871.00/11–1045: Telegram
The American Representative in Rumania (Berry) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 11—8:36 a.m.]
872. The Government is trying to place the onus for the casualties in Thursday’s demonstration on the members of the opposition groups, namely, the National Peasant, National Liberal and to a lesser extent the Social Democratic parties.20
Therefore General Schuyler and I have had conversations in the last 24 hours with Mr. Maniu, Mr. Bratianu and Mr. Titel Petrescu for the purpose of informing ourselves of the facts not available from witnesses at Thursday’s demonstration.
Messrs. Maniu and Bratianu said that the secretaries-general of their respective parties had informed the Ministry of Interior of their plans on November 6. These plans included orderly demonstrations of loyalty to the King in the Palace square on his name day November 8. At this demonstration there were to be no political speeches, no banners except the national flag and no placards except the King’s picture. There was no premeditated plan of march. The people would assemble, shout for the King, sign the Palace register and depart. The Minister suggested using halls but Mr. Maniu refused bearing in mind the experience of General Radescu and more recently that of Titel Petrescu with Communist packed halls (remy 860, November [Page 625] 721). He insisted that the demonstration have a popular rather than a political character. In the end the Minister gave his consent, a consent that he withdrew by telephone the morning of the demonstration as the crowds were assembling.
All political leaders felt that the Groza govt had shown an excess of zeal in obliging factories to close the 7th so that attendance would be large at a Govt demonstration for Soviet Rumanian solidarity at which there were political speeches and a mixture of Rumanian and Soviet flags and placards. The leaders considered that the Groza govt was culpable in declaring contrary to tradition that the King’s name day was a working day thus prohibiting workers and school children from demonstrating their loyalty to the King. In spite of this the leaders believed that the demonstration would have passed in an orderly and calm manner had not the Govt provoked the feelings of the people by sending trucks through the crowd loaded with men who shouted in favor of the Groza govt. Even then there would likely have been no fatality had not the Govt withdrawn regular troops who showed themselves to the demonstrators and substituted units from the Tudor Vladimirescu Division which fired into the crowd.
The three leaders said that the Soviet authorities had abstained from intervening with Soviet troops. Moreover, these authorities had ordered the Rumanian troops to cease firing into the crowd. The leaders said that they felt the demonstration had served a useful purpose as by it the people had unmasked the Groza govt that the world might see its true features.
This is 872 from Berry; repeated Moscow as 261 and London as 92.
- Telegram 875, November 12, 7 p.m., from Bucharest, reported on the holding of a large-scale popular demonstration, organized by the Communists, on the occasion of the burying of workers killed during the November 8 demonstrations. Extraordinary measures were adopted by Government officials to secure a large turnout, and members of the Government stood at the gravesides. The demonstration included signs placing the responsibility for the deaths upon Maniu and Bratianu. (871.00/11–1245)↩
- Not printed; it reported Communist efforts to break up Rumanian Social Democratic Party meetings (871.00/11–745).↩