Arrow Cross Party
Arrow Cross Party – Hungarist Movement Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom | |
---|---|
Leader | Ferenc Szálasi[1] |
Founded | 15 March 1939 |
Dissolved | 7 May 1945 |
Preceded by | NSZMP – HM[2] |
Headquarters | Andrássy út 60, Budapest |
Membership | 300,000 (1939 est.)[3] |
Ideology | |
Political alliance | Hungarian National Socialist Party (until 1941)[11] |
Colours | Red White Green |
Anthem | "Ébredj Magyar!"[12] (lit. 'Wake up Hungarian!') |
Most MPs in the Diet (1939) | 29 / 260 (11%) |
Party flag | |
Other Flags: | |
The Arrow Cross Party (
Formation
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Nazism |
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The party was founded by Ferenc Szálasi in 1935 as the Party of National Will.[16] It had its origins in the political philosophy of pro-German extremists such as Gyula Gömbös, who coined the term "national socialism" in the 1920s.[17] The party was outlawed in 1937 but was reconstituted in 1939 as the Arrow Cross Party, and was modelled fairly explicitly on the Nazi Party of Germany, although Szálasi often harshly criticised the Nazi regime of Germany.[18]
Emblem and symbolism
The party's iconography was clearly inspired by that of the Nazis.
The
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.[10]
Ideology
The party's
Rise to power
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2017) |
The roots of Arrow Cross influence can be traced to the
After the Soviet Republic was overthrown in August 1919, conservative authoritarians under the leadership of Admiral Miklós Horthy seized control. Many Hungarian military officers took part in the counter-reprisals known as the White Terror – parts of which were directed at Jews.[10] Although the White Guard was officially suppressed, many of its most prevalent members went underground and formed the core membership of a spreading nationalist antisemitic movement.
During the 1930s, the Arrow Cross began to dominate
The Arrow Cross subscribed to the Nazi ideology of "
The
The Arrow Cross obtained most of its support from a disparate coalition of military officers, soldiers, nationalists and agricultural workers. It was only one of several similar fascist factions in Hungary but was by far the most prominent, through effective recruiting. In the only election it participated in, in May 1939, the party won 15% of the vote and 29 seats in the Hungarian Parliament but this was only superficially impressive as most Hungarians were not permitted to vote. 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,
During the spring and summer of 1944, more than 400,000 Jews were driven into centralised ghettos and then deported from the Hungarian countryside to death camps by the Nazis, with the enthusiastic assistance of the Hungarian Interior Ministry and its gendarmerie (the csendőrség), both of which had members closely linked to the Arrow Cross. Budapest Jews were forced into Yellow Star Houses, approximately 2,000 single-building mini-ghettos identified by a yellow Star of David at the entrance.[13]: 578 In August 1944, before deportations from Budapest began, Horthy used what remaining influence he had to stop them, and force the radical antisemites out of his government.
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. Jews were often rounded up on the streets by Arrow Cross men, and their standard procedure was to take children away from their parents, then killing or beating any parent or child who protested. The Arrow Cross repeatedly organized mass murders next to the Danube, shooting people in the head, with the bodies falling into the river. 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.[23] It has been estimated that during the autumn of 1944 there were no more than 4,000 members of the Arrow Cross in Budapest, yet despite this they were able to terrorize the city's population of a million.[23] Their methods eventually became too sickening even for the German military whose commander General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch ordered his troops not to take part in the killings. 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] Eventually Szálasi became concerned about the impression that neutral diplomats were forming of his government and ordered that the killings be undertaken with more discretion. The country's national police commissioner Pál Hódosy concurred, "The problem is not that the Jews are being murdered... the trouble is the method. The bodies must be made to disappear, not put out on the streets."[23] This view was shared by parliamentarian Károlyl Maróthy who said "We must not allow individual cases to create comparison for them... 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]
Arrow Cross rule
In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched the covert Operation Panzerfaust which took Horthy into "protective custody" in Germany and forced him to abdicate. Szálasi was made "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of a "Government of National Unity" the same day.
Red Army troops reached the outskirts of Budapest in December 1944, and the
As control of the city's institutions weakened, the Arrow Cross trained their guns on the most helpless possible targets including patients in the city's two Jewish hospitals on Maros Street and Bethlen Square, remaining women and children, and residents in the Jewish poorhouse on Alma Road. 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
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,[18] 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.
Post-war developments
After the war, many Arrow Cross leaders were captured and tried for war crimes and no fewer than 6,200 indictments for murder were served against Arrow Cross men in just a few months.[13]: 587 Some Arrow Cross officials were executed, including Szálasi.
A memorial which was created by Gyula Pauer , 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. The victims were forced to remove their shoes, all of which were confiscated later,[26] and then shot so that their bodies would fall into the river.
