During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered outright, including many Jews and Romani,[12][13] and 80,000 people were deported from Hungary to concentration camps in Austria.

[9] The arrow cross symbol had other ideological implications, including a desire to nullify the Treaty of Trianon, and expand the Hungarian state in all cardinal directions, out to the borders of the former Kingdom of Hungary.

[9] The roots of Arrow Cross influence can be traced to the antisemitism that followed the Communist putsch, the creation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and Red Terror during the spring and summer of 1919.

Béla Kun, the Republic's leader and instigator of the Terror, had a secular Jewish father and a mother who, despite converting to the Reformed Church of Hungary, was still seen as being a Jew.

Before World War II, the Arrow Cross were not proponents of the racial antisemitism of the Nazis, but utilised traditional stereotypes and prejudices to gain votes among voters both in Budapest and the countryside.

It did become one of the most powerful parties in Hungary but the Horthy leadership banned the Arrow Cross on the outbreak of World War II, forcing it to operate clandestinely.

In 1944, the Arrow Cross Party's fortunes abruptly reversed when Hitler lost patience with Horthy's and his moderate prime minister's, Miklós Kállay's, reluctance to fully toe the Nazi line.

In March 1944, the Germans invaded and occupied Hungary, which resulted in Kállay fleeing, and a Nazi proxy, Döme Sztójay, replacing him who quickly legalised the Arrow Cross.

As the summer progressed, and with the Allied and Soviet armies closing in on central Europe, the ability of the Nazis to devote resources to Hungary's "Jewish Solution" waned, but they still carried out many massacres.

To save bullets, their favorite method was to tie the waists of three people together with wire and shoot only the middle person, who would fall forward into the river drowning the other two as the weight of the copse dragged them to the bottom of the Danube.

On the other hand, the German envoy to Hungary Edmund Veesenmayer received orders from Berlin to provide as much assistance as he could to the Arrow Cross in killing of Jews.

"[23] This view was shared by parliamentarian Károlyl Maróthy who said "Something must be done to stop the death rattle going on in the ditches day and night... the population must not be able to see them dying"[23] In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms.

As order collapsed, Arrow Cross members continued their attacks on Jews so that the majority of Budapest's Jews were only saved by the heroic efforts of a handful of Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats, most famously Sweden's special envoy Raoul Wallenberg, the Papal Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta, Swiss Consul Carl Lutz, Spanish Consul Ángel Sanz Briz and the Italian cattle trader Giorgio Perlasca.

[12]: 589 The Arrow Cross government effectively fell at the end of January 1945, when the Soviet Army took Pest and the Axis forces retreated across the Danube to Buda.

Szálasi had escaped from Budapest on December 11, 1944,[17] taking with him the Hungarian royal crown, while Arrow Cross members and German forces continued to fight a rear-guard action in the far west of Hungary until the end of the war in April 1945.

A memorial which was created by Gyula Pauer [hu], Hungarian sculptor, and Can Togay in 2005 on the bank of the Danube River in Budapest honors the Jews who were shot there by Arrow Cross militiamen, between 1944 and 1945.