British Diplomacy, Propaganda, and War Strategy and the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute over Transylvania in 1939–40

Abstract

This article concerns British official policy and political propaganda disseminated in the first year of World War II towards Hungary and Romania. The story is told in the broad framework of the relationship between foreign propaganda, foreign policy implementation, and war strategy. As these embody short-term strategic aims and long-term political objectives, the analysis throws light upon the often differing requirements of British diplomacy, war strategy, and post-war plans. This context is discussed through the prism of the British evaluation of the minority and territorial dispute in Transylvania between Budapest and Bucharest. Such a perspective has been of little concern in the historiography, although it provides a means for putting into question certain basic assumptions underpinning existing models in the history of British policy towards the region. Although these countries lay on the periphery of British war strategy, London aimed at expanding its political influence there during and after the war. For one, the analysis of this dichotomy tells us about the paradoxes, dynamics, and interplays of short- and long-term political, economic, and strategic interests; for another, it answers the question, whether any broad patterns could be reached about British Central and South-East European policy, or did actions distinctively differ towards individual countries? Regarding this last question, it is offered here that, precisely because these countries lay outside of primary imperial interest, standard diplomatic and strategic procedures were subverted, criteria were less carefully calculated, and historical reflexes and prejudices governed British viewpoints and actions.