Sunday, August 31, 1930

Trier, Germany:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, making a campaign speech like every other politician in Germany these days, reaffirms comments made by Foreign Minister Julius Curtius a few days ago that Germany has no plans to seek revision of the German-Polish border. He says no responsible politicians would seek “rash experiments” or “foreign adventure” of the sort. 

Saturday, August 30, 1930

Budapest:  Unemployed farmers and labor members plan “protest walk” parades Monday.  Every policeman in Hungary has been called to duty in preparation -- 4,200 in all.  Reports say fully 25% of all agricultural workers and nearly 13% of organized labor are unemployed. 

China:  Three divisions of Manchurian troops march into northern China, surprising both the nationalist government and northern alliance rebels, even though both had been courting Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang’s support.  No one seems to know what the Manchurian forces are there to do, but reports are they will garrison in the Peking-Tientsin area.  Some believe Zhang is planning to grab that area for himself. 

Friday, August 29, 1930

Freiburg, Germany:  Foreign Minister Julius Curtius, in a campaign speech of his own, rebuts recent comments made by Minister of Occupied Territories Gottfried Treviranus. “Election time is a trying time for foreign ministers. The campaign requirements of parties and the party speakers confuse the country’s foreign policy and give a distorted picture of Germany abroad. The government continues along the lines laid down by Dr. Stresseman [former Foreign Minister]. The Reich simply is adapting his principles to changing conditions.” He asks for “discipline regarding campaign utterances on Germany’s foreign policy.”’

Berlin:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, who has been running the country without the Reichstag since its dissolution last month, releases a communique containing an outline of plans to reform the country’s finances. Critics immediately call it light on specifics and vague on the most pressing issues, such as the government’s deficit. With elections now only a couple of weeks away, observers say Bruening doesn’t want to communicate anything that might hurt his party’s chances.

Thursday, August 28, 1930

Moscow:  The soviet government shoots 10 of its citizens for money hoarding.  This brings the total killed for this crime to 23, with hundreds more arrested and awaiting trial.

Berlin:  A new survey says one in every 45 people in Germany is a civil servant, paid by public funds.  This comes to 1.4 million people, consistent with earlier reports which called the German government the largest employer in the world. 

Wednesday, August 27, 1930

Moscow:  The Communist Trade Union, at its congress here, advocates aggressive communist agitation aimed at the British and French colonies, seeing them as ripe for revolution. 

Tuesday, August 26, 1930

Koenigsberg, Germany:  Minister of Occupied Territories Gottfried Treviranus, whose campaign speech last week about the German-Polish border touched off a mild diplomatic crisis, is at it again.  In a speech here before a small group of political supporters, Treviranus predicts that Germany will one day regain the territory it lost to Poland in the treaty ending the World War.  “However necessary I personally regard the revision of those treaties, nevertheless the time for such action can be fixed only when the internal strength of our people gives us the assurance that we are strong enough to insist upon our demand.  Otherwise, the harm will be much greater than the benefit.  Were I the foreign minister I would not give the Poles the opportunity of having this problem discussed at Geneva and shelved.” 

Helsinki:  Many of the communists who fled Finland into the Soviet Union earlier this year are reportedly returning, saying conditions in Russia are too chaotic for them.  Yet they return to a nation that may be even more anti-communist than when they left.  Peasants who were behind the march on parliament earlier this year are said to be planning even bigger demonstrations, possibly even to contemplate overthrowing the government. 

Havana:  Cuban authorities arrest two communist leaders, and find on them letters from the Communist International urging Cuba’s communists to get into positions of control in government departments, in an effort to gain control of the country.

China:  A bidding war of sorts is reportedly on for the support of Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang in the civil war.  Nationalist government head Chiang Kai-Shek has reportedly offered Zhang the equivalent of US$30 million and rule over the Tientsin-Peking area in exchange for his support in the conflict with various rebel groups, including Northern Alliance rebels.  Other reports say Zhang has decided to support the rebels. 

