Czechoslovakia, the Germans allowed Hungary to seize Carpathian Ruthenia, as well.

World War II

In 1940, Hungary prepared to go to war against Romania to regain another lost province, Transylvania. Again, Hitler intervened on Horthy's behalf and gave Hungary half of the disputed territory without firing a shot. In April 1941, Hungary became a full member of the Axis, participating together with Germany and Bulgaria in the invasion of Yugoslavia (in protest against this, Prime-Minister Pál Teleki committed suicide). In 1942 Horthy decided to open negotiations with the Allies. The secret delegation was led by Albert Szent-Györgyi, and they met British diplomats in Istanbul on several occasions. These negotiations were known to the German intelligence services, and even the Allies used the talks with Hungary to distract the Nazis.

In January 1942, by the order of some disloyal officers (lieutenant-general Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeidner, major-general József Grassy, colonel László Deák and gendarmarie-captain Márton Zöldy) numerous Serbian and Jewish civilians were murdered in the Bačka region of Vojvodina, and their corpses were thrown into the rivers Danube and Tisza. When Horthy ordered investigation, the officers responsible fled to Nazi Germany and only returned after the German Nazi regime occupied Hungary in 1944. They were executed after the war.

By 1944, the fortunes of war had turned against Germany and its allies, and the Red Army stood at Hungary's borders. The Germans invited Horthy to Klessheim (today in Austria) for negotiations, and they kept him virtually captive, so he couldn't order resistance. The Wehrmacht occupied Hungary on 19 March to appoint a puppet government in Budapest, which helpfully assisted the Germans in deporting the Jews of Hungary. The Regent decided to act in June: he stopped the deportation of the Jews living in Budapest. After the Romanians switched to the Allied side, Horthy dismissed the government, began to organise another and started negotiations with the Soviets. Again, the Germans intervened by sending commando Otto Skorzeny to Budapest. Skorzeny kidnapped Horthy's son Nicholas on the day he declared an end to the war. Horthy was forced to revoke his declarations and abdicate.

Horthy spent the rest of the war under house arrest in Bavaria, being treated remarkably well under the circumstances, and was arrested by the Americans in May 1945.

Horthy, Hungary, and the Holocaust

Starting in 1938, Hungary under the regency of Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures. The first, in 1938, restricted the number of Jews in the professions, the administration, and in commerce to twenty percent, and reduced it to five percent the following year. 250,000 Hungarian Jews lost their income. A "Third Jewish Law" prohibited intermarriage and defined Jews racially.

Radical Hungarian governments - mainly the puppet government of Döme Sztójay, appointed after the German occupation - under Horthy also actively participated in the Holocaust, although Horthy ultimately resisted pressure to deport Jews en masse. Nevertheless, the first massacre of Hungarian Jews took place in 1941 when 20,000 Jews were expelled from Carpathian Ruthenia to German-occupied Soviet territories in July of 1941, where they were killed by SS troops in the autumn of 1941.

Horthy, however, ultimately resisted German pressure and refused to allow the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German extermination camps in occupied Poland as part of the Holocaust in 1944, and even prevented deportation of 200,000 Jews from Budapest. His resistance was partly inspired by the appeals made to Horthy, a Protestant by birth, by the Church to have mercy on the Jews. After he was forced to abdicate, and was placed into house arrest by Nazis at the end of 1944, Hungarian cooperation resumed, and, ultimately, of the original 825,000 Jews before the war, only 260,000 Hungarian Jews survived and 565,000 perished.

Horthy certainly did as much as any Western leader to protect and save the Hungarian Jews, and under the circumstances did a great deal more than the non-axis leaders, or the western media. The fact that the 200,000 Jews in Budapest survived until the arrival of the Soviets, could not have been possible without Horthy’s active resistance to the German orders, nor without the Hungarian Roman Catholic Church, which handed out false baptism certificates and false IDs in an effort to save the nation's Jews from being deported. At the time the New York Times itself admitted the fair treatment Jews received in Hungary from the regent. After saving the Jews of Budapest the first time and after returning the trainload of Jews to Kistarcsa, on July 15, 1944 the Times had an article praising Hungary as the last refuge of Jews in Europe, and that “Hungarians tried to protect the Jews.”

Post-War Life

Although the new Yugoslavia demanded that Horthy be tried as a war criminal, the Allies refused to do so. This was mainly the result of American influence, but even Stalin agreed, due to Horthy's age. He was released and settled in Estoril, Portugal, where he died in 1957.

While in Portugal he wrote his memoirs, Ein Leben für Ungarn (English: A Life for Hungary), published under the name of Nikolaus von Horthy, in which he narrated many personal experiences from his youth until the end of World War II, claimed to have distrusted Hitler for much of the time he knew him, claimed that he tried to perform the best actions and appoint the best officials in his country, and gave evidence for Hungary's mistreatment by many other countries since the end of World War I.

Horthy married once, with Magdolna Purgly de Jószáshely. He had two sons, Nicholas and Steven, who served as his political assistants; and two daughters, Magda and Paula. Of his four children, only Nicholas outlived him. According to footnotes in his memoirs, Horthy was very distraught about the failure of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In his will, Horthy asked that his body not be returned to Hungary "until the last Russian soldier has left." His heirs honored the request. In 1993, when Russian troops evacuated their Cold War bases in Hungary, Horthy's body was returned and he was buried in his hometown of Kenderes.

Notes

External links

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