Arrow Cross Party – Hungarist Movement Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Ferenc Szálasi[1] Kalman Hubay [hu][n 1] |
| Chief organizer | József Gera (from 1944) |
| Founded | 15 March 1939; 86 years ago (1939-03-15) |
| Dissolved | 7 May 1945; 80 years ago (1945-05-07) |
| Preceded by | NSZMP – HM [hu][2] |
| Headquarters | Andrássy út60,Budapest |
| Newspaper | Magyar Futár[3] |
| Women's wing | Hungarista Nők Egyesülete |
| Armed wing | Pártszolgálat (1944–45)[4] |
| Membership |  300,000 (1939est.)[5] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-right[20] |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Political alliance | Hungarian National Socialist Party (until 1941)[21] |
| Colours | Red White Green |
| Anthem | Ébredj Magyar![22] (lit. 'Wake up Hungarian!') |
| Most MPs in theDiet (1939) | 29 / 260 (11%) |
| Party flag | |
 Other flags: | |
TheArrow Cross Party (Hungarian:Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom,lit. 'Arrow Cross Party – Hungarist Movement', abbreviatedNYKP) was afar-rightHungarian ultranationalist party led byFerenc Szálasi, which formed a government inHungary they named theGovernment of National Unity. They were in power from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945. During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered outright, including manyJews andRomani,[23][24] and 80,000 people were deported from Hungary to concentration camps in Austria.[25] Afterthe war, the Arrow Cross leaders were tried and found guilty aswar criminals by Hungarian courts. In March 1946, Szálasi and three of his key henchmen were hanged.
The party was founded byFerenc Szálasi in 1935 as theParty of National Will.[26] It had its origins in the political philosophy of pro-German extremists such asGyula Gömbös, who coined the term "national socialism" in the 1920s.[27] The party was outlawed in 1937 but was reconstituted in 1939 as the Arrow Cross Party, and was modelled fairly explicitly on theNazi Party ofGermany, although Szálasi often harshly criticized the Nazi regime of Germany.[28]
The party's iconography was clearly inspired by that of the Nazis.[29][23][30]
TheNyilaskereszt ("arrow cross") emblem was considered to be a symbol of theMagyar tribes who, from the late 9th century, conquered and settled in what became Hungary. In emulating the central role of theswastika in Nazi ideology, the arrow cross also alluded to the purported racial purity of the Magyars, in the same way that the swastika was intended to allude to the purported racial purity of the Germans.[20]
The arrow cross symbol had other ideological implications, including a desire to nullify theTreaty of Trianon, and expand the Hungarian state in allcardinal directions, out to the borders of the formerKingdom of Hungary.[20]
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The party'sideology was similar to those ofNazism andfascism[32] and it combined aspects of those ideologies withHungarian Turanism, forming an ideology which Ferenc Szálasi called "Hungarism". It combinednationalism, the promotion of agriculture,anti-capitalism,anti-communism and a special type ofanti-Semitism, calleda-Semitism. In a series of four books on Hungarism, Szálasi distinguished a-Semitism, which called for a society which should be completely absent of Jews, fromanti-Semitism, which, he argued, would nominally allow Jews to exist in a particular society with limited rights. He argued that a-Semitism was not opposed to the existence of Jews per se, instead, it regarded their existence as being incompatible with European society. Szálasi extended this argument toArabs, and he also extended it to the whole "semitic race".[33]
The party and its leader originally opposed German geopolitical ambitions, so Hitler was slow to accept Szálasi'sconnationalism, the support of nationalist movements within their historical territories and spheres of influence on the grounds of historical evidence of cultural dominance. This concept was poorly understood by the Germans because it combinednationalism andinternationalism, the co-operation of nationalist movements. Consequently, the party judgedJews inracial as well asreligious terms. It believed that Jews were incapable of being integrated into any society which was outside theplace andculture of theirhistorical origins. Although the Arrow Cross Party was certainly far moreracist than the Horthy regime was, it differed from theGerman Nazi Party. It was also more economically radical than other fascist movements were, and advocated someworkers' rights andland reforms.[20]
The geopolitical vision of the Arrow Cross Party was deeply rooted in a mythologized conception of Hungarian exceptionalism, predicated on the belief that Hungarians constituted a master race due to their unique ethno-cultural synthesis of Western and Eastern elements. Drawing upon the legacy of Turanism and Hungarian ethnogenesis theories, Arrow Cross ideologues asserted that Hungary’s ancient Asian roots—particularly its connections to nomadic steppe cultures—combined with its historical integration into the Christian and European civilizational sphere, endowed the Hungarian people with a hybrid vigor that surpassed the limitations of either tradition in isolation.
This alleged fusion of martial Asiatic dynamism and European rationalism was presented not merely as a cultural curiosity but as the biological and spiritual foundation for Hungary’s claim to geopolitical preeminence. In this framework, Hungary was envisioned as a bridge between civilizations, uniquely positioned to rise as a world power capable of leading a new hierarchical order grounded in ethnonational superiority. Such beliefs, while framed in the language of national destiny and historical necessity, mirrored broader fascist trends that sacralized racial purity or hybridity as instruments of geopolitical renewal and imperial ambition.[34][35][36]
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The roots of Arrow Cross influence can be traced to theantisemitism that followed thecommunistputsch, the creation of theHungarian Soviet Republic, andRed Terror during the spring and summer of 1919. Most communist leaders were from Jewish families such asTibor Szamuely.Béla Kun, the republic's leader and instigator of the Terror, had a secular Jewish father and a mother who, despite converting to theReformed Church of Hungary, was still seen as being a Jew. Many antisemitic writers before the Second World War, such asLéon de Poncins used this fact to propagate theJudeo-Masonic conspiracy theory.[37]
TheHungarian Soviet Republic's policies were credited by someanti-communists as being part of a "Judeo-Bolshevist conspiracy."
