Carol II of Romania

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Carol II
230px
Carol II of Romania
King of Romania
Reign 8 June 1930 – 6 September 1940
Predecessor Ferdinand I
Successor Michael I
Prime Minister
Born (1893-10-15)15 October 1893
Sinaia, Romania
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Estoril, Portugal
Burial Royal Pantheon,
Portugal (1953)
Curtea de Argeș,
Romania (2003)
Spouse Zizi Lambrino
(m. 1918; ann. 1919)
Helen of Greece and Denmark (m. 1921; div. 1928)
Magda Lupescu
(m. 1947–53; his death)
Issue Carol Lambrino
Michael I of Romania
Full name
Carol Caraiman
House House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
Father Ferdinand I of Romania
Mother Marie of Edinburgh
Religion Romanian Orthodox

Carol II (15 October 1893 – 4 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. He was the first member of the Romanian royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith.[1]

Early life

Crown Prince Carol training during World War I with a Chauchat machine gun

Carol was born in Peleș Castle. Carol grew up under the thumb of his dominating great-uncle, King Carol I who largely excluded his parents, the German-born Crown Prince Ferdinand and the British-born Crown Princess Marie from any role in bringing him up.[2] The childless Carol I treated Prince Carol as his surrogate son. Carol II was the first real Romanian of the Hohenzollern kings as both his father and great-uncle were born and grew up in Germany and only came to Romania as adults. Carol by contrast, was born in and grew up in Romania, and was the first of the Romanian branch of the House of Hohenzollern to speak Romanian as his first language. Besides for Romanian, Carol was fluent in English, French and German.[3] In November 1914, Carol joined the Romanian Senate, as the 1866 Constitution guaranteed him a seat there upon reaching maturity.[4] Known more for his romantic misadventures than for any leadership skills, Carol (Romanian for "Charles") was first married in the Cathedral Church of Odessa, Ukraine, 31 August 1918, to Joanna Marie Valentina Lambrino (1898–1953), known as "Zizi", the daughter of a Romanian general. The marriage was annulled on 29 March 1919 by the Ilfov Suburban Court. Carol and Zizi continued to live together after the annulment. Their only child, Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino, was born 8 January 1920.

Carol next married, in Athens, Greece, on 10 March 1921, Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark (who was known in Romania as Crown Princess Elena). They were second cousins, as both were great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. The marriage soon collapsed in the wake of Carol's affair with Elena "Magda" Lupescu (1895?–1977), the Roman Catholic daughter of a Jewish pharmacist and his Roman Catholic wife. Magda Lupescu had formerly been the wife of Army officer Ion Tâmpeanu.

As a result of the scandal, Carol renounced his right to the throne on 28 December 1925 in favour of his son by Crown Princess Helen, Michael (Mihai), who became King in July 1927. Helen divorced Carol in 1928.

Rule

Returning to the country on 7 June 1930, in a coup d'état engineered by National Peasant Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol reneged on the renunciation and was proclaimed King the following day, replacing his son Michael on the throne. For the next decade he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently (January 1938) through a ministry of his own choosing. Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult against the growing influence of the Iron Guard, for instance by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Țării in 1935. The American historian Stanley G. Payne described Carol as "the most cynical, corrupt and power-hungry monarch who ever disgraced a throne anywhere in twentieth-century Europe".[5] A colorful character, Carol was in the words of the British historian Richard Cavendish: "Dashing, wilful and reckless, a lover of women, champagne and speed, Carol drove racing cars and piloted planes, and on state occasions appeared in operetta uniforms with enough ribbons, chains and orders to sink a small destroyer."[6] Carol had sworn in his coronation oath to uphold the constitution of 1923, a promise he had no intention of keeping and right from the start of his reign, the king meddled in politics to increase his own power.[5] Carol was an opportunist with no real principles or values other then the belief he was the right man to rule Romania and that what his kingdom needed was a modernizing dictatorship.[7] Carol ruled via an informal body known as the camarilla comprising courtiers together with senior diplomats, army officers, politicians and industrialists who were all in some way dependent upon royal favor to advance their careers.[8] The most important member of the camarilla was Carol's mistress Madame Lupescu whose political advice Carol greatly valued.[8] Maniu had brought Carol to the throne out of the fear that the Regency for Michael I was dominated by National Liberals who would ensure that their party would always win the elections.[8] Madame Lupescu was deeply unpopular with the Romanian people, and Maniu had demanded that Carol return to his wife, Queen Elena as part of the price of being given the throne. When Carol broke his own word and continued to live with Madame Lupescu, Maniu resigned in protest in October 1930, and was to emerge as one of Carol's leading enemies.[8]

Carol sought to play the National Liberals, the National Peasant Party and the Iron Guard off against each other with the ultimate aim of making himself master of Romanian politics and disposing of all the parties in Romania.[5] With regards to the Legion of the Archangel Michael, Carol had no intention of ever letting the Iron Guard come to power, but insofar as the Legion was a disruptive force that weakened both the National Liberals and the National Peasants, Carol welcomed the rise of the Iron Guard in the early 1930s and he sought to use the Legion for his own ends.[5] Until 1935, Carol was a leading contributor to the "Friends of the Legion", the group who collected contributions to the Legion.[9] Carol's image was always that of the "playboy king"; a hedonistic monarch more interested in womanizing, drinking, gambling and partying than in affairs of state, and to the extent that he cared about politics, Carol was viewed as a scheming, dishonest man only interested in wrecking the democratic system to seize power for himself.[10] To compensate for his rather negative and well-deserved "playboy king" image, Carol created a lavish personality cult around himself that grew more extreme as his reign went on, which portrayed the king as a Christ-like being "chosen" by God to create a "new Romania".[11] In the 1934 book The Three Kings by Cezar Petrescu, which was intended for a less educated audience, Carol was constantly described as being almost god-like, the "father of the villagers and workers of the land" and the "king of culture" who was the greatest of all the Hohenzollern kings, and whose return from exile from France via airplane in June 1930 was a "descent from the heavens".[10] Petrescu depicted Carol's return as the beginning of his God-appointed task of becoming "the maker of eternal Romania", the start of a glorious golden age as Petrescu asserted that rule by monarchs was what God wanted for Romanians.[11]

