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Updated: June 13, 2025
As regards the Dobrudsha question, our position was one of constraint.
The cession of the Dobrudsha was a terribly hard demand to make on the Roumanians, and was only rendered bearable for them when Kühlmann and I, with the greatest difficulty and against the most violent opposition from the Bulgarians, obtained for them free access to the Black Sea.
The Turks, on the other hand, protested with equal vehemence that the Dobrudsha had been conquered by two Turkish army corps, that it was a moral injustice that the gains chiefly won by Turkish forces should be given exclusively to the Bulgarians, and that they would never consent to Bulgaria receiving the whole of the Dobrudsha unless compensation was given to them.
The ultimatum which preceded the preliminary Treaty of Buftea had also to be altered chiefly on the Dobrudsha question, as Bulgaria was already talking of the ingratitude of the Central Powers, of how Bulgaria had been disillusioned, and of the evil effects this disillusionment would have on the subsequent conduct of the war.
They went much further in their aspirations: they demanded the whole of the Dobrudsha, including the mouth of the Danube, and the great and numerous disputes that occurred later in this connection show how insistently and obstinately the Bulgarians held to their demands.
In the eyes of the Roumanians he had just achieved a great diplomatic success by the Peace of Bucharest and the acquisition of the Dobrudsha, when Bratianu came forward with a demand for vast agrarian reforms.
The frontier rectifications, as they stood on the Austro-Hungarian programme, were barely alluded to, and the economic questions, which later played a rather important part, were only hinted at. Avarescu's standpoint was that the cession of the Dobrudsha was an impossibility, and the interview ended with a non possumus from the Roumanian general, which was equivalent to breaking off negotiations.
In Paris there was a passionate demand for Alsace-Lorraine; in Berlin the contrary was demanded just as eagerly; in England the destruction of Germany was the objective; in Sofia the conquest of the Dobrudsha; in Rome they clamoured for all possible and impossible things; in Vienna nothing at all was demanded.
The Bulgarians' view was that the entire Dobrudsha, including the mouth of the Danube, must be promised to them, and they insisted on their point with an obstinacy which I have seldom, if ever, come across.
In Roumania the Avarescu Ministry was in power. On February 24 Kühlmann and I had our first interview alone with Avarescu at the castle of Prince Stirbey, at Buftia. At this interview, which was very short, the sole topic was the Dobrudsha question.
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