Румыния во Второй мировой войне: от нейтралитета к смене сторон

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The Kingdom of Romania, under the rule of King Carol II, was initially a neutral country in World War II. However, Fascist political forces, especially the Iron Guard, rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies. As the military fortunes of Romania's two main guarantors of territorial integrity—France and Britain—crumbled in the Fall of France (May to June, 1940), the government of Romania turned to Germany in hopes of a similar guarantee, unaware that Germany, in the supplementary protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, had already granted its blessing to Soviet claims on Romanian territory. In the summer of 1940, as had been agreed with Germany, the USSR occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina; in August and September 1940, two territorial disputes, arbitrated by Germany and Italy, were decided against Romania: Romania lost Northern Transylvania to Hungary and had to cede Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. The popularity of the Romanian government plummeted, further reinforcing the fascist and military factions, who eventually staged a coup in September 1940 that turned the country into a dictatorship under Mareșal Ion Antonescu. The new regime officially joined the Axis powers on 23 November 1940. As a member of the Axis, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) on 22 June 1941, providing equipment and oil to Nazi Germany and committing more troops to the Eastern Front than all other allies of Germany combined. Romanian forces played a large role during fighting in Ukraine, Bessarabia, and in the Battle of Stalingrad. Romanian troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of 260,000 Jews in Romanian controlled territories, though half of the Jews living in Romania itself survived the war. Romania controlled the third largest Axis army in Europe and the fourth largest Axis army in the world, only behind the three principal Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Following the September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile between the Allies and Italy, Romania became the second Axis Power in Europe. The Allies bombed Romania from 1943 onwards, and advancing Soviet armies invaded the country in 1944. Popular support for Romania's participation in the war faltered, and the German Romanian fronts collapsed under the Soviet onslaught. King Michael of Romania led a coup d'état that deposed the Antonescu regime (August 1944) and put Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of the war (Antonescu was executed in June 1946). Despite this late association with the winning side, Greater Romania was not restored. However, the country was able to regain Northern Transylvania from Hungary.

In the aftermath of World War I, Romania, which fought alongside the Entente powers against the Central Powers, had greatly expanded its territory, incorporating the regions of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina, largely as a result of the vacuum created by the collapse of the Austro Hungarian and Russian empires. This led to the achievement of the long standing nationalist goal of creating a "Greater Romania", a national state that would incorporate all ethnic Romanians. However, the newly gained territories also included significant Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and Russian minorities, which put Romania at odds with several of her neighbours. This occasionally led to violent conflicts, as exemplified by the Hungarian–Romanian War and the Tatarbunary Uprising. To contain Hungarian irredentism, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia established the Little Entente in 1921. That same year Romania and Poland concluded a defensive alliance against the emergent Soviet Union, and in 1934 the Balkan Entente was formed with Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, which were suspicious of Bulgaria. Since the late 19th century onwards Romania had been a relatively democratic constitutional monarchy with a pro Western outlook, but the country faced increasing turmoil in the 1930s as a result of the Great Depression in Romania and the rise of fascist movements such as the Iron Guard, which advocated revolutionary terrorism against the state. Under the pretext of stabilizing the country, the increasingly autocratic King Carol II proclaimed a 'royal dictatorship' in 1938. The new regime featured corporatist policies that often resembled those of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In parallel with these internal developments, economic pressures and a weak Franco British response to Hitler's aggressive foreign policy caused Romania to start drifting away from the Western Allies and closer to the Axis. On 23 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Among other things, this recognized in a secret annex the Soviet "interest" in Bessarabia (which had been ruled by the Russian Empire from 1812 to 1918). This Soviet interest was combined with a clear indication that there was an explicit lack of any German interest in the area. Eight days later Nazi Germany invaded the Second Polish Republic. Expecting military aid from Britain and France, Poland chose not to execute its alliance with Romania in order to be able to use the Romanian Bridgehead. Romania officially remained neutral and, under pressure from the Soviet Union and Germany, interned the fleeing Polish government after its members had crossed the Polish–Romanian border on 17 September, forcing them to relegate their authority to what became the Polish government in exile. After the assassination of Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu on 21 September, King Carol II tried to maintain neutrality for several months longer, but the surrender of the Third French Republic and the retreat of British forces from continental Europe rendered the assurances that both countries had made to Romania meaningless. others were imprisoned. Antonescu abolished the National Legionary State, in its stead declaring Romania a "National and Social State."

