People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1874–1947/1948 ○ Died in a labour camp

Counter-revolutionary paramilitary commander who led the most brutal officer detachment of the Hungarian White Terror of 1919–1921

Born to an old noble family in Romhány, Nógrád County, the career officer took command of Horthy’s bodyguard in Szeged in 1919 and formed the first officer detachment. Torturing and killing Communists, Social Democrats, peasants and Jews, his unit is considered the most brutal of the Hungarian White Terror. Convicted of extortion in 1921, he lost his command and joined King Charles’s second return attempt; his battalion was dissolved in January 1922. He failed to build a fascist mass movement in the 1930s and in October 1944 again assembled a squad to hunt Jews. Captured by Soviet troops in 1945, he died in the Gulag.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1876–1962 ○ Died in Vienna

Legitimist general who led counter-revolutionary troops in western Hungary and joined both of King Charles’s return attempts in 1921

Born in Sopron and trained at the cadet school and war college in Vienna, he was the younger brother of the composer Ferenc Lehár. His First World War service won him the Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa and a barony. During the Soviet Republic he raised a force of some 2,000 men in Graz, and in August 1919 he became military commander of Western Hungary, where his troops carried out reprisals against Communists and Social Democrats. A legitimist, he placed himself at King Charles’s disposal in March 1921 and was named defence minister in the second attempt that October; when it failed he fled through Czechoslovakia to Germany. He later lived in Berlin and Vienna, administered his brother’s estate, and died in Vienna in 1962.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1881–1952 ○ Died in Soviet captivity

Chief of the Hungarian General Staff who was the strongest advocate of alliance with Germany and of war on the Soviet Union

Born into a Swabian family at Rezsőháza in the Banat (now Knićanin, Serbia), he became a cadet in Vienna in 1897 and served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. In 1919 he commanded the I Corps of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s Red Army before going over to Horthy’s National Army in June. Retired in 1936, he was recalled in 1938 as Chief of the General Staff and, with Defence Minister Károly Bartha, became the leading advocate of alliance with Germany. He oversaw the invasion and annexation of Carpatho-Ukraine in March 1939 and, after the Kassa bombing of June 1941, at once blamed the Soviet Union and urged an immediate declaration of war. He left the post of chief of staff in September 1941; arrested by Soviet forces in February 1945, he was taken to the USSR and died there in 1952.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1883–1946 ✕ Executed

Soldier-diplomat who pushed for the German alliance in Berlin and, as prime minister under occupation, sped up the Jewish deportations

Born Dimitrije Stojaković into a Serb family in Versec (Vršac), he served in the First World War as an intelligence officer of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. After the war he specialised in counter-espionage in Horthy’s counter-revolutionary army, was military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933 and, from 1935 to 1944, Hungary’s minister in Berlin, where he pressed for alliance with Germany. Prime minister and foreign minister after the German occupation of March 1944, he legalised the Arrow Cross, dissolved the trade unions, jailed opponents and sharply accelerated the deportation of Jews. Forced out by Horthy’s pressure in August, he was captured by American troops after the war, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1883–1947 ✕ Executed

Commander of the Hungarian Second Army destroyed on the Don in January 1943

Born Gusztáv Hautzinger, he trained at the Ludovika Academy and the Vienna war college and served as a staff officer in the First World War. On entering the Order of Vitéz in 1924 he took his mother’s surname, Jány, and from 1931 to 1936 he headed the Ludovika Academy. He became commander of the Second Army in March 1940 and led it to the Don in 1942. During the Soviet offensive of January 1943 he held to the no-retreat order, and when the army collapsed he issued an order of the day accusing his men of cowardice. Returning home voluntarily after the war, he was sentenced to death by a People’s Court and shot in 1947; the Supreme Court exonerated him in 1993.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1883–1951 ○ Died in prison

Factory owner who was prime minister of Hungary for three months after the August 1919 coup against the Peidl government

Born into a pharmacist’s family of German origin in Malacka (now Malacky, Slovakia), he studied engineering, worked for AEG in Berlin and then ran his own machinery works outside Budapest. He joined Mihály Károlyi’s Independence Party in 1912 and became one of his closest friends; after the Aster Revolution he was state secretary for war, but he drifted to the right and was dismissed in February 1919. Arrested under the Soviet Republic and sentenced to death, he had the sentence commuted and escaped. In August 1919 he joined the right-wing White House Comrades’ Association in ousting the Peidl government; on 7 August he was named prime minister, with Archduke Joseph August as regent, and held office until 24 November. Arrested by Rákosi’s regime in 1951 and sentenced to fifteen years, he died the same year; he was rehabilitated in 1990.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1884–1964 ○ Natural death in emigration

Defence minister who pressed for joining the invasion of Yugoslavia and the war on the Soviet Union, and harshened labour service

Born in Budapest, he graduated from the military technical academy at Mödling in 1904. After the fall of the Soviet Republic he joined Horthy’s National Army. Appointed defence minister by Imrédy in 1938, he kept the post until 1942; with Chief of Staff Werth he pressed for full participation in the invasion of Yugoslavia and for fighting on the Eastern Front, and after the Kassa bombing demanded an immediate declaration of war on the Soviets. In 1942 he removed the age limit for conscription into labour service battalions and in June announced in parliament that Jewishness would be defined in racial terms. Horthy forced him to resign in September 1942 over his excessive pro-German stance. After the war a military court stripped him of his rank; he emigrated to Venezuela and died in 1964 while visiting Linz, Austria.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1950 ○ Died of illness in exile

White Terror commander whose detachment around Kecskemét carried out the Orgovány killings and the Izsák pogrom

Born into a wealthy peasant family in Kecskemét, he was a fighter pilot in the Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops by the end of the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 Horthy’s chief of staff ordered him to “make order” around Kecskemét, and he became the de facto military governor of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve. His men took abducted people to the forest of Orgovány to be tortured and executed and staged a pogrom at Izsák; about a third of their victims were Jewish. Because he did not back King Charles’s return in 1921, Horthy’s amnesty shielded him, and he sat in parliament from 1927 to 1931. After the war he was sentenced to death in absentia, and he died of illness in Vigo, Spain, in 1950.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1912–2009 ○ Natural causes

The general and contested witness of 1956

“I was skin and bones coming out of five years of imprisonment.”

Béla Király was a Hungarian officer whose career crossed the Second World War, the construction of postwar socialism, and the 1956 Revolution. Sentenced to death by the postwar regime and later commuted and released, he became the highest-ranking military commander of the Hungarian armed forces that resisted the Soviet intervention. In exile he became a historian and teacher in the United States, while his memoirs and writings on the Tito–Stalin split argued that Stalin had prepared to invade Yugoslavia. Archive-based scholarship later disputed or qualified that claim, making Király both an important witness to 1956 and a contested author of Cold War memory.