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Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania 1940-1944
This book is the first complete study in English of Antonescu's part in the Second World War. Antonescu was a major ally of Hitler and Romania fielded the third largest Axis army, joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 as a sovereign state and participated in the attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941 as an equal partner of Germany.
389 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2006
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December 29, 2018The author did a good job of showing the good, the bad, and the ugly of WWII-era Romania. This book focuses on Romania's role in WWII, with an emphasis on its role in the Holocaust. Some parts of the book were hard to read because such horrible things happened. Jews living in areas previously occupied by the Soviet Union were shoved into camps, starved, and often massacred. Yet Antonescu refused to sent Jews from the more permanent areas of Romania to death camps despite Hitler's request. The author did a good job explaining why people may have acted the way they did, and he did a good job showing that difficult circumstances surrounding those actions. Overall, not a happy book, but an informative one.
April 28, 2020
General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu was the leader of Romania from 1940 to 1944. Taking over the government from the incompetent King Carol II, Antonescu was put between rock and hard places. Recently, Romania just lost its territories of Bessarabia to Soviet Union. Unlike Finland, who at least put up resistance and earned sympathies from democratic powers that became understandable reason to its cooperation with Nazi Germany, Carol chose not to fight, making its decision to align to Axis branded as traitorous opportunism. Romania itself was vital to Axis’ war effort. It was the fourth largest military power in the Axis, and its oil fields fueled German war machines in its drive to Soviet Union.
Marshal Antonescu, and his regime by extension, was ambiguous at best. Was he a fascist? Evidently, while he rose to power by the support of fascist Iron Guards, he ended up tossing them away by the next year. A furious antisemite himself, yet he often heard and took action after numerous pleas from jewish communities. He was responsible, though, for jewish persecutions, massacres and deportations within Romania, yet stopped short on participating in Hitler’s ‘final solution’, preferring to evacuate remaining Jewish community to Palestine instead.
As a political football, his reputation within Romania is also ambiguous, from traitor to saint, he was branded. For me, I also choose to put Antonescu within those gray area, with people who don’t have much of a choice within their times and places. Overall, this book is an interesting one, that discusses reasons for Axis-aligned countries to align themselves with Germany, as shown by Antonescu’s Romania.
Marshal Antonescu, and his regime by extension, was ambiguous at best. Was he a fascist? Evidently, while he rose to power by the support of fascist Iron Guards, he ended up tossing them away by the next year. A furious antisemite himself, yet he often heard and took action after numerous pleas from jewish communities. He was responsible, though, for jewish persecutions, massacres and deportations within Romania, yet stopped short on participating in Hitler’s ‘final solution’, preferring to evacuate remaining Jewish community to Palestine instead.
As a political football, his reputation within Romania is also ambiguous, from traitor to saint, he was branded. For me, I also choose to put Antonescu within those gray area, with people who don’t have much of a choice within their times and places. Overall, this book is an interesting one, that discusses reasons for Axis-aligned countries to align themselves with Germany, as shown by Antonescu’s Romania.
December 8, 2021
I've read the Romanian edition and frankly, I had the impression that the author gathered lots of bits and pieces of information and tried to cram them together in a book, without too much thought of making the whole a coherent unit. The book doesn't give a clear idea of the chronology of the regime; the book is split into a number of chapters, each covering certain aspects of the regime (Antonescu and the Jews; Antonescu and the Holocaust etc). Trouble is, there is some overlap, and even some bits are covered twice in different chapters! I had strange feelings of deja vu while reading certain parts, only to realize that the same facts had been already covered in another chapter. A real mess. Well, at least he gives credit to people who've pointed him to this or that document from the archives.
It's worse when Deletant has conflicting sources for something. After reading the book, I was quite confused about Maria Antonescu's trial for bigamy. Had it happened in 34-35, after her husband's stint as Army Chief of Staff? Had it happened in 1938, after the then general's resignation from Goga's government? You wouldn't know from the book, because it gives you both versions in different places (it seems to have happened in 1934, according to "Pe marginea prăpastiei").
All in all, it's a good start for learning about the Antonescu regime, giving some insights into moments that, unfortunately, haven't been too often covered by Romanian historians, like the Iași pogrom, or details about deportations, the sorry state and equipment of the army etc. I also think it does manage to convey some useful information on the period. It's too bad that the material is not better organized, and a bit more thoroughly checked. I'm not aware of a better book covering the regime altogether, but maybe there are better sources for particular aspects of the period, like deportations, treatment of Jews and Roma, the war effort etc.
It's worse when Deletant has conflicting sources for something. After reading the book, I was quite confused about Maria Antonescu's trial for bigamy. Had it happened in 34-35, after her husband's stint as Army Chief of Staff? Had it happened in 1938, after the then general's resignation from Goga's government? You wouldn't know from the book, because it gives you both versions in different places (it seems to have happened in 1934, according to "Pe marginea prăpastiei").