The fact that the first leader to visit Nazi Germany (albeit not in an official capacity) was the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös was a source of much alarm to Carol.[12] For the entire interwar period, Budapest refused to recognize the frontiers imposed by the Treaty of Trianon and laid claim to Transylvania region of Romania. Carol like the rest of the Romanian elite was worried by the prospect of an alliance of the revisionist states that rejected the legitimacy of the international order created by the Allies in 1918-20 as indicating that Germany would support Hungary's claims to Transylvania.[13] Reflecting his initially pro-French orientation, in June 1934 when the French foreign minister Louis Barthou visited Bucharest to meet with the foreign ministers of the Little Entente of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Carol organized lavish celebrations to welcome Barthou that were made to symbolized the enduring Franco-Romanian friendship between the two "Latin sisters".[14] The German minister to Romania, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg complained in a report to Berlin that everyone in the Romanian elite was an incurable Francophile who told him that Romania would never betray its "Latin sister" France.[15] At the same time, Carol also considered the possibility that if Romanian-German relations were improved, then perhaps Berlin could be persuaded not to support Budapest in its campaign to regain Transylvania.[16] Further pressing Carol towards Germany was the desperate state of the Romanian economy. Even before the Great Depression, Romania had been an extremely poor country and the Depression had hit Romania hard with Romanians been unable to export much owning to the global trade war set off by the American Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which in turn led to a decline in the value of the lei as Romanian's reserves of foreign exchange were being used up.[17] In 1936 when Wilhelm Fabricius was appointed German minister in Bucharest, the Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath in his instructions to the new minister described Romania as an unfriendly, pro-French state, but suggested that the prospect of more trade with the Reich might bring the Romanians out of the French orbit.[18]

Carol often encouraged splits in the political parties to encourage his own ends. In 1935, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, the leader of the Transylvanian branch of the National Peasants broke away to form the Romanian Front with Carol's encouragement.[19] During the same time, Carol developed close contacts with Armand Călinescu, an ambitious National Peasant leader who founded a faction opposed to the leadership of Carol's archenemy Iuliu Maniu, and wanted the National Peasants to work with the Crown.[19] In the same way, Carol encouraged the "Young Liberal" faction headed by Gheorghe Tătărescu as a way of weakening the power of the Brătianu family who dominated the National Liberals.[20] On 30 December 1933, the Iron Guard assassinated the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion G. Duca, which led to the first of several bans placed on the Legion.[20] In February 1935, the Legion's Corneliu Zelea Codreanu who until then had regarded as an ally of Carol for the first time attacked the king directly when he organized demonstrations outside of the royal palace attacking Carol after Dr. Dimitrie Gerota had been imprisoned for writing an article exposing the corrupt business dealings of Lupescu.[21] Codreanu in his speech before the Royal Palace called Lupescu a "Jewish whore" who was robbing Romania blind, which led to an insulted Carol calling on one of the members of his camarilla, the Bucharest police prefect Gavrilă Marinescu who sent the police out to break up the Iron Guard rally with much violence.[22]

For most of the interwar period, Romania was in the French sphere of influence and in June 1926 a defensive alliance was signed with France. The alliance with France together with an alliance with Poland signed in 1921 and the Little Entente which united Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were the cornerstones of Romanian foreign policy. Starting in 1919, the French had sought to create the Cordon sanitaire that would keep both Germany and the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe. Carol did not seek to replace the foreign policy he had inherited in 1930 at first as he regarded the continuation of the cordon sanitaire as the best guarantee of Romania's independence and territorial integrity, and as such, his foreign policy was essentially pro-French. At the time that Romania signed the alliance with France, the Rhineland region of Germany was demilitarised and the assumption in Bucharest was always that if Germany should commit any act of aggression anywhere in Eastern Europe, the French would begin an offensive into the Reich. Starting in 1930 when the French began to build the Maginot Line along their border with Germany, some doubts started to be expressed in Bucharest about whatever the French might actually come to Romania's aid in the event of German aggression. In 1933, Carol had Nicolae Titulescu-an outspoken champion of collective security under the banner of League of Nations-appointed foreign minister with instructions to use principles of collective security as the building blocks for creating some sort of security structure intended to keep both Germany and the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe.[23] The process of Gleichschaltung (coordination) in National Socialist Germany did not extend only to the Reich, but was rather thought of by the National Socialist leadership as a world-wide process in which the NSDAP would take control over all of the ethnic German communities around the entire world. The Foreign Policy Department of the NSDAP headed by Alfred Rosenberg starting in 1934 had attempted to take over the volksdeutsch (ethnic German) community in Romania, a policy that greatly offended Carol who regarded this as outrageous German interference in Romania's internal affairs.[24] As Romania had half-million volksdeutsch citizens in the 1930s, the Nazi campaign to take over the German community in Romania was a real concern for Carol, who feared that the German minority might become a fifth column.[24] In addition, Rosenberg's agents had established contracts with the Romanian extreme right, most notably with the National Christian Party headed by Octavian Goga and less substantial links with the Iron Guard headed by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, which further annoyed Carol.[24] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about Carol's foreign policy views that: "He admired and feared Germany, but feared and disliked the Soviet Union".[25]

The doubts about the French willingness to undertake an offensive against Germany were further reinforced by the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 which had the effect of allowing the Germans to start building the Siegfried line along the border with France, something that considerably lessened the prospect of a French offensive into western Germany if the Reich should invade any of the states of the cordon sanitaire. A British Foreign Office memo from March 1936 stated that only nations in the world that would apply sanctions on Germany for remilitarizing the Rhineland if the League of Nations should vote for such a step were Britain, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Romania.[26] In the aftermath of the remilitarization of the Rhineland and once it was clear that no sanctions were going to be applied against Germany, Carol started to voice his fears that the days of French influence in Eastern Europe were numbered and Romania might have to seek some understanding with Germany to preserve its independence.[27] With continuing the alliance with France, after March 1936 Carol also began a policy of attempting to improve relations with Germany.[28] On the domestic front, in the summer of 1936 Codreanu and Maniu formed an alliance to oppose the growing power of the Crown and the National Liberal government.[29] In August 1936, Carol had Tituelscu fired as foreign minister and in November 1936, Carol sent the National Liberal politician Gheorghe I. Brătianu to Germany to meet with Adolf Hitler, the Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath and Hermann Göring to tell them of Romania's desire for a rapprochement with the Reich.[30] Carol was much relieved when Brătianu reported that Hitler, Neurath and Göring had all reassured him that the Reich had no interest in supporting Hungarian revanchism, and were neutral on the Transylvania dispute.[30] Göring, the newly appointed chief of the Four Year Plan organization designed to have Germany ready to wage a total war by 1940 was especially interested in Romania's oil, and talked much to Brătianu about a new era of German-Romanian economic relations.[30] Germany had no almost oil of its own, and throughout the Third Reich control of Romania's oil was a key foreign policy goal. Reflecting the changed emphasis, Carol vetoed in February 1937 a plan promoted by France and Czechoslovakia for a new alliance which would formally unite France with the Little Entente and envisioned more much closer military ties between the French and their allies in Eastern Europe.[31] Because of its oil, the French were keen to keep the alliance with Romania strong, and because of Romania's manpower was a way of compensating the French for their lower population vs. Germany's (the French had 40 million people while Germany had 70 million people).[31] Additionally it was assumed in Paris that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia that Hungary would also attack Czechoslovakia to regain Slovakia and Ruthenia. French military planners envisioned the role of Romania and Yugoslavia in such a war as invading Hungary to relieve the pressure on Czechoslovakia.[31]

