Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46)

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This article is about the Kingdom of Hungary between 1920 to 1946. For the general article, see Kingdom of Hungary.
Kingdom of Hungary
Magyar Királyság



Flag Coat of arms
"Regnum Mariae Patrona Hungariae"[1] (Latin)
"Kingdom of Mary, the Patron of Hungary"
Extent of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1942.
Capital Budapest
Languages Hungarian (official)  · German · Romanian · Rusyn · Slovak · Croatian · Serbian · Slovene · Carpathian Romani · Mideastern Yiddish
Religion Roman Catholicism · Calvinism · Lutheranism · Eastern Orthodoxy · Eastern Catholicism · Unitarianism · Judaism
Government Authoritarian regency
Agrarian fascist single-party state
 -  1920–1946 Vacant a
Head of State
 -  1920–1944 Miklós Horthyb
 -  1944–1945 Ferenc Szálasic
 -  1945–1946 High National Councild
Prime Minister
 -  1920 (first) Károly Huszár
 -  1945–1946 (last) Zoltán Tildy
Legislature Diet
 -  Upper Felsőház
 -  Representatives Képviselőház
Historical era Interwar · World War II
 -  Monarchy restored 29 February[2] 1920
 -  Treaty of Trianon 4 June 1920
 -  First Vienna Award 2 November 1938
 -  Second Vienna Award 30 August 1940
 -  Hungarist take-over 16 October 1944
 -  Monarchy abolished 1 February 1946
 -  1920[3] 92,833 km² (35,843 sq mi)
 -  1930[4] 93,073 km² (35,936 sq mi)
 -  1941[5] 172,149 km² (66,467 sq mi)
 -  1920[3] est. 7,980,143 
     Density 86 /km²  (222.6 /sq mi)
 -  1930[4] est. 8,688,319 
     Density 93.3 /km²  (241.8 /sq mi)
 -  1941[5] est. 14,669,100 
     Density 85.2 /km²  (220.7 /sq mi)
Currency Hungarian korona (1920–1927)
Hungarian pengő (1927–1946)
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Hungarian Republic (1919–20)
Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)
Slovak Republic (1939–45)
Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Republic of Hungary (1946–1949)
Czechoslovak Republic (1945–48)
Kingdom of Romania
Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
Today part of  Croatia
a. Claimed by former King Charles IV of Hungary in 1921.
b. Miklós Horthy used the title "Regent".
c. Ferenc Szálasi used the title "Nation Leader".
d. Ruled as a collective head of state.


The country has been regarded by some historians to have been a client state of Germany from 1938 to 1944.[6] The Kingdom of Hungary under Horthy was an Axis Power during most of World War II. In 1944, after Horthy's government considered leaving the war, Hungary was occupied by Nazi Germany and Horthy was deposed. The Arrow Cross Party's leader Ferenc Szálasi established a new Nazi-backed government, effectively turning Hungary into a German puppet state.

After World War II, Hungary fell within the Soviet Union's sphere of interest. In 1946, the Second Hungarian Republic was established under Soviet influence. In 1949, the communist Hungarian People's Republic was founded.



Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary



Standard of the Regent of Hungary.

Horthy's rule as Regent possessed characteristics such that it could be construed a dictatorship. As a counterpoint, his powers were a continuation of the constitutional powers of the King of Hungary, adopted earlier during the Hungary federation with the Austrian Empire.[7] As Regent, Horthy had the power to adjourn or dissolve the Hungarian Diet (parliament) at his own discretion; he appointed the Hungarian Prime Minister.[8]


During his first ten years, Horthy led increased repression of Hungarian minorities, placed limits on the number of Jews permitted to go to university, and legalized corporal punishment. Under the leadership of Prime Minister István Bethlen democracy dissipated, as Bethlen manipulated elections in rural areas. His political party, the Party of Unity, won repeated elections. Bethlen pushed for revision of the Treaty of Trianon. After the collapse of the Hungarian economy from 1929 to 1931, national turmoil pushed Bethlen to resign as Prime Minister.

Social conditions in the kingdom did not improve as time passed, as extremely small percentages of the population controlling much of the country’s wealth. Jews were continually pressured to assimilate into Hungarian mainstream culture.

The desperate situation forced Regent Horthy to accept far-right politician Gyula Gömbös as Prime Minister. He pledged to retain the existing political system. Gömbös agreed to abandon his extreme anti-Semitism and allow some Jews into the government.


In 1944, responding to the advancing Soviet forces, Regent Miklós Horthy deposed the last fascist Prime Minister and installed an anti-Fascist regime in an effort to join the Allies and avoid occupation by the Soviet Union. Shortly afterward, German forces invaded Hungary, deposed Horthy as Regent, and installed a puppet regime led by Ferenc Szálasi of the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. The Arrow Cross Party never abolished the Monarchy as a form of government, as Hungarian newspapers kept referring to the country as the Kingdom of Hungary (Magyar Királyság), although Magyarország (Hungary) was used as an alternative.[9][10] From May to June 1944, Hungarian authorities rapidly rounded up and transported hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps, where most died.

