Romania

Romania

1. Introduction

Romania entered the war because, as Grigore Gafencu, a former foreign minister, argued in 1944, ‘there was no longer order in Europe, nor any feeling of security or collective solidarity.’

Greater Romania was born of the Versailles settlement in 1919 and its continued existence was linked to the maintenance of, and respect for, the new international order consecrated by the peace treaties. Defence of the European status quo, which implied opposition to revision of the Versailles agreements and to any attempt to readjust Romania's new frontiers, thus became the cornerstone of inter-war foreign policy pursued by all Romanian governments until the Munich agreement of 1938. There were three bases to this policy: collaboration with France, the strongest western continental military power; alliance with the other post-Versailles states which shared a common interest with Romania; and support for and participation in the League of Nations which guaranteed the territorial integrity of its members.

2. Domestic life, economy, and war effort

The German–Romanian economic agreement of 23 March 1939 guaranteed the predominance of Germany in the Romanian economy and established an economic plan for the development of agriculture, forestry, mining, and communications with German assistance; in furtherance of these activities joint German–Romanian companies were to be established. This plan was extended under an agreement, concluded on 4 December 1940, which provided long-term credits. Through these arrangements Germany achieved both direct and indirect control, through a monopoly of purchase and supply, of much of the Romanian economy. By 1941, 47% of the country's crude oil out put was produced by German-owned companies and Romanian deliveries of petroleum products to Germany rose from 1,177,000 tons in 1940 to 2,963,000 in 1941, 2,192,000 tons in 1942, 2,406,000 in 1943, and to 1,043,000 in 1944 (see also raw and synthetic materials). Such was the German reliance upon Romanian oil that in August 1944 Hitler declared to General Alfred Gerstenberg, the officer responsible for air defence of the Ploesti oilfields: ‘if we lose the oilfields we can no longer win the war’ (quoted in D. Irving, Hitler's War, New York, 1977, p. 681).

The major wartime problem for Romanian agriculture was maintaining production in the face of the drain on manpower, and the requisitioning of equipment and livestock for the army. Legislation was introduced to control prices, and exports, to requisition cereals, and to organize labour battalions to work the land. In order to compensate for the shortage of manpower and livestock increased imports of agricultural machinery were made from Germany. The numbers of tractors imported almost trebled in 1942 in comparison with the previous year to 2,800, and there were also significant increases over the same period in imports of harvesters, hoes, and threshing machinery. Despite German optimism that these measures would help to increase Romanian agricultural production by 25% over ten years, and that 40% of the surplus of cereals and vegetables would be available for export to Germany, the total production of cereals dropped from an average of 7.5 billion kg. for the period 1935–9 (without the lost provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina) to 6.4 billion in 1940–3 for the same land area. What the estimates had overlooked was the sharp decline by one-third in the number of draught animals, caused largely by the presence of both German and Soviet troops on Romanian soil between 1943 and 1945. Since these animals were the most practical form of traction on the small strip farms, the increased numbers of tractors did not have a marked impact upon cereal production. The burden of feeding the German Army on its territory and in southern Russia led to the introduction of bread rationing in Romania in December 1941; rationing continued after the Soviet Army took the place of the Germans in the late summer of 1944.

3. Government

The economic recession of the 1930s fostered a decade of instability in which the xenophobia of the impoverished Romanian peasantry was exploited by right-wing movements, principally by the fascist Iron Guard, and directed against the Jews. The growth in support for the Guard, which stemmed in part from a widespread disillusionment with the experience of parliamentary government, led the king, Carol II (1893–1953), to institute a personal dictatorship in 1938. At the same time, Romania's geographical position, and its economic predicament, forced it into Hitler's arms.

