From 1920, Hungary was ruled far from being democratic by Miklos Horthy, whose political views can be described as right-wing and conservative. He also clearly aimed at undermining the peace treaty in Trianon (1920) and restoring the so-called Great Hungary. From the turn of 1938/1939, he was clearly oriented towards Germany and Italy in his foreign policy. Hungary also entered the war with the Soviet Union. Already in March 1940, they formed 3 general armies (1, 2 and 3), each consisting of three corps (Hungarian Hadtest). In total, there were 27 infantry brigades (Hungarian dandar) in the Hungarian army (when Hungary joined the war with the USSR). Each of them consisted of about 9,500 people. It consisted of a command company, one 7-battery field artillery regiment and 2 infantry regiments. Each such regiment (Hungarian Ezred) had a command platoon, a machine gun company and 3 battalions (Hungarian: szloalj) of infantry. The basic shooting armament of the line units were relatively modern rifles, but in the second-throw units you could meet the old 8mm Mannlicher rifles. The anti-tank defense was mainly provided by Belgian 47 mm guns and German 37 mm PaK36 guns. The field artillery, on the other hand, consisted of the production department of such companies as Skoda, Bofors and Rheinmetall.
The Battle of Stalingrad is widely regarded as the bloodiest single battle World War II. It was fought between the Red Army and the Axis forces - especially the Wehrmacht - on the Eastern Front from August 1942 to February 1943. It happened as a result of the implementation by the Wehrmacht of a plan code-named Fall Blau, which was aimed at taking over the southern areas of the USSR, reaching the Caucasus and seizing oil fields in Maykop and Baku. However, in the course of the implementation of this plan, as a result of, inter alia, the intervention of Adolf Hitler, the seizure of the city of Stalingrad became one of the main objectives of the operation. For Nazi Germany, this decision turned out to be one of the worst in the history of World War II. The Stalingrad battle turned into horribly bloody and very heavy city fights, during which every house or street was fought, and the front line often ran through rooms or staircases in apartment blocks! Ultimately, as a result of it, the Wehrmacht suffered a great defeat, and the entire 6th Army was taken prisoner by the Soviets, including Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. It is estimated that during the entire Battle of Stalingrad, the Axis forces lost about 850,000 soldiers - killed, wounded and captured. The Battle of Stalingrad also marked a turn in the war on the Eastern Front, which from then on began to take a favorable turn for the USSR.