Pax Germanica. Planuri germane referitoare la soluţionarea chestiunii Transilvaniei între anii 1940-1944

Authors
Ottmar Traşcă
Pages
187-205
Abstract

The Romanian-Hungarian territorial dispute regarding Transylvania’s owner-ship has highly concerned the Reich leadership during the Second World War. Al-though, for political and military reasons, German officials have postponed a decision on the thorny issue of Transylvania’s membership for the post-war period, in terms of the concrete solution, as concerns what the decision-making circles in Berlin had in mind for Transylvania, in the event of obtaining the “final victory,” the researched ar-chival documents and the specialized literature we have investigated does not provide a clear answer. At the current stage of research, it is virtually impossible to say whether the disputed territory would have been awarded to Romania or to Hungary, or placed under German protectorate. Specialized literature on the post-war German projections does not provide significant details about the fate of the territory disputed by the two countries. Instead, the documents kept especially in the Romanian and German archives offer some clues to the projections spread within certain circles in the leadership of the Third Reich as possible solutions to the territorial dispute between Bucharest and Buda-pest. Thus, several projects proposing various solutions on solving the problem of Transylvania have been developed. Most of them were, however, unrealistic, and some downright fanciful. These projections did not have a specific purpose after the defeat of Nazi Germany, but, paradoxically, the “German experience” in preparing the Roma-nian-Hungarian territorial dispute was later taken and successfully used by the USSR.

Keywords
Romania, Hungary, Nazi Germany, Transylvania, Post-war projections (1940-1944).