title: Ion Antonescu

text: Lieutenant Colonel Ion Antonescu retained his visibility in the public eye during the interwar period. He participated in the political campaign to earn recognition at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 for Romania's gains in Transylvania. His nationalist argument about a future state was published as the essay "Românii. Origina, trecutul, sacrificiile și drepturile lor" ("The Romanians. Their Origin, Their Past, Their Sacrifices and Their Rights"). The booklet advocated extension of Romanian rule beyond the confines of Greater Romania, and recommended, at the risk of war with the emerging Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the annexation of all Banat areas and the Timok Valley. Antonescu was known for his frequent and erratic changes of mood, going from being extremely angry to being calm to angry again to being calm again within minutes, behaviour that often disoriented those who had to work with him. The Israeli historian Jean Ancel wrote that Antonescu's frequent changes of mood were due to the syphilis he contracted as a young man, a condition he suffered from for the rest of his life.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: He became attache in Paris in 1922. He negotiated a credit worth 100 million French francs to purchase French weaponry. He worked together with Romanian diplomat Nicolae Titulescu; the two became personal friends. He was also in contact with the Romanian-born conservative aristocrat and writer Marthe Bibesco, who introduced Antonescu to the ideas of Gustave Le Bon, a researcher of crowd psychology who had an influence on Fascism. Bibesco saw Antonescu as a new version of 19th century nationalist Frenchman Georges Boulanger, introducing him as such to Le Bon. In 1923, he made the acquaintance of lawyer Mihai Antonescu, who was to become his close friend, legal representative and political associate.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: After returning to Romania in 1926, Antonescu resumed his teaching in Sibiu, and, in the autumn of 1928, became Secretary-General of the Defense Ministry in the Vintilă Brătianu cabinet. He married Maria Niculescu, for long a resident of France, who had been married twice before: first to a Romanian Police officer, with whom she had a son, Gheorghe (died 1944), and then to a Frenchman of Jewish origin. After a period as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, he was appointed its Chief (1933–1934). These assignments coincided with the rule of Carol's underage son Michael I and his regents, and with Carol's seizure of power in 1930. During this period Antonescu first grew interested in the Iron Guard, an antisemitic and fascist-related movement headed by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. In his capacity as Deputy Chief of Staff, he ordered the Army's intelligence unit to compile a report on the faction, and made a series of critical notes on Codreanu's various statements.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: As Chief of Staff, Antonescu reportedly had his first confrontation with the political class and the monarch. His projects for weapon modernization were questioned by Defense Minister Paul Angelescu, leading Antonescu to present his resignation. According to another account, he completed an official report on the embezzlement of Army funds which indirectly implicated Carol and his "camarilla" ("see Škoda Affair"). The king consequently ordered him out of office, provoking indignation among sections of the political mainstream. On Carol's orders, Antonescu was placed under surveillance by the "Siguranța Statului" intelligence service, and closely monitored by the Interior Ministry Undersecretary Armand Călinescu. The officer's political credentials were on the rise, as he was able to establish and maintain contacts with people on all sides of the political spectrum, while support for Carol plummeted. Among these were contacts with the two main democratic groups, the National Liberal and the National Peasants', parties known respectively as PNL and PNȚ. He was also engaged in discussions with the rising far right, antisemitic and fascist movements; although in competition with each other, both the National Christian Party (PNC) of Octavian Goga and the Iron Guard sought to attract Antonescu to their side. In 1936, to the authorities' alarm, Army General and Iron Guard member Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul arranged a meeting between Ion Antonescu and the movement's leader, Corneliu Codreanu. Antonescu is reported to have found Codreanu arrogant, but to have welcomed his revolutionizing approach to politics.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In late 1937, after the December general election came to an inconclusive result, Carol appointed Goga Prime Minister over a far right cabinet that was the first executive to impose racial discrimination in its treatment of the Jewish community. Goga's appointment was meant to curb the rise of the more popular and even more radical Codreanu. Initially given the Communications portfolio by his rival, Interior Minister Armand Călinescu, Antonescu repeatedly demanded the office of Defense Minister, which he was eventually granted. His mandate coincided with a troubled period, and saw Romania having to choose between its traditional alliance with France, Britain, the crumbling Little Entente and the League of Nations or moving closer to Nazi Germany and its Anti-Comintern Pact. Antonescu's own contribution is disputed by historians, who variously see him as either a supporter of the Anglo-French alliance or, like the PNC itself, more favourable to cooperation with Adolf Hitler's Germany. At the time, Antonescu viewed Romania's alliance with the Entente as insurance against Hungarian and Soviet revanchism, but, as an anti-communist, he was suspicious of the Franco-Soviet rapprochement. Particularly concerned about Hungarian demands in Transylvania, he ordered the General Staff to prepare for a western attack. However, his major contribution in office was in relation to an internal crisis: as a response to violent clashes between the Iron Guard and the PNC's own fascist militia, the "Lăncieri", Antonescu extended the already imposed martial law.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The Goga cabinet ended when the tentative rapprochement between Goga and Codreanu prompted Carol to overthrow the democratic system and proclaim his own authoritarian regime ("see 1938 Constitution of Romania, National Renaissance Front"). The deposed Premier died in 1938, while Antonescu remained a close friend of his widow, Veturia Goga. By that time, revising his earlier stance, Antonescu had also built a close relationship with Codreanu, and was even said to have become his confidant. On Carol's request, he had earlier asked the Guard's leader to consider an alliance with the king, which Codreanu promptly refused in favour of negotiations with Goga, coupled with claims that he was not interested in political battles, an attitude supposedly induced by Antonescu himself.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Soon afterward, Călinescu, acting on indications from the monarch, arrested Codreanu and prosecuted him in two successive trials. Antonescu, whose mandate of Defense Minister had been prolonged under the premiership of Miron Cristea, resigned in protest of Codreanu's arrest. Antonescu's mandate ended on 30 March 1938. He also served as Air and Marine Minister between 2 February and his resignation on 30 March. He was a celebrity defense witness at the latter's first and second trials. During the latter, which resulted in Codreanu's conviction for treason, Antonescu vouched for his friend's honesty while shaking his hand in front of the jury. Upon the conclusion of the trial, the king ordered his former minister interned at Predeal, before assigning him to command the Third Army in the remote eastern region of Bessarabia (and later removing him after Antonescu expressed sympathy for Guardists imprisoned in Chișinău). Attempting to discredit his rival, Carol also ordered Antonescu's wife to be tried for bigamy, based on a false claim that her divorce had not been finalized. Defended by Mihai Antonescu, the officer was able to prove his detractors wrong. Codreanu himself was taken into custody and discreetly killed by the Gendarmes acting on Carol's orders (November 1938).


