Miklós Kállay

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The native form of this personal name is Kállay Miklós. This article uses the Western name order.

Miklós Kállay de Nagy-Kálló (January 23, 1887, Nyíregyháza – January 14, 1967, New York City) was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary during World War II, from March 9, 1942 to March 19, 1944.

The Kállay family was old and influential amongst the local gentry of their region, and Miklós served as lord lieutenant of his county from 1921 to 1929. He then moved on to national government, serving first as deputy under secretary of state for the Ministry of Trade (1929-31) and later as minister of agriculture (1932-35). 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 Miklós Horthy asked him to form a government to reverse the pro-Nazi policies of László Bárdossy in March 1942.

Although Hungary remained allied with Nazi Germany, Kállay and Horthy were basically conservative and unsympathetic to fascism, and Kállay's government refused to participate in the rounding up of Jews and other activities desired by the Nazis. The government also allowed the left-wing opposition press to function without much interference. In foreign affairs, Kállay supported the German war effort against the Soviet Union, but made peaceful overtures to the Western allied powers. The Germans finally had enough of their ally's policies and occupied Hungary in March 1944, forcing Kállay to flee and replacing him with a more pliable successor.

Kállay was able to evade the Nazis at first, but he was eventually captured and sent first to the Dachau concentration camp and later to Mauthausen. He was freed after the war and went into voluntary exile in 1946. He settled in the United States in 1951 and published his memoirs, Hungarian Premier: A Personal Account of a Nation's Struggle in the Second World War, in 1954.

[edit] References

• 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.
• 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.

Preceded by László Bárdossy

Prime Minister of Hungary 1942–1944

Succeeded by Döme Sztójay