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.
Career timeline
1904Played for the Hungarian national football team
1912Joined the Independence Party
1918–1919State secretary for war in the Károlyi government
Gendarmerie officer whose detachment murdered two Népszava journalists and who joined King Charles’s 1921 return attempt
Born in Marosvásárhely, he became gendarmerie commander of Sopron after the fall of the Soviet Republic. On 17 February 1920 officers of his detachment murdered Béla Somogyi and Béla Bacsó of Népszava as a warning to Horthy’s opponents, and at the regency vote in March his troops kept “order” in the National Assembly. In August 1921 he refused to evacuate Sopron, opening the way for the town to remain in Hungary. That October he and other legitimist officers urged King Charles to seize power and escorted his armoured trains towards Budapest, but were defeated at Budaörs; he was amnestied and pensioned off. In 1932 he founded the Hungarian National Fascist Party under joint leadership with Pál Prónay.
Career timeline
1919Gendarmerie commander of Sopron
1920His officers murder Somogyi and Bacsó
1921Refuses to evacuate Sopron
1921King Charles’s second return attempt; Battle of Budaörs
Benedictine cardinal who led the Hungarian Catholic Church as Archbishop of Esztergom and Prince Primate in 1927–1945
Born Szapucsek György into a roofer’s family of Slovak origin at Deáki, now in Slovakia, he joined the Benedictines at Pannonhalma in 1901 and was ordained in 1908. In 1927 Pius XI appointed him Archbishop of Esztergom and made him a cardinal, and as Prince Primate he sat in the upper house of parliament in his own right. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 he organised Church aid for the Polish refugees in Hungary. In spring 1944 he sought to have Catholic converts exempted from deportation but won the exemption only for priests, monks and nuns; he made no public condemnation of the deportations and on 29 June decided against issuing a pastoral letter. He regarded Szálasi’s inauguration as “Leader of the Nation” as illegal and refused to attend his oath-taking, and died in an air-raid shelter in Esztergom in March 1945.
Career timeline
1901Joined the Benedictines at Pannonhalma
1908Ordained priest
1910s–1927Professor at Sant’Anselmo, Rome; procurator general of the order
1927–1945Archbishop of Esztergom, Prince Primate, cardinal
1944Sought exemption for converts; decided against a pastoral letter
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.
Career timeline
1904Graduated from the military technical academy at Mödling
1914–1918Senior commands in Budapest and Trieste
1919Fought the Czechoslovak and Romanian armies; joined the National Army
1938–1942Defence minister
1945Stripped of rank by a military court
1950s–1964Emigrated to Venezuela; railway engineer
Right-radical officer who organised the Szeged National Army and as prime minister in 1932–1936 steered Hungary towards Italy and Germany
Born in Murga, Tolna County, the son of the village schoolmaster, he served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 he founded the paramilitary MOVE and played a leading role in organising Horthy’s National Army, and in 1921 he led the armed opposition to King Charles’s return. He became defence minister in Bethlen’s government in 1929 and prime minister in 1932. He aligned with Mussolini, signing the Rome Protocols in 1934, and as the first foreign head of government to visit Hitler concluded a trade agreement with Germany. He died of illness in Munich in 1936.
Gömbös’s successor as prime minister in 1936–1938, who announced the Győr programme and introduced the First Jewish Law
Born in Budapest, he began his civil-service career in Pest County in 1909 and after the revolutions was head of Győr and Komárom counties. He entered parliament in 1927 and became Gömbös’s minister of agriculture in 1935. Succeeding Gömbös as prime minister in October 1936, he promised a return to Bethlen’s constitutional course and in 1937 banned the Party of National Will and had Szálasi imprisoned. In March 1938 he announced the Győr programme, but after the Anschluss he brought pro-German politicians into the cabinet and negotiated with the extreme right, and resigned in May. The First Jewish Law his government introduced passed under Imrédy, and from December 1938 until his death he was Speaker of the House of Representatives.
