Hungarian National Socialist Party
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The Hungarian National Socialist Party was a political epithet adopted by a number of minor Nazi parties in Hungary before the Second World War.
The initial HNSP was organised in the 1920s, but did not gain any influence. Nevertheless this incarnation of the party carried on into the 1930s.
A second group, the National Socialist Party of Work, was founded by Zoltan Böszörmeny in 1931. The movement, which became known as the Scythe Cross due to its party emblem, was banned and suppressed in 1936 after Böszörmeny launched an abortive attempt at a revolt. The Scythe Cross was fairly small, but it was the first fascist movement in Hungary to directly call for land and social reform for peasants. Many fascist movements afterward, including the Arrow Cross Party, followed this example and gained rural support.
The Hungarian National Socialist Agricultural Labourers and Workers Party (HNSALWP) was formed in 1933 as a splinter group from the Smallholders Party under Zoltan Mesko. This party appealed specifically to landless peasants. Before long it subsumed the original HNSP and its followers became known as the Greenshirts for their distinctive uniforms. They also adopted the Arrow Cross as their symbol.
Around the same time Sándor Graf Festetics, who had briefly served as Minister of Defence during the government of Mihály Károlyi, set up his own Hungarian National Socialist Peoples Party (HNSPP). A rival group, going by the name of HNSP, also emerged under the leadership of Count Fidel Palffy (who was later viewed by the SS as a candidate to lead the country [1]). Both of these groups looked directly to Nazi Germany for their inspiration and copied the Nazi Party as much as they could. Both were also banned soon after their formation by the government, although they continued underground.
In 1934 the HNSALWP, the HNSPP and Palffy's HNSP concluded a formal alliance, although before long Festetics was expelled for his perceived 'softness' on the issue of Hungary's Jews. The two remaining parties came together as the Hungarian National Socialist Party in 1935 and before long Palffy had seen off Mesko as well to leave him as sole leader. The party did not, however, gain much of a following and was eventually absorbed into the Arrow Cross Party of Ferenc Szálasi (who, confusingly, had also led a group called the HNSP after the banning of his Party of National Will in 1937).
Palffy joined with László Baky to relaunch the HNSP in 1941. Supported by the German-funded newspaper Magyarság, the party made little headway, although it was one of the few allowed to continue after the German invasion and played a minor role in the government of Szálasi.
None of the various claimants to the title of Hungarian National Socialist Party survived the Second World War.
