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259 The defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I resulted in a considerable enlargement of the Romanian state due to territorial acquisition.1 However, satisfaction with the realization of the dream of incorporating all Romanian speakers within the confines of a single state was mitigated by the reality of the inclusion in the newly enlarged Kingdom of Romania of large numbers of non– ethnic Romanians.2 Gaining all of Transylvania now meant that Romania had a sizeable Hungarian population; problems with this community continued not only through the interwar period but through the years of World War II, the Communist ascension to power, and even after the downfall of the regime of the nationalistic Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918–1989). The ancient Saxon German community of Transylvania also came under pressure in the Ceauşescu era, leading to the migration—voluntary or forced—of large numbers of these Germans. The best novels of the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller (b. 1953), the 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, depict the gradual withering away of the German Saxon community as well as the difficulties of resettling in Germany. It was, however, with its Jewish community that interwar Romania had its greatest problems. The acquisition of Bessarabia, Bukovina, as well as Transylvania brought significant increases in the size of the Jewish population. Yet it was only after the passing of the Constitution of 1923 that Jews were able to claim Romanian minority rights and citizenship, which had in fact already been guaranteed by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. But accelerating interwar Romanian nationalism, which usually went hand in hand with the conservatism of traditional Romanian Orthodox Christianity, sought to sharply curtail any accommodation of the public and civic needs of the Jewish population. Much of Romanian militant anti-Semitism in the interwar period was spearheaded by the National Christian Defense League founded by the right-wing politician Alexandru C. Cuza (1857–1947).3 It was considerably augr o Mania 260 | roMania mented by the extreme right-wing legionary movement founded in 1927 by the charismatic and popular Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1937). Known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael or the Iron Guard, it rapidly became the most virulent expression of anti-Semitism in Romania between the two world wars. By the time the populist-nationalist Octavian Goga (1881–1938) became prime minister of Romania in 1937, he felt secure enough to pass a series of anti-Semitic laws culminating in the edict of 12 January 1938 that stripped Jews of their Romanian citizenship. As it came to acquire more popular support and power, the right wing threatened to become the dominant political force in Romania in the 1930s. Although an early supporter of the Iron Guard, King Carol II (1893–1953) moved against Codreanu and the entire legionary movement when it threatened to undermine the growing rapprochement between Romania and Nazi Germany shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Following a short period of imprisonment, Codreanu and a number of his close associates were murdered on the night of 29 November 1938, doubtlessly on Carol’s orders.4 New life was infused into what was left of the Iron Guard by Codreanu’s successor, Horia Sima (1907–1993), who in 1940–1941 took command of the movement and proclaimed a National Legionary State in the wake of King Carol’s abdication in September 1940. Aimed directly at the power of the king, this virtual coup d’état was motivated by Romania’s surrender of Transylvania back to Hungary under pressure from Nazi Germany.5 The power of the National Legionary State did not last long. One of its supporters , the ardently right-wing General Ion Antonescu (1882–1946), lost little time in subverting it, thereby ending his uneasy relationship with Horia Sima once he had Hitler’s backing and led Romania into World War II on the side of the Axis. With the elimination of the Iron Guard in the Legionary Rebellion of 1941, Antonescu held all the cards. He was now the uncontested leader of wartime Romania or, in the Romanian equivalent of the German term Führer (leader), the nation’s conducător. By officially joining the Axis on 23 November 1941 Antonescu hoped not only to regain territory previously lost to Hungary but also to take possession of lands incorporated into the Soviet Union and to which Romania laid claim.6 Despite some early (and ultimately ephemeral) successes, such as...

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