A tribute to Miklos Horthy: His life and service for Hungarian freedom!

[Stegura]

Miklós Horthy

(b. Jun. 18, 1868 - d. Feb. 9, 1957)



Regent of Hungary (1920-1944)

Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (Hungarian: Vitéz nagybányai Horthy Miklós, German: Held Nikolaus Horthy von Nagybánya; Kenderes, June 18, 1868 – Estoril, February 9, 1957) was the Regent of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from March 1, 1920 to October 15, 1944. He was originally an Admiral in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Fleet, and after his regency, wrote of his experiences in his memoirs. Horthy 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's (Cohen) Communists seized power in Hungary 1919 and imposed red terror against the enemies of new Hungarian Soviet Republic, the counterrevolutionary government put Horthy in command of its forces. With the consent of the Triple Entente, Romanian forces invaded Hungary and overthrew the Soviet Republic. When the Romanians evacuated Budapest (November, 1919), Horthy entered it and in 1920 was made regent and head of the state. A conservative who was distinctly inclined toward the right, he guided Hungary through the years between the two world wars.



1919. Regent Miklos Horthy enters liberated Budapest after breaking the Jewish-led Communist tyranny of Bela Kun (Cohen)...

Miklós Horthy came from an old Calvinist noble family. 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 Charles to surrender the fleet to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on October 31.



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-Gesamtdetailoffizier-First Officer, temporary)
1 Jan 1909 Korvettenkapitän (korvettkapitány - Lieutenant-Commander)
1 Nov 1909 aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Josef
1 Nov 1911 Fregattenkapitän (fregattkapitány - Commander)
Dec 1912-Mar 1913 SMS Budapest (commander)
20 Jan 1914 Linienschiffskapitän (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)

The end of the war saw Hungary turned into a landlocked nation, and hence the new government had little need for Horthy's services. Thus, he retired with his family to his private homestead to Kenderes. However, he was still regarded by his people as a war hero, and this status paid off in 1919, when the Communist Jew Béla Kun (Cohen) seized power in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. A counter-government was established on May 30 in the southern city of Szeged, occupied by French forces at the time. There, Gyula Károlyi, whose ideas were opposed to those of his Social Democrat cousin, Mihály Károlyi, asked Horthy to be the Minister of War in the new government. Soon after, because of appeals from the Entente, the cabinet was reformed, and Horthy did not receive any place in the new one. With that, the Admiral decided to place the National Army (Hungarian: Nemzeti Hadsereg) – established by anti-Communist forces a bit earlier – in order, and to seize power with it. On August 6 French-supported Romanian forces entered Budapest, deserted by the Communists three days before. By early August, Horthy moved with his forces to Siófok, next to Lake Balaton in Transdanubia (with Entente approval). During that time, counter-revolutionaries launched the White Terror against communists. These acts were initiated by Pál Prónay, Gyula Ostenburg-Moravek and Iván Héjjas. The Supreme Commander, as Horthy was styled at the time, proclaimed the actions as the judgements of the people, or dismissed them as personal deviations from proper restraint. Nevertheless, he never commanded anybody to execute these acts. The existence of the cruelties in August 1919 are also noted in his memoirs, but he does not deny the necessity of them: „Conflagrations rising from the earth were never suppressed by anyone just by fanning them with angels' wings.” The Romanian army retreated from Budapest on November 14 leaving Horthy to enter the city, where he gave a rousing speech:



"... The nation of the Hungarians loved and carressed Budapest, which became its polluter in the last years. Now I call the Hungarian capital to the ordeal, here at the banks of the Danube. This city denied its thousand-year-old past; this city trampled the crown and the colors of the nation into the mud, and dressed itself in red rags. It imprisoned and chased away the best of the nation, furthermore, it plundered all of our goods. ..."



Hungarian Royalists fighting under Regent Horthy.

Following the orders of the Entente, Romanian troops finally evacuated Hungary on February 25, 1920.

