Ion Antonescu

Ion Antonescu (Piteşti, June 14, 1882 - Jilava, June 1, 1946) was a Romanian soldier and politician, who governed the country with dictatorial powers from September 1940 to August of 1944, in close alliance with the Axis. Considered a war criminal for his direct responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, he was executed in 1946.

Born in 1882 into a family with a military tradition, he participated in the First World War and during the 1920s served as a military attaché in Western Europe. As a General Staff officer, he had played a leading role in the Romanian defense. against the Central Empires in 1916-1917 and in the Romanian victory against the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. At the end of the decade, he served at the head of the General Staff school, where he earned the respect of a new generation of officers.

In 1934 he was appointed chief of the Romanian General Staff, but his disagreements with King Charles II, especially over the corruption of the royal clique, led to his dismissal and transfer to a lower command, an event that did not diminish his prestige. Antonescu among the officers, who considered him generally honest and effective. His choleric temperament, his insistence on discipline and probity made him stand out in the Romanian Army. Minister of Defense at the end of 1937 in the right-wing government of Octavian Goga by At his insistence despite the sovereign's initial opposition, Antonescu resigned shortly after due to the monarch's harassment of the Iron Guard. He remained away from politics until the summer of 1940.

Critical of the Romanian territorial cessions of the summer and autumn of 1940, he came to power during the serious internal crisis that these caused and that ended the reign of Charles. He governed in a dictatorial manner from then until August 1944. While Antonescu managed to consolidate closer relations with Germany in the fall and winter, his coalition with the Iron Guard failed, which proved incompetent in governing the country and incapable of guaranteeing the internal order and economic development desired by that one. In January 1941, he put an end to the unstable coalition by crushing the Guard uprising against him, with Hitler's approval.

He participated in the invasion of the USSR alongside Germany and refused to stop the advance of the Romanian forces once they had recovered Bukovina and Bessarabia. When the fortunes of the war began to favor the Allies, he tolerated contacts with them, which did not bear fruit. With the Soviet armies at the gates of the country, King Michael deposed and arrested him in August 1944, before requesting an armistice.

Responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand Jews in Bukovina, Bessarabia and Transnistria, the survival of most of those in Wallachia and Moldavia was due to his decision in the fall of 1942 to indefinitely postpone their deportation to the camps. extermination of occupied Poland.

Beginnings and character of Antonescu

Military studies and Balkan wars

Ion Antonescu was born into a bourgeois family of Orthodox faith with a long military tradition, in a city in southern Romania, Pitești, on June 2, 1882. The family lacked any social relevance. His father, a soldier, died shortly after and he was raised by his mother and an uncle, also a soldier, who had a great influence on the young Antonescu. His relationship with the Army was early: he graduated from the school for children of soldiers. from Craiova in 1902, and from the preparatory school for infantry and cavalry officers in 1904; in both he achieved excellent grades, the best of his class. Upon finishing preparatory school, he entered the Tirgoviste Cavalry Academy, from which He graduated first in his year in 1906.

Commanding a small cavalry unit, he took part in the repression of the peasant revolt of 1907, around the city of Galaţi, where his tact in the crisis caused the admiration of the king. In May 1908, he was promoted to lieutenant. Between 1911 and 1913 he attended the Higher War School in Bucharest, where he graduated as captain. That same year, he participated in the Second Balkan War as an officer of the General Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division. Chief of operations of the unit, he was one of the very few officers to obtain the highest Romanian military decoration of the time in this conflict.

During the First World War, which Romania entered in the summer of 1916, he was appointed chief of operations of the Northern Army, under the orders of General Constantin Prezan. As such, he directed the advances of the forces. Romanians in Transylvania. He took a prominent part in the unsuccessful defense of the capital in November 1916 and, when Prezan was appointed chief of the General Staff in December, Antonescu became chief of operations of the Army, already with the rank of major. He had a notable role in planning the strategy that allowed the Romanian Army to repel the Central Empires offensive in 1917; He was then promoted to lieutenant colonel and remained Prezan's lieutenant for the rest of the conflict. He unsuccessfully opposed, along with Prezan, the signing of peace with the Central Empires; this opposition led to his temporary removal. of command, until the fall of 1918, when Romania re-entered the war shortly before the end of the war.

He later planned the war against the Hungarian Soviet Republic, a campaign that ended successfully with the capture of Budapest and the end of the communist regime. Antonescu's merits in the world war and in the Hungarian campaign were recognized by the King Ferdinand who, giving him his own medal of the order of Michael the Brave on the banks of the Tisza, said to him:

Antonescu, no other can know better than your king the great services you gave to this land and what the Great Romania owes you.

Although he was widely hated by his fellow Romanian officers, he was considered an excellent soldier, punctilious in the fulfillment of his duties and exceptionally honest—a rare characteristic in the Romanian Army.

Commands, military attaché and character of Antonescu

He was entrusted with the direction of the Special Cavalry School in Sibiu after the demobilization of the bulk of the Army in 1920, a position in which he had friction with the commander of the VIII Army Corps, whose command was located in the same town. He managed to start the school after great efforts with the limited means at his disposal; He almost lost his life the same year in a bad fall from a horse.

He spent a brief time in France in 1921, where he attended an espionage course. Industrious and very capable, Antonescu already showed at this time the defects that he showed for the rest of his life; According to the French military attaché, who evaluated him as a candidate for military attaché in France in 1920, Antonescu was:

Extremely industrious, of great military value and suitable from the Romanian point of view to perform that position successfully. But Lieutenant Colonel Antonescu is extremely vain in terms of his person and his country, he is a chauvinist, xenophobic and I am convinced that we cannot count on him in any way to continue the Franco-Roman military approach policy or to expect to receive from him any gratitude for the services provided by France.

Another French general described him in 1922, about to finally be sent to Paris as military attaché of the embassy as: «Of proven intelligence, brutal, cunning, very arrogant, with a fierce will to succeed. These are, along with extreme xenophobia, the most notable characteristics of this strange character.

He was sent as military attaché in the autumn at the request of the king, who wanted to keep him away from military intrigues. He was also appointed attaché to the United Kingdom and Belgium as well as to France in 1923 and became friends with the ambassador and future Romanian Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu. He remained as representative only to the United Kingdom at the beginning of 1924, where he was well received. He married his first wife during his time in France; She was a woman of Jewish origin with whom he had his only child, who died in infancy.The marriage, however, was dissolved before Antonescu returned to Romania.

He returned to Romania at the end of 1926, where he was put in charge of a military cavalry school and a regiment quartered near the capital. He married Maria Niculescu in 1928; he briefly served as secretary of State of the Ministry of War the same year. He presided over the General Staff school between 1927 and 1929 and again between 1931 and 1933, where he earned the respect of a new generation of mid-level officers, many of them future commanders in the Second World War.

Chief of the General Staff and reform attempts

He was promoted to brigadier general in 1931. He was appointed chief of the General Staff on December 12, 1933 - by then he was already a division general, although several officers surpassed him in rank and seniority, which sparked complaints about his appointment— The new Prime Minister Ion G. Duca commissioned him to reform the Army after a notorious military contract scandal with the Czechoslovak company Škoda, with the support of the monarch and the Minister of Defense and the approval of all. the parties in Parliament. He decided to give priority to the modernization of the Army, which he saw as incapable of defending the country. According to a study he commissioned in this period, the Army could barely deploy ten divisions in the event of war, a worrying situation given the rearmament of Hungary; This conclusion led to the approval of a rearmament plan that was launched a year and a half later, in the spring of 1935. He ended up resigning in December 1934, due to disagreements with the new Minister of Defense, General Angelescu, after months of friction between the two. He had clashed with the king over undeserved promotions of soldiers close to the royal clique during his period at the head of the General Staff. During this time of growth of the Iron Guard, Antonescu saw the formation of Codreanu as "lack of seriousness", although he shared their hostility towards Jews. Antonescu lacked political support despite his good military reputation, his contacts in Romanian high society were few and, as an active officer, he could not join any political formation. During this time, he felt contempt for Romanian parliamentary democracy, manipulated by the monarch, which he considered endangered the defense of the country.

Away from the Army

Released from the General Staff at the end of 1934, he spent the next four years at its disposal, but without any command, in a kind of lax house arrest. He was against participating in politics despite the fact that the main political parties opposition longed to obtain his support and the prestige that it entailed. Reluctant at first to meet with Codreanu, the intercession of personal friends close to the leader of the Guard, his apparent abandonment of violence, his agreement with Maniu and the clear intention attempt to end the parliamentary system ended up convincing him to do so. He had various contacts with far-right politicians during this period, despite being politically conservative, but not radical, and maintaining an allyophile stance - common to the majority of the Romanian officialdom—and not favorable to Germany.

Minister of Defense

Carlos commissioned Octavian Goga to form a new Council of Ministers at the end of 1937, after the complicated December elections that left an uncertain outlook due to the failure of the party in power, which did not reach an absolute majority and the difficulty that a coalition government be formed; Goga, despite the royal commission, had obtained little electoral support (10% of the votes). He was a right-wing extremist like Codreanu, but, unlike him, he was also a firm supporter of the king. He insisted on appointing Antonescu. Minister of Defense and, after the initial rejection of both Antonescu himself and the monarch, he assigned him the position of Communications, by direct order of the king, which Antonescu accepted, showing his sense of honor while warning the sovereign of his intention to put an end to the corruption that was corroding the ministry. Carlos then changed his mind and awarded the Ministry of Defense to Antonescu the next day. One of his first acts as minister was to visit the French military attaché to assure him that Romania continued to maintain the traditional alliance with France. According to Goga, his own presence at the head of the cabinet should favor relations with Germany while Antonescu's should calm any French or British apprehension about a possible change of alliances on the part of Romania. His cabinet was an unstable mix of pro-Western and Axis ministers.

Antonescu met with Codreanu and assured him of the benevolence of the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Armand Călinescu, to which Codreanu responded with a promise to abandon political violence. The clashes between the Guard and its LANC competitors, Supported by the king, they made Antonescu try to apply martial law, although he failed to stop the clashes. The king used him as an envoy to Codreanu, to whom he proposed handing over the Government in exchange for obtaining control of the Guard, at which that Codreanu refused. New elections were called, Antonescu promised Codreanu to protect him in case the monarch attacked his party, in exchange for it not responding with violence to the LANC attacks. Codreanu announced on February 9 who was withdrawing from the electoral campaign, convinced by Antonescu and after obtaining the promise of protection against possible attacks from the authorities.

The agreement reached by Goga and Codreanu, not consented to by the king, who feared losing control over the country's politics, caused the monarch to fire Goga, establish the royal dictatorship and form a Government on February 11 headed by the Orthodox Patriarch Miron Cristea, in which Antonescu remained as Minister of Defense. The king promulgated a new Constitution on February 20 that abolished political parties; Codreanu did not oppose the measure and dissolved his formation. Călinescu had exposed the need to eliminate the Guard through radical action in a council of ministers held days before, which Antonescu had not attended.

