Hungarian Forces

General Veress, Hungarian Army

A progeny of a Székely noble family, Lajos Veress was a trusted senior officer of Regent Horthy, with command experiences from cavalry to armor, in the latter case at the Don front in 1942. In 1944, he was appointed to lead the newly raised Hungarian Second Army for defending Erdély. In the Battle of Torda during September, 1944, his patriotic army, with the effective support of German units, succeeded in halting eleven Soviet and Romanian breakthrough attempts toward Kolozsvár, before finally withdrawing. The fate of General Veress took a turn for the worse in mid-October, 1944, at the time of the German/Nyilas coup in Budapest. As the Regent's first deputy or homo regius, Horthy had kept the general fully abreast of his steps for reaching a separate peace agreement with Stalin. However, Veress was betrayed by his pro-war/pro-German officers, preventing him from contributing to Horthy's volta- face attempt. The checkmated general spent the rest of the war in various Axis- prisons, paying for his steadfast loyalty to Hungary. Well after the war, nevertheless, Veress found a new life by helping to lead Hungarian exile groups in the West.