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Carol's regime slowly dissolved into crisis, a dissolution accelerated after the start of World War II, when the military success of the core Axis Powers and the non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union saw Romania isolated and threatened ("see Romania during World War II"). In 1940, two of Romania's regions, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, were lost to a Soviet occupation consented to by the king. This came as Romania, exposed by the Fall of France, was seeking to align its policies with those of Germany. Ion Antonescu himself had come to value a pro-Axis alternative after the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Germany imposed demands on Czechoslovakia with the acquiescence of France and the United Kingdom, leaving locals to fear that, unless reoriented, Romania would follow. Angered by the territorial losses of 1940, General Antonescu sent Carol a general note of protest, and, as a result, was arrested and interned at Bistrița Monastery. While there, he commissioned Mihai Antonescu to establish contacts with Nazi German officials, promising to advance German economic interest, particularly in respect to the local oil industry, in exchange for endorsement. Commenting on Ion Antonescu's ambivalent stance, Hitler's minister to Romania, Wilhelm Fabricius, wrote to his superiors: "I am not convinced that he is a safe man."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Romania's elite had been intensely Francophile ever since Romania had won its independence in the 19th century, indeed so Francophile that the defeat of France in June 1940 had the effect of discrediting the entire elite. Antonescu's internment ended in August, during which interval, under Axis pressure, Romania had ceded Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria ("see Treaty of Craiova") and Northern Transylvania to Hungary ("see Second Vienna Award"). The latter grant caused consternation among large sections of Romania's population, causing Carol's popularity to fall to a record low and provoking large-scale protests in Bucharest, the capital. These movements were organized competitively by the pro-Allied PNȚ, headed by Iuliu Maniu, and the pro-Nazi Iron Guard. The latter group had been revived under the leadership of Horia Sima, and was organizing a "coup d'état". In this troubled context, Antonescu simply left his assigned residence. He may have been secretly helped in this by German intercession, but was more directly aided to escape by socialite Alice Sturdza, who was acting on Maniu's request. Antonescu subsequently met with Maniu in Ploiești, where they discussed how best to manage the political situation. While these negotiations were carried out, the monarch himself was being advised by his entourage to recover legitimacy by governing in tandem with the increasingly popular Antonescu, while creating a new political majority from the existing forces. On 2 September 1940, Valer Pop, a courtier and an important member of the "camarilla", first advised Carol to appoint Antonescu as Prime Minister as the solution to the crisis. Pop's reasons for advising Carol to appoint Antonescu as Prime Minister were partly because Antonescu, who was known to be friendly with the Iron Guard and who had been imprisoned under Carol, was believed to have enough of an oppositional background to Carol's regime to appease the public and partly because Pop knew that Antonescu, for all his Legionary sympathies, was a member of the elite and believed he would never turn against it. When Carol proved reluctant to make Antonescu Prime Minister, Pop visited the German legation to meet with Fabricius on the night of 4 September 1940 to ask that the German minister phone Carol to tell him that the "Reich" wanted Antonescu as Prime Minister, and Fabricius's promptly did just that. Carol and Antonescu accepted the proposal, Antonescu being ordered to approach political party leaders Maniu of the PNȚ and Dinu Brătianu of the PNL. They all called for Carol's abdication as a preliminary measure, while Sima, another leader sought after for negotiations, could not be found in time to express his opinion. Antonescu partly complied with the request but also asked Carol to bestow upon him the reserve powers for Romanian heads of state. Carol yielded and, on 5 September 1940, the general became Prime Minister, and Carol transferred most of his dictatorial powers to him. The latter's first measure was to curtail potential resistance within the Army by relieving Bucharest Garrison chief Gheorghe Argeșanu of his position and replacing him with Dumitru Coroamă. Shortly afterward, Antonescu heard rumours that two of Carol's loyalist generals, Gheorghe Mihail and Paul Teodorescu, were planning to have him killed. In reaction, he forced Carol to abdicate, while General Coroamă was refusing to carry out the royal order of shooting down Iron Guardist protesters.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Michael ascended the throne for the second time, while Antonescu's dictatorial powers were confirmed and extended. On 6 September, the day Michael formally assumed the throne, he issued a royal decree declaring Antonescu "Conducător" (leader) of the state. The same decree relegated the monarch to a ceremonial role. Among Antonescu's subsequent measures was ensuring the safe departure into self-exile of Carol and his mistress Elena Lupescu, granting protection to the royal train when it was attacked by armed members of the Iron Guard. The regime of King Carol had been notorious for being the most corrupt regime in Europe during the 1930s, and when Carol fled Romania, he took with him the better part of the Romanian treasury, leaving the new government with enormous financial problems. Antonescu had expected, perhaps naïvely, that Carol would take with him enough money to provide for a comfortable exile, and was surprised that Carol had cleared out almost the entire national treasury. For the next four years, a major concern of Antonescu's government was attempting to have the Swiss banks where Carol had deposited the assets return the money to Romania; this effort did not meet with success. Horia Sima's subsequent cooperation with Antonescu was endorsed by high-ranking Nazi German officials, many of whom feared the Iron Guard was too weak to rule on its own. Antonescu therefore received the approval of Ambassador Fabricius. Despite early promises, Antonescu abandoned projects for the creation of a national government, and opted instead for a coalition between a military dictatorship lobby and the Iron Guard. He later justified his choice by stating that the Iron Guard "represented the political base of the country at the time." Right from the outset, Antonescu clashed with Sima over economic questions, with Antonescu's main concern being to get the economy growing so as to provide taxes for a treasury looted by Carol, while Sima favored populist economic measures that Antonescu insisted there was no money for.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The resulting regime, deemed the "National Legionary State", was officially proclaimed on 14 September. On that date, the Iron Guard was remodelled into the only legally permitted party in Romania. Antonescu continued as Premier and "Conducător", and was named as the Guard's honorary commander. Sima became Deputy Premier and leader of the Guard. Antonescu subsequently ordered the Guardists imprisoned by Carol to be set free. On 6 October, he presided over the Iron Guard's mass rally in Bucharest, one in a series of major celebratory and commemorative events organized by the movement during the late months of 1940. However, he tolerated the PNȚ and PNL's informal existence, allowing them to preserve much of their political support.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: There followed a short-lived and always uneasy partnership between Antonescu and Sima. In late September, the new regime denounced all pacts, accords and diplomatic agreements signed under Carol, bringing the country into Germany's orbit while subverting its relationship with a former Balkan ally, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Germans troops entered the country in stages, in order to defend the local oil industry and help instruct their Romanian counterparts on "Blitzkrieg" tactics. On 23 November, Antonescu was in Berlin, where his signature sealed Romania's commitment to the main Axis instrument, the Tripartite Pact. Two days later, the country also adhered to the Nazi-led Anti-Comintern Pact. Other than these generic commitments, Romania had no treaty binding it to Germany, and the Romanian-German alliance functioned informally. Speaking in 1946, Antonescu claimed to have followed the pro-German path in continuation of earlier policies, and for fear of a Nazi protectorate in Romania.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: During the National Legionary State period, earlier antisemitic legislation was upheld and strengthened, while the "Romanianization" of Jewish-owned enterprises became standard official practice. Immediately after coming into office, Antonescu himself expanded the anti-Jewish and Nuremberg law-inspired legislation passed by his predecessors Goga and Ion Gigurtu, while tens of new anti-Jewish regulations were passed in 1941–1942. This was done despite his formal pledge to Wilhelm Filderman and the Jewish Communities Federation that, unless engaged in "sabotage," "the Jewish population will not suffer." Antonescu did not reject the application of Legionary policies, but was offended by Sima's advocacy of paramilitarism and the Guard's frequent recourse to street violence. He drew much hostility from his partners by extending some protection to former dignitaries whom the Iron Guard had arrested. One early incident opposed Antonescu to the Guard's magazine "Buna Vestire", which accused him of leniency and was subsequently forced to change its editorial board. By then, the Legionary press was routinely claiming that he was obstructing revolution and aiming to take control of the Iron Guard, and that he had been transformed into a tool of Freemasonry ("see Anti-Masonry"). The political conflict coincided with major social challenges, including the influx of refugees from areas lost earlier in the year and a large-scale earthquake affecting Bucharest.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Disorder peaked in the last days of November 1940, when, after uncovering the circumstances of Codreanu's death, the fascist movement ordered retaliations against political figures previously associated with Carol, carrying out the Jilava Massacre, the assassinations of Nicolae Iorga and Virgil Madgearu, and several other acts of violence. As retaliation for this insubordination, Antonescu ordered the Army to resume control of the streets, unsuccessfully pressured Sima to have the assassins detained, ousted the Iron Guardist prefect of Bucharest Police Ștefan Zăvoianu, and ordered Legionary ministers to swear an oath to the "Conducător". His condemnation of the killings was nevertheless limited and discreet, and, the same month, he joined Sima at a burial ceremony for Codreanu's newly discovered remains. The widening gap between the dictator and Sima's party resonated in Berlin. When, in December, Legionary Foreign Minister Mihail R. Sturdza obtained the replacement of Fabricius with Manfred Freiherr von Killinger, perceived as more sympathetic to the Iron Guard, Antonescu promptly took over leadership of the ministry, with the compliant diplomat Constantin Greceanu as his right hand. In Germany, such leaders of the Nazi Party as Heinrich Himmler, Baldur von Schirach and Joseph Goebbels threw their support behind the Legionaries, whereas Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Wehrmacht stood by Antonescu. The latter group was concerned that any internal conflict would threaten Romania's oil industry, vital to the German war effort. The German leadership was by then secretly organizing "Operation Barbarossa", the attack on the Soviet Union.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Antonescu's plan to act against his coalition partners in the event of further disorder hinged on Hitler's approval, a vague signal of which had been given during ceremonies confirming Romania's adherence to the Tripartite Pact. A decisive turn occurred when Hitler invited Antonescu and Sima both over for discussions: whereas Antonescu agreed, Sima stayed behind in Romania, probably plotting a "coup d'état". While Hitler did not produce a clear endorsement for clamping down on Sima's party, he made remarks interpreted by their recipient as oblique blessings. On 14 January 1941 during a German-Romanian summit, Hitler informed Antonescu of his plans to invade the Soviet Union later that year and asked Romania to participate. By this time, Hitler had come to the conclusion that while Sima was ideologically closer to him, Antonescu was the more competent leader capable of ensuring stability in Romania while being committed to aligning his country with the Axis.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The Antonescu-Sima dispute erupted into violence in January 1941, when the Iron Guard instigated a series of attacks on public institutions and a pogrom, incidents collectively known as the "Legionary Rebellion." This came after the mysterious assassination of Major Döring, a German agent in Bucharest, which was used by the Iron Guard as a pretext to accuse the "Conducător" of having a secret anti-German agenda, and made Antonescu oust the Legionary Interior Minister, Constantin Petrovicescu, while closing down all of the Legionary-controlled "Romanianization" offices. Various other clashes prompted him to demand the resignation of all Police commanders who sympathized with the movement. After two days of widespread violence, during which Guardists killed some 120 Bucharest Jews, Antonescu sent in the Army, under the command of General Constantin Sănătescu. German officials acting on Hitler's orders, including the new Ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger, helped Antonescu eliminate the Iron Guardists, but several of their lower-level colleagues actively aided Sima's subordinates. Goebbels was especially upset by the decision to support Antonescu, believing it to have been advantageous to "the Freemasons."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: After the purge of the Iron Guard, Hitler kept his options open by granting political asylum to Sima—whom Antonescu's courts sentenced to death—and to other Legionaries in similar situations. The Guardists were detained in special conditions at Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. In parallel, Antonescu publicly obtained the cooperation of "Codreanists", members of an Iron Guardist wing which had virulently opposed Sima, and whose leader was Codreanu's father Ion Zelea Codreanu. Antonescu again sought backing from the PNȚ and PNL to form a national cabinet, but his rejection of parliamentarism made the two groups refuse him.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Antonescu traveled to Germany and met Hitler on eight more occasions between June 1941 and August 1944. Such close contacts helped cement an enduring relationship between the two dictators, and Hitler reportedly came to see Antonescu as the only trustworthy person in Romania, and the only foreigner to consult on military matters. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that Hitler after first meeting Antonescu "...was greatly impressed by him; no other leader Hitler met other than Mussolini ever received such consistently favourable comments from the German dictator. Hitler even mustered the patience to listen to Antonescu's lengthy disquisitions on the glorious history of Romania and the perfidy of the Hungarians—a curious reversal for a man who was more accustomed to regaling visitors with tirades of his own." In later statements, Hitler offered praise to Antonescu's "breadth of vision" and "real personality." A remarkable aspect of the Hitler-Antonescu friendship was neither could speak others' language. Hitler only knew German while the only foreign language Antonescu knew was French, in which he was completely fluent. During their meetings, Antonescu spoke in French which was then translated into German by Hitler's translator Paul Schmidt and vice versa since Schmidt did not speak Romanian either. The German military presence increased significantly in early 1941, when, using Romania as a base, Hitler invaded the rebellious Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Greece ("see Balkans Campaign"). In parallel, Romania's relationship with the United Kingdom, at the time the only major adversary of Nazi Germany, erupted into conflict: on 10 February 1941, British Premier Winston Churchill recalled His Majesty's Ambassador Reginald Hoare, and approved the blockade of Romanian ships in British-controlled ports. On 12 June 1941, during another summit with Hitler, Antonescu first learned of the "special" nature of Operation Barbarossa, namely, that the war against the Soviet Union was to be an ideological war to "annihilate" the forces of "Judeo-Bolshevism," a "war of extermination" to be fought without any mercy; Hitler even showed Antonescu a copy of the "Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia" he had issued to his forces about the "special treatment" to be handed out to Soviet Jews. Antonescu completely accepted Hitler's ideas about Operation Barbarossa as a "race war" between the Aryans, represented by the Nordic Germans and Latin Romanians on the Axis side vs. the Slavs and Asians, commanded by the Jews on the Soviet side. Besides anti-Semitism, there was an extremely strong current of anti-Slavic and anti-Asian racism to Antonescu's remarks about the "Asiatic hordes" of the Red Army. The Asians Antonescu referred were the various Asian peoples of the Soviet Union, such as the Kazakhs, Kalmyks, Mongols, Uzbeks, Buryats, etc. During his summit with Hitler in June 1941, Antonescu told the "Führer" that he believed it was necessary to "once and for all" eliminate Russia as a power because the Russians were the most powerful Slavic nation and that as a Latin people, the Romanians had an inborn hatred of all Slavs and Jews. Antonescu went on to tell Hitler: "Because of its racial qualities, Romania can continue to play its role as an anti-Slavic buffer for the benefit of Germany." Ancel wrote that Romanian anti-Slavic racism differed from the German variety in that the Romanians had traditionally feared the Slavic peoples whereas the Germans had traditionally held the Slavic peoples in contempt. In Antonescu's mind, the Romanians as a Latin people had attained a level of civilization that the Slavs were nowhere close to, but theoretically the Slavic Russians and Ukrainians might be able to reach under Romanian auspices, through Antonescu's remarks to Hitler that "We must fight this race (i.e. the Slavs) resolutely" together, with the need for "colonization" of Transnistria, suggested that he did think this would happen in his own lifetime. Subsequently, the Romanians assigned to Barbarossa were to learn that as a Latin people, the Germans considered them to be their inferiors, albeit not as inferior as the Slavs, Asians and Jews who were viewed as "untermenschen" ("sub-humans"). Hitler's promise to Antonescu that after the war, the Germanic and Latin races would rule the world in a partnership turned out to be meaningless.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In June of that year, Romania joined the attack on the Soviet Union, led by Germany in coalition with Hungary, Finland, the State of Slovakia, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Independent State of Croatia. Antonescu had been made aware of the plan by German envoys, and supported it enthusiastically even before Hitler extended Romania an offer to participate. On 18 June 1941, Antonescu gave orders to his generals about "cleansing the ground" of Jews when Romanian forces entered Bessarabia and Bukovina. Right from the start, Antonescu proclaimed the war against the Soviet Union to be a "holy war", a "crusade" in the name of Eastern Orthodox faith and the Romanian race against the forces of "Judeo-Bolshevism". The propaganda of the Antonescu regime demonized everything Jewish as Antonescu believed that Communism was invented by the Jews, and all of the Soviet leaders were really Jews. Reflecting Antonescu's anti-Slavic feelings, despite the fact that the war was billed as a "crusade" in defence of Orthodoxy against "Judeo-Bolshevism", the war was not presented as a struggle to liberate the Orthodox Russians and Ukrainians from Communism; instead rule by "Judeo-Bolshevism" was portrayed as something brought about the innate moral inferiority of the Slavs, who thus needed to be ruled by the Germans and the Romanians. The Romanian force engaged formed a "General Antonescu Army Group" under the effective command of German general Eugen Ritter von Schobert. Romania's campaign on the Eastern Front began without a formal declaration of war, and was consecrated by Antonescu's statement: "Soldiers, I order you, cross the Prut River" (in reference to the Bessarabian border between Romania and post-1940 Soviet territory). A few days after this, a large-scale pogrom was carried out in Iași with Antonescu's agreement; thousands of Jews were killed in the bloody Iași pogrom. Antonescu had followed a generation of younger right-wing Romanian intellectuals led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu who in the 1920s–30s had rejected the traditional Francophila of the Romanian elites and their adherence to Western notions of universal democratic values and human rights. Antonescu made it clear that his regime rejected the moral principles of the "demo-liberal world" and he saw the war as an ideological struggle between his spiritually pure "national-totalitarian regime" vs. "Jewish morality". Antonescu believed that the liberal humanist-democratic-capitalist values of the West and Communism were both invented by the Jews to destroy Romania. In a lengthy speech just before the war, Antonescu attacked democracy in the most violent terms as it allowed Jews equal rights and thus to undercut the Romanian "national idea". As such, Antonescu stated what was needed was a "new man" who would be "tough", "virile" and willing to fight for an ethnically and religiously "pure" Romania. Despite his quarrel with Sima, much of Antonescu's speech clearly reflected the influence of the ideas of the Iron Guard that Antonescu had absorbed in the 1930s. Antonescu's anti-Semitism and sexism went so far that he tacitly condoned the rape of Jewish women and girls in Bessarabia and northern Bukovinia by his forces under the grounds that he was going take away all of the property that the Jews had "stolen" from the Romanians, and as far he was concerned, Jewish females were just another piece of property. Since the Jewish women were going to exterminated anyway, Antonescu felt there was nothing wrong about letting his soldiers and gendarmes have "some fun" before shooting them.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: After becoming the first Romanian to be granted the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which he received from Hitler at their 6 August meeting in the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv, Ion Antonescu was promoted to Marshal of Romania by royal decree on 22 August, in recognition for his role in restoring the eastern frontiers of Greater Romania. In a report to Berlin, a German diplomat wrote that Marshal Antonescu had syphilis and that "among [Romanian] cavalry officers this disease is as widespread as a common cold is among German officers. The Marshal suffers from severe attacks of it every several months." Antonescu took one of his most debated decisions when, with Bessarabia's conquest almost complete, he committed Romania to Hitler's war effort beyond the Dniester—that is, beyond territory that had been part of Romania between the wars—and thrust deeper into Soviet territory, thus waging a war of aggression. On 30 August, Romania occupied a territory it deemed "Transnistria", formerly a part of the Ukrainian SSR (including the entire Moldavian ASSR and further territories). Like the decision to continue the war beyond Bessarabia, this earned Antonescu much criticism from the semi-clandestine PNL and PNȚ. Insofar as the war against the Soviet Union was a war to recover Bessarabia and northern Bukovina – both regions that been a part of Romania until June 1940 and that had Romanian majorities – the conflict had been very popular with the Romanian public opinion. But the idea of conquering Transnistria was not as that region had never been part of Romania, and a minority of the people were ethnic Romanian. Soon after the takeover, the area was assigned to a civil administration apparatus headed by Gheorghe Alexianu and became the site for the main component of the Holocaust in Romania: a mass deportation of the Bessarabian and Ukrainian Jews, followed later by transports of Romani Romanians and Jews from Moldavia proper (that is, the portions of Moldavia west of the Prut).


