Miklós Kállay

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 1921-29. 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.[3]

Prime Minister Kállay Miklós in procession on Holy Trinity Square, along Holy Trinity Street, Buda Castle. 1943. Fortepan.

Prime Minister Kállay and National Defense Minister Lajos Csatay. June 13, 1943.

Although Hungary remained allied with Nazi Germany, Kállay and Horthy were conservatives who were 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 (except for the Communists) to function without much interference. In foreign affairs, Kállay supported the German war effort against the Soviet Union. However, he made numerous peaceful overtures to the Western Allies, even going as far as to promise to surrender to them unconditionally once they reached Hungary's borders. The Germans finally had enough of their ally's policies and occupied Hungary in March 1944, forcing Horthy to oust Kállay and replace him with the more pliable Döme Sztójay.

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. In late April 1945 he was transferred to Tyrol together with other prominent concentration camp inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on 5 May 1945.[4]

In 1946 he went into exile, finally settling 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).[5]

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

• 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.

• Newspaper clippings about Miklós Kállay in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW