Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya[a] (18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957) was a Hungarian admiral and statesman who was the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar period and most of World War II, from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944.

Under Horthy's leadership, Hungary provided support to Polish refugees when Germany attacked their country in 1939 and participated in the Axis powers' invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

The excisions, eventually ratified in the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, cost Hungary two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its native Hungarian speakers; this dealt the population a terrible psychological blow.

Horthy himself declined to apologize for the savagery of his officer detachments, writing later, "I have no reason to gloss over deeds of injustice and atrocities committed when an iron broom alone could sweep the country clean.

It was a conviction shared by Horthy and his country's ruling class that would help drive Hungary into a fateful alliance with Adolf Hitler.The nation of the Hungarians loved and admired Budapest, which became its polluter in the last years.

When in 1927 the British newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere denounced the partitions ratified at Trianon in the pages of his Daily Mail, an official letter of gratitude was eagerly signed by 1.2 million Hungarians.

John Gunther stated that Horthy, though reactionary as far as social or economic ideas are concerned, is in effect the guardian of constitutionalism and what vestigial democracy remains in the country, because it is largely his influence that prevents any prime minister from abolishing parliament and setting up a dictatorial rule.

The means by which the regent granted or resisted Hitler's demands, especially with regard to Hungarian military action and the treatment of Hungary's Jews, remain the central criteria by which his career has been judged.

Horthy enthusiastically rode into the re-acquired territories at the head of his troops, greeted by emotional ethnic Hungarians: "As I passed along the roads, people embraced one another, fell upon their knees, and wept with joy because liberation had come to them at last, without war, without bloodshed.

In an October 1940 letter to Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki, Horthy echoed a widespread national sentiment: that Jews enjoyed too much success in commerce, the professions, and industry—success that needed to be curtailed:As regards the Jewish problem, I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life.

Prime Minister Pál Teleki, horrified that he had failed to prevent this collusion with the Nazis, despite the fact that he had signed a non-aggression pact with Yugoslavia in December 1940, committed suicide.

That March, he dismissed the pro-German prime minister László Bárdossy and replaced him with Miklós Kállay, a moderate whom Horthy expected to loosen Hungary's ties to Germany.

[60] Yet Horthy himself gained knowledge of the situation of the Jews in Auschwitz in 1944 when one of the family's friends, Pető Ernő, one of the leaders of the Central Jewish Council revealed the truth about the deportations.

Knowing the likely alternative was a gauleiter who would treat Hungary in the same manner as the other countries under Nazi occupation, Horthy acquiesced and appointed his ambassador to Germany, General Döme Sztójay, as prime minister.

Upon learning about the deportations, Horthy wrote the following letter to the prime minister:Dear Sztójay: I was aware that the Government in the given forced situation has to take many steps that I do not consider correct, and for which I can not take responsibility.

[30]Just before the deportations began, two Slovak Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz and passed details of what was happening inside the camps to officials in Slovakia.

With his son's life in the balance, Horthy consented to sign a document officially abdicating his office and naming Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross, as both head of state and prime minister.

[30] With the help of the SS, the Arrow Cross leadership moved swiftly to take command of the Hungarian armed forces, and to prevent the surrender that Horthy had arranged, even though Soviet troops were now deep inside the country.

Indeed, the former regent reported being told that Josip Broz Tito, the new ruler of Yugoslavia, asked that Horthy be charged with complicity with the 1942 Novi Sad raid by Hungarian troops in the Bačka region of Vojvodina.

[75] According to the memoirs of Ferenc Nagy, who served for a year as prime minister in post-war Hungary, the Hungarian Communist leadership was also interested in extraditing Horthy for trial.

Horthy never lost his deep contempt for communism, and in his memoirs he blamed Hungary's alliance with the Axis on the threat posed by the "Asiatic barbarians" of the Soviet Union.

[80] The regime's efforts at economic development and modernization also improved contemporaries' opinions, and although the Great Depression initially hurt his image, Horthy's wide-ranging social programs saved face for the most part.

[85] Mátyás Rákosi's hardline Stalinist government systematically disseminated, through propaganda and state education, the idea that the Horthy era constituted the "lowest point in Hungarian history.

Especially critical in this campaign was the 1950 publication of the textbook The Story of the Hungarian People, which denounced Horthy's military as a "genocidal band" consisting of "sociopathic officers, kulaks, and the dregs of society.

Popular volumes still painted him negatively, openly leveling ad hominem attacks: Horthy was accused of bastardy, lechery, sadism, greed, nepotism, bloodthirst, warmongering, and cowardice, among other vices.

[86] Gostony argued that Horthy did not seek a dictatorship until the 1930s and, although he was unable to prevent the German invasion of Yugoslavia, sought to maintain a moderately liberal government, citing his replacement of hardliner László Bárdossy with Miklós Kállay as prime minister as evidence of this.

"[87] Contemporary Hungarian-American historian István Deák regards Horthy as typical of other strongmen of the era, especially dictators Francisco Franco of Spain and Philippe Pétain of Vichy France.

[13] Critics have more specifically connected Horthy's popularity to the Magyar Gárda, a paramilitary group that uses Árpád dynasty imagery and to recent incidents of antiziganist and antisemitic vandalism in Hungary.

In 2012, for instance, then-party leader Attila Mesterházy condemned the Orbán government's position as "inexcusable", claiming that Fidesz was "openly associating itself with the ideology of the regime that collaborated with the fascists.

"[12] Words have led to actions in some instances, as when leftist activist Péter Dániel vandalized a rural bust of Horthy by dousing it in red paint and hanging a sign that read "Mass Murderer – War Criminal" around its neck.