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The accord over Transnistria's administration, signed in Tighina, also placed areas between the Dniester and the Dnieper under Romanian military occupation, while granting control over all resources to Germany. In September 1941, Antonescu ordered Romanian forces to take Odessa, a prize he badly wanted for reasons of prestige. Russians had traditionally been seen in Romania as brutal aggressors, and for Romanian forces to take a major Soviet city and one of the largest Black Sea ports like Odessa would be a sign of how far Romania had been "regenerated" under Antonescu's leadership. Much to Antonescu's intense fury, the Red Army were able to halt the Romanian offensive on Odessa and 24 September 1941 Antonescu had to reluctantly ask for the help of the Wehrmacht with the drive on Odessa. On 16 October 1941 Odessa fell to the German-Romanian forces. The Romanian losses had been so heavy that the area around Odessa was known to the Romanian Army as the Vale of Tears. Antonescu's anti-Semitism was sharpened by the Odessa fighting as he was convinced that the only reason why the Red Army had fought so fiercely around Odessa was that the average Russian soldier had been terrorized by bloodthirsty Jewish commissars into fighting hard. When Wilhelm Filderman wrote a letter to Antonescu complaining about the murder of Jews in Odessa, Antonescu wrote back: "Your Jews, who have become Soviet commissars, are driving Soviet soldiers in the Odessa region into a futile bloodbath, through horrendous terror techniques as the Russian prisoners themselves have admitted, simply to cause us heavy losses". Antonescu ended his letter with the claim that Russian Jewish commissars had savagely tortured Romanian POWs and that the entire Jewish community of Romania, Filderman included were morally responsible for all of the losses and sufferings of the Romanians around Odessa. In the fall of 1941, Antonescu planned to deport all of the Jews of the "Regat", southern Bukovina and southern Transylvania into Transnistria as the prelude to killing them, but this operation was vetoed by Germany, who complained that Antonescu had not finished killing the Jews of Transnistria yet. This veto was largely motivated by bureaucratic politics, namely if Antonescu exterminated all of the Jews of Romania himself, there would be nothing for the SS and the "Auswärtiges Amt" to do. Killinger informed Antonescu that Germany would reduce its supplies of arms if Antonescu went ahead with his plans to deport the Jews of the "Regat" into Transnistria and told him he would be better off deporting the Jews to the death camps in Poland that the Germans were already busy building. Since Romania had almost no arms industry of its own and was almost entirely dependent upon weapons from Germany to fight the war, Antonescu had little choice, but to comply with Killinger's request.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The Romanian Army's inferior arms, insufficient armour and lack of training had been major concerns for the German commanders since before the start of the operation. One of the earliest major obstacles Antonescu encountered on the Eastern Front was the resistance of Odessa, a Soviet port on the Black Sea. Refusing any German assistance, he ordered the Romanian Army to maintain a two-month siege on heavily fortified and well-defended positions. The ill-equipped 4th Army suffered losses of some 100,000 men. Antonescu's popularity again rose in October, when the fall of Odessa was celebrated triumphantly with a parade through Bucharest's "Arcul de Triumf", and when many Romanians reportedly believed the war was as good as won. In Odessa itself, the aftermath included a large-scale massacre of the Jewish population, ordered by the Marshal as retaliation for a bombing which killed a number of Romanian officers and soldiers (General Ioan Glogojeanu among them). The city subsequently became the administrative capital of Transnistria. According to one account, the Romanian administration planned to change Odessa's name to "Antonescu". Antonescu's planned that once the war against the Soviet Union was won to invade Hungary to take back Transylvania and Bulgaria to take back the Dobruja with Antonescu being especially keen on the former. Antonescu planned on attacking Hungary to recover Transylvania at the first opportunity and regarded Romanian involvement on the Eastern Front in part as a way of proving to Hitler that Romania was a better German ally than Hungary, and thus deserving of German support when the planned Romanian-Hungarian war began. The "Conducător" had also created an intra-Axis alliance against Hungary along with Croatia and Slovakia.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: As the Soviet Union recovered from the initial shock and slowed down the Axis offensive at the Battle of Moscow (October 1941 – January 1942), Romania was asked by its allies to contribute a larger number of troops. A decisive factor in Antonescu's compliance with the request appears to have been a special visit to Bucharest by Wehrmacht chief of staff Wilhelm Keitel, who introduced the "Conducător" to Hitler's plan for attacking the Caucasus ("see Battle of the Caucasus"). The Romanian force engaged in the war reportedly exceeded German demands. It came to around 500,000 troops and thirty actively involved divisions. As a sign of his satisfaction, Hitler presented his Romanian counterpart with a luxury car. On 7 December 1941, after reflecting on the possibility for Romania, Hungary and Finland to change their stance, the British government responded to repeated Soviet requests and declared war on all three countries. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and in compliance with its Axis commitment, Romania declared war on the United States within five days. These developments contrasted with Antonescu's own statement of 7 December: "I am an ally of the [German] Reich against [the Soviet Union], I am neutral in the conflict between Great Britain and Germany. I am for America against the Japanese."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: A crucial change in the war came with the Battle of Stalingrad in June 1942 – February 1943, a major defeat for the Axis. Romania's armies alone lost some 150,000 men (either dead, wounded or captured) and more than half of the country's divisions were wiped out.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The loss of two entire Romanian armies who all either killed or captured by the Soviets produced a major crisis in German-Romanian relations in the winter of 1943 with many people in the Romanian government for the first time questioning the wisdom of fighting on the side of the Axis. Outside of the elites, by 1943 the continuing heavy losses on the Eastern Front, anger at the contempt which the Wehrmacht treated their Romanian allies and declining living standards within Romania made the war unpopular with the Romanian people, and consequently the "Conducător" himself. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that: "The string of broken German promises of equipment and support, the disregard of warnings about Soviet offensive preparations, the unfriendly treatment of retreating Romanian units by German officers and soldiers and the general German tendency to blame their own miscalculations and disasters on their allies all combined to produce a real crisis in German-Romanian relations." For part of that interval, the Marshal had withdrawn from public life, owing to an unknown affliction, which is variously rumoured to have been a mental breakdown, a foodborne illness or a symptom of the syphilis he had contracted earlier in life. He is known to have been suffering from digestive problems, treating himself with food prepared by Marlene von Exner, an Austrian-born dietitian who moved into Hitler's service after 1943.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Upon his return, Antonescu blamed the Romanian losses on German overseer Arthur Hauffe, whom Hitler agreed to replace. In parallel with the military losses, Romania was confronted with large-scale economic problems. Romania's oil was the "Reich"'s only source of natural oil after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 to August 1944 (Germany also had synthetic oil plants operating from 1942 onwards), and as such for economic reasons, Romania was always treated as a major ally by Hitler. While Germany monopolized Romania's exports, it defaulted on most of its payments. Like all countries whose exports to Germany, particularly in oil, exceeded imports from that country, Romania's economy suffered from Nazi control of the exchange rate ("see Economy of Nazi Germany"). On the German side, those directly involved in harnessing Romania's economic output for German goals were economic planners Hermann Göring and Walther Funk, together with Hermann Neubacher, the Special Representative for Economic Problems. A recurring problem for Antonescu was attempting to obtain payments for all of the oil he shipped to Germany while resisting German demands for increased oil production. The situation was further aggravated in 1942, as USAAF and RAF were able to bomb the oil fields in Prahova County ("see Bombing of Romania in World War II, Operation Tidal Wave"). Official sources from the following period amalgamate military and civilian losses of all kinds, which produces a total of 554,000 victims of the war. To improve the Romanian army's effectiveness, the Mareșal tank destroyer was developed starting in late 1942. Marshal Antonescu, after whom the vehicle was named, was involved in the project himself. The vehicle later influenced the development of the German Hetzer.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In this context, the Romanian leader acknowledged that Germany was losing the war, and he therefore authorized his Deputy Premier and new Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu to set up contacts with the Allies. In early 1943, Antonescu authorized his diplomats to contact British and American diplomats in Portugal and Switzerland to see if were possible for Romania to sign an armistice with the Western powers. The Romanian diplomats were informed that no armistice was possible until an armistice was signed with the Soviet Union, a condition Antonescu rejected. In parallel, he allowed the PNȚ and the PNL to engage in parallel talks with the Allies at various locations in neutral countries. The discussions were strained by the Western Allies' call for an unconditional surrender, over which the Romanian envoys bargained with Allied diplomats in Sweden and Egypt (among them the Soviet representatives Nikolai Vasilevich Novikov and Alexandra Kollontai). Antonescu was also alarmed by the possibility of war being carried on Romanian territory, as had happened in Italy after Operation Avalanche. The events also prompted hostile negotiations aimed at toppling Antonescu, and involving the two political parties, the young monarch, diplomats and soldiers. A major clash between Michael and Antonescu took place during the first days of 1943, when the 21-year-old monarch used his New Year's address on national radio to part with the Axis war effort.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In March 1944, the Soviet Red Army broke the Southern Bug and Dniester fronts, advancing on Bessarabia. This came just as Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson, the British Allied commander of the Mediterranean theatre, presented Antonescu with an ultimatum. After a new visit to Germany and a meeting with Hitler, Antonescu opted to continue fighting alongside the remaining Axis states, a decision which he later claimed was motivated by Hitler's promise to allow Romania possession of Northern Transylvania in the event of an Axis victory. Upon his return, the "Conducător" oversaw a counteroffensive which stabilized the front on a line between Iași and Chișinău to the north and the lower Dniester to the east. This normalized his relations with Nazi German officials, whose alarm over the possible loss of an ally had resulted in the "Margarethe II" plan, an adapted version of the Nazi takeover in Hungary.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: However, Antonescu's non-compliance with the terms of Wilson's ultimatum also had drastic effects on Romania's ability to exit the war. By then, Antonescu was conceiving of a separate peace with the Western Allies, while maintaining contacts with the Soviets. In parallel, the mainstream opposition movement came to establish contacts with the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), which, although minor numerically, gained importance for being the only political group to be favored by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. On the PCR side, the discussions involved Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu and later Emil Bodnăraș. Another participating group at this stage was the old Romanian Social Democratic Party.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Large-scale Allied bombings of Bucharest took place in spring 1944, while the Soviet Red Army approached Romanian borders. The Battle for Romania began in late summer: while German commanders Johannes Frießner and Otto Wöhler of the Army Group South Ukraine attempted to hold Bukovina, Soviet Steppe Front leader Rodion Malinovsky stormed into the areas of Moldavia defended by Petre Dumitrescu's troops. In reaction, Antonescu attempted to stabilize the front on a line between Focșani, Nămoloasa and Brăila, deep inside Romanian territory. On 5 August, he visited Hitler one final time in Kętrzyn. On this occasion, the German leader reportedly explained that his people had betrayed the Nazi cause, and asked him if Romania would go on fighting (to which Antonescu reportedly answered in vague terms). After Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov more than once stated that the Soviet Union was not going to require Romanian subservience, the factions opposing Antonescu agreed that the moment had come to overthrow him, by carrying out the Royal Coup of 23 August. On that day, the sovereign asked Antonescu to meet him in the royal palace building, where he presented him with a request to take Romania out of its Axis alliance. The "Conducător" refused, and was promptly arrested by soldiers of the guard, being replaced as Premier with General Constantin Sănătescu, who presided over a national government.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The new Romanian authorities declared peace with the Allies and advised the population to greet Soviet troops. On 25 August, as Bucharest was successfully defending itself against German retaliations, Romania declared war on Nazi Germany. The events disrupted German domination in the Balkans, putting a stop to the "Maibaum" offensive against Yugoslav Partisans. The coup was nevertheless a unilateral move, and, until the signature of an armistice on 12 September, the country was still perceived as an enemy by the Soviets, who continued to take Romanian soldiers as prisoners of war. In parallel, Hitler reactivated the Iron Guardist exile, creating a Sima-led government in exile that did not survive the war's end in Europe.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Placed in the custody of PCR militants, Ion Antonescu spent the interval at a house in Bucharest's Vatra Luminoasă quarter. He was afterward handed to the Soviet occupation forces, who transported him to Moscow, together with his deputy Mihai Antonescu, Governor of Transnistria Gheorghe Alexianu, Defense Minister Constantin Pantazi, Gendarmerie commander Constantin Vasiliu and Bucharest Police chief Mircea Elefterescu. They were subsequently kept in luxurious detention at a mansion nearby the city, and guarded by SMERSH, a special counter-intelligence body answering directly to Stalin. Shortly after Germany surrendered in May 1945, the group was moved to Lubyanka prison. There, Antonescu was interrogated and reputedly pressured by SMERSH operatives, among them Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, but transcripts of their conversations were never sent back to Romania by the Soviet authorities. Later research noted that the main issues discussed were the German-Romanian alliance, the war on the Soviet Union, the economic toll on both countries, and Romania's participation in the Holocaust (defined specifically as crimes against "peaceful Soviet citizens"). At some point during this period, Antonescu attempted suicide in his quarters. He was returned to Bucharest in spring 1946 and held in Jilava prison. He was subsequently interrogated by prosecutor Avram Bunaciu, to whom he complained about the conditions of his detainment, contrasting them with those in Moscow, while explaining that he was a vegetarian and demanding a special diet.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In May 1946, Ion Antonescu was prosecuted at the first in a series of People's Tribunals, on charges of war crimes, crimes against the peace and treason. The tribunals had first been proposed by the PNȚ, and were comparable to the Nuremberg Trials in Allied-occupied Germany. The Romanian legislative framework was drafted by coup participant Pătrășcanu, a PCR member who had been granted leadership of the Justice Ministry. Despite the idea having earned support from several sides of the political spectrum, the procedures were politicized in a sense favourable to the PCR and the Soviet Union, and posed a legal problem for being based on "ex post facto" decisions. The first such local trial took place in 1945, resulting in the sentencing of Iosif Iacobici, Nicolae Macici, Constantin Trestioreanu and other military commanders directly involved in planning or carrying out the Odessa massacre.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Antonescu was represented by Constantin Paraschivescu-Bălăceanu and Titus Stoica, two public defenders whom he had first consulted with a day before the procedures were initiated. The prosecution team, led by Vasile Stoican, and the panel of judges, presided over by Alexandru Voitinovici, were infiltrated by PCR supporters. Both consistently failed to admit that Antonescu's foreign policies were overall dictated by Romania's positioning between Germany and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and although references to the mass murders formed just 23% of the indictment and corpus of evidence (ranking below charges of anti-Soviet aggression), the procedures also included Antonescu's admission of and self-exculpating take on war crimes, including the deportations to Transnistria. They also evidence his awareness of the Odessa massacre, accompanied by his claim that few of the deaths were his direct responsibility. One notable event at the trial was a testimony by PNȚ leader Iuliu Maniu. Reacting against the aggressive tone of other accusers, Maniu went on record saying: "We [Maniu and Antonescu] were political adversaries, not cannibals." Upon leaving the bench, Maniu walked toward Antonescu and shook his hand.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Ion Antonescu was found guilty of the charges. This verdict was followed by two sets of appeals, which claimed that the restored and amended 1923 Constitution did not offer a framework for the People's Tribunals and prevented capital punishment during peacetime, while noting that, contrary to the armistice agreement, only one power represented within the Allied Commission had supervised the tribunal. They were both rejected within six days, in compliance with a legal deadline on the completion of trials by the People's Tribunals. King Michael subsequently received pleas for clemency from Antonescu's lawyer and his mother, and reputedly considered asking the Allies to reassess the case as part of the actual Nuremberg Trials, taking Romanian war criminals into foreign custody. Subjected to pressures by the new Soviet-backed Petru Groza executive, he issued a decree in favour of execution. Together with his co-defendants Mihai Antonescu, Alexianu and Vasiliu, the former "Conducător" was executed by a military firing squad on 1 June 1946. Ion Antonescu's supporters circulated false rumours that regular soldiers had refused to fire at their commander, and that the squad was mostly composed of Jewish policemen. Another apologetic claim insists that he himself ordered the squad to shoot, but footage of the event has proven it false. However, he did refuse a blindfold and raised his hat in salute once the order was given. The execution site, some distance away from the locality of Jilava and the prison fort, was known as "Valea Piersicilor" ("Valley of the Peach Trees"). His final written statement was a letter to his wife, urging her to withdraw into a convent, while stating the belief that posterity would reconsider his deeds and accusing Romanians of being "ungrateful".


