Ion Antonescu, the Romanian marshal whose wartime regime joined the Holocaust
Romania was Hitler's ally, never occupied by German troops, so what happened to its Jews was largely decided in Bucharest. Under Marshal Ion Antonescu, policies of deportation and mass killing took as many as 400,000 lives, mostly Jews and Roma. Romania only formally reaffirmed that responsibility in 2003, after the Wiesel Commission reported.
Antonescu was born in Pitești, north-west of Bucharest, on 14 June 1882, into an Orthodox family with military roots. His father sent him to the Infantry and Cavalry School in Craiova. Small in build, he made up for it with harshness, and his reddish hair and severity earned him the nickname The Red Dog. He was known for challenging superiors and going over their heads, and colleagues were unsettled by moods that swung from fury to calm within minutes.
He first drew notice while commanding cavalry during the suppression of the 1907 peasant revolt, where historians still argue over how brutal he was. In World War I he became the key staff officer behind General Constantin Prezan, contributing to the defensive tactics at Mărășești in 1917, where Romanian troops halted a German advance. His grip on his chief was such that another general wrote of plans by Prezan, with Antonescu in brackets. When Crown Prince Carol abandoned his post in 1918 to marry a commoner, Antonescu formed a lasting contempt for the future king.
Between the wars he served as military attaché in Paris, arranging 100 million francs of credit for French arms, and later as chief of the general staff. His antisemitic, far-right sympathies deepened, and conflict with Carol II led to his detention. In the crisis of 1940 he seized power in partnership with the fascist Iron Guard, crushed the Guard after its rebellion in 1941 and took Romania into the invasion of the Soviet Union.
His regime combined pogroms, massacres and deportations to occupied Transnistria, though it was inconsistent, often favouring plunder and ultimately declining to join the Nazi Final Solution. As Allied bombing and losses on the Eastern Front mounted, he sought peace without success. On 23 August 1944 King Michael I had him arrested in a coup; convicted of war crimes, he was executed in June 1946.
Source: Ion Antonescu
