Sunday, June 8, 1930

Bucharest:  Carol II’s victorious return to Romania is sealed, as the National Assembly, meeting in special session, votes 495 to 1 to proclaim him king.  The scene in Bucharest is described as “wild enthusiasm.”

Paris:  France holds its air show as planned, with crowds reported at 200,000.  

Saturday, June 7, 1930: Carol II's Triumphant Return to Romania

Bucharest:  Carol II, Prince of Romania, who renounced his right to the throne in 1925 after an extra-marital affair, flies into Bucharest in the middle of the night and is proclaimed king.  He is welcomed by his brother and several regiments of the military, and hailed by the public as savior of the nation, which is struggling in the Depression.  The person he would replace on the throne is his own son, Michael, age 8.  Carol says he will only rule until Michael comes of age.  The National Assembly is said to be overwhelmingly in favor of this development, and the prime minister has resigned to make way for it.

Rome:  More military display by Italy.  The air force holds a mock combat involving 20 divisions of warplanes to demonstrate the nation’s advances in air power.  This comes the day before France is scheduled to hold its own air show.

Thursday, June 5, 1930

Germany:

Berlin:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet proposes a plan to rescue Germany’s ailing finances by an emergency 10% tax increase on workers’ salaries, on fees earned by corporate directors, and on . . . unmarried men.  The latter is being called the “bachelor tax.”  How popular this idea will prove remains to be seen.

Nienburgh:  More evidence of the depression’s toll.  Farmers in this northern community tear up paving and barricade two streets into their village, wielding clubs and pitchforks, to prevent tax bailiffs from serving notice of non-payment on drainage assessments.  No violence breaks out; the bailiffs leave without delivering their notices.

Nice:  French authorities expel an ethnic Italian fascist for his role in sending a group from Nice’s Italian community to Rome as representatives of “Italian provinces and dominions” at a ceremony there.  That Nice is not an Italian province seems clear to the French.  But many in Italy still consider Nice and Savoy lost territories from the last century, before Italy’s unification.

Bucharest:  Romanian police uncover a widespread soviet propaganda organization in Bessarabia, the northeastern region which Romania has governed since 1918, but which Russia still considers her territory.  Police say the network had 16 centers, intended to agitate for the region’s communization and unification with the Soviet Union.

Sunday, May 11, 1930

Bucharest:  The former chief of Romanian police is sentenced to 10 years in prison for communist spying; his wife and five aides get five years each.

Sunday, 23 March 1930

Potsdam, Germany:  A mob of communists attempts to set free the inmates of a compulsory education school.  The facility director learns of their approach and calls the police, 22 of whom arrive armed with rifles.  120 communists are arrested.

 

Criuleni, Romania:  Authorities say they have uncovered a Russian spy plot after they arrest the municipal clerk of the town as he’s attempting to cross the Dniester River into Russia.  In his possession they find 500 forged Romanian citizenship certificates, a list of employees of the Romanian secret service, and a handful of confidential military documents.  The clerk says he got the materials from two officers in the Romanian military.  When police descend on one of the officer’s homes to arrest him, a gunfight erupts before he is arrested. 

London:  The worldwide economic depression worsens: government reports show unemployment is the worst since 1926, and still trending downward.

Friday, 21 March 1930

Manchuria:  

Warlord Zhang Xueliang, effective ruler of Manchuria, offers his services as mediator between Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and rebellious Governor Yen Hsishan of Shansi.  The threat of renewed civil war in China has been looming for weeks.

  

London:  

The French delegation appears to withdraw from the naval conference, having left for Paris for the weekend and announcing that they won’t be back.  Observers think it’s a ploy to try to wrest an 11^th hour concession out of either Italy (to give up its demand for naval parity with France) or England (for a naval deal that includes continental security).  But Great Britain, the U.S. and Japan evidently saw this coming, and reportedly have a three-way “fallback” pact they will go to work on.  It is expected that if France is out, Italy will be too, as Italy presumably would not agree to any limitations on naval power with France under no such obligation.

Chisinau, Romania:  

Russian and Romanian border guards get into a firefight on the Dniester River near here.  According to reports, the Russian guards board a boat on their side of the river, then cross over and attack the Romanian border post with hand grenades.  The Romanians respond with rifle fire.  One Romanian is killed and several Russians wounded.  No one knows a reason for the attack, but tensions relative to Russia are high in Romania, as the government says it has uncovered communist plots to attempt a coup in the country.

Elsewhere:

Moscow:  Crowds of Young Communists and Young Pioneers (a communist version of the boy scouts) converge on the Italian Embassy and hold protests against the Pope. 

Bogota:  Thousands of unemployed conduct a demonstration that devolves into a riot when police fire on the crowd.  Two are killed and at least 20 injured.

Tuesday, 25 February 1930

Bucharest:  In the ongoing crisis that includes reports of a Red Army buildup along the Romanian border, the government announces that the former chief of Romania’s secret police has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the Soviet Union.

New York:  2,000 communists hold a demonstration march in the garment district against police brutality; 400 police protect them on their route.  On Wall Street, 200 members of the Young Communists League also hold a demonstration.  Two are arrested.

