Miklós Horthy

Early Life and Naval Career

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 as an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. During the war he defeated the Regia Marina|Italian Navy several times, and was wounded at the Otranto Barrage|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 Karl of Austria|Emperor Karl to surrender the fleet to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on October 31.

Dates of rank and assigments

1896 Fregattenleutnant

1899 Linienschiffleutnant

Jan 1901 SMS ''Sperber'' (commander)

1902 SMS ''Kranich'' (commander)

Jun 1908 SMS ''Taurus'' (commander)

Aug 1908 SMS ''Kaiser Karl VI'' (GDO-Gemeindienstoffizier-First Officer, temporary)

1 Jan 1909 Korvettenkäpitan

1 Nov 1909 aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Josef

1 Nov 1911 Fregattenkäpitan

Dec 1912-Mar 1913 SMS ''Budapest'' (commander)

20 Jan 1914 Linienschiffskäpitan

Aug 1914 SMS ''Habsburg'' (commander)

Dec 1914 SMS ''Novara'' (commander)

1 Feb 1918 SMS ''Prinz Eugen'' (commander)

27 Feb 1918 Konteradmiral

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

Interwar Period, 1919-1939

The end of the war saw Hungary turned into a landlocked nation, and hence the new government had little need for Horthy's services. However, he was still regarded by his people as a war hero, and this status paid off in 1919, when the Communist Béla Kun seized power in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Horthy became head of the armed forces of the counter-revolutionary government established on April 10 in the eastern city of Szeged (occupied by France|French forces). As the head of the newly organised National Army, he decided to spare his forces and avoided all combat. On August 6 Romanian forces entered Budapest, deserted by the Communists three days before. During the Romanian military control of Budapest, counter-revolutionaries and Romanian forces launched the White Terror against Leftists and Jews. The Romanian army retreated from Budapest on November 14 leaving Horthy in command of the city. Following the orders of the Entente, Romanian troops finally evacuated Hungary on February 25 1920. In March, 1920, the National Assembly of Hungary re-established the Kingdom of Hungary, but elected not to recall Karl of Austria|Charles IV of Hungary from exile. Instead, they proclaimed Horthy as Regent for an indefinite period of time. The Admiral without a fleet, in a country without a coastline, ruled the next 24 years as the Regent for a Kingdom without a King. A staunch conservatism|conservative, Horthy eventually began to sympathize with Fascism and appointed several pro-fascist officials to cabinet posts in the 1930s. Eventually, when the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler began to rise to power and put pressure on neighboring nations to return territories lost after the war, Horthy became his willing accomplice. In November 1938, the Vienna Arbitrage enabled him to annex nearly one-third of Slovakia. Five months later, when Hitler took over what remained of Czechoslovakia, the Germans allowed Hungary to seize Ruthenia, as well.

World War II

In 1940, Hungary prepared to go to war with Romania to regain another lost province, Transylvania. Again, Hitler intervened on Horthy's behalf and gave Hungary half of the disputed territory without firing a shot. In April of 1941, Hungary became a full member of the Axis Powers|Axis, participating together with Germany and Bulgaria in the invasion of Yugoslavia (in protest against this, Prime-Minister Pál Teleki committed suicide). In 1942 Horthy decided to open negotiations with the Allies. The secret delegation was led by Albert Szent-Györgyi, and they met British diplomats in Istanbul on several occasions. These negotiations were known to the German intelligence services, and even the Allies used the talks with Hungary to distract the Nazis. In January 1942, by the order of some disloyal officers (lieutenant-general Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeidner, major-general József Grassy, colonel László Deák and gendarmarie-captain Márton Zöldy) numerous Serb and Jewish civilians were brutally murdered in the Backa region of Vojvodina, and their corpses were thrown into the rivers Danube and Tisa. When Horthy ordered the investigation, the officers responsible for action fled to Nazi Germany and only returned after the German Nazi regime occupied Hungary in 1944. 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 couldn't order resistance. The Wehrmacht occupied Hungary on 19 March to appoint a puppet government in Budapest, which helpfully assisted the Germans in deporting the Jews of Hungary. The Regent decided to act in June: he stopped the deportation of the Jews living in Budapest. After the Romanians swiched to the Allied side, Horthy dismissed the government, began to organise another, and started negotiations with the Soviets. Again, the Germans intervened by sending commando Otto Skorzeny to Budapest. Skorzeny kidnapped Horthy's son Nicholas on the day he declared and end to the war. Horthy was forced to revoke his declarations and abdicate. Horthy spent the rest of the war under house arrest in Bavaria, being treated remarkably well in the circumstances, and was arrested by the Americans in May of 1945.

Horthy, Hungary, and the Holocaust

Starting in 1938, Hungary under Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures. The first, in 1938, restricted the number of Jews in the professions, the administration, and in 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 governments - mainly the puppet government of Döme Sztójay, appointed after the German occupation - under Horthy also actively participated in the Holocaust, although Horthy ultimately resisted pressure to deport Jews en masse. Nevertheless, the first massacre of Hungarian Jews took place in when 20,000 Jews were expelled from conquered Ruthenia to German-occupied Soviet territories in July of 1941, where they were killed by SS troops in the autumn of 1941. Horthy, however, ultimately resisted German pressure and refused to allow the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German extermination camps in occupied Poland as part of the Holocaust in 1944, and even prevented deportation of Jews from Budapest. After he was forced to abdicate, Hungarian cooperation resumed, and, ultimately, of the original 825,000 Jews before the war, only 260,000 Hungarian Jews survived and 565,000 perished.

Post-War Life

Although the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia demanded that Horthy be tried as a war criminal, the Allies refused to do so. This was mainly the result of USA|American influence. He was released and settled in Estoril, Portugal, where he died in 1957. While in Portugal he wrote his memoirs, ''Ein Leben für Ungarn'' (English: A Life for Hungary), in which he narrated many personal experiences from his youth until the end of World War II, claimed to have distrusted Hitler for much of the time he knew him, claimed that he tried to perform the best actions and appoint the best officials in his country, and gave evidence for Hungary's mistreatment by many other countries since the end of World War I. Horthy married once. He had two sons, Miklos Horthy, Jr.|Nicholas and Istvan Horthy|Steven, who served as his political assistants; 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 1956 Hungarian Revolution|Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In his will, Horthy asked that his body not be returned to Hungary "until the last Russian soldier has left." His heirs honored the request. In 1993, when Russian troops evacuated their Cold War bases in Hungary, Horthy's body was returned and he was buried in his hometown of Kenderes.

See also

History of Hungary

External links

http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/horthy/horthy.pdf

http://historicaltextarchive.com/horthy/

http://www.geocities.com/veldes1/horthy.html

http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/horthy.htm

http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/montgo/index.htm