Hungarian Army general and prime minister from 1944 to 1945. Born on 11 June 1890 in Budapest, Béla Dálnoki-Miklós graduated from the Ludovika Military Academy, Budapest, in 1910. From 1933 to 1936 he was the Hungarian military attaché in Berlin. In 1939 he was promoted to general and in November 1942 was appointed aide-de-camp to Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy. In July 1944 Dálnoki-Miklós became commander of the Hungarian First Army. When a pro-Nazi party took power in Hungary in October 1944, he refused to be associated with it and surrendered to the advancing Red Army. When the Red Army seized the eastern half of Hungary in late autumn 1944 the Soviets established a provisional government, and on 22 December 1944 Dálnoki-Miklós became its prime minister.

Dálnoki-Miklós retained his position until the parliamentary elections of November 1945, which the Smallholders Party won. A new government was immediately formed, and Dálnoki-Miklós left office on 15 November 1945. In August 1947 he was elected to parliament but shortly thereafter withdrew from politics. As Hungary's first postwar prime minister, Dálnoki-Miklós was kept under close rein by the Soviets, so his legacy was a limited one. Nevertheless, he made small strides in reorganizing public administration, carrying out land reform, and modernizing elementary education. Dálnoki-Miklós died on 21 November 1948 in Budapest.

Anna Boros-McGee

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Further Reading
Sugar, Peter F., Peter Hanak, and Tibor Frank, eds. A History of Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.