Sunday, August 24, 1930

Berlin:  Communists demonstrating for their party in the upcoming parliamentary elections launch attacks on nazis, police, and even innocent bystanders, in various parts of the city.  Using bottles, chairs, table legs and beer steins, the communists fire projectiles seemingly at random targets.  In the East End, they close a street and hold up cars and pedestrians for “contributions” to the communist party.  100 communists and 41 nazis are arrested, and two policemen are injured. 

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office issues a statement that it does not intend to raise the German-Polish border at the upcoming League of Nations meetings, scheduled to start next month in Geneva.  The French press had raised the issue, claiming a speech given by Minister of Occupied Territories Gotfried Treviranus last week had been a prelude to a German initiative to seek revision of the border. 

Friday, August 22, 1930

Bunzlau, Germany:  Three people are killed and six wounded when a mob protesting a nazi meeting attempts to charge fire fighters who were spraying them with fire hoses to disperse them.  Police open fire, leading to the deaths.

Berlin:  Unemployment among labor union members rises to 20.8 percent, up from 19.9 percent in July.  A total of 3 million are said to be unemployed in Germany, an increase of 80,000 in the first half of August alone.  Recent attempts by various government entities to stimulate the economy with large orders for goods or services appear to be failing.

Washington:  More bad economic news: preliminary official census figure show more than 2.5 million may be unemployed in the United States. 

Budapest:  Police occupy public buildings, the airport, and strategic highways approaching the city as rumors fly that Archduke Otto, pretender to the Hungarian throne, has arrived in the country to attempt a coup.  Government officials characterize the rumors as “fantastic,” but order the police anyway, who are reportedly under orders to arrest “a heavily veiled lady and an 18-year-old youth.”  Leave is also canceled for military officers, who are recalled to duty in case needed.

Helsinki:  Records show that authorities have detained a total of 517 communists so far this year, charging 104 with high treason for their role in communist agitation in the country. 

Thursday, August 21, 1930

Paris:  Diplomats say naval talks between Italy and France are quietly resuming, five months after the two couldn’t agree at the London Naval Conference. 

Tuesday, August 19, 1930

Klausenberg, Romania: Carol Danila, an anti-Semitic agitator whom the police have been hunting for nearly a month, is arrested here.  Authorities say his arrest completes their roundup of the leaders responsible for a wave of anti-Semitic unrest in the country earlier.

Madrid:  Two days after the cabinet of Prime Minister Damaso Berenguer began urgent cabinet meetings over a dramatic fall in the peseta, Minister of Finance Manuel Arguelles resigns. 

Monday, August 18, 1930

Berlin:  The Foreign Office issues a statement stating that German foreign policy, especially regarding the German-Polish border, has not changed, and that Germany has no intention of attempting to renegotiate the Treaty of Versailles, in which the present border was laid out.

Poland:  People along the Polish border with Russia are reporting hearing rifle and machine gun fire day and night from across the border.  Occasional escapees into Poland say the gunfire is the soviet secret police hunting down people who have escaped exile and, occasionally, former exiles carrying out attacks against communist officials.  One Pole reports seeing a lone peasant woman walking quietly along a road close to the border when she was shot dead by a red soldier, who then buried her body on the spot. 

Bucharest:  Reporters in Berlin and Vienna say they have received dispatches from here that King Carol II, who recently returned to Romania, appears to be moving the country closer to a dictatorship.  Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, who helped Carol return, is now said to be forming an alliance with the Liberal Party and its leader, Vintila Bratianu, in an attempt to block Carol’s power grab.  Carol’s pattern, say his critics, is to have a newspaper publish an alarmist story about an impending crisis and potential revolution, after which Carol can crack down on the alleged perpetrators, consolidating his power while elevating himself in the eyes of the public.  Reports say just such a story is slated to be published tomorrow, which will claim that a nascent revolution in southern Russia threatens to spill over into Romania.

Tokyo:  The special committee created by the Privy Council to study the London Naval Treaty begins its work in a session at the imperial palace.  The first meeting is devoted largely to agenda setting, although the chairman’s comments, that the treaty will receive a fair treatment and that the Privy Council is not hostile to Japan’s current government, are thought by observers to be hopeful for the treaty’s approval.