On March 1, 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 elected Horthy as Regent for an indefinite period of time; he defeated Count Albert Apponyi by a vote of 131 to 7. A military cordon surrounded the Parliament building and several parliamentarians were refused admission, even as officers in uniform freely entered the building and walked around in the halls and galleries. Bishop Ottokár Prohászka then led a small delegation to meet Horthy, announcing, “Hungary’s Parliament has elected you Regent! Would it please you to accept the office of Regent of Hungary?” To their astonishment, Horthy declined unless his powers were expanded. This they promised to do, and he took the oath of office. 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.



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.



1938 Berlin postcard issued to commemorate the meeting between
Adolf Hitler, and Admiral Horthy (with his wife, Magdolna Purgly, in the center).



Regent Horthy during a State visit to Vienna in August of 1938.

In 1938, Horthy's government passed a number of anti-Jewish measures that led to the exclusion and isolation of the Jewish community, including those limiting Jews to five percent or less of university slots. These policies grew more repressive. Starting in 1938, Hungary under Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures, probably to appease their German allies. The first, in 1938, restricted the number of Jews in liberal professions, administration, and commerce to twenty percent, and reduced it to five percent the following year. 250,000 Hungarian Jews lost their income. A "Third Jewish Law" was prohibited intermarriage and defined Jews racially.



Hungarian divisions under the leadership of Miklos Horthy at the outset of World War II in 1939



Miklós Horthy and Adolf Hitler in Berlin Opera House, 1938.

In 1940, Hitler intervened on Horthy's behalf and gave Hungary the disputed territory of Northern Trannslyvania without firing a shot. In April 1941, Hungary became a full member of the Axis, participating together with Germany, Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria.



Hungarian troops liberating former Magyar lands which were stolen from them by the Treaty of Triannon (1920). For Miklos Horthy's friendship with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, Hungary was granted rights to those lands in the Vienna Awards of 1938 and 1940. With the Vienna Awards, southern Slovakia and Northern Trannslyvania were restored to the Kingdom of Hungary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIqod0qg2Jc

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 could not order resistance. The Wehrmacht occupied Hungary on 19 March to appoint a government in Budapest, which helpfully assisted the Germans in deporting the Jews of Hungary.

In Operation Miki Maus the Germans sent commando leader 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 was later replaced with the Hitler faithful Arrow Cross Party of Ferenc Szalasi which resumed the deportations of Hungarian Jews and kept the Hungarians in Axis for the remainder of World War 2.

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.



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. Horthy was the only Axis head of state to survive the war, and thus, the only one to write post-war memoirs.

Horthy was married once, to Magdolna Purgly de Jószáshely (Magdalene Horthy). He had two sons, Nicholas and Steven, 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 Soviet soldier has left." His heirs honored the request. In 1993, after the Soviet occupational troops evacuated their Cold War bases in Hungary (in 1991), Horthy's body was returned and he was buried in his hometown of Kenderes.

[TheGreatest]

Horthy was noted for his service in the Hapsburg Navy during the Great War. He was one of the few Axis Heads of State, who survived the war and wrote extensive memoirs.

[GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS]

Very nice article, but as TG pointed out, he wasn't the only Axis head of state to survive the war, Hirohito, Simeon II and Victor Emmanuel III survived.

[TheGreatest]

Very nice article, but as TG pointed out, he wasn't the only Axis head of state to survive the war, Hirohito, Simeon II and Victor Emmanuel III survived.

Both Horthy and Mannerheim were the only two men who were Admirals/Generals in the Great War, and remained so during the second.

[Arrow Cross]

Let me see... Admiral Horthy... a pro-Western governor who only sided with the Germans because he was forced into it.

