Leader of the National Peasant Party who led Transylvania's union with Romania, sentenced to life in 1947 and dead in Sighet prison
On 11 November 1947 the Bucharest military court sentenced the seventy-four-year-old Maniu to hard labour for life. His closing statement came to a single sentence: everything he had done had been for the Romanian people, and history would judge.
A lawyer born into a Greek Catholic family in Sălaj, Transylvania, he began in politics as a Romanian National Party deputy in the Hungarian parliament. After the great assembly at Alba Iulia in December 1918 he led Transylvania's union with Romania as president of its Directing Council, and in 1926 he merged with the Peasant Party to found the National Peasant Party, serving as prime minister in 1928–30 and 1932–33. He opposed Carol II's personal rule and the royal dictatorship of 1938; under Antonescu he supported the recovery of Bessarabia but opposed the war beyond the Dniester, and took part in preparing the coup of 23 August 1944. After the war he was the centre of the opposition to the Groza government and Soviet domination and protested the rigging of the 1946 election. In July 1947 the arrest of party leaders attempting to fly abroad from Tămădău airfield became the pretext for dissolving the National Peasant Party, and at the trial of October and November he was sentenced to life imprisonment for "treason". He died at eighty in Sighet prison in February 1953 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Career timeline
- 1906–1910Romanian National Party deputy in the Hungarian parliament
- 1918–1920President of the Directing Council of Transylvania
- 1926Founded the National Peasant Party
- 1928–1930Prime minister
- 1932–1933Prime minister
- 1944Took part in preparing the coup of 23 August
- 1945–1947Leader of the opposition to the Groza government
- 1947Tămădău affair; party dissolved; sentenced to life
- 1953Died in Sighet prison
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.
Career timeline
- 1916–1918Staff officer in the First World War
- 1933–1934Chief of the General Staff
- 1937–1938Minister of Defence
- 1940Prime minister with full powers; Carol II deposed; title of Conducător
- 1940–1941National Legionary State; Legionary rebellion crushed
- 1941Invasion of the Soviet Union; occupation of Transnistria
- 1944Arrested on 23 August; handed to the Soviets
- 1946Sentenced to death by the People's Tribunal; executed at Jilava
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.
Career timeline
- 1901–1903Studied at the School of Artillery and Engineers; commissioned as a second lieutenant
- 1911–1913Studied at the Superior War School
- 1930–1932Military attaché to France
- 1935–1937Vice Chief of the General Staff
- 1940–1941Commander of the Romanian First Army
- 1941–1944Commander of the Romanian Third Army
- 1942Commanded the Third Army during the Battle of Stalingrad
- 1944Retired and investigated for alleged war crimes
133 days of the second Soviet state in Europe, and the execution cellar 19 years later
“The Hungarian proletariat betrayed not their leaders but itself.” — last speech before the Republic's fall, 1 August 1919
A Transylvanian-born Jewish journalist turned revolutionary, Béla Kun founded and led the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Europe's second proletarian dictatorship. In 133 days he nationalised industry, but his refusal to distribute confiscated land to peasants, turning estates into state farms, lost the countryside; Entente-backed armies crushed the Republic. In Soviet exile he became a key Comintern figure, ECCI Presidium member and head of Agitprop, backing the ultra-left "Third Period" and resisting the 1935 Popular Front turn, clashing with Dimitrov. Swept up in the Great Purge in 1937, tortured, shot in 1938, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
- 1902Joins the Hungarian Social Democratic Party; organises Transylvanian branch
- 1916Taken prisoner by the Russian Army in WWI; exposed to Bolshevism in the Urals camp
- 1917Joins the RSDLP(b); works in the Tomsk party committee and Bolshevik press
- 1918.03Co-founds the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow — precursor to the KMP
- 1918.11Returns to Budapest; founds the Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) and becomes CC chair
- 1919.03–08People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
- 1920Chairman of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee
- 1921Directs the March Action in Germany — uprising fails
- 1921–1936Member of the ECCI and its Presidium
- 1924–Head of the ECCI Agitprop Department
- 1937Arrested on charges of leading a counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation
- 1938.08.29Sentenced to death and shot — Kommunarka, Moscow
The last King of Romania, who arrested Antonescu on 23 August 1944 to bring the country over to the Allies and abdicated at gunpoint in 1947
On the morning of 30 December 1947, in a palace surrounded by troops, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej put the abdication before him. Michael testified in exile that he was told refusal would mean bloodshed and the shooting of a thousand students held in custody. That afternoon parliament proclaimed the People's Republic.
Born to Crown Prince Carol of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Helen of Greece, he became king at six in 1927 under a regency because his father had renounced the succession, and was demoted to crown prince when Carol II returned to take the throne in 1930. When Antonescu deposed Carol II in September 1940 he was crowned again at eighteen, but power lay with Antonescu's dictatorship and the Axis alliance. On 23 August 1944, with the Red Army across the border, he arrested Antonescu in a palace coup, concluded an armistice with the Allies and turned Romania against Germany, becoming one of the very few foreigners awarded the Soviet Order of Victory. Yet in March 1945 he had to appoint the Groza government under Vyshinsky's pressure, and his "royal strike" of refusing to sign decrees from August that year could not stop the rigged election of 1946 or the Maniu trial of 1947. On 30 December 1947 he signed the abdication forced on him by Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, and the People's Republic was proclaimed the same day. Stripped of citizenship in 1948, he lived in Britain and Switzerland as a test pilot and a broker; a million people gathered in Bucharest on his first return at Easter 1992. His citizenship was restored in 1997, and he died in Switzerland in 2017, buried with a state funeral in the royal necropolis at Curtea de Argeș.
Career timeline
- 1927–1930First reign under a regency
- 1930–1940Crown prince
- 1940Crowned again after Antonescu deposed Carol II
- 1944Palace coup of 23 August; Antonescu arrested, Romania joins the Allies
- 1945Awarded the Soviet Order of Victory; forced to appoint the Groza government
- 1945–1946"Royal strike", refusing to sign decrees
- 1947Forced abdication on 30 December; exile
- 1948Stripped of citizenship
- 1992First return visit to Romania
- 1997Citizenship restored