Right up until 1940, Carol's foreign policy teetered uneasily between the traditional alliance with France and an alignment with the newly ascendant power of Germany.[30] Concerning the claim of the American historian Larry Watts that it was Carol that allied Romania to Nazi Germany and that Marshal Ion Antonescu had unwillingly inherited an alliance with Germany in 1940, the Canadian historian Dov Lungu wrote:

"The author's [Watts] claim that Romania's de facto alliance with Germany under Antonescu was the work of Carol, who began laying its foundations for it as early as 1938, is wide off the mark. Carol's concessions to Germany were made half-heartedly and delayed as much as possible in the hope that the western powers would regain the initiative on the political-diplomatic front and, from September 1939, the military one. He finally did change his country's external economic and political orientation, but only in the spring of 1940, when German hegemony on the Continent seemed imminent. In addition, there is more than a subtle distinction between Carol's request in the last weeks of his rule for the dispatch of a German military mission to train the ill-prepared Romanian Army and Antonescu's decision almost immediately after assuming power to fight on Germany's side until the very end. In fact, in his desire to regain the province of Bessarabia, Antonescu was keener than the Germans' in Romania's participation in an anti-Soviet war".[32]

On 9 December 1937, a German-Romanian economic treaty was signed that placed Romania within the German economic sphere of influence, but which left the Germans unsatisfied as the Reich's enormous demand for oil to power its increasingly large war machine was not fulfilled by the 1937 treaty.[33] Germany had a seemingly endless need for oil, and no sooner had the 1937 agreement had been signed than the Germans asked for a new economic treaty in 1938. At the same time that the German-Romanian treaty was signed in December 1937, Carol was receiving the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos to show that the alliance with France was no yet dead.[34]

In the summer of 1937, Carol paid an extended visit to Paris, during which he predicated to the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos that Romanian democracy would soon end.[35] In November 1937 in a campaign speech for the general elections due that December, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu of the Legion of the Archangel Michael gave a speech in which called for an end to the alliance with France and stated: " I am for a Romanian foreign policy with Rome and Berlin. I am with the states of the National Revolution against Bolshevism...Within fourty-eight hours of a Legionary movement victory, Romania will have an alliance with Rome and Berlin".[36] Without realizing it, Codreanu had sealed his doom with that speech. Carol had always insisted that control of foreign policy was his own, exclusive royal prerogative which no-else was allowed to interfere with.[37] Despite the constitution which stated that the foreign minister was responsible to the prime minister, in practice the foreign ministers had always reported to the king. By challenging Carol's right to control foreign policy, Codreanu had crossed the Rubicon in the king's eyes and that time onward, Carol was committed to the destruction of the arrogant upstart Codreanu and his movement who had dared to challenge the king's prerogative.[37] In the December 1937 elections, the National Liberal government of Prime Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu won the largest number of seats, but less than the 40% required to form a majority government in parliament.[38]

On 28 December 1937, Carol sworn in the radical anti-Semitic poet Octavian Goga of the National Christian Party-which only won 9% of the vote-as Prime Minister. Carol's reasons for appointing Goga Prime Minister were partly because he hoped that anti-Semitic policies Goga would bring in would win him support from the Iron Guard voters, and thus weaken the Legion and partly because he hoped that Goga would prove so incompetent as Prime Minister as to provoke such a crisis that would allow him to seize power for himself.[39] Carol wrote in his diary that the markedly stupid Goga could not possibly last long as Prime Minister, and that Goga's failure would allow him to "be free to take stronger measures which will free me and the country from the tyranny of party interests".[39] Carol agreed to Goga's request to dissolve parliament for new elections on 18 January 1938. As leader of the fourth party in parliament, Goga's government was certain to be defeated on a vote of no-confidence when parliament convened as the National Liberals, National Peasants and the Iron Guard had all come out against Goga, albeit for very different reasons. The election got off to a violent start with a brawl in Bucharest between Goga's Lăncieri paramilitary group and the Iron Guard that left two dead, 52 hospitalized and 450 people arrested.[40] The 1938 election was one of the most violent elections in Romanian history as the Iron Guard and Lăncieri battled one another for control of the streets while seeking to establish their anti-Semitic creditations by assaulting Jews.[41]

The harsh anti-Semitic policies of the Goga government impoverished the Jewish minority, and led to immediate complaints from the British, French and American governments that Goga's policies were going to lead to a Jewish exodus out of Romania.[42] Neither Britain, France or the United States had any wish to take in the Jewish refugees that Goga was creating by imposing increasingly oppressive anti-Semitic laws, and all three governments pressed for Carol to dismiss Goga as a way of nipping the developing humanitarian crisis caused by Goga in the bud.[43] The British minister Sir Reginald Hoare and French minister Adrien Thierry both submitted notes of protest against the Goga government's anti-Semitism while President Roosevelt of the United States wrote a letter to Carol complaining about the anti-Semitic policies he was tolerating.[25] On 12 January 1938, Goga stripped all Romanian Jews of their Romanian citizenship, a preparatory move towards Goga's ultimate goal of the expulsion of all Romanian Jews. Carol was personally not an anti-Semite, but in the words of his biographer Paul D. Quinlan the king was "simply indifferent" to the sufferings of his Jewish subjects caused by Goga's oppressive anti-Semitic laws.[44] The opportunistic Carol did not believe in antisemitism anymore than he believed in anything else other than power, but if raison d'Etat meant tolerating an anti-Semitic government as the price of power, Carol was quite prepared to sacrifice the rights of his Jewish subjects.[44] At the same time, Goga proved himself a better poet than politician, and there was a crisis atmosphere in early 1938 as the Goga government, which obsessed with solving the "Jewish Question" to the exclusion of everything else was clearly floundering. Weinberg wrote about Goga that he was "Unprepared for office and untouched by any leadership ability..." and whose clownish antics left diplomats stationed in Bucharest "half-amused, half-appalled".[25] As Carol had expected, Goga proved to be such an inept leader as to discredit democracy while his anti-Semitic policies ensured that the none of the democratic great powers would object to Carol proclaiming a dictatorship.[45]

