Arrow Cross Party The Arrow Cross Party ( , literally " Arrow Cross Party - Hungarist Movement " ) was a national socialist party led by Ferenc Szálasi , which led in Hungary a government known as the Government of National Unity from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945 . During its short rule , ten to fifteen thousand people ( many of whom were Jews ) were murdered outright , and 80 , 000 people were deported from Hungary to their deaths in the Auschwitz concentration camp . After the war , Szálasi and other Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by Soviet courts . Formation . The party was founded by Ferenc Szálasi in 1935 as the Party of National Will . It had its origins in the political philosophy of pro - German extremists such as Gyula Gömbös , who famously coined the term " national socialism " in the 1920s . The party was outlawed in 1937 but was reconstituted in 1939 as the Arrow Cross Party , and was said to be modeled fairly explicitly on the Nazi Party of Germany , although Szálasi often and harshly criticized the Nazi regime of Germany . The iconography of the party was clearly inspired by that of the Nazis ; the Arrow Cross emblem was an ancient symbol of the Magyar tribes who settled Hungary , thereby suggesting the racial purity of the Hungarians in much the same way that the Nazi swastika was intended to allude to the racial purity of the Aryan s . The Arrow Cross symbol also referred to the desire to nullify the Treaty of Trianon , and expand the Hungarian state in all cardinal direction s towards the former borders of the Kingdom of Hungary . Ideology . The party ' s ideology was similar to that of Nazism , although a more accurate comparison might be drawn between Austrofascism and Hungarian fascism which was called Hungarism by Ferenc Szálasi – extreme nationalism , the promotion of agriculture , anti - capitalism , anticommunism and militant anti - Semitism . The party and its leader were originally anti - German , so it was a long and very difficult process for Hitler to compromise with Szálasi and his party . The Arrow Cross Party conceived Jews in racial as well as religious terms , although the necessary scientific capital for a widespread and elaborate program of eugenics simply did not exist in Hungary at the time . Thus , although the Arrow Cross Party was certainly far more racist than the Judeophobic Horthyite regime , whose antisemitism was based solely on Christian belief , it was still very different from the German Nazi Party . The Arrow Cross Party was pro - Catholic and its antisemitism had its origins in Christian belief . It was also more economically radical than other fascist movements , advocating worker rights and land reforms . In a sense , the Arrow Cross Party was more like Germany ' s NSDAP prior to the Night of the Long Knives when the socialist faction among the Nazis ( led by Ernst Röhm ) was murdered or subjugated . Rise to power . The roots of Arrow Cross influence can be traced to the outburst of anti - Jewish feeling that followed theCommunist putsch and brief rule in Hungary in the spring and summer of 1919 . Some Communist leaders , like Tibor Szamuely , came from Jewish families , or like Béla Kun , its leader , who had a Jewish father and a Protestant Swabian mother , were considered to be Jews , and the failed and murderous policies of the Hungarian Soviet Republic came to be associated in the minds of many Hungarians with a " Jewish - Bolshevist conspiracy . " After the communist regime was crushed in August 1919 , conservatives under the leadership of Admiral Miklós Horthy took control of the nation . Many Hungarian military officers took part in the counter - reprisals known as the White Terror – some of that violence was directed at Jews , simply because they were Jewish . Although the White Guard was officially suppressed , many of its most bloodthirsty members went underground and formed the core membership of a spreading nationalist and anti - Jewish movement . During the 1930s , the Arrow Cross gradually began to dominate Budapest ' s working class district , defeating the Social Democrats . It should be noted , however , that the Social Democrats did not really contest elections effectively ; they had to make a pact with the conservative Horthy regime in order to prevent the abolition of their party . The Arrow Cross subscribed to the Nazi ideology of " master race s " 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 realistic étatism " . But its espousal of territorial claims under the banner of a " Greater Hungary " and Hungarian values ( which Szálasi labelled " Hungarizmus " or " Hungarianism " ) clashed with Nazi ambitions in central Europe , delaying by several years Hitler ' s endorsement of that party . The German Foreign Office instead endorsed the pro - German Hungarian National Socialist Party , which had some support among German minorities . Before World War II , the Arrow Cross were not proponents of the racial antisemitism of the Nazis , but utilized traditional stereotypes and prejudices to gain votes among voters both in Budapest and the countryside . However , the constant bickering among these diverse fascist groups prevented the Arrow Cross Party from gaining even 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 a number of similar openly fascist factions in Hungary but was by far the most prominent , having developed an effective system of recruitment . When it contested the May 1939 elections – the only ones in which it participated – the party won 15 % of the vote and 29 seats in the Hungarian Parliament . This was only a superficially impressive result ; the majority of Hungarians were not permitted to vote . It did , however , 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 underground . In 1944 , the Arrow Cross Party ' s fortunes were abruptly reversed after Hitler lost patience with the reluctance of Horthy and his moderate prime minister , Miklós Kállay , to toe the Nazi line fully . In March 1944 , the Germans invaded and officially occupied Hungary ; Kállay