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Romania Security during the Interwar Years and the Second World War
Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia formed the
Little
Entente under French influence during the interwar years
to act as
a counterweight against the possible resurgence of German
influence
in southeastern and central Europe during the 1920s and
1930s.
Romania continued to look to France to guarantee its
security, at
least until Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia's
territorial integrity in the Munich Agreement of September
1938.
After Munich, French guarantees meant little, and Romania
accommodated the reality of German hegemony in the region.
The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939
squeezed
Romania between the territorial ambitions of Germany and
the Soviet
Union. Beginning in 1940, Germany forced Romania to cede
territory
to Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union
(see
Greater Romania to the End of World War I, 1920-45
, ch. 1). In September
German forces
occupied Romanian territory under the pretext of
protecting the
country's oil resources, access to which had already been
secured
in a 1939 commercial agreement. In November 1940, Romania
joined
Germany, Italy, and Japan in the Anti-Comintern Pact and
became
Hitler's base of operations to conquer the Balkans.
On June 22, 1941, Romania's third and fourth armies, a
total of
thirty divisions, joined Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's
attack on
the Soviet Union. Its forces were by far the largest and
possibly
the best of the fifty divisions allied with the Wehrmacht
(German
armed forces) on the eastern front. Romania joined the war
largely
in the hope of regaining northern Bukovina and Bessarabia,
establishing a greater Romania at the Soviet Union's
expense along
the northern Black Sea coast, and also because it was
simply too
weak to resist Germany.
The third and fourth armies fought at Odessa and
Sevastopol but
became bogged down with a German army group in front of
Stalingrad
in October 1942. In November the Red Army counteroffensive
at
Stalingrad focused on encircling the powerful German Sixth
Army by
striking its flanks held by the relatively weaker Romanian
armies.
Northeast of Stalingrad, three Soviet armies punched
through the
Romanian Third Army and its spearhead, the Romanian First
Armored
Division. Southwest of Stalingrad, two Soviet armies
smashed the
Sixth Corps and the Eighteenth Infantry Division, the
strongest
elements of the Romanian Army. By November 23, the Soviet
armies
completed their encirclement of the German Sixth Army. In
bearing
the brunt of the Red Army's breakthrough at Stalingrad,
nineteen
Romanian divisions were badly mauled, and more than
250,000
Romanian soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or
missing in
action. In August 1943, the war reached Romanian soil
dramatically:
178 B-24 bombers from the United States Army's eighth and
ninth air
forces conducted a bombing raid from North African
airfields
against the oil fields at Ploiesti, a major source of fuel
for the
Wehrmacht. The raid reduced Romanian oil production by
half and
destroyed much of the country's military industry.
The Red Army refocused its strategic attention on
Romania in
mid-1944. It sought to occupy Romania, knock it out of the
war, and
from there advance across the Danube Delta through the
Carpathian
Mountains into Yugoslavia and Hungary before wheeling
north to roll
up the right flank of Nazi Germany. Having penetrated
northern
Bukovina at the end of 1943, the Red Army launched the
IasiKishinev Operation in August 1944 by sending eight armies
with more
than 1 million men across the Prut River along two
convergent axes
from Iasi and Kishinev in Bessarabia to drive through the
Focsani
Gap to capture the Ploiesti oil fields and Bucharest.
Soviet
armies driving from Kishinev pinned down the remnants of
the German
Sixth Army and seven divisions of Romania's Third Army on
the Black
Sea coast. Meanwhile, the bulk of Soviet forces driving
from Iasi
encircled the German Eighth Army and the remaining
fourteen
divisions of the Romanian Fourth Army. On the first day of
the
operation, Red Army forces destroyed five divisions of the
Fourth
Army in fighting northwest of Iasi. Remaining Romanian
divisions
simply disintegrated as their troops deserted the front.
After the August 23, 1944, coup d'état against military
dictator General Ion Antonescu, King Michael arranged
Romania's
surrender to the Red Army. The following day, Hitler
ordered 150
German bombers to attack Bucharest in a vain attempt to
force
Romania to rejoin the war. Romania then declared war on
Germany and
put its scattered forces under the command of the Red
Army. These
forces included parts of the Fourth Army; the four
divisions of the
First Army, which guarded the disputed Romanian-Hungarian
border
during the war; and the Tudor Vladimirescu First Volunteer
Division, a force recruited by the Red Army from Romanian
prisoners
of war taken at Stalingrad who were willing to submit to
communist
indoctrination. These forces helped to liberate Bucharest
and clear
German forces from the rest of Romania, and they finished
the war
fighting alongside the Red Army in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia. In
all, Romania suffered an estimated 600,000 casualties
during World
War II.
Under the terms of the September 1944 armistice signed
in
Moscow, Romania accepted Red Army occupation of the
country at
least until peace negotiations commenced, agreed to pay
US$300
million in war reparations, and put its oil production,
rolling
stock, and merchant fleet at the Soviet Union's disposal.
Given the
situation on the ground, the Soviet Union dominated the
Allied
Control Commission, which administered Romania for three
years
after the war. The Soviet Union also retained the right to
maintain
its occupation of Romania in order to keep open its lines
of
communication to Soviet forces occupying Austria. Under
the 1947
peace treaty, Romania permanently surrendered large tracts
to
Bulgaria and the Soviet Union
(see Armistice Negotiations and Soviet Occupation
, ch. 1).
Data as of July 1989
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