National radical politician who denounced the Novi Sad massacre in parliament and was executed for preparing an anti-Nazi uprising
He was born at Szarvas. In 1923 he founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös but drew away, forming the National Radical Party in 1930; in the 1930s he turned to speaking out against antisemitism. In 1939 he returned to parliament for the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Turning against the war in late 1941, he called in the Christmas issue of Népszava for an Independence Front to take Hungary out of the war and bring land reform and universal suffrage; in January 1942 he warned Bárdossy of the coming Novi Sad massacre and then denounced it in parliament as “a state-organized pogrom”. Wounded in a gunfight resisting arrest when the Germans occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, he was freed in October and in November elected president of the Liberation Committee of the Hungarian National Uprising, but was arrested again and hanged at Sopronkőhida on 24 December.
Career timeline
1908Doctorate in law
1914–1918Served with the hussars
1922Elected deputy for the Unity Party
1923Co-founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös
1930Founded the National Radical Party
1939–1944Deputy for the Independent Smallholders’ Party
1944President of the Liberation Committee; arrested and executed
Hungarian communist who backed Soviet intervention with Kádár in 1956 and became prime minister after the revolution was crushed
Born into a German Catholic family in Seregélyes, he studied law and was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front in 1915 and sent to Tomsk. There he joined the Bolsheviks and commanded an international POW unit; back in Hungary in 1918 he helped found the Hungarian Communist Party and was war commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936 and, under the name Otto Flatter, commanded the XI International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he was Budapest’s chief of police and then a diplomat. In the 1956 revolution he was interior minister under Imre Nagy, but in November he went to Moscow with János Kádár and openly backed Soviet armed intervention. As minister of the armed forces and public security in Kádár’s government he helped organise the security regiments and the Workers’ Militia, and he was prime minister from 1958 to 1961.
Career timeline
1915Captured by the Russians; held in Tomsk
1918Co-founder of the Hungarian Communist Party
1919War commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic
1936–1939Commander of the XI International Brigade in Spain
1946–1949Budapest chief of police
1956Interior minister under Nagy; minister of the armed forces and public security under Kádár
Last Habsburg monarch, Emperor Charles I of Austria and King Charles IV of Hungary, who twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne in 1921
In November 1916 he succeeded his grand-uncle Franz Joseph as Emperor of Austria (as Charles I) and King of Hungary (as Charles IV). His secret peace negotiations with the Allies failed, and in the autumn of 1918 the empire fell apart. On 11 November in Austria and on 13 November in Hungary he renounced participation in affairs of state, carefully avoiding the word abdication. After going into exile in Switzerland in 1919, he twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne, in March and October 1921, but failed in the face of opposition from Regent Horthy. Arrested after the second attempt, he was exiled to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died of respiratory failure in 1922. The Catholic Church beatified him in 2004.
Career timeline
1916Becomes Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary
Chief of the General Staff who ordered the Bačka intervention behind the Novi Sad massacre and later sought contact with the West
Born Ferenc Knaus (or Knauz) at Moson, he served as an Austro-Hungarian staff officer in the First World War and in 1934 took his mother’s surname, Szombathelyi. In 1941 he led the Carpathian Group in the invasion of the Soviet Union. That September he succeeded Werth as Chief of the General Staff, and in January 1942 he ordered General Feketehalmy-Czeydner to intervene in Bačka, an operation that grew into punitive raids on Serb villages and the Novi Sad massacre. In 1943 he opened the investigation and court martial of those responsible for the massacre, and with Kállay he led the contacts with the Western Allies. Removed after the German occupation of 1944, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a People’s Court after the war, handed over to Yugoslavia and shot at Petrovaradin in 1946.
Career timeline
1914–1918Austro-Hungarian staff officer
1926–1938Instructor and commander, Ludovica Military Academy
1938–1939Deputy Chief of Staff
1941Commander, Carpathian Group
1941–1944Chief of the General Staff
1946Life sentence by a People’s Court; executed after extradition to Yugoslavia
Wartime prime minister who refused German deportation demands and sought a secret armistice with the Western Allies
From an old gentry family of Szabolcs County, he was a county lord-lieutenant and minister of agriculture from 1932 to 1935, a conservative of the Bethlen school. In 1941 he voted in the upper house against the Third Jewish Law. Made prime minister at Horthy’s request in March 1942, he kept up the war against the Soviet Union while refusing German demands to deport Hungary’s Jews and negotiating an armistice with the Western Allies. A secret preliminary armistice was signed off Istanbul in September 1943, but when Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 he was ousted and hid in the Turkish legation. Captured in October 1944, he was held in Dachau and Mauthausen until freed in 1945; he went into exile in 1946 and died in New York.
