Bratislava bridgehead

Bratislava bridgehead is present in the Western part of modern Slovakia, and has an area of 93,7 square kms. It is situated on the Little Hungarian Plain, on the left bank of the river Danube. Administratively, it belongs to the district Bratislava V in Bratislava, and has 111,135 inhabitants.

History

As a result of the Treaty of Trianon - the peace treaty by the Hungary, signed at the end of First World War - a bridgehead was created for the Czechoslovakia on the right bank of river Danube at Bratislava, mainly for defensive purposes. At this time Petržalka was transferred to the newly founded country.

In October 1938, as part of Munich Agreement, Petržalka and Devín were transferred to Nazi Germany for strategical purposes.

At the end of World War II, ceasefire agreements gave back all of the territories annexed in Slovakia except a small part of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the Ukraine as per the Moscow Agreement. A camp for Hungarians and Germans impeached for war crimes was also set up and was located in Petržalka.

Territories involved in the Treaties of Paris. The Bratislava bridgehead is in green.

It was an idea of the delegation of Czechoslovakia at the Paris Peace Conference that they would need an extended defensive territory at the Bratislava bridgehead.[1] They required to get Dunacsún (Čunovo), Horvátjárfalu (Jarovce), Oroszvár (Rusovce), Rajka and Bezenye. The first three of them were transferred, with a territory of 62 km².

During the 1970s, a microdistrict was built at Petržalka, with a population of 100,000 inhabitants. Today all of the four villages are part of the Bratislava V district.

Between 1977 and 1992, the Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros Dams was built here. The bridgehead makes the abstraction of the water to Slovakia possible.

References

Frank, Matthew (2017). "A Paris Affair". Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe. Oxford University Press. p. 333. ISBN 978-0191017711.

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[1] Frank, Matthew (2017). "A Paris Affair". Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe. Oxford University Press. p. 333. ISBN 978-0191017711.