Royal dictatorship

Iron Guard repression and European crisis

During the months that he held the position of Minister of Defense, he once again confirmed the poor state of the Romanian armed forces, which had returned to the corruption and lack of preparation that he had already observed four years earlier during his period at the head of the General Staff. In both periods, he was one of the fundamental figures of the Romanian rearmament that was carried out during the decade.

Given Codreanu's lack of resistance when the king ordered the dissolution of political parties, Călinescu decided to provoke an incident to stop him. Codreanu reproached Nicolae Iorga for the attacks he had received in his publication and Călinescu accused the leader of the Libel Guard. Antonescu, contrary to Călinescu's planned maneuver, resigned on March 29, 1938. At Codreanu's trial for high treason in May, he testified as a defense witness, alongside Iuliu Maniu. Once Codreanu was convicted, Antonescu was briefly detained at his home and then sent to the provinces, commanding the 3rd.er Army in Bessarabia. The king tried to discredit him, accusing his wife of bigamy (Antonescu's wife had been previously married). The stratagem failed and increased Antonescu's prestige in the Army at the same time. that diminished the esteem for the monarch.

Critical of the Anglo-French position in the Munich Crisis, he was increasingly skeptical about the value of closeness to the two countries, becoming convinced of the need for a rapprochement with Germany given the growth of its power in Central Europe, which the Western powers consented to. At the beginning of the year, he had still shown himself certain that France would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia. Antonescu remained removed from power by the king, in the face of the progressive failure of his policy of balance. in 1939 and 1940. However, he continued to be a threat to royal power. A British observer described it this way in May 1940:

General Antonescu, a man of great integrity and former War Minister, has lost almost all power. It's too independent to be controlled by the king for pleasure... However, if the big crisis arises, it is certain that General Antonescu will have to be addressed due to the respect he enjoys in the army.

On November 29, the day before Codreanu's murder, an act that caused general indignation in the country, he was removed from command of the 3.er Army. For the next two years, he did not receive any command.

Crisis of the summer of 1940

After the Soviet ultimatum of June 1940 in which the immediate surrender of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina was demanded and to which Romania had to give in due to the lack of German support, the king ordered the arrest of Antonescu on July 12, without consulting the Government or the military commanders. The general had advised the king to oppose the Soviet demands or, at least, negotiate a longer period of surrender of the territories to achieve an orderly evacuation of the military units. and thus avoid the demoralization of the Army, in addition to harshly criticizing the royal advisors. The sovereign understood the demand for extensive reforms that would have ended the power of the royal clique as a threat and ordered the arrest of the general, apparently with the intention to assassinate him as he had done with Codreanu. The monarch feared Antonescu's prestige and saw him as a threat to his political and economic control of the country. Friends of the military man managed to get the German special representative in Romania, Hermann Neubacher, to intervene., and the ambassador Wilhelm Fabricius to avoid this possibility. Remembering the murder of Codreanu in prison and although they did not fully trust the general, the Germans agreed to intercede with the king, who released Antonescu on the 11th and interned him. in the Bistrița monastery from which he requested to leave the Army, which was granted.

The acceptance of the territorial losses of the Second Vienna Arbitration by the king led him to a desperate situation: to the loss of prestige due to the transfers of territory, the hostility of the two main traditional parties to the king was added. and the constant threat of the Guard. There were demonstrations organized by the Iron Guard demanding the monarch's abdication while Iuliu Maniu, sensing that the sovereign would turn to Antonescu's help to save his regime, achieved his release. The general left the Bistrita monastery and returned to Predeal, where he lived hosted by some friends. After meeting him clandestinely on September 1, Maniu agreed that Antonescu would agree to form a new government after the abdication of the king, who wanted to force On September 3, the monarch, finally persuaded by his advisors, called Antonescu and was willing to get rid of his clique and entrust him with the government, but not to give him absolute powers, so Antonescu did not accept the offer. The monarch's intention was to use Antonescu's prestige in various areas (in the traditional parties, in the Guard, in the Army and among the Germans, increasingly in favor of a general cabinet) to preserve its power.

On the 4th, given the intensification of the demonstrations, Carlos ordered Prime Minister Gigurtu to execute fifteen prisoners of the Guard, which he refused before resigning. Antonescu was called again, who agreed to form a Government once the king was willing to grant him "the necessary powers." His intention was to use Antonescu to calm popular discontent over the failure of his foreign policy. The announcement that he would lead the new cabinet was well received by the population. The leaders of the main parties, Maniu and Brătianu, refused to enter the new Government before the king's abdication. Sima, hiding in Brașov after the failure of the uprising, also It demanded the resignation of the sovereign. On the 5th, after accepting the application of Vienna arbitration, the reception of a German military mission and the increase in economic exchanges with the Reich, Antonescu received German support. The ambassador German, Fabricius, with the agreement of the Italian, recommended that Antonescu govern in a dictatorial manner, dismiss the royal clique and resolve the question of the composition of the new Council of Ministers and the possible abdication of the sovereign. The dawn of the On the 5th, after consulting the German ambassador, Charles finally outlined the powers he would maintain and those he would grant to Antonescu as prime minister. At the same time, he abolished the Constitution and dissolved Parliament. Once again, Antonescu tried in vain to achieve the entry of the three main parties into the new cabinet, which again demanded the abdication. The Guard resumed violent street protests against the king.

After trying to stay on the throne and relying on the Army, which did not support him, Carlos finally abdicated to his 19-year-old son in the face of an ultimatum from Antonescu in the early hours of the 6th and left the country. with his lover on a train loaded with possessions, which the Guard tried to stop without success. The new monarch, Miguel, granted full powers to Antonescu on the same day 6, naming him "leader of the Romanian State" ( Conducătorul Statului Român). The general enjoyed dictatorial powers from then on. Antonescu requested the return of the queen mother to advise the new king - she returned on September 15 - but his arrogant attitude towards Both men soon made their relationship with the royal family strained. The general turned the new king into a purely ceremonial figure, while concentrating political power in himself.

The Antonescian regime

Unstable coalition with the Guard

Failure of the unity government

Antonescu did not have to answer to any political forum for his actions, directing the State through decree laws. The set of royal decrees signed first by Carlos and later by Miguel during the crisis of the autumn of 1940 concentrated in his legislative and executive power in his hands. Neither the non-existent Parliament nor the Council of Ministers controlled his actions. At the same time, the powers of the monarch were greatly reduced.

The general tried to form a Government of national unity with two important parties, the National Peasant Party and the National Liberal Party, in addition to the Iron Guard, but he was not successful, since the leaders of the first two refused to enter into the Council of Ministers. Despite his former closeness to Goga, his supporters were an insufficient base to support the Government; At that time, the successive military withdrawals had discredited the Army enough that Antonescu could not rely solely on the military either. Negotiations between the various parties, which seemed that would at least lead to the entry of various currents of liberals in the new cabinet, they ultimately failed. Therefore, on September 14, Antonescu formed a government with the legionnaires, with him being president of the Council of Ministers, and Horia Sima, the leader of the Guard, vice president. On the same day, Romania was declared a "National Legionary State", with a single recognized party, the Guard, a condition that the Legionnaires had demanded during the failed negotiations with the rest of the parties. Antonescu, who despised the legionary leaders whom he considered inept, nevertheless granted them important powers, such as control of the press, official propaganda, provincial prefectures or relevant ministries, such as the Interior or the of Foreign Affairs and the majority of the State Secretariats. German representatives, concerned about the possible detrimental repercussions for their economic interests in Romania of the measures of the Guard leadership, which inspired little confidence in them, insisted Antonescu to that would keep it away from the main ministries. In effect, the ministries related to the economy, justice, agriculture or the armed forces were left in the hands of the military, conservative politicians or technocrats and only the Ministry of the Interior among those supposed to be real power remained in the hands of the legionnaires. From the beginning, this coalition cabinet showed internal tensions and attempts by the two allied groups to extend their power and limit that of their government partner. The apparent concord of Antonescu and the legionnaires in September and October barely concealed the confrontation between both parties for control of the administration and the security agencies, due to the different political objectives of each. Antonescu rejected Sima's wishes to impose the German National Socialist model on Romanian politics and economy and the legionary ambition to control them, convinced of his inability and wanted to impose his model of order and discipline in the country.

Coalition dictatorship and disagreements

After a weak attempt by Antonescu to end corruption in the State, his own partners in the Guard maintained the vices of the previous Governments.

The country was in a deep crisis, both political and economic. The territorial losses had not only ended the royal dictatorship of Charles and brought Antonescu and the Guard to power, but had created important economic problems: the reduction in the harvest – it is estimated that it decreased by 70% – and the resulting shortage of food, the disorganization of the industry due to the loss of raw materials and markets, the consequent inflation and an avalanche of refugees – about three hundred thousand. Added to this was a devastating earthquake at the beginning of November that severely affected the south of the country.

The legionnaires tried from the beginning to take control of the country. The public administration remained under the control of the Guard, with the new provincial prefects being members of it. The organization of the new totalitarian State remained in the hands of the Guard., which tried to recover its former popular support through extensive campaigns throughout the country, especially in the cities. Various organizations controlled by the Guard tried to include various social groups (urban workers, to whom special importance was given, youth, etc). Some social work projects promoted by the Guard had notable popular support. This activity, sometimes more voluntaristic than effective, was joined by radical activity and abuses. The organization tried to take control of the Police and the Army, in addition to creating its own auxiliary police; Although he achieved important influence in the first organization, Antonescu was in charge of limiting his infiltration in the second. The Guard, with its control of the Ministry of National Economy, which coordinated the government's economic policy, tried to take over its reins, with dire consequences that aggravated the crisis. On October 5, the "Romanization commissions" were created to take the direction of companies considered essential for the country; Its management always remained under legionary control. This power gave rise to chaos in production, looting of businesses—especially those of Jewish owners—and corruption of the new administrators.

Opposed to the outbreak of internal violence in the country, Antonescu tried to maintain the stability of the State and mitigate some anti-Semitic measures implemented in September by the Guard. At the end of the month and repeatedly, he condemned the disorders against minorities that, in his opinion, harmed the image of the country and Romanian minorities abroad, and advocated a legal solution to possible problems with them. Already in October, the Guard, grown with numerous new members, began to spread abuse and violence. Confiscations or forced sales, kidnappings, mistreatment and various punishments followed. Legal anti-Semitism that tried to eliminate Jews from the economy and the administration—preferred by Antonescu— joined that applied by groups of legionnaires in the streets of the country. The abuses of the Guard did not only affect minorities, but also extended to their various political adversaries, harming economic activity. The violence even affected to the different factions of the Guard, facing each other.

