740.0011 European War 1939/15609: Telegram
The Minister in Rumania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 4—9:07 p.m.]
872. The Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs late yesterday gave me a glimpse only of what is purported to be a “military convention” just signed with the Germans ceding all Rumania’s claims to territory over the Dniester and stipulating that Rumania’s boundaries on the east should be those of 1919 and on the northwest that of Poland at the time. Mr. Mihai Antonescu seemed very pleased that he had succeeded in having inserted Poland and showed me the word himself. I suggested that he let me have a copy of this military convention and alluded vaguely to the declared British attitude regarding Finland but he smilingly demurred, saying that he would see whether he could let me have parts of it.
In view of his statement that Rumania was ceding claim to all territory over the Dniester, I asked him just why such a costly effort was being made to take Odessa—I now estimate total Rumanian casualties at about 110,000 since the beginning of the war. He replied that he was beginning to ask himself just that question but observed, as usual, that in view of German assistance in the recovery of Bessarabia it was impossible for the Rumanians to refuse to go further. I then stressed the particularly heavy losses before Odessa, which he did not deny, due to lack of heavy artillery—it is reported that some German naval guns have now reached that front—and the strength of the Russian defenses, and I referred to the token force incorporated with the Germans now fighting beyond the Dnieper. He admitted this but argued that in this case too it would have seemed ungrateful to have refused to go on, especially as these troops were a part of the joint army under Von Schobert as distinguished from the solely Rumanian force under [Page 333] General Ciuperca, who has been replaced by General Iacobici, which worked down towards Odessa. I feel that a great many of the Rumanian troops with the Germans over the Dnieper River may have been withdrawn already as the Minister of Education, General Rosetti, whose word I would take, yesterday assured me that there were no more than 40,000 at the present time. He is in a position to know from his attendance at Cabinet.
Mihai Antonescu told me that he had consented to go along with the Germans on the condition only that Rumania would not be expected to take action against its former allies, including Yugoslavia and especially Turkey. He alluded to the Yugoslav Banat question and stressed his Government’s loyal stand in refusing to be an accomplice in its partition and the Timoc Valley which, however, he insisted was ethnically Rumanian to all intents and purposes. He said that as far as he knew there was nothing new in regard to the Banat and, although the question may have been discussed again by Horthy and De Bárdossy with Hitler at their recent meeting, the German Government was fully aware of his Government’s adamant stand in that regard—it was in regard also to Transylvania and its non-acceptance of the Vienna diktat.