Hungary was one of the Axis Powers, but it wasn't a true fascist state.
Well, it later would become as such but only in 1944 when the Germans seized power in Hungary.
And they installed a puppet regime: the so-called Government of National Unity.
Led by the Arrow Cross Party; the Hungarian fascists led by Ferenc Szálasi.
In this video you're gonna learn more about this short-lived fascist state.
Keep watching.
In a previous video I explained how in March 1944 the Germans moved into Hungary to make
sure the country wouldn't defect to the Allies.
The Hungarian government on several occasions had made contact with the Allies.
The German invasion of Hungary happened on Sunday morning, 19 March 1944.
Germans crossed the border in trains, tanks and armored cars.
They were ordered to act in a restrained manner but crush any eventual resistance.
On some places Hungarian units offered light resistance, but in most places the Hungarian
army didn't resist at all.
According to a German report in some places there were received ceremonially.
Regent Miklos Horthy remained on his position.
He continued to contact the Allies and on 15 October managed an armistice with the Soviets.
The Germans then organized a take-over: Operation Panzerfaust (carried out by Otto Skorzeny).
Horthy was taken into custody by SS officer Edmund Veesenmayer.
Horthy refused to appoint Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi as prime minister but finally
acquiesced when the Germans threatened his family.
The Arrow Cross Party was a Hungarian fascist party that before and during the war had limited
influence in Hungarian politics.
Altough the Parliament was not dissolved, true power now lay in hands of the Arrow Cross
Party.
The population greeted the change of power passively.
Szálasi believed that Hungary's only hope was to fully co-operate with Germany.
Hungary now became fully at the disposal of the Germans.
Szálasi wanted a levée en masse – full mobilization – to raise 14 new army divisions.
However many wanted to serve, out of fear for the Soviets, the orders had to be rescinded
because of the chaotic organization: there was not enough weaponry and uniforms for the
new recruits.
Let's take a look at the Arrow Cross ideology.
Szálasi envisioned a so-called Hungarista state.
“The Hungarista state, to be known as Hungarian United Ancient Lands, was to encompass the
Danubian basin, including all the Magyar-populated territories, as well as areas inhabited by
non-Magyar nationalities, Slovaks, Ruthens, Croats and so on.”
The construction of this new Hungarista state would see a national reconstruction where
the economy and society was reorganized, similar to the corporate system of Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini.
This corporatist model had gained many supporters in Europe before the outbreak of WW2.
All of Hungary's institutions were placed under the so-called Home Army Command.
They did manage to sent loads of Hungarian material to Germany and early 1945 the Hungarista
government moved to the West of the country.
When the fascists puppet state was proclaimed the Red Army forces were well within Hungary's
borders.
Yet, the Jews who lived in the area that was under Arrow Cross control; they suffered severily
because they were targetted by Arrow Cross militias.
Hungarian Jews were already deported after the German take-over in March.
Horthy had managed to halt the deportations, but to no avail.
In the Summer of 1944 a total of 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported – and most of them gassed.
For those remaining in Hungary a grim future awaited.
Szálasi believed in the theory of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and believed that all Hungarian
Jews should be removed from the country.
Arrow Cross members arrested thousands of Jews and alleged leftists, many of them sent
to German concentration camps.
The most atrocities were carried out by the Arrow Cross mob: a group undisciplined members
wearing armbands and weapons, numbering in the thousands.
Some Jews were taken to the Danube and shot.
The monument of the Shoes on the Danube Bank honours the Jews who were massacred here.
Others were taken to the Budapest ghetto that was established in November 1944.
Around 125,000 able-bodied men and women were taken for military forced labour.
They had to dig trenches for the defence of Budapest.
38,000 were sent to the German Reich.
Arrow Cross members, as well as Hungarian gendarmes and soldiers forced them to get
there on foot and many died en route.
Numerous individuals risked their lives to save Hungary's Jews: Christian families offered
their own homes and some lent their own baptismal certificates.
Also church organizations helped doing this by given out these certificates.
Others brought food to the ghetto.
One Hungarian boy recalled:
“An old woman who had been shopping pulled a piece of bread out of her basket and gave
it to a Jewish woman who immediately hid it.
The Arrow Cross saw it – shot the woman dead, not the Jewish woman but the Christian
who was trying to help”.
Different embassy personal issued protective passports to save Jews.
Most noteworthy were the efforts of Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg who issued countless
protective passports.
With American money Wallenberg rented 32 buildings in Budapest to hide Jews declaring these buildings
extraterritorial.
He put up signs such as “The Swedish Library” and “The Swedish Research Institute”.
These buildings housed 10,000 people.
Eventually Wallenberg was arrested.
Not by the Nazis nor the Arrow Cross, but by the Soviet authorities once they seized
control of Budapest.
He was taken to Moscow and never returned.
When the Arrow Cross Regime was established the Red Army soldiers were within Hungary's
borders.
Towards the end of 1944 a "counter" Hungarian government in Soviet-controlled Debrecen was
proclaimed.
What Regent Miklos Horthy had tried to avoid now became a reality: Hungary became a battlefield.
Towards the end of 1944 a climactic battle commenced at Budapest between German-Hungarian
forces versus Soviet-Romanian forces.
Romania by that time had switched sides.
It left Hungary's capital in ruins and countless of lives – both military and civilian – were
lost.
In March 1945 near Lake Balaton the Germans launched Operation Spring Awakening but to
no avail.
Details of this will be covered in the future.
Hungary came under full Soviet control by April 1945.
The fascist state was officially abolished on 7 May 1945.
Basically one day before the German unconditional surrender.
Szalasi was captured by US troops; he was extradited to Hungary.
There he was trialed and later executed.