Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy ruled Hungary for twenty-four years as regent for a monarchy that had no king. Born in 1868 into a Calvinist noble family, he became a career officer in the Austro-Hungarian navy, served as aide-de-camp to Franz Joseph, and commanded a cruiser at the battle of the Otranto Strait in 1917. He became the navy's last commander-in-chief, of a fleet belonging to a country that no longer existed and had no coastline. After the collapse of Béla Kun's short-lived communist republic in 1919, Horthy led the National Army into Budapest and became regent in March 1920. The White Terror that accompanied his rise killed several thousand, many of them Jews. He twice blocked the return of the Habsburg king Charles in 1921, which secured his own position. His government was authoritarian and conservative, with a parliament, restricted franchise, and a numerus clausus limiting Jewish university admissions from 1920 — the first antisemitic law in interwar Europe. His fixed aim was to reverse the Treaty of Trianon, which had removed two thirds of Hungary's territory. That drove him into alignment with Germany, which returned parts of Slovakia, Transylvania and Yugoslavia between 1938 and 1941, and into the invasion of the Soviet Union, where the Second Army was destroyed at Voronezh in 1943. He passed antisemitic laws and refused to deport Hungarian Jews until Germany occupied the country in March 1944. Some 437,000 were then deported to Auschwitz in eight weeks by Hungarian gendarmerie. He halted the deportations in July under international pressure, after most had gone. The Germans deposed him in October 1944. He died in Portugal in 1957.
- Lived: 1868 CE – 1957 CE
- Nationality: Hungarian
- Roles: regent, admiral, statesman