After the Munich agreement of 1938 Romania found itself increasingly drawn into the web of German military and economic policies. With the UK unwilling to buy Romania's wheat in large quantities, and with Germany in control of the Czech Skoda works with which Carol had placed orders for arms, Romania was dependent on Hitler for the means to save its economy and territorial integrity in the face of threats from the USSR and Hungary. The decision to shift towards Germany was taken by Carol and his ministers on 27 May 1940 after the successful German sweep to the Channel during the fighting which led to the Fall of France. In June Carol succumbed, on German advice given in accordance with the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, to the Soviet demand for Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina; two months later he accepted Hitler's own imposition of the second Vienna award, by which Romania was forced to cede northern Transylvania to Hungary (see Map 49); and in September, by the treaty of Craiova, South Dobruja, Romanian territory since 1913, was returned to Bulgaria. In return Carol obtained Hitler's guarantee of protection for the rump of his country which had been truncated at the German leader's own request; German bombers began to arrive at Brasov in July.

The loss of these provinces cost Romania almost one-third of its territory and population of whom half, some three million, were ethnically Romanian. Unable to resist popular demands for his abdication following these supine concessions, Carol renounced the throne on 6 September 1940 in favour of his son Michael (b.1921) after having appointed General Ion Antonescu as prime minister. On 12 October the first contingents of the German military mission entered Romania to rebuild the Romanian Army; a German economic mission also arrived to match the Romanian economy to Germany's military needs. But efforts to increase Romania's economic output were threatened by the reign of terror which the Iron Guard, a partner in power with Antonescu, unleashed against its opponents and against Jews. Therefore when Antonescu began to disarm Iron Guardists and strengthen the army, he did so with Hitler's support. On 21 January 1941 the Guard rose against the government and Hitler, anxious to have a stable Romania as a springboard for his invasion of the USSR (see BARBAROSSA) allowed Antonescu to crush the rebellion. On 27 January he appointed a new cabinet formed almost entirely of military officers, and the Iron Guard was dissolved.

A military dictatorship was now established under Antonescu and it received the rubber stamp of a popular plebiscite. Despite alignment with Germany and the presence of German troops on its territory, Romania retained its sovereignty which, because of Hitler's admiration for Antonescu, was respected. Apart from a small number of changes the military government headed by Antonescu remained in power until August 1944.

Throughout this period the opposition parties remained outlawed, having been suppressed when Carol established his own personal dictatorship in February 1938; nevertheless, Antonescu acknowledged the counsels offered to him by Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Brǎtianu, the respective leaders of the two major democratic parties, the National Peasants and the National Liberals. Thus he received their support when he joined BARBAROSSA on 22 June 1941. According to foreign observers, such as The Times correspondent Archibald Gibson, most Romanians were behind Antonescu when he joined Hitler's attack on the USSR, but after Romanian troops crossed the River Dniester into Soviet territory proper, both Maniu and Brǎtianu protested and demanded Romania's withdrawal from the war.

After German–Romanian forces captured Odessa in October, pressure began to build up from Moscow for the UK to declare war on Romania. The British government had not protested when Romanian forces crossed the River Prut into Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, but because Romania was at war with the USSR Stalin urged Churchill to act. Churchill was reluctant to do this because he realized that Romania had been overpowered by Hitler but, realizing the need to give the Soviet leader a public gesture of support, finally acquiesced. On 28 November the British government sent an ultimatum via the US legation to the Romanian government pointing out that for several months it had been conducting aggressive military operations on the territory of the USSR, an ally of the UK, in close collaboration with Germany. It warned that unless the Romanians ceased military operations in the USSR by 5 December the British government would have no option but to declare the existence of a state of war between the two countries. The Romanian government did not reply until the day after the expiry of the ultimatum. It offered a justification for Romania's military action against the USSR which, it argued, was one of legitimate self-defence in the face of Soviet aggression which had begun in 1940 with the occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. When the UK officially declared war on Romania on 7 December, Antonescu, who had served as military attaché in London in the 1920s and had a great admiration for Britain, expressed regret in a radio broadcast that his people's centuries-old struggle to preserve its existence had not been understood. Romania's present action was, he claimed, a continuation of that struggle. On 12 December Romania, following Germany's lead, declared war on the USA.

