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The Suicide of Europe Books by Prince Michel Sturdza THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE BOOKS BY PRINCE MICHEL STURDZA The Suicide of Europe La Roumaine Peut-elle Combattre sur Deux Fronts? Avec 1'Armee Roumaine Crise Econimique et Reforme Monetaire Czecho-Soviet Protectorate or Independent Rumanian Kingdom? La Bete sans Nom Katanga : El Occidente al Servicio del Communismo Open Letter to Their Excellencies World Government and International Assassination And You Tomorrow (To be published) Introduction to a Parabiology (To be published) THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE MEMOIRS OF PRINCE MICHEL STURDZA, FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUMANIA WESTERN ISLANDS PUBLISHERS BOSTON LON ANGELES COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY MICHEL STURDZA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WESTERN ISLANDS 395 CONCORD AVENUE BELMONT, MASSACHUSETTS 02178 Direct quotations taken from the following sources have been reprinted in this book with written permission of the respective publishers : F . J . P . Veale, Advance to Barbarism (C . C . Nelson Publishing Company, Appleton, Wisconsin, © 1953) Hans Rogger and Eugene Weber, eds., The European Right, a Historical Profile (University of California Press, Berkeley, © 1965) Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, © 1950) Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, © 1953) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER : 68-58294 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side . We will bury you ." NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV Moscow, November 16, 1956 Table of Contents Introduction ix Analytical Chronology xxxi PART ONE PRELUDE I The Past in Us 3 II Early Posts and World War I 12 III The Beast and Its Friends 17 IV The European Right and Professor Weber's Special Assignment 25 PART TWO TITULESCU, THE ENEMY'S AGENT V Riga and the Pacts of Nonaggression 45 VI Titulescu to the Rescue 52 VII A Strange Railway Agreement 58 VIII The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram .. 64 PART THREE KING CAROL THE MURDERER IX Titulescu and the Military Alliances with Soviet Russia 81 X Prelude to War 90 XI Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools 100 XII From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion 108 XIII Visit to London and Codreanu's Assassination- The Two Grynszpans 116 XIV Codreanu's Suppression and Hitler's Policy 121 XV The Phony Guarantees 127 XVI The First Betrayal of Poland 134 vii viii / Contents XVII Danger of Peace-Massacre of the Legionaries 145 XVIII The Panicky Tyrant 150 XIX The Arbitration of Vienna and the Legionary Movement 157 PART FOUR ANTONESCU, THE INSANE LEADER XX A Tortured Man 167 XXI Bloodshed in Transylvania, Visit to Rome- The Two Forums 175 XXII Visit to Berlin-Four Are Three 183 XXIII Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present 188 XXIV More About Truth and Directed Information 196 XXV Another Night in Jilava 200 XXVI How We Parted 207 XXVII Antonescu's Putsch 211 XXVIII Fooled Again 217 XXIX Too Late, Gentlemen! 225 PART FIVE MICHAEL: THE PUPPET KING XXX Falsehood, The Scoundrels' Weapon 231 XXXI Roving in Foreign Parts 239 XXXII The Betrayed Army 244 XXXIII Posthumous Triumph 250 XXXIV When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved 256 XXXV Hungarian Intermezzo 265 XXXVI The End and After 268 Post Scriptum 279 Appendix Diplomatic Papers of the United States and Rumania's Capitulation 289 A Selected Bibliography 301 Index of Persons 305 General Index 325 Introduction But who dares call the child by its right name? The few who knowing something about it Were foolish enough not to guard it in their hearts, Those who have shown the people their feeling and their thoughts Have been since always crucified or burned at the stake . GOETHE-Faust I This book is not a history of Europe nor of Rumania nor even of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, but rather the memoirs of one man who has been a witness and a participant in the events which, for hundreds of millions of people, have turned a century so full of promise into an eternity of suffering and slavery . From the first days of the Russian Revolution, this man understood the terrible danger which the Soviet regime represented not only for his own country but also for Europe and the entire world . From that time, his political thinking and activities were unswervingly directed by a growing con- sciousness of this danger and by the necessity, to which circumstances made him particularly obligated, to inform or to fight those in his nation who were, or pretended to be, blind to the magnitude and the imminence of this peril . Prince Michel Sturdza, a former Foreign Minister of Rumania, served in the diplomatic corps of his country for twenty-five years without any interruption other than for his tour of duty during World War I, in which he fought first in a squadron of mounted artillery and then as chief of an armored car section, and for a period of service as prefect in Transylvania. During his career, he held posts in