SS officers such as Adolf Eichmann to allow a number of Jews to escape in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds. Other diplomats also organized false papers and safe houses for Jews in Budapest and hundreds of Hungarian people were executed by the Arrow Cross Party for sheltering Jews.
The war left Hungary devastated, destroying over 60% of the economy and causing huge loss of life. Many Hungarian men, women, and children were raped, murdered and executed or deported for slave labour by Czechoslovaks, Soviet Red Army troops, and Yugoslavs (mostly Serbian partisans and regular units)— by the end of the war approximately 500,000–650,000 people.
On 13 February 1945, the Hungarian capital city surrendered unconditionally. By the agreement between the Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš and Joseph Stalin, expulsions of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia and Slovaks from Hungary started. 250,000 ethnic Germans were also transferred to Germany pursuant to article XIII of the Potsdam Protocol of 2 August 1945.
The territories regained with the Vienna Awards and during World War II were again lost by Hungary with the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947.
Communist era 1947–1989
Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Soviet troops occupied all of the country, and Hungary gradually became a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union.
An estimated 2,000 people were executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned. Approximately 350,000 officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956. Many freethinkers and democrats were secretly arrested and taken to inland or foreign concentration camps without any judicial sentence. Some 600,000 Hungarians were deported to Soviet labour camps after the Second World War and at least 200,000 died in captivity.
Rákosi adhered to a militarist, industrialising, and war compensation economic policy, and the standard of living fell. The rule of the Rákosi government led to the Hungarian
