“Hungarianness has Melted into a Single Ingot”. Negotiating Regionalism and Nation-Building in the <i>Torontál</i> During World War II

Abstract The Banat, like all territories lost after the First World War, was part of Hungarian irredentist plans. On the eve of the German occupation of Serbia, Hitler promised both the Bačka and the Banat to Hungary. Romania, the other ally of Nazi Germany, also had interest in the Banat as compensation for its territorial losses and as fulfillment of its First World War goals. To avoid a possible conflict between its two allies, Germany decided to occupy the Banat and appointed an ethnic German administration to the region. This article explores how the Banat Hungarian cultural elite navigated this new situation in the shadow of the Reich German occupation and the ethnic German administration. The failed and indefinitely postponed return of the region to Hungary raised self-doubt in the Banat Hungarian minority elites, causing them to rethink their position in the region and in the Hungarian nation. In the hopes of strengthening their positions, these elites discussed their ideas in the only Hungarian-language daily in the Banat during the period. The texts published in the Torontál repositioned the historical borderland of the Banat as a core part of the Hungarian nation-state and reinforced the border only towards the Balkan peninsula.