All in all, it's a good start for learning about the Antonescu regime, giving some insights into moments that, unfortunately, haven't been too often covered by Romanian historians, like the Iași pogrom, or details about deportations, the sorry state and equipment of the army etc. I also think it does manage to convey some useful information on the period. It's too bad that the material is not better organized, and a bit more thoroughly checked. I'm not aware of a better book covering the regime altogether, but maybe there are better sources for particular aspects of the period, like deportations, treatment of Jews and Roma, the war effort etc.
June 7, 2021
Professor Deletant make, with this essay, a deep and interesting work about the contribution of Romania in WWII. The third powerful state between the European Axis, the dictatorship incarnated by Marshall Ion Antonescu was too one of the bloodiest in his ethnical cleaning of Jews and Romas in the country and in the captured territories in the USSR. A very interesting essay, with a lot of testimonies and documents to reinforce author's elaborated conclusions about the guilty of this country, his people and his leaders; and about the problems with the memory of such a traumatic events.
July 24, 2021
An objective account of Romania's alliance with Germany (which still evades Romanian historiography) with an emphasis on Ion Antonescu and the regime's role in the persecution of the Jews and less on military considerations and evolution of the warfront. The author goes a long way in identifying the motivations behind this alliance and the lack of options Romania had at the time while still pointing out the atrocities and the darker aspects of this regime. The account of the 23rd of August 1944 events which led to Antonescu's overthrow and Romania joining the Allies is one of the cleanest and well documented versions out there.
October 10, 2025
Correctly written and documented, but the title is terribly misleading, most of the book being about the persecution of the Jews. Nothing untruthful, but i expected a very different book, from a military or at least political perspective.
July 28, 2024
In Romania, the Second World War is not very well covered in works intended for a general audience. Many people try to avoid the fact that the Romanian state took part in the Holocaust. The former Communist regimes also altered the facts to suit its propaganda. D. Deletant's book compensates this through its systematic study of the right-wing dictatorship of that period.
The author is a well-known historian and thus work is kind of a classic. I would recommend it to any reader interested in an unprejudiced view of Romania in that perilous time. Contrary to an idea shared by anthropologists and activists, sometimes an outside perspective holds an advantage over local ones. Being distant may mean being less partisan, and D. Deletant certainly achieved this much needed detachment.
The book combines the chronological and the thematic approaches. The author traces the origin of the events, characters, and institutions in the interwar period. D. Deletant then shows the origin and evolution of Antonescu's regime and the decision to go to war against the Soviet Union, alongside Nazi Germany. A significant portion of the book describes Romania's role in the Holocaust.
D. Deletant makes the facts pretty clear. Romania's dictator, Ion Antonescu, organized two genocides, part of the Holocaust, against the Jewish and the Roma people. The author shows that around 300000 persons were killed by the Romanian state in a series of pogroms, mass shootings, deportation, reprisals, famines, and other actions. These events are often ignored or glossed over in contemporary retellings.
Published in 2006, D. Deletant's book made a genuine contribution to the understanding of Romanian history. Some ideas may need reconsideration, especially on the treatment of the Roma minority before the Holocaust. These days, there is a resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in an era marked by pandemics, war, and inflation. We need to be aware of the past, to see when current events may lead us, or we may miss the right choices.
The author is a well-known historian and thus work is kind of a classic. I would recommend it to any reader interested in an unprejudiced view of Romania in that perilous time. Contrary to an idea shared by anthropologists and activists, sometimes an outside perspective holds an advantage over local ones. Being distant may mean being less partisan, and D. Deletant certainly achieved this much needed detachment.
The book combines the chronological and the thematic approaches. The author traces the origin of the events, characters, and institutions in the interwar period. D. Deletant then shows the origin and evolution of Antonescu's regime and the decision to go to war against the Soviet Union, alongside Nazi Germany. A significant portion of the book describes Romania's role in the Holocaust.
D. Deletant makes the facts pretty clear. Romania's dictator, Ion Antonescu, organized two genocides, part of the Holocaust, against the Jewish and the Roma people. The author shows that around 300000 persons were killed by the Romanian state in a series of pogroms, mass shootings, deportation, reprisals, famines, and other actions. These events are often ignored or glossed over in contemporary retellings.
Published in 2006, D. Deletant's book made a genuine contribution to the understanding of Romanian history. Some ideas may need reconsideration, especially on the treatment of the Roma minority before the Holocaust. These days, there is a resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in an era marked by pandemics, war, and inflation. We need to be aware of the past, to see when current events may lead us, or we may miss the right choices.
May 10, 2017
Antonescu is largely overlooked by historians in the West and is a political football in both communist and post-communist era Romanian politics.
