See the well-deserved execution of the Hungarian Nazi minister – Döme Sztáray.
In recent years, the whole world has been watching a leader who put his own interests above the people he swore to protect, who made decisions that affected millions and then slept soundly . This is nothing new; it’s happened before and ended much worse. In 1944, Damyai signed off on the deportation of 440,000 Hungarians to Achovitz within 8 weeks.
Men, women, children. He knew exactly what was going to happen to each of them in one of the worst camps the world had ever seen. And when the time came to pay for what he had done, facing a firing squad in Budapest, this man said something that left everyone speechless. Today you will watch the execution of Dom Tohai, the Nazi Prime Minister of Hungary.
Who was Toyai? Dameai was born on January 5, 1883, in the city of Versec, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today, this city is located in Serbian territory. His given name was Dimitri Stojakovic, and he came from a family of Serbian origin, in a region marked by the mixture of peoples, languages, and identities that characterized the empire at that time.
He pursued a military career from a young age. He studied at the Vienna Military Academy, one of the most prestigious institutions in the empire, where officers responsible for commanding troops in different regions of Central Europe and the Balkans were trained. Like many young officers of his generation, he grew up in an environment deeply influenced by military discipline and loyalty to the state.
When World War I began, Stoyai served in the Austro-Hungarian army, fighting on the side of the empire and, throughout the conflict, gaining experience within the military structure. Over time, he also became involved in intelligence activities, eventually leading the military intelligence service in the Balkans, an extremely strategic and unstable region during the conflict.
On the outside, he was the portrait of a typical officer of his time: disciplined, competent, and dedicated to his career. A man who had risen through the military ranks step by step, seemingly through merit and experience accumulated over the years. Nothing at first glance indicated what was to come in the following decades. But to understand Stoyai’s trajectory , it is necessary to look beyond his individual biography and understand what happened to Hungary after 1918.
The First World War ended in disaster for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which simply ceased to exist. Hungary, which had once been part of this vast multinational empire, emerged from the war as a defeated, politically unstable, and deeply wounded country. In 1920, the Treaty of Trianon completely redrew the map of the region.
Hungarian territory was reduced by approximately 72%. Hungary lost access to the sea, half of its largest cities, and virtually all of its major precious metal mines. Entire regions came under the control of neighboring countries. The human impact was also enormous. Before the war, the Hungarian territory had approximately 20 million inhabitants.
After the treaty, only 7.6 million remained within the new borders. More than 3 million ethnic Hungarians ended up living outside the country, scattered across territories that now belonged to Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. For many Hungarians, this was not just a military defeat, it was a national humiliation.
This collective trauma profoundly marked the country’s politics and society in the following decades. Resentment against the Treaty of Trianon became a powerful force within Hungarian nationalism. And it was precisely this resentment, fueled by years of frustration and a desire for revenge, that Nazi Germany skillfully exploited in the years to come.
Ideological shift. In 1927, Stoi made a symbolic decision that spoke volumes about the path he was choosing to follow. He Magyarized his surname, abandoning his original Serbian name, Stoyakovic, and began using the Hungarian form, Stoyai. It wasn’t just a change in spelling; it was also a declaration of identity, a way of demonstrating alignment with Hungarian nationalism, which was gaining strength during that period.
In the same year, he was appointed military attaché in Berlin. The position placed him in a strategic role, representing Hungary’s military interests within Germany and closely monitoring the country’s political and military developments. It was there that Stoyai began to get closer to the German power circle at a time when the European political landscape was changing rapidly.
In 1935, his career took an even bigger leap. He was promoted to Hungarian ambassador to Nazi Germany, an extremely important post, especially at a time when Budapest was seeking to strengthen its relations with Berlin. And he would remain in that position for 9 years, becoming one of the most influential figures in the relationship between the two countries.
It was during this period that he built deep ties with leaders of the third Rich. More than just a diplomat tasked with relaying messages between governments, Stoia came to act almost as a defender of German positions within Hungarian diplomacy itself. He closely followed the policies of Adolf Hitler’s regime and frequently submitted reports to Budapest, highlighting Germany’s strength and importance .
Over the years, it became increasingly clear that Stoyai did not see Germany merely as a strategic ally. He believed in the political project that was being built in Berlin. In his reports and conversations with Hungarian authorities, he advocated for increasingly close cooperation with the Nazi regime and argued that Hungary’s future was tied to German success in Europe.
Meanwhile, Hungary itself was drawing ever closer to the German orbit throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. For many Hungarian leaders, Berlin represented the only real chance to reverse the losses imposed by the Treaty of Trianol. And indeed, with the support of Germany and also Fascist Italy, the country managed to recover some of the territories it had lost after the First World War.
Parts of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia have temporarily returned to Hungarian control. For many nationalists in Budapest, this seemed like proof that the rapprochement with the Axis was working. In November 1940, Hungary formally joined the Axis, uniting with Germany and Italy in the military alliance that was beginning to dominate much of Europe.
A few months later, in June 1941, Hungarian troops participated alongside the Germans in the invasion of the Soviet Union, officially entering the war against the Soviets. But despite this increasingly close alliance in Berlin, not all Hungarian leaders were convinced that this path would lead to victory. The Hungarian Prime Minister at the time, Michos Kalai, began to realize that the war could end in disaster for the Axis powers.
