As a wartime ally of Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Szálasi's government readily executed and realised the Holocaust in Hungary (1941–1945); thus, in seven months, the Arrow Cross regime killed between 10,000 and 15,000 Hungarian Jews in the country,[10] and deported 80,000 Jewish women, children, and old people for killing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

[11] Late in the Second World War, at the time of the joint coup d’état by which the German Nazis and the Arrow Cross Party overthrew the Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy (r. 1920–1944), the Red Army occupied most of the Kingdom of Hungary, which effectively limited the authority of the Government of National Unity to the city of Budapest and its environs as the Hungarian capital city.

In a scorched earth strategy, the German armed forces destroyed Hungarian infrastructure as the Soviets closed in.

However, within twenty-four hours, the Soviet counterattack was able to drive the Germans and Hungarians back to the positions they held before the offensive began.

[2] Szálasi was captured by American troops in Mattsee on 6 May[2] and returned to Hungary, where he was tried for crimes against the state and executed, along with three of his ministers.

To spare his son's life, Horthy signed a statement announcing both his abdication and the appointment of Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi as Magyar királyi miniszterelnök (Royal Hungarian Prime Minister) on 16 October.

In his memoirs, Horthy later contended that he never gave power to the Arrow Cross, but had "merely exchanged my signature for my son's life."

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.

On 21 December 1944, with the approval of the Soviet Union, Béla Miklós was elected as the prime minister of a "counter" Hungarian government in Soviet-controlled Debrecen.