Throughout 1942 Maniu and Brǎtianu kept up the pressure on Antonescu to withdraw Romanian forces from the USSR, but he would not bow. He argued that a withdrawal would be a mistake because the front was 1,500 km. (930 mi.) away, winter was approaching, the stores and railways were in the hands of the Germans, and the Luftwaffe had the power to punish disloyalty. Antonescu asked Brǎtianu if he realized what would happen to the army, its soldiers, and its equipment, should Romania try to abandon the front without the consent of the Germans. Not only would the army collapse, but the whole country with it, for the Germans would occupy Romania as they had done Serbia and Greece. Antonescu offered to consult the army and the people with a view to handing over the government to Brǎtianu, and invited him to withdraw the army from the USSR and come to terms with the UK. Brǎtianu, in his reply of 14 November, ignored this offer. He might not have done so five days later when the major Soviet offensive at Stalingrad was launched.

As the situation steadily deteriorated after the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in January 1943 Antonescu, no longer certain of an Axis victory, tolerated the extension of peace feelers, both from within his own government and from the opposition leader Maniu. Mihai Antonescu, vice-president of the council of ministers, gave some indication of his own change of heart in January 1943 to the Italian minister in Bucharest. The minister went to Rome to present a report of his conversation with Antonescu to Ciano, the Italian foreign minister. Ciano saw an about-face in the attitude and words of Mihai Antonescu, but Mussolini was not swayed by the proposal that the Italians and Romanians should make a joint approach to the Allies to withdraw from the war.

This rebuff prompted Mihai Antonescu to attempt direct contact with the diplomatic representatives of the Allies in neutral countries with a view to concluding a separate peace. He himself raised the matter with Andrea Cassulo, the papal nuncio in Bucharest, while the Romanian minister in Berne was instructed to make contact with the nuncio there. In March the Romanian minister in Madrid asked his Portuguese and Argentinian counterparts to let the American ambassador, Carlton Hayes, know of Romania's desire to conclude a peace with the Allies. Similarly, Victor Cǎdere, the Romanian minister in Lisbon, took soundings in October of Salazar and of the British ambassador. In December the Romanian chargé in Stockholm, George Duca, contacted the British and American ministers in the name of Maniu and Brǎtianu. All these efforts foundered on the Anglo-American insistence on unconditional surrender, which could not be reconciled with Antonescu's desire to guarantee Romania's post-war independence from the USSR. The Romanian side, be it Antonescu, Mihai Antonescu, or Maniu, was unable to secure the joint agreement of the Americans, British, and Soviets to the conditional armistice proposals which it made between December 1943 and April 1944 in Stockholm (to the Soviets) and in Cairo (to all three Allies). Eventually agreement on armistice terms was reached with the UK and the USA in Cairo in April 1944 and confirmed by the Soviets through the Stockholm channel in June. However, no Romanian representative was empowered by Antonescu to sign the armistice because of his reluctance as a soldier to abandon his German ally. Antonescu's intransigence forced the opposition parties to plot his overthrow and, in the face of a rapid Soviet advance on Romanian territory and the threat of military defeat and occupation, the young King Michael boldly had him arrested on 23 August 1944. The surrender of all Romanian forces opposing the Red Army followed.

Stalin fashioned from the Soviet–Romanian armistice, signed on 12 September, a legal framework for securing a dominant political and economic interest in Romania, one conceded to him by Churchill at their Moscow meeting a month later when the infamous ‘percentage agreement’ was initialled (see TOLSTOY). The American and British co-signatories, and their repre sentatives on the significantly named Allied (Soviet) Control Commission in Romania, were reduced to the role of spectators in the armistice's application. Blatant political engineering was employed by the Soviet authorities in order to impose Stalin's will on the Romanian people. On the grounds that they needed stability in a country that was behind their lines in their continuing war effort against Germany, they installed a puppet government under Petru Groza on 6 March 1945. This government oversaw the first steps to communize the country which involved abolition of the freedom of the press and of political assembly, and the arrest and imprisonment of virtually all political opponents. Most of the Romanian Army was demobilized and the policing of the country placed in the hands of the Soviet army of occupation.

