First Vienna Award

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The First Vienna Award was handed down in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, and the whole proceeding took about half a day. The arbitration began at noon on the 2nd of November 1938. Two foreign ministers sat as judges. They were Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Italy. Around 7 p.m., Ribbentrop announced where the new border would run. The Czechoslovak delegation was so shocked that Ribbentrop and their own foreign minister, František Chvalkovský, had to talk Jozef Tiso into signing.

  That shock is strange, because Czechoslovakia had asked for this arbitration itself. It had even promised in advance to obey whatever the two ministers decided. So why did a country invite two Axis powers to settle its borders? How did Hungary, weaker than its neighbours, win a verdict that its army could not have won by force? And what happened to the hundreds of thousands of people who found themselves on the other side of a line drawn in half a day? The answers begin in the years after World War I.

  24282923

• 2. Trianon's Long Shadow

  ›

  In March 1933, Hungary's prime minister declared that his country "wanted justice on the historical principle." In practice, that meant undoing the Treaty of Trianon, imposed on Hungary in 1920 after World War I. The treaty had left a significant Hungarian minority living across Hungary's new borders. Reuniting them with the mother country became the great aim of Hungarian foreign policy.

  From 1933, Hungary coordinated its foreign policy closely with Nazi Germany. That June, Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös visited Germany and met Adolf Hitler. The two men agreed that Czechoslovakia blocked a "rearrangement" of Central Europe. It should be subverted from within, isolated abroad and finally destroyed by military force. In August 1936, Miklós Horthy urged Hitler to attack Czechoslovakia together, to cut a "cancerous tumor from the heart of Europe."

  Yet Hungary's appetite outran its strength. Between the wars it was weaker than the neighbours it had claims against, both economically and militarily. When Hitler decided in late 1937 to open a campaign against Czechoslovakia, Hungarian representatives shied away from an open attack. They thought it too dangerous. France and Britain had also made their support on the minority question conditional on Hungary staying out of any German military action. Hitler was outraged, and his attitude toward Hungarian claims in eastern Czechoslovakia changed.

  Before the Munich Agreement, a Hungarian emissary asked the German and Italian delegations to settle Hungary's demands alongside the Sudeten German question. Hitler refused. He was unhappy with Hungary's passivity and had his own plans for Central Europe. Daladier and Chamberlain feared such a tangled bargain. Mussolini, however, let Hungarian demands appear in an appendix to the agreement. It told Czechoslovakia to settle matters with Hungary and Poland within three months by direct negotiation. Otherwise the four signatories would decide.

  Budapest read that appendix generously. Officials saw it as the Great Powers accepting a revision of peace treaties, and they wanted more than ethnic borders. They hoped for the restoration of land held before 1918 and a common border with Poland. They also knew any attack would meet the more modern Czechoslovak Army. So Hungary chose to fight in the diplomatic field. The Munich text allowed three months, but Hungary wanted talks at once, and it had ways of hurrying them along.

  145227

• 3. Raids and Failed Talks

  ›

  Early on the morning of the 5th of October 1938, soldiers of the Royal Hungarian Army crossed the border and attacked Czechoslovak positions near Jesenské. Their goal was Rimavská Sobota. Czechoslovak reinforcements arrived, killed nine Hungarians, took prisoners and drove the rest back. Two days later, Hungarian troops tried to cross the Danube near Parkan.

  The situation was worse in Carpathian Ruthenia, where fortifications were thinner. Paramilitary units called the Rongyos Gárda slipped across the border. The first two crossed on the 6th of October, and two days later they blew up the bridge over the Borozhava River. The raids did not stop when talks began. On the 10th of October, the second day of negotiations, Hungarian troops murdered a railway officer in Borozhava and damaged railway facilities.

  Czechoslovakia had little appetite for talks before the 15th of October, because its foreign ministry was busy with Poland and Germany. Slovakia, however, declared its autonomy on the 6th of October. Prague first thought of a Slovak delegation leader such as Milan Hodža or Imrich Karvaš. Foreign Minister Chvalkovský instead proposed Tiso or Ferdinand Ďurčanský. Both first refused, because the role competed with the central government. They accepted when told it mattered chiefly to Slovakia. Tiso hoped Hungarians would offer more concessions to someone who was not from Prague. Facing the pressure of sabotage, Czechoslovakia agreed to begin on the 9th of October.

  The talks ran from the 9th to the 13th in Komárno, on the Slovak bank of the Danube. Tiso led a Czechoslovak delegation that included Ďurčanský and General Rudolf Viest. Ivan Krno spoke for the central government, and Ivan Párkányi for Carpathian Ruthenia. They had little time to prepare, and Tiso had no experience of such negotiations. Across the table sat experienced men: Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya and Education Minister Pál Teleki. Hungary welcomed Tiso's inexperience and expected to sway the Slovaks with promises. It was disappointed, because the other Slovak delegates rejected any return to Hungary.

