1946: Bela Imredy, Hungarian fascist prime minister
February 28th, 2013 Headsman
On this date in 1946, Bela Imredy, the fascist former prime minister of Hungary, was shot in Budapest.
Imredy was a Catholic financier who steered Hungarian economic policy in a succession of state posts during the chaotic 1930s.
When one of those governments fell in 1938, regent Miklos Horthy appointed Imredy prime minister. He was forced out of office the next year on revelations that he had Jewish ancestry.
This did nothing to moderate Imredy’s anti-Semitic views; he returned at the head of a new fascist party and nearly became Prime Minister under the German occupation in 1944.
Horthy demurred, and another future gallows-bird got the job instead. Imredy took the Minister of Economic Coordination as his last political gig.
A “People’s Tribunal” condemned Imredy after the war for war crimes and Nazi collaboration.
Also on this date
- 1476: The Garrison of Grandson, by Charles the Bold
- 2000: Hassan bin Awad al-Zubair, Sudanese sorcerer
- 1810: Tommaso Tintori, the first guillotined in Rome
- 1887: Roxalana Druse, the last woman hanged in New York
- 2002: Monty Allen Delk, in a Three-Pronged Failure
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Heads of State,History,Hungary,Politicians,Shot,Treason,War Crimes
Tags: 1940s, 1946, bela imredy, fascism, february 28, photography, world war ii
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