Career timeline
1921–1929Lord-lieutenant of Szabolcs County
1929–1931Deputy under-secretary, Ministry of Trade
1932–1935Minister of agriculture
1942–1944Prime minister; secret armistice talks with the Allies
1944–1945Refuge in the Turkish legation; Dachau and Mauthausen
The Reformed pastor-president who declared neutrality before Soviet tanks
At a press conference on November 1, 1956, asked about the likelihood of a new Soviet assault: "Such a tragedy is humanly impossible… it will never take place."
A Reformed pastor who became the face of Hungary's post-war democracy as founder and leader of the Independent Smallholders' Party. After his party's landslide victory, he served as prime minister (1945–46) and was elected the republic's first president, but communist salami tactics forced his resignation in 1948 on fabricated treason charges against his son-in-law; he spent the next eight years under house arrest. In October 1956 he joined Imre Nagy's revolutionary government as minister of state and was present at the November 1 cabinet meeting that voted unanimously to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and declare neutrality. Arrested after the crushing of the uprising, he was sentenced to six years and amnestied in 1959; the Supreme Court annulled his conviction in 1989.
Career timeline
1921–1929Reformed pastor; edited church periodicals
1936–1944Smallholders MP; pressed to exit the war; hiding after German occupation
1945–1946Prime Minister
1946–1948President of the Republic; forced to resign
1948–1956House arrest
1956.10–11Minister of State in Nagy's revolutionary government
Communist deputy war commissar of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and a leading figure of its Red Terror
Born to a Jewish family in Nyíregyháza, he became a journalist and was taken prisoner by Russia during the First World War. After the October Revolution he organised Communist Hungarian prisoners of war in Moscow with Béla Kun, and in December 1918 he took part in founding the Spartacist League in Germany. In the Soviet Republic he was deputy people’s commissar of war and commissar of public education, and his guards became known as the Lenin Boys. A central figure of the Red Terror, which executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial, he flew to Moscow in late May to see Lenin. He died on 2 August 1919 after being caught crossing into Austria; the authorities reported that he had shot himself.
Career timeline
1915Captured by the Russian army
1918Organised the Hungarian POW Communist group in Moscow
1918Took part in founding the Spartacist League
1919Member of the KMP Central Committee
1919Deputy war commissar; commissar of public education
Hungarian general who directed the Novi Sad massacre, fled to Germany after his conviction and joined the SS
Born Franz Zeidner into a Transylvanian Saxon family, he served as an artillery and staff officer in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, and between the wars changed his surname to the more Magyar-sounding Feketehalmy-Czeydner. In August 1941 he became commander of the Fifth Corps at Szeged. In January 1942 Chief of Staff Szombathelyi sent him against the partisans in Bačka; villagers there were massacred on his orders, and he organised the Novi Sad massacre. Sentenced to fifteen years by a court martial in January 1944, he fled to Vienna with other convicted officers and volunteered for the SS. As deputy defence minister under the Arrow Cross he signed the death warrant of his critic Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky. After the war he was handed via Hungary to Yugoslavia and executed in November 1946.
Career timeline
1910Commissioned lieutenant of artillery
1914–1918Austro-Hungarian artillery and staff officer
1941–1942Commander, Fifth Corps; directed the Bačka massacres
1944Convicted by court martial; fled to Vienna and joined the SS
1944–1945Deputy defence minister under the Arrow Cross
Wartime prime minister who declared war on the Soviet Union over the Kassa bombing and approved the deportation of Jews
A lawyer and diplomat from Szombathely, he moved to the foreign ministry in 1922 and headed its press department. He became foreign minister in January 1941 and, after Teleki’s suicide in April, prime minister as well. Seeking to regain lands lost at Trianon, he followed a pro-German line, joined the invasion of Yugoslavia, declared a state of war with the Soviet Union without parliament’s consent after the Kassa bombing in June, and took Hungary into war with Britain and the United States. He pushed through the deportation of “alien” Jews and the Third Jewish Law, and Horthy forced him out in March 1942. Sentenced to death by a People’s Court after the war, he was shot in January 1946.
