| Hungarian Foreign Minister István Csáky signing the agreement | |
| Signed | 30 August 1940 |
|---|---|
| Location | Vienna |
| Signatories | Nazi Germany Italy Hungary Romania |
The Second Vienna Award was the second of two Vienna Awards arbitrated by the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Rendered on August 30, 1940, it re-assigned the territory of Northern Transylvania (including the entire Maramureş and part of Crişana) from Romania to Hungary.
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After the World War I, the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Hungary was split apart by the Treaty of Trianon to form several new nation-states. The new Magyar nation-state of Hungary was approximately ⅓ the size of the former Kingdom, and millions of ethnic Magyars now lived outside the borders of Hungary. Many historically important areas of Hungary were assigned to other countries, and the distribution of natural resources came out unevenly as well. Thus, while the various non-Magyar populations of the old Kingdom generally saw the treaty as justice for the historically-marginalized nationalities, from the point of view of the Hungarians, the Treaty had been unjust and even a national humiliation.
The Treaty and its consequences dominated Hungarian public life and political culture in the inter-war period. In addition, the government of Hungary swung more and more to the right in those years; eventually, under Regent Miklos Horty, Hungary established close relations with Benito Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Germany. The alliance with Nazi Germany made possible Hungary's regaining of southern Czechoslovakia in the First Vienna Award of 1938 and Subcarpathia in 1939. But that and the subsequent military conquest of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939 still did not satisfy Hungarian political ambitions. These awards allocated only a fraction of the territories lost by the Treaty of Trianon, and in any event, the loss that the Hungarians resented the most was that of Transylvania.
At the end of June 1940, as relations between Romania and her neighboring countries were seriously strained, the Romanian government gave in to a Soviet ultimatum, and allowed Moscow to retake Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which had been incorporated into Romania after World War I. Although the territorial loss was undesirable from the Romanian perspective, the government viewed it as preferable to the conflict which could have arisen had Romania resisted Soviet advances. However, the Hungarian government interpreted the fact that Romania gave up some of its territories as an admission that Romania no longer insisted on keeping its territory intact.
So the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina inspired Budapest to escalate its efforts to resolve the question of Transylvania. Peace in the Balkans was very much in the interest of the Axis Powers, both for strategic and material reasons, and so they suggested to the parties concerned that they solve their problems by direct negotiations.
The negotiations started on August 16, 1940 in Turnu Severin. The Hungarian delegation hoped to gain as much of Transylvania as possible, but the Romanians would have none of that and submitted only a small region for consideration. Eventually, the Hungarian-Romanian negotiations fell through entirely. After this, the Romanian government asked Italy and Germany to arbitrate.
Meanwhile, the Romanian government had acceded to Italy's request for territorial cessions to Bulgaria. On September 7, under the Treaty of Craiova, the "Cadrilater" (southern Dobrudja) was ceded by Romania to Bulgaria.
The ministers of foreign affairs of the Axis, Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Italy, announced the award on August 30, 1940 at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. As a result of the award, Hungary regained 43,104 km² of its territories lost to Romania after the First World War. The new border was guaranteed by both Germany and Italy.
The population statistics in Northern Transylvania and the changes following the award are presented in detail in the next section. The rest of Transylvania, known as Southern Transylvania, with 2,274,600 Romanians and 363,200 Hungarians remained Romanian.
The territory in question covered an area of 43,104 km².
The 1930 Romanian census registered for this 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 separately about language and nationality. The results of the two censuses are summarized in the following table.
| Nationality/ language |
1930 Romanian census | 1941 Hungarian census | 1940 Romanian estimate[1] |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality | Language | Nationality | Language | ||
| Hungarian | 912,500 | 1,007,200 | 1,380,500 | 1,344,000 | 968,371 |
| Romanian | 1,176,900 | 1,165,800 | 1,029,000 | 1,068,700 | 1,304,898 |
| German | 68,300 | 59,700 | 44,600 | 47,300 | N/A |
| Jewish/Yiddish | 138,800 | 99,600 | 47,400 | 48,500 | 200,000 |
| Other | 96,800 | 61,000 | 76,600 | 69,600 | N/A |
As Árpád E. Varga writes, "the census conducted in 1930 met international statistical requirements in every respect. In order to establish nationality, the compilers devised a complex criterion system, unique at the time, which covered citizenship, nationality, native language (i.e. the language spoken in the family) and religion."
Apart from the natural population growth, the differences between the two censuses are due to some other complex reasons, like migration and assimilation of Jews or bilingual speakers. According to Hungarian registrations, 100 thousand 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 re-annexed territory as moved to the Trianon Hungary territory from South Transylvania. As a result of these migrations, North Transylvanian Hungarians increased by almost 100 thousand. In order to compensate for this, a great number of Romanians were obliged to leave North Transylvania. Some 100 thousand had left by February 1941 according to the incomplete registration of North Transylvanian refugees carried out by the Romanian government. Besides this, a fall in the total population suggests that a further 40 to 50 thousand Romanians moved from North to South Transylvania (including refugees who were omitted from the official registration for various reasons). The Hungarian assimilation gain is made up of losses on the part of other groups of native speakers, such as the Jewish people. The changing of language was most typical among bilingual Romanians and Hungarians. On the other hand, in Maramureş (Hungarian: Máramaros) and Satu Mare (Hungarian: Szatmár) counties, in dozens of settlements many of those who had declared themselves as Romanian now identified themselves as Hungarian, even though they did not speak Hungarian at all (nor did they in 1910).
Historian Keith Hitchins summarizes the situation created by the award in his book "Rumania: 1866-1947 (Oxford History of Modern Europe), Oxford University Press, 1994":
Romania had 14 days to evacuate concerned territories and assign them to Hungary. The Hungarian troops stepped across the Trianon borders on September 5. The Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, also attended in the entry. They reached the pre-Trianon border, completing the re-annexation process, on September 13.
Generally, the ethnic Hungarian population welcomed the troops and regarded separation from Romania as liberation. The large ethnic Romanian community had nothing to celebrate though, as for them the Second Vienna Award represented the return to the times of Hungarian rule. Upon entering the regained territory there were incidents between the Hungarian Army and the Romanian population:
The exact number of casualties is disputed between some historians, but the existence of such events cannot be disputed.
The retreat of the Romanian army was also not free from incidents, mostly consisting of damaging the infrastructure and destroying public documents.
The Second Vienna Award was voided by the Allied Commission through the Armistice Agreement with Romania (September 12, 1944) whose Article 19 stipulated the following: "The Allied Governments regard the decision of the Vienna award regarding Transylvania as void and are agreed that Transylvania (the greater part thereof) should be returned to Romania, subject to confirmation at the peace settlement, and the Soviet Government agrees that Soviet forces shall take part for this purpose in joint military operations with Romania against Germany and Hungary."
This came after King Michael's Coup following which Romania changed sides and joined the Allies. Thus, the Romanian army fought Nazi Germany and its allies in Romania, regaining Northern Transylvania, and further on, in German occupied Hungary and Czechoslovakia (e.g. Budapest Offensive & Siege of Budapest and Prague Offensive).
The 1947 Treaty of Paris reaffirmed the borders between Romania and Hungary, as originally defined in Treaty of Trianon, 27 years earlier.
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