871.01/12–944: Telegram
The American Representative in Rumania (Berry) to the Secretary of State
[Received 9:45 p.m.]
52. A few days ago Maniu told Le Rougetel, my British colleague, that if the British Government wished that Rumania cast her lot with the Soviets rather than with the Anglo-Saxon powers, in case a decision become[s] necessary, he would quite understand the position but he would be grateful to receive an indication to that effect. In transmitting this statement to British Foreign Office, Le Rougetel said he was convinced Maniu was genuinely seeking guidance and suggested this inquiry could be used as [a peg?] upon which to convey a message to Maniu.
Last evening with me Maniu developed more fully the same thought. He said if he had known the Soviets were to be given a free hand in application of armistice terms he would not have advised the King to sign the armistice. He argued that his pressure and the Rumanian action which resulted from it had actually advanced the Foscani–Galatz line, which might have been held a long time, to the very gates of Budapest.
He told of an approach made to him by Molotov a year ago regarding future relationship between Rumania and the Soviet Union and explained that because of his loyalty to the democratic powers he had not accepted his approach. He was convinced at that time that the democratic powers would preserve an independent and sovereign Rumania. Everything today however indicated that this was not the intention of those powers. On the contrary it appeared that Soviet Russia was deliberately planning to communize Rumania while the democratic powers silently watched. To support his point he cited such examples as the installing of Hungarian Communists in administrative positions in northern Transylvania; the steadily advancing Soviet colonizing of Constantza; and the recent request of Malinovsky that the whole of the four Rumanian countries [counties] in Translyvania which were divided between Rumania and Hungary by the Vienna dictate be turned over to Soviet and Hungarian administration.
With considerable emotion Maniu asked if America and Great Britain wished Rumania to become a part of the Soviet Union. “If so, please advise me accordingly for this can be easily arranged and even today late as it is I can arrange it to the better advantage to Rumania than can the Rumanian Communists.” Then he repeated that if it were our intention to abandon Rumania we owed him [Page 280] the obligation of telling him so and he owed the Rumanian people the obligation of securing the best possible terms for them.
I told Maniu that as far as I knew the statement made by Molotov last spring and the articles of the armistice indicated that the three principal Allies expected Rumania to be an independent and sovereign state.
The Department well knows that Maniu has stood out boldly as a champion of pro-Allied action and sentiment in Rumania even during the dark days of the Antonescu dictatorship. He has an enormous political following in the country and I believe the respect in which all Rumanians hold him eclipses that held for any other Rumanian. Because of what he has been and what he is it seems important that he be preserved from slipping into sharing the general conviction that the dissolution of the Rumanian state is now in progress. Reference my No. 42, November 30, 6 p.m.87 In view of the foregoing I suggest that any message from which Maniu could take heart would be timely.
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