Where Next?

Restless spring had come at last to Europe, and last week Europe's peoples were on the move. The tall fighting people of Germany marched into Denmark and Norway and some of the peaceful people of those countries--refugees, frightened liberals, Jews--fled to Sweden. From Malmoe in Sweden, a short ferry ride from German-held Copenhagen, Swedes who had not seen war in their lifetimes moved inland. Well-fed Dutch burghers in cities near the German frontier packed up and went to Amsterdam; from Eindhoven a thousand women and children took the broad, flat road to Utrecht. Refugees from once-German Eupen and Malmedy had already fled toward Brussels. In the Danube Valley and the Balkans, Serbs, Croats, Magyars, Rumanians, Bulgars and Greeks, trapped on all sides by war and threats of war, would have liked to move somewhere, if only they had somewhere to move to.

Not a spot on the continent of Europe, large or small, was safe. Not since the first decade of the 19th Century, when Bonaparte was on the prowl, had panic so seized Europe. Caught in the relentless pressure of power politics, the politicians of the smaller nations were as helpless as their people. The fate of their countries was in the hands of belligerents and near-belligerents; neutrality no longer seemed possible.

Tragically significant for Europe's people were the words that came out of Italy. Darkling Fascist Grand Councilman Roberto Farinacci, a onetime Socialist often used effectively by Benito Mussolini to sound off to the Italian masses, wrote in his Cremona paper Regime Fascista: "Now we can speak high and loud. . . . It is absurd to think that our country . . . shall not participate in the transformation of the map of Europe and perhaps of the world." In a broadcast to Italian troops at week's end, Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano's mouthpiece, Giovanni Ansaldo, said: "No people in Europe can isolate itself from conflict." Italy, Mouthpiece Ansaldo went on, has been preparing herself "for the occasion and the moment which will be most opportune for it. This occasion and this moment . . . may be much nearer than is believed." Only six days earlier Il Duce had cried at Orvieto: "Whatever may be the happenings which this late spring brings us, Italy will face them."

At any moment war might strike again, from the North Cape to the Peloponnesus.

In the North. Three years ago at a dinner in Lund, Sweden's Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson made this statement: "No earthly power can prevent Sweden's fighting on the side of a Denmark in distress." Long before Denmark came to distress last week it was plain that Sweden would not fight side by side with anybody against Germany, unless Germany forced her to do so. Sweden's cultural and economic ties with Germany are too strong for political differences to break, and she is bound even closer to Germany by her mortal dread of Russia.

Adolf Hitler thoughtfully spared Sweden such a decision as Norway had to make last week (see p. 22). Evidently Herr Hitler believed he could knock out Norway, then lay down the law to Sweden.

Against this threat Premier Hansson talked surprisingly tough. He ordered all Swedish ships to run for neutral or Allied ports, announced that Sweden would defend her independence, whatever the cost, and added: "It is not compatible with Swedish neutrality to let any belligerent power use Swedish territory for its operations. No such demands have been made on us. If they are, they must be rejected."

Although this sounded like defiance of Germany, Premier Hansson was playing a cagey game with a bad hand. His hand was strengthened before the week was out by the British capture of Narvik. If Britain establishes a strong force there, Germany will have to think twice before invading Sweden. It is only 84 miles from Narvik to the Swedish iron mines at Kiruna, 125 miles to the mines at Gaellivare, and Britons could probably reach the mines before the Germans. But Premier Hansson had still other problems. For what he mortally fears is that Sweden may become a battleground not for two, but for three belligerents. Russia has to be reckoned with.

The day that Germany attacked Norway, German Ambassador Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenberg had a four-hour talk with Premier Molotov in Moscow. The Ambassador had some explaining to do, inasmuch as German occupation of the Norwegian coast would spoil Russian dreams of reaching the Atlantic. Next day Premier Molotov served up a new set of demands on the new Finnish Minister to Moscow, Juho Paasikivi. Chief demands: 1) immediate construction of the promised railroad across Finland to Sweden; 2) an economic agreement at once. If either the Allies or Germany invaded Sweden, it was almost certain that Russia would further "adjust her frontiers" with Finland, push up to Sweden's elbow.

