Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Tripartite Pact

On 20 November 1940, in the Belvedere in Vienna – the same palace in which, less than three months earlier, the Second Vienna Award had been announced – the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count István Csáky, signed the protocol of his country’s accession to the Tripartite Pact. Alongside him signed Joachim von Ribbentrop for Germany, Galeazzo Ciano for Italy and Ambassador Saburō Kurusu for Japan. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Pál Teleki, also came to Vienna, and Adolf Hitler was there on the same day. Three days later, on 23 November, Romania’s leader, General Ion Antonescu, did the same in Berlin on his country’s behalf, and on 24 November, also in Berlin, so did Slovakia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Vojtech Tuka. Within five days the alliance concluded two months earlier by three great powers had gained three smaller members from Central Europe.

The three acts followed one another on 20, 23 and 24 November; these dates are confirmed by the texts of the protocols and by German diplomatic documents. It was nevertheless a single series of signatures, prepared in Berlin as a whole.

A pact open to “friends”

The Tripartite Pact, signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940, made no formal provision for the accession of new members. Ribbentrop did say after the ceremony that any state wishing to join would be welcomed gratefully, but the DNB news agency’s communiqué toned his words down. Even so, the Hungarian minister in Berlin, General Döme Sztójay, cabled Budapest that Hungary should join – and on no account after Romania. On 28 September, however, the State Secretary at the German Foreign Ministry, Ernst von Weizsäcker, explained that Ribbentrop had meant not formal accession but an attitude “in the spirit of the pact”. Hungary therefore merely announced its “spiritual accession”, and Slovakia soon followed suit.

In October the situation changed. A German military mission arrived in Romania, its transports travelling through Hungary with Budapest’s consent. Hitler decided that “friendly” states should after all enter the pact, which would show London and Washington that the Axis was growing. On 10 October Ribbentrop telephoned Ciano to say that the Hungarians were again asking to be admitted. Ciano noted that Ribbentrop, hitherto opposed, was now “entirely in favour”, since no one who wished to join the fight against England could be turned away. Benito Mussolini agreed reluctantly, foreseeing that after Hungary the door would have to be opened to the Romanians too. On 12 October Ribbentrop informed Sztójay that Italy and Japan had agreed. The Regent, Miklós Horthy, instructed the minister to press for Hungary to be the first of the new states to join, and Berlin consented.

The signatures, however, were delayed. According to some historians, the Germans were waiting, in Romania’s case, until their troops stood by the oilfields of Ploiești, so as not to provoke the Soviet Union, and in Hungary’s case until Romania’s accession had been agreed. In mid-November Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to Berlin mattered more to Hitler. Only on 17 November, after Molotov had returned to Moscow, did Ribbentrop instruct Ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg to inform him that Hungary, Romania and Slovakia would shortly enter the pact.

Hungary: first and most willing

Hungary had reasons to hurry. For twenty years its entire policy had served the revision of the Treaty of Trianon, and everything it had regained it owed to Germany and Italy: southern Slovakia in the First Vienna Award of November 1938, Carpathian Ruthenia in March 1939 and northern Transylvania in August 1940. In February 1939 Budapest had joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. These gains now had to be kept, and the most dangerous rival for Berlin’s favour was Romania, which after the award was demanding the return of Transylvania and whose new leader was openly courting Hitler. Whoever entered the alliance first, it was reasoned in Budapest, would have the stronger position in Berlin.

Teleki’s calculations were more complex. The Prime Minister, a geographer and an advocate of good relations with Britain, was trying to keep Hungary out of the war and to avoid complete dependence on the Reich. According to Hungarian historians, he regarded joining the pact as a price that a state owing its new borders to Hitler could not refuse, and he hoped that vague commitments would not drag the country into the fighting. He also knew that the Germans could pass through Hungary to Romania whether the Hungarians agreed or not. At home his position was weakening: the generals of the General Staff, under the Chief of Staff, General Henrik Werth, maintained their own contacts with the Wehrmacht, and the far right was demanding an even closer bond with Germany.

