First Vienna Award

The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on 2 November 1938 pursuant to the Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The arbitration and award were direct consequences of the previous month's Munich Agreement, which resulted in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.

Hungary sought to reclaim the lost territories through peaceful way to restore its historical borders, and reunite the significant Hungarian minority living right across its borders with the mother country. In the interwar period, Hungary was weaker economically and militarily than the neighbours against which it had territorial claims. Germany and Italy had supported the territorial claims of Hungary, and revision of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, imposed on Hungary in the aftermath of World War I. Nazi Germany had already violated the Versailles Treaty via the remilitarisation of the Rhineland (7 March 1936) and the Anschluss of Austria (12 March 1938).