Valley of Conquest

Battle fleets steaming eastward in the Mediterranean last week (see p. 30) put fresh fear in the hearts of the unhappy people who live in Southeast Europe. By land, too, danger came closer to those frightened neutral nations that lie in the path of eastward-looking conquerors. Troops stood ready for action a stone's throw from their frontiers; spies and quislings swarmed in their midst; while pressure politicians increased their demands for concessions and still more concessions. Signs of trouble:

>In Bucharest the German Legation entertained Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu and other prominent Rumanians with a newsreel of the conquest of Norway, a sequel to the Nazis' film of the blasting of Poland plugged so diligently around the neutral circuit this winter. Two days earlier the Government had nipped what it said was a plot to seize all the country's airfields, had rounded up 60 foreign "tourists"--British as well as German--in the Ploesti oil-field region. King Carol held another secret confab with Yugoslavia's regent, Prince Paul.

>Yugoslavia was scared stiff. Both Germany and Italy had troops massed near her frontiers (300,000 Italians were reported concentrated north of Fiume). Police uncovered an arsenal in a German cardboard factory. An Italian-Yugoslav commission investigated the death of one Italian soldier and the wounding of three others when Italian troops tried to disarm a Yugoslav sergeant on Yugoslav soil. The Italians said they thought the sergeant was in Italy.

>In Budapest, Dr. Geza Szullo, onetime champion of Hungarian interests in Czecho-Slovakia, told the Upper Chamber of Parliament that German-protected Slovakia was systematically abusing its Magyar minority, that Slovak propaganda was "making attempts to spoil the harmony between Germany and Hungary." This made the Senators so angry that Foreign Minister Count Stephen Csaky had to reply with a speech that was scarcely less inflammatory. Said he: "Hungary may have to take risks for the protection of her national honor. The Hungarian Government . . . will act at the appropriate moment." Germany shipped tanks and supplies to eastern Slovakia, concentrated troops near the Hungarian border--perhaps to keep the peace.

As such incidents multiplied, all Europe looked anxiously toward the valley of that great, sluggish river which Germans call Donau, Slavs Dunav, Magyars Duna, Rumanians Dunarea, English -speaking peoples Danube (see map). The nations of the Danube Basin knew their danger, knew also that for their chances of remaining unmolested a little longer they could thank the richness of their valley, since would-be conquerors might well destroy the prize they covet.

Blue & Yellow Danube. At Donaue-schingen in the Black Forest three small Alpine streams come together to form Europe's second longest river (the Volga is longer), which flows 1,750 miles across central and southeastern Europe to pour its waters into the Black Sea north of Constantsa. The Danube drains 320,200 square miles, has 300 tributaries; with the Rhine and the canal joining the two (now being improved at a cost of $300,000,000) it forms a waterway across Europe.

The upper Danube is German, has always been German. It flows through Sigmaringen, Ulm, Blenheim and Regensburg (Ratisbon), winding past castles set up on its cliffs, down into Old Austria to Linz and Vienna. This is the Danube of Strauss's waltz, but long before it reaches Vienna its blue has turned to a thick, dull yellow.

South of Vienna it is a commercial river, full of tugs, barges, river freighters, passenger steamers. It is also an international river, with grey monitors darting back & forth. From Vienna to the Iron Gate, before Anschluss, the Danube flowed through six countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania). A broad, wandering stream, sometimes breaking its banks and meandering off across the countryside, it is lined with small, dirty villages whose geese, horses and cattle go down to the river to drink. Now & then it passes a larger town like Esztergom or Novi Sad, a capital like Budapest or Belgrade.

Once it has cut through the Transylvanian Alps, the Danube deepens, can float steamers that come in from the Black Sea laden with produce and oil. The lower Danube is almost entirely Rumanian, although 220 miles of its south bank are Bulgarian. If Bulgaria had Dobruja, she would share the lower Danube to the sea.

Bloody History. Once the Danube was a peaceful stream. That was before history began, when the river flowed from the Alps to an inland sea that covered what is now the flat, fertile Hungarian puszta. Then the sea overflowed the Transylvanian Alps, cut the narrow gorge at the Iron Gate, and bloody history began.

