Soviet occupation of Hungary

The Germans and Italians granted to Hungary part of southern Czechoslovakia and Subcarpathia in the First Vienna Treaty of 1938, and then northern Transylvania in the Second Vienna Treaty of 1940.

In 1941 Hungary participated in its first military manoeuvres as part of the Axis. Thus the Hungarian army was part of the invasion of Yugoslavia, gaining some more territory. On 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa; Hungary joined the German effort and declared war on the Soviet Union on 26 June, and formally entered World War II on the side of the Axis. In late 1941, the Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front experienced success at the Battle of Uman. By 1943, after the Hungarian Second Army suffered extremely heavy losses at the River Don, the Hungarian government sought to negotiate a surrender with the Allies.

On 19 March 1944, as a result of this duplicity, German troops occupied Hungary in what was known as Operation Margarethe. By then it was clear that Hungarian politics was suppressed by Hitler's intent to hold the country in war on the side of the Nazi Third Reich because of its strategic location. On 15 October 1944, Miklós Horthy made a token effort to disengage Hungary from the war. This time the Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and Horthy was replaced by a puppet government under the pro-German Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi. Szálasi and his pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party remained loyal to the Germans until the end of the war.

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