Execution of Hungarian Nazi prime minister who killed 330,000 men, women & children at Auschwitz JJ
March 1944, Hungary. As the tide of the Second World War shifts decisively against Nazi Germany, Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy finds himself under growing pressure, both domestically and from Berlin, to determine where Hungary truly stands. Behind the scenes, the Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, increasingly convinced that Germany’s defeat is inevitable, has been discreetly reaching out to the Western Allies in hopes of securing a separate peace and avoiding Soviet occupation. These secret efforts, however, do not go unnoticed by the Germans.
On 19 March 1944, under the codename Operation Margarethe, German troops enter Hungary and swiftly occupy the country without firing a single shot. In the days that follow, Horthy is confronted with a stark ultimatum from Hitler: either appoint a pro-German prime minister who will fully cooperate with the Nazi leadership or accept total occupation, a move that would effectively strip Hungary of all remaining sovereignty. Faced with this dilemma, and fearing the fate that had already befallen countries
like Poland and France, Horthy reluctantly agrees to replace Kállay. While Germans strongly recommend Béla Imrédy, a former prime minister known for his fanatical pro-German stance and his implementation of antisemitic policies, Horthy—deeply uneasy about Imrédy’s extremism—instead proposes a seemingly more moderate figure. He will choose a man who will help Germans to kill hundreds of thousands of Hungarian citizens. His name is Döme Sztójay. Döme Sztójay was born as Dimitrije Stojaković on 5 January 1883 in the city of Versec,
then part of Austria-Hungary. He came from a Serbian family and pursued a military career, studying at the cadet school in Pécs and later at the Military Academy in Vienna. During the First World War, which started on 28 July 1914, Sztójay served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and led the Balkan group of the military intelligence service. Hungary had been on the losing side of World War I, which ended on 11 November 1918. On 4 June 1920 Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon which reduced the country’s territory
by 72%. In addition, Hungary lost its sea access, half of its 10 biggest cities and all of its precious metal mines. The post-1920 Hungary had a population of 7.6 million, 36% compared to the pre-war kingdom’s population of 20.9 million, and 3,425,000 ethnic Hungarians found themselves separated from their motherland. In June 1919, Admiral Miklós Horthy, who had been an officer in the Austro-Hungarian navy, came to power as the head of a conservative-nationalist coalition. Horthy presided for the next 24 years
over an authoritarian, almost feudal system of aristocratic rule, which nevertheless had a functioning parliament and permitted political opposition. After Horthy became Regent of Hungary, Sztójay was promoted to general and served as a military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933. He Magyarized his name to Sztójay in 1927, and from 1933 to 1935, he served in the Ministry of Defence. In 1935, he became Hungary’s ambassador to Nazi Germany — a position he held for the next nine years. As ambassador, Sztójay formed strong
ties with the Third Reich and often voiced support for German policies to his superiors in Hungary. In the late 1930s, as Germany began redrawing national boundaries across Europe, Hungary — with support from Germany and Italy — was able to reclaim lost territory. Before the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, this included southern Slovakia, annexed from Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Subcarpathian Rus, acquired from the dismembered Czechoslovak state in 1939. After the war started, the regained territory included northern Transylvania
from Romania in 1940 and the Bačka region from dismembered Yugoslavia, which was attacked in April 1941. In November 1940, Hungary joined the Axis alliance which was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. In June 1941 Hungarian troops participated alongside German troops in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany and many Hungarian politicians called for more radical steps to be taken in solving the so called Jewish Question.
According to a 1941 census, Hungary, including the recently annexed territories, had a Jewish population of 825,000, less than 6 percent of the total population. The Hungarian racial laws were modelled on Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. These defined “Jews” in so-called racial terms, forbade intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, and excluded Jews from full participation in various professions. The laws also barred employment of Jews in the civil service and restricted their opportunities in economic life.
It was in the summer of 1941 when Hungarian authorities deported some 20,000 Jews, most of whom resided in Subcarpathian Rus and none of whom had been able to obtain Hungarian citizenship. These Jews were deported to the city of Kamenets-Podolski in German-occupied Ukraine, where they were shot by detachments of Einsatzgruppe, which were Nazi mobile death squads. In January 1942, Hungarian military units murdered 3,000 Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad, the major city in the part of Yugoslavia annexed by Hungary.