  On the first day, Hungary handed over a memorandum. It demanded areas that were at least 50 percent Hungarian by the 1910 census. It also asked for places that failed that test. The line ran from Devín and Bratislava through Nitra, Levice, Lučenec, Košice and Uzhhorod to Vinogradiv. It covered 14,106 square kilometres and 1,346,000 people. According to the 1930 census, 678,000 of those people had declared a non-Hungarian nationality. Hungary also demanded a plebiscite on whether Slovaks and Ruthenians wished to join Hungary. Czechoslovakia refused, since Munich said nothing about either nation. The Ruthenian delegate added that his people, apart from the communists, had already chosen Czechoslovakia.

  As a "goodwill gesture," Hungary asked for two border towns at once. Czechoslovakia agreed to give up Slovenské Nové Mesto and Šahy, and Hungary occupied both on the 12th of October.

  The real quarrel was over numbers. Hungary used the 1910 census, as Germany had at Munich. Czechoslovakia argued for 1930 figures and called 1910 the peak of Magyarization. Tiso noted that he had been counted as a Hungarian in that census. Hungary proposed the 1880 census as a compromise. The city of Košice showed the problem. In 1910 it recorded 6,547 Slovaks and 33,350 Hungarians, while in 1930 it recorded 42,245 Slovaks and 11,504 Hungarians.

  Czechoslovakia offered an autonomous Hungarian territory inside Slovakia. Kánya called it a "bad joke" and said it was "absolutely impossible to discuss this question." Czechoslovakia then offered Great Rye Island, with 105,418 inhabitants, almost all Hungarian. It added a free port at Komárno and a population exchange in other frontier regions. Hungary refused. On the 13th of October, Czechoslovakia proposed borders that would leave balanced minorities on both sides. It also protected the railway to Carpathian Ruthenia. Teleki rejected it unread as a "humorous border," and the Hungarian delegation looked at the map "only to be polite."

  That evening, after consulting Budapest, Kánya declared the talks a failure and asked the four Munich signatories to adjudicate. Britain and France decided not to decide anything. That left the judging to Ribbentrop and Ciano.

  2628312429

• 4. Two Mediators

  ›

  On the 13th of October 1938, the day the talks deadlocked, Hungary called a partial mobilisation, and Czechoslovakia declared martial law in its frontier region. Hungary sent envoys to both Axis capitals. Count Csáky went to Rome. Kálmán Darányi went to Germany and told Hitler that Hungary was ready to fight and "would not accept the behavior of the Slovaks."

  Hitler gave him no comfort. The German-Hungarian-Polish bloc was over, he said, and if Hungary started a conflict nobody would help it. He rejected a conference of the four Munich signatories, plebiscites, and Hungarian claims to Bratislava. Instead he offered German mediation. Ribbentrop and Darányi agreed a map that became known as the Ribbentrop line, and it soon caused a quarrel. Darányi later complained that Bratislava, Nitra, Uzhorod and Mukachevo stayed in Czechoslovakia. Germany replied that he had agreed to the line. When Hungary insisted, Ribbentrop announced that German mediation was over.

  Chvalkovský was in Germany at the same time. Hitler blamed Czechoslovakia for the failure, gave him a map with the Ribbentrop line, and promised to guarantee borders based on it. In Prague, Chvalkovský advised acceptance. The Slovak autonomous government hoped for more. On the 19th of October, Tiso and Ďurčanský met Ribbentrop in Munich and persuaded him to give Košice to Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak experts argued that Hungary's claim to Košice was strategic, not ethnic. Taking the city would cut the railway to Carpathian Ruthenia and to Romania, Czechoslovakia's ally, and isolate the east. Tiso and Ďurčanský believed they had won Hitler over, and Tiso wrote to Prague with the good news.

  Ribbentrop's mood soon turned. Ciano wrote that Ribbentrop meant to protect Czechoslovakia as far as he could, and "sacrifice the ambitions, even the legitimate ambitions, of Hungary." On the 22nd of October, Czechoslovakia officially proposed the Ribbentrop line. It would cede territory with 494,646 Hungarians and 168,632 Slovaks, and keep Bratislava, Nitra and Košice. Hungary refused. It wanted immediate occupation of those lands, a plebiscite in the disputed area, and the right for Subcarpathia to "decide its own future." Czechoslovakia could not hand over territory that had not been discussed, because its border fortifications would then become Hungarian. Germany withdrew as mediator.