As the conflict progressed and German defeats began to mount, Kalai discreetly sought a way out. Behind the scenes, his government initiated secret contacts with Western allies, attempting to negotiate a separate armistice should Germany’s military situation continue to worsen. It was a risky attempt to get Hungary out of the war before it was too late.
But for the Nazi leadership, this was unacceptable. And it would soon become clear that Berlin would not allow Hungary to simply abandon the conflict. German occupation. On March 19, 1944, the situation changed abruptly. That morning, under the codename Operation Margaret, German troops crossed the border and occupied Hungary.
Columns of tanks, military trucks, and soldiers advanced rapidly along the country’s roads. Within a few hours, strategic points were already under German control. There was almost no organized resistance. The Hungarian leadership knew that any attempt at direct confrontation with Germany would be futile.
The German army was far more powerful and already had a deep presence in the region. Resisting at that moment could have meant immediate destruction for the country. The occupation, however, was not just a military maneuver; it was also a very clear political message from Berlin. Germany no longer trusted the Hungarian government.
The Nazi leadership was convinced that Budapest might try to abandon the war and negotiate with the Allies. To prevent this, he decided to act beforehand. Shortly after the troops entered, Adolf Hitler presented the Regent of Hungary, Michos Horty, with a direct ultimatum. The demand was simple and brutal. Hort should immediately appoint a prime minister fully aligned with Nazi Germany.
Otherwise, Hungary would lose any remaining autonomy and the Germans would assume complete control of the government. Hort knew he was in an extremely precarious position. The country was occupied, German troops were scattered throughout the territory, and any attempt at resistance could lead to the immediate fall of the regime or even a civil war within Hungary itself.
Faced with this overwhelming pressure, he eventually gave in. The Germans already had a name in mind for the position, Billy Red, a radically pro-Nazi and openly anti-Semitic politician, known for his extreme positions. For Berlin, he would be the perfect ally. Hort, however, tried to negotiate. He feared that placing such a radical figure in power could provoke even more instability within the country, as well as deepen the direct control of the Germans over the Hungarian government.
After some tense negotiations, a name emerged that seemed, at least on the surface, a little more acceptable to the regent. That name was Dame Stoyai. For the Germans, he was a safe choice. During nearly a decade as ambassador in Berlin, Stoi had repeatedly demonstrated his loyalty to the Nazi regime and his willingness to cooperate with German interests.
He knew the leaders of the Third Party well and had proven over the years that he would have no problem following Berlin’s political line. Thus, Domyai was appointed the Prime Minister of Hungary. At that time, many still saw their choice as a compromise solution, but the months that followed would reveal a different reality.
Under his rule, Hungary would quickly be transformed into an active collaborator in one of the fastest and deadliest phases of the Holocaust. Guys, before we move on, I want to make sure you’ve been following and enjoying the content so far. Comment on the phrase “I want more stories”. It’s super quick, and this way you help our video reach more people, and you can also be pinned in the comments to show your support. Let’s continue.
The measures. Estoia acted quickly. As soon as he took office, he began to dismantle the few political barriers that still existed in the country. One of his first decisions was to re-legalize the Arrow Cross Party, the radical and violently anti-Semitic fascist movement that had previously been banned by Michos Horty.
At the same time, the new government began to concentrate power at an accelerated pace. Trade unions were dissolved, opposition politicians were arrested, and civil liberties were suspended. Within a few weeks, Hungary had transformed into a regime fully aligned with the demands of Nazi Germany. Soon came measures aimed directly against the Jewish population.
On March 31, 1944, a government decree mandated that all Jews over the age of 6 wear a yellow six-pointed star sewn onto their clothing. The measure came into effect on April 5th. The star functioned as a public brand, turning ordinary people into visible targets of discrimination, persecution, and violence. But that was only the beginning.
Back in April, authorities began forcing Jews living outside Budapest— around 500,000 people—to move to makeshift ghettos in various inland cities. Entire families were uprooted from their homes and taken to isolated, fenced-off, and overcrowded neighborhoods. Many believed that this would only be a temporary control measure.
The trains would soon show that it wasn’t. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, in a period of just 8 weeks, the Hungarian Gendarmerie organized one of the fastest deportation operations of the entire war. Nearly 440,000 Jews were crammed into over 145 trains and sent primarily to the Alchitz Burkin extermination camp.
The vast majority of people who boarded these trains had no idea what awaited them. When they arrived at the field, they went through an immediate selection process. Approximately 100,000 were deemed fit for forced labor. The remaining 330,000, about 75%, were sent directly to the gas chambers a few hours after getting off the train cars.
It was the deadliest period in the entire history of Achovitz. The influx of deportees was so intense that even the camp’s infrastructure began to collapse. Auschovich’s commander, Rudolf Hus, even asked the German authorities to reduce the number of trains sent out each day. The crematoriums simply couldn’t cope with the number of bodies.