Coming to realize belatedly that he was being used by Carol, Goga had a meeting with Codreanu on 8 February 1938 at the house of Ion Gigurtu to arrange for a deal under which the Iron Guard would withdraw its candidates from the election in order to ensure that the radical anti-Semitic right would a majority.[46] Carol quickly learned of the Goga-Codeanu pact, and used it as the justification for the coup he had been since late 1937.[47] On 10 February 1938, Carol suspended the Constitution and seized emergency powers.[39] Carol proclaimed martial law and suspended all civil liberties under the grounds that the violent election was running the risk of plunging the nation into civil war.[48] Having outlived his usefulness, Carol sacked Goga as Prime Minister and appointed as his successor Patriarch Elie Cristea, the head of the Romanian Eastern Orthodox Church, a man whom Carol knew would command wide respect in a country where the majority of the population was Orthodox. On 11 February 1938, Carol had the constitution recast into a severely authoritarian/corporatist document that concentrated virtually all governing power in his hands—turning his government into a de facto legal dictatorship. The new constitution was approved in a plebiscite held under far-from-secret conditions; voters were required to appear before an election bureau and verbally state whether they approved the constitution; silence was deemed as a "yes" vote. Under these conditions, an implausible 99.87 percent were reported as having approved the new charter.[49] At the time of his coup in February 1938, Carol informed the German minister Wilhelm Fabricius of his wish for closer ties between his country and Germany.[50] Thierry told Carol in a meeting after the coup that his new government was "well received" in Paris, and the French would not allow the end of democracy to affect their relations with Romania.[51] The new government of Patriarch Cristea did not introduce new anti-Semitic laws, but did not repeal the laws passed by Goga either, through Cristea was less extreme about enforcing these laws.[52] When asked by a Jewish friend if his citizenship would be restored now that Goga was gone, the Interior Minister Armand Călinescu-who detested the Iron Guard and antisemitism-replied that the Cristea government had no interest in restoring citizenship back to the Jews.[53]

In March 1938, Armand Călinescu, the Interior Minister who had emerged as one of Carol's closet allies and who was to serve as the "strong man" of the new regime demanded the Iron Guard be finally destroyed.[54] In April 1938, Carol moved to crush the Iron Guard by having Codreanu imprisoned for libeling the historian Nicolae Iorga after Codreanu had published a public letter accusing Iorga of dishonest business dealings. After Codreanu's conviction on 19 April 1938, he was convicted again in a second trial in 27 May 1938 of high treason where he was accused of working in the pay of Germany to effect a revolution since 1935 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.[55]

Carol was made the 892nd Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1938 by his second cousin, George VI (King of the United Kingdom). In 1937, he was awarded the Grand Cross of Justice of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem and given the Grand Collar of the Order on the 16th October 1938. He served as the Grand Bailiwick of the budding Grand Bailiwick of Romania.[56] In the fall of 1938, Carol together with the rest of the Romanian elite was deeply shocked by the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, which he saw as allowing all of Eastern Europe to fall within the German sphere of influence.[57] Romania had long been one of the most Francophile nations in the world, which meant that the effects of Munich were felt especially strongly there.[57] Weinberg wrote about the effect of Munich on Franco-Romanian relations: "In view of the traditional ties going back to the beginnings of Romanian independence and manifested in the way in which the Romanian elite looked to France as the model for everything from fashion to government, the revelation of France's abdication was particularly shockingly."[57] In view of Germany's desperate need for oil and the repeated German requests for a new economic agreement which would allow for more Romanian oil to be shipped to the Reich, Carol met Fabricius to tell him that he wanted such an agreement to create a lasting understanding between Germany and Romania.[58] At the same time in October–November 1938, Carol was playing a double game and appealed to Britain for help, offering to place Romania within the British economic sphere of influence, and visited London between 15–20 November 1938 to hold unsuccessful talks on that subject.[59] On 24 November 1938, Carol visited Germany to meet with Hitler in order to improve German-Romanian relations.[60] During the talks for the new German-Romanian economic agreement which was signed on 10 December 1938, Weinberg wrote that: "Carol made the needed concessions, but he demonstrated his concern for his country's independence by driving a very hard bargain".[60] The British historian D.C. Watt wrote that Carol had a "trump card" in his control of the oil Germany needed so badly and that the Germans were willing to pay a very high price for Romanian oil without which their military could not function.[61]

In October 1938, the Iron Guard had began a terrorist campaign of assassinating police officers and bureaucrats and staging bombings of government offices as part of an effort to overthrow Carol.[62][63] Carol struck back hard, ordering the police to arrest without warrant Iron Guardsmen and to summarily execute those found with weapons. Carol had initially planned to keep Codreanu in prison, but after the terrorist campaign began in October 1938, Carol agreed to Călinescu's plan drawn up in the spring to murder all of the Iron Guard leaders in custody.[64] On the night of 30 November 1938, Carol had Codreanu and 13 other Iron Guard leaders murdered with the official story being that they were "shot while trying to escape".[65] The killings on the night of 30 November 1938 which saw much of the Iron Guard's leadership wiped out have gone down in Romanian history as "the night of the vampires". The Germans were much offended by the murder of Codreanu and for a period in late 1938 waged a violent propaganda campaign against Carol with Germans newspapers regularly running stories casting doubt about the official version of events that Codreanu had been "shot while trying to escape" while calling Codreaunu's murder "a victory for the Jews".[65][66] But ultimately economic concerns, especially the German need for Romanian oil caused the Nazis to get over their outrage over the killings of the Iron Guard leaders by early 1939, and relations with Carol soon went back to normal.[65]

