World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseFerenc Szálasi was born in Kassa (now Slovak town Košice), Hungary. After service in the Hungarian Army in WW1, he remained in the military and joined the Hungarian General Staff in 1925 and reached the rank of major by 1933. A right-wing nationalist, he left the army in 1935 and established the Party of National Will, which was eventually banned by the government for being too radical in thought. In 1937, he found the Hungarian National Socialist Party, which was also later banned for similar reasons, but his second attempt began to attract support around him from the working class. In 1938, Szálasi was arrested by the Hungarian Secret Police for being a threat to his government, but from prison he was able to gain influence within the fascist Arrow Cross Party. While the Arrow Cross Party was banned before the war just like the previous political associations of Szálasi's, it was made legal after the rise of the pro-German Prime Minister Döme Sztójay. In Aug 1944, Sztójay was removed from power, and regent Miklós Horthy ordered for Szálasi's arrested. Favored by the Germans, Szálasi was named Prime Minister as Horthy was forced to resign. Though he refused to give in to Nazi demands to deport Hungarian Jews, Szálasi's government nevertheless conducted an anti-Semitic campaign of their own, murdering thousands of Jews. In Apr 1945, at the face of Russian advance in Budapest, he fled to Austria, but was captured by American troops. He was tried by a Communist-backed tribunal in Budapest and was sentenced to death for his war crimes. He was executed in 1946.

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