4. Armed forces and their part in the German–Soviet war

(a) Army

By 27 July 1941, just over a month after the launch of BARBAROSSA, the combined German–Romanian armies had recovered the two Romanian provinces of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia—as defined by their boundaries prior to their seizure by the USSR in June 1940—at a cost of 10,486 Romanian dead. Most Romanian political leaders were content with the reconquest and advised Antonescu against crossing the River Dniester into the USSR proper. But Antonescu (who by promoting himself to marshal while commanding the armies had received the nickname ‘Auto-Marshal’) did not heed this advice. The German–Romanian armies advanced across the Dniester and eventually captured Odessa on 16 October after fierce resistance from Soviet forces. These inflicted heavy Romanian losses which, by then, amounted to 27,061 killed, 89,632 wounded, and 14,624 missing.

Antonescu's participation in the attack on the USSR was not motivated solely by the desire to regain the lost territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. He saw the German invasion as an ideological crusade against the infidel of communism and his association with it as an act of Christian righteousness (see also religion). In an order of the day Antonescu told his troops that the hour had arrived for the fight against the yoke of Bolshevism, while his vice-president, Mihai Antonescu, in a broadcast on the same day, began with the words: ‘Romanians, today our nation has begun a great holy war’.

In the attack Romanian forces were assigned the task of protecting the right flank of Army Group South. These forces were integrated into a separate Army Group under the nominal command of Antonescu which was made up of the Eleventh German Army and the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies. In effect this Group took its orders from the commander of the Eleventh German Army, General Eugen von Schobert, in accordance with the guidelines for German–Romanian military co-operation laid down by Hitler in a letter to Antonescu of 18 June. Here Hitler underlined the need for the direction of ‘this grandiose attack’ to be concentrated ‘in a single hand’ and requested Antonescu's ‘permission to send him from time to time those of his wishes which referred to the Romanian Army and whose execution, in the interests of a unified, co-ordinated direction of operations, must be considered absolutely necessary’.

The escalation of Romania's part in the war prompted further misgivings, not only from political quarters but also from Antonescu's own senior commanders. In a series of memoranda Antonescu's chief of staff, General Iosif Iacobici, fearing a surprise Hungarian attack from the west against southern Transylvania—which was considered at risk because of the withdrawal of forces from there to support the campaign in the USSR—urged the Marshal to limit his involvement east of the Dniester. Iacobici was dismissed for his pains in January 1942 and replaced by General Ilie Şteflea, who endorsed his predecessor's views. When Şteflea took over the Romanian Army had 33 divisions, 15 east of the Dniester in the USSR and 18 in Romania. In February Şteflea learned about the promise given to Hitler by Antonescu to send the divisions in Romania to the front.

A first echelon of 10 divisions was due to be sent in the spring of 1942, followed by a second echelon of 5–6 divisions. That represented almost all the troops in the country. If these plans were implemented there would have remained in Romania only one division in the oilfields, and a division each to protect the Black Sea coast and Bessarabia. Şteflea succeeded in delaying the dispatch of the first echelon by six months and then sent them under strength, keeping much of their artillery in the country. By claiming that these under-strength divisions needed to be augmented by men and equipment from the divisions which were due to be sent in the second echelon, he was able to keep in Romania all the divisions which should have formed the second echelon. By sending the first echelon to the front at only half strength, he was able to keep 120,000 soldiers in reserve, and by keeping the second echelon in Romania he was able to save 100,000.

The major objectives of the German summer offensive of 1942 were the pincers move on Stalingrad, and its capture, and the conquest of the Caucasian oilfields. On 23 July Hitler issued his directive No. 45. The Seventeenth German Army, the Third Romanian Army, and the First and Fourth German Panzer Armies, concentrated under the command of Army Group A, were ordered to advance to the conquest of the Caucasus via Rostov-on-Don, where Hitler proposed to surround and defeat the enemy (see German–Soviet war, 4). Sixth Army, under the command of General Paulus, was ordered to capture Stalingrad and throw a cordon between the Don and the Volga. Paulus, because of his family contacts (he was married to a Romanian), was selected for the post of deputy C-in-C of a new Romanian–German Army Group Don, which was to be formed from the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies, the Sixth German Army, and the Fourth Panzer Army, and placed under Antonescu's command after the capture of Stalingrad.