After the Soviet republic was overthrown in August 1919, conservative authoritarians under the leadership ofAdmiralMiklós Horthy seized control. Many Hungarian military officers took part in the counter-reprisals known as theWhite Terror – parts of which were directed atJews.[20] 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 dominateBudapest'sworking class neighborhoods, defeating theSocial Democrats. The Social Democrats did not contest elections effectively and they were forced into a pact with the conservative Horthy regime in order to prevent their abolition. The Arrow Cross recruited from the poorest members of society, including the chronically unemployed, alcoholics, ex-convicts, prisoners, rapists, and the uneducated.[38] These members later committed some of the most brutal crimes against Jews, intellectuals, socialists, and other civilians.
The Arrow Cross subscribed to the Nazi ideology of "master races",[20] which, in Szálasi's view, included the Hungarians and Germans, and also supported the concept of an order based on the power of the strongest – what Szálasi called a "brutally realisticétatism". But its espousal of territorial claims under the banner of a "Greater Hungary" and Hungarian values ("Hungarizmus" or "Hungarianism") clashed with Nazi ambitions, delaying Hitler's endorsement of that party by several years.
TheGerman Foreign Office instead endorsed the pro-GermanHungarian National Socialist Party, which had some supporters amongethnic Germans. BeforeWorld 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 inBudapest and the countryside. Nonetheless, the constant bickering among these diverse fascist groups prevented the Arrow Cross Party from gaining more support and power.
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 theHungarian 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 ministerMiklós Kállay's reluctance to fully toe the Nazi line. In March 1944, the Germansinvaded and occupied Hungary, which resulted in Kállay fleeing, and a Nazi proxy,Döme Sztójay, replacing him who quickly legalised the Arrow Cross.
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 HungarianInterior Ministry and itsgendarmerie (thecsendőrség), both of which had members closely linked to the Arrow Cross. Budapest Jews were forced intoYellow Star Houses, approximately 2,000 single-building mini-ghettos identified by a yellow Star of David at the entrance.[23]: 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 theAllied andSoviet 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 theDanube, shooting people in the head, with the bodies falling into the river. To save ammunition, 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.[39] 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.[39] Their methods eventually became too sickening even for the German military whose commander GeneralKarl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch ordered his troops not to take part in the killings. On the other hand, the German envoy to HungaryEdmund Veesenmayer received orders from Berlin to provide as much assistance as he could to the Arrow Cross in killing of Jews.[39] 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."[39] 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"[39]
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 covertOperation 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 an Arrow Cross-dominated "Government of National Unity" the same day.
By this time,Soviet andRomanian forces had pushed deep into Hungarian territory. As a result, the Szálasi government's authority was limited to an ever-narrowing band of territory around Budapest. In this context, Arrow Cross rule was short and brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews. Arrow Cross officers helpedAdolf Eichmann re-start deportations from which the Jews of Budapest had thus far been spared, sending some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labour details and many more straight to death camps. Virtually all Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labour for theHungarian Army'sForced Labor Battalions. Most died, including many who were murdered as they were returning home after the end of the fighting.[40][41]
Red Army troops reached the outskirts of Budapest in December 1944, and thesiege of the city began. Arrow Cross members and the Germans may have conspired to destroy theBudapest ghetto but any evidence remains disputed.[40] Days before fleeing, Arrow Cross Interior MinisterGábor Vajna ordered that streets and squares named for Jews be renamed.[23]: 586
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 envoyRaoul Wallenberg, thePapal Nuncio MonsignorAngelo Rotta, Swiss ConsulCarl Lutz, Spanish ConsulÁngel Sanz Briz and the Italian cattle traderGiorgio Perlasca.[23]: 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 11 December 1944,[28] taking with him theHungarian 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.
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After the war, many Arrow Cross leaders were captured and tried forwar crimes and no fewer than 6,200 indictments for murder were served against Arrow Cross men in just a few months.[23]: 587 Some Arrow Cross officials were executed, including Szálasi.
A memorial which was created byGyula Pauer [hu], Hungarian sculptor, andCan Togay in 2005 on the bank of theDanube 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,[42] and then shot so that their bodies would fall into the river.
In 2006, a former high-ranking member,Lajos Polgár, was found inMelbourne,Australia.[25] He died of natural causes in July of that year after the war crimes case against him was dropped.[43]
To some extent, the ideology of the Arrow Cross has resurfaced in recent years, with theneofascistHungarian 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.[44]
| 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 |
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-JewishWeltanschauung. It served as a source of inspiration for the various cross movements, including the Arrow-Cross party.
the ultranationalist Arrow Cross Party
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)Szálasi's 'Hungarism' was a bizarre version of racial geopolitics, but no more bizarre than Hitler's vision of an Aryan racialist–imperialist utopia. In a way which was characteristic of inter-war fascist movements and ideologies, Szálasi invented for the Hungarian Magyars a mythical and glorious past, which served as an ideal to evoke and emulate, a stimulus to remedying Hungary's inglorious present situation and to securing its glorious future.
The Hungarista state, to be known as Hungarian United Ancient Lands, was to encompass the Danubian basin, including all the Magyar-populated territories, as well as areas inhabited by non-Magyar nationalities, Slovaks, Ruthens, Croats and so on.
The expulsion of the Jews would be a step towards creating a 'Christian' corporately organised economy, where the state would nationalise the banks and financial services sector, energy production and war industries, and foster the growth of a Magyar middle class of agricultural and industrial entrepreneurs, by promoting land reform and industrial development.
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