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Antonescu's policies were motivated, in large part, by ethnic nationalism. A firm believer in the restoration of Greater Romania as the union of lands inhabited by ethnic Romanians, he never reconciled himself to Hungary's incorporation of Northern Transylvania. Although Hungary and Romania were technically allied through the Axis system, their relationship was always tense, and marked by serious diplomatic incidents. The Romanian leader kept contacts with representatives of ethnic Romanian communities directly affected by the Second Vienna Award, including Transylvanian Greek-Catholic clergy. Another aspect of Antonescu's nationalist policies was evidenced after the Balkans Campaign. Antonescu's Romania did not partake in the military action, but laid a claim to the territories in eastern Vojvodina (western Banat) and the Timok Valley, home to a sizeable Romanian community. Reportedly, Germany's initial designs of granting Vojvodina to Hungary enhanced the tensions between Antonescu and Miklós Horthy to the point where war between the two countries became a possibility. Such incidents made Germany indefinitely prolong its occupation of the region. The Romanian authorities issued projects for an independent Macedonia with autonomy for its Aromanian communities, while an official memorandum on the Timok Valley, approved by Antonescu, made mention of "Romanian" areas "from Timok [...] to Salonika". The "Conducător" also maintained contacts with Aromanian fascists in Axis-occupied Greece, awarding refuge to Alcibiades Diamandi and Nicola Matussi of the Roman Legion, whose pro-Romanian policies had brought them into conflict with other Aromanian factions.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: "Conducător" Antonescu thought Hitler willing to revise his stance on Northern Transylvania, and claimed to have obtained the German leader's agreement, using it to justify participation on the Eastern Front after the recovery of Bessarabia. However, transcripts of the Hitler-Antonescu conversations do not validate his interpretation. Another version has it that Hitler sent Antonescu a letter informing him that Bessarabia's political status still ultimately depended on German decisions. In one of his letters to Hitler, Antonescu himself stated his anti-communist ideological motivation: "I confirm that I will pursue operations in the east to the end against that great enemy of civilization, of Europe, and of my country: Russian Bolshevism [...] I will not be swayed by anyone not to extend this military cooperation into new territory." Antonescu's ideological perspective blended national sentiment with generically Christian and particularly Romanian Orthodox traits. British historian Arnold D. Harvey writes that while this ideology seems a poor match with Nazi doctrine, especially its anti-religious elements, "It seems that Hitler was not even perturbed by the militant Christian orientation of the Antonescu regime".


