Talk:Iron Guard
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[edit] Romania allows German troops to pass through to Poland
The first paragraph of the Sima's brief ascendancy section reads
"In the first months of World War II, Romania was officially neutral, but leaned heavily toward the Axis Powers, allowing the German troops to pass through on their way into Poland.".
I made a similar comment on Romania during World War II which contained a similar phrase, and it was fixed: if you take a look at a map of Europe it's pretty obvious that Germany needs no permission from Romania to find their way into Poland. --Gutza 14:59, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Agreed. You want to edit here in parallel fashion, or should I? --Jmabel 23:42, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I won't edit because the article goes on with "This political alignment was obviously favorable to the surviving legionnaires.", and continues based on these assumptions, so some of the continuation must be rewritten to accomodate the changes. --Gutza 17:02, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Gutza, I'd appreciate if you review my revised version. It's parallel to how we changed Romania during World War II. -- Jmabel 18:17, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I find your edit quite sensible and unbiased, as usual. Again, I'm aware it's a very, very late acknowledgement, but at least it is here, for whoever might want to check out my opinion in the future. Thank you! --Gutza 00:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The Legion of Saint Michael the Archangel
Just came across The Legion of Saint Michael the Archangel - it'd be nice if someone integrated that text into this article.IulianU 13:04, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I just went and cleaned that up a little, but I think that any reasonable merger is going to have to be done by someone else. I feel dirty after handling the other article: e.g. "This success is granted to the deeply Christian message of the legionnaires." I'm going to stick an NPOV notice on it. There may be some decent content there, but I can't bring myself to work on it further. -- Jmabel 00:56, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] "royal dictator" vs. "absolute monarchy"
An anon recently changed my phrase "taking on the role of a royal dictator" to "re-establishing the absolute monarchy". I leave it to someone else to decide which is better wording. I had specifically avoided the term "absolute monarchy" because of its connotation of Divine Right, which he certainly was not claiming. I don't believe there was a change in the theory of sovereignty, just in the practice of rule. -- Jmabel|Talk 00:35, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
- Agreed, reverted. Yes, late, but not never. :-) --Gutza 00:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Writing style
These edits by Sam Spade are arguably defensible as NPOVing the article, but some of this feels to me like what I've come to think of as the "war on vivid writing" in Wikpedia; but I shouldn't make the judgment, because the writing in question is mine. I'd appreciate, though, if a third party would have a look and see what they think. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I largely agree with you. I'd add that, unless there is a significant group (preferably of scholars) arguing that the anti-semitism of the Iron Guard was not particularly virulent, it is not POV to say that they were virulently anti-semitic. john k 19:54, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
- John, would you please revert what you think is appropriate to revert? I suspect that, since Sam is no fool, some of his edits of me are likely to be correct, but I don't feel I should be the one to make that judgment. This is not a topic on which I am easily neutral. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:35, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] "Fatherland" or "Country"?
I realize that "Everything for the Country" is a more literal translation of "Totul pentru Ţară" than "Everything for the Fatherland", and is occasionally used in English, but I believe that "Everything for the Fatherland" is the more common English-language name, both then and now. At the very least, it deserves mention as a common English-language name. It is the name used by both Encarta [1] and Britannica [2]; interestingly, the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania refers [3] (PDF) to "Everything for the Motherland", which I'd never seen before. I'll leave one Romanian daytime (just beginning as I write) for someone else to comment before I edit. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- Hmmmm, the thing is that there are other mor elaborate synonims for Country (Tara) in Romanian like glie stramoseasca or the simple patrie which would be better suited for Fatherland. But taking acount the fascist context, I think it is more apporpriate to translate Totul pentru Tara as Everything for the Fatherland. --Orioane 08:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup?
This has a cleanup tag on it, but no indication of what someone thinks is wrong with the article. I noticed, and fixed, a problem in the footnote mechanism. Was there anything else? If not, the tag should be removed. - Jmabel | Talk 18:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Several observations about the historical accuracy
1) "The royal dictatorship was brief". This is not true: it lasted 2 years and 7 months. The previous Romanian governments were corrupt, but at least they were more or less democratic. Royal dictatorship, however, was a dictatorship in the full sence: many public and personal liberties were suppresed. In turn it provided the "moral" justification for the "National Legionary State" and the Antonescu regime, which were also dictatorships. No democratic parties participated in government since 1938. I think this point must be mentioned in the article, because it provides one of the reasons of Iron Guard's ascendancy in popular mind.
2) It must be mentioned that Iron Guard supported the Franco's uprising in Spain, while other political parties officially remained neutral
3) From the article it is not clear that the charismatic leadership, that was assasinated prior to 1940, was only declaratively anti-semitic, and that no actual pogroms occured prior to 1940-41. This however should not hinder to mention up and sound that Iron Guard members killed many Jews in 1940-41. This point is important to explain the way Iron Guard is persived nowadays in Romania
4) The most important shortcome of the article is in my oppinion: How did Iond Guard so suddenly switched in September 1940 from a persecuted organizetion to a party with 50% of givernment posts? It must be mentioned that in June and then in August 1940 King Carol II government agreed to ceed importsnt portioned of Romanian territory (about 1/3) to Soviet Union, Hungary, and Bulgaria due to Soviet ultimatum as result of Molotov-Ribbentrop parc and to the Vienna dictate of Germany and Italy. As a result, there was a general uprising in Romania. It was not organized, but spontaneous and popular. King Carol II had to abdicate (for the 4th time) and WAS FORMALLY FORBIDDEN TO ENTER ROMANIA EVER SINCE (September 1940). All political parties were dissolved at that time, and the only orginized forces which profited were the reminants of the Iron Guard, led by Horia Sima, and the military, led by Chief of General Stuff General Antonescu. In the first months the government was very popular!
