People of the Revolution and the USSR

Romania Counter-revolutionary forces 1882–1946 ✕ Executed

The Conducător who took Romania into the Axis war against the Soviet Union and ordered the killings in Transnistria, executed at Jilava in 1946

On the afternoon of 23 August 1944, summoned to the palace, Antonescu refused the king's demand for an immediate armistice; Michael gave the prearranged signal and the guards arrested him. That night the king's radio address announced the armistice, and the Romanian army turned its guns on the Germans.

A cavalry officer born into a military family in Pitești, he helped plan the defence of Mărășești as a staff officer in the First World War, served as military attaché in Paris and London and was chief of the general staff in 1933–34. Defence minister in the Goga government of 1937–38, he fell out with Carol II and was confined to the Bistrița monastery in 1940. When the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Transylvania in the summer of 1940 shook the monarchy, he became prime minister with full powers on 4 September, forced Carol II to abdicate two days later and styled himself Conducător, founding the National Legionary State with the Iron Guard before crushing the Legionary rebellion by force in January 1941. He joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 and invaded the Soviet Union alongside Germany in June 1941, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and occupying Transnistria beyond the Dniester. Through the Iași pogrom, the Odessa massacre and the deportations to Transnistria, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and more than 10,000 Roma died under Romanian jurisdiction, the Wiesel Commission concluded in 2004. After losing two armies at Stalingrad he sought a way out of the war, but on 23 August 1944 King Michael had him arrested and handed to the Soviets; sentenced to death by the Bucharest People's Tribunal in May 1946, he was shot at Jilava on 1 June.

Romania Counter-revolutionary forces 1882–1950 ○ Natural causes

Romania's commander on the Eastern Front

Before the flank northwest of Stalingrad collapsed, Dumitrescu requested German reinforcements.

Petre Dumitrescu was a career officer of the Kingdom of Romania who commanded the Romanian Third Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Alongside German forces, he led Romanian operations in Bukovina, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Caucasus as Romania pursued the war against the Soviet Union. In November 1942, the Third Army's exposed flank northwest of Stalingrad came under the Soviet Uranus offensive; Dumitrescu requested support, but his formation suffered catastrophic losses and retreated. Charged with war crimes after the war, he was acquitted in 1946 for lack of sufficient evidence.