Miklos Horthy

Miklos Horthy (1868-1957) styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary," was an Austro-Hungarian naval officer who ascended to the position of Supreme Commander of the Austro-Hungarian fleet at the end of World War I. In 1919, following the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, he led the Hungarian National Army in its defeat of Communist revolutionary Bela Kun. In 1920, Horthy became Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary on behalf of the perenially absent King Otto von Hapsburg. Many people noticed the irony of a landlocked country being ruled by an admiral.

During World War II, Horthy brought Hungary into the war on the side of the Axis, but Adolf Hitler considered him an inadequately cooperative ally and invaded Hungary and deposed Horthy in March 1944. Horthy was imprisoned in Germany until the end of the war, when he was liberated and immediately arrested by American forces. Horthy assisted the Allied Forces in preparing evidence to be used in the upcoming war crimes tribunals against Nazi leadership, and testified against the Nazis' administrator of Hungary. In 1949, Horthy was allowed to emigrate to Portugal, where he lived out the rest of his life.

Miklos Horthy in Hitler's War
Miklos Horthy entered the war on the side of Germany in order to make good his territorial claims against Czechoslovakia. He also had territorial claims against Romania and Yugoslavia.

Horthy used the commencement of hostilities in 1938 as an excuse to conscript a large army.