In December 1938, the National Renaissance Front was formed as the country's only legal party. That same month, Carol appointed his friend since childhood and another member of the camarilla Grigore Gafencu as foreign minister.[67] Gafencu was appointed foreign minister partly because Carol knew he could trust Gafencu and partly because of Gafencu's friendship with Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish foreign minister as Carol wanted to strengthen ties with Poland.[67] Gafencu was to prove himself something of an opportunist as foreign minister, the man who always wanted to take the path of least resistance, in marked contrast to Armand Călinescu, the tough, "almost freakish-looking", diminutive, one-eyed Interior Minister (and soon to be Prime Minister) who proved himself a consistent opponent of fascism both in Romania and abroad and encouraged Carol to stand with the Allies.[67] Carol's foreign policy going into 1939 was strengthen Romania's alliances with Poland and the Balkan Entente, work to avoid conflicts with Romania's enemies Hungary and Bulgaria, encourage Britain and France to get involved in the Balkans while trying to avoid giving offense to Germany.[68] On 6 March 1939, the Patriarch Cristea died and was replaced as Prime Minister by Călinescu.

In February 1939, Göring dispatched his deputy Helmuth Wohlthat of the Four Year Plan organisation to Bucharest with instructions to sign yet another German-Romanian economic treaty that would allow Germany total economic domination of Romania, especially its oil industry.[69] That Wohlthat, the number two man in the Four Year Plan organisation was sent to Bucharest indicated the importance of the German-Romanian talks.[68] Carol had resisted German demands for more oil in the December 1938 agreement, and instead had succeeded by early 1939 placing Romania to a certain extent within the British economic sphere of influence.[67] To counterbalance the increasingly powerful German influence in the Balkans, Carol wanted closer ties with Britain.[67] At the same time, the Four Year Plan was running into major difficulties by early 1939 and in particular, Göring's plans to have synthetic oil plants which would make oil from coal were well behind schedule.[68] The new technology of making synthetic oil from ligate coal had run into major technical problems and cost overruns, and Göring had been informed in early 1939 that the synthetic oil plants whose construction had started in 1936 would not be operative by 1940 as planned. It was not until the summer of 1942 that Germany's first synthetic oil plants finally start operating. It was making painfully obvious to Göring in the first months of 1939 that the German economy would not be ready to support a total war by 1940 as the Four Year Plan of 1936 had envisioned while at the same time his economic experts were telling him the Reich needed to import 400, 000 tons of oil per month while Germany had in fact imported only 61, 000 tons of oil per month in the last four months of 1938.[68] Hence Wohlthat demanded during his talks with the Romanian Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu that Romania nationalize their entire oil industry which was henceforward to controlled by a new corporation owned jointly by the German and Romanian governments while demanding Romania "respect German export interests" by only selling their oil to Germany.[68] In addition, Wohlthat demanded a host of other measures that to all practical purposes would have converted Romania into a German economic colony.[68] As Carol had no intention of giving in to these demands, the talks in Bucharest went very badly. It was at this point that Carol began what become known as the "Tilea affair" when on 17 March 1939 Virgil Tilea, the Romanian minister in London burst unexpectedly into the office of the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax in an agitated state to announce that his country was faced with an imminent German invasion, and asked Halifax for British support.[70] At same time, Carol mobilized five infantry corps on the Hungarian border to guard the supposed invasion.[71] The British "economic offensive" in the Balkans was causing Germany very real economic pain as the British bought up Romanian oil that the Germans badly needed, hence their demands for control of the Romanian oil industry that so offended Carol.[68] As the British believed in Tilea's claims, the "Tilea affair" had an immense impact of British foreign policy and led to the Chamberlain government doing a volta-face from appeasement of Germany to a policy of "containing" the Reich.[72][73] Carol denied, unconvincingly of knowing anything about Tilea was up to in London, but the British warnings to Germany against invading Romania in March 1939 led to the Germans to relax their demands and the latest German-Romanian economic treaty signed on 23 March 1939 was in the words of Watt 'very vague".[74]

As part of their new policy of seeking to "contain" Germany starting in March 1939, the British sought the construction of the "peace front" that was to comprise at a minimum Britain, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Romania, Greece and Yugoslavia. For his part, Carol was obsessed with fears in the first half of 1939 that Hungary with German support would soon attack his kingdom.[75] On 6 April 1939, a cabinet meeting decided that Romania would not join the "peace front", but would seek Anglo-French support for its independence.[75] The same meeting decided that Romania would work to strengthen ties with other Balkan nations, but would seek to prevent the Anglo-French efforts to link the security of the Balkans to the security of Poland.[76] On 13 April 1939 the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain speaking in the House of Commons and the French Premier Édouard Daladier speaking in the Chamber of Deputies announced a joint Anglo-French "guarantee" of the independence of Romania and Greece.[77] Carol promptly accepted the "guarantee". On 5 May 1939, the French Marshal Maxime Weygand visited Bucharest to meet with Carol and his Prime Minister Armand Călinescu to discuss Romania's possible participation in the "peace front".[78] Both Carol and Călinescu were supportive, but evasive, saying that they would welcome having the Soviet Union fight against Germany, but would never allow the Red Army to enter Romania even if Germany should invade.[78] Carol told Weygand: "I do not wish to let my country be engaged in a war which would result, in a few weeks, in the destruction of its army and the occupation of its territory...We do not wish to be the lighting conductor for the coming storm".[79] Carol went on to complain that he had enough equipment for only two-thirds of his army, which also lacked tanks, anti-aircraft guns, heavy artillery and anti-tank guns while his air force had only about 400 antiquated aircraft of French manufacture that were no match for latest German aircraft.[79] Weygand reported to Paris that Carol wanted Anglo-French support, but would not fight for the Allies if war came.[79]