title: Ion Antonescu

text: It is also possible that, contrary to Antonescu's own will, Hitler viewed the transfer of Transnistria as compensation for the Transylvanian areas, and that he therefore considered the matter closed. According to the Romanian representative in Berlin, Raoul Bossy, various German and Hungarian officials recommended the extension of permanent Romanian rule into Transnistria, as well as into Podolia, Galicia and Pokuttya, in exchange for delivering the whole of Transylvania to Hungary (and relocating its ethnic Romanian majority to the new provinces). American political scientist Charles King writes: "There was never any attempt to annex the occupied territory [of Transnistria], for it was generally considered by the Romanian government to be a temporary buffer zone between Greater Romania and the Soviet front line." At his 1946 trial, Antonescu claimed that Transnistria had been occupied to prevent Romania being caught in a "pincer" between Germany's "Drang nach Osten" and the "Volksdeutsch" communities to the east, while denying charges of having exploited the region for Romania's benefit.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Romanian historian Lucian Boia believes that Ion Antonescu may have nevertheless had expansionist goals to the east, and that he implicitly understood Operation Barbarossa as a tool for containing Slavic peoples. Similar verdicts are provided by other researchers. Another Romanian historian, Ottmar Trașcă, argues that Antonescu did not wish to annex the region "at least until the end of the war", but notes that Antonescu's own statements make reference to its incorporation in the event of a victory. In addition to early annexation plans to the Southern Bug (reportedly confessed to Bossy in June 1941), the "Conducător" is known to have presented his ministers with designs for the region's colonization. The motivation he cited was alleged malnutrition among Romanian peasants, to which he added: "I'll take this population, I'll lead it into Transnistria, where I shall give it all the land it requires". Several nationalists sympathetic to Antonescu acclaimed the extension of Romanian rule into Transnistria, which they understood as permanent.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: A recurring element in Antonescu's doctrines is racism, and in particular antisemitism. This was linked to his sympathy for ethnocratic ideals, and complemented by his statements in favor of "integral nationalism" and "Romanianism". Like other far right Romanians, he saw a Jewish presence behind liberal democracy, and believed in the existence of Judeo-Masonry. His earliest thoughts on Codreanu's ideology criticize the Legionary leader for advocating "brutal measures" in dealing with the "invasion of Jews", and instead propose "the organization of Romanian classes" as a method for reaching the same objective. Politician Aureliu Weiss, who met General Antonescu during that interval, recalled that, although antisemitic "to the core", he was capable of restraint in public. According to historian Mihail Ionescu, the "Conducător" was not averse to the Iron Guard's "Legionary principles", but wanted antisemitism to be "applied in an orderly fashion", as opposed to Horia Sima's revolutionary ways. Historian Ioan Scurtu believes that, during the Legionary Rebellion, Antonescu deliberately waited before stepping in, in order for the Guard to be "profoundly discredited" and for himself to be perceived as a "savior". In April 1941, he let his ministers know that he was considering letting "the mob" deal with the Jews, "and after the slaughter, I will restore order." Lucian Boia notes that the Romanian leader was indeed motivated by antisemitic beliefs, but that these need to be contextualized in order to understand what separates Antonescu from Hitler in terms of radicalism. However, various other researchers assess that, by aligning himself with Hitler before and during Operation Barbarossa, Antonescu implicitly agreed with his thoughts on the "Jewish Question", choosing racial over religious antisemitism. According to Harvey, the Iași pogrom made the Germans "evidently willing to accept that organized Christianity in Romania was very different from what it was in Germany".