However, in 1942 when the German government began to pressure the Hungarians to deliver Jews who were Hungarian citizens into German custody, Horthy’s prime minister, Miklós Kállay, despite significant pressure from the domestic radical right, refused to deport the Hungarian Jews. After the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Hungarian Admiral Miklós Horthy and Prime Minister Miklós Kállay recognized that Germany would likely lose the war. With Horthy’s tacit approval, Kállay tried to negotiate a separate armistice for Hungary with the Western Allies.
To prevent these efforts, Adolf Hitler ordered Operation Margarethe—the German occupation of Hungary and on 19 March 1944, German troops entered the country without resistance. By this time, about 63,000 Jews living in Hungary died or were killed. During the German occupation, Horthy was permitted to remain as Regent but Kallay was dismissed. In his place, the Germans installed Döme Sztójay as Prime Minister who immediately aligned Hungarian policy with Nazi interests. Sztójay quickly legalized Ferenc Szálasi’s Arrow Cross Party — a radically antisemitic,
Nazi-inspired fascist movement that had previously been banned under Horthy’s leadership. He committed Hungary fully to the Nazi war effort, increasing Hungarian troop deployments on the Eastern Front and cracking down on political opposition. Labor unions were dissolved, left-wing politicians were jailed, and civil liberties were severely restricted. Most notably, Sztójay oversaw dramatic escalation in the persecution of Hungarian Jews. On 31 March 1944, a decree required all Jews over the age of six to wear a yellow six-pointed star
on their clothing, starting 5 April. In April 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered Hungarian Jews living outside Budapest – roughly 500,000 – to concentrate in certain cities, usually regional government seats. When Horthy learned about the deportations, he called them “inhuman, stupid and unworthy of the Hungarian character with which the present “Hungarian”, government has sullied the Hungarian name in the eyes of the world”. Horthy wrote to his prime minister the following: “Dear Sztójay: I was aware that the Government in the given
forced situation has to take many steps that I do not consider correct, and for which I cannot take responsibility. Among these matters is the handling of the Jewish question in a manner that does not correspond to the Hungarian mentality, Hungarian conditions, and, for that matter, Hungarian interests. It is clear to everyone that what among these were done by Germans or by the insistence of the Germans was not in my power to prevent, so in these matters, I was forced into passivity. As such, I was not informed in advance, or I am not fully informed now, however, I have
heard recently that in many cases in inhumaneness and brutality we exceeded the Germans.” However, Sztójay ignored this and he even ramped up the pace of forced deportations of Hungarian Jews. Just before the deportations began, two Slovak Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz and passed details of what was happening inside the camp to officials in Slovakia. This document, known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report, was quickly translated into German and passed among Jewish groups and then to Allied officials. In late June 1944, world leaders, including Pope
Pius XII and American President Roosevelt, pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased. On 2 July 1944, Horthy issued the order halting deportations on 7 July. Nevertheless, deportations to Auschwitz from cities around Budapest continued for two more days. During 8 weeks from the 15th of May to 9 July 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials whose members were closely linked to the antisemitic Arrow Cross, under the guidance of German SS
officials, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. About 100,000 Jews from Hungary were selected for forced labor and the remainder—approximately 330,000 Jews (about 75 percent)—were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival. This was the deadliest period at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp complex, begged the Hungarian authorities not to send more than one transport per day, as the camp crematoria did not have the sheer capacity
to cope with the amount of bodies arriving from the gas chambers. To solve this problem, Otto Moll, director of all crematoria at Auschwitz, ordered fire pits to be dug. There, the excess people – Hungarian men, women and children – were shot in the back of their head and dropped into fire. It sometimes happened that some prisoners put up a fight or children cried. As punishment, the Nazi personnel would throw them into the burning pits alive. By the end of July 1944, the only Jewish community left in Hungary was that of Budapest, the capital.
Horthy became appalled by Sztójay’s actions and demanded his removal as prime minister. However, Hitler sternly refused to do so. Eventually, in August 1944, the Germans yielded and allowed Sztójay to be replaced by General Géza Lakatos. When Horthy himself was overthrown by the Nazis in October, Sztójay was not reinstated due to poor health. He fled Hungary as the Red Army advanced, but was later captured by American forces, extradited, and sentenced to death for war crimes by a Hungarian People’s Tribunal. Döme Sztójay was 63 years old when, on 22 August
1946, he was executed firing squad in Budapest. There were no tears shed for Döme Sztójay. Thanks for watching the World History Channel be sure to like and subscribe and click the bell notification icon so you don’t miss our next episodes we thank you and we’ll see you next time on the channel.