With a succession of increasingly nationalist Prime Ministers, Hungary steadily came to repent the Treaty of Trianon, and aligned itself with Europe's two fascist states, Germany and Italy, which both opposed the changes to national borders in Europe at the end of World War I. The Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini sought closer ties with Hungary, beginning with the signing of a treaty of friendship between Hungary and Italy on 5 April 1927. Gyula Gömbös was an open admirer of the fascist leaders. Gömbös attempted to forge a closer trilateral unity between Germany, Italy and Hungary by acting as an intermediary between Germany and Italy, whose two fascist regimes had nearly come to conflict in 1934 over the issue of Austrian independence. Gömbös eventually persuaded Mussolini to accept Hitler's annexation of Austria in the late 1930s. Gömbös is said to have coined the phrase "axis", which he applied to his intention to create an alliance with Germany and Italy; those two countries used it to term their alliance as the Rome–Berlin axis. Just prior to the Second World War, Hungary benefited from its close ties with Germany and Italy when the Munich Agreement obliged Czechoslovakia and Hungary to settle their territorial disputes by negotiation. Finally, the First Vienna Award reassigned the southern parts of Czechoslovakia to Hungary, and shortly after Czechoslovakia was abolished Hungary occupied and annexed the remainder of the Carpatho-Ukraine.