  Hungary then threatened to demand arbitration. Czechoslovakia would be left with a choice between accepting Hungarian demands and accepting arbitration. France and Britain had lost interest and treated the region as a German sphere of influence. Germany itself did not want arbitration, since Hitler disagreed and a military clash was possible if either side rejected the result. Hungary worked on Italy instead. It argued that a strong Hungary could limit German influence in the region, and Ciano promised to back it. During Ribbentrop's visit to Rome from the 27th to the 30th of October, Ciano persuaded him that arbitration mattered for the Axis. Ciano had been briefed by Hungarian experts and so had the better of a less informed Ribbentrop. On the 29th of October, both Czechoslovakia and Hungary asked Germany and Italy to arbitrate and pledged to abide by the result. Two days later, Hungary's envoy in Rome reported privately that Ribbentrop had definitely agreed to the return of Košice, Uzhorod and Mukachevo.

  Not everyone on the map welcomed the prospect. A few days before the hearing, Budapest received a message from some borderline villages: "Stay there, do not liberate us. We are having a good time, better than you, liberate yourself."

  282930524

• 5. A Border With Poland

  ›

  After the 17th of October 1938, attention turned to Subcarpathian Rus'. Poland proposed dividing it among Hungary, Poland and Romania. Romania, a staunch ally of Czechoslovakia, rejected the idea and offered military support to Czechoslovakia there. Hungary tried to persuade Subcarpathian representatives to join Hungary. The prize was a common Polish-Hungarian border, a long-held dream in both countries. The two had shared such a frontier from the Middle Ages until well into the 18th century, and relations had always been good.

  Germany disliked the idea, since a shared border would flank Germany. Berlin would accept it only if Poland handed over the Danzig Corridor, and Poland refused. On the 20th of October, the Rusyns produced a resolution more or less favouring a plebiscite on joining Hungary. Five days later, Prime Minister Andriy Borody was arrested in Prague. Avhustyn Voloshyn replaced him. Voloshyn was willing to consider handing over only ethnically Hungarian lands and rejected a plebiscite.

  Hungary soon ignored the arbitration. A few weeks after the award, it tried to annex Carpathian Ruthenia. The real chance came in March 1939. Under pressure from Hitler, Slovakia declared independence on the 14th of March, and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Two days earlier Hitler had allowed Hungary to occupy the rest of Carpatho-Ruthenia within 24 hours, but not the rest of Slovakia. He wanted Slovakia as a strategically placed German ally for his planned invasion of Poland. Carpatho-Ukraine declared independence on the 14th and the 15th of March, and Hungary occupied it between the 15th and 18th.

  Hungary then pushed its luck. It took a small part of Slovakia on the 15th of March. Seeing no strong reaction, it launched a larger attack on eastern Slovakia on the 23rd, planning to "advance as far west as possible." A short Slovak-Hungarian War followed, with several Hungarian air raids, such as the one on Spišská Nová Ves on the 24th. Germany forced Hungary to stop and negotiate. The talks, from the 27th of March to the 4th of April, gave Hungary 1,897 square kilometres and 69,630 inhabitants, almost all Slovaks or Rusyns. No ethnic argument supported this land grab. Hungary claimed that the Vienna arbitration was between Hungary and Czechoslovakia and that Czechoslovakia no longer existed.

  Why did Hitler reverse himself on a Hungarian-Polish frontier? Until mid-March, Germany had thought it undesirable for military reasons. But the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had begun in 1938 to organise Ukrainian military units in a sich outside Uzhhorod, under German supervision. Poland saw the sich as a danger to its Ukrainian-populated southeast. Hitler feared a Ukrainian army in Carpathian Rus' might demand an independent Ukraine, which did not suit his plans for Ukraine's natural and farming resources. So he betrayed his Ukrainian nationalist allies.

  He soon had cause to regret it. Six months later, during the invasion of Poland, Horthy's government declined Hitler's request to move German forces through Carpathian Rus' into southeastern Poland. It acted out of long friendship with the Poles and Hungarian honour. The Polish government and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers, airmen and ground crews escaped into Hungary and Romania. Among them was Stanisław Maczek's 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, along with volunteers. All were known collectively as "Sikorski's tourists," a phrase drawn from an official statement by Joseph Goebbels. They continued on to France and French-mandated Syria, helped partly by local governments' tacit acceptance. The Polish forces became the third-strongest Allied belligerent after Britain and France. Polish and British agents and couriers, including Krystyna Skarbek, also used Hungary's Carpathian Rus' as a route across the mountains.

