TROUBLE IN THE BALKANS. The Germans continue to bomb and strafe Britain, but the real drama in the war this week appears to be building in southeastern Europe. The Associated Press reports that Yugoslav Prime Minister Cvetkovic is defiantly rebuffing German and Italian demands that Yugoslavia abandon her neutrality and grant the Axis military concessions. The A.P. quotes the Prime Minister as saying that his country "was created in blood and only that way can territory be taken away from her." Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune’s Monday banner headline screams, "Red Troops Mass On Danube," and the accompanying story talks of "almost feverish military activity" by Soviet officers in the Russian-held Rumanian town of Cernauti. Radio reports say this morning that Turkey has ordered her nationals out of Rumania by Nov. 1 and is pledging aid to Greece in case the Greeks are attacked.
The European war is looking more and more like a brush fire spreading out of control. And all the U.S. can do about it is give as much help as possible to Britain. But the British are helpless as well if Hitler and Mussolini now decide they want to blow up the Balkan states.
WHAT’S HITLER UP TO IN RUMANIA? A New York Herald Tribune editorial Monday speculates on the possibilities --
"If Germany plans an offensive Rumania would furnish a base for operations in several directions. Direct pressure could be exerted on Yugoslavia. This might please Italy, and contribute to a further co-ordination of the Balkans under the Axis, but would have little immediate effect on the real war against Great Britain. Or the assistance of Bulgaria might be secured for an attack on Greece or Turkey. Success in this quarter would place the Axis in complete control of the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, and enable them to strike through Syria and Palestine toward Suez at the same time that Marshal Graziani was attacking Egypt from the west. A drive through Turkey, moreover, might be the opening wedge in an attack on the Irak oil fields."
But the Herald Tribune editors are dubious about all of those options -- "These are grandiose conceptions, bristling with military and geographical difficulties. For one thing, a German attack on Turkey would be the most flagrant insult that Hitler could offer to his comrade in the Kremlin. A strong power at the Dardanelles is the last thing the Russians wish to see – unless that power is Russia. Morever, to take on several new, if not particularly strong opponents in a terrain ill suited for mechanized warfare, does not seem a good risk for Germany in view of the relatively small stakes involved. The Nazis would be taking a roundabout and dangerous course to attack the British Empire in an area which is undoubtedly important, but not vital."
GERMANY WILL LIKELY GO FOR BROKE. What the Herald Tribune editors forget is that Hitler is, in columnist Barnet Nover's words, "a man in a hurry." Since the R.A.F. is now making a land invasion of Britain much costlier than anticipated, and perhaps impossible, the Fuehrer appears to be turning to a policy of strangling the British Empire by cutting off her oil and access to strategic ports and waterways. He doesn’t take Russia’s military seriously -- and considering the relative performance of the Red Army and the Reichswehr this past year, he’s probably right to discount the Soviets. Stalin knows he can’t risk a war with Hitler, and will stay on the sidelines, even if he has to swallow his pride. So, the Germans will almost surely launch an assault this fall on the Suez Canal and the oil regions of the Near East. The scariest thing about such a strategy is that Germany’s potential adversaries -- principally Turkey, Russia, Yugoslavia -- are disunited and in a position to be picked off or cowed into neutrality one by one. It’s a situation very much like the Western Front last winter, and we know how that turned out.
GERMAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS GOING DOWNHILL. On the other hand, a remarkable piece by C.L. Sulzberger in Sunday’s New York Times indicates just how much things have soured between Hitler and Stalin. The Times story says that Germany has decided to Nazify the Balkans, but a "nervous" Russia is indicating she won’t surrender her own expansionist aspirations in Europe, and won’t sit still for Germany to become a "far more immediate threat" to Soviet security interests in southeastern Europe --
"Behind the facade of friendship the struggle continues in the lands the Axis and Soviet systems encircle. While the Kremlin placates the Reich, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria are flooded with [Soviet] pamphlets attacking German and Italian imperialism and making no mention of the British. The Italians talk of the Russian menace. The Germans boast that when the day comes the Reichswehr will go through the Soviet Army ‘as a knife cuts a potato.’"
What’s really startling in all this is the casual manner in which the region’s diplomats now anticipate a war between the two giant dictatorships -- "Ever since the Vienna 'Diktat' and the Cralova corollary which further mutilated Rumania for the sake of Bulgaria many Balkan statesmen have been convinced that a Russo-German struggle was imminent. Count Czaky, Foreign Minister of Hungary, told the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee that Hungary must prepare soon for 'a possible blood sacrifice.' All sorts of rumors kept issuing from harassed Rumania about frontier incidents along the Pruth. It is now more than ever clear that the first Russian soldier overstepping the Soviet’s present limits in Central Europe would be looked on as a trespasser on the Reich’s territory and the war would be on."
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