BULGARIA GIVEN UP FOR LOST

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 13 February 1941, Page 6

BULGARIA GIVEN UP FOR LOST

GENERAL OPINION IN TURKEY Springboard for Southward Drive STREAM OF GERMAN TROOPS AND MATERIALS CONTINUES i United Press Association—Ry Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 13th February, 2.0 p.m.) LONDON, 12th February. The certainty of the early German occupation of Bulgaria as a springboard for a drive southward, south eastward or both is even more unreservedly accepted in the neighbouring countries today as a stream of German troops and war materials continues unabated across Hungary and Rumania. Because the Turkish attitude is vitally important much attention is directed to the discussion in Turkish diplomatic circles where it is assumed the Germans in the event of the occupation of Bulgaria will adopt methods causing the least alarm to Bulgaria s neighbours. To avoid provoking Turkey, German occupation might be restricted to western Bulgaria from which she would be able to threaten Salonika if the Greeks resisted German pressure to make peace with Italy. This would create a military problem directly interesting the English, Greeks and Yugoslavs rather than the Turks. Should Germany advance into eastern Bulgaria towards the Turkish frontiers some Turkish circles consider that the Allies should move against Bulgaria from Thrace before Bulgaria is completely filled by Germans. /Reuter’s Ankara correspondent says that well-informed Ankara circles assume that neither the English nor Turkish General Staffs desire an action jeopardising the defence of the straits and also recognise that the strength of the Turkish army lies in the defensive rather than the offensive. Meanwhile the Turkish Xaovernment is maintaining close contact with the British Government although they are reported as not yet convinced that a German march is imminent. Turkish general opinion however has given up Bulgaria for lost. “The Times” Sofia correspondent emphasised the almost complete unanimity of Bulgarian official and political circles that Bulgaria must stay out of the war and that any resistance of the German army across the Danube would be suicide. The Bulgarians, however, believe that the arrival of German troops may bring Turkish military action for which the Bulgarians’ diplomacy both in Ankara and Sofia is desperately attempting to secure a Turkish guarantee that the German passage across Bulgaria would not be considered a casus belli against Bulgaria. According to Ankara information German penetration in Bulgaria has not gone as far as Mr Churchill suggested.