Hungary

Historical interpretation of Hungarian fascism has been shaped by the political divisions that followed its fall in 1945. Almost from the moment of the war's end, Hungary's left-wing political parties used their anti-fascist credentials to legitimize their political project for Hungary's future. From the end of the Second World War, through most of the socialist era, ‘Horthy fascism’ was described as the pursuit of territorial revision, and institutionalized anti-Semitism was held responsible for the tragedies of Hungary's painful entanglement in the Second World War and the murder of the majority of the country's Jewish population. The roots of both Hungarian fascism and the dominant neo-conservative ideology of the inter-war years lay in a polarization of politics that began in the 1890s, when conservative intellectuals responded to the growing mobilization of the left in the country's industrial centres and a greater assertiveness from non-Magyar speakers, who composed half of pre-war Hungary's population.