The protocol signed in the Belvedere was brief. In Article I Hungary acceded to the pact concluded in Berlin on 27 September 1940. Article II provided that if the joint technical commissions envisaged in Article 4 of the pact dealt with matters concerning Hungary, Hungarian representatives would be admitted to their deliberations. Article III attached the text of the pact as an annex. The protocol, drawn up in Hungarian, Japanese, German and Italian, came into force on the day of signature. Hungary had gained a seat at a table at which no decisions of any importance were made.

After the ceremony Hitler received Teleki and Csáky in Ribbentrop’s presence. According to the German record, he expressed “in warm words” his satisfaction at Hungary’s accession and assured them that the war was decided and that by the spring the German army would number 230 divisions. He wanted to draw the Soviet Union into a “great world coalition from Yokohama to Spain”, but declared that he would not allow the British to establish themselves in Salonika, even if he had to intervene by force of arms to rescue Italy, which had attacked Greece “too light-heartedly”. Csáky replied that the war had to be ended as quickly as possible, because small states could not withstand it economically for long. Teleki, as the German note-taker recorded, raised the “Jewish question”, saying that after the peace the Jews would have to leave Europe, and Hitler replied that he regarded its “solution” as one of the most important problems of the future peace. The Hungarians also admitted, albeit in convoluted terms, that expulsions and violence against Romanians had occurred during the occupation of northern Transylvania. The next day Csáky assured Ribbentrop that Hungary would meet all German requests concerning military transports over its railways and roads.

Ciano, who had come to Vienna by train, did not hide his scepticism. He wrote in his diary that day: “Signature of Hungary’s accession. Romania’s and Slovakia’s accessions will follow. I attach no great importance to the accession of these states, which are vassals of Germany or nearly so. In fact they weaken the Tripartite agreement itself and seem useless substitutes for the diplomacy of our victory.”

Romania: an alliance instead of a guarantee

Romania came to the pact from an entirely different position. In the summer of 1940 it had lost Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, northern Transylvania to Hungary and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, and King Carol II had been forced to abdicate. Power passed to General Antonescu, who together with Horia Sima’s fascist Iron Guard proclaimed the “National Legionary State”. The only real protection against further Soviet demands was the German–Italian guarantee of Romania’s borders, given along with the Vienna verdict, and the German troops that had been in the country since October. Entry into the pact was meant to turn that guarantee into an alliance. Antonescu also hoped that loyalty to Hitler would one day pay off over Transylvania.

He made no secret of this last hope, which irritated the Germans. On 14–16 November he visited Rome and, according to Ciano’s account, sharply attacked the Vienna verdict in front of Mussolini, and he told the German chargé d’affaires that Romania would never renounce the lands taken from it. When he arrived in Berlin on 22 November, Ribbentrop raised these words at the very start of their conversation “with surprise and regret”. He explained that without the award Romania would have ceased to exist, that the matter was “settled once and for all”, and that Bucharest should refrain from criticising the verdict, just as Budapest should refrain from propaganda for further revision.

That same afternoon Antonescu was received by Hitler. According to the German record, he delivered a long lecture on two thousand years of Romanian history, on the wrongs suffered by Romanians in Hungarian Transylvania and on the “dark forces of Bolshevism and Jewry” that, in his view, had brought the country to ruin. Finally he declared that the next day he would accede to the pact, but would not stop at the formal act: he was ready to fight “arms in hand” alongside the Axis powers. Hitler replied that he understood the General’s difficult position. He called the guarantee for Romania an obligation backed by 180 divisions and assured him that in his talks with Molotov he had left no doubt that the Reich would allow no one to violate Romanian territory. He promised nothing about Transylvania, but ended with the remark that “world history does not end in 1940”. Antonescu took this as encouragement and remembered those words throughout the war.

