Regent who led the counter-revolutionary National Army and ruled Hungary until 1944
Regent from 1920, Horthy led Hungary in alliance with Nazi Germany and into the invasion of the Soviet Union. After Germany occupied Hungary, 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz; Horthy was ousted after his October 1944 armistice attempt.
An Austro-Hungarian naval officer, he became commander-in-chief of the Navy in 1918. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 he entered Budapest at the head of the counter-revolutionary National Army, and in March 1920 the Diet elected him regent. His national-conservative and antisemitic administration banned the Communist Party and the Arrow Cross and sought to revise the Treaty of Trianon. Allied with Nazi Germany, he joined the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941; after the German occupation of March 1944, 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. In October 1944 he announced an armistice with the Soviets, was forced by the Germans to resign, and power passed to the Arrow Cross. He went into exile in Portugal after the war and died at Estoril in 1957.
Activities and affiliations
- 1920–1944 Government and administration · Hungary
Career Timeline
- 1920The Diet elected Horthy regent of the Kingdom of Hungary.
- 1940Hungary joined the Axis; Horthy's regime enforced antisemitic laws and a forced-labor system.
- 1941Hungary joined the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union; the government deported over 20,000 Jews to occupied Galicia.
- 1944After Germany occupied Hungary, Hungarian authorities deported about 437,000 Jews between May and July. Horthy ordered deportations halted in July and declared an armistice with the Soviets in October, but the Germans detained him and forced him to abdicate.
Related historical events
Antisemitic State Policy and the 1944 Deportations
During Horthy’s regency, the Hungarian government enacted laws to exclude Jews from public, economic, and cultural life. A 1920 law limited Jewish university enrollment. The 1938 law imposed quotas in some professions and economic sectors, while the 1939 law defined Jews in racial terms and further restricted voting rights and employment. In 1941 the government banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. From 1939, it also conscripted Jewish men into forced labor service. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Hungarian authorities deployed labor servicemen near the front in Axis-occupied eastern Europe, especially Ukraine. Marked by discriminatory armbands and denied adequate uniforms, food, and medical care, an estimated 25,000 to 42,000 died before Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944.
After the German occupation in March 1944, Hungarian authorities, working with German deportation experts, organized Jewish registration, compulsory yellow-star wearing, confinement in provincial transit ghettos, and rail deportations. From May 15 to July 9, Hungarian gendarmes and German officials deported approximately 437,000 people on 147 trains; about 420,000 were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Horthy ordered the deportations halted on July 7. Transports from areas around Budapest continued for two more days and stopped on July 9, though Adolf Eichmann’s German team and Hungarian government collaborators later carried out a small number of further deportations. In August Horthy dismissed Prime Minister Sztójay and installed a new government. On October 15 he announced an armistice with the Soviet Union, but German authorities detained him and threatened his son’s life, compelling him to install a government led by Ferenc Szálasi of the Arrow Cross Party. Hungary continued fighting alongside Germany under that government, while Arrow Cross militias murdered Jews in Budapest, including by shooting them into the Danube.