Hitler's Europe

That smart and slippery politician, King Carol II of Rumania, last week lost no time in coming to terms with continental Europe's new master. No sooner had France asked for peace than Carol, in a sweeping decree, made Rumania a totalitarian State. A single new Party of the Nation was established and the Nazi Iron Guard and anti-Semitic "National Generation of 1922" invited to join. The last imprisoned members of the Iron Guard were set free and an announcement said that "officials responsible for killing Iron Guardists in recent years" will be punished. This obviously did not apply to King Carol, who will be boss of the New Rumania.

"That which the Fuehrer has accomplished for Germany our King has accomplished for us," cried Propaganda Minister Constantino Giurescu. Iron Guard Leader Horia Sima, last month an exile in Germany, now Carol's pal, was more realistic. Commanding his comrades to join Fuehrer Hohenzollern's Party, he sighed: "The whole world is going topsyturvy. We are going to have a new arrangement of countries and peoples. It is possible our country will meet with misfortune. The King's new Party will enable us to face the future."

Rumania did not have to wait long for that future to materialize. This week Russian planes began making reconnaissance flights over Bessarabia. Then border clashes were reported all along the Dnestr River. Though the Rumanian Army made a show of resistance for the record, it has no chance of stopping the Russians without help, and Germany had already acknowledged Russia's claim to Bessarabia in secret deals last year.

Rumania had accepted her destiny in the new Europe that Hitler plans (TIME, June 3). She will also lose Transylvania to Hungary and probably a part of the Dobruja to Bulgaria, which last week turned from Russia and began courting the Axis. Sofia newspapers yelled for revision of the Treaty of Neuilly. Bulgaria wants not only the Dobruja but an outlet to the Aegean Sea, through Greece. That could be worked, too, because last week Greek

Premier John Metaxas was also ready to take orders from the Axis.

In the Balkans only Yugoslavia's Regent Prince Paul still held out. Italy wanted him to replace Premier Dragisha Cvetkovitch with Dr. Ante Pavelitch, a fugitive in Italy for plotting the assassination of King Alexander I. Germany wanted Dr. Milan Stoyadinovitch, who was recently released from jail after being caught in a fifth-column roundup (TIME, April 29). Whichever way Prince Paul moved, his country was doubtless in for some territorial revisions too.

Russia's Sphere. Russia was preoccupied with consolidating her own position to the east of Hitler's Europe. On the heels of her occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, those three countries set up left-wing Governments that looked like steppingstones to complete sovietization. Hotly Russia's official news agency Tass denied that her Baltic grab was aimed against Germany. Tass said only 18 or 20 divisions, not the 100 reported from London, had moved into the Baltic States. Germany took the occupation calmly. Germany's calm was doubtless real, since last year's deals gave Russia a free hand in the Baltic as well as Bessarabia.

Scandinavia. The Swedish Riksdag met in secret session for the third time since World War II began. Reason: conditions in Norway, where the German-controlled press was agitating for new Storting elections to depose King Haakon VII and set up a Nazi Government. Whether Norway would again be united with Sweden, or Sweden simply dominate Scandinavia under German direction, Hitler's Northern Union seemed destined to be realized.

Congress of Berlin? From Bucharest, Correspondent Walter Duranty cabled a story that Germany would soon summon all Europe except Russia and Turkey to a congress at Berlin which would revise national boundaries and set up Hitler's plan for a five-zone Europe guided by the Third Reich. Wrote he:

"Within a month from today, there will not be a single Englishman on the continent of Europe outside of prison or a concentration camp, nor a dollar's worth of British business, if the German plans work out as the Germans believe they must."

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