Born on October 23, 1899, in Újvidék, Hungary (today in Serbia), de Balla graduated from the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt, and then from the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied international law.
He was trapped in Budapest during the two-month German siege, and later worked with Cardinal Mindszenty in the underground, and then with the Spanish Legation in Hungary assisting Jews.
After two years under Soviet rule, de Balla escaped Hungary in 1946 in the private airplane of an American general.
[4] An ardent Catholic and anti-Communist, de Balla also defended Francoist Spain as “incomparably more human than that of the Soviets,”[5] and argued for military support of the Spanish army, noting that Spain had “the toughest and biggest anti-Communist army in Europe and which only needs modern armaments.”[6] In America, de Balla was on the research staff of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins,[7] and then taught Political Science at St. Peter's College in New Jersey, Notre Dame College in Maryland, and Loyola College in Maryland.
He purchased Flamhof Castle near St. Nikolai, Austria, and was living there at the time of his death in an automobile accident on November 25, 1957.