Ferenc Szalasi (6 January 1897 – 12 March 1946) was the Prime Minister of Hungary from 16 October 1944 to 28 March 1945, succeeding Miklos Horthy and preceding Bela Miklos.
Szalasi was the leader of the fascist Arrow Cross Party, and he was installed as "Leader of the Nation" in 1944 by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany after German troops occupied the country. Szalasi was responsible for the deaths of 95,000 Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirable" groups, and he was hanged for war crimes in 1946.
Biography[]
Ferenc Szalasi was born on 6 January 1897 in Kassa, Austria-Hungary (now Kosice, Slovakia). Szalasi's paternal great-grandfather was an Armenian immigrant with the original surname of "Salossian", and other ancestors came from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Szalasi joined the army in 1915 during World War I, and he was promoted to Lieutenant after graduating from the Theresian Military Academy. Szalasi was an apolitical man during his youth, and he finished non-commissioned officer training school at Hajmasker in 1921. In 1929, he became a company commander, and he became a Major in the Royal Hungarian Army in 1933.
Szalasi was a strong supporter of Hungarian nationalism and far-right politics, and he was expelled from the general staff for publishing a political pamplet in 1933, which was against the rules of the military. In 1935, he established the fascist "Party of National Will", which would later become known as the "Arrow Cross Party". He gained the support of factory workers and the lower classes due to his nationalist views, and he promoted anti-Semitism in the style of Adolf Hitler and his German Nazi Party. In 1939, the party gained 30 seats in the Hungarian Parliament, becoming one of the major political parties in the government.
In October 1944, Hitler ordered for the Wehrmacht armed forces of Nazi Germany to occupy Hungary as the Soviet Red Army advanced on the Hungarian capital of Budapest, and Szalasi was installed as the pro-Nazi Prime Minister of Hungary and "Leader of the Nation", replacing Miklos Horthy as head of state. Hungary was effectively a client state of Nazi Germany under Szalasi's rule, and he had 15,000 Jews and other "undesirables" executed, while 80,000 more were deported to Nazi extermination and concentration camps in Austria. In March 1945, he was overthrown when the Siege of Budapest came to an end, and he was forced to flee to Munich in Bavaria.
On 6 May 1945, the US Army captured him at Mattsee, and he was deported to the Hungarian People's Republic. He was sentenced to death for war crimes, and he was hanged with some former ministers and ideologists on 12 March 1946.