Miklós Horthy
Regent of Hungary from 1920 to 1944 (1868-1957)
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957) was a Hungarian admiral and statesman who was the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar period and most of World War II, from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944.
Horthy began his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear admiral by 1918. He participated in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto and ascended to the position of commander-in-chief of the Navy in the final year of World War I. Following mutinies, Emperor-King Charles I and IV appointed him a vice admiral and commander of the Fleet, dismissing the previous admiral. During the revolutions and interventions in Hungary from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, Horthy returned to Budapest with the National Army. Subsequently, the Diet of Hungary offered him the position of Regent of Hungary, while the House of Habsburg and Hungarian monarchy was formally dethroned.
Throughout the interwar period, Horthy led an administration characterized by national conservatism and antisemitism. Under his leadership, Hungary banned the Hungarian Communist Party and the far-right Arrow Cross Party led by Ferenc Szálasi, and pursued a revanchist foreign policy in response to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. The former King of Hungary, Charles IV, attempted to return to Hungary twice before the Hungarian government yielded to Allied threats of renewed hostilities in 1921. Subsequently, Charles was escorted out of Hungary and into exile.
Ideologically a national conservative, Horthy has sometimes been labelled as a fascist.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q117144. VIAF identifies the subject as 61123. The Library of Congress control number is n82158404. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1868, 1957, 1920 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Miklós Horthy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.