Tuesday, 28 March

Snow

In the evening, I invited the Ambassador of Afghanistan, the Iranian Ambassador, his wife and children, the Greek Ambassador, the Ambassador of Norway, and the French Ambassador and others to dinner at the Embassy. The French Ambassador said that the underground resistance workers in Romania and Bulgaria had concentrated on the western Alpine mountain areas before the arrival of the German army. Tito’s guerrillas were also moving East to joint them. Probably after several weeks the Soviet army would be able to enter Romania’s territory and unite with these groups, thus cutting off the Germans in the area around the Balkans. He also told Attaché Hu that the captives of Italy, Hungary and Romania would organise liberation armies for their countries respectively. This is worth paying attention to. He also told me that the Soviet Government had proposed to the Yugoslavian Government in exile to enter into a mutual help treaty earlier, but the Yugoslavian Government requested the addition of one more term, stating that the Soviet Union could not propagandise Communism within Yugoslavian territory. The Soviet Union felt that this proposal by the Yugoslavian government was hostile so it declined. Afterwards the Yugoslavian Government proposed signing the treaty and the Soviet Union declined. At the moment, the Soviet Government recognises Tito’s Government and has signed a mutual help pact with it. On Tito’s side, it has already cabled to dispatch the former Ambassador of Yugoslavia, Simic, as its representative. I immediately cabled the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Today, the Soviet army recovered Nikolaev.