In revenge for the repression of the previous regime and especially for the murder of Codreanu and his collaborators in 1938, the legionnaires murdered various prominent politicians of the previous royal regime, such as the economist Virgil Madgearu (former minister) or Nicolae Iorga (former prime minister and great Romanian historian). The day before, on the night of November 26, the Jilava prison massacre took place in which sixty-four prisoners were murdered, some members of the royal regime, considered by the legionaries responsible for the death of Codreanu. The tension in the country was continually increasing. From the beginning, Antonescu opposed the political revenge of the legionnaires, established a special court to investigate the previous royal repression of the Guard (September 23) and managed to prevent subsequent political assassination attempts. Other notables Politicians of the royal regime saved their lives through the intervention of Antonescu's trusted man in the Ministry of the Interior, when they were already detained by the Guard and waiting to be murdered. Antonescu ordered the investigation of the massacres, the results of which published in 1941. The Guard riots also did not please the Germans, concerned about their effects on the economy that they wanted to exploit for their benefit. The events of November meant the disappearance of all possibility of concord between the legionnaires and Antonescu. The relationship between the general, who needed the popular support that the Guard enjoyed and its proximity to Germany, and the political formation, which needed Antonescu's prestige in the Army and the traditional political parties, was getting worse by the moment. The breakup between the two sides that seemed imminent was postponed at the end of November because the two sides considered the timing inopportune, but this was hardly a truce.

Antonescu, an adherent of "legal order" and "public tranquility", issued a decree law on November 28 against infractions "against public order and the interests of the State" and on December 12 another that He punished with death those who "instigated rebellion" or insubordination. These measures were the general's response to the massacres perpetrated by the Guard days before. Neither these nor his repeated warnings to the legionaries to avoid disorders had any effect. effect. In his next conflict with the Guard, the general had the support of the Army and the traditional parties, who rejected the disorder and violence of the legionnaires and feared German occupation in the event of economic chaos. The German position It was more ambiguous: while some organizations were favorable to Antonescu, others defended the Guard. Faced with the imminent clash with the Guard and taking advantage of the Romanian participation in Operation Marita as justification, Antonescu requested an audience with Hitler. to clarify his attitude.

Closing of the alliance with Germany

As for the international situation, on October 14, the German military mission requested by Antonescu had arrived, mainly in charge of protecting the Romanian oil wells that supplied Germany, although its official purpose was to train. to the Romanian Army. Once southern Dobruja was ceded to Bulgaria by the Craiova Agreements, Italy and Germany guaranteed the new Romanian borders.

After the failure of the Italian attack on Greece at the end of October, however, they were at the mercy of possible British air attacks, so Hitler decided to use Romania as a gateway to attack Greece and eliminate this danger. On November 23, three days after the Hungarian signature and during an official visit to Hitler, Antonescu signed the Tripartite Pact that brought Romania even closer to Hitler's policy. He took special respect for the marshal since his first interview in Berlin—despite Antonescu's undiplomatic statements against Vienna arbitration.

Despite the ambiguous statements of the German leader, Antonescu was convinced of his willingness to return the lost Transylvania to Romania in case it maintained its close alliance with the Reich. During the visit to Hitler, Antonescu He also requested German cooperation to develop Romanian industry and communications, which he promised would remain at the service of Berlin, while confirming his willingness to fight alongside the Axis.

Days before the visit to Berlin, the only interview between Antonescu and Mussolini took place. Critical of what he considered a philomagiar position of the Italian president in the Vienna arbitration and convinced of the Italian inability to satisfy Romanian needs of weapons, the interview was a failure and was not repeated.

The process of rapprochement with Germany culminated with Antonescu, but it had begun years before, with the replacement of the Francophile Nicolae Titulescu as head of the Foreign Ministry in August 1936 and had accelerated after the outbreak of the world war in autumn of 1939. The final alliance between Romania and Germany had already begun to be forged during the summer of 1940, during the last months of Carlosl's reign. Antonescu shared with the former sovereign anti-communism and fear of the USSR—of possible losses. territorial and social changes—which led to rapprochement with Germany. The fight against the Soviets was the basis of the German-Romanian alliance.

Although he signed the pact with the Axis powers, Antonescu managed to limit German interference in Romanian internal politics that had spread in the last years of Charles's reign, especially thanks to police and espionage cooperation, until then very This autonomy sometimes allowed the Romanian authorities to facilitate the escape of Allied soldiers (Polish, French or British officers) and prevent the delivery of prominent politicians such as Maniu or Brătianu to the Gestapo, despite their request. The German-Romanian alliance was due, according to Antonescu, to the fact that German power in Europe forced Romania to adopt a close alliance with the Reich to avoid its destruction. In various statements in the final months of 1940, he proclaimed that the alliance with the Axis was not a personal preference, but a pragmatic necessity. Hitler intended, however, to use Romania as the center of the southern front in the future confrontation with the USSR, not only as an important source of raw materials for the Reich..

Breakup of the coalition and crushing of the Guard

In the meeting with Hitler on January 14, 1941, to which Sima, despite having been invited, decided not to attend, Antonescu finally obtained his support to confront the Guard. From At the beginning of the month, both sides were preparing for an imminent confrontation. Antonescu requested the agreement of the German leader to expel the legionnaires from the Government and obtained his acquiescence. Despite the ideological closeness of the legionnaires, Hitler preferred to support the general for his control of the Army and his willingness to maintain economic concessions to Germany. When he returned to Romania, Antonescu annulled the "Romanization commissions"—controlled by the legionnaires—on the 18th, and fired the Minister of the Interior (legionary), Constantin Petrovicescu, using the assassination of a German officer, on the 20th and replaced all the legionary prefects. These measures accelerated the legionary rebellion, which broke out on the night of January 20 with the occupation of various official buildings in the capital and other cities; the fighting began the following morning. The legionnaires mistakenly believed they had German support. With the military units in the capital garrisoned awaiting reinforcements, the Guardia dominated much of Bucharest for thirty hours. Antonescu waited for the legionnaires to discredit themselves before the population and the Germans for their outrages before acting. On the 22nd, one hundred and twenty Jews were murdered in cold blood. Antonescu, supported by the Army, which was against the legionnaires, finally intervened and suppressed the rebellion that same day, with the approval of Hitler. The attempts of the legionnaire leaders to enlist the support of the The Germans, who at that time had one hundred and seventy thousand soldiers in the country - mostly awaiting their passage to Bulgaria to attack Greece - were rendered useless due to Hitler's decision to support the general. Although defeated, the legionary leaders managed to avoid Antonescu's repression, protected by the Germans themselves, who facilitated his departure from the country. Antonescu rejected the attempts of the new German ambassador to recompose the government coalition with the legionnaires and, after failing again In the formation of a cabinet with the traditional parties, he formed a essentially military Council of Ministers. The exiled legionary leaders remained in Germany as a possible alternative to Antonescu in case he decided to abandon his alliance with the Axis.

Military dictatorship

On January 27, Antonescu formed a new Government, made up of military personnel and technicians, in which Mihai Antonescu was appointed vice president of the Council of Ministers a few months later, at the end of June. Its objective was the maintenance of public order and the establishment of an effective administration through an authoritarian government. On February 5, a decree was promulgated that harshly punished riots and effectively prohibited any organization not approved by the Government and all demonstrations., considered subversive by default. On the 14th of the same month, the "national-legionary State" was abolished. The general carried out an intense repression of the legionnaires that took about nine thousand to prison. from them; military courts tried a third of these. Some of those who had participated in the pogroms during the January fighting were executed. In June, a military court sentenced the legionary leaders in absentia. His new military dictatorship received, however, the support of the old political parties, who saw Antonescu as the only figure capable of guiding the country in the circumstances of the moment. In March a plebiscite approved almost by unanimously the measures imposed by Antonescu in the previous weeks. These had meant the implementation of a militaristic, authoritarian and conservative State, but not fascist - Antonescu lacked a mass movement similar to the German or Italian one -, interested mainly in the maintenance of public order and the security of the country. Opposed to the parliamentary system and the participation of the population in politics, he intended to "build the nation" in an authoritarian manner, thanks to the control of the security forces of the State. Police state created to maintain order, as Antonescu himself admitted to Hitler, the general considered this a necessary condition for any subsequent progress. Antonescu, thanks to his powers granted by the monarchs and the lack of control of the Council of Ministers, he exercised authoritarian power that extended to the Administration. He relied, however, on the former followers of the National Christian Party of Octavian Goga and Alexandru C. Cuza, philo-fascists and conservatives, very favorable to Germany and willing to support the dictatorship without the whims of radical change of the Guard.

Domestic policy

The regime did not have a political ideology, the general's government program being simple: internal order and security of the Romanian borders from the outside, supported by the State security forces. The provincial administration was left in the hands of the prefects, appointed by Antonescu himself and responsible exclusively to him. Their broad powers were extended in October 1942 to cover the entire provincial administration. Meanwhile, the political representatives in the town councils remained under the control of the Ministry of the Interior and the prefects. The elected councilors were replaced by representatives appointed by the authorities.

The decree of February 1941 provided harsh sentences for opponents and a network of concentration camps was created where those who the Ministry of the Interior considered belonged to that category were sent. About five thousand people passed through these camps. during Antonescu's government, two thirds for political crimes.

Chauvinist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic, until his assumption of the Government in the fall of 1940, these characteristics were shown in a relatively moderate way. Antonescu's government promoted an anti-Semitic policy, with the intention of isolating citizens Romanians of Jewish origin from the rest of society.

Tolerance of the opposition

Although Antonescu had dictatorial powers, he allowed the existence of a relatively broad political opposition to his government. Although the activity of political parties was prohibited, he tolerated the activity of liberal and national-peasant leaders, with those with whom he corresponded and from whom he received criticism. On several occasions, he offered the government to the leaders of the opposition formations, who rejected or ignored the offers, considering that the military was still necessary to maintain the alliance with Germany. Opposed to sharing the responsibility of governing in a difficult period, they nevertheless gave indirect support to Antonescu. The unofficial pact between the national-peasants and liberals and marshal allowed the former to survive the war and recover a part notable of its former influence in the postwar. Indeed, traditional political parties could hold semi-clandestine meetings and even send complaints and petitions to the Government. For the Germans, aware of the pro-Allied attitude of the opposition, Antonescu acted with permissiveness and They repeatedly requested the arrest of their leaders, without result. The communists, on the contrary, were repressed, with two thousand of them imprisoned and seventy-two executed, convicted of sabotage or espionage in favor of the Soviet Union. regime managed to eliminate its activity, although not its organization, which survived in prisons. In total, 5,463 political opponents ended up imprisoned and 72 executed during the Antonescu dictatorship. The Guard, for its part, was ruthlessly crushed and disappeared as mass movement during the first months of 1941.