Career timeline
1913–1922Official, Ministry of Culture and Education
1922–1941Press chief and diplomat, foreign ministry
1941Foreign minister
1941–1942Prime minister and foreign minister; war on the USSR
1945–1946Sentenced by a People’s Court and executed
Commander of the Hungarian First Army who went over to the Soviets in October 1944 and headed the provisional government in Debrecen
Born in Budapest into a Székely family, he graduated from the Ludovica Military Academy in 1910 and fought in the First World War. He was military attaché in Berlin from 1933 to 1936, headed Horthy’s military office from October 1942 and became colonel general in 1943. Given command of the First Army on 1 August 1944, he supported leaving the Axis; after the failed attempt of 15 October he went over to the Soviets the next day and urged his commanders by radio to defect. In December the Interim National Assembly in Debrecen elected him prime minister of the Provisional National Government, which made the armistice with the Soviets, declared war on Germany and set up people’s tribunals; he served until the November 1945 elections. Elected for the Hungarian Independence Party in 1947, he lost his seat, withdrew from public life and died in 1948, buried without military honours.
Career timeline
1910Graduated from the Ludovica Academy; hussar lieutenant
1933–1936Military attaché in Berlin
1942–1944Head of the Regent’s military office
1944Commander of the First Army; went over to the Soviets on 16 October
1944–1945Prime minister of the Provisional National Government
1947Elected for the Hungarian Independence Party; seat cancelled
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.
Career timeline
1916–1918Serves in the Austro-Hungarian army; fighter pilot
General who as prime minister in August–October 1944 halted the Jewish deportations and prepared an armistice until the Arrow Cross coup
Born in Budapest, he graduated from the Ludovika Academy in 1910 and in 1919 served at the Hungarian Red Army’s headquarters before joining Horthy’s National Army. Military attaché in Prague from 1928 to 1934, he commanded the Second Army from 1943 and the First Army from April 1944. Recommended by István Bethlen, he succeeded Sztójay as prime minister on 29 August 1944 with a secret mandate to prepare an armistice; his government stopped the deportation of Jews and replaced the state secretaries responsible. When Operation Panzerfaust and the Arrow Cross coup thwarted the armistice on 15 October, he negotiated through the night with Veesenmayer, then urged Horthy to surrender; forced to resign, he was imprisoned by the Germans. Never prosecuted, he lost his pension and lands, and in 1965 joined his daughter in Adelaide, where he died in 1967.
Prime minister who swung Hungary towards Germany and drafted the Second Jewish Law, then fell over his own Jewish ancestry
Born to a Catholic family in Budapest, he was an economist in the finance ministry who became Gömbös’s finance minister in 1932 and president of the National Bank in 1935. Prime minister from May 1938, he turned foreign policy towards Germany and Italy from that autumn, and under him the First Vienna Award returned southern Slovakia to Hungary. He pressed for a dictatorial reorganisation and the Second Jewish Law, but resigned in February 1939 when opponents exposed his Jewish ancestry. In 1940 he founded the pro-fascist Party of Hungarian Renewal, and after the German occupation of 1944 he served in Sztójay’s cabinet. Sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal, he was shot in 1946.
Career timeline
1928–1932Director, Hungarian National Bank
1932–1935Finance minister under Gömbös
1935–1938President, Hungarian National Bank
1938–1939Prime minister; introduced the Second Jewish Law
1940–1944Founder and leader, Party of Hungarian Renewal
1944Minister of economic coordination under Sztójay
Communist paramilitary commander who led the Lenin Boys and was a leading participant in the Red Terror of 1919
Born into a working-class family in Budapest, he worked as a shoemaker and served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the First World War. In 1918 he escaped to Soviet Russia, joined the Hungarian Communist group and studied at an agitators’ school. Back in Hungary by December 1918, he joined the sailor detachment guarding the Communist Party headquarters. Under the Soviet Republic he commanded more than two hundred men and oversaw some revolutionary tribunal trials, while his men arrested, tortured and executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. Ordered to disarm by Vilmos Böhm at the end of April, the group was re-armed at his request to Béla Kun after the June rising and resumed its activities. Arrested on 4 August after the fall, he was convicted of nine murders and hanged on 18 December 1919.