Romania entered the war on the side of the Axis Powers playing a supporting role in Germany's invasion of Russia and then, once the tide had turned and the Red Army was threatening Bucharest, they ousted Antonescu in a coup and switched sides.
General Antonescu came to power in 1940 when Romania had already lost Bessarabia and Bukovina to Russia without putting up any sort of fight and then suffering the further humiliation of having to accept the return of northern Transylvania to Hungary. Antonescu was saddled with the misfortune of having to take over from King Carol II who by general agreement seems to have been pretty poor at governing, and Romania's uncomfortable geographic position located as it is between Russia and Germany. It was too small to fight either power alone and Britain and France were not realistically going to be of any help. They were going to have to take sides and in the end they were already tied to Germany. The fact that Russia had invaded two eastern provinces meant that Russia also appeared the more aggressive.
Deletant paints a nuanced picture of Antonescu as an authoritarian military figure who found himself leader of the country and needed the support of the fascist Iron Guardists but wasn't one himself. He was rightwing, anti-communist and anti Semitic but not a fascist. Nor was he proGerman. He was first and foremost a Military man.
To be honest I don't think this added much to my understanding having read Walbeck's "Athene Palace" which was written at the time and made it clear that he was neither a fascist or power-mad. But this book went on to describe his conduct during the war, his involvement in war crimes against the Jews and Gypsies and his eventual overthrow, trial and execution which Walbeck does not cover.
Antonescu's responsibility for war crimes clearly puts him on the "bad guy" list of history but his siding with Germany was perhaps unavoidable. While not seeking territorial gain for Romania or subscribing to the fascist ideology going to war on the side of Germany was pretty much the only option. It was a case of choosing between being occupied or going to war as an ally.
Communist and post communist era Romanian politics have distorted the historic facts about Antonescu to serve political purposes. This book, while pretty dry, does serve an important purpose in providing an unbiased account of his period of government.
Romania entered the war on the side of the Axis Powers playing a supporting role in Germany's invasion of Russia and then, once the tide had turned and the Red Army was threatening Bucharest, they ousted Antonescu in a coup and switched sides.
General Antonescu came to power in 1940 when Romania had already lost Bessarabia and Bukovina to Russia without putting up any sort of fight and then suffering the further humiliation of having to accept the return of northern Transylvania to Hungary. Antonescu was saddled with the misfortune of having to take over from King Carol II who by general agreement seems to have been pretty poor at governing, and Romania's uncomfortable geographic position located as it is between Russia and Germany. It was too small to fight either power alone and Britain and France were not realistically going to be of any help. They were going to have to take sides and in the end they were already tied to Germany. The fact that Russia had invaded two eastern provinces meant that Russia also appeared the more aggressive.
Deletant paints a nuanced picture of Antonescu as an authoritarian military figure who found himself leader of the country and needed the support of the fascist Iron Guardists but wasn't one himself. He was rightwing, anti-communist and anti Semitic but not a fascist. Nor was he proGerman. He was first and foremost a Military man.
To be honest I don't think this added much to my understanding having read Walbeck's "Athene Palace" which was written at the time and made it clear that he was neither a fascist or power-mad. But this book went on to describe his conduct during the war, his involvement in war crimes against the Jews and Gypsies and his eventual overthrow, trial and execution which Walbeck does not cover.
Antonescu's responsibility for war crimes clearly puts him on the "bad guy" list of history but his siding with Germany was perhaps unavoidable. While not seeking territorial gain for Romania or subscribing to the fascist ideology going to war on the side of Germany was pretty much the only option. It was a case of choosing between being occupied or going to war as an ally.
Communist and post communist era Romanian politics have distorted the historic facts about Antonescu to serve political purposes. This book, while pretty dry, does serve an important purpose in providing an unbiased account of his period of government.
December 30, 2024
For most readers, as it was for myself, Romania is a poorly understood corner of World War II. I knew very little about Antonescu, what he did and how things played out. This was exactly the book for me,it gave me just about the highest level of detail that I craved. The Goldilocks level of detail; more would have been too much and less would have been too little.
The writing style was good, though I did find several sections dragged a fair bit, and I found it hard to maintain my attention. Its not a page-turner, and it could have been just a bit more lively.
The writing style was good, though I did find several sections dragged a fair bit, and I found it hard to maintain my attention. Its not a page-turner, and it could have been just a bit more lively.
February 11, 2015
The wet dream of a nationalist Romania. A power thirsty personage Antonescu rises every time he gets a new function and is presented as a moderate. An innocent virgin in the bordello of History, Deletant says. Deletant only repeats what the extremist slogans. Sure Antonescu never sent Jews in Germany. The forgotten part is that Conducător needed the slaves for himself.
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