Economic situation

The Romanian-German economic agreement (valid for ten years) that Antonescu and the German leaders had agreed upon during his visit to Berlin at the end of November was signed on December 4, 1940. It aligned the national economy with the German one and It also served to obtain advantageous concessions such as low-interest loans, agricultural machinery or fertilizers, as well as advice in some sectors.

The economy became increasingly controlled by the State, with totalitarian measures. A decree of February 18, 1941 granted the military control of companies when the "interest of the State" required it; another of March 10 established the right of the Ministry of Agriculture to demand compulsory labor service from the rural population; a third extended this power over the entire adult population on May 15. The entry into the war increased the demands of the State on the population. The labor legislation that the previous two decades had improved the condition of workers was dismantled in the practice in order to increase production per worker. The working day increased from fifty-six to sixty hours per week, the employment of young people and women was facilitated and unions were repressed, which the regime tried to replace with a network of inspectors. mediators.

In agriculture and after the total failure of the brief period of government with the Guard, Antonescu concentrated on trying to maintain production despite the adverse effects of the war (with the mobilization of men and animals) and the loss of territories in 1940. Much of the measures (price control, export control, fight against speculation and sabotage, planting planning, etc.) had already begun during the Carlos dictatorship, but the war intensified your application.

German aid - interested - did, however, favor Romanian development in some economic sectors, mainly agriculture and the industries that Berlin considered most relevant for war production, although at the price of granting Germany important influence on the national economy. According to the OSS, Romania was not contributing its full economic or military potential to Hitler's campaigns. Antonescu opposed repeated German attempts to take control of the national economy, which he tried to to remain in Romanian hands, both through laws limiting foreign economic penetration and with state purchases of key companies. The trade agreement of December 4, 1940, which provided for bilateral cooperation to recover the Romanian economy, favored, however, the extension of German influence in crucial sectors, such as oil production, the metallurgical industry or grain exports. Romanian economic dependence on Germany - sole supplier of some key products and main market for Romanian agricultural products due to the Allied blockade — however, reduced the impact of Antonescu's protectionist measures. The large purchases at high prices by the Germans also caused inflation and the depreciation of the Romanian currency. Disagreements over payments were also constant, since the representatives Romanians wanted to take advantage of Germany's war needs to obtain goods and foreign exchange, while the Reich was unable to produce enough to pay for Romania's imports and wanted to use its foreign exchange reserves to make purchases abroad. Growing German arms deliveries and railway material never compensated for imports.

State planning concentrated on agriculture, both because of German interest and because of Antonescu's conviction that national development should be based on it. He launched a series of measures (increased credit, mechanization, land concentration, promotion of cooperatives, diversification of crops) aimed at increasing production, reducing poverty and creating a community of middle owners that was to become the basis of the nation. The agricultural structure did not change significantly to Despite the state's efforts: the division into smallholdings dedicated mainly to the cultivation of wheat and corn was maintained while the mobilization of men and animals, essential to work those, reduced production compared to that of the interwar period. The importation of Tractors did not compensate for the loss of trains. The final result of cooperation with Germany in agriculture was negative: the growth in production between the wars disappeared and the situation of the peasantry at the end of the war had worsened.

The results of attempts to increase industrial production were ambiguous: food, oil and textile production declined, coal barely grew, while the metallurgical and chemical industries grew considerably.

In general, the economic situation, however, seems to have improved even during the world conflict. According to reports from the American spy service (OSS), in 1943-1944 Romania enjoyed the highest caloric diet in all of occupied Europe, higher than that of the interwar period. According to the Swedish ambassador in the country, in January 1944 the food situation had improved compared to the previous year, Romania had agricultural surpluses and the number of factories and the railway network had increased.

The Holocaust

The worsening of the treatment of the Jewish population, after the excesses of the Guard during the period of the National Legionary State, coincided with Romania's entry into war with the Soviet Union. The horrors suffered by the community - responsibility of the general and their Cuzist allies—had in 1941, however, more of disorganized massacres than of orderly extermination as happened in the territories controlled by Germans and, later, Hungarians. The majority of the Jewish population in territory under Romanian control managed to survive the war despite the atrocities. The anti-Semitic measures of the Antonescu dictatorship were, in reality, characterized by disorganization, arbitrariness and enormous corruption. Antonescu did not effectively condemn or punish the atrocities against Jews and Gypsies. Despite the protests of the main representative of the Jewish community, Wilhelm Filderman, about the situation in Transnistria, Antonescu refused to put an end to it, justified the mistreatment and, later, deported Filderman himself. Those directly responsible for the crimes They were never properly punished by Antonescu, who limited himself to belatedly judging some officers and sending them to the front. It is estimated that, in total, more than two hundred thousand Romanian Jews and one hundred thousand Ukrainians died in territories under Romanian administration during Antonescu's dictatorship.. Romania under Antonescu was the only country allied to Nazi Germany that not only participated in the genocide of the European Jewish population, but carried out its own extermination in Bukovina, Bessarabia and Ukraine.

Antisemitism and xenophobia

Antonescu's chauvinism carried an aspect of anti-Semitism and rejection of the rest of the country's minorities. For the general, minorities represented a danger to the Romanian State. Already in the presentation of his program politician in September 1940, announced that this was based on an "integral nationalism" hostile to minorities and a desire to "ethnically" homogenize the country. The legislation enacted by Antonescu sought this end, through the elimination of which he considered "foreign plague in Romanian property structures and suppression of Jewish domination of Romanian economic life." Heir to an extreme right-wing nationalism born in the second half of the previous century, he considered the objective of "Romanization" essential. the country. Of special influence were the nationalist and anti-Semitic ideas of Nichifor Crainic, who served briefly as Minister of Propaganda under Antonescu. Favoring social, economic and political discrimination and the subsequent expulsion of the Jewish community, it was not until He came into contact with Hitler and his followers when their influence made him consider physically eliminating her.

During his government, different government agencies designed various plans to eliminate minorities from the country. He attributed the corruption of national politics to "Pharisee, Judaic and Masonic" influences and presented himself as the savior of the nation. The external enemies of this were "the British, Americans and Jews who had dictated the terms of peace in the previous war" while the internal ones were, for Antonescu, the "jidani, Hungarians and Reds" The general's attitude towards the Jews, however, oscillated between moments of bitter hatred and others of paternalistic generosity. Although his opinion on the best way to "solve the Jewish problem" varied extremely At various times during his time at the head of the government, he maintained certain convictions unchanged throughout this time: the abundance of the Jewish population in Romania - despite the statistics -, the exploitation of Romanians by Jews, their corruption of Romanian society and its constant threat, its alliance with the nation's enemies and the certainty that they dominated the world.

Although the crushing of the Guard meant the disappearance of uncontrolled violence against the Jewish community, it soon had to face, from May 3, 1941, the activity of the new National Center for Romanianization (CNR), contrary to minorities. Antonescu's methods were less brutal and more gradual than those of the legionaries - fundamentally so as not to harm the economy - but the objective of "Romanianizing" the country was common to both. The CNR depended directly on the Presidency of the Government, its main task was the expropriation and management or sale of Jewish properties and had a repressive and police nature.

Antonescu's anti-Semitism was evident. In the council of ministers of November 3, 1941 he declared:

Do not think that they (the Jews) will not revenge when they have a chance. But so there's no one left to get revenge, I'm gonna end up with them before.

Days before, on October 6, 1941, in another Government meeting, he had declared:

Regarding the Jews I have taken measures to eliminate them completely and definitively from these regions (Besarabia and Bucovina)... Unless we use the opportunity we have nationally and internationally to clean the Romanian nation, we will lose the last chance that history gives us. I can get Besarabia and Transylvania back, but I won't have achieved anything if I don't clean the Romanian nation. Because it is not the borders that give strength to a nation, but the homogeneity and purity of its race, which are more important. This has been my primary objective.

Throughout the various councils of ministers in 1941, there were anti-Semitic statements in which the general blamed the Jewish population for exploiting the country, keeping it backward or being communist, in addition to showing his willingness to tolerate the massacres.. Statements of this style were repeated until the end of the war.

Measures against the Jewish population

The legal basis for the actions against the Jewish community were the laws enacted by Ion Gigurtu's cabinet during the summer of 1940. During the coalition period with the legionnaires, new anti-Jewish legislation was relatively scarce, apart from which allowed the expropriation of the land in Hebrew hands. In addition to the monetary "contributions" demanded by Antonescu from the community, most of the outrages against it were due to outrages, not legal actions. However, and despite his hostility to the previous royal regime, Antonescu not only did not repeal the anti-Semitic decree of the summer of 1940, but used it as the basis of his own anti-Jewish decrees and expanded the definition of who was considered a Hebrew. A series of decrees promulgated In late 1940 and early 1941 he nationalized Jewish agrarian properties and expelled the community from agriculture. These laws were later extended to the provinces recovered from the USSR. Aware of the impossibility of immediately replacing Jews in commerce and the industry, the Government tried to impose control over them through the "Romanization commissions", a Nazi-inspired method that remained mainly in the hands of legionnaires. After the crushing of the Guard, they were replaced by officials from the Ministry of Economy National. A new decree of March 28, 1941, nationalized Jewish properties in the cities. Several decrees published in the summer of 1942 also allowed the nationalization of hundreds of community buildings, including schools, synagogues and hospitals. Antonescu's anti-Semitic laws had a clear fascist overtone, a mixture of the anti-Semitic ideology of legionaries and Cuzists, and were sometimes inspired by the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. The protection of Romanian Jews abroad followed the general pattern of the measures. anti-Semites: the intercession of the embassies and consulates in their favor was withdrawn in May 1941 and was granted again starting in 1943, with the change of course of the war. Again in August of that year, Antonescu agreed with the Germans the handover of Romanian Jews living abroad, as long as their property remained in Romanian hands. This agreement allowed the deportation to the extermination camps in Poland of several thousand Romanian Jews, who perished in their country. majority.

On June 21, 1941, the day before the beginning of the offensive against the USSR, he ordered the deportation of all male Jews between the ages of eighteen and sixty who resided between Siret and Prut to a camp in Tirgu Jiu, in the south of the country, as well as other military garrisons in the area; this measure was to be carried out in forty-eight hours. Their families, as well as the Jewish population of the rest of Moldova, were to be moved to certain cities. On the same day, the Romanian secret service (SSI, which reported directly to Antonescu) formed a special unit similar to the German einsatzgruppen, which participated days later in the Iași massacre, along with Romanian and German troops. Days before (on June 18), at a meeting of the gendarmerie chaired by its inspector general, General Vasiliu, he had ordered to "clear the ground", which implied repression - including the deportation or annihilation—of the region's Jewish population. The order, secret and widely known only since 1982, was equivalent to the Nazi guidelines on the treatment of Eastern European Jews—known to the Antonescu—and meant the immediate extermination of part of the population of the provinces recovered from the Soviets and the deportation of the survivors. The deportations of Moldovan and Vlach Jews during the first two weeks of the war affected nearly forty thousand people, many of them sent to hundreds of kilometers from their homes. The deportations of Jews from the recovered provinces were, in reality, only the first step in the total "ethnic cleansing" of the country through the elimination of minorities. It is estimated that this first phase of the Holocaust In Romania it claimed the lives of at least one hundred thousand people.

