During the 1930s, as German power grew and sovereign neighbors disappeared with little resistance, Romania’s leader, King Carol II, a former playboy, became increasingly nervous. When World War II broke out in Poland in 1939, Romanians feared their little corner of Europe would be the next entrée for Hitler. Romania’s only safeguard was to ally with the British and the always-eager-to-make-agreements-it-can-never-honor French. But in 1940 when Germany defeated France and threw Britain off the continent, Romania was on its own.
Romania faced its own volatile political mixture. King Carol had ruled since 1930 with a strong hand. But the driving force in the country’s politics was the Iron Guard: religious fanatics, right-wing nuts, and violent anti-Semites. Unsurprisingly, they were much loved by the always-on-the-lookout-for-thugs-who-like-to-kill-the-helpless, Heinrich Himmler of the German SS. The Iron Guard was like a posse of Bible-toting SS thugs. They were not happy with Carol and probably wouldn’t have been happy with Hitler, either.
Fearing an Iron Guard takeover and unhindered by such notions as fair play, King Carol suddenly showed some impressive fascistic chops by orchestrating the assassination of the Iron Guard leader Cornelius Codreanu in 1938 and outlawing the group. Carol also excluded General Ion Antonescu, the head of the army and former defense minister, from his government. In May 1940, with Poland already conquered by Hitler and the collapse of the west imminent, King Carol wrapped up a treaty with Germany giving the Nazi war machine access to Romania’s plentiful oil. The king, believing his hard work was done, was now able to relax and get back to his real interests, living the high life amid the gathering storms of total war.
Teaming up with the Nazis somehow angered the Soviets, so in June of 1940 the Reds grabbed two northern Romanian provinces, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, primarily because the Russians didn’t already control them. Hungary, with Hitler’s approval, then jumped into the land grab and took most of Transylvania in August. And in September, Bulgaria took a cheap shot at its northern neighbor and reclaimed the area of Dobrogea. In all, Romania lost about one-third of its territory and population. The country had now become Less Romania.
Ion denounced the king over the humiliating loss of territory and prestige, so Carol dismissed him from the army and tossed him into prison. But this could not prevent the population from realizing their country was shrinking and party boy King Carol started to catch the blame. Demonstrating that even louche kings read polls, he desperately sprung Antonescu from prison directly into the prime ministership in September 1940. As a show of gratitude, Antonescu squeezed Carol to abdicate and flee the country. Carol reputedly loaded up a train with royal swag and decamped to Portugal. With the backing of the army, Ion grabbed dictatorial powers and appointed as his deputy the head of the Iron Guard. Touché! The circle of lunacy was complete again, for the moment.
With the instincts of a true dictator, Ion burned to see the day when he could extend his irrational rule over the ancient homeland of Romanians, Transylvania, as well as the other stolen territories. The problem, however, was that the lost lands were held by two opposite sides of the war. But Ion, starting to warm up to his job as dictator, began to limber up with some Houdini-like reversals and escapes of his own. He soon came up with a plan to fix Romania’s territorial problems by throwing his lot in with Hitler.
In November 1940, Ion met with Adolf in Germany. In dictator-to-dictator talks, Antonescu ranted about the Jews, Slavs, and Hungarians. The two got along great. Hitler found the Conducător to be an eager ally. He bonded with the German generals. They in turn had little difficulty recognizing the rampant greed of a true sucker. Ion gleefully accepted an invitation to join the Axis.
In January 1941, Horia Sima, the head of the Iron Guard, was unable to repress his deep-rooted, coup-making urges and tried to overthrow Antonescu. Hitler preferred the order of Antonescu to the anarchy of the Iron Guard and supported Antonescu in crushing the coup. Sima and the other Iron Guard leaders were whisked away by Himmler and stashed in Germany in preparation to take over Romania if Antonescu turned woolly-headed on them. Ion now ruled alone.
Adding to the volatile mix of greed and hate swirling around Romania was the country’s huge oil reserve. Romania was the largest European oil producer, the West Texas of the Balkans. At the start of the war, the British and French tried to buy as much of the oil as possible and even tried to sabotage the oil transport system, just to keep it away from the tank-happy Germans. Their plots failed, and in August 1940 Germany and Romania cut a deal whereby Germany got virtually all the oil it wanted. Romania got to charge Germany whatever it wanted. You could call it the Hermann Goering Plan.
The only cloud marring the clear blue sky of the perfect Romanian future, Transylvania included, was an invasion rendezvous with the German army in Red Square.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “TRANSYLVANIA DREAMIN’”
Throughout 1940 and 1941, the Germans primped the Romanian army for the coming dustup with the Soviets. They were the first foreign power informed by the Germans of the invasion date of June 22, 1941.
Initially the plans for Romanian forces, called Army Group Antonescu, were to simply block the Soviets from taking over the oil fields and then later join in any needed offensive operations. All told, Romania’s order of battle numbered about 325,000 troops.
With the Soviets reeling in the face of the German blitzkrieg, Romania easily recaptured the two provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina lying between Romania and Russia. The army then halted while Antonescu pondered whether to invade the Soviet Union. Or not. For most people this is a simple decision — NO. But Antonescu was one of the few people on earth who awoke one day and said, “Yes, I think invading Russia will be a good thing.” (For anyone unfamiliar with basic geography, Russia is just about the largest land mass on the face of the earth, and its citizens live in such desperation that the state of total war is often indistinguishable from normal daily life.)
As a reward to the country for his work so far, Ion promoted himself to Marshal. With Russia seemingly on the ropes, Antonescu pushed all his chips into the middle of the table: invasion of Russia, full partnership with Adolf. It would all be worth it once Count Dracula’s homeland, Transylvania, was returned to Romanian hands.
With the decision made, on August 3 the Romanians invaded Russia with the goal of capturing the city of Odessa. They eventually succeeded, with the Soviets withdrawing on October 16, but only after Romania suffered heavy casualties. Getting beat up by the retreating Russians should have been a big hint to Ion that his army wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Despite high-quality German arms and a dose of Prussian training to stiffen them, it was clear that the Romanians were ill equipped and ill prepared for a major war with their more powerful and, most important, more numerous enemy. The brutality of the fighting guaranteed that the Soviets would never forget that Romania had entered the long hall of sworn Russian enemies to be humiliated eternally after the inevitable defeat. In fact, the Romanians fought with such gusto against the Russians that they suffered a higher proportion of casualties than did the German forces in the east.
Not satisfied with going toe-to-toe with the behemoth Russia, the cocky Romanians joined Japan, Italy, and Germany in declaring war on the United States, the richest country on earth, in the days following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Romania was now taking on half of the developed world to acquire a few provinces smaller than Pennsylvania.