This week, seventy years ago, Romanian General, Ion Victor Antonescu, became Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Romania.  Not bad considering that only a few weeks prior, the General had been an involuntary guest of the King, Carol II.  Within a day of naming the General Prime Minister, the King had abdicated in favor of his 18-year-old son, Mihai I, who, on September 14, 1940, declared the General the Conducator of the State. This is a Romanian word for Leader, or National Leader. The General became the fourth European Dictator to adopt that title. The first was Il Duce of Italy. The second was der Führer of Germany. The third was El Caudillo of Spain. Three more would follow - the Poglavnik of Croatia, the Slovakian Vodca  and the Nemzetvezetö of Hungary. The Vodca, Nemzetvezetö, and Conducator  would be executed after short trials following the defeat of the Axis.
    The ascension of General Antonescu to the position of Prime Minister came because of his alliance with the Iron Guard, which united the Guard with the military. The Guard then became the only legal party in Romania and its leader, Horia Sima, Deputy Prime Minister.  Other Guard members were also named to high government posts, such as Prince Michel Sturdza as Foreign Affairs Minister and General Constantin Petrovicescu as Interior Minister. The Iron Guard was characterized by virulent anti-Semitism, fascism and nationalism. The way was paved for this alliance by the King’s plummeting popularity, caused by the loss by the Kingdom of immense territory to the U.S.S.R., Hungary and Bulgaria.
    First was the grab by the Soviet Union, in June, of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza region, which contained more than 20,000 square miles and 4,000,000 residents. Next came the loss of Northern Transylvania pursuant to the Vienna Diktat in August, with another 2,500,000 residents. Finally, was the loss of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria formalized in early September, by the Treaty of Craiova.
    The King had never really enjoyed much popularity since his marriage to a commoner, Johanna “Zizi” Lambrino (which was annulled within a year by a Romanian court), subsequent marriage to Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark (Mihai’s mother), and affair, during that marriage, with Elena “Magda” Lupescu. As a result of the last affair, he renounced his right to the throne in favor of his infant son and left the country with Magda. A regency was established to govern the country, until 1930, when, dissatisfied with the Regency, Parliament recalled Carol and proclaimed him, again, King.
    The new government, formed by the alliance between General Antonescu and the Iron Guard, in September 1940 was called the “National Legionary State.”  The title was derived from the group known as “The Legion of Archangel Michael,” of which the Iron Guard was the political party and paramilitary arm. “The National Legionary State” lasted one hundred, thirty-one days, until January 21st,1941, when the Iron Guard attempted to seize complete control and was instead defeated, leaving General Antonescu as truly the Conducator of the Kingdom of Romania.  A week prior, the Romanian Conducator had met with the German Führer and, in exchange for the Conducator’s promise of Romanian assistance in a war against the U.S.S.R., secured der Führer’s support for his attempt to eliminate the Iron Guard from Romanian government. In the meantime, the Wehrmacht had been invited to help protect the oil fields in Ploiesti and to give training to the Armata Româna.
    In late November 1940, the Conducator traveled to Berlin to sign the Tri-Partite Pact which joined it with Germany, Italy, Japan and Hungary. He executed the Pact, on Romania’s behalf on November 23. Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia would join later. In response, Great Britain declared a blockade of Romanian ships.
    After executing the Pact on his country’s behalf, the Romanian Conducator met with the German Führer, who informed him of the German plans for the invasion of Greece, and the role expected of Romania. The next day, General Antonescu met with Wehrmacht chief Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
    On June 6, 1941, in Munich, the Conducator was informed that the German Reich and its Slovakian ally would invade the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and was asked if the Kingdom of Romania wished to join. The Conducator replied, “When it’s a question of action against the Slavs, you can always count on Romania!” Although this was not enough time for the Armata Româna to prepare for such an undertaking, the Conducator was not going to pass up this opportunity to recover Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza region. In addition, the Conducator saw this as an opportunity to further ingratiate his country with the German Reich with an eye to receiving the Reich’s aid in recovering Northern Transylvania from Hungary and Southern Dobruja from Bulgaria.
    Although the Aeronautica Regalä Românä participated in Operation Barbarossa from the beginning, the Armata Româna was not ready to advance until July 4, 1941. At that time the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies commanded by Generals Petre Dumitrescu and Nicolae Ciuperca, respectively, were joined with the German Eleventh Army, commanded by General Baron Eugene von Schobert, to form “Army Group Antonescu,” under the command of the Conducator.
