740.00/266
The Minister in Albania (Grant) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 13, 1938.]
Sir: I have the honor to inform the Department that I was received in audience by His Majesty King Zog on Friday, December 17, 1937. I remarked to the King that since I had recently completed a tour of several Central European and Balkan countries, namely Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Greece and Turkey, and had received certain impressions of the general political situation through my contacts, I desired to have His Majesty’s opinion regarding the European political situation with a view of determining how far wrong my own views may be. The King responded immediately, as he has done in previous audiences, and prefacing his remarks with the statement: “I am speaking openly and as a friend to Your Excellency, as I always have”, launched into a discussion of the political situation which continued for more than an hour. As I have pointed out in previous despatches, King Zog is a student and follows closely the political trends of Europe. During the recent celebration of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Albanian Independence he held numerous conversations with visiting delegates, including a number of high-ranking officials and ex-officials, from Central European countries as well as from Italy and Greece. The substance of the King’s [Page 208] remarks regarding the European situation in the audience granted to me is set forth below.
“Great Britain wants to give Germany some colonies in order to get her back into the League of Nations. This is the meaning of the Halifax-Hitler conversations. In order to forestall Great Britain, Mussolini has quit the League. The German Army is not yet sufficiently prepared for an offensive and it will not be prepared for another three or four years. As I said to Your Excellency nearly a year ago, Italy has completely given up the idea of defending Austria and the occupation of Austria by Germany is a foregone conclusion. It is only a matter of time—until the German Army is properly prepared. Italy cannot and will not stop it. In Germany the military preparations do not follow politics, but politics follows military preparations. Hence, when the German General Staff is ready the Army will march into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Germany’s present wish is to tie up Czechoslovakia with a treaty similar to that with Austria. But there is nothing to stop Germany from invading these two European countries when the time comes. Germany is preparing slowly, because it lacks raw materials. Italo-German cooperation has been formulated for the purpose of discovering sources of raw materials and technicians have been sent to Ethiopia, the Balkan countries and Central Europe. Let us bear in mind that it is not merely for ethnical reasons, i. e., the desire to unite the Germanic peoples that prompts Germany to resolve to send its Army down the Danube. The principal objective is the acquisition of the vast iron deposits in Bohemia.
“I am visualizing the situation three or four years from now”, the King continued, “At first—a year ago—I thought that the war would break out within two years, but I have changed my mind. In fact, I believe the war may be avoided if Germany can achieve her aspirations in Central Europe in a peaceable manner. A Czechoslovak who was here during the Twenty-fifth Anniversary celebration and who is a close friend of President Beneš talked with me and asked my opinion of the situation in Central Europe. I told him that as I see the situation Czechoslovakia might as well capitulate to Germany now because terms are better now than they will be after three or four years.
“Let me tell Your Excellency what King Alexander of Yugoslavia stated to a friend of mine just before he was killed. He said: ‘If I fight to defend Austria from the Germans I must do so with my whole Army, but by the time I get my Army to the Austrian frontier half of it will be destroyed by the Hungarians. And do you think that I can go against the German Army with only half of my Army, and that demoralized?’ Incidentally, my Minister for Foreign Affairs will bear witness to the fact that when King Alexander desired to go [Page 209] to France I sent word to him warning him not to go by way of Marseilles because Marseilles is France’s most adventurous port.
“The Yugoslavs have therefore given up their plan of defending Austria. That is the reason they have recently become friendly with Italy. Now they are trying to come to terms with Germany. As for the Hungarians, let them say all they want to say, but they will not feel badly if Germany occupies the Central European countries.”
I said to the King that when I was in Berlin recently I conversed with an official who is very high in the Nazi Government regarding the practical aspects of the Rome-Berlin Axis, and that this gentleman remarked that there is “A lot of bluffing going on”. I said that I also spoke with many of the rank and file of German people and that these people said they are content and do not want another war. One man whom I interviewed at Berchtesgaden, where Hitler has his summer home, said emphatically, “We do not want war, for if we go to war the whole world will be against us again”. However, on all sides I saw evidence of the worship of Hitler as the saviour of the Nation and it seemed to me that if Hitler should tell the people tomorrow to go to war they probably would take up arms enthusiastically. This, I observed, is the psychology of the German situation as I saw it during my recent tour.
The King replied: “If the Germans do not want war, why then all of these armaments? Here in Europe public opinion does not count. Hitler is public opinion in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia. Whatever they say goes. Germany will be satisfied with the acquisition of Central Europe. She does not care anything about distant places such as the Cameroons. The National Socialist Party in Germany was formed with the sole object of uniting Austria to Germany.”
“Is the Little Entente demolished as the result of the new Italo-Yugoslav friendship?” I inquired of His Majesty.
“No, the Little Entente stands”, the King replied. “Yugoslavia will remain loyal to the Little Entente and to France as long as it can but it is only a loyalty of form. Italy and Yugoslavia have had a thorough understanding”.
“Italy,” His Majesty continued, “is prepared for war to the maximum. I say to the maximum because even if she waits another ten years to strike she cannot be prepared any better than she is today. The Italian General Staff says that Italy can equip ten million soldiers. This is the best she can do. Therefore, Italy is ready to make war, but she will not make it alone. She is waiting until Germany is ready. If the Ethiopian and the Mediterranean questions can be settled according to Italy’s desires there will be no war in Europe. I asked the British Minister one day if he thought the Canadian, the [Page 210] Australian and the South African soldiers would come to Europe to fight in defense of Austrian independence. In order to save the British Minister from embarrassment I did not let him answer my question. As I have said, if war is to be prevented the Ethiopian and the Mediterranean questions must be settled—to correspond with Italy’s desires.”
His Majesty reiterated a statement he has made to me on previous occasions to the effect that a general war could be avoided through close collaboration between the United States and Great Britain. I referred to the tense Far Eastern situation and observed that another incident such as the flagrant attack on the United States gunboat “Panay”6 by the Japanese would likely arouse the American public to emotions similar to those which plunged America into the World War in 1917. I added that the President necessarily must be guided by public opinion in dealing with foreign relations and that public opinion, which is formulated largely by the people of the great rural sections of America who are not much concerned with world affairs, had not reacted completely to the President’s Chicago speech. The King replied:
“I read all of His Excellency President Roosevelt’s Chicago speech and I was very much impressed by it. Your President appears a greater man when he loses than when he wins.
“The Chinese situation”, the King continued, “might possibly be settled by following England’s example in Egypt—Turkish sovereignty and British occupation. In China let Japan occupy the five Chinese provinces and let the dry, soulless Chinese sovereignty be over these provinces.”
In conclusion the King said: “We will have peace for three or four years more; that is, comparative peace, for we will continue to have a blow out here and a blow out there, as in Spain and in the Far East. During these three or four years of comparative peace we (Albania) must advance, and that is what I wrote to my Prime Minister a few weeks ago. But I am a firm believer that Anglo-American collaboration can save the world from plunging into a war. We, too, have aspirations, but we are a small country and we work for peace.”
After an exchange of courtesies, in the course of which the King expressed appreciation of my felicitations upon the excellence of the program of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Albanian Independence and of the Legation’s cooperation in connection with the jubilee, I took my leave.
Respectfully yours,
- See Vol. iv, pp. 485 ff., and Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. i, pp. 517 ff.↩