  910111235

• 6. The Verdict at Belvedere

  ›

  Hermann Göring was also present when the delegations gathered for the arbitration. Kánya led the Hungarian delegation with Teleki at his side. Chvalkovský led the Czechoslovak side with Krno. Voloshyn, and Tiso with Ďurčanský, had come as representatives of Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia. Chvalkovský spoke briefly and left the presentation to Krno. Tiso and Voloshyn asked repeatedly to take part, and both arbiters refused. Ribbentrop and Ciano said only central governments could take part, and they assumed Chvalkovský would be more submissive. They also expected Tiso to complicate the proceedings. The hearing was a formality.

  The new line took from Czechoslovakia the southern parts of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, down to the Romanian border. Among the towns lost were Senec, Galanta, Levice, Lučenec, Rimavská Sobota, Košice, Uzhhorod and Mukachevo. Slovakia alone lost 10,390 square kilometres and 854,277 inhabitants by the 1930 census. Of these, 503,980 were Hungarians, or 58.99 percent, and 272,145 were Slovaks or Czechs. There were also 26,151 Jews and 8,947 Germans. Allowing for population growth, the total at the time was probably about 935,000, and about 300,000 of them were Slovaks or Czechs. Czechoslovakia also lost its direct railway connection to Carpathian Ruthenia and to Romania.

  Then came the entrance. The Royal Hungarian Army occupied the ceded land between the 5th and the 10th of November. The Hungarian government and the United Hungarian Party staged celebrations and a triumphant march deliberately modelled on Hitler's army entering the Sudetenland. Most of the Hungarian population answered with local statements of disagreement. Honvéds were not welcomed even in some "pure Hungarian" villages, and in one village their lodging had to be arranged by force. A military administration ruled first, and Horthy solemnly entered Košice on the 11th of November. The next day, the Hungarian Parliament incorporated the territory. Following the old county lines, it created two new counties with seats at Nové Zámky and Levice. A civilian administration replaced the military one on the 21st of December.

  Poland also collected a share. On the 30th of November 1938, Czechoslovakia ceded small patches of land in the Spiš and Orava regions. Poland annexed more border villages in Kysuce, Orava and Spiš, covering 226 square kilometres with 4,280 inhabitants.

  2425313443

• 7. Life in the Redeemed Lands

  ›

  Between the 28th and the 29th of October 1938, Béla Imrédy and Andor Jaross, leader of the United Hungarian Party, struck a deal. Party representatives in the returned territories would form a civic group holding supreme authority. One branch of it became the Ministry for Upper Country, led by Jaross. All other parties were banned. The United Hungarian Party then used its power against Slovaks, and against Hungarians who had disagreed with the activities against Czechoslovakia.

  The numbers were reshaped as well. Only about 60,000 Hungarians remained in Slovakia, and the new border ignored the ethnic principle Hungary had demanded. Around Košice, only 8 of 79 villages had a Hungarian majority. In December 1938, Hungary held a census in an atmosphere of expulsions, persecution and psychological coercion, under military control. It counted the "mother tongue" registered by commissars, as in 1910. The official result was 86.5 percent Hungarians and 9.8 percent Slovaks. The Slovak population fell to 121,603, a drop of 74,100, and 67 villages lost their Slovak majority. Jews could not record their own mother tongue, so their real numbers can only be estimated from religion.

  The pressure on newcomers was fiercer. Hungarian nationalists regarded Czech and Slovak colonists, who had received land through Czechoslovak land reform, as aliens. On the 5th of November, the Hungarian General Staff ordered their expulsion, including family members and descendants. A new edict on the 11th of November called them enemies of the state. Soldiers and police could search homes without authorisation and seize food, livestock and grain. The word "colonist" stretched to cover anyone non-Hungarian who had settled since 1918. After the colonists came state employees, Slovak farmers, and anyone on lists of unreliable persons prepared before the award. Violence, shooting and looting followed. In Gbelce, three Czech colonists were shot dead and one was hanged. Civil servants had 48 hours to leave. The historian Tilkovszky puts the number of expelled families at 647. Many who left had to sign a statement that they went voluntarily and surrendered their property to Hungary.

  Czechoslovakia threatened to settle expelled civilians on land owned by Hungarians. Hungarian aristocrats held 50,000 hectares of farmland and 14,000 hectares of woods in Slovakia. Hungary promised to stop mass expulsions. Its new foreign minister, István Csáky, admitted that the steps had stirred anti-Hungarian feeling and pushed the Slovak government toward Prague. Even so, expulsions continued.

