Ferenc Szálasi (6 January 1897 – 12 March 1946) was a Hungarian military officer, politician, Nazi sympathizer and founder of the far-right fascist Arrow Cross Party who headed the government of Hungary during the country's occupation by Nazi Germany in the final stages of World War II.
Szálasi served with distinction during World War I as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1925, he became a staff officer of the restored Kingdom of Hungary under Regent Miklós Horthy. Initially apolitical, Szálasi embraced right-wing ultranationalism in the early 1930s and became a passionate advocate of the irredentist Hungarism. In 1937, he founded the Hungarian National Socialist Party, having retired from the military and fully devoted himself to politics. He attracted considerable support through his virulently nationalist and antisemitic program, while his followers became increasingly radical, leading to his imprisonment in 1938. While in prison, he was proclaimed leader of the far-right Nazi Arrow Cross Party, which quickly became one of the most powerful political forces in the country. Szálasi was granted amnesty in 1940, but had to operate his party clandestinely after Horthy outlawed it on the outbreak of World War II.
Following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 and Horthy's ousting in October, Szálasi was made head of government and head of state. His pro-Nazi puppet government, known as the Government of National Unity, was dominated by members of the Arrow Cross Party. The regime imposed martial law, participated in Germany's war efforts and recommenced the Holocaust in Hungary, which had been halted by Horthy. His militias were singularly responsible for the murder of 10,000–15,000 Hungarian Jews and for the deportation of a further 650,000 to death camps.
Szálasi's collaborationist government, with its authority limited to the city of Budapest and its environs, only lasted 163 days. Facing the advance of Soviet and Romanian forces, Szálasi and his cabinet fled the country shortly before the Siege of Budapest began. He was captured by American troops in Austria in May 1945 and returned to Hungary to face trial. The Government of National Unity, which had relocated to Munich, was formally dissolved the next day. The People's Tribunal in Budapest found him guilty of war crimes and high treason, and sentenced him to death. He was executed by hanging on 12 March 1946.
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Early life
Ancestry
Born the son of a soldier in Kassa, Abaúj-Torna County, Kingdom of Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia) of mixed Armenian (the surname of his great-grandfather was Salossian), German, Hungarian (one grandparent), Slovak and Rusyn ancestry. His Armenian ancestors settled down in Ebesfalva, Transylvania during the reign of Prince Michael I Apafi. Szálasi's grandfather, who participated as a honvéd in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, married a German woman from Vienna, and their son, Ferenc Szálasi, Sr. (born 1866) attended a military cadet school in Kassa and later became an official in the Honvédség. Szálasi's brothers, Béla, Károly and Rezső also served in the army.
Szálasi's mother was the Greek Catholic Erzsébet Szakmár (born 1875), who had Slovak and Rusyn roots. She provided religious education to her sons. Szálasi once said "I received the power of belief and faith in God through breast milk. My mother made to drink faith through and through me". Ferenc Szálasi lived with his mother until 1944.
Military career
Szálasi followed in his father's footsteps and joined the army at a young age. He finished elementary studies in his birthplace, then attended the military academy in Kőszeg, Marosvásárhely (now Târgu Mureș in Romania) and continued studies in Kismarton. Finally, he finished his military education in the Theresian Military Academy of Wiener Neustadt, where he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1915.
He eventually became an officer and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I. He served on the frontline for 36 months. At the end of the war, he was promoted to First Lieutenant and was involved in the 2nd regiment of k.u.k. Tyrolean Rifle Regiments, widely known as Kaiserjäger. He was stationed near Merano and Lake Garda in the Italian Front. Later the regiments were ordered to the north to Verdun at the last days of the war. For his service, he was honored with Third Class of the Order of the Iron Crown. Returning to Hungary, Szálasi performed courier service for the newly formed Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the Aster Revolution in November 1918.
