Italy had the blackshirts; Germany had the brownshirts and Romania...
Romania had the greenshirts.
These were the members of the Iron Guard, also known as Legion of the Archangel Michael or
the Legionnaire Movement.
More on this extreme political faction coming up.
Good to have you back on the channel.
If this is your first time here: welcome to History Hustle.
I'm Stefan; I'm a Dutch history teacher and I'm hustling history 4 U!
If you find that interesting, consider subscribing and join the HUSTLE!
Romania joined the side of the Entente during WW1, was first defeated but re-joined near
the end of 1918 and thus belonged to the winning team.
During the Russian Civil War and Romanian-Hungarian War it gained control over Bessarabia and
Transylvania.
During the interwar years France backed the so-called Little Entente.
This was an alliance formed in 1921 by Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (from 1929 known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) to keep Hungary and Austria in
check.
Czechoslovakia was dismembered and France had fallen by 1940.
After this three of Romania's neighboring countries began knocking on Romania's door
for territory: the USSR, Hungary and Bulgaria.
All in all Romania lost 33 per cent of its interwar landmass and population.
Due to these territorial losses autocratic King Carol was forced to abdicate on 6 September.
His son King Mikhai was in theory the new head of stad as a nationalist government was
established.
On 23 November 1940 Romania formally joined the Axis Powers.
What was left of Romania had to rely on Germany in order to survive.
In January 1941 the Iron Guard staged an uprising which was crushed by
General Ion Antonescu.
What was the Iron Guard?
First we must notice that the Iron Guard was also known as the Legion of the Archangel
Michael and its members were referred to as legionaries.
The movement was founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu.
He was born in 1899 in a town in northern part of Moldavia were a majority of Jews lived.
When Romania entered WW1 Codreanu had not yet come of age.
He then went to infantry school but when he finished the war was over.
He later studied in Iași which had a large population of Jews living in it too.
Mentored by professor Alexandru Cuza he developed his ideas of ulta nationalism combined with
antisemitism.
Cuza established the National-Christian Defense League.
In 1927 Codreanu founded his own fascist movement: the Iron Guard.
“The Iron Guard was a typical East Central European fascist movement rooted in populism,
religion, and peasant nationalism.
Codreanu and many other legionaries frequently wore embroidered shirts which emphasized their
connection to the people, soil, and the peasant culture, and served as their unofficial uniform.
The core of the movement’s ideology was religious mysticism, which the Iron Guard
combined with anti-individualism, anti-Semitism, racism, hostility toward democracy and toward
communism.”
The legionaries saw the Jews as their main enemies.
In order to become a member a candidate had to swear to obey six laws of the movement:
discipline, work, silence, education, mutual aid, and honor, write oaths in his own blood,
and pledge to kill when so ordered.
“During the Depression years, the Iron Guard became a national mass movement, its proselytising
and organising in often politically untouched peasant communities feeding off the deepening
rural impoverishment caused by the economic crisis.
Its practical small scale self-help community work projects helped the Guard to establish
a permanent presence in village society.”
Early 1930s Codreanu was elected to parliament but due to clashes between the legionaries
and state officials the movement was surpressed.
In retaliation the Romanian prime minister was assassinated in 1933 by the Iron Guard.
By the late 1930s the Iron Guard had around 200,000 members but the organization lacked the capacity
to successfully conduct an uprising.
An important propaganda event was the funeral of two legionaries who had fallen in 1937
in the Spanish Civil War.
This incident increased the popularity of the Iron Guard in Romania.
Towards the end of that year the movement gained 15.5 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary
elections.
In February 1938 King Carol II dissolved the parliament and introduced his royal dictatorship.
Codreanu was arrested in April and executed in November that year (1938).
“On 30 November the office of the military attorney attached to the Second Army Corps
reported that the night before, Codreanu [...] had been “shot while trying to escape.”
In reality, they were loaded into a truck, tied with ropes, and when the truck stopped
on a deserted road they were strangled to death and then shot, brought back to the military
prison in Jilava near Bucharest, and buried in a common grave there.”
Horia Sima became the new leader.
Interesting enough King Caroll II added fascist elements to his own dictatorship.
While all political organization were banned the Front of National Rebirth (FNR) was the
only one allowed with the goal to unite all Romanian political parties under one banner.
This had only limited success.
In 1939 the Iron Guard assassinated another prime minister and Sima fled to Germany while
over 250 imprisoned legionaries were executed.
When Romania started to lose territory as I discussed before, Romania's position became
much weaker.
Before Carol II's abdication, on 6 September 1940, the king had ordered former Defense
Minister Marshal Ion Antonescu to establish a new government.
Antonescu allied with the Iron Guard and formed the National Revolutionary State with two
leaders: Antonescu and Sima.
Conflicts between them soon emerged.
This would lead to the demise of the Iron Guard.
“Although the marshal and the Iron Guard presented themselves in public as a harmonious
team, conflicts between them emerged.
Antonescu and Sima belonged to different generations, and they had dissimilar political interests
and expectations.”
The Nazis tried to mediate, but the recklessness of the Iron Guard made this difficult.
Antonescu was angry with Sima because he wasn't able to control the Iron Guard death squads
who terrorized the Jews and destabilized the country.
For Hitler the most important thing was that Romania had to be a stable country in order
to form a stable and strong ally against the USSR.
In January 1941 Hitler met Antonescu.
Hitler made clear that the stability was more important than ideology.
Back in Romania Antonescu denounced the Iron Guard.
This was backed by Germany although Germany did offer asylum to the legionaries.
The Iron Guard didn't go down without a fight.
Towards the end of January they launched an uprising and pogrom in Bucharest.
Eventually the troops of Antonescu put down this rebellion.
“Some less radical elements were integrated into the new regime, but over ten thousand
legionaries were arrested and about 250 killed.
About three hundred Romanian fascists, including Sima, fled to Germany; some twenty thousand
went into hiding in Romania.”
The Iron Guard members who fled to Germany would have a troublesome relation with the
Nazis.
When Antonescu was overthrown and Romania switched sides the Germans released Sima who
proclaimed a new Romanian state, urging all Romanians to fight against the Soviets.
As Romania had switched sides they now fought with the Soviets against the Axis.
The remaining Iron Guard members would continue to support Nazi Germany till the end of April 1945.