ABSTRACT
It has been suggested earlier that Anglo-Hungarian relations were never more important for Hungarian history than between 1938 and 1941. During these three years Great Britain was the sole world power that acted first as counterweight to, then outright opponent of, Hitler’s German Reich, which was weighing on Hungary and threatening the country’s independence. From May 1938 to December 1941 Hungary’s prime ministers were successively Béla Imrédy, Count Pál Teleki and László Bárdossy. All highly talented politicians and statesmen, the three differed in their personalities and characters. While Teleki sought to keep the by then unavoidable accommodation to the Third Reich within limits Imrédy and Bárdossy, albeit for different reasons, became representatives and spokesmen for unconditional alliance with Germany. All three paid for this tragedy with their lives.