Upon the dissolution and break-up of Austria-Hungary after the war, the Hungarian Democratic Republic and then the Hungarian Soviet Republic were briefly proclaimed in 1918 and 1919 respectively. The short-lived communist government of Béla Kun launched what was known as the "Red Terror" and ultimately involved Hungary in an ill-fated war with Romania. In 1920, the country went into a period of civil conflict with Hungarian anti-communists and monarchists violently purging the nation of communists, leftist intellectuals, and others they felt threatened by, especially Jews. This period was known as the "White Terror" and, in 1920, after the pullout of the last of the Romanian occupation forces, it led to the restoration of the Kingdom of Hungary (Magyar Királyság) under Regent Miklós Horthy. During that time, Szálasi was still an apolitical person, and he did not involve himself in events beyond the general interest. In 1926, he attended the trials of the officials associated with the Franc affair, a plan to destroy the French economy by circulating thousands of counterfeit francs. In a series of letters to the editor of various newspapers, Szálasi attacked the courts for convicting the "patriots", saying that the only thing wrong with the counterfeiting operation was that the disguised General Staff officers who been supposed to circulate the counterfeit francs had been arrested before they had gotten many of the counterfeit francs into circulation.
In 1920–21, Szálasi finished non-commissioned officer training school in Hajmáskér; following that, he served in the 13th Infantry Regiment in Miskolc. In 1923, he enrolled to the General Staff officers' training course at the Ludovica Military Academy. For his outstanding achievements, he was promoted with priority to Captain in 1924. In 1925, Szálasi entered the General Staff of the restored Kingdom. He fulfilled his mandatory field-grade task in 1929 at the 11th Infantry Regiment in Debrecen as a company commander. According to some memoirs by former subordinates, Szálasi was a popular and beloved superior among the infantry. His fellow officers acknowledged his military skills and literacy, but some others thought Szálasi was pedantic and autonomous. According to his future Minister of Defence, Károly Beregfy, "Szálasi's name among the General Staff was a concept of excellent hunting and tactics, but also a concept with the regards of honesty, truthfulness and Puritanism." Starting in 1927, Szálasi formed a common law relationship with his servant Gizella Lutz, whom he was to marry in 1945. Szálasi was very close to his mother, whom he lived with until 1944. By 1933, Szálasi had attained the rank of Major and became Chief of the 1st Honvéd Mixed-Brigade's General Staff in Budapest.
Political career
First steps in politics
Around this time, when Gyula Gömbös came to power, Szálasi became fascinated with politics and often lectured on Hungary's political affairs. By this time, the hitherto apolitical Szálasi was a fanatical right-wing nationalist and a strong proponent of "Hungarism" and advocating the expansion of Hungary's territory back to the borders of Greater Hungary as it was prior to the Treaty of Trianon, which in 1920 had reduced the country's territory by 72%. In 1933, to summarize his views, he published his 46-page pamphlet with the title A magyar állam felépítésének terve ("Plan for the Building of the Hungarian State") and sent his work to several politicians. Soldiers and military officers were banned from politicizing, thus Szálasi was sentenced to twenty-day detention and expelled from the General Staff by a military court. After his release, Szálasi was ordered to the 14th Infantry Regiment in Eger, where served as staff officer then first adjutant. Szálasi gradually became disillusioned with the army and requested resignation from that in October 1934.
On 1 March 1935, Szálasi left the army in order to devote his full attention to politics, after which time he established the Party of National Will, a nationalistic group. It was eventually outlawed by the conservative government for being too radical. Unperturbed, Szálasi established the Hungarian National Socialist Party in 1937, which was also banned. However, Szálasi was able to attract considerable support to his cause from factory workers and Hungary's lower classes by pandering to their aggrieved sense of nationalism and their virulent antisemitism. Szálasi's populist style and his appeal to the masses made him the object of much distrust by the governing conservative politicians. The political system in the Kingdom of Hungary had disfranchised most of the poor by making income level a criterion for voting and holding office. Under the laws introduced in 1922 only 28% of Hungarians were wealthy enough to be allowed to vote and hold office with the rest all disfranchised. Furthermore, the open ballot along with the way that the seats in Parliament were gerrymandered by giving urban areas less seats than what their share of the population entitled them to ensured that the governing conservative party, the Unity Party (which later changed its name to the Party of Hungarian Life) always won the elections. Szálasi's vague call for a "changing" of the Hungarian system along with his populism led for the elites to see him as a demagogue who was threatening the existing system.