Despite his formal opposition to joining the "peace front", Carol did decide to strengthen the Balkan Entente, and especially to strengthen ties with Turkey.[80] Since Britain and France were working for an alliance with Turkey while at same time holding talks with the Soviet Union, Carol reasoned that if Romania was to be firmly allied to Turkey, that this would be a way of associating Romania with the emerging "peace front" without actually joining it.[80] In July 1939, when Carol heard rumors that Hungary supported by Germany was planning on invading Romania following a new crisis in Romanian-Hungarian relations caused by complaints from Budapest that the Romanians were mistreating the Magyar minority in Transylvania (which were supported by Berlin), the king ordered general mobilization of his military while taking off in the royal yacht to Istanbul.[81] During his unexpected trip to Istanbul, Carol held talks with the Turkish President İsmet İnönü and the Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu during which the Turks promised him that Turkey would immediately mobilize its military in the event of an Axis attack on Romania.[81] The Turks in their turn pressed Carol to sign an alliance with the Soviet Union, something that Carol said very reluctantly he might do if the Turks were to serve as the middlemen and if the Soviets were to promise to recognize the border with Romania.[81] The show of Romanian resolve supported by Turkey had the effect of causing the Hungarians to back off on their demands against Romania.[81] The news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in August 1939 was received with horror by Carol.[82] In August 1939, Carol sought to play off both sides against each other. Carol allowed Călinescu to tell Thierry that the Romanians would destroy their oil fields if the Axis should invade while at the same time Gafencu told the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of his firm friendship with Germany, his opposition to the "peace front" and of his desire to sell more oil to the Germans.[83] After the signing of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, Călinescu advised Carol: "Germany is the real danger. An alliance with it is tantamount to a protectorate. Only Germany's defeat by France and Britain can ward off the danger".[53] On 27 August 1939 Gafencu told Fabricius that Romania would declare neutrality if Germany invaded Poland and that he wanted to sell to Germany some 450, 000 tons of oil per month in exchange for 1 million and half Reichmarks plus a number of modern German aircraft for free.[83] Carol met with the German air force attaché on 28 August 1939 to congratulate the Germans on the great diplomatic success they had gained with the pact with the Soviet Union.[83] Unknown to Carol, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had in its infamous "secret protocols" assigned the Romanian region of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. In the short run, the German-Soviet pact was a blessing for Carol since Germany now had access to Soviet oil, which reduced the pressure on Romania.

When World War II began with the German aggression against Poland on 1 September 1939, followed up by British and French declarations of war on the Reich on 3 September 1939, Carol proclaimed neutrality. In doing so Carol violated the letter of the treaty of alliance with Poland signed in 1921 and the spirit of treaty of alliance signed with France in 1926. Carol justified his policy under the grounds that with Germany and the Soviet Union allied in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939 and France holding its forces behind the Maginot line, unwilling to start an offensive into Germany, that neutrality was his only hope of preserving his kingdom's independence.[84] As usual with Carol, he sought to play a careful balancing act between the Allies and the Axis, on one hand signing a new economic treaty with Germany while on the other hand allowing for a considerable period of time for the Polish troops to cross into Romania while declining to intern them as international law required; instead the Poles were allowed to travel to Constanța to board ships to take them to Marseille to continue the fight against Germany from France.[84] The Romanian Bridgehead remained a key escape route for thousands of Poles in the desperate days of September 1939. It was only receiving a number of furious complaints from Fabricius about the passage of Polish soldiers across Romania that Carol finally started to intern the fleeing Poles. On 21 September 1939, Prime Minister Călinescu was assassinated by the Iron Guard in a plot organized out of Berlin, thus silencing the most strongest pro-Allied voice amongst Carol's camarilla.[85] The next day, the nine assassins of Călinescu were publicity shot without the benefit of a trial and on the week of 22–28 September 1939 242 Iron Guards were the victims of extrajudicial executions.[86] Because of its oil, Romania was considered to be highly important by both sides, and during the Phoney War of 1939-40 there occurred what Weinberg called a "silent struggle over Romania's oil" with the German government doing everything within its power to have as much Romanian oil as possible while the British and French governments equally doing everything possible to deny the Reich Romanian oil.[87] The British in particular launched an unsuccessful campaign to sabotage Romanian oil fields and the transportation network that took Romanian oil to Germany.[84] In January 1940, Carol gave a speech on the radio in which he proclaimed that it was his brilliant handing of foreign policy that kept Romania neutral and safe from danger.[88] In the same speech, Carol announced that he was going to be build a gigantic defense line around the kingdom and as such, taxes would have to rise to pay for it.[88] Romanians called the proposed line the Imagiont Line, as the line was considered to be a purely imaginary version of the Maginot line and many of Carol's subjects suspected that the money raised by higher taxes would go to the king's Swiss bank accounts.[88]

Carol had hedged his bets about whatever to chose between the Allies and the Axis. It was only in late May 1940 when France was clearly losing the war that Carol swung decisively over to the Axis side.[89] During the later period of the Phoney War after waging a campaign of bloody repression against the Iron Guard, which reached its peak after Călinescu's assassination, Carol began a policy of reaching out to the surviving Iron Guard leaders.[90] Carol felt that a "tamed" Iron Guard could be used as a source of popular support. In April 1940, Carol had reached an agreement with Vasile Noveanu, the leader of the underground Iron Guard in Romania, but it was not until early May 1940 that Horia Sima, the leader of the Iron Guards in exile in Germany could be persuaded to support the government.[91] On May 26, 1940 Sima returned to Romania from Germany to begin talks with General Mihail Moruzov of the secret service about the Iron Guard joining the government.[91] On 28 May 1940 after learning of the surrender of Belgium, Carol told the Crown Council that Germany was going to win the war, and Romania accordingly needed to realign its foreign and domestic policies with the victors.[91] On 13 June 1940, an agreement was reached whereas the Iron Guard would be allowed to join the National Renaissance Front (which was renamed the Party of the Nation) in exchange for more harsher anti-Semitic laws.[91] On 21 June 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany. Romania's elite had been so obsessively Francophile for so long that France's defeat had the effect of discrediting that elite in the eyes of public opinion and led to an upswing of popular support for the pro-German Iron Guard.[88]

In amidst of the turn towards the Iron Guard and Germany came a bombshell from aboard. On 26 June 1940, the Soviet Union submitted an ultimatum demanding that Romania hand over the Bessarabia region (which had been Russian until 1918) and the northern part of Bukovina (which had never been Russian) to the Soviet Union, and threatened war within next two days if the ultimatum rejected.[92] Carol had at one moment considered following the example of Finland in 1939 when faced with a similar Soviet ultimatum, but the outcome of the Winter War was scarcely an inspiring example.[92] Carol at first considered rejecting the ultimatum, but upon being informed that the Romanian Army would be no match for the Red Army, agreed to cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. Carol appealed to Berlin for support against the Soviet ultimatum, only to told to comply with Stalin's demands.[92] The loss of the regions without any fighting to the Soviet Union was widely felt to be a national humiliation by the Romanian people, and was a huge blow to Carol's prestige.

