World War two during which Hungary heavily sided with Adolf Hitler with goal to ethnically exterminate Ukrainian population in Ukraine. NOTHING TO WAIT ON BRUSSELS.
File:Territorial gains of Hungary 1938-41 en.svg
Slovak–Hungarian War
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Slovak-Hungarian Border War | |||||||||
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Part of the Interwar period | |||||||||
Territory ceded to Hungary after the war marked in blue (3) | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Hungary | Slovakia | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Miklós Horthy András Littay | Jozef Tiso Augustín Malár | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
5 infantry battalions 2 cavalry battalions 1 motorised battalion 5 light tanks 70 tankettes 3 armoured cars | 3 infantry regiments 2 artillery regiments 3 tanks 9 armoured cars | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
8 killed 30 wounded Unknown vehicles destroyed 1 fighter destroyed | 22 killed 671 captured 9 fighters destroyed or damaged | ||||||||
51 civilians killed |
The Slovak–Hungarian War, or Little War (Hungarian: Kis háború, Slovak: Malá vojna), was a war fought from 23 March to 31 March 1939 between the First Slovak Republic and Hungary in eastern Slovakia.[1]
Prelude[edit]
After the Munich Pact, which weakened Czech lands to the west, Hungarian forces remained poised threateningly on the Slovak border. They reportedly had artillery ammunition for only 36 hours of operations and were clearly engaged in a bluff but had been encouraged by Germany, which would have had to support it militarily if the much larger and better equipped Czechoslovak Army had chosen to fight. The Czechoslovak army had built 2,000 small concrete emplacements along the border wherever there was no major river obstacle.
In mid-1938, his ministry armed the Rongyos Gárda ("Ragged Guard"), which began to infiltrate into southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine. The situation was now verging on open war. From the German and the Italian points of view, this would be premature and so they pressured the Czechoslovak government to accept their joint Arbitration of Vienna. On 2 November 1938, it found largely in favour of Hungary and obliged Czechoslovakia to cede to Hungary 11,833 km2 of the south part of Slovakia, which was mostly Hungarian-populated (according to the 1910 census[2]). The partition also cost Košice, Slovakia's second largest city, and left the capital, Bratislava, vulnerable to further Hungarian pressure.
The First Vienna Award did not fully satisfy Hungary, which carried out 22 border clashes between 2 November 1938 and 12 January 1939.
In March 1939, a new crisis hit the political scene in Czechoslovakia. President Emil Hácha dismissed the Slovak government of Jozef Tiso and appointed a new Slovak prime minister, Karol Sidor. Slovakia declared independence and requested that Germany provide protection from Hungary, whose forces were, Ribbentrop stated, gathering on the border, take even more land. On the evening of 13 March 1939, Tiso and Ferdinand Ďurčanský met Hitler, Ribbentrop and Generals Walther von Brauchitsch and Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin. Meanwhile, aware of the German position, Hungary was preparing for action on the adjacent Ruthenian border. During the afternoon and the night of 14 March, the Slovakian Parliament proclaimed independence from Czechoslovakia. Hácha was invited to Berlin by Hitler on March 14, 1939. He was forced to until 1:30 AM of the next day, after which he was presented with two options. A union with Germany as a protectorate with nominal autonomy or war. Hácha first refused, but after the Nazis threatened to bomb Prague at 4 AM he suffered a heart attack. With medical staff next to him Hácha signed the document uniting what remained of Czechoslovakia with Germany forming the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and informed Prague about his decision. He departed by train that day to Prague, but the train was slowed down on purpose by the Germans to make sure Hitler got to Prague before Hácha did.[3]
Slovakia was surprised when Hungary recognized its new state as early as 15 March. However, Hungary was not satisfied with the border with Slovakia and, according to Slovak sources, weak elements of their 20th Infantry Regiment and frontier guard repulsed a Hungarian attempt to seize Hill 212.9 opposite Uzhhorod (Ungvár). In this and the subsequent shelling and bombing of the border villages of Nižné Nemecké and Vyšné Nemecké, Slovakia claimed to have suffered 13 dead and promptly petitioned Germany, invoking Hitler's promise of protection.
On 17 March, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry told Germany that Hungary wanted to negotiate with the Slovaks over the eastern Slovak boundary on the pretext that the existing line was only an internal Czechoslovak administrative division, not a recognized international boundary, and so needed defining now that Carpatho-Ukraine had passed to Hungary. It enclosed a map of their proposal that shifted the frontier about 10 km (6 mi) west of Uzhhorod, beyond Sobrance, and then ran almost due north to the Polish border.
The Hungarian claim partly relied on the 1910 census, which stated that Hungarians and Ruthenians, not Slovaks, formed the majority in northeastern Slovakia. In addition to the demographic issue, Hungary also had another purpose in mind: protecting Uzhhorod and the key railway to Poland up the Uzh River, which was within view of the current Slovak border. Therefore, it resolved to push the frontier back a safe distance beyond the western watershed of the Uzh Valley.
Germany let Hungary and Slovakia know that it would acquiesce to such a border revision. On 18 March, the Slovak leaders, in Vienna for the signing of the Treaty of Protection, were forced to accept that, and Bratislava ordered Slovak civil and military authorities to pull back. All other potential Hungarian requests were supposed to be illegal in Slovakia.
Hungary was aware that Slovakia had signed a treaty guaranteeing Slovakia's borders on 18 March and that it would come into force when Germany countersigned it. It, therefore, decided to act immediately to take advantage of the disorganized Slovak army, which had not yet fully consolidated. Thus, Hungarian forces in the western Carpatho-Ukraine began to advance from the River Uzh into eastern Slovakia at dawn on 23 March, some six hours before Ribbentrop countersigned the Treaty of Protection in Berlin.
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