Although he condemned the massacres of the Jewish population such as the Iași pogrom and tried to take measures to prevent them, he did so not to condemn the mistreatment of the Jewish community, but because they were illegal actions not ordered by the Government. According to Antonescu, the elimination of the Jews—who, in his opinion, had impeded the development of the Romanian population for centuries and constituted a "pestilence for Romanianism"—had to be carried out without disorder and under state control.

The mistreatment of the Jews had a notable geographical characteristic: it was concentrated in the population of the provinces recovered from the USSR in the summer of 1941, often proletarian and extremely poor. The anti-Semitism and bad government of Bessarabia during the The interwar years had fueled a rejection on the part of local Jews towards Romanians, which was evident in the welcome of Soviet troops in June 1940 and in the subsequent revenge. The deportations from these provinces were justified by referring to the "satisfaction of the honor of the Romanian people" by the events of the summer of 1940 but, in reality, they served as a relief for the crises of 1940, the desire for revenge and violence and were a symptom of state and private greed, satisfied in the possessions of the victims. During the reconquest of the provinces, Romanian units murdered Jewish civilians, a task that 3.er Army continued months later in Crimea. Some thirteen thousand died in Bessarabia and another three thousand in Bucovina - around six thousand of them at the hands of Einsatzgruppe D. Once the provinces were recovered in 1941 and without spirit After analyzing the cause of Jewish disaffection, the Romanian authorities decided to eliminate the minority from the province, hated and considered disloyal. The recovery of the provinces lost to the Soviets led to the death of tens of thousands of Jews in these territories.; the survivors were locked in ghettos and concentration camps. Antonescu explicitly approved their deportation—euphemistically called "forced emigration"—on July 8. Amid great corruption, disorganization and arbitrariness, the majority of the community The province was hastily deported beyond the Dniester starting on August 7, but, rejected by the Germans, it was locked up in makeshift camps where many died of hunger, torture and massacre. Transfer, on trains without water or food, thousands died. The deportation was extended even to areas that had not been under Soviet rule, such as southern Bukovina. Antonescu protested the return of the Jews by the German military commanders. in Ukraine. In August, he halted his plans to deport another sixty thousand from Wallachia and Moldova to Ukraine solely because of the German request to abandon this plan; Berlin hoped to be able to deal with these communities later. The same month, Hitler praised Antonescu's radical anti-Semitic measures. In July, the Germans, satisfied with Romanian measures against the Jews, had recalled the special envoy for Jewish affairs, who He returned in August 1942 at the express request of the Romanian Government, eager to have his advice to apply a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem." Between August and October, another seventeen thousand people lost their lives in deportations and in the camps. After various massacres carried out by the forces of einsatzgruppe D and the Romanian Army in Transnistria, the territory passed under Romanian administration on August 30. Days later, on September 6, Antonescu ordered the confinement of the Jewish population local in fields along the Bug. After various delays, the deportation to Trasnnistria in groups of a thousand Jews began on September 16. The General Staff ordered the execution of anyone who could not continue the march and extensive preparations were made. pits to bury the corpses, which were saturated. The peasants could buy those expelled so that, once they were killed by the troops guarding them, they could keep their belongings. Some of the young women were raped.

The brutal deportations of residents in Bucovina began, by order of Antonescu, in early October and were practically completed by the middle of the following month. Some one hundred and ten thousand Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews were deported to the Bug. Antonescu admitted to the cabinet his knowledge of the numerous deaths that occurred during the trial. Most of the orders were given orally, to avoid evidence of the trial. The concentration of the Hebrew population in this area had to precede their surrender. to the Germans beyond the Bug River. In early October, he had given orders to confiscate their money and jewelry from those about to be deported.

After the capture of Odessa, Romanian troops carried out a huge massacre of more than fifteen thousand Jews in the city. The cause was the blowing up of the Romanian headquarters in the city by partisans; Antonescu ordered the execution of seven thousand eight hundred people in retaliation in addition to the taking of communist and Jewish hostages, which led to the massacre. Official propaganda had blamed the Jewish population for the long resistance of the town, fostering anti-Semitism. On December 13 In November, Antonescu demanded confirmation that the city's Jewish population had suffered harsh repression following the Soviet attack. Some of the punishment massacres were secretly ordered. The survivors of the massacre were immediately expelled from the city and They, along with thousands of other Jews from the region, were led north. Antonescu had expressed his wish that they all be eliminated. About half, some twenty-five thousand, were sent to the town of Dalnic, five kilometers from Odessa. There they were locked in some buildings where they were machine-gunned before being set on fire to kill any possible survivors. The other thirty thousand began a two-week march, without food or drink, to the countryside. of Bogdanovka, where, in the middle of one of the coldest winters in the modern history of the region and without facilities to house them, they were left to die. The most unfortunate, without accommodation, were left outdoors occupying about three kilometers on the banks of the Bug at temperatures of -30°C.

Once Transnistria was dominated and handed over to the Romanian administration, some one hundred and nineteen thousand Jews were deported to the region in the final months of 1941 and another five thousand at the beginning of the following year. The deportees came from the camps and Bessarabian ghettos and their original destination was the Ukraine under German occupation, not the region under Romanian control. They were locked in camps in horrendous conditions that led to the death of most of them. They were joined by the Jews of Transnistria itself. Between December 21, 1941 and the end of February 1942, it is estimated that at least seventy thousand lost their lives in the Dumanovka, Bogdanovca and Ajmechetka fields in Transnistria. At a council of ministers in December, Antonescu expressed his displeasure because it had not been possible to loot the possessions of the Bessarabian deportees before their expulsion, a task that ended up being carried out by the deportees' own bodyguards.

Romanians, Germans and Ukrainians participated in these massacres. In Bogdanovka alone, an immense massacre at the end of the year produced between forty-three thousand and forty-eight thousand victims, who were later cremated. In the Berezovka district, The Romanian authorities handed over to the local German units - integrated into the SS - at least thirty-one thousand Jews, many expelled from Odessa, who were murdered in their entirety over several months in 1942. The massacres in the camps along the Bug and others annihilated the entire Jewish population in the south of the region and claimed around one hundred and thirty thousand victims.

Most of the murders occurred in a new and failed attempt to entrust the problem to the German authorities by means of a new deportation beyond the Bug in February 1942. The rest died due to lack of food, shelter, mistreatment, forced labor and a typhus epidemic. The German authorities, however, showed their displeasure at the Romanian anti-Semitic actions, which were lacking in method in their opinion. The Germans, without extermination camps in the region to finish with the Jewish deportees, they had demanded that they not cross the Bug until the final defeat of the Soviets. The violent deportations and confinement in atrocious conditions of those expelled were carried out by secret order from the marshal to prominent military and civilian commanders. The plan included the subsequent expulsion of the Slav population from Bukovina and Bessarabia, which was to follow that of the Hebrews, and their colonization by Romanians to ensure the "purification" of the provinces. The objective, presented by the vice president in During the summer councils of ministers, he received the support of Antonescu; for him, Bucovina and Bessarabia were "model provinces." The marshal knew about the massacres perpetrated by the SS but, in response to a report about it from the General Staff, he indicated that "he should not worry about those things."

Antonescu offered to Hitler to eliminate the Romanian Jews and only stopped the deportations to the Transnistrian extermination camps when he considered that the war was lost and he needed to negotiate with the Allies. In the summer of 1942, the Germans counted on the Antonescu's acquiescence to begin the deportation to the extermination camps of the around three hundred thousand Jews who still resided in Wallachia, southern Transylvania and Moldova. In August, a German newspaper in the capital near The embassy announced the upcoming deportation of some twenty-five thousand and the expulsion of the rest during the following year and rumors about the imminence of the measure soon spread. During the autumn and after various attempts by Romanian and foreign personalities to prevent the expulsions, Antonescu postponed them indefinitely. At the end of 1942, however, Antonescu approved a plan for the deportations of minorities—including Jews—and for Romanian rural colonization. Although the majority of Jews in the former provinces (about 290 000) survived the war, at least 10% perished and the rest survived without civil rights and in precarious economic conditions. Unlike Hitler, however, Antonescu was willing to accept Jewish emigration—without their property. as an alternative to extermination.

At the end of 1942 and during 1943, Antonescu improved conditions in the camps and allowed the repatriation of the fifty-three thousand survivors at the end of 1943. On September 1, 1943, a report estimated that only about fifty and one thousand deportees of the more than one hundred and twenty-three thousand originals were still alive. The same day their repatriation was approved, but this took place in a very slow and conditional manner. At the end of the month, however, they were considering the possibility of deporting all Romanian Jews to Transnistria, which he wished to evacuate. By the end of November, more than six thousand of them had barely been ordered to return. The first returns, not without mistreatment of the helpless survivors, took place in December, before Antonescu decided to paralyze them in January 1944. The original plan for a mass repatriation was only resumed on March 14, the same day that Mihai Antonescu tried to resume contacts with the Americans through Ankara. In April, However, he continued to order that those Jews who crossed into Romania clandestinely from Transnistria would be handed over to the Germans.

Later he tried to get rid of the Jewish population by allowing emigration to Palestine, but the lack of ships to transport them and the money to pay the necessary permit meant that only six thousand were able to do so. The desire to use forced emigration as method of getting rid of the Jewish population—a method advocated by the Germans until 1939—also had its origins in the ideology of the legionnaires and Cuzists, who had previously advocated for it. The improvement in the treatment of the Jewish population in the second part of the war, however, did not prevent official propaganda from continuing to brand it as the main internal enemy, the cause of the country's economic problems and an agent of the Allies. Much of this was also due to the venality of many Romanian officials., bribes from foreign Jewish organizations and the belief that the Axis would lose the war. Five days before his overthrow and arrest, Antonescu forbade Jews from settling in rural areas.

In total, it is estimated that at least one hundred thousand Jews died in the first massacres in Bukovina and Bessarabia, another one hundred forty thousand from the same regions perished in Transnitria, and at least one hundred eighty thousand Ukrainian Jews died in the area, all under Antonescu's authority. Under Antonescu, Romania was the largest exterminator of the Jewish population among Germany's allies.

