Unity Party (Hungary)
Ruling party of Hungary (1922–1944) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Unity Party (Hungarian: Egységes Párt), officially the Catholic-Protestant Farmers, Smallholders, and Civic Party or Christian Farmers, Smallholders and Civic Party (Hungarian: Keresztény-Keresztyén Földmíves-, Kisgazda- és Polgári Párt), was the ruling party of Kingdom of Hungary from 1922 to 1944.
Unity Party Egységes Párt | |
---|---|
Leader | István Bethlen (1922–1932) Gyula Gömbös (1932–1936) Béla Imrédy (1938–1939) Miklós Kállay (1942–1944) |
Founder | István Bethlen |
Founded | 2 February 1922 (1922-02-02) |
Dissolved | 23 March 1944 (1944-03-23) |
Merger of | KNEP (partial) and OKGFP |
Headquarters | Budapest, Hungary |
Ideology | |
Political position | 1922–1932: Right-wing[4] 1932–1944: Far-right |
Party flag | |
It was founded in early 1922, and in the same year they won a electoral landslide in the parliamentary election.[5] Initially, the party was conservative and agrarian but in the early 1930s its fascist faction grew to become the largest, and shortly after they established a militia.[6] The main leader of the fascist faction was Gyula Gömbös, who served as the prime minister from 1932 to 1936.[7] When he came to power, the party was renamed to National Unity Party (Hungarian: Nemzeti Egység Pártja).
Gömbös declared the party's intention to achieve "total control of the nation's social life".[8] In the 1935 Hungarian Election, Gömbös promoted the creation of a "unitary Hungarian nation with no class distinctions".[9] The party won a huge majority of the seats of the Hungarian parliament in the Hungarian election of May 1939.[10] It won 72 percent of the parliament's seats and won 49 percent of the popular vote in the election.[11] This was a major breakthrough for the far-right in Hungary.[11] The party promoted nationalist propaganda and some of its members sympathized with the Nazi Arrow Cross Party.[11] In 1939, the party was renamed to the Party of Hungarian Life (Hungarian: Magyar Élet Pártja).
It was also called "the Government Party" since it was the governing party of the Kingdom of Hungary during the existence of the Horthy era.[7] A faction of the most pro-Nazi members led by the party's former leader Béla Imrédy split from the party October 1940 to form the Party of Hungarian Renewal [Wikidata] (Magyar Megújulás Pártja) that sought to explicitly "solve" the "Jewish Problem."