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| Part ofHungary in World War II | |
|---|---|
 Map of territories that were reassigned to Hungary in 1938 to 1941. The Second Vienna Award highlighted in green. | |
| Context | Territorial dispute over Transylvania between Hungary and Romania, spread of Axis influence during World War II |
| Signed | 30 August 1940 |
| Location | Belvedere Palace,Vienna,Germany |
| Signatories | |
| Parties | |
TheSecond Vienna Award was the second of two territorial disputes that were arbitrated byNazi Germany andFascist Italy. On 30 August 1940, they assigned the territory ofNorthern Transylvania, including all ofMaramureș and part ofCrișana, from theKingdom of Romania to theKingdom of Hungary.[1]
AfterWorld War I, the multiethnicKingdom of Hungary was divided by the 1920Treaty of Trianon to form several new nation states, but Hungary noted that the new state borders did not follow ethnic boundaries. The new nation state of Hungary was about a third the size of prewar Hungary, and millions of ethnic Hungarians were left outside the new Hungarian borders. Many historically-important areas of Hungary were assigned to other countries, and the distribution of natural resources was uneven. The various non-Hungarian populations generally saw the treaty as justice for their historically-marginalised nationalities, but the Hungarians considered the treaty to have been deeply unjust, a national humiliation and a real tragedy.
The treaty and its consequences dominated Hungarian public life and political culture in the interwar period, and the Hungarian government swung more and more to the right. Eventually, under RegentMiklós Horthy, Hungary established close relations withBenito Mussolini's Italy andAdolf Hitler's Germany.
The good relations with Germany and Italy allowed Hungary to regain southernCzechoslovakia in theFirst Vienna Award of 1938 andSubcarpathia in 1939. However, neither that nor the subsequent military conquest ofCarpathianRuthenia in 1939 satisfied Hungarian political ambitions. The awards allocated only a fraction of the territories lost by the Treaty of Trianon, and the loss resented the most by the Hungarians was that ofTransylvania, which had been ceded to Romania.
In late June 1940, the Romanian government gave in to aSovietultimatum and allowedMoscow to take over bothBessarabia andNorthern Bukovina, which had been incorporated into Romania afterWorld War I, as well as theHertsa region. The territorial loss was dreadful from Romania's perspective, but its government preferred that to an unwinnable military conflict with the Soviets. Hungary's government, however, interpreted Romania's cession of land as an admission that it would no longer insist upon its territorial integrity under pressure. TheSoviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina thus inspiredBudapest to escalate its efforts to resolve "the question of Transylvania". Hungary hoped to gain as much of Transylvania as possible, but the Romanians would have none of it and submitted only a small region for consideration. Eventually, Hungarian-Romanian negotiations fell through entirely. As a result, Romania and Hungary were "browbeaten" into acceptingAxis arbitration.[2]
Meanwhile, the Romanian government had acceded to Italy's request for territorial cessions toBulgaria, another German-aligned neighbour. On 7 September, under theTreaty of Craiova, the "Cadrilater" (southernDobruja) was ceded by Romania to Bulgaria.
On 1 July 1940, Romania repudiated the Anglo-French guarantee of 13 April 1939, which had become worthless following thefall of France. The next day, KingCarol II of Romania suggested to Hitler that Germany dispatch a military mission to Romania and renewthe alliance of 1883. Germany used Romania's new desperation to force a revision of the territorial settlement produced by theParis Peace Conference of 1919 in favour of Germany's old allies: Hungary and Bulgaria. In an exchange of letters between Carol and Hitler (5–15 July), Carol insisted that no territorial exchange occur without a population exchange, and Hitler conditioned German goodwill towards Romania on Romania's having good relations with Hungary and Bulgaria.[3] The Romanian foreign minister wasMihail Manoilescu; the German minister plenipotentiary in Bucharest was Wilhelm Fabricius.