He is personally responsible for creating a "country of three million beggars", barring the National Socialists from power and having them banned several times with false claims of conspiracy, keeping the feudal system "alive", in which the Jewish usury could flourish, being reluctant about rearmament and executing it poorly, which resulted in sending Hungarian soldiers to the Soviet Union in possibly the poorest equipment on the entire Axis side, seeking to bail out of the war as soon as after Stalingrad, appointing half-hearted and treasonous Prime Ministers, making Hungary a haven for fleeeing Jews from across the continent, and finally, proclaiming the country's short-lived exit from the war on the 15th of October, 1944.

His son, István, was one of the most ardent upper-class anti-Nazis in Hungary, and many suspect that his death by plane crash on the Eastern Front was arranged by the Gestapo. Either way, not a big loss.

[Arrow Cross]

Very nice article, but as TG pointed out, he wasn't the only Axis head of state to survive the war, Hirohito, Simeon II and Victor Emmanuel III survived.

He was no longer an Axis head of state after 15/10/44, the legitimate head of state of Hungary when the war ended was in fact Szálasi. He survived, was captured by the "Allies" and extradicted to the red mobs waiting for him at home. They got their revenge after a kangaroo court on 12/03/46.

[GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS]

Both Horthy and Mannerheim were the only two men who were Admirals/Generals in the Great War, and remained so during the second.

Bullshit. Two people who comes to mind are MacArthur and Montgomery.

[Stegura]

Let me see... Admiral Horthy... a pro-Western governor who only sided with the Germans because he was forced into it.

He is personally responsible for creating a "country of three million beggars", barring the National Socialists from power and having them banned several times with false claims of conspiracy, keeping the feudal system "alive", in which the Jewish usury could flourish, being reluctant about rearmament and executing it poorly, which resulted in sending Hungarian soldiers to the Soviet Union in possibly the poorest equipment on the entire Axis side, seeking to bail out of the war as soon as after Stalingrad, appointing half-hearted and treasonous Prime Ministers, making Hungary a haven for fleeeing Jews from across the continent, and finally, proclaiming the country's short-lived exit from the war on the 15th of October, 1944.

His son, István, was one of the most ardent upper-class anti-Nazis in Hungary, and many suspect that his death by plane crash on the Eastern Front was arranged by the Gestapo. Either way, not a big loss.

All valid points! I appreciate your insight and I admire your knowledge on the issue at hand.

It's strange I guess, Most of the Hungarians I've seen on Nationalist/racialist sites regard him as a Patriot and a Hero.

Maybe I'll do a tribute thread to Szalasi and the Arrow Cross next!

[Æmeric]

Very nice article, but as TG pointed out, he wasn't the only Axis head of state to survive the war, Hirohito, Simeon II and Victor Emmanuel III survived.

Simeon II was only a child during the war, his uncle who was regent on his behalf was executed by the communists. Simeon was the prime minister of Bulgaria earlier this decade.

King Michael of Romania also survived the war. The Communists forced him out in 1947 but allowed him to leave the country without executing him. He's still alive somewhere. Hirohito was the only monarch on the Axis side who managed to keep his throne.

[Arrow Cross]

All valid points! I appreciate your insight and I admire your knowledge on the issue at hand.

It's strange I guess, Most of the Hungarians I've seen on Nationalist/racialist sites regard him as a Patriot and a Hero.

Maybe I'll do a tribute thread to Szalasi and the Arrow Cross next!

Of course. There are two sides of each coin. I may have pointed out his mistakes to counterbalance the praise, but he was certainly a great deal better still than either the pseudo-Socialist regime until 1989, or the current demoCrazy, in national terms. He certainly advocated a deep partiotism, anti-leftism and territorial revisionism, which are very-very inspiring for the disillusioned modern youth, but that was just the spirit of his time. He could very well be a neocon-like "rightist", if he'd be living today. To his credit, at least he never wanted to switch sides like our good ole Romanian neighbours, who betrayed their side in both World Wars. He remained an anti-Communist both in principle and practice.

And thank you, though it's not hard to be knowledgeable on the recent history of your own country.