Throughout the Second World War, there were many different countries who collaborated
with the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
A number of armies collaborated and fought alongside the German Army and the Wehrmacht
and were witnesses to some of the most evil executions and crimes of the conflict.
Inside of Hungary, the Nazis would eventually occupy the country and they would cause chaos
inside the lands deporting hundreds of thousands of people to concentration camps.
After the war had come to an end, the Hungarian people who had suffered significantly sought
to punish those who collaborated and they carried out a number of executions of people
who were responsible for the persecution.
Many politicians were taken to make shift firing ranges or gallows where they were executed
for their crimes, and one man who was executed was Laszlo Endre.
He was a man who was a politician who had sided with others who were responsible for
evil laws that caused wide scale depravity.
But he was a man who also directly was involved in the deportations of thousands to concentration
camps such as Auschwitz.
Join us today as we look at the execution of Laszlo Endre, and as always to support
our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Laszlo Endre was born on the 1st January 1895, and he was born into a very wealthy family.
But he would then go to university to study political science following a period in service
in the Austrian-Hungarian army.
He saw service on the Western Front, but then after the defeat in the army he became a local
government officer.
But Endre then was involved in the right wing nationalist soccer known as MOVE.
But he then developed a reputation for brutality and for being incredibly cruel, and he then
wormed his way in to become a role inside of the Hungarian National Socialist Party,
and he would be involved in recruitment and organising movements for the party.
This party was of course inspired in a sense by the Nazi party, and despite being just
a minor party in the country before the war broke out, it did attract a significant degree
of supporters, and also they were brutally anti semitic and they encouraged the persecution
of other people.
However in 1938 he became part of the government and governing part of Bela Imredy.
Imredy had began his career in politics as pro-British, but then he after a number of
high profile resignations and sackings was made the Prime Minister of Hungary.
But soon Imredy realised that he was upsetting Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the dictators
of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
They saw him as an enemy to begin with, but then Imredy realised that he needed to please
these two nations, and he then started to move his government and country closer to
the ideas of the Nazis.
He would realise that Hungary could be helped financially by these two also, and his government
then began to harass other opposition and opponents in brutal ways.
But Imredy would be shockingly ousted from power after being in office for less than
a year, as his opponents went to the Hungarian regent with claims that his great grandfather
was in fact Jewish, and Imredy was accused of being a hyppocrit as he was persecuting
Jews inside of his country.
He was then forced to step down.
But inside of Imredy’s government, right wing figures such as Laszlo Endre were given
positions and platforms of influence, and Endre became one of the leading antisemitic
voices that the Prime Minister would listen to on a regular basis.
He believed that the Hungarian governments anti jewish laws and the persecution they
were involved in were not strong enough, and he favoured the laws that the nazis had, and
wanted them introducing to Hungary.
He managed to push through his agenda and he was responsible for further laws that placed
more restrictions on Jews.
His laws banned them from visiting beaches and spas, and also banned Jewish people from
working at fairs and making money, but his laws would then later be reversed when he
briefly fell from power.
But still as the Second World War was going on, Laszlo Endre was not a major figure in
government and he was in a sense working in the shadows.
But his rise to power came later in 1944, as Hitler who was fed up of Hungary’s hesitancy
to become fully behind the German war effort ordered a huge invasion and occupation of
Hungary.
Hungarian units had suffered heavily during the Battle of Stalingrad and their defeat,
and following this the Regent realised that the Germans would probably lose the war.
There were talks of a separate armistice being agreed for Hungary and the Western Allies,
but to prevent this happening Hitler got wind of it and ordered the occupation.
The Nazis now occupied the country, and if there wasn’t reason for people to fear for
their lives before, it was now a real possibility that terror would come to their lives.
The Nazi occupiers got rid of the tolerant government headed up by Prime Minister Miklos
Kallas, and they forced the Regent to replace him with a Nazi sympathiser.
But the Nazis wanted the new rulers in Hungary to be on their side, and the Nazis also prioritised
the final solution inside of the country.
They wanted the quick extermination of the countries jews, who had also been suffering
through persecution.
Laszlo Endre was viewed by the nazis as an expert on this matter, and he was very anti-semitic.
He was then appointed the state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior in the Nazi
controlled government under the Interior Minister Andor Jaross.
However Endre despite being a number 2, would be given huge and shocking powers to cause
mass suffering.
He was able to put thousands of people into established ghettos and then also deport hundreds
of thousands of Jews out of the country to concentration camps.
He was a man who helped Adolf Eichmann deport over 400,000 Hungarian Jews between May and
July 1944.
The majority of these were then sent to Auschwitz, where Operation Hoss was enacted and these
people were gassed in 56 murderous days at the site.
The Hungarian Jews killed in this quick spate amassed to around half of all of those who
were killed at Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp of the Second World War.
But Endre’s brutality was wide-reaching and the Regent Miklos Horthy learned of this,
and then he ordered his sacking from the Interior Ministry, and he was disgusted with his involvement
in the deportations.
Horthy would bring these to an end, but Endre was then sacked but within a month he came
back to government.
The Nazis were ousted from the country as the Soviet Union approached, and Endre was
then appointed as the Commissioner of Civil Administration when Ferenc Szalasi’s Arrow
Cross Party rose to power.
But then in March 1945, Budapest would crumble to the Red Army as they brought the war to
the doorsteps of the Hungarian capital.
Endre knew he would be sought after and would be a wanted man, and because of this he fled
to Austria hoping to escape justice, but he was later captured and was extradited back
to his nation for punishment by his own people.
In December 1945 months after the Second World War had come to an end, Laszlo Endre was brought
to trial in Budapest and he was accused of crimes against humanity and in being a collaborator
with the Nazis.
It did not take long until he was found guilty of the murder of the Jews, and of acting against
the national interests of Hungary.
For this he was then sentenced to death, and there had been a number of many politicians
who were also condemned.
But he was to be executed with the Austro-Hungarian pole hanging method, and this was where the
condemned stood in front of a pole which was 3m’s high.
Then ropes and pulleys were attached to their feet, and the rope would be passed around
the body and through loops around the prisoners neck, and a chest sling would then be released
and the condemned person would then be left hanging.
Laszlo Endre was flanked by guards who brought him to his pole along with another man, and
the ropes were then secured and a white cap was placed over his head before the ropes
were dropped and he was left hanging.
Within minutes he was dead.
Laszlo Endre was a Hungarian politician who was responsible for the deaths of thousands
of people who were sent to camps such as Auschwitz.
He was a very evil man, whose actions would condemned many people inside some of the worst
hells on earth.
But he was a man who was in league with terrible members of the SS, and he was considered an
architect of the mass slaughter of innocent people.
But inside of Budapest in front of a sizeable crowd this former politician was executed
for his crimes.
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