Northern Transylvania
Northern Transylvania was the region of the Kingdom of Romania that during World War II, as a consequence of the August 1940 territorial agreement known as the Second Vienna Award, became part of the Kingdom of Hungary. With an area of, the population was largely composed of both ethnic Romanians and Hungarians.
In October 1944, Soviet and Romanian forces gained control of the territory, and by March 1945 Northern Transylvania returned to Romanian administration. After the war, this was confirmed by the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947.
Background
Transylvania has a varied history. Once part of the Kingdom of Dacia, in 106 AD, the Roman Empire conquered the territory, after the Roman legions withdrew in 271 AD, it was overrun by a succession of various tribes such as Carpi, Visigoths, Huns, Gepids, Avars, and Slavs, in the 9th century various parts came under the rule of the First Bulgarian Empire.The Magyars conquered the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century and for almost six hundred years, Transylvania was a voivodeship in the Kingdom of Hungary. After the Hungarian defeat at Battle of Mohács by the Ottomans in 1526, two rival kings claimed the Hungarian kingdom. The Eastern Hungarian Kingdom is the predecessor of the Principality of Transylvania, which was established by the Treaty of Speyer in 1570 and the Eastern Hungarian King became the first Prince of Transylvania. The Principality of Transylvania was a semi-independent state, and a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire under the rule of the local Hungarian nobility, it continued to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the sense of public law, John Sigismund's possessions belonged to the Holy Crown of Hungary, and was a symbol of the survival of Hungarian statehood. In 1690, it became part of the Habsburg monarchy as the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, and after 1848, and again from 1867 to 1918 it was reincorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved after World War I, in the wake of the expected territorial rearrangements, the dispute over Transylvania and former ethnic tensions escalated between Romania and Hungary. The elected representatives of the Romanian National Assembly proclaimed the Union with Romania on 1 December 1918, while the Hungarian General Assembly 22 December 1918 reaffirmed their loyalty to the Hungarian state. By 1919, as a result of the Hungarian–Romanian War, much of Eastern Hungary - including Transylvania - fell under Romanian control. Eventually on 4 June 1920 the Treaty of Trianon assigned Transylvania and further areas to the Kingdom of Romania.
Considered as a national tragedy having about 3,3 million Hungarians outside the new borders, the loss of 71% of its historical territory, majority of its economy, Hungary sought for revision which in the 1930's culminated as a primary goal and significantly determined her international and external politics. After the successful revision regarding southern Czechoslovakia by the First Vienna Award in 1938 and the full recovery of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939, the Hungarian Government prepared to resolve the Transylvanian question and initiated a mass mobilization near the Hungarian-Romanian border. At the early stage of World War II the Axis Powers were not interested in the outbreak of another armed conflicts in the wake of other ongoing military events, therefore they intervened to persuade the parties to enforce diplomatic solution to reduce tensions in order to prevent further escalation.
Second Vienna Award
In June 1940, Romania was forced to submit to a Soviet ultimatum and accept the annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Subsequently, Hungary attempted to regain Transylvania, which it had lost in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Germany and Italy pressured both Hungary and Romania to resolve the situation in a bilateral agreement. The two delegations met in Turnu Severin on 16 August, but the negotiations failed due to a demand for a territory from the Hungarian side and only an offer of population exchange from the Romanian side. To impede a Hungarian-Romanian war in their "hinterland", the Axis powers pressured both governments to accept their arbitration: the Second Vienna Award, signed on 30 August 1940.Population
After World War I, the multiethnic Kingdom of Hungary was divided by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, to form several new states, but Hungary noted that the new state borders did not follow ethnic boundaries. Hungarians were the majority in border regions outside the post-Trianon Hungarian borders in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. Deep within Romania, far from the Hungarian border, in the region of eastern Transylvania known as Székely Land, the Hungarian population found itself in the unusual situation of being an overwhelming majority. By the Second Vienna Award, the solution decided upon was to carve out a claw-shaped corridor with mixed population through northwestern Romania, which included a large Romanian-populated area, in order to incorporate this Hungarian-majority region into Hungary.Historian Keith Hitchins summarizes the situation created by the award:
The 1930 Romanian census registered for the 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 language and nationality separately.
The dissimilar ratios were caused by a combination of complex factors such as migration, the assimilation of Jews, and bilingual speakers. According to Hungarian registrations, 100,000 Hungarian refugees had arrived in Hungary from South Transylvania by January 1941. By then, there were a total of 109,532 Romanian refugees from Northern Transylvania. A fall in the total population suggests that a further 40,000 to 50,000 Romanians moved from North Transylvania to South Transylvania, including refugees who were omitted from the official registration for various reasons. Additionally, Hungarian gains by assimilation were balanced by losses for other groups of native speakers, such as Jews. In the counties of Máramaros and Szatmár, dozens of settlements had many people who had declared themselves as Romanian but now identified themselves as Hungarian, although they had not spoken any Hungarian even in 1910.