Rumanians tell legends of their Dacian forefathers who always drank of the Danube's waters to fortify themselves before joining battle with other tribes, and many a riverman today would rather quaff a beer mug full of the stream's yellow water than the product of wells ashore. Still in existence is the military road Roman Emperor Trajan cut out of the Danube's cliffs, in 98 A.D. The Romans held the valley until the Fifth Century, when the Huns and Goths overran it.

By the Seventh Century the Avars had moved in. Two hundred years later Charlemagne marched eastward, warred for seven years on the Danubian plains, exterminated the Avars. In the Ninth Century the Magyars from beyond the Volga descended on the war-torn valley, made themselves masters of it. Their rule lasted until the Turks began fighting their way up the river, taking more than 200 years to conquer Belgrade, then Budapest, only to be stopped at the gates of Vienna. In the 17th Century Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes fought the Germans on the banks of the Danube. In the 19th, Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armee captured the river's birthplace, Donaueschingen, marched on to and through Vienna. In World War I, which began in the valley, Germany and Austria conquered all of the Danube. Since 1938 Adolf Hitler has added 340 miles of the river to the German Reich. He has 1,058 miles still to go.

Path of Empire. From Europe to the Near East the best and shortest land route is down the Danube Valley. Attila the Hun marched through what are now Hungary and Yugoslavia (he is buried at Senta in Yugoslavia), and Wilhelm II once dreamed of using this route for his Drang nach Osten. For Adolf Hitler's swift mechanized legions the plains of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria are ideally adapted. The small gunboats he is building in Vienna could easily convoy bargeloads of troops down the broad slow river. Whoever controls the Danube controls the destinies of four countries and most of Southeast Europe, and the most persistently repeated German demand of the last four months has been for the right to police the whole river. Last week both Yugoslavia and Rumania turned down the proposal, offered by Hungary as Germany's stooge.

Life Line. Since World War II began, almost all the foreign oil Germany imports, and wheat from the entire valley, is carried up the Danube, which has thus become her southeastern life line. But Allied agents are as thick as German spies in the Balkans, buying up wheat and oil, chartering ships and sending them out of the river to keep Germany from using them. Of late the Allies have equaled or exceeded German purchases of Yugoslav horses, lead, copper and timber, Rumanian wheat, Hungarian beans, flax and oakum. Discovery of an alleged Allied plot to block the Iron Gate (TIME, April 15) frightened Germany half to death. Germany would fight for her life line as readily as she would keep the peace, if that would better secure Danubian commerce.

Prize. If she fights--and wins--Germany will almost certainly place the valley in economic as well as political vassalage. For the Danube Valley is rich in the natural resources Germany lacks. Last fall Hungarian wheat exports were the third largest in the world (Canada was first, Argentina second) and Rumania's were only slightly smaller. Besides wheat, Rumania grows maize, barley, oats, rye. Yugoslavia's big crop is maize, but she produces also sugar beets, tobacco, hemp, flax, oilseed plants, fruits, pigs. Bulgaria raises all these, plus sunflower seeds (for soap), plus acres & acres of roses for making attar of roses.

Since they are farmed almost entirely by peasants, the great plains of the Danube Valley are only partly developed agriculturally, with mechanization and planning could be made to yield far more. And Germany could develop Hungary's bauxite (onefourth of the world's deposits), lignite, coal and iron ore; Rumania's coal, lignite, bauxite, manganese, lead, silver, zinc; Yugoslavia's manganese, bauxite, iron--not to mention oil, tapped and untapped, from them all.

One Master or Three? The Danubian countries have never been able to get along with one another. Racial problems and national jealousies have always divided them one against another, split them internally as well. Germany used to ship from the Black Sea to the North Sea via the Mediterranean to save excessive river duties and delays. A canoeist going from Vienna to Turnu-Severin would have to pay duty on his craft four times. Many a politico-economist from Metternich on has held that these States would be worth their salt only if ruled by one master.

Adolf Hitler would like nothing better than to be that one. Besides the Allies (who have the disadvantage of distance) and the Danubian countries themselves (who have the disadvantage of weakness), only two other forces stood in his way last week. One was Italy, who, if there was a grab in the Balkans, stood ready to grab her share. The other was Russia. In Moscow trade negotiations with Yugoslavia were going nicely, and the Danube's other Slavic State, Bulgaria, is a good little friend to the U. S. S. R. If Russia wanted to protect what she considers her interests in the Balkans, Bulgaria might easily do a Denmark. The age-old dream of Pan-Slavism is a nightmare every German dreads.

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