fled and was replaced by the Nazi proxy , Döme Sztójay . One of Sztójay ' s first acts was to legalize the Arrow Cross . During the spring and summer of 1944 , more than 400 , 000 Jews were herded into centralized ghettos and then deported from the Hungarian countryside to death camps by the Nazis , with the willing help of the Hungarian Interior Ministry and its gendarmerie ( the " csendőrség " ) , both of whose members had close links to the Arrow Cross . The Jews of Budapest were concentrated into so - called Yellow Star House s , approximately 2 , 000 single - building mini - ghettos identified by a yellow Star of David over the entrance . In August 1944 , before deportations from Budapest began , Horthy used what influence he had to stop the deportations and force the radical antisemites out of the government . As the summer progressed , and the Allied and Soviet armies closed in on central Europe , the ability of the Nazis to devote themselves to Hungary ' s " Jewish Solution " waned . 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 Operation Panzerfaust , a covert operation which forced Horthy to abdicate in favour of Szálasi , after which he was taken into " protective custody " in Germany . This merely rubber - stamped an Arrow Cross takeover of Budapest on the same day . Szálasi was declared " Leader of the Nation " and prime minister of a " Government of National Unity " . Soviet and Romania n forces were already fighting in Hungary even before Szálasi ' s takeover , and by the time the Arrow Cross took power the Red Army was already far inside the country . As a result , its jurisdiction was effectively limited to an ever - narrowing band of territory in central Hungary , around Budapest . Nonetheless , the Arrow Cross rule , short - lived as it was , was brutal . In fewer than three months , death squads killed as many as 38 , 000 Hungarians . Arrow Cross officers helped Adolf Eichmann re - activate the deportation proceedings from which the Jews of Budapest had thus far been spared , sending some 80 , 000 Jews out of the city on slave labor details and many more straight to death camps . Many Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labor for the Hungarian Army ' s Forced Labor Battalions . Most of them died , including many who were murdered outright after the end of the fighting as they were returning home . Quickly formed battalions raided the Yellow Star Houses and combed the streets , hunting down Jews claimed to be partisans and saboteurs since Jews attacked Arrow Cross squads at least six to eight times with gunfire . These approximately 200 Jews were taken to the bridges crossing the Danube , where they were shot and their bodies borne away by the waters of the river because many were attached to weights while they were handcuffed to each other in pairs . Red Army troops reached the outskirts of the city in December 1944 , and the siege action known as the Battle of Budapest began , although it has often been claimed that there is no proof that the Arrow Cross members and the Germans conspired to destroy the Budapest ghetto . Days before he fled the city , Arrow Cross Interior Minister Gabor Vájna commanded that streets and squares named for Jews be renamed . As control of the city ' s institutions began to decay , the Arrow Cross trained their guns on the most helpless possible targets : patients in the beds of the city ' s two Jewish hospitals on Maros Street and Bethlen Square , and residents in the Jewish poorhouse on Alma Road . As order collapsed , Arrow Cross members continually sought to raid the ghettos and Jewish concentration buildings ; the majority of Budapest ' s Jews were saved only by fearless and heroic efforts on the part of a handful of Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats , most famously the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg , the Papal Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta , Swiss Consul Carl Lutz and Giorgio Perlasca . Szálasi knew that the documents used by these diplomats to save Jews were invalid according to international law , but he allowed them to use those papers . Charles Ardai , an American entrepreneur , novelist and book publisher , recounted in an Oct . 2008 National Public Radio interview an episode recalled by his mother , who survived the Holocaust in Hungary . Her family and other Budapest Jews were preparing to flee before the approach of Arrow Cross killers . They pleaded with two young boys who were family relatives to go with them , but they refused because their parents had told them to wait for them at home . As a result , the Arrow Cross men discovered the boys and killed them . The atrocities committed during the Arrow Cross rule , especially the mass murders of Jewish citizens , are depicted at length in György Konrad ' s largely autobiographical novel " Feast in the Garden " ( 1989 ) . The Arrow Cross government effectively fell at the end of January 1945 , when the Soviet Army took Pest and the fascist forces retreated across the Danube to Buda . Szálasi had escaped from Budapest on December 11 , 1944 , 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 of the Arrow Cross leaders were captured and tried for war crime s . In the first months of postwar adjudication , no fewer than 6 , 200 indictments for murder were served against Arrow Cross men . Some Arrow Cross officials , including Szálasi himself , were executed . In 2006 , a former high - ranking member of the Arrow Cross Party named Lajos Polgár was found to be living in Melbourne , Australia . He was accused of war crimes , but the case was later dropped and Polgár died of natural causes in July of that year . The ideology of the Arrow Cross has resurfaced to some extent in recent years , with the neofascist Hungarian Welfare Association prominent in reviving Szálasi ' s " Hungarizmus " through its monthly magazine , " Magyartudat " ( " " Hungarian Awareness " " ) . But " Hungarism " is very much a fringe element of modern Hungarian politics , and the Hungarian Welfare Association has since dissolved .