RUMANIA FORSAKES HITLER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 24 August 1944, Page 4

RUMANIA FORSAKES HITLER

THE house that Hitler built is fast tumbling about his ears and the crashes reverberate round the world. One of the lesser pillars of the idolators’ temple was Rumania, where Dictator Antonescu goose-stepped his Iron Guard and became the little Hitler of the Balkans. It was his fiat which turned Rumania into a German vassal state; on his decree Rumania sent her armies to bleed on the Russian steppes a year after the Soviet ultimatum had forced satisfaction of Moscow’s territorial claims regarding Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

At the height of his evil triumph Hitler could afford to be . generous with other people’s property and reward his satellite with the prize of Odessa and Russian territory beyond the Dniester. But where are those spoils now, where is Rumanian subservience to the swastika and where is Antonescu! Rumania is out of the war on Hitler’s side and in with the Allies; Antonescu is well out of the new national government which hqs been formed and which has accepted the peace terms of Russia after their confirmation by Britain and the United States. She has beaten all the Nazi partners except Italy out of the Axis camp, thereby forestalling Bulgaria, who may follow very soon. Considering her folly, Rumania may be accounted lucky, for the peace terms are described as generous and Rumanian independence has been guaranteed by the United Nations. This will be subject to certain territorial adjustments, one of which is the return of that part of Transylvania ceded to Hungary under the Vienna award. The new administration announces that Rumania is taking her destiny into her own hands.. Good-bye to Hitler’s Balkan bloc, which has long had dangerous fissures showing, and goodbye for Germany to what the Allied bombers have left of the Ploesti oilfields.