The Gypsy Holocaust

Approximately twenty-five thousand gypsies, about 12% of their members in Romania, were deported to Transnistria in 1942;< it is estimated that more than half of them died. Antonescu considered the deportation of the gypsies It was necessary to reduce the number of infractions (thefts, crimes) caused by the war situation in Romania. Their deportation, like that of the Jews, was selective and included nomads, the unemployed and those with a criminal record, But they did not suffer theoretical legal discrimination, nor were their property expropriated, nor did they lose their nationality, unlike the Jewish community. Antonescu wished, however, to expel them from the cities, sending them to new settlements under military surveillance. Their deportation It was due to a mixture of social reasons (which Antonescu used to justify the expulsion of those he considered unassimilated) and "racial". The deportations began in May 1942 by order of the Council of Ministers and ended for the nomads in August., while the sedentary were still being deported in September. Those deported were barely allowed to keep a herd and had to abandon the rest of their belongings. In some cases, soldiers or families of soldiers who were in prison were deported. the front. Most of the deportations ended in October 1942, by order of Antonescu himself. The deportation of a community that was contributing soldiers to the armed forces caused considerable problems for the military commanders. The living conditions of the deported was horrendous and most of the victims perished in the winter of 1942. The exact number of members of the Gypsy community killed in Transnistria is unknown, but in May 1944, those who returned to Romania from the region, registered by the Romanian gendarmerie, barely reached six thousand.

Favorable measures

On the other hand and despite German pressure, Antonescu applied a series of measures relatively favorable to the Jewish population. In early September 1941, he abolished the obligation for Romanian Jews to wear the Star of David, a measure he tried to extend to Romanian Jews living in occupied Europe. Also in September, he banned the marking of Jewish shops after meeting with the representative of the community, an event that was repeated on several occasions during the war, although in October he was not willing to put an end to the outrages perpetrated against the community.

Nor did he send Romanian representatives to the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 which, despite this absence, approved the deportation of two hundred and eighty thousand Romanian Jews to the General Government. A few days later, at the council of ministers on the 13th October, Antonescu prohibited further deportations, before the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. The permission of the Romanian authorities for the shipment of community and clothing to Transnistria and the relative improvement of treatment in the region was largely due part to American pressure and bribery. It is believed that it was pressure both internally (from prominent politicians such as Maniu, Brătianu or Lupu or from the queen mother herself) and external pressure (from the Swedish and Swiss embassies, the Vatican, the International Red Cross or American agencies, and the rejection of German interference in the "Jewish problem" which led to the paralysis and subsequent abandonment of the deportations. The decision to postpone the deportations indefinitely was the cause of the survival of the bulk of the Jewish population of Wallachia, Moldavia and southern Transylvania, while the measures approved by Antonescu for Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria were the death of the majority of the community in these territories. From the end of 1942, Antonescu and other Romanian policymakers assumed that they could use improving conditions for Jews as a method to improve the country's image in the eyes of the British and Americans.

Antonescu also favored the emigration of part of the Jewish population during the war, despite German opposition to the measure. According to reports from the German embassy at the end of 1942, Antonescu had approved the emigration to Palestine among seventy-five and eighty thousand Jews in exchange for a payment of two hundred thousand lei and had rejected Romanian participation in the "final solution." The expropriation of Jewish companies also slowed down over time, gradually decreasing between 1940 and 1942. In the territories under Romanian control at the end of 1940, the concentration of the Jewish population in ghettos was not completed either and the vast majority (about three hundred and forty-two thousand) survived the war, the largest number in Romania-controlled Europe. the Axis. At the end of 1942, the agency created to manage the deportation of the Jewish population began to dedicate itself to the selective repatriation of deportees.

In 1943, with the continued German retreat on the Eastern Front due to successive defeats, Antonescu approved the transfer of Jewish survivors from Transnistria to Palestine through Romania, at the request of Wilhelm Filderman. The European section of the Jewish Congress World Cup, which in vain requested the cooperation of the Allies for the process, considered that Antonescu would be favorable. With the arrival of the front in Transnistria in 1944, the marshal allowed the Jewish survivors of the region who had been deported in 1941 to return. to Romanian territory, an offer that most of them accepted - the majority were forcibly repatriated to the USSR in 1949 accused of desertion -. Repatriation, however, could not simply mean the return of the deportees to their places of origin; At the end of April 1944, Antonescu demanded their concentration in certain cities or ghettos while sending part of them to work battalions.

Foreign policy

In foreign policy, Antonescu's main objective was a firm alliance with Germany, which became even closer after the suppression of the Guard. Initially pro-Allied, the defeat of France, British setbacks on the continent, the constant Soviet threat and the feeling that Germany would eventually win the war convinced him of the need for an alliance with the Third Reich. He established contacts with the Germans during the summer of 1940 - a time in which they helped prevent his possible assassination—and, in the autumn crisis, it was presented as the option that seemed to guarantee order and stability in the country—convenient for Germany, interested in Romanian products—in the face of the possible political incapacity of the Guard, which lacked a clear program and men capable of leading the country. The support of the Nazi party organizations and their security services for the legionnaires during the January 1941 revolt allowed them to demand and achieve the withdrawal of their personnel from Romania during the spring of that year, which increased its control of domestic politics and freed it from possible interference from the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst and other Nazi organizations. Immediately after the proclamation of the military dictatorship and the crushing of the legionnaires, the Government de Antonescu also received representatives of Himmler to collaborate in the elimination of the country's Jewish population.

Between November 1940 and August 1944, two stages can be distinguished regarding Romania's involvement in Axis politics: the first, from November 1940 to June 1941, in which Romania joined to the alliance but did not actively participate in the world war; and the second, from June 1941 to August 1944, in which he became actively involved in the world conflict alongside his Axis allies.

During the first, Antonescu limited himself to facilitating the German campaigns in the Balkans, but without participating militarily in them. Since the meeting with Hitler in January, however, he knew of the German intention to attack the USSR and the desire of Berlin for the Romanians to participate in it. Permission for German units to invade Greece led to the withdrawal of the British embassy in February. Faced with the attack on Yugoslavia, he indicated at the beginning that, given the traditional good relations Romanian-Yugoslavian forces, did not wish to raise territorial claims, although he strongly opposed the entry of Hungarian units into the Yugoslav Banat and threatened to send Romanian troops to expel them if this happened. This threat led Germany to not hand over the region to Hungary and to establish an autonomous administration there dominated by the local German minority. On the other hand, subsequent Romanian claims for the Yugoslav Banat and for an independent Macedonia with autonomy for the Romanian minority were rejected by Berlin.

Dispute over Transylvania

Antonescu and the Budapest Government maintained their confrontation to gain control of all of Transylvania. The Vienna arbitration did not solve the problem of the numerous minorities nor the desire of the two Governments to take over the territory of the neighboring country. The discriminatory measures in politics, education and economy, implemented by the two countries, fueled bilateral tension, which Hitler tried to take advantage of to his advantage while ensuring that it did not break out into a military conflict. Although dealt with the main problem of Romanian foreign policy between 1941 and 1943, Antonescu was unable to reach an agreement with the Magyar Government that would resolve it, despite contacts in the first half of 1943, driven by the mutual conviction of future defeat. German, of the desire to avoid a Soviet occupation and to reach an agreement with the Western Allies. The informal bilateral talks, known to Hitler, failed in the summer due to the territorial ambitions of both parties.

The war against the Soviet Union

Recovery of the lost provinces

On June 12, Antonescu was the first German ally to receive news of Hitler's plans to soon attack the Soviet Union, following the deployment of several divisions to the Soviet border at the German request at the beginning. of the month. Antonescu expressed his desire to participate in the invasion from the beginning; he wanted not only to recover the territories lost in June 1940, but also to participate in what he considered a Christian crusade against infidel Bolshevism. He therefore promised full military and economic cooperation with Berlin.

On June 22, 1941, Romania entered the war, alongside Germany and its allies, attacking the Soviet Union, without prior declaration of war. It was the beginning of a war considered in Romania "war holy, anti-communist, just and national", which caused enthusiasm among a large part of the population. Romania mainly wanted to recover the provinces obtained by the Soviets in June 1940 and definitively eliminate any Soviet threat. Romanian leaders and The population hoped that the campaign would be short thanks to the supposed German military superiority.

Antonescu used the bulk of the Romanian Army in the Soviet campaign, although around half of the units destined for the front remained under German command. Antonescu formally commanded - his General Staff was made up of German officers - the "group of Antonescu armies", which encompassed the 3rd er Romanian Army, the German 11th and the 4th Romanian and covered the right flank of Army Group South, stationed in occupied Poland.

In a month of campaign, the Romanians retook Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, culminating their main military objectives. The 3.er Romanian army, actually commanded by a German general, took the former capital of Cernăuţi on July 4. Operations to recover the provinces lost in 1940 had practically completed on July 27, Romania having suffered nearly twenty-one thousand casualties.

On August 22, the king promoted Antonescu to the rank of marshal for the recovery of Bukovina and Bessarabia. On September 4, Bessarabia and Bukovina were again proclaimed Romanian provinces. Both remained under administration. military during the rest of Antonescu's government. The leaders of the main parties Iuliu Maniu and Constantin I. C. Brătianu then advised Antonescu to stop the advance of Romanian troops and not to occupy Soviet territory that had not previously belonged to Romania, to which The marshal refused. He maintained that the security of the recovered provinces depended on the Soviet defeat, a goal in which he was willing to cooperate with the Germans.

Advances beyond the Dniester and Stalingrad

Antonescu agreed to continue the war beyond the Dniester on the side of Germany and participate in what he believed would mean the destruction of the USSR. The crossing of the river began on July 17 and on August 3, the 4th Army headed to Odessa, the only city already under Soviet control between the Dniester and the Bug; Antonescu received the Iron Cross from Hitler on the 6th, in addition to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and became He was the first foreigner to receive this decoration. The general hoped to obtain the annulment of the Vienna arbitration that had awarded northern Transylvania to Hungary in exchange for continuing the campaign against the USSR. It is possible that it was also an influenced decision. for his concept of military honor. The marshal undertook to use Romanian units in security missions between the Dniester and the Dnieper and to allow some others - mountain or cavalry brigades - to participate in combat beyond it. In addition to the military commitment, the two leaders agreed to transfer the area between the Dniester and the Southern Bug, called "Transnistria", to Romanian civil administration, an agreement that was formalized days later, on August 30. The cession was not permanent since for this Hitler expected Antonescu's renunciation of Transylvania handed over to Hungary, a condition that he rejected. Although he refused to convert the military occupation into a legal annexation, Antonescu hoped to be able to maintain possession. of the territory indefinitely, converting it into a Romanian province and expelling the non-Romanian population from it. The recovery of all the territories lost by Romania since the beginning of the war was a constant concern for the marshal. Transnistria, with a small Romanian minority of 11% of the population, continued to be administered with Soviet laws, German currency and a border without free movement with Romania; Antonescu limited himself to taking advantage of the territory's agricultural resources to compensate for the decline in Romanian production.