On 23 November, in the Reich Chancellery, Antonescu, in the presence of the Romanian Foreign Minister Mihail Sturdza, signed the protocol of accession, modelled on the Hungarian one. Ambassador Kurusu again signed for Japan. That same day the General also spoke with Ribbentrop and with the Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, Wilhelm Keitel. According to a German note, when the Soviet threat was discussed, he accepted Keitel’s suggestion that a further division should join the German “training units” in Romania.

Slovakia: Tuka’s signature

For Slovakia, joining the pact was essentially a formality. Since March 1939 the Slovak state had been bound to the Reich by a treaty of protection that obliged it to conduct its foreign policy in close agreement with Berlin and gave the Wehrmacht a strip of land along its western border. In September 1939 the Slovak army took part in the attack on Poland. At the Salzburg conference in July 1940 Hitler forced the removal from the government of the Foreign Minister, Ferdinand Ďurčanský, who had tried to preserve at least a little freedom of manoeuvre, and placed foreign policy in the hands of Prime Minister Tuka, and internal affairs and the Hlinka Guard in those of Alexander Mach. Both were advocates of a “Slovak National Socialism” on the German model. German advisers were sent to the ministries, and the Reich’s minister in Bratislava became Manfred von Killinger, one of the senior SA commanders.

Slovakia, which in October had followed Hungary in announcing its “spiritual accession” to the pact, did not want to lag behind its neighbour, with which relations had been cool since the 1938 award and the short war of spring 1939. For Tuka there was one more reason. His rival was President Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest who relied on the party, the Church and the army and held back the Prime Minister’s radical designs. The signature in Berlin and a reception by Hitler were meant to raise Tuka’s standing at home, although the Germans had no intention of letting him push Tiso aside.

On 24 November Tuka signed Slovakia’s protocol of accession in Berlin and was then received by Ribbentrop and, in the Reich Chancellery, by Hitler as well. The surviving German record of his conversation with Ribbentrop captures the nature of this “alliance” well. Ribbentrop assured him that the Reich would gladly help Slovakia with its “reconstruction” and that the German advisers would remain at its disposal “until it has organised its state apparatus”. Tuka praised them and promised to say at home that he had asked for them himself. He also asked for German officers for the army, in which, he claimed, there were still many supporters of Edvard Beneš, and asked how to deal with the communists and with Catholic organisations. “Ruthlessly!” Ribbentrop replied when asked whether the communists should be stamped out, and of “political Catholicism” he said that it had to be crushed. Tuka nodded and assured him that after his return “there will be no more upheavals”, since the President was going along with German policy, even if, as a priest, he made his decisions slowly.

What membership meant

On paper the three new states accepted the same obligations as the great powers. The most important was Article 3 of the pact: the signatories were to assist one another “with all political, economic and military means” if one of them was attacked by a power not yet involved in the European war or the Sino-Japanese conflict. This meant, above all, the United States. Article 5 affirmed that the pact did not alter the relations of any of the parties with the Soviet Union. In theory, therefore, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia committed themselves to war with America should it attack Germany, Italy or Japan, although none of them had either a navy or interests outside Europe. They also accepted the “leadership” of Germany and Italy in building a “new order” in Europe – in other words, they agreed to a role that Ciano bluntly called that of vassals.

In practice membership brought neither a joint command nor a plan. The joint commissions were set up only by an agreement of 20 December 1940 and played no serious role. The real commitments were made bilaterally: the transit of troops through Hungary, the “training units” in Romania, the German advisers in Slovakia, the economic agreements securing Romanian oil and grain for the Reich. The pact gave these dependencies a political frame and allowed propaganda to speak of a “new Europe” uniting around the Axis against England.

Bulgaria and Yugoslavia wait

Hitler wanted Bulgaria to join the pact at the same time. On 18 November he received Tsar Boris III and the Foreign Minister, Ivan Popov, at the Berghof. The Tsar promised loyalty but refused to sign. On 23 November, the day of Romania’s accession, the Bulgarian minister in Berlin, Parvan Draganov, told Hitler that the government in Sofia was ready to join the pact “in principle” but asked for a delay. The Bulgarians feared Turkey, whose troops stood in Thrace, and did not want to break with the Soviet Union, which was popular in the country because of Slavic kinship. They also knew that, once they joined, they would become the route of a German march on Greece.