On 28 June 1940, Sima entered the cabinet as Under-secretary of State at the Ministry of Education .[93] On 1 July 1940, Carol in a radio speech renounced both the 1926 alliance with France and the 1939 Anglo-French "guarantee" of Romania, saying that henceforth Romania would seek in its place in the German-dominated "New Order" in Europe.[94] The next day, Carol invited a German military mission to train the Romanian Army.[95] On 4 July 1940, Carol sworn in a new government headed by Ion Gigurtu with Sima Minister of Arts and Culture.[96] Gigurtu had been a leading figure in the anti-Semitic National Christian Party in the 1930s, was a millionaire businessman with many connections to Germany and was a well-known Germanophile.[97] For all these reasons, Carol hoped that having Gigurtu was Prime Minister would win him Hitler's good-will, and thus prevented any further loss of territory.[98] Along the same lines, Carol signed a new economic treaty with Germany on 8 August 1940 that finally gave the Germans the economic domination of Romania and its oil that they had been seeking all through the 1930s.

Immediately afterwards, inspired by the Soviet example in gaining Romanian territory led to the Bulgarians demanding the return of Dobruja lost in the Second Balkan war of 1913 while the Hungarians demanded the return of Transylvania lost to Romania after World War I.[99] Romania and Bulgaria opened talks that led to the Treaty of Craiova that saw the southern Dobruja ceded to Bulgaria. In particular, Carol proved unwilling to cede Transylvania and had it not been for the diplomatic intervention of Germany and Italy, Romania and Hungary would had gone to war with each other in the summer of 1940.[99] In the meantime, Carol had on 9 July 1940 imprisoned General Ion Antonescu after the latter had criticized the king, charging it was the corruption of the royal government that was responsible for the military backwardness of Romania, and hence the loss of Bessarabia.[100] Both Fabricius and Hermann Neubacher, the man in charge of the Four Year Plan's operations in the Balkans intervened with Carol, saying that Antonescu's "accidental death" or being "shot while trying to escape" would "make a very bad impression on the German headquarters" as Antonescu was known to be a leading advocate of an alliance with Germany.[101] On 11 July 1940, Carol had Antonescu freed, but kept under house arrest at the Bisțria monastery.[102] Hitler was alarmed about the possibility of a Hungarian-Romanian war which he feared might result in the destruction of Romania's oil fields and/or might lead to the Soviets intervening to seize all of Romania.[99] At this time, Hitler was already seriously considering invading the Soviet Union in 1941, and if he were to take such a step, he would need Romanian oil to power his military.[99] At the Second Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano ruled that northern Transylvania was to go to Hungary while southern Transylvania would stay with Romania; a compromise that left both Budapest and Bucharest deeply unhappy with the Vienna award.[103] For economic reasons, Romania was far more important to Hitler than was Hungary, but Romania had been allied to France since 1926 and had flirted with joining the British-inspired "peace front" in 1939, so Hitler-who personally disliked and distrusted Carol-felt that Romania deserved to be punished for waiting so long to align with the Axis.[99] After the fall of Paris in June 1940, the Germans had captured the archives of the Quai d'Orsay and were thus well-informed about the double-line that Carol had pursued until the spring of 1940.[104] Extracts from the captured French documents were translated into German for Hitler's reading (Hitler knew no other language other then his native German), who was not impressed with Carol's efforts to forge closer ties with France at the same time proclaiming his friendship towards Germany.[104] At the same time, Hitler offered Carol a "guarantee" of the rest of Romania against further territorial losses, which Carol promptly accepted.[103]

The acceptance of the Second Vienna Award completely discredited Carol with his people, and in early September 1940 enormous demonstrations broke out all over Romania demanding that Carol abdicate. On 1 September 1940, Sima who had resigned from the government gave a speech calling upon Carol to abdicate, and the Iron Guard began to organize demonstrations all over Romania to press for king's abdication.[105] On 2 September 1940, Valer Pop, a courtier and an important member of the camarilla first advised Carol to appoint General Ion Antonescu as Prime Minister as the solution to the crisis.[106] Pop's reasons for advising Carol to have Antonescu as Prime Minister who was partly because Antonescu-who was known to be friendly with the Iron Guard and had been imprisoned under Carol-was believed to have enough of an oppositional background to appease the public and partly because Pop knew that Antonescu for all his Legionary sympathies was a member of the elite and would never turn against it. As the increasingly large crowds started to assemble outside of the royal palace demanding the king's abdication, Carol considered Pop's advice, but was reluctant to have Antonescu as Prime Minister.[107] As more and more people started to join the protests, Pop feared that Romania was on the verge of a revolution that might not only sweep away the king's regime, but also the elite who had dominated the country since the 19th century. To apply further pressure on Carol, Pop met with Fabricius on the night of 4 September 1940 to ask him to tell Carol that the Reich wanted Antonescu as Prime Minister, which led to Fabricius promptly calling Carol to tell him to appoint the general as the prime minister.[108] On September 5, 1940, Antonescu became Prime Minister, and Carol transferred most of his dictatorial powers to him.[109][110] As Prime Minister, Antonescu was a man acceptable to both the Iron Guard and the traditional elite.[111] Carol planned to stay as king after appointing Antonescu and initially Antonescu did not support the popular demand for Carol's abdication.[112] Carol ordered Antonescu and General Dumitru Coroamă who commanded the troops in Bucharest to shoot down demonstrators in front of the royal palace, an order that both refused to obey.[113] It was only on 6 September 1940, when Antonescu learned of a plot to murder him headed by another member of the camarilla General Paul Teodorescu that Antonescu joined the chorus demanding Carol's abdication.[114] With public opinion solidly against him and with the Army refusing to obey his orders, Carol was forced to abdicate.

Exile

Forced under Soviet and subsequently Hungarian, Bulgarian, and German pressure to surrender parts of his kingdom to foreign rule, he was finally outmaneuvered by the pro-German administration of Marshal Ion Antonescu, and abdicated in favour of Michael in September 1940. He went into exile, initially in Mexico,[115] but ultimately settled in Portugal.