In the West. Before the French and British Embassies in Brussels, students paraded, carrying banners that said: "VIVE LA FRANCE!" "VIVE LA GRANDE BRETAGNE!" At night columns of Belgian troops clumped along mined roads, across barricaded bridges, toward Liege and the German frontier. Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak called in Allied diplomats to deny that Germany had presented an ultimatum demanding Belgian neutrality, to reaffirm that Belgium was neutral anyway--until Belgium or The Netherlands was invaded. Minister of Defense Lieutenant General Henri Denis told correspondents: "If any invader sought ... to cross our territory, he would find there only slim advantages to be gained." Alarmed by the ease with which Germany's fifth column handed over Norway, the Cabinet met to "consider the situation of foreigners in the country." On the Western Front activity increased. Artillery boomed all day long and at night patrols sought prisoners for information. French military sources reported heavy German concentrations near Frankfurt, practically said an offensive was coming. Where would it strike first? The Netherlands was most nervous. As civilians fled from frontier districts, fresh troops moved in. All Army leaves were canceled. Martial law was extended. With roads and bridges mined, trees girded with dynamite, the Dutch hoped they could give a good account of themselves in the field before they had to open the dikes.

Three things menaced The Netherlands.

The first was military weakness. The second was the strategic importance of the country for Germany. With air bases in Holland, the German Air Force would threaten the Allies' troop-&-supply line between Dover and Calais. The Netherlands is also full of tempting loot, including gasoline and oil.

But the greatest danger to The Netherlands, as to other countries Germany wants, was internal. The Netherlands has a small but tight-knit Nazi Party led by Anton Adrian Mussert, a blackshirt. Many younger Army officers are Nazis at heart, out of dissatisfaction with their low social status in a country of burghers and traders. Since last fall Germany has been smuggling Army uniforms out of The Netherlands, smuggling Dutch-uniformed Germans in. That the Government has its eye on Mussert's fifth column was made plain by an announcement which said: "The Government is vigilant and conscious of possible dangers from within."

In the South. In Rumania last week began with the cool murder of a German munitions expert and a female spy by a British agent under Bucharest's Arch of Triumph. In Belgrade cars sped through the streets scattering leaflets bearing the warning: Do not resist Germany if you value your freedom! Hundreds of German "tourists" crossed Hungary into Rumania.

In Albania 50,000 Italian "laborers" were landed from Italian transports. Germany had 100,000 troops concentrated at Bruck on the frontier of Hungary, 200,000 more farther north at Cracow. Russian troops massed at Odessa, a convenient spot for jumping off into Rumania's Bessarabia.

The Italian Navy began "maneuvers" off the Dodecanese Islands not far from the Dardanelles. Fed up with incessant German demands for oil, for wheat, for everything, Rumania's King Carol got his Hohenzollern blood up, clamped down on exports to Germany, snubbed Herr Hitler's pressure-man, Dr. Karl Clodius, who was seen idling about Bucharest. It was reported, denied and reported again that Germany had demanded the right to police the Danube. Once German gunboats appeared on the river, the Balkans would in fact be at war.

Where war would strike first was anybody's guess. Germany had a problem on her hands. Any move against Rumania would be a signal for the destruction of the oil wells. But those German tourists might be going to look at the oil wells.

Italy's laborers might be going to work in Yugoslavia or in Greece. If Italy attacked Greece, however, she would immediately be at war with the Allies, as would Russia if she attacked Rumania--but perhaps not Germany if she took Hungary, last independent part of the old Habsburg empire.

The Italian Navy could be in the Aegean for two purposes: 1) to keep Turkey from opening the Dardanelles to the Allies for a push through the Balkans against Germany; 2) to protect Italy's rear by seizing Salonika if Benito Mussolini had decided to cut himself a slice of the Balkans. As in the North, Russia was not expected to move until somebody else moved first. Until somebody moved, the little countries of the Balkans, like those in the rest of Europe, sat, waited.

As war's shadow spread across Europe, its edge reached the Western Hemisphere (see p. 13). But most U. S. people who heard of its progress on their radios did not dare to imagine what, in mid-April 1940, it meant to be a European.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.