Yugoslavia, bound to Greece and Turkey by the Balkan Pact and, since October, bordering on the Italo-Greek war, mattered even more to Hitler. On 20 November in Vienna he talked with Ciano mainly about Yugoslavia: he wanted to invite the Regent, Prince Paul, and propose to him a “grand agreement” under which the Axis would guarantee Yugoslavia’s borders and Yugoslavia in return would bind itself to Germany and Italy. The government in Belgrade manoeuvred.

The view from Moscow

In Moscow the entry of the three states into the pact was received with distrust. The Soviet Union bordered on Romania and, since the autumn of 1939, on Hungary too, and German troops now stood on the borders of Bessarabia, taken that summer. In Berlin Molotov had been assured that the pact was not directed against the USSR, but when he asked against whom the guarantee for Romania was directed, he was told only that the Reich would allow no one to violate Romanian territory.

On 18 November, according to an account intercepted by the Germans, Molotov, in the presence of his deputy Vladimir Dekanozov, told the Bulgarian minister in Moscow that he had precise information about the accession of Hungary, Slovakia and Romania to the pact, and asked whether Bulgaria would do the same. He added that the Soviet Union could not tolerate Bulgaria’s transformation into a “legionary state”, which the Germans read as an allusion to Antonescu’s Romania. When, after the ceremony in Vienna, German propaganda began to suggest that Hungary had joined the pact with Moscow’s knowledge and consent, the Soviet agency TASS declared that this report “in no way corresponds to the facts”. It was one of the first public signs that German–Soviet relations after Molotov’s visit were not as cordial as claimed. A few days later Moscow set out its own terms for joining the pact, reaching precisely for Bulgaria and the Turkish Straits. Berlin did not reply.

Place in the war

The November accessions transformed the Tripartite Pact from an alliance of three distant great powers into a system embracing the states of Central and South-Eastern Europe. For Hitler this was part of the preparations for the war he had been planning since the summer. On 18 December 1940 he signed Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa, which envisaged Romania and Finland taking part in the attack on the Soviet Union and treated the territory of Romania and Hungary as a rear base. From Romania, where the German Twelfth Army was assembled over the winter, the Wehrmacht moved in March 1941 into Bulgaria, which had joined the pact in Vienna on 1 March, and on 6 April it struck at Yugoslavia and Greece. Yugoslavia signed the pact on 25 March, and only two days later officers in Belgrade overthrew the government that had done so. Teleki, who in December 1940 had concluded a treaty of “eternal friendship” with Yugoslavia, was unable to prevent Hungary from taking part in the attack on it and took his own life on 3 April 1941. On 15 June 1941 the Independent State of Croatia joined the pact.

On 22 June 1941 the Romanian army marched with the Germans against the Soviet Union, and Slovakia and Hungary entered the war within the next few days. In the winter of 1942/1943 Hungary and Romania lost entire armies on the Don and at Stalingrad. In December 1941, after Japan’s attack on the United States, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia declared war on America in the name of allied solidarity, although this did not follow at all from Article 3 of the pact, which concerned defence only. The bond with the Reich also sealed the fate of their Jewish citizens: in 1942 Tuka’s government handed nearly 58,000 Slovak Jews over to the Germans, the Antonescu regime is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria, and after the German occupation of Hungary in 1944 some 437,000 people were deported from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The rivalry between Budapest and Bucharest for Berlin’s favour lasted until the end of the war. In the end Romania went over to the Allies on 23 August 1944, the Slovaks rose against the Germans that same year, and Hungary, after a failed attempt to leave the war in October 1944, remained with the Reich under the rule of the Arrow Cross until the end. Antonescu and Tuka were sentenced to death after the war and executed in 1946.