Németh was born into a poor Catholic peasant family on 14 January 1948 in Monok, the birthplace of the revolutionary Lajos Kossuth. He was of Swabian origin on his maternal side, the Stajzs had been resettled by the aristocrat Károlyi family in the 18th century. Németh's grandfather was deported from Monok to the Soviet Union in Autumn, 1944, and only in 1951 was he able to return home. His father András Németh, a devout Catholic, fought in the Battle of Voronezh and survived the disaster by the Don River in early 1943. He returned to Hungary in 1946. That kind of dual identity was present in Németh's political life, since he had a Christian family background behind his Communist party career. For instance, when he married Erzsébet Szilágyi in 1971, they also had a church wedding after their civil marriage. Németh was 8 years old during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He had just isolated experiences about those events; his parents listened to Radio Free Europe, 1848 flags were erected in the main square of the village, and the local party secretary was arrested and freedom fighters forced him to recite Lord's Prayer. Németh could not have known the whole truth of the events due to state propaganda and concealment until his studies in the United States.