    About a week after war began, the Conducator ordered the first Romanian pogrom. On June 27, 1941, he telephoned Colonel Constantin Lupu, Commander of the Romanian garrison for the city of Iasi, which was a city of about 100,000 near the Romanian/Bessarabian border and ordered him to, “...cleanse  Iasi of its Jewish population.”  The killing, which began the following night, resulted in 8,000 deaths. More than 5,000 were shoved into overcrowded boxcars and sent on a seven-day trek, without food or water, to a camp in Southern Romania. Little more than 1000 survived the journey to Calarasi.
    On July 5, 1941, the Third Army drove the Soviets out of Northern Bukovina. Before Romanian soldiers attacked Bessarabia, the Conducator addressed them, saying,
    “Sugary and incorporeal humanism is inappropriate in this situation. I think that the Jews should be forced to leave Bessarabia and Bukovina. And Ukranian people must leave the country also....I am not disturbed if the world should consider us barbarians.  You can use machine guns if it is necessary. And I tell you that the law does not exist....so let us give up all the formalities and use this complete freedom. I assume all the responsibility and claim that the law does not exist.”
    “Soldiers, I order you to cross the River Prut!”
    The River was the border between Bessarabia and Romania. The Conducator became the first Romanian to receive the Knight’s Cross when it was presented to him by the German Führer on August 6, 1941, in the Ukranian city of Berdychiv. On August 22, King Mihai named him Marshal of Romania. 
    Meanwhile, on July 17, Romanian troops had crossed the Dneister River, into Ukrainian territory. Many Romanians, although overjoyed to recover those areas grabbed by the U.S.S.R. a year earlier, were not supportive of advancing further into the Soviet Union. However, General Antonescu understood that, unless the Soviet Union was defeated, these gains were transitory. He agreed to help the German ally and administer the area between the Dneister and Bug Rivers. This included the Black Sea port of Odessa.
    The Siege of Odessa by the Romanian Fourth Army began on August 8, 1941, and lasted 76 days, before the Soviets evacuated and the city  was finally taken, at a cost of 93,000 Romanian casualties. On October 16, 1941, Rumanian troops entered the city. Six days later, a bomb was detonated in Romanian Army headquarters, killing 67 people, including 17 Romanian Army officers and four German naval officers. The “Odessa Massacre” ensued, in which tens of thousands of Odessa’s Jewish citizens were murdered.
    Romanian troops made significant contributions to the battles for Sevastopol, Kerch, Stalingrad and Novorossiysk, all of which, along with Odessa, became Soviet Hero Cities.
    The Romanian Third and Fourth Armies under the command of Petre Dumitrescu and Constantin Constantinescu-Claps, respectively, guarded the flanks of the German forces that were assaulting Stalingrad. It was on them that the massive Soviet counteroffensive fell, in November 1942. The Romanians were heavily outnumbered and out gunned. No army, under similar circumstances, could have held, but they were blamed for the ensuing debacle.
    Ultimately, in August 1944, with the Red Army at the gates of Bucharest, King Mihai I had the Conducator arrested. The Kingdom then switched sides and joined the Red Army in the invasion of Hungary. After the war, it again lost Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza Region to the Soviet Union, but it regained Northern Transylvania from Hungary.
    After the war, Marshal Antonescu was tried and convicted of war crimes, crimes against peace and treason, and sentenced to death. The Court’s sentence was executed by firing squad on June 1, 1946, outside Jiliva Penitentiary in the village of Jiliva, near Bucharest.  He and three others were marched along a dirt road, unrestrained, to the place of execution, where they faced their executioners without blindfolds. The Conducator raised his right arm saluting his country, when the order to fire was given.
    The cost of the war against the Soviet Union was more than 625,000 casualties, of which almost 400,000 were deaths. Then there were another 170,000 casualties (of which 45,000 were deaths) suffered, in the remaining 10 months of the war, fighting against its former allies, Hungary, Germany and Slovakia. The Soviet NKVD was responsible for, at least, another 75,000 deaths upon the “liberation” of Romania by the Red Army. This is in addition to the 250,000 Jews and 25,000 Gypsies murdered in Romania and Romanian administered territories.
    The Romanian government admitted, in a report issued in 2004, that,
    “Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself. The murders committed in Iasi, Odessa, Bogdanovka, Domanovka, and Peciora, for example, were among the most hideous murders committed against Jews anywhere during the Holocaust. Romania committed genocide against the Jews. The survival of Jews in some parts of the country does not alter this reality.”

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.

NEXT WEEK: THE ROYAL NAVY VS. REGIA MARINA ITALIA AT CAPE PASSERO