TOTALITARIANISM IN ROMANIA

III. MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

Antonescu had naively stated for a long time: "I am an ally to the Reich against Russia, I am neutral in the conflict between Great Britain and Germany. I am for America against the Japanese." (December 1941).

A good patriot and military man, from the point of view of political skill, he was not up to the task of the moment. He was neither Nazi, nor fascist, nor even pro German, but as a soldier, he believed in the victory of the Reich and this belief drove him to throw his country beyond its natural borders by regaining the lost territories, and into a war which it could only lose. He thought that in this way he would convince Hitler to give him back the northern part of Transylvania and did not miss any opportunity to remind the Führer that the dictate of Vienna had been unfair and that he was waiting for it to be cancelled.

On his own, without any consultation with the political opinion of the country and without concluding any convention with Germany stipulating the conditions and the limits of their co-operation, Antonescu gave orders for crossing the Prut river (22nd June 1940).

The socialists and communists were the first to join the United Workers' Front (April 1944), promising to coordinate their actions against Antonescu's regime.

In 1944 the two parties formed together with the tsaranists and liberals, and with the king's knowledge, the Bloc of Democratic parties. The programme of the Bloc stipulated the acceptance of the armistice conditions of the allies, that is to rise up in arms, to overturn the marshal Antonescu and to set up a democratic regime.

Lacking a real power basis, the political parties did not have any useful means to put their plans into practice. Under such circumstances the initiative and responsibility for action went to the young King Mihai I, who repeatedly and openly showed his hostility towards the marshal's policy.

A new Soviet offensive, launched on 20th August 1944, clearly showed everybody that there were only two solutions left: either immediately getting out of the war, or the occupation of the country by the Red Army.

Marshal Antonescu refused to conclude the armistice and this made the King order the arrest of him and then the main ministers.

On the evening of 23rd August 1944 evening the regime in the country changed and Romanian troops received the order to stop hostilities against the Russians.

It is difficult to define Antonescu's personality as it raises a lot of questions. Nobody can deny his patriotism and desire to draw the country out of the critical situation it was in 1940. His desire of restoring the border lines is also understandable. But in the Jewish problem he adopted a line in which none of the politicians of old Romania would have got involved. At the same time, it is true that Antonescu firmly resisted German pressure to apply "the final solution", supported by Hitler, in Romania too. So he saved a great number of Jews from death. In the absence of some reliable statistics, we can say that an extremely big number of Romanian Jews lost their lives in the period 1940 - August 1944. However, without Antonescu, the number of victims would have been much bigger. In the summer of 1941 the Germans got from Antonescu a promise to deport all the Romanian Jews to Auschwitz. At the request of the King, the mother-queen, Iuliu Maniu (the president of the tsaranist party) and of the Orthodox Church, the marshal cancelled the order. As a matter of fact, since 1940 he had followed a contradictory policy in the Jewish problem. Initially he had given orders to close the synagogues, then he changed his mind (1949); in September he accepted the introduction of yellow star, but a few month later patriarch Nicodim put pressure upon him and he withdrew the decree. At the end of 1942, the government accepted the proposal of Zionist organizations and of the Palestinian Office in Bucharest to facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine, the orphan children from Transnistria included. In this way Bucharest became, before the Germans' eyes, a turn-table for Jewish emigration from Central Europe, Hungary, Poland and Romania.