In 2006, a former high-ranking member, Lajos Polgár, was found in Melbourne, Australia.[15] He died of natural causes in July of that year after the war crimes case against him was dropped.[27]
To some extent, the ideology of the Arrow Cross has resurfaced in recent years, with the neofascist Hungarian Welfare Association being prominent in reviving Szálasi's "Hungarizmus" through its monthly magazine, Magyartudat ("Hungarian Awareness") but "Hungarism" remains a fringe element in modern Hungarian politics, and the Hungarian Welfare Association has dissolved.[28]
Electoral results
National Assembly
Election | Votes | Seats | Rank | Government | Leader of the national list | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
# | % | ±pp | # | +/− | ||||
1939 | 530,405 | 14.4% | 14.4 | 29 / 260
|
29 | 3rd | in opposition | Ferenc Szálasi |
See also
- András Kun
- Antisemitism in contemporary Hungary
- Hungarian National Socialist Party
- The Holocaust in Hungary
- Hungary during the Second World War
- Music Box
- The Fifth Seal
Notes
- ^ The Arrow Cross Party held anti-feudal, anti-capitalist and anti-socialist beliefs. They supported land reform and militarism and drew most of its support from the ranks of the Royal Hungarian Army.[7][8]
Citations
- ^ Ferenc Szálasi. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Három hónapja nem fizetnek házbért az Andrássy úti nyilasok, 1938. augusztus, huszadikszazad.hu
- ^ "Ungváry Krisztián: A politikai erjedés – az 1939-es választások Magyarországon". Archived from the original on 2002-11-30. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
- ^ a b c d "Szálasi Ferenc: Hungarizmus (alapterv és követelések)". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
- ^ PAYNE, Stanley: A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. 1995. p.272.
- ^ Ramet, Sabrina (1992). Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia. Duke University Press. p. 113.
the ultranationalist Arrow Cross Party
- ISBN 0060469951.
- ISBN 0521538556.
- ISBN 0814773206– via Google Books.
A considerable portion of the media in Hungary described the swastika as a symbol of the forces defending European Christian culture, struggling bravely against the danger of Red expansion from the east and against the Bolshevik-Jewish Weltanschauung. It served as a source of inspiration for the various cross movements, including the Arrow-Cross party.
- ^ ISBN 0814773206– via Google Books.
- ^ Stanley G. Payne (2001). A History of Fascism 1914-1945. London, Routledge. pp. 273-274, 415-416.
- ^ "Ébredj Magyar - Hungarista Induló". YouTube. 2021-01-10. Retrieved 2024-02-03.
- ^ ISBN 0-8143-2561-0.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link - ^ Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, Jack R. Fischel, Scarecrow Press, 17 Jul 2010, pg106
- ^ a b Johnston, Chris (2006-02-16). "War Crime Suspect Admits to his Leading Fascist Role". The Age. Archived from the original on 17 May 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
- ISBN 1-57607-800-0.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link - ^ Miklos Molnar, 'A Concise History of Hungary
- ^ a b "Amerikai Népszava Online". Nepszava.com. 2015-03-23. Archived from the original on 2009-02-02. Retrieved 2017-06-17.
- ^ Karsai, László (2012). "Szálasi Ferenc: Politikai életrajz (Doktori disszertáció)" [Ferenc Szálasi: A Political Biography (doctoral dissertation)] (PDF). Repository of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in Hungarian). p. 234. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
- ^ Payne, Stanley. "Fascism." Comparison and Definition, Madison (1980): 7.
- ISBN 9639298077
- ^ Nazismens och Fascismens idéer
- ^ ISBN 9781474609999.
- ^ a b "Szita Szabolcs: A budapesti csillagos házak (1944-45) | Remény". Remeny.org. 15 February 2006. Retrieved 2017-06-17.
- ^ "The Arrow Cross - Persecution of the Jews". Archived from the original on 2009-02-02. Retrieved 2013-05-18.
- ^ Stephanie Geyer. "Shoes on the Danube, Budapest". Visitbudapest.travel. Retrieved 2017-06-17.
- ^ Lack of political will over Polgar, says Holocaust Centre Archived September 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Australian Jewish News, July 13, 2006
- ^ "MNO Magyar Nemzet Online". Archived from the original on 2009-02-02. Retrieved 2009-01-20.
Further reading
- Braham, R. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2 vol.; 2nd ed. 1994).
- Cohen, Asher. "Some Socio-Political Aspects of the Arrow Cross Party in Hungary." East European Quarterly 21.3 (1987): 369+
- Deák, István. “Hungary” in Hans Rogger and Egon Weber, eds., The European right: A historical profile (1963) pp. 364–407.
- Deak, Istvan. "Collaborationism in Europe, 1940–1945: the case of Hungary." Austrian History Yearbook 15 (1979): 157–164.
- Deák, István. "A fatal compromise? The debate over collaboration and resistance in Hungary." East European Politics and Societies 9.2 (1995): 209–233.
- Herczl, Moshe Y. Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry (1993) online
- Lackó, M. Arrow-Cross Men: National Socialists 1935–1944 (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó 1969).
- Petö, Andrea (2009). "Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants". Baltic Worlds. 2. Huddinge, Sweden: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies: 49–52.
- Pető, Andrea (2020). The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War (Hardcover). London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-51224-8.
External links
Media related to Arrow Cross Party at Wikimedia Commons