Early in the autumn, the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies were brought up to protect the right and left flanks respectively of the Sixth Army. The Third Romanian Army, under General Petre Dumitrescu, was made up of eleven divisions (1st Armoured, 1st and 7th Cavalry, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 14th, and 15th Infantry) and was placed to the north of Stalingrad, while the Fourth Romanian Army, under General Constantin Constantinescu, made up of seven divisions (5th and 8th Cavalry, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, and 20th Infantry) was positioned to the south in the area of the Kalmyk Steppe lakes. Both Romanian formations were very inadequately armed, having neither heavy artillery nor anti-tank weapons.

The German troops suffered heavy losses as they gnawed their way into Stalingrad. Paulus begged for reinforcements, for the strengthening or the protection of his flanks, for better arms for the Romanians. He tried to enlist the co-operation of Dumitrescu in the hope that, via Antonescu, of whom Hitler held quite a high opinion, help might be extended to the Romanians and to his own army. Hitler ignored these requests. In the middle of November he sent Paulus a signal saying that he now expected of the Sixth Army one final, supreme effort to wipe out the Red Army in Stalingrad.

On 19 November the Twenty-First Soviet Army and the Fifth Soviet Tank Army, each with two armoured and two cavalry corps and infantry estimated at 21 divisions, broke through the front of the Third Romanian Army on the Don. The next day, 20 November, the Fifty-First and Fifty-Seventh Soviet Armies, with strong armoured support, broke through the front of the Fourth Panzer Army and Fourth Romanian Army to the south of Stalingrad. Thus the Soviets had succeeded in making deep breaches in the line on both flanks of the Sixth Army; there was a grave danger of encirclement. Paulus realized that his forces, together with elements of the Fourth Panzer Army, stood in danger of being hemmed in between the Volga and the Don. The formations involved were four army corps, one panzer corps, fourteen infantry, three armoured and three motorized Divisions, one Romanian infantry and one Romanian cavalry division, a total of approximately 260,000 men.

Despite stubborn Romanian and German resistance the Soviet Sixty-Fifth Soviet Army cut off any retreat to the west from a bend in the Don, and it was in this area to the south-west of Raspopinskaya that five infantry divisions of the Third Romanian Army (5th, 6th, 13th 14th, and 15th), under General Mihail Lascǎr, were forced to surrender after their ammunition ran out on 24 November. The Soviet forces took more than 30,000 Romanian prisoners and all their equipment.

On 24 November Hitler ordered his forces to hold Stalingrad. The new Army Group Don, commanded by Manstein, was formed from the encircled Sixth Army of Paulus, the Fourth Panzer Army, part of which was also surrounded, the Fourth Romanian Army and a number of units taken from France and Germany. On 12 December the Fourth Panzer Army and the Fourth Romanian Army tried to battle their way to the encircled forces but were stopped some 40 km. (25 mi.) short of their objective. On 24 December the Soviet armies counter-attacked and virtually destroyed the Fourth Panzer Army and the Fourth Romanian Army. Of the three Romanian divisions only battalions survived. By early January Paulus's supplies were nearly exhausted. German attempts to relieve him by air were thwarted by bad weather and by the Soviet Army Air Force. On 8 January the Soviet command sent Paulus an ultimatum to surrender but it was rejected under Hitler's orders. The Soviet armies went over to the offensive and split the German resistance. On 31 January the southern group, under Paulus, who had just been promoted to Field Marshal by Hitler, surrendered, and two days later the remnants of the northern group also capitulated.

In the course of the Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad two German armies, two Romanian armies, and one Italian army were massacred. The Romanian losses in the Third and Fourth Armies in the period from 19 November 1942 to 7 January 1943 were put at 155,010 dead, wounded, and missing, most of the last being taken prisoner. This figure represented over a quarter of all Romanian troops engaged on the Eastern Front. Antonescu now realized that Hitler could no longer win the war and that Şteflea had been wise to advise withholding half Romania's army from the Eastern Front and keeping them in reserve to protect his country's sovereignty. It now seemed that he might have to use them for this purpose.

