People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1868–1957 ○ Died in exile

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.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1874–1946 ○ Died in prison

Transylvanian aristocrat who, as prime minister in 1921–1931, consolidated the Horthy regime with a restricted franchise and a League loan

Scion of an old Transylvanian noble family, he entered parliament as a liberal in 1901. He joined the counter-revolution in Szeged in 1919 and became prime minister in April 1921, after King Charles’s first return attempt. He founded the Unity Party, secured its victories by restoring the open ballot in the countryside with the Franchise Act of 1922, concluded a pact with the Social Democrats, and stabilised the economy through League of Nations membership and a loan. He resigned in the Depression in 1931 and in 1941 opposed war with the Soviet Union. Arrested by the Soviets in 1945, he died in a Moscow prison in 1946.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1879–1941 ✕ Suicide

Geographer of the “Red map” who was twice prime minister and killed himself in 1941 as German troops crossed Hungary

Born in Budapest to an aristocratic family from Transylvania, he was a geographer, university professor, member of the Academy of Sciences and chief scout of the Hungarian Scout Association. In 1918–19 he compiled the “Red map” of ethnic distribution based on the 1910 census. As foreign minister he attended the signing of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, became prime minister in July and led the government of the numerus clausus period until April 1921. Prime minister again from 1939, he wrote the preamble to the Second Anti-Jewish Law and prepared the Third. He killed himself on 3 April 1941 when German troops were about to cross Hungary to invade Yugoslavia.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1880–1964 Died in Budapest

Christian Socialist politician who, as minister of religion and education, prepared and tabled the numerus clausus bill of 1920

Born in Mezőpetri, he left the Szatmár seminary after four years to become a journalist, edited the Christian Socialist Igaz Szó and the daily Új Lap, and was general secretary of the Catholic People’s Association from 1908 to 1918. After the fall of the Soviet Republic he was minister of propaganda in the Friedrich government and then, from November 1919 to December 1920, minister of religion and education. He prepared and tabled the numerus clausus bill, often seen as the first anti-Jewish act of twentieth-century Europe. He became chairman of the Christian National Union Party in 1920 but soon lost his seat, and by the time of his arrest in 1945 he was a textile merchant.

Hungary 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 Counter-revolutionary forces 1886–1939 ○ Illness

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.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1946 ✕ Executed

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.