Arrow Cross Party

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. The arrow cross symbol had other ideological implications, including a desire to nullify the Treaty of Trianon, and expand the Hungarian state in all cardinal directions, out to the borders of the former Kingdom of Hungary. ==Ideology==

with the historical Árpád stripes, opposed to the liberal influence from the French Revolution that inspired the red-white-green tricolor from the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. . 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, 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. 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. Their methods eventually became too sickening even for the German military, whose commander General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch ordered his troops not to take part in the killings. On the other hand, the German envoy to Hungary Edmund Veesenmayer received orders from Berlin to provide as much assistance as he could to the Arrow Cross in the killing of Jews. Eventually, Szálasi became concerned about the impression that neutral diplomats were forming of his government and ordered that the killings be undertaken with more discretion. The country's national police commissioner, Pál Hódosy, concurred, "The problem is not that the Jews are being murdered... the trouble is the method. The bodies must be made to disappear, not put out on the streets." This view was shared by parliamentarian Károlyl Maróthy, who said "Something must be done to stop the death rattle going on in the ditches day and night... the population must not be able to see them dying" ==Arrow Cross rule==

In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched the covert Operation Panzerfaust, which took Horthy into "protective custody" in Germany and forced him to abdicate. Szálasi was made "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of an Arrow Cross-dominated "Government of National Unity" the same day. By this time, Soviet and Romanian forces had pushed deep into Hungarian territory. As a result, the Szálasi government's authority was limited to an ever-narrowing band of territory around Budapest. In this context, Arrow Cross rule was short and brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews. Arrow Cross officers helped Adolf Eichmann re-start deportations from which the Jews of Budapest had thus far been spared, sending some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labour details and many more straight to death camps. Virtually all Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labour for the Hungarian Army's Forced Labor Battalions. Most died, including many who were murdered as they were returning home after the end of the fighting. 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. Days before fleeing, Arrow Cross Interior Minister Gábor Vajna ordered that streets and squares named for Jews be renamed. As control of the city's institutions weakened, the Arrow Cross trained their guns on the most helpless possible targets, including patients in the city's two Jewish hospitals on Maros Street and Bethlen Square, remaining women and children, and residents in the Jewish poorhouse on Alma Road. As order collapsed, Arrow Cross members continued their attacks on Jews so that the majority of Budapest's Jews were only saved by the heroic efforts of a handful of Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats, most famously Sweden's special envoy Raoul Wallenberg, the Papal Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta, Swiss Consul Carl Lutz, Spanish Consul Ángel Sanz Briz and the Italian cattle trader Giorgio Perlasca. The Arrow Cross government effectively fell at the end of January 1945, when the Soviet Army took Pest and the Axis forces retreated across the Danube to Buda. Szálasi had escaped from Budapest on 11 December 1944, taking with him the Hungarian royal crown, while Arrow Cross members and German forces continued to fight a rear-guard action in the far west of Hungary until the end of the war in April 1945. ==Post-war developments==

" memorial in Budapest, conceived by film director Can Togay with sculptor to honor those Jews who were murdered by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II. After the war, many Arrow Cross leaders were captured and tried for war crimes, and no fewer than 6,200 indictments for murder were served against Arrow Cross men in just a few months. 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==

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) ==Electoral results==

=== National Assembly === ==See also==