Döme Sztójay (, 5 January 1883 – 22 August 1946) was a Hungarian soldier and diplomat of Serb origin, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1944, during World War II. Biography Born in Versec (modern-day Vršac) into a Serb family as Dimitrije Stojaković (), Sztójay joined the Austro-Hungarian Army as a young man and served as a colonel during World War I. After the war, Sztójay served in Admiral Miklós Horthy’s counter-revolutionary Royal Hungarian Army, specializing in counter-espionage. After Horthy became Regent of Hungary, Sztójay was promoted to general and served as a military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933. He Magyarized his name to Sztójay in 1927. From 1933 to 1935, Sztójay served in the Ministry of Defence. In 1935, Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös named Sztójay as Hungarian ambassador to Germany, a position he would hold until 1944. As ambassador, Sztójay formed strong ties with the Third Reich and often voiced support for German policies to his superiors in Hungary. In Operation Margarethe in March 1944, the German Army occupied Hungary and forced Horthy to remove Prime Minister Miklós Kállay from office. Kállay, like Horthy, knew that Germany was losing the war, and had put out numerous feelers to the West. On 9 September 1943 László Veress, an employee of the Ministry of Exterior signed a secret agreement to surrender unconditionally to the Western Allies. Although Kállay and his government had promised on numerous occasions to surrender to the Western Allies as soon as they reached Hungary, Veress' agreement was unauthorized, as in Kállay's consideration it effectively gave up Hungary's sovereignty. Nevertheless, the agreement didn't sit well with Berlin. When they took over the country, the Germans gave Horthy a choice between choosing a new prime minister who would cooperate with the Germans or undisguised occupation. Knowing that the latter would likely mean a gauleiter who would treat Hungary in the same manner as the other Nazi-occupied countries, Horthy chose the former. The German Plenipotentiary for Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, proposed that Horthy reappoint Béla Imrédy, who had been prime minister earlier in the war (and who had, ironically, a Jewish great-grandfather). However, Horthy balked at appointing the strongly pro-German Imrédy and suggested Sztójay instead. Though Sztójay had been ambassador to Berlin for a decade and was known to be pro-German, Horthy believed that at bottom he was a soldier first and would not totally give in