  Schools were a special target. About 150 schools built by the Slovak League were declared Hungarian state property. According to several authors, 862 of 1,119 teachers lost their jobs by the end of 1938. In Lučenec, Hungary deported 54 Slovak teachers to the demarcation line. Slovaks lost 386 primary schools with 45,709 children and 29 burgher schools with 10,750. Four grammar schools closed in Košice and six more elsewhere. Parents from Ruskov and Blažice who demanded Slovak schools were imprisoned for two weeks. Yet pressure did not always work. In Šurany, Slovaks shunned anyone who enrolled a child in a Hungarian school. In the fall of 1943, Hungary decided to favour education in minority mother tongues, but the German occupation ended the plan.

  Money was a different kind of wound. The government ordered a revision of Jewish trade licences in the redeemed territory alone, and 80 percent of Jews lost their licences. In Košice, Nové Zámky and Lučenec, every second shop closed. Slovakia lost 41 percent of its agricultural soil, which had produced about 80 percent of the products needed for its food supply. Yet Hungary gained little. Only half of Southern Slovakia's 400,000 tons of wheat found local buyers, and prices fell by 20-30 percent. The exchange rate of 7-1 cut salaries by 20 percent, while goods from Hungary cost 20-30 percent more. Road and river projects stopped, and farm workers received no unemployment benefits. Retirement pensions were cut in stages from 150 pengő to 120 and then 60, as the cabinet agreed on the 22nd of December 1939. Czechoslovak health insurance for farm workers was kept for the moment, though made voluntary rather than compulsory.

  3443451742

• 8. Aftershocks and Annulment

  ›

  Late on the evening of the 2nd of November 1938, Tiso announced the result on the radio. He took it personally, partly because he had failed to arrange the evacuation of Košice. He blamed the central government's long-term policy but accepted the verdict. Then Slovakia's autonomous government looked for a scapegoat and found one in Jews, who had demonstrated in favour of Bratislava joining Hungary the evening before. On the 4th and the 5th of November it deported 7,500 Jews to the new border. Tiso justified this as "letting them go where they wanted." Hungary refused them, including elderly people and children. They were stranded in no man's land in cold autumn weather, and hundreds stayed in camps at Veľký Kýr and Miloslavov.

  The award also destroyed a piece of Hungarian propaganda, the claim that "Slovak brothers" dreamed of returning to a thousand-year Hungarian empire. Anti-Hungarian feeling grew and became a unifying force for Slovaks. János Esterházy led the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Soon after the award, he proposed that Hungary return 1000 square kilometres between Šurany and Palárikovo, mostly Slovak land, to secure lasting peace. Hungary's government rejected it. On every anniversary of the award, demonstrations shouted anti-Hungarian slogans, and Hungarian houses and cultural institutions were damaged. On the third anniversary, after Hungarian police shot Slovaks in Komjatice, a mob destroyed the Hungarian Cultural House. Hungary had also annulled Point 4 of Article 27 of the Treaty of Trianon, which bound it to respect its new borders.

  International law later declared the award null and void, like the Munich Agreement. Czechoslovakia had accepted arbitration under an assumed threat from both arbiters and under heavy Hungarian influence. On the 11th of December 1940, the British Foreign Office told the Czechoslovak government that Britain was not bound by Munich. It treated the agreement as validly signed but invalid from the 15th of March 1939, and talks on that stance continued until mid-1942. On the 9th of June 1942, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov confirmed the restoration of Czechoslovakia's pre-Munich borders. On the 26th of September 1944, Italy's Carlo Sforza told a Czechoslovak representative that Italy saw Munich and the Vienna Award as invalid from the start. Italy's view was confirmed in the peace treaty with Hungary, signed on the 10th of February 1947. It fixed the frontier as it stood on the 1st of January 1938. Three villages south of Bratislava were the exception, given to Czechoslovakia as a bridgehead.

  Hungarians then paid in turn. The Government Program of Košice, issued on the 5th of April 1945, accepted collective guilt for the German and Hungarian minorities. Articles X and XI ordered seizure of their property, and Article XV closed minority schools. A presidential decree of the 2nd of August 1945 stripped Hungarians, except antifascist fighters, of Czechoslovak citizenship. The two countries exchanged 68,407 Hungarians and 59,774 Slovaks, and a further 31,780 Hungarians were expelled for settling after the Vienna Award. Relations began to normalise in the second half of 1948. In October, the Czechoslovak parliament restored citizenship to certain Hungarians. They had to have lived in Slovakia on the 1st of November 1938 and be free of convictions for crimes. The two states signed a friendship agreement on the 16th of April 1949. On the 25th of July 1949, Hungary committed to return artistic and historical relics seized after the award. The final agreement, signed on the 11th of November 1951 for ten years, was not fully respected.

  4042354136