István Horthy de Nagybánya (9 December 1904 – 20 August 1942) was a Hungarian politician and fighter pilot during World War II. He was briefly Vice-Regent of Hungary in 1942, and was the eldest son of Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy.
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Early life
In his youth, István Horthy and his younger brother Miklós Jr. were active members of a Catholic Scout troop of the Magyar Cserkészszövetség (Hungarian Scout Association), even though he was a Protestant.
Horthy graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1928. He went to the United States for one year and worked in the Ford factory in Detroit, Michigan.
Career
Returning to the Kingdom of Hungary, he worked in MÁVAG's locomotive factory as a mechanical engineer. On the forefront of the designer team, he took part in the development of many great projects, such as the Class 424. Between 1934 and 1938, Horthy was director of the company and after 1938 he became its general manager. In 1940, he married Countess Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai.
István was pro-Western, and he strenuously confronted Nazism, often making his criticism public, despite Hungary being a part of the Axis. In January 1942, he had been elected Deputy Regent, and for some time, the "small regent" enjoyed massive popularity in Hungary. Shortly thereafter, István was sent to the Eastern Front. His humanity, and his disagreement in the "Jewish question" appears even here, too – a quote from one of his letters, which he sent to his father from Kiev, Soviet Ukraine: "[...] Yet another sad topic: the Jewish companies, as I hear, -there 20 or 30,000 [men]-, are at the mercy of the sadist's passions, in every regard; the stomach of man gets ache [looking at this]; it is abhorrent, that in the 20th century, it happens at us, too... [...] I fear, we will pay for this very dearly once. (Is it possible to take them home to work there?) Otherwise, in spring, only a few will be alive. [...]"