The capture of Transnistria brought about two important consequences: a major temporary demobilization of almost half of the Romanian forces (from about nine hundred thousand men in October to about four hundred and sixty-five thousand in January 1942) and the declaration of British war, at the instigation of Stalin. Although the recovery of Bukovina and Bessarabia had not worried the British, the occupation of Transnistria represented a territorial expansion at the expense of the USSR. On December 7, after the lack of a Romanian response to its demand for withdrawal from the Soviet Union, Great Britain declared war on Romania, much to the dismay of Antonescu, who had great respect for the United Kingdom. A few days later—on December 12—and forced by Due to its membership in the Tripartite Pact, the nation went to war with the United States, even though Antonescu declared:

I am an ally of the Reich against Russia and neutral in the struggle between Britain and Germany. I'm a U.S. supporter. In front of Japan.

Both Antonescu and the Romanian political elite were reluctant allies of Berlin in its struggle with the Western powers, but not in the conflict with the USSR. Although declarations of war with Great Britain and the US did not have Immediate repercussions later led to heavy bombing.

In February 1942 and convinced of the imminence of Soviet defeat, Antonescu again promised new Romanian forces for the spring offensive, although he demanded modern German weapons to equip them and the significant participation of Bulgaria and Hungary in the campaign. At the same time, he reiterated the Romanian desire to recover the lost Transylvania, although he was willing to postpone this demand until the end of the world war. To neutralize any Hungarian threat in Transylvania, he strengthened ties with Croatia and Slovakia in May. Due to the increase in border clashes in the spring and summer, Hitler imposed on Horthy and Antonescu public recognition of the 1940 border, which Antonescu reluctantly granted in August, while continuing to claim the territory from Hitler in successive interviews. of both.

Romanian troops, who did not have the backing of a modern industrialized state, were poorly equipped with heavy artillery and tanks, suffered heavy casualties and were often unable to exploit their theoretical advantage. Lacking a strong industry to supply the weapons necessary to modernize the Romanian divisions and without sufficient German supply - the Germans preferred to create new units of their own rather than improve the weapons of the Romanian ones - Antonescu had to abandon his plans to reorganize the Army around armored divisions and 75% of the soldiers were peasants, half of them illiterate. Resistant and capable of long marches, their lack of education made it difficult for them to use modern weapons and offer opposition to armored attacks. Romanian officers, unlike the troops, received harsh criticism from their German allies. Romanian troops were the third in number in the Axis, totaling 585,000 soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front between June and October 1941.

The Romanian Army participated in very complicated battles, such as those of Odessa (taken on October 16, 1941 after a fierce Soviet resistance of almost two months), in the Crimea and in the Caucasus mountains, in which suffered significant losses. The long siege of Odessa alone, for which Antonescu had rejected German aid, underestimating the strength of the defenders, caused nearly seventy thousand casualties to the Romanians, forcing the withdrawal from Transnistria. of the depleted 4th Army and reduced the Romanian contribution to the winter campaign of 1941-1942. Of the five or six divisions that participated, the majority did so in the capture of Crimea as part of the German 11th Army. The Crimean campaign, in which Antonescu diligently cooperated with the commanding German general, Von Manstein, resulted in a brilliant victory, satisfactory to both allies. Antonescu not only sent nearly half a million men to the Eastern Front in the second half of 1942 - more than twice as much as Italy and more than any other ally of Germany - as he had promised Hitler in February, but he supported the Italian forces with oil and supplies. In the autumn of 1942, Antonescu contributed to the Axis in the east more soldiers than Mussolini in Africa and the USSR. Romanian participation in the Ukrainian campaign produced some opposition in the command, more public due to Antonescu's long illness that seemed to announce his soon death; He reacted by transferring twenty-three senior officers to the reserve during the summer and granting himself extraordinary powers in September to face any possible opposition.

Again in the summer of 1942, large Romanian forces participated in the summer battles of the Eastern Front; Eight Romanian divisions fought east of the Don, most of them on the march to the Volga, on the flanks of the German units. The Soviets launched their winter offensive at the end of November precisely in these positions, where the Romanians fought bravely. but, lacking sufficient modern weapons, they had to retreat, allowing the first to surround Stalingrad.

The Battle of Stalingrad caused one hundred and fifty-five thousand Romanian dead, wounded or missing and destroyed eighteen Romanian divisions. Poorly armed, short of men and without sufficient support, the Romanian armies lost a quarter of their troops in the eastern front. Antonescu had already shown concern at the end of August about the German plans and the enormous concentration (80% of the Romanian Army) in this campaign. In September, he had asked Hitler in vain for the withdrawal of the Romanian divisions of the front to reinforce them and concentrate them under a single Romanian command. The major defeat caused tension between Germany and Romania, which accused each other of being responsible for the disaster. Despite this, in January 1943, Antonescu visited to Hitler, he agreed to rearm the Romanian divisions with German material obtained on credit and publicly maintained his faith in German victory. While nineteen new divisions were formed, Antonescu committed to maintaining the eight that still existed in the Crimea and the Caucasus. after the defeat.

Withdrawal and contacts with the Allies

The defeat at Stalingrad marked a turning point in Romanian politics: fearing Soviet advances, Antonescu maintained extensive military cooperation with Germany but, at the same time, sought an agreement with the Western Allies. The growing German demands of men and material for the Eastern Front reinforced Antonescu's conviction of future German defeat and allowed the country to obtain some economic concessions from the Reich.

The Marshal allowed his Foreign Minister and Maniu's attempts at contact with the Allies, which began in January 1943. Their insistence on an unconditional surrender frustrated these first contacts. Thus, throughout 1943, on behalf of the Bucharest Government, Romanian diplomats contacted representatives of the Allies with the purpose of signing a separate peace, without, however, accepting the basic condition of surrender demanded by the Allies. The Romanian attempts to make an agreement with the British and Americans, to avoid the Soviets and to satisfy their territorial desires failed. Neither Maniu nor the minister showed interest in making an agreement with the Soviets, despite contacts with Moscow, convinced that they could yield the country to London and Washington. Antonescu rejected Hitler's accusations of treason against Maniu and the Foreign Minister and, at their meeting in early April, asked in vain that Germany sign peace with the Western Allies to concentrate on fighting. to the Soviet Union. Mihai Antonescu's contacts with the Italians to appear jointly before the British and Americans did not bear fruit and ended with the overthrow of Mussolini and the Italian surrender. In September, Hitler again met with Antonescu who, in the midst of the Italian crisis and with the recent death of King Boris of Bulgaria, reiterated his fidelity to the Axis. Once Mussolini was rescued from his arrest and the Republic of Saló was proclaimed, Romania became the second country after Germany to recognize it, in against the opinion of Mihai Antonescu. The marshal, despite presenting the Germans with reports that indicated a greater weakness than the real one in obtaining more weapons, continued to collaborate closely with Hitler in the design of the eastern campaign. At the same time, however, it allowed Mihai Antonescu to resume talks with the Allies through the Ankara embassy in September, upon his return from his visit to Hitler.

The most important negotiations were carried out in Ankara (September 1943 - March 1944) and Stockholm (November 1943 - June 1944) - by the Antonescu Government - and in Cairo (March-June 1944)—on the part of the opposition—. In the discussions held in Stockholm, the Romanian ambassador Frederic Nanu, on behalf of Marshal Antonescu, and Aleksandra Kolontái, ambassador of the Soviet Union in Sweden, discussed the armistice. The Soviets were confident in being able to reach an agreement with Antonescu that would facilitate Romania's change of side as it controlled the armed forces. For its part, the Romanian Government abandoned the talks, convinced of being able to reach an agreement with the British and Americans. Antonescu, anti-Soviet, preferred deal with the British and Americans. In February 1944, Maniu dispatched former Prime Minister Barbu Știrbey—very close to the royal family—to Cairo to deal with the Allied command in the Middle East, with Antonescu's acquiescence.

In January 1944, in a meeting with Maniu, Antonescu expressed his willingness to abandon the alliance with Germany if the allies guaranteed the Romanian borders, which Maniu could not guarantee. By then the marshal admitted that Germany had lost the war and had given orders not to confront British or American troops if they appeared in the Balkans, but refused to admit a possible agreement with the Allies that would hand control of the country to the Soviets. At the end of March, the Allied command demanded immediate surrender to the Soviets in response to Bucharest's urgent consultation on the Allied attitude to the German occupation of Hungary and the fear that Hitler would do the same to Romania. The conditions presented by the Allied command at the beginning of April, to which neither Maniu nor Antonescu responded for not including territorial guarantees as they wished, dispelled any illusion of a separate peace that did not include Moscow.

In the new meeting with Hitler - the ninth - at the end of February, he managed to get Antonescu to agree to maintain the Romanian units defending Crimea in exchange for promising to retake the lost ground in Ukraine in June and thus end the isolation of the peninsula. At the beginning of the meeting, Antonescu had demanded the evacuation of the territory. At the March meeting and with Odessa—the peninsula's main supply port—in immediate danger of falling into Soviet hands—which happened on the 10th. April—the marshal again demanded the abandonment of Crimea, which took place in April.

In March Hitler summoned Antonescu and reproached him for the peace negotiations, of which he had news despite their secret nature, and only in response to the marshal's profession of loyalty did he decide to keep him in power and not occupy the country, as he did with Hungary that same month. Antonescu nevertheless maintained his attempts to abandon the war on the condition of obtaining guarantees for the Romanian borders, refusing an unconditional surrender, despite the worsening military situation — By the end of March, the Soviets had reached Bucovina. At the same time, he made a commitment to Hitler to provide new troops for the Eastern Front, although he demanded the delivery of new weapons and a German guarantee against Hungary. Hitler announced that the Vienna arbitration had been abrogated and that northern Transylvania would soon be returned to Romania, although it left Antonescu's request to allow the return of Transylvanian Romanian refugees unanswered. The Germans refused to consider the possibility of a separate peace. with British and Americans, suggested by Mihai Antonescu in the same meeting.