Career timeline
1914–1918Served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy
1918Joined the Hungarian Communist group in Soviet Russia
1918Sailor guard of the Communist Party headquarters
Communist who ran the political police of the Hungarian Soviet Republic as head of its political investigation department
Born into a wealthy, enlightened Jewish family, he was active in the Galileo Circle and, while working as a bank official, led the illegal anti-militarist group of revolutionary socialists in 1918. He helped found the Party of Communists in Hungary and joined its Central Committee, and on 21 March 1919 he typed the text of the merger of the two parties in prison. In the Soviet Republic he first handled the socialisation of shops and then, as head of the political investigation department of the interior commissariat, hunted suspected counter-revolutionaries. After the fall he stayed behind with György Lukács to rebuild the underground party, was arrested and tortured, and was hanged in December 1919.
Career timeline
1917Joined the Galileo Circle and the anti-militarist movement
1918Co-founded the KMP; Central Committee member
1919In charge of socialising shops
1919Head of the political investigation department
Interior Ministry state secretary who in 1944 ran the ghettoisation and deportation of Hungary’s Jews with László Baky
Born into a wealthy Abony family, he served as a hussar officer in the First World War and after the fall of the Soviet Republic joined counter-revolutionary groups such as MOVE, noted for his extreme cruelty. Chief magistrate of Gödöllő from 1923 and deputy lord-lieutenant of Pest county from 1938, he called the anti-Jewish laws too mild and imposed his own restrictions, such as banning Jews from beaches. After the German occupation in 1944 he became state secretary under Interior Minister Andor Jaross with far-reaching powers to ghettoise and deport the Jews, and with László Baky helped Eichmann deport over 400,000 Hungarian Jews between May and July. Removed in September, he returned under the Arrow Cross as commissioner for civil administration in the operational areas. Captured by US forces after fleeing in 1945, he was handed back, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946.
Career timeline
1915–1918Hussar officer
1919–1921Active in counter-revolutionary groups
1923–1938Chief magistrate of Gödöllő
1938–1944Deputy lord-lieutenant of Pest county
1944Administrative state secretary, Interior Ministry
1944–1945Commissioner for civil administration in the operational areas
1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Hungarian minority leader in Czechoslovakia who, as interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet in 1944, organised the deportation of Jews
Born in Komáromcsehi, Komárom County (now Čechy, Slovakia), he entered the politics of the Hungarian minority in Upper Hungary, cut off by Trianon, in the early 1920s. He became chairman of the Hungarian National Party in 1933 and a deputy in Prague in 1935, and was general secretary of the United Hungarian Party. From 1938 to 1940 he was Hungary’s minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary, and in 1940 he co-founded the far-right Party of Hungarian Renewal with Béla Imrédy. As interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet after the German occupation of 1944, he organised the deportation of the Jews with his state secretaries László Baky and László Endre. He resigned under Horthy’s pressure on 17 August. After the war he fled west, was captured by the Americans, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by the People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
1925–1933Vice-chairman, Hungarian National Party
1933Chairman, Hungarian National Party
1935–1938Member of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies
1938–1940Minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary
1940Co-founded the Party of Hungarian Renewal
1944Interior minister
1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Refusing clemency after his secret trial death sentence, June 1958: "My only consolation is the conviction that sooner or later the Hungarian nation and the international working class will clear me of these grave charges."
A Hungarian communist. Taken prisoner by the Russian army in the First World War, he joined the Bolsheviks and became an agrarian expert during his Moscow exile. As agriculture minister in 1945 he carried out the land reform, but clashed with Rákosi and Gerő over the pace of collectivization in 1948–49 and was pushed aside. Prime minister from July 1953, he pursued a 'New Course' of lower investment, security for individual farms and the closing of the internment camps, until his dismissal in 1955. Returning as premier in the 1956 revolution, he proclaimed a multi-party system and neutrality, and was executed after a secret trial in 1958.
Career timeline
1916–1921POW in Russia; joins the Red Army and the party
1930–1944Moscow exile; agrarian research for the Comintern
1945–1946Agriculture Minister: land reform
1953–1955Premier: the New Course, camps closed, peasant burdens eased
1955Removed and expelled
1956.10–11Premier of the rising: multi-party rule, neutrality
