- Born
- Died
- Height5′ 9½″ (1.77 m)
- Miklós Horthy DE Nagybánya (18 June 1868 - 9 February 1957), was a Hungarian admiral and statesman who served as the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between the two World Wars and throughout most of World War II - from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy started his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear admiral in 1918. He saw action in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto and became commander-in-chief of the Navy in the last year of World War I; he was promoted to vice admiral and commander of the Fleet when Emperor-King Charles dismissed the previous admiral from his post following mutinies. During the revolutions and interventions in Hungary from Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, Horthy returned to Budapest with the National Army; the parliament subsequently invited him to become regent of the kingdom. Through the interwar period Horthy led an administration which was national conservative and antisemitic. Hungary under Horthy banned the Hungarian Communist Party as well as the Arrow Cross Party, and pursued an irritants foreign policy in the face of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. Charles, the former king, attempted twice to return to Hungary before the Hungarian government caved in to Allied threats to renew hostilities in 1921. Charles was then escorted out of Hungary into exile.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bonitao
- SpouseMagdolna Purgly(July 22, 1901 - February 9, 1957) (his death, 4 children)
- Allied with Nazi Germany during World War II in order to regain Hungarian lands. There is dispute among historians as to how much Horthy knew about the Holocaust.
- He allowed Hungary to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hungarian forces performed a front-line role during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43. In April 1943 he supplied 10,000 Hungarian Jewish deportees for labor battalions in Germany.
- He passed anti-Semitic laws in Hungary in the 1930s.
- Signed the Tripartite Pact on 20 November 1940.
- He was likely only spared from execution after World War II because Joseph Stalin did not want to make a martyr of him (he was then in his late 70s). The Soviet dictator pressured the Communist government of Hungary not to request his extradition, and he moved to Portugal in 1949.
- [in an Oct. 1940 letter to Prime Minister Pál Teleki] As regards the Jewish problem, I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life. I have never had contact with Jews. I have considered it intolerable that here in Hungary everything, every factory, bank, large fortune, business, theatre, press, commerce, etc,, should be in Jewish hands, and that the Jew should be the image reflected of Hungary, especially abroad. Since, however, one of the most important tasks of the government is to raise the standard of living, i.e., we have to acquire wealth, it is impossible, in a year or two, to replace the Jews, who have everything in their hands, and to replace them with incompetent, unworthy, mostly big-mouthed elements, for we should become bankrupt. This requires a generation at least.
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