The volte-face of King Michael's coup in August 1944 exposed the German Army's southern flank and opened the whole of south-eastern Europe to the Red Army which was now able to sweep down into Bulgaria and move on towards Yugoslavia. At a stroke Hitler lost an ally who had 20 divisions on the Eastern Front and 30 divisions in Romania itself. Those at the front were disarmed by the Red Army while those in Romania now turned against the Germans (at the time of the coup there were 612,000 German troops at the front and in Romania, including 26 divisions totalling 390,000 men and 36,000 air force and navy personnel). In this fighting in the week after the coup the Romanians killed about 5,000 Germans and took 53,000 prisoners, including 9 generals and 650 officers. Romanian losses were 5,800 including 116 officers.

Romanian casualties in the German–Soviet war were put in 1946 at 625,000; almost half this figure represented persons missing. More than 100,000 soldiers were lost in the week following King Michael's coup, presumably taken prisoner by the Red Army after having laid down their arms, although the Soviet foreign minister Molotov had given an undertaking on 2 April, repeated by Moscow radio on 24 August, to leave the Romanian forces their arms if they fought the Germans and Hungarians.

The terms of the Soviet–Romanian armistice, signed in Moscow on 12 September, recognized Romania's entry into the war on 24 August on the Allied side against Germany and Hungary, and stipulated that it should provide no less than twelve infantry divisions to fight alongside Soviet forces. In fact between sixteen and twenty Romanian divisions assisted the Red Army in driving the Germans first from Romanian territory, and later, at the beginning of 1945, from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, thus making the Romanian contribution in the European theatre of war at that time, in terms of troops engaged, the fourth largest after the USSR, the USA, and the UK. Romanian losses during these campaigns totalled 160,000 men, of whom 111,000 were killed or seriously wounded. Romania's military effort on both sides, from 1941 to 1944, and from 1944 to 1945, belied its craven surrenders of territory in 1940.

(b) Navy

Romanian naval forces in the Black Sea consisted of four Italian-built destroyers, four torpedo boats, three submarines, three minelayers, one submarine depot ship, three gunboats, and one training ship. Operating with this force were five Italian submarines and when Italy capitulated in September 1943 the Romanians forestalled the Germans by seizing them. Although the Soviet Black Sea fleet was much larger, the Romanians, despite participation in convoying and in the evacuation of Odessa on 15 January 1944, lost no warships.

(c) Air Force

At the outbreak of war between Romania and the USSR on 22 June 1941 the Romanian Air Force consisted of 956 aircraft; 586 fighters (49 squadrons), 180 bombers (20 squadrons), 18 naval aircraft (2 squadrons), and 162 reconnaissance aircraft (18 squadrons). More than one-third of these aircraft were engaged in hostilities with the USSR, the remainder being deployed to defend Bucharest and the oilfields at Ploesti north of the capital, and in Transylvania. Between 1941 and 1944 in the war with the USSR 152 Romanian airmen lost their lives. During the Anglo-American raids on the Ploesti oilfields from 1942 to 1944 Romanian fighter aircraft joined locally based Luftwaffe forces in defending them.

After King Michael's coup in 1944 the Romanian Air Force was used in operations to clear Romania of German forces. On Stalin's orders Romanian forces were demobilized in March 1945. Subsequently, officers from all three Romanian services who had fought in the war against the USSR were arrested and tried as ‘war criminals’ by the communist authorities. A number were executed, while many were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment, including General George Jienescu, chief of the air staff, who spent the years 1945–64 in jail.

5. Merchant marine

This consisted of 28 ships at the outbreak of war. Ten of them were lost to mines in the Black Sea; one was seized by the British in Port Said and a number survived by remaining in Turkish waters during hostilities.

Dennis Deletant

Bibliography

Gafencu, G. , Prelude to the Russian Campaign (London, 1945).
Hillgruber, A. , Hitler, König Carol und Marschall Antonescu (2nd edn., Wiesbaden, 1965). An authoritative account of German–Romanian relations from 1938 to 1944.
Pearton, M. , Oil and the Romanian State (Oxford, 1971).
Porter, I. , Operation Autonomous. With SOE in Wartime Romania (London, 1989).