Berlin:  The new People’s Conservative Party, led by Gotfried Treviranus and Kuno von Westarp (both of whom bolted from Alfred Hugenberg’s nationalist party), releases its campaign platform for the upcoming elections.  It calls for the nations victorious in the World War to cut their military forces to match Germany’s; revisions of the German borders drawn after the war; revision of the war reparations payments; and for the German “war guilt” clause in the Treaty of Versailles to be cut. 

Prague:  Czechoslovakia concludes separate land deals with the government of Lichtenstein and the Order of Teutonic Knights, in which Czechoslovakia buys nearly 325,000 acres near the German border from the two.  The country says it plans to use the land to settle Czechs as a barrier against Germany.  It is being called one of the largest land deals ever done in Europe.

Sunday, August 17, 1930

Berlin:  The German Colonial Society issues a statement saying Germany’s colonies from before the World War (mostly in Africa) should be returned to her, and that this would save central Europe from financial and economic disaster.  The society urges all 11 political parties running in the upcoming parliamentary elections to make the former colonies a prominent issue in their campaigns.  “The colonial problem is more than an academic question for German political interest.  It is the central problem of German life and German economics, and its solution is the only way by which the German people can lead themselves out of the severe depression.”

Madrid:  The cabinet of Prime Minister Damaso Berenguer holds emergency meetings tonight to discuss a drastic decline of the peseta.

San Sebastian, Spain:  In the Hotel de Londres, representatives from almost all of the republican political parties in Spain, including socialists, hold a meeting to discuss working together to bring about the end of the Spanish monarchy and a new constitutional form of government.  Among those in attendance is Niceto Alcala-Zamora, founder of the new Moderate Republican Party.  The group agrees to form a “revolutionary committee,” of which Alcala-Zamora is named head.

Saturday, August 16, 1930

Berlin:  With the elections approaching, rhetoric is heating up, especially around the campaign speech made by Minister of Occupied Territories Gottfried Treviranus in which he attacked the German-Polish border set after the World War.  Though he subsequently said he did not mean to imply that the border should be revised, others have pounced on the comment in the midst of Germany’s economic suffering as a means to stir up nationalist pride.  Adolf Hitler, head of the nazis, says Germany “has a right to territory superior to all others, because we ourselves haven’t enough.” 

Meanwhile, the influential Federation of German Industries issues a statement positioning German industry as strongly favoring the republic, and urging individuals at their member companies to vote for republicanism.  The letter notes that in the present economic crisis, the republic may face the severest test of the faith of the people in these elections. 

Friday, August 15, 1930

Zagreb:  One communist is killed and a second wounded in a firefight with police.  A third kills himself rather than be taken into custody. 

Berlin:  The diplomatic flap between Germany and Poland over Gottfried Treviranus’ speech Sunday continues.  The German Charge d’Affairs visits Poland’s foreign minister to try to patch up relations. 

Meanwhile, more bad economic news: reports today say the total debt of the federal states, the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Liibeck, and 44 other large German municipalities, now cumulatively exceeds US$4 billion. 

Thursday, August 14, 1930

Narva, Estonia:  Four Russian warplanes cross into Estonian airspace near here. They are fired upon by Estonian border guards with rifles and machine guns.The planes return fire before returning to Russian airspace. Estonia claims one of the aircraft was hit and went down in Russian territory. Observers believe the incursion is Russia’s expression of disapproval for Latvia’s warm welcome of Polish President Ignacy Moscicki, who visited earlier this week. Estonia files a vigorous protest with Russia’s minister at Reval.  

Berlin:  President Paul von Hindenburg issues a letter to the appellate court hearing his defamation lawsuit against Joseph Goebbels, saying he now believes Goebbels meant no insult and would withdraw his lawsuit if he could.  In December, Goebbels published the article, “Is Hindenburg Still Alive?”, in which he accused Hindenburg of not voting against the Young Plan because “he always does what his Jewish and Marxist advisers tell him to do.”  Hindenburg filed suit two days later (see Dec. 31, 1929).  Now, Hindenburg’s letter says, “I should withdraw my complaint if it were legally possible.  Inasmuch as it is not, I declare that I personally regard the incident as closed and have no further interest in punishment of Herr Goebbels.”