Ion Antonescu was born in Pitesti, Romania, on June 15, 1882, to a
middle-class family. He was sent to French military academies for his
education, and upon returning home enlisted in the Romanian army, being
commissioned as a lieutenant in 1907. He made a name for himself in
that year when his unit was sent to Galati to put down a peasant
revolt. His superior officers were impressed by the swiftness with
which he helped to suppress the rebels and the ruthless manner in which
he did it. They sent him to the Romanian military academy, from which
he graduated in 1911. Two years later he led his unit in the Second
Balkan War against Bulgaria, and his performance resulted in his being
awarded Romania's highest military honors. When World War I broke out
the next year, Romania declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, and
Antonescu was appointed Chief of Staff of the army. As the war
progressed, he was appointed Chief of Operations of the army general
staff. After the Axis Powers were defeated, Romania was rewarded for
its participation by being given territory from the defeated
Austro-Hungarian Empire that resulted in the country more than doubling
in size. It also resulted in many foreign and ethnic nationalities
being absorbed into the country, especially Jews, leading to an
increase in Romanian nationalism and a major increase in anti-Semitism.
Antonescu was appointed military attaché in Paris and then in London.
Meanwhile, economic and political conditions in Romania gave rise to an
ultranationalist, violently anti-Semitic paramilitary organization
called the Iron Guard, which engaged in pitched street battles with its
opponents and embarked on a spree of political assassinations. The Iron
Guard was supported and financed in large part by Nazi Germany, and its
leader, Corneliu Codreanu, was elected to Parliament.
In 1934 Antonescu was appointed Chief of the General Staff. By 1937 the
Iron Guard organization had 66 seats in Parliament and a national
membership of 34,000 (it did have opposition in the country, mainly
among Communists, who fought bitter battles in both Parliament and on
the streets against the organization. Among the Communist street
fighters was future dictator Nicolae Ceausescu). The Iron Guard had become so
powerful that King Carol II was eventually forced to cede power to a group of
far-right-wing, anti-Semitic nationalists allied with the organization
who immediately passed laws barring Jews from government employment and
forbidding them from buying property. Antonescu was appointed Minister
of Defense in that government. However, in 1938 the government, alarmed
at the growing power of the Iron Guard, arrested its leader, Codreanu,
and other officials of the organization. On April 19 during what was
characterized as an "attempted escape", Codreanu and 13 Iron Guard
leaders were shot and killed by police.
When World War II broke out, Romania tried to remain neutral, but after
its Prime Minister was assassinated by members of the Iron Guard, the
government was forced to make a deal with German leader Adolf Hitler, which
resulted in the loss of much of the territory Romania won after World
War I. This caused a fierce backlash against King Carol, and in the
face of riots, strikes and a rebellion launched by the Iron Guard, he
suspended the constitution and appointed Antonescu as Prime Minister.
Antonescu immediately demanded that King Carol abdicate, which he did.
Then Antonescu, with support from Nazi Germany, the Iron Guard and a
group of senior Romanian army officers, named himself as head of the
government and Iron Guard leader Horia Sima as deputy prime minister.
On October 7, 1940, Antonescu declared that Romania was entering World
War II on the side of Nazi Germany. He allowed German forces to occupy
the country and passed strict anti-Semitic laws. Under Antonescu's
leadership Romania supplied Nazi Germany with food, fuel (from its huge
Ploesti oil fields and refineries) and more than a million troops. He
also unleashed the Iron Guard to "pacify" the country, resulting in the
assassination of many supporters and associates of the former King
Carol and the carrying out of mass killings and massacres of Jews.
However, the Iron Guard's brutal tactics and the scale of their
killings were too much even for the Nazis, and before long German
troops began rounding up and disarming Iron Guard fighters. In 1941 the
remaining Iron Guard forces staged a rebellion against Antonescu, and
in a rampage that lasted several days murdered hundreds of Jews. The
rebellion was finally put down by Romanian and German troops and the
Guard was disbanded. At that time Antonescu adopted the title of
"Marshal of Romania" and assumed dictatorial powers. In that capacity
he introduced even more stringent anti-Semitic measures.
When Hitler invaded Russia in June of 1941, Antonescu committed almost
one million Romanian soldiers to the invading army. As a reward, Hitler
gave back Romania much of the territory it had lost at the beginning of
the war. However, many of these territories had large Jewish
populations, and Antonescu began to set up detention camps and ghettos
to hold the 40,000 Jews he ordered expelled from the towns and cities
in the "new" territories. On June 25 German and Romanian troops
massacred at least 1000 Jews in the city of Iasi, and within the next
several days a series of killings and massacres resulted in the deaths
of an estimated 10,000 more Jews. Antonescu had instructed his soldiers
to be "merciless" in their expulsion of Jews from the territories,
saying, "I am not disturbed if the world should consider us barbarians.
You can use machine-guns if it is necessary . . . I assume all the
responsibility and claim that the law [preventing such massacres] does
not exist."
Approximately 300,000 Jews were ultimately removed from the provinces
of Bukovina and Bessarabia, and more than 150,000 of that number were
killed outright by German and Romanian troops and Ukrainian and
Romanian civilians and paramilitaries. Antonescu ordered the survivors
removed to an area of the Ukraine known as the "Transnistria". Of that
number, only about 50,000 would survive until the end of the war.
On 22 October partisans bombed Romanian army headquarters in Odessa. In
retaliation, Antonescu ordered that for every Romanian or German
officer who died, 200 civilians were to be executed. For every Romanian
or German enlisted man killed, 100 civilians would be shot. On October
23 the city was burned by Romanian and German forces and approximately
25,000 of the city's Jews were murdered. It's estimated that of
Romanian's pre-war Jewish population of more than 750,000, about
425,000 died in concentration camps or were killed by German and
Romanian forces.
Meanwhile, the war on the Eastern front was not going well for the
Germans and their Romanian allies. Germany had suffered a staggering
defeat at Stalingrad when its forces surrendered, and of the almost one
million Romanian soldiers involved in the Russian campaign, 400,000 or
more were killed. By the end of 1943 the Russians had recaptured much
of the Ukraine and moved on Germany and Romania. In August of 1944
their forces entered Romania, and on August 23 the figurehead King Michael,
supported by army officers and civilian paramilitaries, seized control
of the government and arrested Antonescu. A few days later the Red Army
entered Bucharest and Romania signed a peace treaty with the Soviet
Union. Antonescu was handed over to Soviet forces and taken to the
Soviet Union for "interrogation", then returned to Romania to be tried
as a war criminal, the trial occurring in May of 1946. On the 17th of
that month he was found guilty of treason and war crimes and sentenced
to death, and on June 1, 1946, he was executed by a firing squad at a
military prison outside Bucharest.