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Antonescu was a firm believer in the conspiracy theory of "Jewish Bolshevism", according to which all Jews were supporters of communism and the Soviet Union. His arguments on the matter involved a spurious claim that, during the 1940 retreat from Bessarabia, the Jews had organized themselves and attacked Romanian soldiers. In part, this notion exaggerated unilateral reports of enthusiasm among the marginalized Jews upon the arrival of Red Army troops. In a summer 1941 address to his ministers, Antonescu stated: "The Satan is the Jew. [Ours] is a battle of life and death. Either we win and the world will be purified, either they win and we will become their slaves." At around the same time, he envisaged the ethnic cleansing ("cleaning out") of Jews from the eastern Romanian-held territories. However, as early as February 1941, Antonescu was also contemplating the ghettoization of all Jewish Romanians, as an early step toward their expulsion. In this context, Antonescu frequently depicted Jews as a disease or a poison. After the Battle of Stalingrad, he encouraged the army commanders to resist the counteroffensive, as otherwise the Soviets "will bring Bolshevism to the country, wipe out the entire leadership stratum, impose the Jews on us, and deport masses of our people."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Ion Antonescu's antiziganism manifested itself as the claim that some or all Romani people, specifically nomadic ones, were given to criminal behavior. The regime did not act consistently on this belief: in various cases, those deported had close relatives drafted into the Romanian Army. Although racist slogans targeting Romani people had been popularized by the Iron Guard, it was only under Antonescu's unchallenged rule that solving the "Gypsy problem" became official policy and antiziganist measures were enforced. After a February 1941 inspection, Antonescu singled out Bucharest's Romani community for alleged offences committed during the blackout, and called on his ministers to present him with solutions. Initially, he contemplated sending all Romani people he considered undesirable to the inhospitable Bărăgan Plain, to join the ranks of a local community of manual labourers. In 1942, he commissioned the Romanian Central Institute for Statistics to compile a report on Romani demography, which, in its edited form, provided scientifically racist conclusions, warning the "Conducător" about alleged Romani-Romanian miscegenation in rural Romania. In doing so, Antonescu offered some credit to a marginal and pseudoscientific trend in Romanian sociology, which, basing itself on eugenic theories, recommended the marginalization, deportation or compulsory sterilization of the Romani people, whose numeric presence it usually exaggerated. Among those who signed the report was demographer Sabin Manuilă, who saw the Romani presence as a major racial problem. The exact effect of the report's claims on Antonescu is uncertain.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: There is a historiographic dispute about whether Ion Antonescu's regime was fascist or more generically right-wing authoritarian, itself integrated within a larger debate about the aspects and limits of fascism. Israeli historian of fascism Zeev Sternhell describes Antonescu, alongside his European counterparts Pierre-Étienne Flandin, Francisco Franco, Miklós Horthy, François de La Rocque, Philippe Pétain and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, as a "conservative", noting that all of them "were not deceived by a [fascist] propaganda trying to place them in the same category [as the fascist movements]." A similar verdict is provided by German historian of Europe Hagen Schulze, who views Horthy, Franco and the Romanian leader alongside Portugal's "Estado Novo" theorist António de Oliveira Salazar and Second Polish Republic founder Józef Piłsudski, as rulers of "either purely military dictatorships, or else authoritarian governments run by civilian politicians", and thus a category apart from the leaders of "Fascist states." For Schulze, the defining elements of such governments is the presence of a "conservative establishment" which ensured "social stability" by extending the control of a "traditional state" (thus effectively blocking "revolutionary suggestions" from the far left and the far right alike). The term "conservative autocrat" is used in relation to the "Conducător" by British political theorist Roger Griffin, who attributes to the Iron Guard the position of a subservient fascist movement, while others identify Antonescu's post-1941 rule as a military rather than a fascist dictatorship. Several other scholars prefer "conservative" as a defining term for Antonescu's policies. Antonescu described himself as "by fate a dictator", and explained that his policies were "militaristic" or, on one occasion, "national-totalitarian".


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Nevertheless, other historians theorize a synthesis of fascist and conservative elements, performed by Antonescu and other European leaders of his day. Routledge's 2002 "Companion to Fascism and the Far Right" uses the terms "para-fascist" to define Antonescu, adding: "generally regarded as an authoritarian conservative [Antonescu] incorporated fascism into his regime, in the shape of the Iron Guard, rather than embodying fascism himself." "Para-fascist" is also used by Griffin, to denote both Antonescu and Carol II. American historian of fascism Robert Paxton notes that, like Salazar, Romania's dictator crushed a competing fascist movement, "after copying some of [its] techniques of popular mobilization." Political scientists John Gledhill and Charles King discuss the Iron Guard as Romania's "indigenous fascist movement", remark that Antonescu "adopted much of the ideology of the Guardists", and conclude that the regime he led was "openly fascist". References to the fascist traits of Antonescu's dictatorship are also made by other researchers.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The synthetic aspect of Antonescu's rule is discussed in detail by various authors. British historian Dennis Deletant, who notes that the fascist label relies on both Antonescu's adoption of some fascist "trappings" and the "dichotomy of wartime and postwar evaluation" of his regime, also notes that post-1960 interpretations "do more to explain his behaviour than the preceding orthodoxy." Deletant contrasts the lack of "mass political party or ideology" with the type of rule associated with Nazism or Italian fascism. British-born sociologist and political analyst Michael Mann writes: "The authoritarian regimes of Antonescu [...] and Franco [...] purported to be 'traditional', but actually their fascist-derived corporatism was a new immanent ideology of the right." Another distinct view is held by Romanian-born historian of ideas Juliana Geran Pilon, who describes Romania's "military fascist regime" as a successor to Iron Guardist "mystical nationalism", while mentioning that Antonescu's "national ideology was rather more traditionally militaristic and conservative."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In theory, Antonescu's policies had at least one revolutionary aspect. The leader himself claimed: "I want to introduce a patriotic, heroic, military-typed education, because economic education and all the others follow from it." According to Boia, his arrival in power was explicitly meant to "regenerate" Romania, and his popularity hinged on his being perceived as a "totalitarian model" and a "saviour" figure, like Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Carol II before him. The "providential" and "saviour" themes are also emphasized by historian Adrian Majuru, who notes that Antonescu both adopted such ideals and criticized Carol for failing to live up to them. Seeing his rule as legitimized by the national interest, the general is also known to have referred to political pluralism as "poltronerie" ("poltroonishness"). Accordingly, Antonescu formally outlawed all political forces in February 1941, codifying penal labor as punishment for most public forms of political expression. In Deletant's assessment, his regenerative program was more declarative than factual, and contradicted by Antonescu's own decision to allow the informal existence of some opposition forces. At the same time, some historians believe his monopolizing of power in the name of a German alliance turned Romania into either a "puppet state" of Hitler or one of Germany's "satellite" governments. However, Deletant notes: "Romania retained her sovereignty throughout the period of the alliance [with Nazi Germany]. [...] Antonescu had, of course, his own country's interests uppermost in his mind, but in following Hitler, he served the Nazi cause." He describes Romania's contribution to the war as that of "a principal ally of Germany", as opposed to a "minor Axis satellite."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Although he assigned an unimportant role to King Michael, Antonescu took steps to increase the monarchy's prestige, personally inviting Carol's estranged wife, Queen Mother Helen, to return home. However, his preferred military structures functioned in cooperation with a bureaucracy inherited from the National Renaissance Front. According to historian of fascism Philip Morgan: "Antonescu probably wanted to create, or perpetuate, something like Carol's front organization." Much of his permanent support base comprised former National Christian Party members, to the point where he was seen as successor to Octavian Goga. While maintaining a decorative replacement for Parliament—known as "Adunarea Obștească Plebiscitară a Națiunii Române" ("The General Plebiscitary Assembly of the Romanian Nation") and convoked only twice— he took charge of hierarchical appointments, and personally drafted new administrative projects. In 1941, he disestablished participative government in localities and counties, replacing it with a corporatist structure appointed by prefects whom he named. In stages between August and October 1941, he instituted civilian administration of Transnistria under Governor Gheorghe Alexianu, whose status he made equivalent to that of a cabinet minister. Similar measures were taken in Bukovina and Bessarabia (under Governors Corneliu Calotescu and Gheorghe Voiculescu, respectively). Antonescu strictly relied on the chain of command, and his direct orders to the Army overrode civilian hierarchies. This system allowed room for endemic political corruption and administrative confusion. The Romanian leader also tolerated a gradual loss of authority over the German communities in Romania, in particular the Transylvanian Saxon and Banat Swabian groups, in agreement with Hitler's views on the "Volksdeutsche". This trend was initiated by Saxon Nazi activist Andreas Schmidt in cooperation with the "Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle", resulting in "de facto" self-governance under a Nazi system which was also replicated among the 130,000 Black Sea Germans of Transnistria. Many young German Romanian men opted to join the "Schutzstaffel" as early as 1940 and, in 1943, an accord between Antonescu and Hitler automatically sent ethnic Germans of recruitable age into the Wehrmacht.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The regime was characterized by the leader's attempts to regulate even remote aspects of public life, including relations between the sexes. He imposed drastic penalties for misdemeanors, and the legal use of capital punishment was extended to an unprecedented level. He personally set standards for nightclub programs, for the length of skirts and for women's use of bicycles, while forcing all men to wear coats in public. His wife Maria was a patron of state-approved charitable organizations, initially designed to compete with successful Iron Guardist ventures such as "Ajutorul Legionar". According to Romanian-born gender studies academic Maria Bucur, although the regime allowed women "to participate in the war effort on the front in a more regularized, if still marginal, fashion", the general tone was sexist.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The administrative apparatus included official press and propaganda sectors, which moved rapidly from constructing Carol's personality cult to doing the same for the new military leader: journals "Universul" and "Timpul", as well as Camil Petrescu's "România" magazine, were particularly active in this process. Some other such venues were "Porunca Vremii", Nichifor Crainic's "Sfarmă-Piatră", as well as all the seemingly independent newspapers and some ten new periodicals the government founded for this purpose. Among the individual journalists involved in propaganda were Crainic, Petrescu, Stelian Popescu, and "Curentul" editor Pamfil Șeicaru (the "Conducător" purposefully ignored support from Carol's former adviser, corporatist economist and newspaperman Mihail Manoilescu, whom he reportedly despised). Much of the propaganda produced during the Antonescu era supported the antisemitic theses put forth by the "Conducător". Antisemitism was notable and virulent at the level of Romanian Army units addressing former Soviet citizens in occupied lands, and reflected the regime's preference for the ethnic slur "jidani" (akin to "kikes" or "Yids" in English). The religious aspect of anti-communism surfaced in such venues, which frequently equated Operation Barbarossa with a holy war or a crusade. Romania's other enemies were generally treated differently: Antonescu himself issued objections to the anti-British propaganda of explicitly pro-Nazi papers such as "Porunca Vremii". A special segment of Antonescu's post-1941 propaganda was "Codrenist": it revisited the Iron Guard's history to minimize Sima's contributions and to depict him as radically different from Codreanu.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Three weeks after gaining power and inaugurating the National Legionary regime, Ion Antonescu declared to Italian interviewers at "La Stampa" that solving the "Jewish Question" was his pressing concern, and that he considered himself "haunted" by the large Jewish presence in Moldavian towns. Antonescu's crimes against the Jewish population were inaugurated by new racial discrimination laws: urban Jewish property was expropriated, Jews were banned from performing a wide range of occupations and forced to provide community work for the state ("muncă de interes obștesc") instead of the inaccessible military service, mixed Romanian-Jewish marriages were forbidden and many Jews, primarily those from strategic areas such as Ploiești, were confined to internment camps. The expulsion of Jewish professionals from all walks of life was also carried out in the National Legionary period, and enforced after the Legionary Rebellion. After a post-Legionary hiatus, "Romanianization" commissions resumed their work under the supervision of a National Center, and their scope was extended.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Often discussed as a prelude to the Holocaust in Romania and in connection with Antonescu's views on "Jewish Bolshevism", the Iași pogrom occurred just days after the start of Operation Barbarossa, and was partly instigated, partly tolerated by the authorities in Bucharest. For a while before the massacre, these issued propaganda claiming that the Jews in Iași, whose numbers had been increased by forced evictions from smaller localities, were actively helping Soviet bombers find their targets through the blackout and plotting against the authorities, with Antonescu himself ordering that the entire community be expelled from the city on such grounds. The discourse appealed to local antisemites, whose murderous rampage, carried out with the officials' complicity, resulted in several thousand deaths among Jewish men, women and children.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: In the aftermath of the pogrom, thousands of survivors were loaded into the so-called "death trains". These overcrowded and sealed Romanian Railways cattle wagons circled the countryside in the extreme heat of the summer, and periodically stopped to unload the dead. At least 4,000 people died during the initial massacre and the subsequent transports. Varied estimates of the Iași massacre and related killings place the total number of Jews killed at 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 or 14,000. Some assistance in their murder was provided by units of the German XXXth Army Corps, a matter which later allowed the authorities to shift blame from themselves and from Antonescu—who was nonetheless implicated by the special orders he had released. The complicity of the Special Intelligence Service and its director Eugen Cristescu was also advanced as a possibility. The subsequent attempts at a cover-up included omissive explanations given by the central authorities to foreign diplomats and rewriting official records.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Right upon setting up camp in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Romanian troops joined the Wehrmacht and the Schutzstaffel-organized "Einsatzgruppen" in mass shootings of Bessarabian and Ukrainian Jews, resulting in the deaths of 10,000 to 20,000 people. Scholar Christopher R. Browning compares these killings with similar atrocities perpetrated by locals in "Reichskommissariat Ukraine", Lithuania and Latvia ("see Holocaust in Latvia, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust in Ukraine"). From then on, as the fighting troops progressed over the Dniester, the local administration deported large numbers of Jews into the fighting zone, in hopes that they would be exterminated by the Germans. Antonescu himself stated: "I am in favor of expelling the Jews from Bessarabia and [Northern] Bukovina to the other side of the border [...]. There is nothing for them to do here and I don't mind if we appear in history as barbarians [...]. There has never been a time more suitable in our history to get rid of the Jews, and if necessary, you are to make use of machine guns against them." He also explained that his aim was: "the policy of purification of the Romanian race, and I will not give way before any obstacle in achieving this historical goal of our nation. If we do not take advantage of the situation which presents itself today [...] we shall miss the last chance that history offers to us. And I do not wish to miss it, because if I do so further generations will blame me." He made a contradictory statement about the murder of Jews in Chișinău, claiming that their perpetrators were "bastards" who "stained" his regime's reputation. Antonescu saw the "war" against the Jews as being just as important as the war against the Soviet Union, and regularly demanded reports from his officers in Bessarabia and Transnistria about their measures against the Jews. In late August 1941, in Tighina, Antonescu called a secret conference attended by himself, the governors of Bessarabia and Bukovina and the governor-designate of Transnistria to discuss his plans regarding the Jews in those regions.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Many deaths followed, as the direct results of starvation and exhaustion, while the local German troops carried out selective shootings. The survivors were sent back over the river, and the German commanders expressed irritation over the methods applied by their counterparts. Romanian authorities subsequently introduced ghettos or transit camps. After the annexation of Transnistria, there ensued a systematic deportation of Jews from Bessarabia, with additional transports of Jews from the Old Kingdom (especially Moldavia-proper). Based on an assignment Antonescu handed down to General Ioan Topor, the decision involved specific quotas, and the transports, most of which were carried out by foot, involved random murders. In conjunction with Antonescu's expansionist ambitions, it is possible that the ultimate destination for the survivors, once circumstances permitted it, was further east than the Southern Bug. On 11 October 1941, the chief of the Federation of Jewish Communities, Wilhelm Filderman issued a public letter to Antonescu asking him to stop the deportations, writing: "This is death, death for no reason except that they are Jews." Antonescu replied to Filderman in a long letter explaining that because the entire Jewish community of Bessarabia had allegedly collaborated with the Soviets during the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, his policies were a justified act of revenge. On 11 November 1941, Antonescu sent Filderman a second letter stating no Jews would be allowed to live in the "liberated territories" and as for the Jews of the "Regat":