Carol and Magda Lupescu were married in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 3 June 1947, Magda calling herself Princess Elena von Hohenzollern. Carol remained in exile for the rest of his life. He was never to see his son, King Michael, after his 1940 departure from Romania. Michael could see no point in meeting his father and did not attend his funeral.[116]

Remains returned to Romania

Carol died in Estoril, Portugal in 1953. His coffin was placed inside the Braganca family pantheon in Lisbon. His remains were finally returned to the Curtea de Argeș monastery in Romania in 2003, the traditional burial ground of Romanian royalty, at the request and expense of the government of Romania. They lie outside the cathedral, the burial place of Romanian kings and queens, as Elena was not of royal blood. Neither of his sons participated in either ceremony. King Michael was represented by his daughter, Princess Margarita, and her husband, Prince Radu of Romania.

Carol Lambrino was forbidden (since 1940) from entering Romanian territory, but a Romanian court declared him a legitimate son in 2003. Carol visited Bucharest in November 2005, shortly before his death.

Ancestry

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
16. Charles, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8. Charles Anthony, Prince of Hohenzollern
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
17. Marie Antoinette Murat
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4. Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
18. Karl, Grand Duke of Baden
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9. Princess Josephine of Baden
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
19. Stéphanie de Beauharnais
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2. Ferdinand I of Romania
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
20. Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10. Ferdinand II of Portugal
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
21. Maria Antonia, Princess of Koháry
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5. Infanta Antónia of Portugal
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
22. Pedro I of Brazil
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
11. Maria II of Portugal
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
23. Maria Leopoldina of Austria
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. Carol II of Romania
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
24. Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
12. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
25. Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6. Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
26. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
13. Queen Victoria
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27. Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
3. Marie of Edinburgh
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
28. Nicholas I of Russia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
14. Alexander II of Russia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
29. Charlotte of Prussia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7. Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
30. Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15. Marie of Hesse
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
31. Princess Wilhelmine of Baden
 
 
 
 
 
 

In popular culture

Carol appears as a character [as Prince Carol] in the final episode of the third season of Mr Selfridge and is played in a cameo appearance by British actor Anton Blake.[117]

Further Reading

  • Troy Southgate, From Lightning: Corneliu Codreanu, Horia Sima and the Story of the Romanian Iron Guard (Black Front Press, 2016).

See also

References

  1. King Carol II
  2. Sankey, Margaret "Carol II" pages 63-64 from War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Breakup of Yugoslavia edited by Richard Hall, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2014 page 63.
  3. Sankey, Margaret "Carol II" pages 63-64 from War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Breakup of Yugoslavia edited by Richard Hall, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2014 page 63.
  4. "Ce citeau românii acum 68 de ani?", Ziua, 29 November 2007.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Payne, Stanley A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1996 page 278.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. Quinlan, Paul The Playboy King, Westpoint: Greenwood Press, 1995 page 116.
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 108.
  9. Haynes, Rebbecca " Germany and the Establishment of the Romanian National Legionary State, September 1940" pages 700-725 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 77, Issue # 4. October 1999 pages 705-706.
  10. 10.0 10.1 Boia, Lucian History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001 page 205.
  11. 11.0 11.1 Boia, Lucian History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001 pages 204-205.
  12. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 page 315
  13. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 page 315
  14. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 pages 314-315
  15. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 pages 314-315
  16. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 page 315
  17. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 page 315
  18. Leitz, Christian "Arms as Levers: "Matériel" and Raw Materials in Germany's Trade with Romania in the 1930s" pages 312-332 from The International History Review, Volume 19, Issue # 2, May 1997 page 315
  19. 19.0 19.1 Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 109.
  20. 20.0 20.1 Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 110.
  21. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 111.
  22. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 111.
  23. Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, New York: Enigma Books, 2013 page 251.
  24. 24.0 24.1 24.2 Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Starting World War II 1937-1939, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 page 234.
  25. 25.0 25.1 25.2 Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Starting World War II 1937-1939, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 page 236.
  26. Emmerson, J.T The Rhineland Crisis 7 March 1936 A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1977 page 171
  27. Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933–36, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 page 261.
  28. Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, New York: Enigma Books, 2013 page 253.
  29. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 pages 110-113.
  30. 30.0 30.1 30.2 30.3 Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, New York: Enigma Books, 2013 pages 252-253.
  31. 31.0 31.1 31.2 Lungu, Dov "The French and British Attitudes towards the Goga-Cuza Government in Romania, December 1937-February 1938" pages 323-341 from Canadian Slavonic Papers /Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Volume 30, Issue # 3 September 1988 page 326.
  32. Lungu, Dov Review of Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916-1941 pages 378-380 from The International History Review, Volume 16, Issue # 2 May 1994 pages 379-380.
  33. Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Starting World War II 1937-1939, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 page 238.
  34. Lungu, Dov "The French and British Attitudes towards the Goga-Cuza Government in Romania, December 1937-February 1938" pages 323-341 from Canadian Slavonic Papers /Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Volume 30, Issue # 3 September 1988 page 327.
  35. Lungu, Dov "The French and British Attitudes towards the Goga-Cuza Government in Romania, December 1937-February 1938" pages 323-341 from Canadian Slavonic Papers /Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Volume 30, Issue # 3 September 1988 page 325.
  36. Haynes, Rebbecca "Germany and the Establishment of the Romanian National Legionary State, September 1940" pages 700-725 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 77, Issue # 4. October 1999 page 704.
  37. 37.0 37.1 Crampton, Richard Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After, London: Routledge, 1997 page 116.
  38. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 pages 120-121.
  39. 39.0 39.1 39.2 Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 121.
  40. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 122.
  41. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 122.
  42. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 124.
  43. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 124.
  44. 44.0 44.1 Quinlan, Paul The Playboy King, Westpoint: Greenwood Press, 1995 page 182.
  45. Haynes, Rebecca "Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania" pages 105-134 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 85, Issue # 1, January 2007 page 124.
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  109. (Romanian) Delia Radu, "Serialul 'Ion Antonescu și asumarea istoriei' (1)", BBC Romanian edition, August 1, 2008
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  115. http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Romania/References/CarolHitlerLupescu/index.htm
  116. Monique Urdareanu on Elena Lupescu and Carol II at the Wayback Machine (archived June 13, 2008), Ziua, 14 January 2006
  117. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Carol II of Romania
Cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern
Born: 15 October 1893 Died: 4 April 1953
Regnal titles
Preceded by King of Romania
8 June 1930 – 6 September 1940
Succeeded by
Michael I