740.0011 European War 1939/5603: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:20 p.m.]
1198. Department’s 537, September 13, 4 p.m.22 Gafencu, the Rumanian Minister, called on me yesterday. He stated he was convinced [Page 517] there had been no Soviet-German cooperation in regard to the Rumanian question at any stage. While presumably the Soviet Government may have been informed of the results of the Salzburg Conference in July23 and of developments subsequent thereto such exchanges had been merely in the form of information and did not constitute prior consultation with the Soviet Government. In respect of the Italian-German guaranty of Rumania, the Minister confirmed the information contained in Embassy’s 1144, September 10, 11 a.m.,24 to the effect that the Soviet Government had been informed by the German Ambassador either at the very last moment or even subsequent to the announcement and that there was little doubt as to Soviet influence of Italian move. He added that the Italian Ambassador here25 was of the opinion that the guaranty had been deliberately designed to oppose Soviet pretentions in the Balkans. The Minister likewise stated that it was his impression that at his interview with Dekanosov on August 29, which was made the subject of the communiqué in regard to the alleged border incidents (see the Embassy’s 1088, August 30) the Soviets had been motivated by the desire to proclaim their interest in the Rumanian question in anticipation of the possibility of a confused situation or even conflict between Rumania and Hungary from which the Soviet Union might profit. (It will be noted that this confirms the view of the Italian Secretary reported in the Embassy’s 1160, September 13, 6 p.m.) Gafencu went on to say that Vishinski’s protest to German Ambassador in regard to the exclusion of the Soviet Union from the Danube Conference in Vienna had been acrimonious as the Soviet Union felt that this exclusion had been deliberate and evidenced an anti-Soviet policy. He added that according to his information in reply to the Soviet protest, the German Government had agreed to include the Soviet Union in a comparatively unimportant meeting of technical experts but not in a second and more important Danubian Conference which was to be held simultaneously to consider general policies affecting the Danube. Gafencu informed me that on September 17 he had transmitted such a note from his Government to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs concerning the Soviet protest of September 12 (see the Embassy’s 1157, September 13) and that this reply, as in the first Rumanian note had been firm in rejecting responsibility for the incidents. The Minister added that he attached some importance to the fact that no mention had appeared in the Soviet press in regard to the second note and he was inclined to believe that, [Page 518] for the moment at least, the Soviet Union was willing to let the question of the border incidents subside.
- Not printed. The Department was interested in ascertaining the opinion of the Rumanian Minister in the Soviet Union, Grigore Gafencu, regarding “how far Russian-German collaboration went during the recent Rumanian crisis prior to the German-Italian guarantee of Rumania.” (740.0011 European War 1939/5456)↩
- Records of these conversations are printed in Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, series D, vol. x, pp. 301–316.↩
- Post, p. 562.↩
- Augusto Rosso.↩