[6] During a meeting with Hitler in August 1936, Miklós Horthy advocated a common attack against Czechoslovakia to excise a "cancerous tumor from the heart of Europe".

In 1938 Germany and Hungary focused on creating a common platform to that end, and in November 1938 Hitler negotiated with the Hungarian government concerning the fate of Czechoslovakia.

[9] After the acceptance of the ultimatum concerning Trans-Olza, which had been annexed by Czechoslovakia in 1920 after the Czechoslovak invasion that triggered the Polish-Czechoslovak War, up to the armistice line, and smaller disputed border areas by Poland, the Hungarian question had remained open.

Official Hungarian circles were aware that Hungary alone was too weak to enforce its territorial demands towards Czechoslovakia because they knew that any attack would encounter the resistance of the more modern Czechoslovak Army.

[note 1] Therefore, Hungary decided to fight Czechoslovakia in the diplomatic field instead and to push for territorial revision in the spirit of Munich Agreement.

The first conflict occurred in the early morning of October 5, 1938, when troops of the Royal Hungarian Army crossed the border and attacked Czechoslovak positions near Jesenské[12] with the goal of capturing Rimavská Sobota.

[13] The Czechoslovak situation was worse in Carpathian Ruthenia, with its lower density of fortifications; there paramilitary units of the Rongyos Gárda infiltrated Czechoslovakia.

[14] Czechoslovakia had an interest in stabilising the situation because its foreign ministry had to resolve problems with Poland and Germany and did not want to start negotiations before October 15.

The central government of Czechoslovakia was represented by Ivan Krno, Political Director of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who held rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.

Hungary demanded territories up to and including a line defined by Devín (Hungarian: Dévény), Bratislava (Pozsony), Nitra (Nyitra), Tlmače (Garamtolmács), Levice (Léva), Lučenec (Losonc), Rimavská Sobota (Rimaszombat), Jelšava (Jolsva), Rožňava (Rozsnyó), Košice (Kassa), Trebišov (Tőketerebes), Pavlovce nad Uhom (Pálóc), Uzhhorod (Slovak: Užhorod, Hungarian: Ungvár), Mukacheve (Mukačevo, Munkács), and Vinogradiv (Nagyszőlős).

He rejected the idea of a common conference of the four signers of the Munich Agreement, the demands for plebiscites in Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia and the Hungarian claims for Bratislava.

According to Darányi, Ribbentrop did not accept his requests because several important towns remained on the Czechoslovak side[32] (Bratislava, Nitra, Uzhorod and Mukachevo; the question of Košice was open[31]).

[34] They argued that Hungarian claims for Košice were not motivated by ethnic or historical reasons but focused on the elimination of the largest communication, economic and cultural centre it the east and on the interruption of the railway to Carpathian Ruthenia and allied Romania.

Czechoslovakia adopted the "Ribbentrop line" in the hope that it would receive a guarantee of new borders from the side of Axis powers and proposed it officially on October 22.

[38] Although the Hungarian government demanded arbitration, it had not had have the prior approval of Germany, which insisted on its negative opinion, Hitler's disagreement, Ribbentrop's disappointment with previous negotiations with Darányi and the danger of military conflict if one country did not accept the results.

That included the towns of Senec (Szenc), Galanta (Galánta), Vráble (Verebély), Levice (Léva), Lučenec (Losonc), Rimavská Sobota (Rimaszombat), Jelšava (Jolsva), Rožnava (Rozsnyó), Košice (Kassa), Michaľany (Szentmihályfalva), Veľké Kapušany (Nagykapos), Uzhhorod (Ungvár), and Mukachevo (Munkács).

[51] The obvious violation of the ethnic balance between the two countries' minorities, which had repeatedly been endorsed years earlier by Hungary, and the short period between the award and a Hungarian attack against Slovakia in March 1939, caused anti-Hungarian sentiment and social movements to become a significant unifying element for Slovaks during the Second World War.

[citation needed] After a short Slovak-Hungarian War, with several Hungarian air raids, such as March 24 on Spišská Nová Ves, Hungary was forced by Germany to stop and negotiate.

[64] For a full comparison of the censuses, it is necessary to take into account the population transfer after the border change (voluntary or forced), the demographic changes during the previous 20 years of Czechoslovakia (such as the arrival of Czechoslovak state employees and colonists and natural domestic migration) and the bilingualism of the population and the reliability of previous statistics, particularly of the 1910 census from the peak of Magyarization.

Hungary refused to accept them, who included some who were elderly or children, and the deported Jews found themselves imprisoned in no man's land during the cold autumn weather.

According to Janics, the officials and farmers who opted to move out (81,000 people) were given administrative, military and public safety support and were provided road vehicles and railway wagons to transport their property.

[72][73] On November 11, 1938, the Hungarian General Staff issued a new edict, which imposed measures against colonists, ordered their immediate expulsion and defined them as enemies of the state.

Soldiers and police could freely perform home inspections without needing official authorisation and could confiscate stocks of food, livestock and grain.

[75] The colonists were followed by state employees, Slovak farmers (including those who inherited land or bought it in a standard legal way with their own money[76][77]) and then anybody denoted as an unreliable.

In addition, they signed official statement that they had moved voluntarily and all of their property, even for items that were allowed to be exported, was passed into the ownership of Hungary.

Although Miklós Horthy had promised to guarantee the freedom of the Slovak language and culture in the redeemed territories, Hungary failed to protect its new minorities.

[clarification needed] That resulted in The Economic Association of Nitra County demanding the right "to grow sugar beet under the same conditions as during Czech rule".

Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer who was responsible for issues of common goods, the health service and social policy, proposed a solution based on unification.

Upper Country Minister Andor Jaross disagreed with that solution and proposed providing the Czechoslovak welfare system for those in the redeemed areas for a transitional period but had no objections to decreasing it to the Hungarian level.

On September 26, 1944, Italian Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza informed a Czechoslovak representative that Italy had considered the Munich Agreement and the First Vienna Award to have been invalid from the start.