Background
Miklós Horthy was born in Konderes, Hungary, on June 18, 1868, to an ancient Protestant noble family.
military politician statesman admiral
Miklós Horthy was born in Konderes, Hungary, on June 18, 1868, to an ancient Protestant noble family.
Horthy graduated from the Naval Academy at Fiume in 1886 and was assigned various commands, including service with the torpedo branch and escort duty to the South Seas.
In 1908 the Hungarian was given command of the Taurus at Constantinople, and he distinguished himself by submitting prescient reports on the Young Turk rebellion then in progress; Emperor Francis Joseph rewarded the magnate with the post of naval aide-de-camp (1909-1914). Horthy was promoted captain and appointed chamberlain in 1913; he was posted to the emperor's naval chancellery as well as to the Naval Section of the War Ministry.
At the outbreak of the Great War, Horthy commanded the battleship Habsburg, but after ten months was transferred to the new cruiser Novarra. During the night of May 23/24, 1915, he took part in the Austro-Hungarian sea raid against the Italian east coast between Bonletta and Venice; Horthy commanded the daring raid against Porto Corsini, the outer harbor of Ravenna. On December 6 the Novarra managed to intercept and to destroy transports bound for the relief of Montenegro in the port of San Giovanni di Medua. And when the Entente in 1917 began to bottle up the Dual Monarchy's fleet with a mine barrage across the Straits of Otranto, Horthy induced his superiors to undertake a cruiser raid against this barrier. On May 15, 1917, Captain Horthy commanded what was to become Austria-Hungary's most daring naval action of the war when he led three cruisers and two destroyers into the Straits. Superior forces attacked the flotilla and Horthy, severely wounded in both legs, barely managed to escape and, under cover of heavy units hastily dispatched from home, to reach port safely. This daring sortie made Horthy somewhat of a national hero.
The new Emperor Charles raised Horthy to the grade of rear admiral. After naval unrest in October 1917 and February 1918 had severely undermined Admiral Maximilian Njegovan's command, Horthy on March 1, 1918 was made fleet commander over several more senior admirals. Charles completed the fragmentation of the naval command by appointing Vice Admiral Franz von Holub head of the Naval Section in the War Ministry. Moreover, all operations now had to be cleared with the emperor. It is hardly surprising, given this cumbersome chain of command, that no further naval action took place. Horthy was promoted vice admiral shortly before the end of the war and it became his bitter task to supervise the end of the Imperial Navy. On October 30, 1918, Charles transferred the entire fleet to the new Yugoslav National Council, and one day later Horthy hauled down the Habsburg banner for the last time, turning the ships under his command over to Rear Admiral Dragutin Prica. This rear admiral promptly managed to run his flagship Yugoslavia (formerly Viribus Unitis) onto an Italian mobile mine as he sailed out of Cattaro on November 1. In the end, Yugoslavia was cheated of the spoils as all but eleven torpedo boats were taken from it and distributed among the Allies.
In November 1919, Horthy abandoned retirement at Konderes in order to take part in suppressing the Communist rebellion of Bela Kun in Budapest; a grateful National Assembly elected him regent governor for life on March 1, 1920. The admiral managed to frustrate Emperor Charles' attempts at restoration in March and October 1921. Twenty years later, Horthy joined Adolf Hitler's crusade against the Soviet Union, but differences of opinion between the two former Habsburg subjects led to the deposition of Horthy on March 19, 1944. When the admiral appealed to Joseph Stalin in October for an armistice and ordered Hungarian soldiers to lay down their guns, he was promptly arrested on October 15 and power turned over to the Nazi-controlled Arrow Cross movement. U.S. troops found Horthy in Bavaria on May 1, 1945, and the Hungarian retired to private life at Estoril, Portugal, where he died on February 9, 1957.
According to footnotes in his memoirs, Horthy was very distraught about the failure of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In his will, Horthy asked that his body not be returned to Hungary "until the last Russian soldier has left." His heirs honoured the request. In 1993, two years after the Soviet troops left Hungary, Horthy's body was returned to Hungary and he was buried in his home town of Kenderes. The reburial in Hungary was the subject of some controversy on part of the left.
Horthy married Magdolna Purgly de Jószáshely in 1901; they were married for just over 56 years, until his death. He had two sons, Miklós Horthy, Jr. (often rendered in English as "Nicholas" or "Nikolaus") and István Horthy, who served as his political assistants; and two daughters, Magda and Paula. Of his four children, only Miklós outlived him.