The American historian Paul Hanebrink described Szálasi as one of the more eccentric fascist leaders in Europe as his views on a number of issues were "peculiar and often unfathomable". The main figure on the Hungarian right in the 1920s was the Anglophile conservative prime minister István Bethlen who greatly admired the British Conservative Party and always believed that Great Britain would at some point step in to peacefully revise the Treaty of Trianon by pressuring Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia to return the lands they had gained under the treaty. By the 1930s, many Hungarians had felt that Bethlen's peaceful approach had failed and favored the approach of the radicals who wanted an alliance with Germany to regain all of the Lands of the Crown of St. István via war. Szálasi was not the only radical politician to advocate an alliance with Germany, but in terms of style he was one of the radicals who made the most forceful impression. Gömbös during his time first as defense minister starting in 1929 and then as prime minister starting in 1932 had promoted a number of officers sympathetic to his views, and as a result the officer corps was a stronghold of radicals. As a result of Gömbös's policies, many Honved officers were attracted to the message preached by the former officer Szálasi. Szálasi was not hostile towards Christianity, but he did insist that Hungarians identify as Hungarians first and Christians second, writing in his book The Road and the Way that every "Magyar priest" should be "a priest and brother to every Magyar and according to the commands of his faith bring his Magyar brothers closer to God, but not as Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox or Unitarians". Szálasi was much influenced by the misogyny of his times, and tended to see the Arrow Cross's many women followers as only good for domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning and sewing. Szálasi created a cult around his mother, whom he presented as the ideal Magyar woman, and made his mother's name day into the Arrow Cross equivalent of mother's day.
Way to power
Following the Nazi occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the pro-German Döme Sztójay was installed as Prime Minister of Hungary. The Arrow Cross Party was then legalized by the government, allowing Szálasi to expand the party. When Sztójay was deposed in August, Szálasi once again became an enemy of the Hungarian government and Regent Miklós Horthy ordered his arrest. By this time, Horthy realized that Hungary's position was untenable, and began putting out feelers to the Allies. The Germans were concerned that Horthy would succeed in extricating Hungary from the war. They had, however, waiting in the wings, a perfect ally in Szálasi.
When the Germans learned of the Regent's plan to come to a separate peace with the Soviets and exit the Axis alliance, they kidnapped Horthy's son, Miklós, Jr. and threatened to kill him unless Horthy abdicated in favor of Szálasi. Under duress, Horthy signed a document announcing his own abdication and naming Szálasi prime minister–effectively giving "legal sanction" to an Arrow Cross coup. In his memoirs, Horthy contended the appointment of Szálasi was invalid, saying, "A signature wrung from a man at machine-gun point can have little legality." The Germans then pressured Parliament to install Szálasi as Head of State as well.
National leader
Szálasi's Government of National Unity turned the Kingdom of Hungary into a puppet state of Nazi Germany formed on 16 October 1944 after Regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy was removed from power during Operation Panzerfaust (Unternehmen Eisenfaust).
The Hungarian parliament approved the formation of a Council of Regency (Kormányzótanács) of three. On 4 November, Szálasi was sworn as Leader of the Nation (nemzetvezető). He formed a government of sixteen ministers, half of which were members of the Arrow Cross Party. While the Horthy regency had come to an end, the Hungarian monarchy was not abolished by the Szálasi regime, as government newspapers kept referring to the country as the Kingdom of Hungary (Magyar Királyság, also abbreviated as m.kir.), although Magyarország (Hungary) was frequently used as an alternative.
