First Vienna Award
- See also Second Vienna Award
The First Vienna Award was a revanchist treaty signed on 2 November, 1938, as a result of the arbitration which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The Arbitration and Award were direct consequences of the Munich Agreement the previous month which agreed to the partitioning of the artificial state[1][2] of Czecho-Slovakia, arguably relying upon Article 19 of the League of Nations' Covenant, which was incorporated in the Versailles Treaty, which said:
- The Assembly may from time to time advise the reconsideration by Members of the League of Treaties which have become inapplicable, and the consideration of international conditions which might endanger the peace of the world.[3]
In May 1935 Hitler wrote to the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklos Horthy, in which letter he spoke of "the scope of the struggle of our two nations for their 'emancipation' [from the World War I treaties], and the revision of the injustices committed against them."[4]
Germany was by this point well into its own revision of the Versailles Treaty, with the reoccupation of their Rhineland (7 March 1936) and the long awaited[5] Anschluss with Austria (March 12, 1938) and the Munich Agreement in Sept 1938.
The British Ambassador in Berlin wrote on November 2nd of the Vienna Award:
- The time-table for the Vienna Conference today is published in the press. The award of the arbitrators is expected to be issued and published at 6 p.m....Germany and Italy have been chosen as arbitrators as being the Great Powers properly concerned. France and Britain, though signatories of the Munich Agreement, being essentially outside agents and foreign to Central European affairs are excluded....the arbitrators are to promote a solution based upon justice.[6]
Germany and Italy sought a non-violent way to deal with the revisionist territorial claims of Hungary and to revise the hated and imposed Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The Czech Foreign Minister, Dr. František Chvalkovský, was also present.
The First Vienna Award separated largely Magyar populated territories in southern Slovakia and southern Czecho-Slovakia and returned them to Hungary, who thus regained some of the territories taken from them in the Treaty of Trianon after World War I. In 1934 there were 691,923 Magyars (Hungarians), and 549,169 Ruthenians, Russians, Ukrainians and Jews in these areas (includes Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia).[7]
In mid-March 1939, Germany agreed with Hungary that they could recover the rest of Ruthenia, which had previously been their territory, further north up to the Polish border, thus creating a common Hungarian-Polish border, as had existed prior to the 18th-century Partitions of Poland. Before the end of the First World War and the Treaties of Trianon and Treaty of Saint Germain, the Carpathian region of the former Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire had bordered to the north on the province of Galicia, which had been part of the Austrian Cisleithanian part of the Dual Monarchy.
On 15 March 1939 The Romanian Foreign Minister, Grigore Gafencu, advised the German Ambassador in Bucharest, Wilhelm Fabricius, that "Romania intends to respect the situation created by the Vienna Award and will not take any steps to alter this situation".[8]
After World War II, the victors of that conflict, in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties, declared the Vienna Awards null and void. In any case all of the territories mentioned were now occupied by the Soviet Union who established puppet governments in them.
References
- ↑ The Tragedy of Trianon by Sir Robert Donald, G.B.E., LL.B., London, 1928, pps: 25-6, 57-8.
- ↑ The Origins of the Second World War by A. J. P. Taylor, London, 1961, p.201.
- ↑ Danger Spots of Europe by Bernard Newman, London, 1938, p.20.
- ↑ Szinai, Miklos, & Szucs, Laszlo, editors, The Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy, Corvina Press, Budapest, 1965. 1965, p.80-2.
- ↑ From 1919 every Austrian Chancellor bar the last two had called for union with Germany: Chancellor Karl Renner from 1919 onwards had proposed a union of Austria with Germany, using the word "Anschluss". Like other Austrian socialists, Renner believed that the best future course was to seek union with Germany. Ernst Panzenböck, Ein Deutscher Traum: die Anschlussidee und Anschlusspolitik bei Karl Renner und Otto Bauer. Materialien zur Arbeiterbewegung, PhD thesis, Vienna: Europaverlag, 1985 p.93.
- ↑ Woodward, Prof. E.L., Butler, Rohan, & Lambert Margaret, editors, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, Third Series, vol. iii, London, 1950, p.218.
- ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year 1938 (1937 reports), London, 1938, p.188.
- ↑ Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945 by a large editorial board, Series D, vol.vi, Her Majesty's Stationary Office, London, 1956, p.4.
