First Vienna Award

On 2 November 1938, at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, awarded Hungary a strip of southern Slovakia and south-western Carpathian Ruthenia taken from Czechoslovakia.

After the Munich Agreement dismembered Czechoslovakia, Hungary demanded the return of predominantly Hungarian-speaking areas lost at Trianon. Bilateral talks failed and both sides accepted German–Italian arbitration. Hungary received about 12,000 square kilometres, including the cities of Kassa (Košice), Ungvár (Uzhhorod) and Munkács (Mukachevo), with a population of over one million, the majority of them Hungarian speakers. The Czechoslovak and Carpatho-Ukrainian representatives were not even given the floor at the arbitration.

Horthy rode into the recovered territories amid public jubilation, but the gain placed Hungary in debt to Hitler and Mussolini. Poland also annexed small border areas of northern Slovakia shortly afterwards.