Szálasi and his "Quisling government" had little other intention or ability but to execute the party's ideology and to maintain control in Nazi-occupied portions of Hungary as the Soviet Union invaded. He did this in order to reduce the threat to Germany. Szálasi's aim was to create a one-party state based on Hungarism. On 3 November 1944, Szálasi took his oath before God as the Nemzetvezető ("Leader of the Nation") at the Royal Castle before the Holy Crown of Saint István, becoming both head of state and head of government. Only 55 MPs of the 370 serving in the Lower House attended the ceremony. Almost all of the civil servants along with most of the Honved officer corps recognised Szálasi's claim to be the Nemzetvezető. Cardinal Seredi of Budapest, the Prince Primate of Hungary, also recognised Szálasi as he ordered all Catholic priests and Catholic school teachers to serve the new regime. Szálasi himself was astonished at the way that most of the civil service, the judiciary, the military, the police and the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie accepted his regime as he expected far more passive resistance and a wave of resignations. The German minister-plenipotentiary in Budapest, SS-Brigadeführer Edmund Veesenmayer, had a low opinion of him as he later told the British historian C.A. Macartney that Szálasi was "a buffoon who alternatively swaggered and grovelled" while his followers were "a gang of fantasists". Szálasi envisioned a far-reaching transformation of society as he proposed laws that would had sterilized all gay Hungarians; made marriage between "fertile" and "barren" Hungarians illegal; and would had imposed severe legal penalties on any "fertile" men and women who did not marry and have children. The Family Law that Szálasi wrote in late 1944 called for castrating all "people burdened with abnormal sexual instinct" (i.e male homosexuals) along with men infected with venereal diseases and all Jewish men and Romany men who had sex with non-Jewish and non-Romany women.
Trial and execution
The Arrow Cross Party's cabinet, which had fled Hungary, was dissolved on 7 May 1945, a day before Germany's surrender. Szálasi was captured by American troops in Mattsee on 6 May and returned to Hungary on 3 October. He was tried by the People's Tribunal in Budapest in open sessions begun in February 1946, and sentenced to death for war crimes and high treason. Of all the Hungarian leaders brought to trial for war crimes, Szálasi was the one who made the very worst impression while he was on the stand. The Hungarian historian Peter Kenez wrote that Szálasi "was so out of touch with reality that he could fairly be described as mad". In his defense, Szálasi made bizarre and strange statements that made sense only to himself and insisted on being addressed as "the Nemzetvezetô" (the Hungarian equivalent to the German der Führer). On the stand, Szálasi cut a figure that was both pathetically deluded and repulsively vicious as he made rambling, incoherent speeches about the secret Masonic coded messages supposedly contained in the speeches of world leaders while at the same time insisting that all of the atrocities committed by the Arrow Cross regime were justified. To the extent that Szálasi had a coherent defense that was expressed in his rambling speeches, it was that he was an idealist on a mission from God to save Hungary from the Jews by creating a synthesis of socialism and nationalism that would be a third way between communism and capitalism and that because everything he did was motivated by a love of Jesus Christ that this justified shooting down Jewish women and children in cold blood.
Szálasi was hanged on 12 March 1946 in Budapest, along with two of his former ministers, Gábor Vajna and Károly Beregfy, and the party ideologist József Gera. The hanging was conducted in the Austrian pole method. A large post had a rope attached to a hook at the top. Szálasi was marched up steps, placed with his back to the post, his legs and arms were tied, the noose placed around his neck, the rope tightened, and the steps were removed. With the post only leaving a couple feet between Szálasi and the ground it is likely that he died slowly due to strangulation rather than being instantaneously rendered unconscious and dying shortly after as would happen when utilizing the standard drop. This would also explain why his arms and legs were bound as to prevent struggle during the process. Before being executed, Szálasi received the last sacraments by a Catholic priest.
Thirty-two photos of the hanging were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Other photographs of the execution are on display in the Holocaust Room of the Budapest Jewish Museum. Szálasi's widow, Lutz, was convicted twice by the People's Tribunals on 22 November 1945 and again on 19 June 1946 of abuse of power, theft of Jewish property, and of promoting the Arrow Cross. After 11 years in prison, she was released at the time of the 1956 revolution. She thereafter lived in an apartment in Budapest until her death in 1992. In 1991, she was featured in the documentary Itélettlenül (Without Verdict) by Tamás Almási, where she held up a photograph of Szálasi shaking hands with Hitler, and then spoke with tears in her eyes about what a "great man" her husband had been whose name she believed had been maligned.