First Vienna arbitration award
The First Vienna Arbitration Award , also known as the Vienna Diktat , was the result of a conference on November 2, 1938 at the Belvedere in Vienna , in which areas with a Hungarian majority in southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine were separated from Czechoslovakia and granted to Hungary .
Delegations
The arbitration decision was made by the Foreign Ministers of the German Reich ( Joachim von Ribbentrop ) and Italy ( Galeazzo Ciano ).
The Hungarian delegation was chaired by Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya . Minister of Culture Pál Teleki accompanied him .
The Czechoslovakian delegation was headed by Foreign Ministers František Chvalkovský and Ivan Krno . Important members of the Czechoslovak delegation were Prime Minister Avgustyn Voloschyn for Carpathian Ukraine and Prime Minister Jozef Tiso , Justice Minister Ferdinand Ďurčanský and General Rudolf Viest for Slovakia .
prehistory
The arbitration award made in favor of Hungary was one of the consequences of the Munich Agreement . Together with that agreement, it was part of the plan of National Socialist Germany to dissolve the state of Czechoslovakia . Hungary, on the other hand, worked to bring the whole of Slovakia back under its rule in the medium term.
As early as November 1937, Adolf Hitler had promised the Hungarians an unspecified part of Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of 1938 the representatives of Hungary and the Hungarian and German parties of Czechoslovakia worked specifically to break up the country. On February 11, 1938, an agreement concluded in Budapest said that "Czechoslovakia must be broken up". On April 17 and 18, 1938, Count Esterházy , one of the political leaders of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, presented a plan drawn up by the Hungarian government in Warsaw, which provided for the destruction of Czechoslovakia and the annexation of all of Slovakia to Hungary. Miklós Kozma , a supporter of the Hungarian ruler Miklós Horthy , openly admitted on April 12, 1939, after the Vienna arbitration, that “the demands for the Hungarian minorities in the neighboring countries were only a tactic that enabled the strategic goal to be achieved - the re-establishment of Greater Hungary , which fills the entire Carpathian Basin - should bring closer ”.
The Munich Agreement followed on September 29, 1938. In response to Polish and Hungarian pressure, the agreement received additional protocols, according to which Czechoslovakia should also resolve the issue of the Hungarian and Polish minorities in bilateral negotiations with Poland and Hungary within three months .
Negotiations with Poland began on October 25th. It had already occupied the middle Olsa area near Teschen on October 1st (with 1000 km² and a large Polish population), due to demands that it had already made on September 21st. As a result of the negotiations, on December 1, 1938, Poland received a further 226 km² with 4280 inhabitants (less than 0.3% Poland) in northern Slovakia.
The negotiations with Hungary took place between October 9th and 13th 1938 in the Czechoslovak part of the twin towns of Komárno / Komárom . The Czechoslovak delegation was headed by the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Jozef Tiso , the Hungarian by Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya and Minister of Education Pál Teleki . As a sign of goodwill, the Czechoslovak delegation offered the Hungarian delegation the transfer of the railway station in Slovenské Nové Mesto (a suburb of the Hungarian town of Sátoraljaújhely until 1918 ) and the town of Šahy ( Ipolyság in Hungarian ). Šahy was then occupied by Hungary on October 12th.
During the negotiations, the Hungarians demanded the cession of the southern Slovak territory (including) the line Devín (Thebes, Dévény) - Bratislava (Pressburg, Pozsony) - Nitra (Neutra, Nyitra) - Tlmače (Garamtolmács) - Levice (Lewenz, Léva) - Lučenec (license, Losonc) - Rimavská Sobota (United Steffelbauer village Rimaszombat) - Jelšava (Eltsch, Jolsva) - Rožňava (Rosenau, Rozsnyó) - Košice (Kassa, Kassa) - Trebišov (Trebischau, Tőketerebes) - Pavlovce (Palocz) - Užhorod ( Uzhhorod / Ungvár) - Mukačevo ( Mukachevo / Munkács) - Sevľuš ( Vynohradiv , Nagyszőllős). In the rest of Slovakia, a referendum was to take place on whether the whole of Slovakia would join Hungary.