On 22 June 1941, German armies with a massive Romanian support attacked the Soviet Union. German and Romanian units conquered Bessarabia, Odessa, and Sevastopol, then marched eastward across the Russian steppes toward Stalingrad. Romania welcomed the war because it allowed them to retake lands annexed by the Soviet Union a year prior. Hitler rewarded Romania's loyalty by returning Bessarabia and northern Bukovina and by allowing Romania to administer Soviet lands immediately between the Dniester and the Bug, including Odessa and Nikolaev. Romanian jingoes in Odessa even distributed a geography showing that the Dacians had inhabited most of southern Russia. After recovering Bessarabia and Bukovina (Operation München), Romanian units fought side by side with the Germans onward to Odessa, Sevastopol, Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The total number of troops involved on the Eastern Front with the Romanian Third Army and the Romanian Fourth Army was second only to that of Nazi Germany itself. The Romanian Army had a total of 686,258 men under arms in the summer of 1941 and a total of 1,224,691 men in the summer of 1944. The number of Romanian troops sent to fight in the Soviet Union exceeded that of all of Germany's other allies combined. A Country Study by the U. S. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress attributes this to a "morbid competition with Hungary to curry Hitler's favor [in hope of] regaining northern Transylvania."

Romanian engineers contributed to the construction of the longest bridge ever built under fire – the bridge over the Dnieper at Beryslav. The Romanian capture of Odessa was the most important wartime conquest – without substantial German support – by any of the minor European Axis powers. On 1 September 1942, the Romanian 3rd Mountain Division took part in the largest amphibious assault undertaken in Europe by the Axis Powers during the war. In late 1942, General Ioan Dumitrache captured Nalchik, the furthest point of Axis advance in the Caucasus. Romania provided up to 40% of the Axis personnel in the Kuban Bridgehead. On 7 April 1943, a single Romanian battalion restored the front of an entire German division. When an entire German army (the 6th) came under Romanian command in May 1944 (as part of general Petre Dumitrescu's Armeegruppe), German commanders came under the actual (rather than nominal) command of their foreign allies for the first time in the war. Romania received more Knight's Crosses than any other non German Axis power. Ion Antonescu was the first foreigner to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Mihail Lascăr was the first foreign recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. The Romanian Mareșal tank destroyer is credited with being the inspiration for the German Hetzer. In terms of heavy armored vehicles, Romania captured 2 KV 1 tanks, 1 IS 2 tank and 1 ISU 152 assault gun. These were the only heavy AFVs that Romania possessed throughout the war, as the country's armor establishment even as late as July 1944 never went beyond medium tanks and assault guns.

See also Responsibility for the Holocaust (Romania), Antonescu and the Holocaust, Porajmos#Persecution in other Axis countries. According to an international commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered or died in various forms on Romanian soil, in the war zones of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and in the formerly occupied Soviet territories under Romanian's control (Transnistria Governorate). Of the 25,000 Romani deported, who were deported to concentration camps in Transnistria, 11,000 died. Though much of the killing was committed in the war zone by Romanian and German troops, there were also substantial persecutions behind the front line. During the Iaşi pogrom of June 1941, over 13,000 Jews were massacred or killed slowly in trains traveling back and forth across the countryside. Half of the estimated 270,000 to 320,000 Jews living in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Dorohoi County in Romania were murdered or died between June 1941 and the spring of 1944, of which between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews were killed in Bessarabia and Bukovina by Romanian and German troops, within months from the entry of the country into the war during 1941. Even after the initial killings, Jews in Moldavia, Bukovina and Bessarabia were subject to frequent pogroms, and were concentrated into ghettos from which they were sent to Transnistria, including camps built and run by the Romanian authorities. Romanian soldiers and gendarmes also worked with the Einsatzkommandos, German killing squads, tasked with massacring Jews and Roma in conquered territories, the local Ukrainian militia, and the SS squads of local Ukrainian Germans (Sonderkommando Russland and Selbstschutz). Romanian troops were in large part responsible for the Odessa massacre, in which from October 18, 1941, until mid March 1942, Romanian soldiers in Odessa, aided by gendarmes and police, killed up to 25,000 Jews and deported more than 35,000. on the side of the Allies. Stalin immediately recognized the king and the restoration of the conservative Romanian monarchy. In a radio broadcast to the Romanian nation and army on the night of 23 August King Michael issued a cease fire, proclaimed Romania's loyalty to the Allies, announced the acceptance of an armistice (to be signed on September 12) offered by Great Britain, the United States, and the USSR, and declared war on Germany. The coup accelerated the Red Army's advance into Romania, but did not avert a rapid Soviet occupation and capture of about 130,000 Romanian soldiers, who were transported to the Soviet Union, where many perished in prison camps. The armistice was signed three weeks later on 12 September 1944, on terms virtually dictated by the Soviet Union. to the USSR and was placed under occupation of the Allied forces with the Soviet Union as their representative, in control of media, communication, post, and civil administration behind the front. During the Moscow Conference in October 1944 Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, proposed an agreement to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on how to split up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence after the war. The Soviet Union was offered a 90% share of influence in Romania. The Armistice Agreement of 12 September stipulated in Article 18 that "An Allied Control Commission will be established which will undertake until the conclusion of peace the regulation of and control over the execution of the present terms under the general direction and orders of the Allied (Soviet) High Command, acting on behalf of the Allied Powers". The Annex to Article 18 made clear that "The Romanian Government and their organs shall fulfil all instructions of the Allied Control Commission arising out of the Armistice Agreement." The Agreement also stipulated that the Allied Control Commission would have its seat in Bucharest. In line with Article 14 of the Armistice Agreement, two Romanian People's Tribunals were set up to try suspected war criminals.

