page_title: Miklós Horthy
section_title: Seeking redress for the Treaty of Trianon
hierarchical_section_title: Miklós Horthy / Interwar period, 1919–1939 / Seeking redress for the Treaty of Trianon
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Der grosse St. Stephanstag in Budapest! Die grösste Nationalfeier Ungarns zu Ehren St. Stephans, des ersten Königs von Ungarn, wurde in Budapest unter Beteiligung des Reichsverwesers Horty, der Kirchen, weltlichen und militärischen Behörden festlich begangen. Der ungarische Reichsverweser Horty (X) im Prozessionszuge.
context_page_description: Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was a Hungarian admiral and statesman, who became the regent of Hungary. He served as regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between World Wars I and II and throughout most of World War II, from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. He was styled His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian: Ő Főméltósága a Magyar Királyság Kormányzója.
  Horthy started his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear-admiral in 1918. He saw action in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto and became commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the last year of the First World War; he was promoted to vice-admiral and commander of the Fleet when the previous admiral was dismissed from his post by Emperor-King Charles following mutinies. In 1919, following a series of revolutions and external interventions in Hungary from Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, Horthy returned to Budapest with the National Army and was subsequently invited to become regent of the kingdom by parliament.
context_section_description: The first decade of Horthy's reign was primarily consumed by stabilizing the Hungarian economy and political system. Horthy's chief partner in these efforts was his prime minister István Bethlen. It was commonly known that Horthy was an Anglophile, and British political and economic support played a significant role in the stabilization and consolidation of the early Horthy era in the Kingdom of Hungary.
  Bethlen sought to stabilize the economy while building alliances with weaker nations that could advance Hungary's cause. That cause was, primarily, reversing the losses of the Treaty of Trianon. The humiliations of the Trianon treaty continued to occupy a central place in Hungarian foreign policy and the popular imagination. The indignant anti-Trianon slogan "Nem, nem soha!" ("No, no never!") became a ubiquitous motto of Hungarian outrage. When in 1927 the British newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere denounced the partitions ratified at Trianon in the pages of his Daily Mail, an official letter of gratitude was eagerly signed by 1.2 million Hungarians.
  But Hungary's stability was precarious, and the Great Depression derailed much of Bethlen's economic balance. Horthy replaced him with an old reactionary confederate from his Szeged days: Gyula Gömbös. Gömbös was an outspoken anti-Semite and a budding fascist. Although he agreed to Horthy's demands that he temper his anti-Jewish rhetoric and work amicably with Hungary's large Jewish professional class, Gömbös's tenure began swinging Hungary's political mood powerfully rightward. He strengthened Hungary's ties to Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist state. Fatefully, when Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, he found in Gömbös an admiring and obliging colleague. John Gunther stated that Horthy,
  though reactionary as far as social or economic ideas are concerned, is in effect the guardian of constitutionalism and what vestigial democracy remains in the country, because it is largely his influence that prevents any prime minister from abolishing parliament and setting up dictatorial rule.
  Gömbös rescued the failing economy by securing trade guarantees from Germany – a strategy that positioned Germany as Hungary's primary trading partner and tied Hungary's future even more tightly to Hitler's. He also assured Hitler that Hungary would quickly become a one-party state modelled on the Nazi party control of Germany. Gömbös died in 1936, before he realized his most extreme goals, but he left his nation headed into firm partnership with the German dictator.
caption: Horthy in Budapest, August 1931
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