Durazzo (Albania), Athens, Bern, Budapest, Vienna, Washington (as Councillor and then Charge d'Affaires of the Rumanian Legation) ; he acted as Envoy Extraordinary and as Minister Plenipotentiary in Riga, Reval, Helsinki, and Copenhagen . His time abroad was interrupted several times by periods of service in the Foreign Office in Bucharest . As a result of violent conflict with King Carol II and his Govern- ment, concerning Rumania's internal and foreign policy, Prince Sturdza was forced to leave the diplomatic service for a short time after the ix x / Introduction outbreak of World War II . In 1940 he was appointed as Foreign Min- ister in the first cabinet following the abdication of King Carol . In 1945 he belonged, again as Foreign Minister, to the Rumanian Govern- ment in Exile, which refused to recognize the capitulation of King Michael to Soviet Russia. Since that time he has continued his fight against the irreconcilable enemy of his motherland and of Western Civilization . These memoirs center around three basic dramas, all of them inter- related and all, for the most part, unknown to the Western reader : the role of pacts of military alliance between France, Czecho-Slovakia and Soviet Russia in bringing on World War II, the attempts of Germany to avoid a Western war, and the story of the Legion of the Archangel Michael . Prince Sturdza maintains that Rumania was the pivotal point in the events leading to the war . So because Rumania plays such an important part in this book, it is wise to briefly review her history . The reader should remember that the Rumanians do not consider their nation a Balkan country, but rather a Danubian state, like Austria and Hungary, and with roots deep in Western Civilization . The Rumanians are not Slavs ; historically, and in a large part ethni- cally, the Rumanian people are the heirs of the Dacians . The ancient kingdom of Dacia covered and went beyond the area of the Rumania of 1939; its population, which was an offshoot of the Thracian race, appears to have developed its own particular characteristics from years of isolation in the valleys of Transylvania whence settlers and warriors spread east to the Dniester and west to the vicinity of what is now Vienna, covering the area which was to become Dacia . The Dacian villages (davae, meaning a confederation of villages, may be the origin of Dacia) were forged into a real power and an actual empire under the kingship of Burebista . This expansion, combined with her geographical position, soon brought Dacia into conflict with Rome . After years of war and hostilities, the Dacians, led by Decebalus, were defeated in 105 A .D . by the Roman Emperor Trajan . The Dacian prisoners sculptured on the column raised by Trajan to commemorate his victory are, in their physical type, their clothes, and their foot-wear, identical with the Rumanian peasants of the present century . Defeat brought Roman garrisons, Roman colonists, and the Latin language ; this occupation went deep enough in its penetration of Dacia to result in Latin becoming the basic element in what has developed into the Rumanian language . With the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 271 A .D . by the Emperor Aurelian, Rumania was left undefended and open to all Introduction / xi attacks . Wave after wave of barbarians passed through the country . All trace of colonial rule would have been obliterated, as happened in Bulgaria, except that the wealth of the country was not great enough or concentrated enough to encourage the marauders to settle down, and, secondly, the inhabitants withdrew into the mountain valleys, par- ticularly those of Transylvania. We do not know when this migration to shelter began, how long it lasted, or at what cost it was undertaken . But late in the Thirteenth Century the process was reversed as a part of the Rumanian nobility, with their followers, left Transylvania and migrated eastward to found what were to become the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia. These two separate states were formed by the merger of the Rumanians from Transylvania with indigenous Ruman- ian settlements . From the very beginning, the Walachians under the Bassarab dynasty and the Moldavians under the Mushats had to struggle constantly against attempted encroachments by their neighbors . Hungary had already occupied much of Transylvania, and continually strove to con- quer more and more Rumanian territory . The Tartars raided, and even launched full scale invasions against, the principalities until the very end of the Sixteenth Century . Poland maintained pretensions over northern Moldavia . And finally towards the end of the Fourteenth Century, the Turks began their raids which would steadily grow in size and ferocity. Thus the Rumanians were perpetually at war, often with both Christians and Moslems at the same time. The independence of Walachia was originally secured by the victory of Ivanco (?-1330) over King Charles Robert of Hungary ; the Walach- ian position was strengthened by Vladislav Bassarab's (1360-1374) defeat of an attack by Charles Robert's son, King Louis the Great .
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