As the country declared war on Germany on the night of 23 August 1944, border clashes between Hungarian and Romanian troops erupted almost immediately. On 24 August, German troops attempted to seize Bucharest and suppress Michael's coup, but were repelled by the city's defenses. Other Wehrmacht units in the country suffered severe losses: remnants of the Sixth Army retreating west of the Prut River were cut off and destroyed by the Red Army, which was now advancing at an even greater speed, while Romanian units attacked German garrisons at the Ploiești oilfields, forcing them to retreat to Hungary. The Romanian Army captured over 50,000 German prisoners around this time, who were later surrendered to the Soviets. In early September 1944, Soviet and Romanian forces entered Transylvania and captured the towns of Brașov and Sibiu while advancing toward the Mureș River. Their main objective was Cluj, a city regarded as the historical capital of Transylvania. However, the Second Hungarian Army was present in the region, and together with the Eighth German Army engaged the Allied forces on 5 September 1944 in what was to become the Battle of Turda, which lasted until 8 October and resulted in heavy casualties for both sides. Also around this time, the Hungarian Army carried out its last independent offensive action of the war, penetrating Arad County in western Romania. Despite initial success, a number of ad hoc Romanian cadet battalions managed to stop the Hungarian advance at the Battle of Păuliș, and soon a combined Romanian Soviet counterattack overwhelmed the Hungarians, who gave ground and evacuated Arad itself on 21 September. The Battle of Carei marked the last stage of recovering Romania's former territory of Northern Transylvania, ceded in 1940 to Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award. On the evening of October 24, 1944, the Romanian 6th Army Corps attacked in the direction of Carei with a force comprising 4 divisions; at the same time, the 2nd Infantry Division of 2nd Army Corps attacked in the direction of Satu Mare, in a pincer movement. On October 25, both cities were freed from Hungarian and German control; by a decree from 1959, this day was established as the Romanian Armed Forces Day. The Romanian Army ended the war fighting against the Wehrmacht alongside the Red Army in Transylvania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, from August 1944 until the end of the war in Europe. In May 1945, the First and Fourth armies took part in the Prague Offensive. The Romanian Army incurred heavy casualties fighting Nazi Germany. Of some 538,000 Romanian soldiers who fought against the Axis in 1944–45, some 167,000 were killed, wounded or went missing. LocationBeginningEndPersonnelCasualties(KIA, WIA, MIA)Mountains crossedRivers crossedLiberated villagesFrom which townsLossesof the enemyRomania 1944 08 23 1945 05 12 >275,000 (538,000) 58,330 3,831 31 167,000 KIA, WIAMaterielHungary 1944 10 08 1945 01 15 210,000 42,700 3 4 1,237 14 21,045 POW9,700 KIA? WIAMaterielProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1944 12 18 1945 05 12 248,430 66,495 10 4 1,722 31 22,803 KIA, WIA, POWAlpine and Danube Reichsgaue 1945–04 10 1945 05 12 2,000 100 7 1 4,000 KIA, WIA, POWMaterielTOTAL 1944 08 23 1945 05 12 538,536 169,822 20 12 3,821 53 117,798 POW18,731 KIALEGEND: KIA = Killed in Action; MIA = Missing in Action; WIA = Wounded in Action; POW = Prisoners of war.

Under the 1947 Treaty of Paris, the Allies did not acknowledge Romania as a co belligerent nation but instead applied the term "ally of Hitlerite Germany" to all recipients of the treaty's stipulations. Like Finland, Romania had to pay $300 million to the Soviet Union as war reparations. However, the treaty specifically recognized that Romania switched sides on 24 August 1944, and therefore "acted in the interests of all the United Nations". As a reward, Northern Transylvania was, once again, recognized as an integral part of Romania, but the border with the USSR and Bulgaria was fixed at its state in January 1941, restoring the pre Barbarossa status quo (with one exception). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Eastern territories became part of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. In Romania proper, Soviet occupation following World War II facilitated the rise of the Communist Party as the main political force, leading ultimately to the abdication of the King and the establishment of a single party people's republic in 1947.