In accordance with German wishes, Romania began negotiations with Hungary atTurnu Severin on 16 August.[4] The initial Hungarian claim was 69,000 km2 (27,000 sq mi) of territory with 3,803,000 inhabitants, almost two-thirds of whom were Romanian. Talks were broken off on 24 August. The German and Italian governments then proposed an arbitration, which was characterised in the minutes of theRomanian Crown Council of 29 August as "communications with an ultimative character made by the German and Italian governments".[4]
The Romanians accepted, and Foreign MinistersJoachim von Ribbentrop of Germany andGaleazzo Ciano of Italy met on 30 August 1940 at theBelvedere Palace inVienna. They reduced the Hungarian demands to 43,492 km2 (16,792 sq mi), with a population of 2,667,007.[5] The treaty was signed byHungarian Foreign MinisterIstván Csáky andRomanian Foreign MinisterMihail Manoilescu. The Romanian Crown Council met overnight on 30–31 August to accept the arbitration. At the meeting,Iuliu Maniu demanded that Carol abdicate and that the Romanian Army to resist the Hungarian takeover of northern Transylvania. His demands were pragmatically rejected.[4]
Population statistics inNorthern Transylvania and the changes after the award are presented in detail in the next section.Southern Transylvania, with 2,274,600 Romanians and 363,200 Hungarians, remained part of Romania.
The territory in question covered an area of 43,104 square kilometres (16,643 sq mi).[6] The 1930 Romanian census registered for the region a population of 2,393,300. In 1941, the Hungarian authorities conducted a new census, which registered a total population of 2,578,100. Both censuses asked language and nationality separately.[7] The results of both censuses are summarised in this table:
| Major ethnic groups | 1930 Romanian census[7] | 1941 Hungarian census[7] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality | Language | Nationality | Language | |
| Hungarian | 912,500 (38.13%) | 1,007,200 (42.08%) | 1,380,500 (53.55%) | 1,344,000 (52.13%) |
| Romanian | 1,176,900 (49.17%) | 1,165,800 (48.71%) | 1,029,000 (39.91%) | 1,068,700 (41.45%) |
| German | 68,300 (2.85%) | 59,700 (2.49%) | 44,600 (1.73%) | 47,300 (1.83%) |
| Jewish (Yiddish language) | 138,800 (5.80%) | 99,600 (4.16%) | 47,400 (1.83%) | 48,500 (1.88%) |
| Other | 96,800 (4.04%) | 61,000 (2.55%) | 76,600 (2.97%) | 69,600 (2.70%) |
| Total | 2,393,300 | 2,578,100 | ||
HistorianKeith Hitchins summarised the situation created by the award:[8]
Apart from natural population growth, the differences between the censuses were caused by other complex reasons like migration, the assimilation of Jews and bilingual speakers. According to Hungarian registrations, 100,000 Hungarian refugees had arrived in Hungary from South Transylvania by January 1941. Most of them sought refuge in the north, and almost as many persons arrived from Hungary in the reannexed territory as those who moved to the Trianon Hungarian territory from South Transylvania.
As a result of the migrations, the number of North Transylvanian Hungarians increased by almost 100,000.[9] On the other hand, nearly the same number of Romanians left to Southern Transylvania by February 1941, according to the incomplete registration of North Transylvanian refugees that was carried out by the Romanian government. Also, a fall in the total population suggests that a further 40,000 to 50,000 Romanians moved from North Transylvania to South Transylvania, including refugees who were omitted from the official registration for various reasons.
Hungarian gains by assimilation were balanced by losses for other groups of native speakers, such as Jews. The shift of languages was most typical among bilingual Romanians and Hungarians. On the other hand, inMáramaros andSzatmár Counties, dozens of settlements had many people who had declared themselves as Romanian in 1930 but now identified themselves as Hungarian in 1941 although they had not spoken any Hungarian even in 1910.[citation needed]
| Recovery of Northern Transylvania | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Romania |  HungarySupported by:  Germany Italy | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Unknown | Miklós HorthyVilmos NagyGusztáv Jány | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Unknown | First Army Second Army | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Romanian military: Unknown Romanian civilians: Hundreds killed | Hungarian military: 4 killed (presumably) Severaltanks damaged[10] Hungarian civilians: Unknown | ||||||||
Romania had 14 days to evacuate the concerned territories and to assign them to Hungary. The Hungarian troops stepped across the Trianon borders on 5 September. TheRegent of Hungary,Miklós Horthy, also attended in the entry. The troops reached the pre-Trianon border, which completed the territorial recovery process, on 13 September.