Meanwhile, the Romanian and German forces continued their withdrawal from Soviet territory, pushed by their successive offensives between the summer of 1943 and the spring of 1944. The main Romanian participation took place in Crimea where, after withdrawing from the Kuban, seven Romanian divisions were isolated along with five other German divisions in October 1943. These forces abandoned the peninsula in mid-May 1944, following the beginning of the Soviet onslaught the previous month. On March 29, the Soviet army retook Cernăuţi and Odessa fell into their hands on April 10. That same month, Soviet units reached the Prut. The loss of northern Bukovina not only marked the first major territorial loss since 1941, but the creation of nearly half million refugees who joined the quarter of a million Transylvanians and the tens of thousands who had lost their homes to Allied bombing, a new burden on the battered national economy. Unlike Bukovina, the Romanian authorities had shown no interest in defending Transnistria, which was hastily evacuated once the Soviets broke through the German defenses and advanced toward Odessa; The Romanian units, accompanied by German units also in retreat, tried to regroup along the Dniester. Antonescu still did not admit an unconditional surrender as possible and refused to abandon the Germans, declaring to his ministers on May 6:

Gentlemen, we must maintain a totally correct attitude in our relations with the Germans: in 1940 we submitted to them, and now we think of beating them when they are down and facing defeat? We can't do that, gentlemen. I have never been a germanophil and I will never be, so I told Hitler. [...] The Romanian people march alongside the German for their own interests and when you are in a position to help them defend their rights it will show you their gratitude. We must behave properly with the Germans.

For the moment, the Soviets halted their advance on the river to concentrate on the destruction of Army Group Center in Belarus, giving the Romanian and German forces a few months of relative calm. The need to reinforce the front Further north, however, it forced the Germans to withdraw part of their armored units from the Romanian front, calling into question Hitler's promise to hold it and, with it, the territorial guarantee he had granted to Romania in the autumn of 1940. After achieving their objective in the north, the Soviets once again concentrated large forces on the Romanian front at the end of July, which increased the anxiety of the Romanian commanders.

Failure of negotiations and conspiracy against Antonescu

The Soviets, in agreement with their allies, had presented their armistice conditions on April 12, but both Maniu and Antonescu rejected them in April and May. Both hoped to avoid Soviet occupation and secure deployment of British or American troops. Antonescu's refusal to yield to the Allies' conditions led the king to plot his overthrow, with the support of Maniu and Bratianu. The Soviets unilaterally offered better conditions in June, but Antonescu rejected them. rejected, still hoping to be able to reach an agreement with the Westerners, a possibility that did not exist even then due to the Churchill-Stalin agreement on the Balkans, which assigned Romania to the USSR.

On June 20, the opposition parties (National Peasant Party, National Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party and Romanian Communist Party) laid the foundations of a national coalition, the "National Democratic Bloc", with the following objectives: eliminate Antonescu from power, sign the armistice with the Allies and return to the democratic regime. The coalition, however, was precarious: neither Maniu trusted the communists nor did they trust him. The king agreed to eliminate Marshal Antonescu, if he rejected the armistice with the allies. The coup d'état of August 23, 1944 began to be planned. Antonescu returned depressed from his meeting with Hitler at the beginning of August and did not respond to the Soviet proposals in Stockholm, more favorable than those raised in Cairo by the three Allied powers. Hitler had tried to ensure Antonescu's loyalty, which he had conditioned on the German maintenance of the front with the USSR, the elimination of the bombings on Romania and the German reaction to a possible opening of the Turkish Straits to the Allied fleets.

Despite not reaching any conclusion in this last interview between the two, Antonescu did not try to abandon the alliance with the Reich and maintained his conviction that he could reach an agreement with the Western Allies against the USSR. After accepting Reluctantly the German confession that new armored divisions could not be sent to Romania to reinforce the front in the face of an attack that Antonescu judged imminent and that meant the impossibility of holding the Dniester line, he again proposed the retreat to the defensive line formed by the Carpathians, the Danube and the intermediate fortifications, easier to defend with smaller forces, despite the territorial sacrifice. The suggestion that this might allow the Germans to withdraw part of their forces for use on other fronts, however, seemed to him Hitler - who feared Romanian surrender - was suspicious and rejected it. The subsequent change of mind was too late to allow the operation.

On August 20, a new Soviet offensive was unleashed, one of the conditions that Maniu had established to carry out the coup d'état that would depose Antonescu, and the date for the coup was set late. for the 26th. After quickly visiting the front and becoming convinced of the seriousness of the military situation, with the Soviets on the verge of breaking it and putting some Romanian units to flight, Antonescu briefly returned to the capital to inform the king. Once the marshal's intention to return to the front on the 24th was known, the conspirators decided to advance the date of the coup to the 23rd. Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu and the marshal's own wife convinced him to go see the king and request an armistice. After requesting written support from Maniu and Bratianu for the armistice request and failing to obtain it because they were untraceable, he initially refused to go to the palace and only the call of General Constantin Sănătescu made him change his mind and finally go to the appointment with the monarch.

After a tense interview between Antonescu and King Michael, the latter dismissed Antonescu and arrested him—along with Mihai Antonescu—after the marshal had refused to request an armistice without first notifying Hitler or to leave power. The The king immediately appointed a new government headed by Sănătescu, formed mainly by the military and with the leaders of the Bloc parties as ministers without portfolio. The Army remained faithful to the king, without high-ranking officers defending the marshal, and they obeyed the orders of the new Government.

Judgment and death

The same night of the coup and after having written their will, the coup plotters handed over the two Antonescu to a clandestine communist unit, which hid them in a home in the capital. After entering Bucharest on August 31, the The Soviet command demanded the surrender of Antonescu, which required the collaboration of the local communists. Despite their initial resistance to entrusting the prisoners, the Soviet military authorities achieved custody of them that same afternoon. On September 2, He sent the group to Moscow, where they arrived on the 5th. The armistice of September 12, signed in Moscow, legalized their detention. They were imprisoned in good conditions in a fortress 60 km from the Soviet capital, where on the 8th November Antonescu tried to commit suicide, which caused surveillance of the prisoners to be strengthened.

On May 10, 1945, two days after the signing of the German surrender in Berlin, the detainees left the fortress and were transferred in much worse conditions to Moscow. Antonescu was detained for two years in the Soviet Union along with other prominent members of its Government in the Moscow Lubianka prison, before being returned to Romania to be tried. The Government of Petru Groza had approved in January 1945 the laws that allowed those responsible for the wartime dictatorship. These were greatly expanded in April and allowed the establishment of "people's courts" in which the usual judicial procedure could be ignored, theoretically to speed up trials. These laws had to be made retroactive to allow trial of Antonescu and his collaborators. The Government accelerated the arrest of former ministers, prominent members of the dictatorship and all kinds of officials, which in May already numbered around four thousand. Stalin decided to try Antonescu and the Soviet ambassador announced the approval of his surrender to the Romanian Government, along with that of other prominent members of his regime, on April 4. The measure had American approval. By mid-April, the marshal was once again in Romanian custody.

The trial for war crimes, the most spectacular of those carried out in the country, was that of the marshal, which began on May 6, 1946. Without a doubt about the conviction of the accused due to pressure from authorities, the trial served them to try to discredit Maniu and Brătianu, ignoring their previous criticisms of Antonescu and highlighting the moments in which they had agreed with him. Antonescu, unlike Mihai Antonescu, He appeared calm and dignified throughout the trial and accepted responsibility for his government actions. Among the charges were having allowed the German exploitation and occupation of the country - for which he received a life sentence -, having carried out a war of aggression against the USSR and the rest of the Allies, mistreating prisoners of war and hostages, ordering massacres for racist and political reasons and of civilians in occupied territory or having used deportations and forced labor. Antonescu qualified some charges and, in general, rejected the majority. He tried in vain to justify his actions. The People's Court sentenced both to death on May 17, their appeal that considered the laws by which they were tried to be illegal was rejected. on the 31st, and they were shot in the Jilava prison on June 1. The king had made a last-minute attempt to accede to the petition for clemency filed, which did not achieve the support of the Government or the three powers. Allies. A detachment of thirty police officers moved to the prison to shoot the condemned men whose sentences had not been commuted. Between five and half past five the condemned men were allowed to say goodbye to their families and later they were transferred to a nearby field where Antonescu refused to be blindfolded; Around six o'clock, they were shot, while the marshal greeted the platoon with his hat. Subsequently, incorrect versions of the execution circulated that highlighted the figure of the soldier and which reappeared in the 1990s.

Posthumous image

From the mid-1960s, the historiography supported by the Romanian Communist Party adopted a nationalist bias. During the Ceaușescu period, the regime carried out a partial rehabilitation of Antonescu and the Romanian role during the world war, for his own interest. At a time of tension with Hungary, Ceaușescu tried to minimize the Romanian Holocaust and compare it with the Hungarian one. Official historians began to present the country during the marshal's government as a refuge for Jews, favoring emigration to Palestine and oblivious to the Holocaust. Hungarian and German barbarism was opposed to Romanian humanitarianism. The massacres of Jews were attributed to the Germans, while the number of victims was reduced. Numerous authors tolerated or sponsored The party began to adopt an open xenophobic and chauvinist nationalism after the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Most of the works about the marshal published since 1989, with little documentary support or with selected sources to show him in a positive way, They favored the rehabilitation of his figure. These are part of a revisionist and denialist current associated with the ultranationalism that resurfaced after the communist collapse, common to all allies of the Third Reich, but especially intense in Croatia and Romania. Right-wing radicals and neo-fascists They spread stories about Romanian cooperation to Jews who escaped from Hungary, as political propaganda against Hungary. The Romanian far-right press also advocated for the rehabilitation of the figure of the marshal. The denialist efforts generally coincided with those of recovery of the figure of Antonescu, presented as a patriot dedicated to restoring Romanian territory, hero of the war against the USSR and defender of Christianity against the Soviets or protector not only of the national Jewish community, but also of others.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the campaign in favor of Antonescu intensified even in official media and various monuments were erected in his memory. Several ultranationalist organizations unsuccessfully requested the official rehabilitation of the marshal in 1992. In 1991, two Years after the disappearance of the Socialist Republic of Romania, Parliament observed a minute of silence in memory of Antonescu. Various unsuccessful attempts occurred in the late 1990s and 2000s to try to politically and judicially rehabilitate the marshal. The conviction for crimes against peace was partially annulled on December 5, 2006, by the Court of Appeal of Bucharest. The decision specifies the fact that the international situation of the year 1940 objectively justified the entry into a preventive defense war against the Soviet Union, so Article 3 of the 1933 Convention to define aggression cannot apply. However, the continuation of the war on the Axis side after the recovery of Bessarabia and Bukovina is considered an act of aggression, so the accusations of the People's Court of 1946 were largely declared valid. Even so, the Government of the Republic of Moldova declared itself outraged by what it considers the "partial rehabilitation" of Antonescu, despite the fact that Antonescu is officially considered a war criminal, a fact recognized by the Government of Romania. The annulment was dismissed by the Romanian Supreme Court in 2008.

Bibliography in Spanish

• Bogdan, Henry: The History of the Eastern Countries, Buenos Aires, Vergara, 1991. ISBN 950-15-1135-9