The solution found by the person in charge of the crematoriums, Otomol, was to improvise huge open-air trenches where bodies were continuously burned. Witnesses reported that people were executed with shots to the back of the head and thrown into the flames. Children who cried or became agitated were often thrown alive into the fire.
Meanwhile , some scant information about what was happening began to leak out of the camp. Two Slovak prisoners, Rodolf Verba and Westler, managed to escape from Auschwitz and wrote a detailed report describing the workings of the extermination camp. The document circulated rapidly among diplomats, political leaders, and international organizations, alerting the world to what was happening.
International pressure began to mount. In June 1944, Pope Pius VI and US President Franklin Roosevelt sent direct appeals to the Hungarian regime, asking that the deportations be stopped. Roosevelt even threatened possible military retaliation against Hungary if the process continued.
Faced with mounting pressure and news that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, Hort decided to take action. On July 2, 1944, he officially ordered the suspension of deportations, but the machine was already in motion. For two more days, the trains continued to depart, and as for that, he simply ignored the regent’s order .
Despite formal protests from Horet, who went so far as to describe the deportations as inhumane, stupid, and unworthy of the Hungarian character, the prime minister kept the process going and pushed for the deportations to proceed as quickly as possible. The fall. As the weeks went by, even conductor Michelos Hort began to realize the magnitude of what was happening.
The mass deportations, the growing international pressure, and the increasingly clear accounts of the fate of Jews sent to Auschwitz [music] began to cause a shock within the Hungarian government itself . Horty was deeply alarmed by the speed and brutality of the actions carried out by his own prime minister. Convinced that the situation had gone too far, he began demanding Dom Stoyai’s removal from office.
Initially, however, Hitler refused to accept the change. For Berlin, Stoyai was exactly the type of leader Germany needed at that moment. Someone willing to cooperate without hesitation with Nazi policies. But Germany’s military situation was rapidly deteriorating in 1944. The advance of the Allies in the west and the Red Army in the east began to put increasing pressure on the Nazi regime.
Amid this unstable scenario, Hitler eventually gave in. In August 1944, Stoyai was finally removed from his position as prime minister. In his place, General Guatos took over, who tried, at least in part, to reduce the direct influence of the Germans over the Hungarian government, but Hungary’s situation remained extremely fragile.
In October 1944, when it became clear that Horty was trying to withdraw the country from the war and negotiate an armistice with the Allies, the Nazis themselves staged a coup. The regent was overthrown and replaced by an even more radical government aligned with Berlin. Even so, Damage Toyai did not return to power.
His health was already quite weak at that point, and he had lost some of the political influence he had held just a few months earlier. As the Red Army advanced rapidly through Eastern Europe, he decided to flee Hungary, attempting to escape the impending collapse of the regime he had helped to sustain.
The escape, however, did not last long. Estoia was eventually captured by American forces after the war ended. He was subsequently extradited to Hungary, where he would face trial before a Hungarian people’s court for war crimes. During the trial, the charges were presented in detail. Prosecutors exposed the mass deportations, the anti-Semitic decrees signed by his government, and the direct collaboration with the extermination policy conducted by Nazi Germany.
There wasn’t much room for denial. Much of the evidence was recorded in official documents, decrees signed by him, telegrams sent to the German government, administrative orders, and the railway records themselves, which documented the trains that carried hundreds of thousands of people to Auschwitz. All of this formed a clear picture of the role that Stoia had played during that period.
The execution. Damish Tokai was 63 years old when he was led before a firing squad in Budapest. It was August 22, 1946. After months of trial and public exposure of the crimes committed during his rule, the sentence was carried out in Hungary itself, the country he had helped lead through one of the darkest periods in its history.
The execution marked the end of the career of a man who had spent decades within the structures of the state. An officer trained in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, who built a career in the army, then in diplomacy, and who for years was seen as just another disciplined functionary within his country’s political machine.
The man who was born with the Serbian name Dimitri Toyakovic, who later erased that identity to adopt the more Hungarian name, who spent almost a decade representing his country in Nazi Germany as an ambassador, and who then signed decrees that sent some 440,000 people to the Auschwitz trains.
This man ended up being executed in the same country he ruled. Stoyai’s story reminds us of something deeply unsettling. The greatest crimes in history are rarely committed by figures who appear monstrous at first glance. Often, these acts are performed by people who, in other contexts, would seem completely ordinary. Efficient bureaucrats, experienced diplomats, disciplined military personnel.
People who spent years inside institutions following orders, filling out reports, signing documents, people who at some point began to make decisions that affected the lives of thousands or millions of people. The Holocaust, for example, would not have reached the scale it did without the active collaboration of governments allied with Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s regime depended not only on its own institutions and people, but also on the cooperation of local authorities in various occupied or allied countries. In this context, Hungary was not merely a passive victim of events. Part of his own administration did, in fact, collaborate directly with the deportations and persecution of the Jewish population.
The government led by Stoai played a central role in this process. Remembering this doesn’t mean condemning an entire country or reducing a complex nation to a single chapter of its history. It means understanding how large-scale systems of violence work and, above all, remembering that decisions made by people in positions of power can have devastating consequences, especially when those people choose to obey, accommodate, or collaborate instead of resisting.
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