Ion Antonescu

Ion Antonescu was born in Ptiesti town 1882,2 June,Antonescu was the scion of an upper-middle class Romanian Orthodox family with some military tradition.He was especially close to his mother, Liţa Baranga, who survived his death.His father, an army officer, wanted Ion to follow in his footsteps, and as such, he sent him to attend the Infantry and Cavalry School in Craiova.According to one account, Ion Antonescu was briefly a classmate of Wilhelm Filderman, the future Romanian Jewish community activist whose interventions with Conducător Antonescu helped save a number of his coreligionists.After graduation, in 1904, Antonescu joined the Romanian Army with the rank of Second Lieutenant. He spent the following two years attending courses at the Special Cavalry Section in Târgovişte.Reportedly, he was a zealous and goal-setting student, upset by the slow pace of promotions, and compensating for his diminutive stature through toughness.In time, the reputation of being a tough and ruthless commander, together with his reddish hair earned him the nickname Câinele Roşu ("The Red Dog").Antonescu also developed a reputation for questioning his commanders, and for appealing over their heads whenever he felt they were wrong. During the repression of the 1907 peasants' revolt, he was the head of a cavalry unit in Covurlui County.Opinions on his role in the events diverge: while some historians believe Antonescu was a particularly violent participant in quelling the revolt,others equate his participation with that of regular officers or view it as outstandingly tactful.In addition to restricting peasant protests, Antonescu's unit subdued socialist activities in Galaţi port.His handling of the situation earned him praise from King Carol I, who sent Crown Prince (future monarch) Ferdinand to congratulate him in front of the whole garrison.The following year, Antonescu was promoted to Lieutenant, and, between 1911 and 1913, he attended the Advanced War School, receiving the rank of Captain upon graduation.In 1913, during the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria, Antonescu served as a staff officer in the First Cavalry Division in Dobruja The resulting regime, deemed the National Legionary State and officially proclaimed on September 14, had Antonescu as Premier and Conducător, with Sima as Deputy Premier and leader of the Iron Guard, the latter being remodeled into a single official party.Antonescu subsequently ordered Carol's Iron Guardist prisoners to be set free.On October 6, 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 PNŢ and PNL's informal existence, allowing them to preserve much of their political support. 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 November 23, 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. 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 the 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. 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 Ştefan 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 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. 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". After the events, 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 Codrenists, 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 PNŢ and PNL to form a national cabinet, but his rejection of parliamentarism made the two groups refuse him. 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.In later statements, he offered praise to Antonescu's "breadth of vision" and "real personality."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) aggravated into conflict: on February 10, 1941, British Premier Winston Churchill recalled His Majesty's Ambassador Reginald Hoare, and approved the blockade of Romanian ships in British-controlled ports. 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.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 Iaşi with Antonescu's agreement; thousands of Jews were killed (see Iaşi pogrom). After becoming the first Romanian to be granted the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which he received from Hitler at their August 6 meeting in the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv, Ion Antonescu was promoted to Marshal of Romania by royal decree on August 22, in recognition for his role in restoring the eastern frontiers of Greater Romania.He 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 August 30, 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 PNŢ.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). 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 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 PNŢ,and was compatible with the Nuremberg Trials in Allied-occupied Germany.The Romanian legislative framework was drafted by coup participant Pătrăşcanu, 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 favorable 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. 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),he 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 PNŢ 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. 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 favor of execution.Together with his co-defendants Mihai Antonescu, Alexianu and Vasiliu, the former Conducător was executed by a military firing squad on June 1, 1946. Ion Antonescu's supporters circulated false rumors 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.It is however attested that he refused 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".