Oil. Romania’s entire contribution to the Nazi war effort during World War II is often reduced to that one word. Indeed, the oil refineries around Ploeşti produced approximately 30 per cent of total oil products in Nazi-dominated Europe, which made Romania a strategically important country. Yet the part Romania played in the Axis coalition was so much more than just that of providing oil, petroleum and lubricants. Geographically, Romania offered a key base for Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the USSR) in 1941 and then it became the gateway blocking the Soviet advance into Southeast Europe in 1944. Moreover, General Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator, was a close ally of Adolf Hitler and his regime committed Romania fully to the Nazi-led so-called ‘Crusade against Bolshevism.’
Romanian troops also proved highly motivated in combat against the Red Army and, unfortunately, in participating in the mass murder of Jews and brutal antipartisan warfare. Romania consistently fielded the largest force – soldiers, airmen and sailors – to the Eastern Front of any of the allies of the Wehrmacht. (Only Finland contributed a similar number of men to during the attack in 1941 but then partially demobilized until again fielding a large force in 1944.) Romania also occupied and administered a large swathe of Ukraine between the Dniester and Bug Rivers, dubbed Transnistria, and shared occupation duties in southern Ukraine and especially in Crimea – freeing up German troops for use elsewhere. Despite devastating losses of men and materiel in the battle for Stalingrad, Romania still had reserves to call upon as Soviet forces again approached its borders. All this is to say that Romania was Nazi Germany’s most important ally against the USSR on the Eastern Front.
Consequently, if Romania abandoned Nazi Germany, it would have a serious impact due to the loss of Romanian oil and the Romanian armed forces. My recently published volume in Osprey’s Campaign Series, Romania 1944: The Turning of Arms Against Nazi Germany, delves into the details of the complicated story of how Romania ‘switched sides’ in August/September 1944. Like the Italian armistice with the United States and Great Britain a year prior, the Romanian armistice with the Soviets was complex affair mixing military operations on the front and politics in the rear. It is a story involving Romanian, German, Soviet, Hungarian, American and British actors. The German–Romanian alliance frayed as the two sides disagreed on how to best prepare for the coming Soviet assault. The Western Allies and Soviets first seriously coordinated their respective air and ground campaigns against Romania. The Axis defeat at the front and Romania’s surrender in the rear, after a palace coup by King Mihai I toppled the Antonescu regime in Bucharest, led to fighting between the Romanians and the Germans (who were later joined by the Hungarians). Within a matter of weeks, Romania not only dropped out of the Axis but agreed to fight for the Allies. Meanwhile, Soviet forces occupied the country, and pushed on into Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary.
Romania’s defection from the Axis can easily be seen as inevitable. Many histories depict Romania as a reluctant ally of Nazi Germany or even that it was under German occupation – which it most assuredly was not – just biding its time until it could stab its ally in the back. Stereotypes of Romanians as duplicitous opportunists aside, Romania very nearly continued to fight alongside Nazi Germany until the bitter end. If the timing and execution of the royal coup had been off, the ‘turning of arms’ may never have happened. The Germans, with Romanian help, may have held onto a line along the Carpathian Mountains. Romania may have kept fighting on from a national redoubt in southern Transylvania. The USSR may have needed to commit more troops to occupy the rest of Romania. Therefore, we must resist the temptation to read history backwards.
Instead, this account carefully chronicles the desperate combat on the front, and in the air, as well as the activities of the small group of conspirators around the king planning the coup against the pro-Nazi government in Romania. In April 1944, during the first Iaşi–Chişinău offensive, Soviet ground forces attempt to compel a Romanian collapse by seizing those cities. Concurrently, American, and to a lesser degree British, bombers began a sustained bombing campaign against targets in Romania. King Mihai I, his household intimates and leaders of various outlawed political parties began to plot more seriously against Antonescu and his cronies. Hitler had his generals draw up plans to occupy Romania and install a puppet government of Romanian fascists, but he and other German leaders never lost trust in the Antonescu regime – unlike in Hungary. Indeed, Romania did not seem about to waver, and German–Romanian forces halted the Soviet advance, although they could not stop the rain of bombs from American heavy bombers.
In August 1944, the Red Army was ready to launch the second Iaşi–Chişinău offensive. This time, German and Romanian armies proved incapable of holding back the red flood and Soviet forces quickly broke through at the front. In the rear in Bucharest, the monarch arrested the dictator, just at the moment when the Germans were in most disarray and unable to mount an effective countercoup. In September, the Romanian Army held off German–Hungarian attacks until reinforced by Soviet forces. Oil now stopped flowing to the Reich for good. After that began a new period of campaigning alongside the Red Army on the front and political intrigue as Romanian communists sought power at home. The text, images, maps, bird’s-eye-views and artworks in this volume help the reader understand the complex and multifaceted story of how Romania turned its arms against Nazi Germany better than ever before. I hope you will obtain a copy and learn about this overlooked but important part of World War II in Europe.
Find out more in Romania 1944: The Turning of Arms against Nazi Germany, out now!
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