From Lightning: Corneliu Codreanu, Horia Sima and the Story of the Romanian Iron Guard

by Troy Southgate

WHEN, in the Spring of 1919, a nineteen year-old student by the name of Corneliu Codreanu (1899-1938) met with a handful of friends in the Dobrina Forest to discuss plans for a nationalist insurrection, the face of Romanian politics was about to change forever. Mass Jewish immigration and a worrying Bolshevik presence in neighbouring Hungary had meant that political, social and economic power in Romania was undergoing a rapid transformation and large-scale corruption in property, finance and media led to an explosive fusion between Orthodox religion and Right-wing politics. Starting out as a young activist in the National-Christian Defence League (LANC), Codreanu went on to form the Legion of Michael the Archangel, or Iron Guard, and mould it into a dynamic paramilitary force that soon invited hostility from the repressive organs of state. Due to its vigorous campaign against Organised Jewry, the Iron Guard was brutally slandered by the press, regularly obliged to defend itself from Communist violence, banned from participating in the electoral process and eventually forced underground. Possessing a meticulous grasp of detail and written with a gripping intensity, Troy Southgate's new work approaches this controversial episode in Romanian history with the candour and respect that it deserves. The book includes an examination of the life and times of Codreanu himself; the mass murder and imprisonment of Legionary cadres; the activities of the Nicadori, Decemviri and Răzbunători "death teams"; the role of Horia Sima (1907-1993) in the National Legionary State and its bloody aftermath; and Romania's gradual incorporation into the dehumanising environs of the Soviet Union. Here, for the first time, is the full and unexpurgated story of the Iron Guard.

340 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

British author, musician and leading National-Anarchist activist and theoretician.

Southgate has been active in diverse British national organizations and is associated with the New Right and third positionism.