5) "The Iron Guard have become infamous for their participation in the Holocaust. In The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg writes, "There were... instances when the Germans actually had to step in to restrain and slow down the pace of the Romanian measures." The annihilation of the Jews of eastern Romania (including Bessarabia, Bucovina, Transnistria, and the city of Iaşi) had more the character of a pogrom than of the well-organized transports and camps of the Germans." Only the first sentance is correct. The events in June 1940 in Iasi, and the deportation of the Jews from Bassarabia, Bucovina and Botosani district to ghetos in Transnistria (which only 20% would survive) occured after Iron Guard was removed from power, and was largely performed by Gandarmery (militarised police). Rather then attributing wrong dids to Iron Guard it would be wise simply to mention that Iron Guard were the main ideological promoters of anti-semitism in Romania of 1930-40s, which is no small did. One should mention clearly that it was during the coup (the 3 days) of 1941 that about 400 Jews were killed (by Iron Guard) in Bucharest, Ploiesti and Iasi. One can also mention that like in other countries there were anti-semitic laws in Romania from 1920s: Jews were forbidden to occupy political posts, and practice some professions, such as Law. Iron Guard supported and achieved in 1940 harsher laws.
6) One can mention that Horia Sima lived in peace in Germany after WWII (he led (ideologically) several divisions of Romanians fighting on the Germany side even after and Romania switched sides in August 1940), and died in 1993 witnessing the fall of communism, unlike Cordeanu who died in 1938 without seeing the ascension of legionarism to power.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.147.5.45 (talk • contribs) 30 July 2006.
- 1) I assume that we can agree that the royal dictatorship began after the dismissal of Octavian Goga on February 11, 1938 (and, by the way, if we want to talk undemocratic, it's not as if Goga's partly had much popular support). When you say "2 years and 7 months" I gather that you are saying that the country continued to be a royal dictatorship until Carol abdicated. I have never seen a historian characterize it that way; do you have a source that says so?
- 2) I have no idea whether any other Romanian party endorsed Franco's Nationalists. Do you have a source on the claim that none did?
- 3) "only declaratively anti-semitic"? One does not have to mass murder Jews to be more than "declaratively anti-semitic". By this standard, the Nazis themselves were only "declaratively anti-semitic" at least until Kristallnacht and arguably until the Wannsee Conference.
- 4) I have no comment on the popularity or otherwise of the National Legionary State (certainly they had ardent supporters; I would imagine that few of their opponents would have dared to show their opposition publicly, and it's not like we have a reliable opinion poll. If we want to go into the background of Carol's downfall, it seems to me that what happened was that Carol held out against Nazi encroachment and sought a Western and a Balkan alliance long enough to be viewed by Hitler as an enemy; finally, in stages, he bowed to the inevitable because Britain and France offered no meaningful support; he chose not to fight in the East because if he had, then Romania would have had a bloody defeat instead of a relatively bloodless one; Hitler conned him into thinking Romanian would get a fair shake at the Second Vienna arbitration, but basically treated him as a whipping boy from the moment he showed up; he went down in flames. There were several times along the way that the Iron Guard, at Hitler's behest, raised the ante of violence, most notably when Carol traveled to the UK and France seeking a Western alliance. (By the way, the Iron Guard tried to ambush Carol's train on the way out of the country.)
- 5) Yes, this does seem to conflate the Iron Guard with Romania in general during the war, probably inappropriately. There is a relationship, it needs to be stated, but the passage as it stands oversimplifies.
- 6) I don't know much about Simia postwar. Again, do you have sources on this?
- I'd appreciate if some others would weigh in on this. I'm pretty knowledgable on this for an American, but I imagine that there are several people working on this page who know this history in far more detail than I do. - Jmabel | Talk 04:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry but i don`t know where t wright this... but i have to say that in Romania there waz NO holocaust. It is a official thing! Pliz search this fact, and find, that is a true thing. Thank you!{{subst:unsigned|86.125.185.105|18 August 2006}
- With reference to this odd claim, I refer you to our article on the Wiesel Commission and especially to the Commission report itself, linked from that page. - Jmabel | Talk 00:51, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Explanation
I have to explain my last edit summary. I had not read the entire sentence, and I mistakenly thought that the edit in question was referring to the Iromn Guard's exile in Germany, and that someone had added (insttead of removed) "death" in front of "camps". Thus, I was under the impression that it was being implied that they were victims of the Nazis... Sorry, I'm quite tired and I've taken off my glasses... Dahn 03:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Looking through the context,I stand by my edit, as it was inadvertedly correct: I think the qualifier does apply to the German camps where Romanian Jews were sent. Dahn 03:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
