Second Vienna Award The Second Vienna Award was the second of two Vienna Award s arbitrated by the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy . Rendered on 30 August 1940 , it re - assigned the territory of Northern Transylvania ( including all of Maramureş and part of Crişana ) from Romania to Hungary . Prelude and historical background . After World War I , the multi - ethnic Kingdom of Hungary was split apart by the Treaty of Trianon to form several new nation - states , but Hungarians claimed that the new state borders did not follow the real ethnic borders . The new Magyar nation - state of Hungary was approximately 1 / 3 the size of the former Kingdom , and millions of ethnic Magyars now lived outside the borders of Hungary . Many historically important areas of Hungary were assigned to other countries , and the distribution of natural resources came out unevenly as well . Thus , while the various non - Magyar populations of the old Kingdom generally saw the treaty as justice for the historically - marginalized nationalities , from the point of view of the Hungarians , the Treaty had been unjust and even a national humiliation . The Treaty and its consequences dominated Hungarian public life and political culture in the inter - war period . In addition , the government of Hungary swung more and more to the right in those years ; eventually , under Regent Miklós Horthy , Hungary established close relations with Benito Mussolini ' s Italy and Adolf Hitler ' s Germany . The alliance with Nazi Germany made possible Hungary ' s regaining of southern Czechoslovakia in the First Vienna Award of 1938 and Subcarpathia in 1939 . But that and the subsequent military conquest of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939 still did not satisfy Hungarian political ambitions . These awards allocated only a fraction of the territories lost by the Treaty of Trianon , and in any event , the loss that the Hungarians resented the most was that of Transylvania . At the end of June 1940 , as relations between Romania and all her neighboring countries were seriously strained , the Romanian government gave in to a Soviet ultimatum , and allowed Moscow to retake Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , which had been incorporated into Romania after World War I . Although the territorial loss was undesirable from the Romanian perspective , the government viewed it as preferable to the conflict which could have arisen had Romania resisted Soviet advances , given Finland ' s bloody defeat the previous winter over it ' s border with the Soviets . However , the Hungarian government interpreted the fact that Romania gave up some of its territories as an admission that Romania no longer insisted on keeping its territory intact . So the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina inspired Budapest to escalate its efforts to resolve the question of Transylvania . However , Berlin persuaded Budapest to take no military action against Romania , who was , along with the Soviet Union at the time , Germany ' s main source of oil . Peace in the Balkans was very much in the interest of the Axis Powers , both for strategic and material reasons , and so they suggested to the parties concerned that they solve their problems by direct negotiations . The negotiations started on 16 August 1940 in Turnu Severin . The Hungarian delegation hoped to gain as much of Transylvania as possible , but the Romanians would have none of that and submitted only a small region for consideration . Eventually , the Hungarian - Romanian negotiations fell through entirely . After this , the Romanian government asked Italy and Germany to arbitrate . Meanwhile , the Romanian government had acceded to Italy ' s request for territorial cessions to Bulgaria , another German - aligned neighbor . On 7 September , under the Treaty of Craiova , the " Cadrilater " ( southern Dobrudja ) was ceded by Romania to Bulgaria . Award . The ministers of foreign affairs of the Axis , Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Italy , announced the award on 30 August 1940 at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna . As a result of the award , Hungary regained 43 , 104 km² of its territories lost to Romania after the First World War . The new border was guaranteed by both Germany and Italy . The population statistics in Northern Transylvania and the changes following the award are presented in detail in the next section . The rest of Transylvania , known as Southern Transylvania , with 2 , 274 , 600 Romanians and 363 , 200 Hungarians remained Romanian . Statistics . The territory in question covered an area of 43 , 104 km² . The 1930 Romanian census registered for this 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 separately about language and nationality . The results of the two censuses are summarized in the following table . As Árpád E . Varga writes , " the census conducted in 1930 met international statistical requirements in every respect . In order to establish nationality , the compilers devised a complex criterion system , unique at the time , which covered citizenship , nationality , native language ( i . e . the language spoken in the family ) and religion . " Apart from the natural population growth , the differences between the two censuses are due to some other complex reasons , like migration and assimilation of Jews or bilingual speakers . According to Hungarian registrations , 100 thousand Hungarian refugees had arrived in Hungary from South Transylvania by January 1941 . Most of them sought refuge in the north , and almost as many persons arrived from Hungary in the re - annexed territory as moved to the Trianon Hungary territory from South Transylvania . As a result of these migrations , North Transylvanian Hungarians increased by almost 100 thousand . In order to compensate for this , a great number of Romanians were obliged to leave North Transylvania . Some 100 thousand had left by February 1941 according to the incomplete registration of North Transylvanian refugees carried out by the Romanian government . Besides this , a fall in the total population suggests that a further 40 to 50 thousand Romanians moved from North to South Transylvania ( including refugees who were omitted from the official registration for various reasons ) . The Hungarian assimilation gain is made up of losses on the part of other groups of native speakers , such as the Jewish people . The changing of language was most typical among bilingual Romanians and Hungarians . On the other hand , in Maramureş ( ) and Satu Mare ( ) counties , in dozens of settlements many of those who had declared themselves as Romanian now identified themselves as Hungarian , even though they did not speak Hungarian at all ( nor did they in 1910 ) . Afterwards . Historian Keith Hitchins summarizes the situation created by the award in his book " Rumania : 1866 - 1947 ( Oxford History of Modern Europe ) , Oxford University Press , 1994 " : Romania had 14 days to evacuate concerned territories and assign them to Hungary . The Hungarian troops stepped across the Trianon borders on 5 September . The Regent of Hungary , Miklós Horthy , also attended in the entry . They reached the pre - Trianon border , completing the re - annexation process , on 13 September . Generally , the ethnic Hungarian population welcomed the troops and regarded separation from Romania as liberation . The large ethnic Romanian community that found themselves under Hungarian Horthyist occupation had nothing to celebrate though , as for them the Second Vienna Award represented the return to the times of the long Hungarian rule . Upon entering the awarded territory the Hungarian Army committed massacres against the Romanian population . Among the massacres : The exact number of casualties is disputed between some historians , but the existence of such events cannot be disputed . The retreat of the Romanian army was also not free from incidents , mostly consisting of damaging the infrastructure and destroying public documents . Nullification . The Second Vienna Award was voided by the Allied Commission through the Armistice Agreement with Romania ( 12 September 1944 ) whose Article 19 stipulated the following : " " The Allied Governments regard the decision of the Vienna award regarding Transylvania as void and are agreed that Transylvania ( the greater part thereof ) 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 . " " This came after King Michael ' s Coup following which Romania changed sides 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 Czechoslovakia ( e . g . Budapest Offensive & Siege of Budapest and Prague Offensive ) . The 1947 Treaty of Paris reaffirmed the borders between Romania and Hungary , as originally defined in Treaty of Trianon , 27 years earlier .