The Czechoslovak delegation, on the other hand, offered the Hungarians the creation of an autonomous region in Slovakia and the cession of the Great Schüttinsel (Slovak Žitný Ostrov , Hungarian Csallóköz ). After this offer was rejected, Czechoslovakia proposed a new solution with territorial cessions, according to which as many Slovaks and Russians were to remain in Hungary as Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak delegation wanted to keep the most important cities in the region in question, such as Levice / Lewenz / Léva, Košice / Kaschau / Kassa, and Užhorod / Uschhorod / Ungvár. This, too, was not acceptable to the Hungarian side, and on October 13, after a meeting in Budapest, Kánya declared the negotiations to have failed.
Soon after, both sides gave their consent to bow to an arbitration ruling by the great powers Germany and Italy; Great Britain and France had previously expressed their disinterest. In the meantime, not only the Hungarians but also the Slovak government worked together with Hitler. Both sides were therefore convinced that Germany would support them in particular; but the Hungarians also enjoyed the support of Italy and Poland. At the end of October, Italy convinced Germany that arbitrage should go beyond the ethnic principle and that Hungary should also get the cities of Kosice, Uzhhorod and Mukachevo.
Provisions
The area was to be ceded in which, according to the last Hungarian census at the time of Austria-Hungary in 1910, the Hungarians accounted for at least 50%. Specifically, it corresponded to the area approximately south of the line (including) Senec - Galanta - Vráble - Levice - Lučenec - Rimavská Sobota - Jelšava - Rožňava - Košice - Michaľany - Veľké Kapušany - Uschhorod - Mukachevo - Romanian border.
The area of these areas was 11,927 km² (10,390 of them in today's Slovakia , the rest in Carpathian Ukraine ) with over 1 million inhabitants. According to Czechoslovakian censuses from the time before the arbitration award, there were 852,332 inhabitants in the separated Slovak territories:
| Ethnic group | As a number | In percent |
|---|---|---|
| Magyars | 506.208 | 59.0% |
| Slovaks | 290.107 | 34.0% |
| Jews | 26,227 | 3.1% |
| German | 13,184 | 1.5% |
| Russians | 1,892 | 0.2% |
| Others | 14,714 | 1.7% |
According to a Hungarian census from the end of 1938, only 121,603 Slovaks lived in the area in question. According to another Hungarian census from 1941, of the area's 869,299 inhabitants, 751,944 were Hungarians (86.5%) and only 85,392 Slovaks (9.8%). In the rest of Slovakia, according to Slovak data, there were 70,000, according to Hungarian data 67,000 Hungarian inhabitants. According to the 1930 census, the Slovaks made up the majority population in 182 municipalities in the arbitration areas. At that time, 60% Slovaks lived in Košice ; in the Vráble district it was 73%. So the award violated the principle of ethnic boundaries in some areas .
Shortly after the arbitration award, János Esterházy , the chairman of the Party of Hungarians in Slovakia, suggested that Hungary should return 1000 km² of the preserved area to Slovakia in order to ensure long-term peaceful coexistence between the two nations (specifically a Slovak area the language border: Šurany / Nagysurány and Palárikovo / Tótmegyer district). But his suggestion was ignored in Budapest.
- Bratislava bridgehead , until October 15, 1947 Hungarian territory
- Southern Slovakia, as a result of the Vienna arbitration from November 2, 1938 to spring / 8. Annexed by Hungary in May 1945
- Strip of land in eastern Slovakia around the places Stakčín and Sobrance , as a result of the Slovak-Hungarian War from April 4, 1939 to spring / 8. Annexed by Hungary in May 1945
- The predominantly German-speaking communities Devín (German: Theben ) and Petržalka (German: Engerau ), from 1./20. Annexed by Germany from November 1938 to 1945.