After the fall of the Szálasi regime, Béla Miklós's Soviet-backed government was left nominally in control of the entire country. The High National Council, appointed in January to assume the Regency, included members of the Hungarian Communist Party, like Ernő Gerő, and later Mátyás Rákosi and László Rajk.


Part of a series on the
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Following the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the prosperity rapidly collapsed in the country, especially in part due to the economic effects of the failure of the Österreichische Creditanstalt bank in Vienna, Austria.[13] From the mid-1930s to the 1940s, after relations improved with Germany, Hungary’s economy benefited from trade. The Hungarian economy became dependent on that of Germany.

Foreign policy[edit]

István Bethlen, Prime Minister of Hungary.

Initially, despite a move towards nationalism, the new state under Regent Horthy in an effort to prevent further immediate conflicts signed the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, thereby reducing Hungary’s size substantially: Transylvania was taken by Romania; Upper Hungary became part of Czechoslovakia; Vojvodina joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia after 1929); and the Free State of Fiume was created.

With the succession of increasingly nationalist and far-right Prime Ministers, Hungary steadily came to oppose the Treaty of Trianon, and aligned itself with Europe's two fascist states, Germany and Italy, which both opposed the changes to national borders in Europe at the end of World War I. Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini sought closer ties with Hungary, beginning with the signing of a treaty of friendship between Hungary and Italy on April 5, 1927.[14] Gyula Gömbös was an open admirer of the fascist leaders.[15] Gömbös attempted to forge closer trilateral unity between Germany, Italy and Hungary by acting as an intermediary between Germany and Italy whose two fascist regimes had nearly come to conflict in 1934 over the issue of Austrian independence. Gömbös eventually persuaded Mussolini to accept Hitler's annexation of Austria in the late 1930s.[14] Gömbös is said to have coined the phrase "axis", which he applied to his intention to create an alliance with Germany and Italy; those two countries used it to term their alliance as the Rome–Berlin axis.[15] Just prior to the Second World War, Hungary benefited from its close ties with Germany when it was allowed to annex parts of former Slovak territories and Carpatho-Ukraine from Czechoslovakia. This agreement was the first of the Vienna Awards.

World War II[edit]

The Kingdom of Hungary in 1941.

In 1940, the Kingdom of Hungary joined the Axis powers and demanded the concession of Transylvanian territory from Romania. German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime helped Hungary receive significant portions of Transylvania while avoiding a war with Romania. Hitler demanded that the Hungarian government follow Germany’s military and racial agenda to avoid potential conflict in the future. Anti-Semitism was already an established political cause by the far-right in Hungary. In 1944, after the ousting of Horthy by Hitler and the installation of the National-Socialist Arrow Cross party, the Hungarian government readily aided Nazi Germany in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust, where most of them died.[citation needed]

In April 1941, Hungary joined Germany and Italy in the invasion of Yugoslavia. Hungary was allowed to annex the Bačka (Bácska) region in Vojvodina, which had a relative majority of Hungarians, as well as the regions of Prekmurje and Medjimurje, which had large Slovenian and Croatian majorities, respectively. Its ambitions regarding Croatia were halted by the creation of the Independent State of Croatia and Nazi Germany’s alliance with the Kingdom of Romania against the Soviet Union.


Hungarian armor and infantry in retreat, August 1944.

By early 1944, with Soviet forces fast advancing from the east, Hungary was caught attempting to contact the British and the Americans to secretly switch sides. On 19 March 1944, the Germans responded by invading Hungary in Operation Margarethe. German forces occupied key locations to ensure Hungarian loyalty. They placed Horthy under house arrest and replaced Prime Minister Miklós Kállay with a more pliable successor. Döme Sztójay, an avid supporter of the Nazis, became the new Hungarian Prime Minister. Sztójay governed with the aid of a Nazi Military Governor, Edmund Veesenmayer.




Under Soviet occupation and provisional governments, the fate of the Kingdom of Hungary was already determined. A High National Council was appointed the country's collective Head of State until the monarchy was formally dissolved on 1 February 1946. The Regency was replaced by the Second Hungarian Republic. It was quickly followed by the creation the People's Republic of Hungary.

See also[edit]


  2. ^ Dr. Térfy, Gyula, ed. (1921). "1920. évi I. törvénycikk az alkotmányosság helyreállításáról és az állami főhatalom gyakorlásának ideiglenes rendezéséről.". Magyar törvénytár (Corpus Juris Hungarici): 1920. évi törvénycikkek (in Hungarian). Budapest: Révai Testvérek Irodalmi Intézet Részvénytársaság. p. 3. 
  8. ^ Sinor, p. 289
  9. ^ Budapesti Közlöny, 17 October 1944
  10. ^ Hivatalos Közlöny, 27 January 1945
  11. ^ a b Signor, pp. 290
  12. ^ Signor, pp. 290.
  13. ^ Signor, pp. 291.
  14. ^ a b Sinor, pp. 291.
  15. ^ a b Sinor, pp. 291
Preceded by
Hungarian Republic
White Terror
Kingdom of Hungary
also known as the
Horthy regime (1920–1944)
succeeded by

Coordinates: 47°29′N 19°02′E﻿ / ﻿47.483°N 19.033°E﻿ / 47.483; 19.033