title: Ion Antonescu

text: We decided to defend our Romanian rights because our all-too-tolerant past was taken advantage of by the Jews and facilitated the abuse of our rights by foreigners, particularly the Jews...We are determined to put an end to this situation. We cannot afford to put in jeopardy the existence of our nation because of several hundred thousand Jews, or in order to salvage some principle of humane democracy that has not been understood properly."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The deportees' remaining property was nationalized, confiscated or left available for plunder. With its own Jewish population confined and subjected to extermination, Transnistria became infamous in short time, especially so for its five main concentration camps: Peciora, Akhmechetka, Bogdanovka, Domanovka and Obodovka. Manned by Romanian Gendarmes and local Ukrainian auxiliaries who acted with the consent of central authorities, Transnistrian localities became the sites of mass executions, particularly after the administrators became worried about the spread of typhus from the camps and into the surrounding region. At a Cabinet meeting on 16 December 1941 to discuss the fate of the Jews of Transnistria, Antonescu stated:


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The question of the Yids is being discussed in Berlin. The Germans want to bring the Yids from Europe to Russia and settle them in certain areas, but there is still time before this plan is carried out. Meanwhile, what should we do? Shall we wait for a decision in Berlin? Shall we wait for a decision that concerns us? Shall we ensure their safety? Pack them into catacombs! Throw them into the Black Sea! As far I am concerned, 100 may die, 1,000 may die, all of them may die"