Hungarian rule
Hungary held Northern Transylvania from September 1940 to October 1944. In 1940, ethnic disturbances between Hungarians and Romanians continued after some incidents following the entrance of the Hungarian Army, culminating in massacres at Treznea and Ip. In the first two weeks approximately 1000 Romanians perished.On 5 September 1940, five days after the Second Vienna Award, the first Hungarian military unit crossed the border at Sighetul Marmației. Two Hungarian armies entered the territory of annexed Transylvania: the first army operated in the northeastern part of Transylvania, while the second army operated in the Oradea-Cluj area.
On the first day, the main occupied cities were Carei, Satu Mare, Sighetul Marmației, and Ocna Șugatag. Nine stages of progress were established, each over a distance of 40-80 kilometers. The last localities taken over, on 13 September 1940, were Sfântu Gheorghe and Târgu Secuiesc. The advance of Hungarian units took place in peaceful conditions, with only a few scattered incidents with Romanian soldiers retreating to southern Transylvania. The Hungarian army was greeted enthusiastically by the majority of the Hungarian population, which was documented in detail in the 1940 films, with the parade of military units, as well as Horthy riding on a gray horse, marching through the main cities of Northern Transylvania.
After some ethnic Hungarian groups considered unreliable or insecure were sacked/expelled from Southern Transylvania, the Hungarian officials also regularly expelled some Romanian groups from Northern Transylvania. Many Hungarians and Romanians either fled or chose to opt between the two countries. There was a mass exodus; over 100,000 people on both sides of the ethnic and political borders relocated. This continued until 1944.
Following the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany on 19 March 1944, Northern Transylvania came under German military occupation. Like the Jews living in Hungary, most of the Jews in Northern Transylvania were sent to concentration camps during World War II, a move that was facilitated by local military and civilians. Following several decrees of the Hungarian government and high-level consultations at a meeting on 26 April with László Endre in Szatmárnémeti, the deportation of the Jews was decided. On 3 May, authorities in Dés launched the action of ghettoization of Jews in the Bungăr forest, where 3,700 Jews from Dej and 4,100 Jews from other localities in the area were imprisoned. During the operation of the Dej ghetto, Jews were mistreated, tortured, and starved. The deportation of the Jews to the Nazi death camps was done with freight wagons, in three stages: the first transport on 28 May, the second on 6 June, and the third on 8 June. Most of those deported were exterminated in the Auschwitz–Birkenau camp, with just over 800 deportees surviving. The Kolozsvár Ghetto was initiated on 3 May, and was put under the command of László Urbán, the local police chief. The ghetto, comprising about 18,000 Jews, was liquidated in six transports to Auschwitz, with the first deportation occurring on 25 May, and the last one on 9 June. Other ghettoes that were set up in Northern Transylvania during this period were the Oradea ghetto, the Baia Mare ghetto, the Bistrița ghetto, the Cehei ghetto, the Reghin ghetto, the Satu Mare ghetto, and the Sfântu Gheorghe ghetto. If one excludes the Szekely area, 127,377 Jews were deported to the Auschwitz death camp, 19,764 returned and 107,613 did not return.
After King Michael's Coup of 23 August 1944, Romania left the Axis 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 in Slovakia and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for instance, in the Budapest Offensive, the Siege of Budapest, and the Prague Offensive.
The Second Vienna Award was voided by the Allied Commission through the Armistice Agreement with Romania whose Article 19 stipulated the following: "The Allied Governments regard the decision of the Vienna award regarding Transylvania as null and void and are agreed that Transylvania 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."
The territory was occupied by the Allied forces by late October 1944. On 25 October, at the Battle of Carei, units of the Romanian 4th Army under the command of General Gheorghe Avramescu defeated the last remaining Hungarian and German troops in the area and took control of the last piece of the territory ceded in 1940 to Hungary. However, due to the activities of Romanian paramilitary forces, the Soviets expelled the Romanian administration from Northern Transylvania in November 1944 and did not allow them to return until 10 March 1945.
On 20 January 1945, the Provisional National Government of Hungary accepted the obligation to evacuate all Hungarian troops and officials from the territory, to retreat to its pre-war borders, and to repeal all legislative and administrative regulations in connection with the incorporation of the territory.
The 1947 Paris Peace Treaty reaffirmed the borders between Romania and Hungary, as originally defined in the Treaty of Trianon, 27 years earlier, thus confirming the return of Northern Transylvania to Romania.