Arrow Cross Party

The Arrow Cross Party was a far-right, Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National Unity. They were in power from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945. During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered, including many Jews and Romani, and 80,000 people were deported from Hungary to concentration camps in Austria. After the war, the Arrow Cross leaders were tried and found guilty as war criminals by Hungarian courts. In March 1946, Szálasi and three of his key henchmen were hanged.

Formation

The party was founded by Ferenc Szálasi in 1935 as the Party of National Will. It had its origins in the political philosophy of pro-German extremists such as Gyula Gömbös, who coined the term "national socialism" in the 1920s. The party was outlawed in 1937 but was reconstituted in 1939 as the Arrow Cross Party, and was modeled fairly explicitly on the Nazi Party of Germany, although Szálasi often harshly criticized the Nazi regime of Germany.

Emblem and symbolism

The party's iconography was clearly inspired by that of the Nazis.

The Nyilaskereszt ("arrow cross") emblem was considered a symbol of the Magyar tribes, who, from the late 9th century, conquered and settled in what became Hungary. In emulating the central role of the swastika in Nazi ideology, the arrow cross also alluded to the purported racial purity of the Magyars, in the same way that the swastika was intended to allude to the purported racial purity of the Germans.]]

thumb|Ministers of the [[Government of National Unity (Hungary)|Arrow Cross Party government. Ferenc Szálasi is in the middle of the front row.]]

The party's ideology was similar to those of Nazism and fascism and it combined aspects of those ideologies with Hungarian Turanism, forming an ideology which Ferenc Szálasi called "Hungarism". It combined nationalism, the promotion of agriculture, anti-communism and a special type of anti-Semitism, called a-Semitism. In a series of four books on Hungarism, Szálasi distinguished a-Semitism, which called for a society that should be completely free of Jews, from anti-Semitism, which, he argued, would nominally allow Jews to exist in a particular society with limited rights. He argued that a-Semitism was not opposed to the existence of Jews per se, instead, it regarded their existence as being incompatible with European society. Szálasi extended this argument to Arabs, and he also extended it to the whole "semitic race".

The party and its leader originally opposed German geopolitical ambitions, so Hitler was slow to accept Szálasi's connationalism, the support of nationalist movements within their historical territories and spheres of influence on the grounds of historical evidence of cultural dominance. This concept was poorly understood by the Germans because it combined nationalism and internationalism, the cooperation of nationalist movements. Consequently, the party judged Jews in racial as well as religious terms. It is believed that Jews were incapable of being integrated into any society that was outside the place and culture of their historical origins. Although the Arrow Cross Party was certainly far more anti-semitic than the Horthy regime was, it differed from the German Nazi Party. It was also more economically radical than other fascist movements were, and advocated some workers' rights and land reforms.

Rise to power

Origins

The roots of Arrow Cross influence can be traced to the antisemitism that followed the communist putsch, the creation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and Red Terror during the spring and summer of 1919. Most communist leaders, such as Tibor Szamuely, were from Jewish families. Béla Kun, the republic's leader and instigator of the Terror, had a secular Jewish father and a mother who, despite converting to the Reformed Church of Hungary, was still seen as being a Jew. Many antisemitic writers before the Second World War, such as Léon de Poncins, used this fact to propagate the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory. The Hungarian Soviet Republic's policies were credited by some anti-communists as being part of a "Judeo-Bolshevist conspiracy."

After the Soviet republic was overthrown in August 1919, conservative authoritarians under the leadership of Admiral Miklós Horthy seized control. Many Hungarian military officers took part in the counter-reprisals known as the White Terror – parts of which were directed at Jews. These members later committed some of the most brutal crimes against Jews, intellectuals, socialists, and other civilians.

thumb|[[World War II propaganda poster for the party – the text reads "Despite it all..!"]]

The Arrow Cross subscribed to the Nazi ideology of "master races",

It has been estimated that during the autumn of 1944, there were no more than 4,000 members of the Arrow Cross in Budapest, yet despite this, they were able to terrorize the city's population of a million.

Red Army troops reached the outskirts of Budapest in December 1944, and the siege of the city began. Arrow Cross members and the Germans may have conspired to destroy the Budapest ghetto, but any evidence remains disputed. and then shot so that their bodies would fall into the river.

In 2006, a former high-ranking member, Lajos Polgár, was found in Melbourne, Australia. To some extent, the ideology of the Arrow Cross has resurfaced in recent years, with the neofascist Hungarian Welfare Association being prominent in reviving Szálasi's "Hungarizmus" through its monthly magazine, Magyartudat ("Hungarian Awareness") but "Hungarism" remains a fringe element in modern Hungarian politics, and the Hungarian Welfare Association has dissolved.

Anthem

Lyrics

{|class="wikitable" style="margin: auto"

!Hungarian original!!English translation

|- style="white-space:nowrap; text-align:center; vertical-align:top;"

|<poem lang="hu">Ébredj, magyar! Az ősi föld veszélyben!

Elvész a fajtánk, hogyha nem merünk!

Vélünk az Isten száz csatán keresztül,

Nem veszhetünk el, csak mi győzhetünk!

Rabokká váltunk ősapáink földjén

De már a hajnal jön, hasadni kezd!

Ha összefog most, magyar a magyarral,

Győzelemre visz majd a nyilaskereszt,

Szálasi Ferenc!</poem>

|<poem>Wake up, Hungarians! The olden land is in danger!

Our nation will perish if we do not fight back!

God is with us even through a hundred battles,

We cannot lose; we can only prevail!

We became captives in the land of our forefathers

But morning is rising; dawn is starting to break!

If we unite now, Hungarian with Hungarian,

The Arrow Cross will lead us to victory,

Ferenc Szálasi!</poem>

Flag gallery

File:Flag of the Arrow Cross Party 1937 to 1942.svg|(1937–1942)

File:Flag of the Arrow Cross Party 1942 to 1945.svg|(1942–1945)

Flag_of_the_Hungarist_Movement.svg|(1942–1945)

</gallery>

Electoral results

National Assembly

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; line-height:16px;"

! rowspan="2" style="width:60px;"| Election

! colspan="3"| Votes

! colspan="2"| Seats

! rowspan="2" style="width:30px;"| Rank

! rowspan="2" style="width:145px;"| Government

! rowspan="2"| Leader of the<br/>national list

! style="width:75px;"| #

! style="width:45px;"| %

! style="width:48px;"| ±pp

! style="width:100px;"| #

! style="width:40px;"| +/−

! 1939

| 530,405

| 14.4%

| 14.4

| 29

| 3rd

| Ferenc Szálasi

Arrow Cross Party

Formation

Emblem and symbolism

Rise to power

Origins

Anthem

Lyrics

Flag gallery

Electoral results

National Assembly

See also

Notes

Citations

Further reading

External links