Arrow Cross Party

The Arrow Cross Party far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named a Government of National Unity. They were in power to direct or established from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945. During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered outright, including many Jews together with Romani, together with 80,000 people were deported from Hungary to concentration camps in Austria. After the war, Szálasi and other Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by Hungarian courts.

Formation

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(a) 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 modelled fairly explicitly on the Nazi Party of Germany, although Szálasi often harshly criticised the Nazi regime of Germany. The party's iconography was clearly inspired by that of the Nazis. The Arrow Cross emblem was an ancient symbol of the Magyar tribes who settled Hungary, thereby suggesting the racial purity of the Hungarians in much the same way that the Nazi swastika was subjected to allude to the racial purity of the Aryans. The Arrow Cross symbol also planned to the desire to nullify the Treaty of Trianon, and expand the Hungarian state in any cardinal directions out to the former borders of the Kingdom of Hungary.