The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

committee of the Peace Conference unanimously rejected, without any vocal
debate, the Czechoslovak proposal regarding the Slav corridor on March 8.
Thus, the Prague and Belgrade governments were unable to establish direct
contact between their two countries 102 via the so-called Slav corridor, and
Czechoslovakia also did not secure an outlet to the Adriatic Sea.
After long negotiations, the Belgrade government finally gave up its claim
to the Rába and Zala River area but, as part of the Trianon treaty agreement, it
received, in exchange, the valley of the Lendva River, today’s Međimurje
(Muravidék). As well, it was given the area South of the Mura and Rába Rivers,
the southern part of the Vend region. We will treat the final Hungarian-South
Slav border in greater detail in the next chapter.
Whose interests would the annexation of the western Hungarian Borderland
serve? Consider that it was part of the country for a thousand years and to
which it had always been loyally devoted. “Not the West Hungarians, not
German-Austria – beset as it was by enemies – but solely in the interest of the
Czech and Serb imperialists, as well as the Greater Germany faction in Austria.
Initially, the voracious Czech and Serb predators wanted to claim this valuable
territory for themselves, to create a corridor between northern and southern
Slavs. Then, when this seemed an impossibility due to the heated opposition of
Italy, they had the servile French friends arrange to annex it to Austria,
obviously with the clever aim of driving a wedge between two countries thrown
on each other, Austria and Hungary. (…) In the calculations of the Pan-German
Austrians, Western Hungary obviously had another role. They saw it as an acein-the-hole
in a European-level movement begun with the intention of uniting
Austria to the German empire – a movement going ahead towards its own goal,
without regard to any casualties.” 103
The new Austria-Hungary border, defined later in the Treaty of Trianon,
cannot be separated from the Treaty of Saint-Germain signed by Austria on
September 10, 1919, from France’s Central European policies (or attempts at
influence) and the American delegates’ pro-Austrian behavior. During the Paris
conference, the consideration of the Austria question underwent significant
change after the Entente Powers decided against the union of Austria with
Germany. Thus, they began to search for a possibility of Austrian
independence, a shift that Vienna quickly realized. In the meantime, Anschluss
faded by degrees into the background – seen by the French as Germanization –
and the idea of an autonomous and independent Austria gained ground. One of
the main reasons was that – although German-Austria signed an agreement with
Germany of the terms of a union in February 1919 – Berlin could less and less
102 Romsics, 2001, op.cit., pp. 124–125.
103 Ajtay, József: Külpolitikai helyzet – Nyugat-Magyarország [Foreign policy situation
in Western Hungary]. In: Új Magyar Szemle, year II, vol. II, issue 3, June, p. 359; also
Romsics, Ignác: Szláv korridor, Burgenland, Lajtabánság: koncepciók Nyugat-
Magyarországról [Slav corridor, Burgenland, Lajta-Banat: models of Western
Hungary]. In: Regio, 1992, issue 1, pp. 90–99.
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