Athens:  300 communists storm a jail, attempting to free 20 of their comrades.  

Minsk, Belorus (Belorussian S.S.R.):  Three of the rabbis arrested earlier this month are still held by soviet authorities, but the government won’t disclose their names, nor tell what it plans to do with them.

Cairo:  CopticOrthodox Pope John XIX, head of Coptic Christians in Egypt, joins the worldwide protest against religious persecution in Russia, and calls for prayers for the salvation of the country.

Friday, 21 February 1930

Bucharest:  

Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu consults with his military generals over the rumored Red Army buildup on the soviet side of the Bessarabian border.  British, French and Polish diplomats have reportedly assured Romania of their support in the event of a soviet attack on Romania. 

Chicago:  

Crying “Wages and work!”, 1,200 unemployed hold a demonstration at city hall that erupts into a riot.  Police charge the crowd, beating many, and arresting 12.  Trouble starts at a communist meeting where speakers circulate handbills calling on workers to “rally to the defense of their fatherland, the Soviet Union,” and inflame the crowd to hold a parade.  When the mob starts to file out, the police move in.  Still, some of the marchers make their way to city hall, where 150 police, some mounted, form a cordon around the building.  It is the third communist-led demonstration at city hall in 10 days.

Some of the handbills at the meeting speak of an “international demonstration against unemployment” day, scheduled for March 6.  Others read:  “Unemployment is increasing.  The crisis is sharpening.  Everywhere misery and suffering increases daily.  Heavy wage cuts go hand in hand with the increase in unemployment.”

Elsewhere:  

Weimar, Germany:  The nazi Minister of the Interior and Education of the state of Thuringia, Wilhelm Frick, announces he is preparing to order all schools in the state to pray daily for Germany’s liberation from the Treaty of Versailles. 

Minsk, Belorus (Belorussian S.S.R):  The Jewish leaders held by soviet authorities for alleged anti-government activities are allowed to receive visitors, who report that their execution now seems less likely.  Meanwhile in Moscow, the soviet government issues an official denial to a rumor that the rabbis had already been executed.  The government newspaper Izvestia says they have only been charged with counter-revolutionary activity, which reportedly stem from their appeal to Jews outside the Soviet Union for financial aid. 

Thursday, 20 February 1930

Bucharest: The nation is alarmed by rumors of soviet army forces concentrating near the Romanian border, across from the region of Bessarabia.  Bessarabia was part of the Russian Empire prior to 1918.

Minsk, Belorus (Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic):  Reports say the Jewish leaders arrested for anti-government activities (see Feb. 15) are slated for execution.  

Sunday, 6 October 1929: USA and Great Britain Announce London Naval Conference

Madison, Virginia, USA: 

President Herbert Hoover and British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, conferring at Hoover's private Rapidan Lodge, jointly announce they will invite five world powers to a naval conference in London in January 1930.  Purpose will be resumption of talks on parity and caps in naval fleets of the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan.  

Negotiations had been going on for six months between the countries about such a gathering.  A previous naval treaty was signed in 1922 among the five nations -- all victors in the World War (accordingly, neither Germany nor Russia are to be invited to the conference).  That treaty was intended to limit the construction of new navy "capital ships" -- battleships, heavy cruisers and aircraft carriers -- in an attempt to prevent an arms buildup that might contribute to another war.  This conference would revisit those terms.

Hoover and MacDonald on White House steps

Bucharest:

Government officials say they suspect yesterday's assassination attempt on Alexandru Vayda-Voevod, Minister of the Interior, was intended to be the start of a broader campaign of communist unrest in Romania and throughout the Balkans.  Authorities say soviets recently held a conference at Odessa, Soviet Union, to discuss agitation in the Balkans in the wake of the failure of "International Red Day," August 1, on which the West European Bureau of the Communist International (COMINTERN) had called on workers throughout the world to hold demonstrations in the streets.  At this Odessa conference, Romanian authorities charge, the communists laid plans to join forces with autonomy movements in the Transylvania and Bessarabia regions of Romania, in an attempt to bring about revolution.  The government orders extra police guards at public buildings.

Warsaw:  

Socialist demonstrations on Socialist Youth Day against the government of Josef Pilsudski turn into a riot.  Police move in to restore order and arrest the demonstration’s leaders.

Saturday, 5 October 1929

Bucharest: 

An assassination attempt is made on Minister of Interior Alexandru Vaida-Voevod.  As Vaida-Voevod is approaching his automobile after leaving his office, a man approaches and fires a single shot which shatters the car window but misses the minister.  Captured later, the assailant says his act is revenge for the shooting of 30 striking miners in Lupeni, Romania, two months ago by the military.  Authorities suspect communist backing for the attempt.  

Paris:  

Twenty police and 100 socialists are injured when communists attack a meeting being held by the socialists to discuss world peace.  The communists beat dozens of socialists before police arrivee to restore order.

New York: 

One of the fastest rebounds in New York Stock Exchange history ends a two-day skid.  Share values rise nearly 5% on weekend trading.