Romania in WW2

borefest — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:32:13 +0000

Let’s recap Romania’s involvement in the second World War. The long version is here. The short version: in 1940 Nazi ally Hungary occupies a part of Transylvania and the Soviet Union occupies Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Our king-turned-dictator Carol II does nothing to stop them, which pisses people off. He gets replaced by fascist dictator Ion Antonescu, which decides that the Soviet Union is the bigger threat and that he’d deal with Hungary later. We invade the Motherland alongside Germany. The Romanian Army kills a few hundred thousand Jews in Bessarabia, Transnistria and Ukraine. In 1944, with the Red Army knocking on our door, Antonescu is deposed and we switch sides for the rest of the war, helping the Soviets invade Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We get northern Transylvania back, but not the areas that the Soviets had occupied (obviously). After the war the Soviets impose a Communist government and we spend the following four and a half decades in Communist hell.

So what would have happened had Romania not joined Nazi Germany in invading Russia?

Well, one way or another we would have been occupied by the Nazis. Germany needed our oil and our grain for the coming war effort against Russia, and I hope no-one seriously thinks that we could have resisted the German war machine. This direct occupation would have made the war years much harder on the Romanian population: instead of paying market prices for our resources, the Germans would have just seized them. We have a precedent: the previous occupation of Romania by the Germans in World War I wasn’t exactly fun.

Would we still have ended up as a Soviet puppet state? Of course. Our fate was sealed the moment Operation Barbarossa started. After driving the Germans out of Romania, the Soviets would have had no reason to allow an independent government, especially considering that they had just annexed territory from us. They needed a Communist leadership in Romania, loyal to the Soviet Union.

Would we have been treated better by the invading Soviets? There probably would have been less raping and stealing, yes. We would not have been forced to pay war reparations. I don’t know if the SovRoms would have been created. Other than that, brutal Communist oppression would still have happened as it did.

Would the Jews have survived? The first thing you have to realize is that the mass killing of Jews by Romanians mostly happened in the war areas, not in Romania proper. Except for the thousands killed during the Iasi and Bucharest pogroms, the majority of Jews in Romania outside Bessarabia and the Hungarian-controlled areas survived. To be sure, they were treated like shit: they had their property confiscated, they were made to do forced labor, to wear the star of David, etc etc. But they survived. Had Romania not been sovereign over its territory, had we been a Nazi protectorate like Czechoslovakia, then the Jews would have been deported en masse. And many of those that we killed in the war zone would have died anyway, if not by Romanian bullets then by German poison gas. The Romanians actually stopped killing Jews in 1943, because Antonescu saw that the tide of the war was turning and he tried to curry favor with the Allies. That would not have happened under the Germans.

I don’t want to be misinterpreted on this point. I’m not saying that the Jews should be grateful to us in any way. Romania was a deeply anti-semitic society, and we killed a huge number of them. I’m just saying that the alternative could have been even worse.

Would we have had as many casualties as we had? Most likely not. We would not have participated in the butchery on the Eastern Front (except for the ethnic Germans in Romania, which would have been drafted into the Wehrmacht).

Would the Germans have had a tougher job on the Eastern Front without our help? Would the war had ended sooner? Unlikely, the Romanian Army probably wasn’t of much use anyway. We were ill-equipped and ill-trained. The Soviets were always attacking our positions in preference to the German ones because they were weaker.

Would we have been bombed by the Allies? Our oil fields, at least, would still have been targeted.

Would we have gotten northern Transylvania back from Hungary? Yes, the Vienna Awards would have still been reversed.

Would America have saved us from Communism? No.

So, all in all, it would have been better for us to not get involved directly in the fighting, but we wouldn’t have ended up in a much better position.

Random Ramblings (about Romania)

Romania in WW2