Hungarian Forces

Hitler with Horthy "invited" to Germany, 1944

During the spring of 1944, the prospect of Hungary’s Italian-style cessation of hostilities and corresponding surrender to the Western Allies had carried for the Third Reich the ominous possibility of a rapid Soviet military advance on Berlin. Although not really in the works, Hitler’s vexation about such a dire strategic surprise was responsible for his preemptive military occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. In the Wehrmacht’s tracks, moreover, insidious Gestapo agents and genocidal SS contingents quickly followed, and hurriedly forced open the sinister gates of the tragic Jewish Holocaust in Hungary with apocalyptic effects. The Führer had abruptly “invited” Horthy to Klessheim Palace near Salzburg, and on March 18, 1944, he informed the Regent in a sober session that Hungary's occupation was already under way. The flabbergasted Horthy eventually bowed to the inevitable and instructed his accompanying Chief of the General Staff to order Hungarian units to abstain from any opposition, and on the next day massive King Tiger tanks rumbled into a capital. Final decision-making passed into the hands of SS Brigadeführer Edmund Veesenmayer, the German plenipotentiary to Hungary, while keeping Horthy with restricted powers at the top of the governmental edifice for the sake of calming the public. The photo above shows Horthy’s mid-March, 1944, arrival in Germany, probably at Salzburg, accompanied by Hitler at a railroad station. The Regent was eventually tempted to use against the Chancellor a concealed handgun he always carried, but he refrained. They both continued with their usual wartime shenanigans until Hitler had Horthy deposed and arrested on October 15-16, 1944, and the Nyilas government of Szálasi was placed in control in Budapest.