Editing Arrow Cross Party (section)

==Arrow Cross rule==
{{see also|Government of National Unity (Hungary)}}
[[File:Holocaust-ArrowCross-DohanySynagogue.jpg|thumb|Jewish victims of Arrow Cross men in the court of the [[Dohány Street Synagogue]]]]

In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched the covert [[Operation Panzerfaust]] which took Horthy into "protective custody" in Germany and forced him to abdicate. Szálasi was made "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of an Arrow Cross-dominated "[[Government of National Unity (Hungary)|Government of National Unity]]" the same day.

By this time, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] and [[Romania in World War II#Campaign against the Axis|Romanian]] forces had pushed deep into Hungarian territory. As a result, the Szálasi government's authority was limited to an ever-narrowing band of territory around Budapest. In this context, Arrow Cross rule was short and brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews. Arrow Cross officers helped [[Adolf Eichmann]] re-start deportations from which the Jews of Budapest had thus far been spared, sending some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labour details and many more straight to death camps. Virtually all Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labour for the [[Royal Hungarian Army|Hungarian Army]]'s [[Labour service (Hungary)|Forced Labor Battalions]]. Most died, including many who were murdered as they were returning home after the end of the fighting.<ref name="remeny.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.remeny.org/node/36 |title=Szita Szabolcs: A budapesti csillagos házak (1944-45) &#124; Remény |website=Remeny.org |date=15 February 2006 |access-date=2017-06-17}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/sites/siege/section2.html |title=The Arrow Cross - Persecution of the Jews |access-date=2013-05-18 |url-status = dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090202124928/http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/sites/siege/section2.html |archive-date=2009-02-02 }}</ref>

Red Army troops reached the outskirts of Budapest in December 1944, and the [[Siege of Budapest|siege of the city]] began. Arrow Cross members and the Germans may have conspired to destroy the [[Budapest ghetto]] but any evidence remains disputed.<ref name="remeny.org" /> Days before fleeing, Arrow Cross Interior Minister [[Gábor Vajna]] ordered that streets and squares named for Jews be renamed.<ref name="patai"/>{{rp|586}}

As control of the city's institutions weakened, the Arrow Cross trained their guns on the most helpless possible targets including patients in the city's two Jewish hospitals on Maros Street and Bethlen Square, remaining women and children, and residents in the Jewish poorhouse on Alma Road. As order collapsed, Arrow Cross members continued their attacks on Jews so that the majority of Budapest's Jews were only saved by the heroic efforts of a handful of Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats, most famously Sweden's special envoy [[Raoul Wallenberg]], the [[Papal Nuncio]] Monsignor [[Angelo Rotta]], Swiss Consul [[Carl Lutz]], Spanish Consul [[Ángel Sanz Briz]] and the Italian cattle trader [[Giorgio Perlasca]].<ref name="patai"/>{{rp|589}}

The Arrow Cross government effectively fell at the end of January 1945, when the Soviet Army took Pest and the Axis forces retreated across the Danube to Buda. Szálasi had escaped from Budapest on December 11, 1944,<ref name="nepszava.com" /> taking with him the [[Holy Crown of Hungary|Hungarian royal crown]], while Arrow Cross members and German forces continued to fight a rear-guard action in the far west of Hungary until the end of the war in April 1945.