Miklós Kállay de Nagykálló (23 January 1887 – 14 January 1967) was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary during World War II, from 9 March 1942 to 22 March 1944. By early 1942, Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy was seeking to put some distance between himself and Hitler's regime. He dismissed the pro-German prime minister, László Bárdossy, and replaced him with Kállay, a moderate whom Horthy expected to loosen Hungary's ties to Germany.

Kállay successfully protected refugees and prisoners, resisted Nazi pressure regarding Jews, established contact with the Allies and negotiated conditions under which Hungary would switch sides against Germany. However, the Allies were not close enough. When the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, Kállay went into hiding. He was finally captured by the Nazis but was liberated when the war ended. He went into exile in 1946 and died two decades later in New York City.

Early life and career

The Kállay family was old and influential among the local gentry of their region, and Miklós served as lord-lieutenant (ispán) of his county from 1921 to 1929. The British historian C.A Macartney who knew Kállay well described him as "a Kállay of Szabolcs County and that itself to any Hungarian was a characterisation. Szabloces County, on the left bank of the middle Tiza, had always been the one of the most Hungarian parts of all Hungary. If Szabolcs might be called the quintessence of Hungary and the Kállays of Szabloces, Miklós Kállay was the quintessence of the Kállays".

Kállay then moved on to national government and served first as deputy under secretary of state for the Ministry of Trade (1929–1931) and later as minister of agriculture (1932–1935). He resigned in 1935 in protest over the right-wing policies of Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös. He kept out of politics for most of the next decade before Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy asked him to form a government to reverse the pro-Nazi policies of László Bárdossy in March 1942.

Exile

In 1946 he went into exile and finally settled in the United States in 1951. In 1954, he published his memoirs, Hungarian Premier: A Personal Account of a Nation's Struggle in the Second World War (Columbia University Press).

See also

  • Diplomatic history of World War II
  • Hungary in World War II

References

Sources

  • Czettler, Antal. "Miklos Kallay's attempts to preserve Hungary's independence." Hungarian Quarterly 41.159 (2000): 88-103.
  • Antal Ullein-Reviczky, Guerre Allemande, Paix Russe: Le Drame Hongrois. Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere, 1947.
  • Nicholas Kállay, Hungarian premier: a personal account of a nation's struggle in the second world war; forew. by C.A. Macartney, New York : Columbia Univ. P., 1954. online review
  • C.A. Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, 2 vols, Edinburgh University Press 1956–7.
  • György Ránki, Unternehmen Margarethe: Die deutsche Besetzung Ungarns, Böhlau, 1984.
  • Ignac Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, Budapest: Corvina, 1999.0
  • Antal Ullein-Reviczky, German War, Russian Peace: The Hungarian Tragedy. Translated by Lovice Mária Ullein-Reviczky. Reno, NV. Helena History Press, 2014.