Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)

The interwar Kingdom of Hungary, referred to retrospectively as the Regency and the Horthy era, existed as a country from 1920 to 1946 under the rule of Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, who officially represented the Hungarian monarchy. In reality there was no king, and attempts by King Charles IV to return to the throne shortly before his death were prevented by Horthy.

Hungary under Horthy was characterized by its conservative, nationalist, and fiercely anti-communist character; some historians have described this system as para-fascist. The government was based on an unstable alliance of conservatives and right-wingers. Foreign policy was characterized by revisionism: the total or partial revision of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which resulted in the loss of 72% of Hungary's historical territory, 58% of its population, 32% of its ethnic Hungarian population, and much of its economic resources and industrial capacity. As a consequence, more than three million ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the country's new borders, primarily in territories transferred to the Kingdom of Romania and the newly created states of Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia). A significant Hungarian population also remained in Székely Land, within the greatly enlarged Romania. Republican Austria, the successor of the former other half of the dual monarchy also received some minor territory from Hungary. Thus the post-1918 kingdom can be described as a rump state. Hungary's interwar politics were dominated by a focus on the territorial losses suffered from this treaty, with the resentment continuing until the present.