- German protection zone, established as a result of the protection zone statute with the Slovak state on March 23, 1939
consequences
Between November 5 and 10, the ceded area was occupied by the Royal Hungarian Army (Magyar Királyi Honvédség) . On November 11th, the Hungarian imperial administrator Horthy entered the occupied Košice (Kaschau, Kassa ). 30,000 Czechs and Slovaks left the city in the following weeks. The arrival of the Honvédség was solemnly welcomed by the majority of the Magyar population of the adjoining area.
However, after the inhabitants of the adjoining area became aware of Hungary's relative economic backwardness, some of the walls soon read instead of Mindent vissza! ("Everything back" - that means the whole of Slovakia) Minden drága, vissza Prága! (“Everything is expensive, Prague back!”) And they said Nem ezeket a magyarokat vártuk (“ We haven't waited for these Hungarians”). The Hungarian writer Kálmán Janics wrote in 1994 that 90% of the Magyar population of the connected areas welcomed the Anschluss, but by the end of the summer of 1939 they were clearly in favor of separating from Hungary. This was not related to Hungary as such, but to the authoritarian regime of Miklós Horthy, which had been in power there for a long time and had not freed Hungary from its political and economic backwardness since the First World War - in contrast to the development in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period. So there was u. A. longer working hours, higher prices, lower wages, higher taxes, no collective agreements, no unemployment benefits and almost no vacation. In response to demands from the population to maintain the advantages of the Czechoslovak system, at least compulsory schooling was increased from 6 to 8 years.
Although Miklós Horthy had promised when entering Košice that the Slovak language could be preserved and cultivated, the Slovak and Jewish populations in the occupied territories were exposed to various types of persecution and violence. The most famous case happened at Christmas 1938, when Hungarian gendarmes shot at Slovaks leaving the church because they had sung a Slovak national song at mass. There were special military courts that sentenced underground members to death or torture. Slovak libraries and books were burned, several thousand Slovak and Czech employees, especially in the railways and in the public service, were laid off. In addition, u. a. Slovaks and Jews were deprived of their trade licenses and priests who did not preach in Hungarian were mistreated. Most of the Slovak schools were also closed (386 elementary schools, 28 secondary schools and 10 grammar schools), the initiators of corresponding protests were interned and 862 teachers were banned. A total of around 100,000 Slovaks and Czechs were driven out of southern Slovakia or they fled.
The Hungarian-speaking Jewish population of the area was deported after the German occupation of Hungary (March 19, 1944) by a command led by Adolf Eichmann .
After the occupation of the area by the Soviet Union , the area was rejoined to Czechoslovakia. The Hungarians were temporarily considered war criminals from 1945 to 1948, unless they had fought underground against the Germans. An expulsion of Hungarians, as in the case of the Germans in the Czech Republic, was not approved by the Allies , only a "population exchange" was permitted, in which 68,407 Hungarians were resettled in Hungary in exchange for Slovaks. Another 31,780 Hungarians were expelled because they had only come to these areas after the arbitration. Before that, around 44,000 Hungarians (and over 100,000 Slovaks) were deported to the abandoned Sudetenland in the Czech Republic for labor service within Czechoslovakia . After a year or two, Hungarians were allowed to return to southern Slovakia, which around 24,000 of them did. This de facto lawless period (Hungarian schools were closed, Hungarian newspapers, parties, meetings banned, theaters closed) lasted until the communist revolution in 1948, after which the Hungarians were given back Czechoslovak citizenship and the rights that other citizens of communist Czechoslovakia also granted were.
Cancellation
The arbitration award was declared null and void by the Allies during the Second World War because it represented a breach of international law. This was then explicitly confirmed again by the Paris Peace Conference in 1947.
See also
text
- Arbitral award establishing the Czechoslovak-Hungarian boundary Decision of November 2, 1938 . (PDF) United Nations (English); Translation from League of Nations (1938), No. 3-4, pp. 54-55.
Individual evidence
- ^ Martin Broszat : Germany - Hungary - Romania. Development and basic factors of National Socialist hegemonic and alliance policy 1938–1941 . In: Manfred Funke : Hitler, Germany and the Powers. Materials on the foreign policy of the 3rd Reich . Droste, Düsseldorf 1976, pp. 524-562; first Historical Journal , Volume 206, 1968