Second Vienna Award
The Second Vienna Award was the second of two Vienna Awards.
It was rendered on August 30, 1940. Germany and Italy compelled Romania let a part of Transylvania (an area henceforth known as "North Transylvania") to Hungary.
Prelude and reasons
The (re)gain of Slovakia and Subcarpathia (part of what was called Upper Hungary within the former Kingdom of Hungary) in 1938 (First Vienna Award/First Vienna Diktat) and the subsequent military conquest of the remaining Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939 did not satiate the Hungarian politics, as well as the Hungarian public opinion. These awards allocated only a little of the territories lost by the Treaty of Trianon. The main goal was retrieving Transylvania and the other territories inhabited with Hungarians.
In the end of June, 1940 the Soviet Union reclaimed Bessarabia and North-Bukovina, which were taken by Romania after World War I. The Government of Romania approved the Soviet pressure, because they despaired of resisting against three belligerent countries:
- Bulgaria, which claimed southern Dobrudja
- Hungary, which claimed Transylvania
- The Soviet Union, which claimed Bessarabia and North-Bukovina
The success of Moscow inspired Budapest to urge much determined the solving of the question of Transylvania with Romania. The Axis Powers suggested the parties concerned to solve their problems by direct negotiations. The interests of the Axis was keeping the peace in the Balkans, because they needed the exports for the war.
The award took place not so much to do justice, as to win Hungary for German war aims. Similarly to the Treaty of Trianon, it granted a multiethnic area to another country, caused massive migration of populations from both sides, and sundered old socioeconomic units. In August 1940, the Romanian government acceded to Italy's request for territorial cessions to Bulgaria. On September 7, under the Treaty of Craiova, the Cadrilater or "Quadrilateral" (southern Dobrudja) was ceded by Romania to Bulgaria.
The negotiations started on August 16, 1940 in Turnu Severin (Hungarian: Szörényvár). The Hungarian delegation submitted notable territorial claims while the Romanians were disposed for only an inconspicuous territorial allowance conflated significant changing of the population. Eventually the negotiation fell through.
Finally, both countries had come round an arbitration award about the border-question to avoid the war.
The award
The ministers of foreign affairs of the Axis (Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Italy) announced the award August 30, 1940 at the Belvedere Palace, Vienna. As a result of Second Vienna Award, Hungary regained 43,492 km².
The evolution of population statistics and the changes following the award are presented in detail in the next section. The rest of (Southern) Transylvania remained Romanian with approximately 400,000 Hungarians, and Romania got guarantee of the borders.
Statistics
The territory in question covered an area of 43,491 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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 reannexed 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 Máramaros/Maramureş and Szatmár/Satu Mare 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). Just as many Hungarian declared themselves as Romanian even though they didn't speak the language on the 1930 census.
Afterwards
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":
- Far from settling matters, the Vienna Award had exacerbated relations between Rumania and Hungary. It did not solve the nationality problem by separating all Magyars from all Rumanians. Some 1,150,000 to 1,300,000 Rumanians, or 48 per cent to over 50 per cent of the population of the ceded territory, depending upon whose statistics are used, remained north of the new frontier, while about 500,000 Magyars (other Hungarian estimates go as high as 800,000, Rumanian as low as 363,000) continued to reside in the south.
Romania had 14 days to evacuate concerned territories and assign them to Hungary. The Hungarian troops stepped across the Trianon borders on 5th September. The Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, also attended in the entry.
Generally, the ethnic Hungarian population welcomed the troops and regarded separation from Romania as liberation. The large ethnic Romanian community that found themselves under Hungarian Horthyst occupation had nothing to celebrate though, as for them the Second Vienna Award represented the return to the times of the long Hungarian rule. Unfortunately, some pitiable events also happened. Among them:
- On 9 September in the village of Treznea (Hungarian: Ördögkút), some Hungarian troops made a 4 km detour from the Zalau - Cluj-Napoca route of the Hungarian Army and started firing at will on locals of all ages, killing many of them and partially destroying the Orthodox church. The official Hungarian sources of the time recorded that 87 Romanians and 6 Jews were killed, including the local Orthodox priest and the Romanian local teacher with his wife, while some Romanian sources give as as many as 263 locals that were killed. Some Hungarian historians claim that the killings came in retaliation after the Hungarian troops were fired upon by inhabitants, allegedly incited by the local Romanian orthodox priest, but this claims are not supported by the accounts of several witnesses. The motivation of the 4 km detour of the Hungarian troups from the rest of the Hungarian Army is still a point of contention, but most evidence points towards the local noble Ferenc Bay who lost a large part of his estates to peasants in the 1920s, as most of the violence was directed towards the peasants living on his former estate.
- Similarly, 159 local villagers were killed on 13-14 September 1940 by the Hungarian troops in the village of Ip (Hungarian: Szilágyipp). Again, some Hungarian historians suggests that this was the result of a retaliation to the killing of 4 Hungarian soldiers by a grenade.
The exact number of the casualties is disputed between some historians, but unfortunately the existence of such events cannot be disputed.
Gallery
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A newspaper's front page
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The Honvéds and the local people
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Artillery
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Assembly
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Festivity
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Regent Miklós Horthy and his wife
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Underway
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Körösfõ (Izvoru Crişului), Kolozs county
See also
References
- Árpád E. Varga. Erdély magyar népessége 1870-1995 között. Magyar Kisebbség 3-4, 1998, pp. 331-407.
- P. Ţurlea. Ip si Trãznea: Atrocitãti maghiare si actiune diplomaticã, Ed. Enciclopedică, Bucureşti 1996.
- Gh.I. Bodea, V.T. Suciu, I Puscas. Administratia militara horthysta in nord-vestul Romaniei, Ed. Dacia, 1988.
- M. Bucur. Treznea. Trauma, nationalism and the memory of World War II in Romania, Rethinking History, Volume 6, Number 1, 1 April 2002, pp. 35-55.
External links
- Árpád E. Varga, Essays on Transylvania's Demographic History. (Mainly in Hungarian, but also in English and Romanian.)