Slovak–Hungarian War

The Slovak–Hungarian War or Little War (Hungarian: Kis háború, Slovak: Malá vojna), was a war fought from 23 March to 31 March 1939 between the First Slovak Republic and Hungary in eastern Slovakia.

Prelude

After the Munich Pact, which weakened Czech lands to the west, the Hungarians remained poised threateningly on the Slovak border. They reportedly had artillery ammunition for only 36 hours of operations, and were clearly engaged in a bluff, but it was a bluff the Germans had encouraged, and one that they would have been obliged to support militarily if the much larger and better equipped Czechoslovak Army chose to fight. The Czechoslovak army had built 2,000 small concrete emplacements along the border wherever there was no major river obstacle.

The Hungarian Minister of the Interior, Miklós Kozma, had been born in Carpathian Ruthenia, and in mid-1938 his ministry armed the Rongyos Gárda ('Ragged Guard'), which began to infiltrate into southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine. The situation was now verging on open war. From the German and Italian points of view, this would be premature, so they pressured the Czechoslovak government to accept their joint Arbitration of Vienna. On 2 November 1938 this found largely in favour of the Hungarians and obliged the Prague government to cede 11,833 km² of the mostly Hungarian populated (according 1910 census) south part of Slovakia to Hungary. The partition also cost Slovakia Košice/Kassa, its second largest city, and left the capital, Bratislava/Pozsony, vulnerable to further Hungarian pressure.