Generally, the ethnic Hungarian population welcomed the troops and regarded the separation from Romania as a liberation. The large ethnic Romanian community that found itself under the Hungarian occupation had nothing to celebrate, as it considered the Second Vienna Award a return to the long Hungarian rule. Upon entering the awarded territory, theRoyal Hungarian Army committed massacres against the Romanian population, including the following:
The circumstances and the exact number of casualties are disputed among historians. The retreat of the Romanian Army was also not free from incidents, which were mostly damaging infrastructure and destroying public documents.
Germany did agree to guarantee Romania after the latter ceded Northern Transylvania to Hungary andSouthern Dobruja toBulgaria (Treaty of Craiova). This guarantee was successfully put to test a few months later. On 13 November 1940,Vyacheslav Molotov asked Hitler to endorse the Soviet annexation of South Bukovina. This was equivalent to Germany cancelling its guarantee of Romania, something obviously unacceptable to Berlin. As theFinal Report of theWiesel Commission put it: "Only Hitler's refusal saved the rest of Bukovina from being swallowed up, Russified, and lost to Romania forever.".[12][13]
By 1941, there have been a total of 919 murders, 1,126 maimings, 4,126 beatings, 15,893 arrests, 124 desecrations, 78 individual and 447 collective home devastations of Romanians by the Hungarian authorities. Additionally, Romanians were deported to working camps, inPüspökladány 1,315 North Transylvanian Romanians were deported at the end of September 1940, a number well above the camp's maximum capacity. In the same month, other working camps for Romanians were established at Szamosfalva (nowSomeșeni) and Szászfenes (nowFlorești), near Kolozsvár (nowCluj).[14]
During this period, Romanian schools also suffered. On the territory of the ceded part of Transylvania, there were 1,733 Romanian-language schools. After the Second Vienna Award, by 1941 there was only one Romanian-language school left in North Transylvania, inNăsăud.[15]
However, in a few cases, there were also Hungarian locals who were involved in rescuing Romanian families. Among them is the case of József Gáll, who saved several Romanians from death during the Treznea Massacre. Or Sarolta Juhász from Omboztelke (nowMureșenii de Câmpie), who was killed while trying to protect the family of the Romanian priest Bujor.[16]
If one excludes the Szekely area, 127,377 Jews were deported for extermination purposes, overwhelmingly to theAuschwitz death camp, 19,764 returned and 107,613 did not return.[17]
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The Carol II fortified line (Romanian:Linia fortificată Carol al II-lea) had been built by Romania in the late 1930s at the order ofKingCarol II to defend thewestern border with Hungary. Stretching across 300 kilometres (190 mi), the line itself was not continuous but protected only the most likely routes towards inner Transylvania. It had 320casemates: 80 built in 1938, 180 built in 1939 and the rest built in the first half of 1940. There was a distance of about 400 m between each casemate, all of which were made of reinforced concrete, with varying sizes, but all were armed with machine guns. The artillery was placed between the casemates themselves. In front of the casemates, there were rows of barbed wire, mine fields and one large antitank ditch, which in some places were filled with water. The firing from the casemates was calculated to be very dense and crossed to cause as many losses as possible to the enemy infantry. The role of the fortified line was not to stop incoming attacks but to delay them, to inflict as many losses as possible and to give time for the bulk of the Romanian Army to be mobilized.
After the Vienna Award, the entire line fell in the area allotted to Hungary. The Romanian troops evacuated as much equipment as possible, but the dug-in telephone lines could not be recovered and so were eventually used by the Hungarian Army. The Hungarians also salvaged as much metal as possible, which eventually amounted to a huge amount. After all of the useful equipment and materiel had been salvaged, the casemates were blown up by the Hungarians to prevent them from being used again.[18]
The Second Vienna Award was voided by theAllied Commission throughthe Armistice Agreement with Romania (12 September 1944), whose Article 19 stipulated the following:
That came afterKing Michael's Coup of 23 August 1944, when Romania changed sides and joined theAllies. Thereafter, the Romanian Army foughtNazi Germany and its allies, first in Romania and later inGerman-occupied Hungary andSlovakia, such as during theBudapest Offensive, theSiege of Budapest, theBratislava–Brno Offensive, and thePrague Offensive. After theBattle of Carei on 25 October 1944, all the territory of Northern Transylvania was under the control of Romanian and Soviet troops. The Soviet Union kept administrative control until 9 March 1945, when it was reverted to Romania.
The 1947Paris Peace Treaties reaffirmed theborders between Romania and Hungary, as they had been originally defined in theTreaty of Trianon, 27 years earlier.
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