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Between 21–24 and 28–31 December 1941, Romanian gendarmes and Ukrainian auxiliaries killed about 70,000 Jews at the Bogdanovca camp; the massacre was Antonescu's way of dealing with a typhus epidemic that had broken out among the Jews of Transnistria owing to the poor living conditions that had been forced to endure. The last wave of Jewish deportations, occurring in June 1942, came mainly from the Cernăuți area in Northern Bukovina.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Also in the summer of 1942, Ion Antonescu became a perpetrator of the "Porajmos", or Holocaust-related crimes against the Romani people, when he ordered the Transnistrian deportation of Romanian Romani from the Old Kingdom, transited through camps and resettled in inhumane conditions near the Southern Bug. They were joined there by 2,000 conscientious objectors of the Inochentist church, a millennialist denomination. As Antonescu admitted during his trial, he personally supervised these operations, giving special orders to the Gendarmerie commanders. In theory, the measures taken against Romani people were supposed to affect only nomads and those with a criminal record created or updated recently, but arbitrary exceptions were immediately made to this rule, in particular by using the vague notion of "undesirable" to define some members of sedentary communities. The central authorities noted differences in the criteria applied locally, and intervened to prevent or sanction under-deportation and, in some cases, over-deportation. Antonescu and Constantin Vasiliu had been made aware of the problems Transnistria faced in feeding its own population, but ignored them when deciding in favour of expulsion. With most of their property confiscated, the Romani men, women and children were only allowed to carry hand luggage, on which they were supposed to survive winter. Famine and disease ensued from criminal negligence, Romani survival being largely dependent on occasional government handouts, the locals' charity, stealing and an underground economy. Once caught, escapees who made their way back into Romania were returned by the central authorities, even as local authorities were objecting.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The Odessa massacre, an act of collective punishment carried out by the Romanian Army and Gendarmes, took the lives of a minimum of between 15,000 and 25,000 to as many as 40,000 or even more than 50,000 Jewish people of all ages. The measure came as the enforcement of Antonescu's own orders, as retaliation for an explosion that killed 67 people at Romanian headquarters on that city. Antonescu believed that the original explosion was a terrorist act, rejecting the possibility of the building in question having been fitted with land mines by the retreating Soviets. In addition, Antonescu blamed the Jews, specifically "Jewish commissars" in the Red Army, for the losses suffered by his 4th Army throughout the siege, although both an inquiry he had ordered and German assessments pointed to the ill-preparedness of Romanian soldiers. While the local command took the initiative for the first executions, Antonescu's personal intervention amplified the number of victims required, and included specific quotas (200 civilians for every dead officer, 100 for every dead soldier). By the time of the explosion, the Jewish population was already rounded up into makeshift ghettos, being made subject to violence and selective murders.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Purportedly the largest single massacre of Jews in the war's history, it involved mass shootings, hangings, acts of immolation and a mass detonation. Antonescu is quoted saying that the Romanian Army's criminal acts were "reprisals, not massacres". Survivors were deported to the nearby settlement of Slobidka, and kept in inhumane conditions. Alexianu himself intervened with Antonescu for a solution to their problems, but the Romanian leader decided he wanted them out of the Odessa area, citing the nearby resistance of Soviet troops in the Siege of Sevastopol as a ferment for similar Jewish activities. His order to Alexianu specified: "Pack them into the catacombs, throw them into the Black Sea, but get them out of Odessa. I don't want to know. A hundred can die, a thousand can die, all of them can die, but I don't want a single Romanian official or officer to die." Defining the presence of Jews in occupied Odessa as "a crime", Antonescu added: "I don't want to stain my activity with such lack of foresight." As a result of this, around 35,000–40,000 Jewish people were deported out of Odessa area and into other sectors of Transnistria. Several thousands were purposefully driven into Berezivka and other areas inhabited by the Black Sea Germans, where "Selbstschutz" organizations massacred them.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: A common assessment ranks Antonescu's Romania as second only to Nazi Germany in its antisemitic extermination policies. According to separate works by historians Dennis Deletant and Adrian Cioroianu, the flaws of Antonescu's 1946 trial notwithstanding, his responsibility for war crimes was such that he would have been equally likely to be found guilty and executed in a Western Allied jurisdiction. The often singular brutality of Romanian-organized massacres was a special topic of reflection for Jewish Holocaust escapee and American political theorist Hannah Arendt, as discussed in her 1963 work "Eichmann in Jerusalem". Official Romanian estimates made in 2003 by the Wiesel Commission mention that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romanian authorities under Antonescu's rule. The Transnistria deportations account for 150,000 to 170,000 individual expulsions of Jews from Romania proper, of whom some 90,000–120,000 never returned. According to Romanian-born Israeli historian Jean Ancel, the Transnistria deportations from other areas account for around 145,000 deaths, while the number of local Transnistrian Jews killed could be as high as 280,000. More conservative estimates for the latter number mention some 130,000–180,000 victims. Other overall estimates speak of 200,000 to over 300,000 Jews purposefully killed as a result of Romania's action. According to historians Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic: "none of these massacres was carried out by the Germans, although [the latter] certainly encouraged such actions and, in some cases, may have coordinated them." The Romani deportations affected some 25,000 people, at least 11,000 of whom died in Transnistria.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The Jewish population in the Old Kingdom, numbering between 300,000 and 400,000 people, survived the Holocaust almost intact. Reflecting on this fact, Lucian Boia noted that Antonescu could not "decently" be viewed as a rescuer of Jews, but that there still is a fundamental difference between the effects of his rule and those of Hitler's, concluding that the overall picture is not "completely dark." For Dennis Deletant, this situation is a "major paradox" of Antonescu's time in power: "more Jews survived under [Antonescu's] rule than in any other country within Axis Europe." American historian of Romania William O. Oldson views Antonescu's policies as characterized by "violence, inconsistency and inanity", but places them in the wider context of local antisemitism, noting some ideological exceptions from their respective European counterparts. These traits, he argues, became "providential" for the more assimilated Jewish communities of the Old Romanian Kingdom, while exposing Jews perceived as foreign. Discussing Antonescu's policy of ethnic cleansing, Polonksy and Mihlic note: "[it] raises important questions about the thin line between the desire to expel an unwanted minority and a small-scale genocidal project under sanctioned conditions." American military historian Gerhard L. Weinberg made reference to the Antonescu regime's "slaughter of large number of Jews in the areas ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 when those areas were retaken in 1941 as well as in [...] Transnistria", but commented: "the government of Marshal Ion Antonescu preferred to rob and persecute Jews [from Romania]; the government would not turn them over to the Germans for killing."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Alongside the noticeable change in fortunes on the Eastern Front, a main motivator for all post-1943 changes, noted by various historians, was the manifold financial opportunity of Jewish survival. Wealthier Jews were financially extorted in order to avoid community work and deportation, and the work of some professionals was harnessed by the public sector, and even by the Army. From the beginning, the regime had excepted from deportations some Jews who were experts in fields such as forestry and chemistry, and some others were even allowed to return despite antisemitic protests in their home provinces. Economic exploitation was institutionalized in late 1941-early 1942, with the creation of a Central Jewish Office. Supervised by Commissioner Radu Lecca and formally led by the Jewish intellectuals Nandor Gingold and Henric Streitman, it collected funds which were in part redirected toward Maria Antonescu's charities. Small numbers of Romanian Jews left independently for the Palestine as early as 1941, but British opposition to Zionist plans made their transfer perilous (one notorious example of this being the MV "Struma"). On a personal level, Antonescu's encouragement of crimes alternated with periods when he gave in to the pleas of Jewish community leader Wilhelm Filderman. In one such instance, he reversed his own 1942 decision to impose the wearing of yellow badges, which nevertheless remained in use everywhere outside the Old Kingdom and, in theory, to any Romanian Jews elsewhere in Axis-controlled Europe. Assessing these contradictions, commentators also mention the effect of Allied promises to prosecute those responsible for genocide throughout Europe. In the late stages of the war, Antonescu was attempting to shift all blame for crimes from his regime while accusing Jews of "bring[ing] destruction upon themselves".


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The regime permitted non-deported Romanian Jews and American charities to send humanitarian aid into Transnistrian camps, a measure it took an interest in enforcing in late 1942. Deportations of Jews ceased altogether in October of the same year. A common explanation historians propose for this reassessment of policies is the change in Germany's fortunes on the Eastern Front, with mention that Antonescu was considering using the Jewish population as an asset in his dealings with the Western Allies. It nevertheless took the regime more than a year to allow more selective Jewish returns from Transnistria, including some 2,000 orphans. After Transnistria's 1944 evacuation, Antonescu himself advocated the creation of new camps in Bessarabia. In conversations with his cabinet, the "Conducător" angrily maintained that surviving Jews were better off than Romanian soldiers.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: The policies applied in respect to the Romani population were ambivalent: while ordering the deportation of those he considered criminals, Ion Antonescu was taking some interest in improving the lives of Romani laborers of the Bărăgan Plain. According to Romanian historian Viorel Achim, although it had claimed the existence of a "Gypsy problem", the Antonescu regime "did not count it among its priorities." By 1943, Antonescu was gradually allowing those deported to return home. Initially, Constantin Vasiliu allowed the families of soldiers to appeal their deportation on a selective basis. Romanian authorities also appear to have been influenced by the objections of Nazi administrators in the "Reichskommissariat Ukraine", who feared that the newly arrived population would outnumber local Germans. By January 1944, the central authorities ordered local ones not to send back apprehended fugitives, instructed them to provide these with some food and clothing, and suggested corporal punishment for Romani people who did not adhere to a behavioural code. As the Romanian administrators abandoned Transnistria, most survivors from the group returned on their own in summer 1944.


title: Ion Antonescu

text: Ion Antonescu and his subordinates were for long divided on the issue of the Final Solution, as applied in territories under direct Nazi control from 1941. At an early stage, German attempts to impose the RSHA's direct control over Old Kingdom Jews drew some objections from Mihai Antonescu, but the two sides agreed to a common policy with reference to Soviet Jews. In various of his early 1940s statements, Ion Antonescu favorably mentions the Axis goal of eliminating the Jewish presence in the event of victory. The unrestrained character of some Romanian actions toward Jews alarmed Nazi officials, who demanded a methodical form of extermination. When confronted with German decisions to push back Jews he had expelled before the occupation of Transnistria, Antonescu protested, arguing that he had conformed with Hitler's decisions regarding "eastern Jews". In August 1941, in preparation for the Final Solution's universal application, Hitler remarked: "As for the Jewish question, today in any case one could say that a man like Antonescu, for example, proceeds much more radically in this manner than we have done until now. But I will not rest or be idle until we too have gone all the way with the Jews."


title: Ion Antonescu

text: By summer 1942, German representatives in Romania obtained Antonescu's approval to deport the remaining Jewish population to extermination camps in occupied Poland. Among those involved on the German side were mass murderer Adolf Eichmann and his aide Gustav Richter, while the Romanian side was represented by Jewish Affairs Commissioner Lecca (reporting to Antonescu himself). Richter directed Lecca in setting up the Central Jewish Office, which he assumed would function as a "Judenrat" to streamline extermination policies. According to such plans, only some 17,000 Jews, labeled useful to Romania's economy, were to be exempt. The transports had already been announced to the Romanian Railways by autumn 1942, but the government eventually decided to postpone these measures indefinitely as was done with most other deportations to Transnistria. Antonescu's new orders on the matter were brought up in his conversations with Hitler at Schloss Klessheim, where both leaders show themselves aware of the fate awaiting Jewish deportees to Poland. By then, German authorities charged with applying the Final Solution in Eastern Europe completely abandoned their plans with respect to Romania. In August 1942, Antonescu had worked out plans with the SS for deporting all of the Jews of the "Regat" or the "Old Kingdom" to the German-run death camps in Poland, but then cancelled the deportation. The principal reasons for his change of mind were signs of disapproval from court circles, a warning from the American government passed on by the Swiss ambassador that he would prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity after the Allies had won if the deportation went ahead, and most importantly because Hitler would not undo the Second Vienna Award and return northern Transylvania to Romania. Antonescu saw the deportation of the Jews of the "Regat" as the "pro quid quo" for the return of Transylvania and unable to obtain satisfactory promises from the German Ambassador Baron Manfred von Killinger that Romania would be rewarded with the return of Transylvania in exchange for handing over its Jews, Antonescu cancelled the deportation until the Germans would make him a better offer.