1944 Romanian coup d'état

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 23rd of August 1944, King Michael I of Romania summoned Prime Minister Ion Antonescu to the royal palace. The meeting lasted an hour. Antonescu explained the situation at the frontlines, and Michael asked him plainly to leave the war and sign an armistice with the Allies. Antonescu refused. The King replied, "If things are so, then there's nothing we can do." Then a colonel and four soldiers walked in and arrested the Prime Minister on the spot.

  What followed in the next twenty-four hours would be described by historian John Lukacs as the most successful coup in all of World War II. Romania, with an entire German Army stationed on its soil, flipped sides overnight. Within a month, the reverberations had reached Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia, and Croatia. Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, called Romania's defection economically decisive. And according to Romanian historians, the coup shortened the war itself by as much as six months.

  How did a king considered little more than a figurehead pull off a feat that seasoned Italian statesmen, in Lukacs's words, had bungled? Who were the conspirators who met in a secret house on Calea Moșilor? And what price did Romania, and Michael himself, ultimately pay?

• 2. The Secret House on Calea Moșilor

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  The conspiracy took shape weeks before the coup, in a clandestine meeting on the night of the 13th to the 14th of June 1944. The location was a safe house belonging to the Romanian Communist Party, at 103 Calea Moșilor in Bucharest.

  According to Silviu Brucan, the two main communist conspirators were Emil Bodnăraș and Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu. They had reached out to King Michael's circle to coordinate action against Antonescu's government. Representing the King that night were Baron, the marshal of the palace; Mircea Ionnițiu, his private secretary; and Grigore Niculescu-Buzești, his diplomatic adviser. The military was represented by General Gheorghe Mihail, General Constantin Sănătescu, and Colonel Dumitru Dămăceanu.

  The King's side arrived with what they called the Gigurtu plan. Under this scheme, Michael would arrange a meeting with Manfred Freiherr von Killinger, the German ambassador in Bucharest, to negotiate replacing Antonescu with a cabinet led by Ion Gigurtu. The communists rejected this out of hand. They called it "naïve and dangerous" on the grounds that it would alert the Gestapo and invite heavier German surveillance.

  The alternative the communists proposed was more direct and more audacious. As commander-in-chief, the King would order Romanian weapons turned against Nazi Germany. Antonescu would be called to the palace, ordered to sign an armistice, and arrested if he refused. Power would then pass to a coalition drawn from four parties that had already formed the National Democratic Bloc in June 1944: the National Peasants' Party, the National Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Romanian Communist Party. The King's military advisers and personal representatives accepted the plan and persuaded Michael it was the right course.

• 3. The Coup Itself

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  Foreign Affairs Minister Mihai Antonescu, who bore the same surname as the Prime Minister but was no relation, was also present at the 23rd of August palace meeting. During the hour of talks, Ion Antonescu told the King that any armistice the Soviets signed would simply be nullified by Germany. He would not commit to one, and especially not with the Soviet Union.

  The King's response triggered the arrest. Troops seized both Antonescus. That night at ten o'clock, Michael broadcast over the radio that Antonescu had been deposed and that Romania would accept an armistice with the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union.

  The German response was swift. Killinger received a non-confrontational offer of retreat from the King, but Berlin judged the coup reversible and launched military attacks to restore the situation. They miscalculated. The Romanian First Army, Second Army under formation, the remnants of the Third Army, and one corps of the Fourth Army had all received orders from the King to defend Romania against German attack. The armies were battered, but they held, and Michael offered their services to the Allied cause.

  Lt. Gen. Constantin Sănătescu became the new prime minister. Custody of Ion Antonescu was handed to Romanian communists, who turned the former leader over to the Soviets on the 1st of September. He was eventually returned to Romania, tried, and executed in 1946.

• 4. Ripples Across the Axis

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  Historian John Lukacs compared Romania's coup favorably to the Italian capitulation that preceded it. His verdict was precise: compared to Romania's feat, the descendants of Machiavelli were "mere bunglers." Within a single month of August 1944, Bulgaria and Finland also changed sides, the Slovak National Uprising began, and a failed coup was attempted in Croatia on the 18th of September.

  Albert Speer's assessment of the economic damage was stark. Romania's defection did not merely deprive the Axis of Romanian oil. It also cut off access to Turkish chromium, which had been reaching Germany through Romanian supply lines. The combined loss was enough that Hitler made his first admission the war was lost.

  Romania's core infrastructure survived almost entirely intact because the country's heartland never became a battlefield. Most of the national economy carried through the defection undamaged. The subsequent reconstruction of the oil industry, however, revealed that Romania had less room to resist Stalin's demands than it had once had resisting Hitler's.

  Formal Allied recognition of Romania's new orientation came on the 12th of September 1944. In the weeks before that date, Soviet forces had moved into Romania and taken approximately 140,000 Romanian prisoners of war. About 130,000 of those prisoners were transported to the Soviet Union, where many died in prison camps.

• 5. The Armistice Terms

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  The armistice signed on the 12th of September 1944 was signed on Allied terms. Article 18 of the Armistice Agreement established an Allied Control Commission to oversee Romania's compliance, operating under the direction of the Allied, meaning Soviet, High Command. The Annex to Article 18 required Romanian authorities to fulfill all instructions that commission issued.

  Article 14 created two Romanian People's Tribunals to try suspected war criminals. Article 19 addressed the territorial question of Transylvania, stipulating its return to Romania, or "the greater part of it." The hedged phrasing was deliberate. It left open the possibility of revising the Treaty of Trianon border, and it was crafted to tempt Hungary into also abandoning Germany.

  The Vienna Award, which had previously transferred Northern Transylvania to Hungary, was declared null and void. On the 15th of October 1944, Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy attempted to follow Romania's example and negotiate a surrender, but his effort failed. Northern Transylvania remained under Soviet military administration from November 1944 through March 1945. On the 9th of March 1945, three days after Petru Groza formed a new Romanian cabinet, Stalin approved the return of all of Northern Transylvania to Romanian administration. Subsequent Hungarian attempts to recover any part of that territory came to nothing.

  In October 1944, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin reached a reported agreement, later described as a percentage deal, under which the Soviet Union would hold a ninety percent share of influence in Romania.

• 6. Romania Fights On, Michael Loses All

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  From the armistice through the end of the war, Romanian armies fought alongside Soviet forces against Germany and its remaining partners. They campaigned in Transylvania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In May 1945, the Romanian First and Fourth Armies took part in the Prague Offensive. Total Romanian casualties fighting on the Allied side reached 169,822 across all causes.

  King Michael received two of the war's most distinguished honors. Joseph Stalin awarded him the Soviet Order of Victory in 1945. A year later, President Harry S. Truman awarded him the highest degree of the Legion of Merit, designating him Chief Commander. No other foreign head of state received both decorations.

  The honors proved hollow. Under the new communist-aligned government, Michael functioned as little more than the figurehead his enemies had once assumed him to be. In 1947, he was forced to abdicate and leave Romania. His departure cleared the way for the communists to establish a fully communist government. Michael lived in exile for decades, unable to return until after the 1989 Romanian revolution. Romania only permitted him back into the country in 1992.