Unity Party (Hungary)


The Unity Party was a political party in the Kingdom of Hungary that was founded in 1921. The party was founded by Prime Minister István Bethlen and shortly afterward won a majority of seats in the Hungarian parliament in the 1922 elections. On 27 October 1932, the party was renamed National Unity Party, while since 2 February 1939 the name was Party of Hungarian Life.
The party was sometimes nicknamed "the Government Party," since it was the governing party of Hungary for its entire existence.
The party, initially more agrarian and conservative, grew similar to fascist movements, establishing a militia. The trend toward fascism came under Gyula Gömbös, who was Prime Minister from 1932 to 1936. Gömbös declared the party's intention to achieve "total control of the nation's social life". In the 1935 Hungarian Election, Gömbös promoted the creation of a "unitary Hungarian nation with no class distinctions".
The party won a huge majority of the seats of the Hungarian parliament in the Hungarian election of May 1939. It won 72 percent of the parliament's seats and won 49 percent of the popular vote in the election. This was a major breakthrough for the far-right in Hungary. The party promoted nationalist propaganda and some of its members sympathized with the Nazi Arrow Cross Party.
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 that sought to explicitly solve the Jewish Problem.

Electoral results

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