CAB80-25 — Page 415

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Copy of telegram No. 214 dated 31st January from

Sir R. Hoare (Bucharest) to Foreign Office.

IMMEDIATE.

Your telegram No. 117.

I am moving toward the conclusion that the presence of this mission in Roumania serves no further useful purpose and that it would be well to withdraw in about a fortnight's time. My reasons are that (a) contacts with Roumanians are becoming more difficult and tend

information. to compromise people who dare to give us (b) There is at least some degree of danger of Gestapo seizing Passport Control Officer or some other

(c) Once we are gone person connected with the Legation. Germans and Roumanians will certainly expect immediate air attacks and it may reasonably be hoped that the blackout will be imposed, the effect of which on the morale of the population and perhaps even of the Germans would certainly be great. See my immediately following telegram No.215.

350

Copy of Telegram No. 215 dated 31st January from

Sir R. Hoare (Bucharest) to Foreign Office.

IMMEDIATE.

Following is continuation of my immediately preceding telegram.

(d). It is generally believed that the German advance is fixed for middle of March (personally I should favour either an immediate occupation of Bulgaria gambling on frost holding or favour a rather later date when the thaw is out of the ground and Danube floods would have subsided). If our departure led Germans to move sooner than they had intended in order not to lose initiative I suggest very tentatively that is might be to our advantage as if the thaw behaved properly Germans might find their motor vehicles bogged in concentrations such as those mentioned in my telegram No. 194 and their aircraft severely handicapped by

This last suggestion is obviously water-logged aerodromes.

made in ignorance of many essential facts.

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