ABSTRACT
With the outbreak of the Second World War, what had previously been palpable in Anglo-Hungarian diplomacy now became crystal clear: Britain’s interests did not include territorial and other disputes between various countries of Eastern Europe. In this period, London was interested in the course of Romanian-Hungarian relations no more than it had been in the Magyars of Czechoslovakia a year earlier. It judged these countries principally on the basis of the closeness of their alliance to Germany. Little change occurred in this domain even after 1 September 1939. Ribbentrop instructed the German minister in Budapest to advise Csáky that while Germany was not asking for Hungary’s military assistance, it was expecting the Hungarian government not to make a declaration of neutrality.140
