The assassination of Duca, which was Romania's first political murder since 1862 shocked Carol, who saw the willingness of Codreanu to order the assassination of the Prime Minister as a sign that the egomaniacal Codreanu was getting out of control and that Codreanu would not play the role assigned by the king as a disruptive force threatening the National Liberals and National Peasant alike.
To a certain extent, Carol was influenced by the prevailing Francophilia, but at the same time he inherited from Carol I, in the words of the American historian Margaret Sankey, a "profound love of German militarism" and the idea that all democratic governments were weak governments. In November 1914, Carol joined the Romanian Senate, as the 1866 Constitution guaranteed him a seat there upon reaching maturity.
Carol II (3 October 18934 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his forced abdication on 6 September 1940.
Carol rapidly become a favorite of gossip columnists around the world owing to the frequent photographs that appeared in the newspapers showing him at various parties with him holding a drink in one hand and a woman in the other. In order to teach the Prince the value of the Prussian virtues, the King had the Prince commissioned as an officer into a Prussian guards regiment in 1913.
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.
He was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and became crown prince upon the death of his grand-uncle, King Carol I in 1914.
To a certain extent, Carol was influenced by the prevailing Francophilia, but at the same time he inherited from Carol I, in the words of the American historian Margaret Sankey, a "profound love of German militarism" and the idea that all democratic governments were weak governments. In November 1914, Carol joined the Romanian Senate, as the 1866 Constitution guaranteed him a seat there upon reaching maturity.
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 (under the occupation of the Central Powers at that time), to Joanna Marie Valentina Lambrino (1898–1953), known as "Zizi", the daughter of a Romanian general, Constantin Lambrino.
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.
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 was rejected.
The marriage was annulled on 29 March 1919 by the Ilfov County Court.
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.
Their only child, Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino, was born 8 January 1920. Carol next married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, who was known in Romania as Crown Princess Elena, on 10 March 1921 in Athens, Greece.
They married in March 1921, having a child in the same year, Prince Michael.
Their only child, Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino, was born 8 January 1920. Carol next married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, who was known in Romania as Crown Princess Elena, on 10 March 1921 in Athens, Greece.
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.
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 regarded Codreanu's death fetish together with his claim that the Archangel Michael had told him that God had chosen him to save Romania as evidence that Codreanu was "crazy". 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.
Although it was superficially similar to its 1923 predecessor, it was actually a severely authoritarian and corporatist document.
Carol was also a fan of football, being the Romanian Football Federation's president for almost one year from 1924 until 1925. Carol's first controversy was his desertion from the army during World War I followed by his marriage to Zizi Lambrino, which resulted in two attempts to give up the rights of succession to the royal crown of Romania, refused by King Ferdinand.
A major problem for Carol's efforts to mobilize the Romanian-American community was the Immigration Control Act of 1924, which drastically limited immigration from Eastern Europe into the United States.
As such, the majority of Romanian-Americans in the 1940s were either people who immigrated prior to 1924 or their children; in either case, Carol did not mean much to them.
Carol was also a fan of football, being the Romanian Football Federation's president for almost one year from 1924 until 1925. Carol's first controversy was his desertion from the army during World War I followed by his marriage to Zizi Lambrino, which resulted in two attempts to give up the rights of succession to the royal crown of Romania, refused by King Ferdinand.
His continued affairs with Elena Lupescu obliged him to renounce his succession rights in 1925 and leave the country.
Gusti took teams of professors from the various disciplines to the countryside to study an entire community from all vantage points every summer, who then produce a lengthy report about the community. ==The Manipulative King== 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.
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.
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.
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 mistrusted Carol-felt that Romania deserved to be punished for waiting so long to align with the Axis.
Michael inherited the throne on the death of King Ferdinand in 1927.
Brătianu died in 1927, the Brătianus were unable to agree upon a successor, causing the fortunes of the National Liberals to go into decline.
Princess Helen eventually divorced Carol in 1928. In the political crisis created by the deaths of Ferdinand I and Ion I.C.
Helen divorced Carol in 1928.
In the 1928 elections, the National Peasant Party under Iuliu Maniu won a resounding victory, taking 78% of the vote.
Carol II (3 October 18934 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his forced abdication on 6 September 1940.
Carol was allowed to return to Romania in 1930 and his name was restored by the royal house of Romania, dethroning his own son.
As Prince Nicolae, the chief of the Regency Council that governed for King Michael, was known to be friendly with the National Liberals, the new prime minister was determined to dispose of the regency council by bringing back Carol. ==Return to the throne== Returning to the country on 7 June 1930, in a coup d'état engineered by National Peasant Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol was recognized by the Parliament as king of Romania the following day.
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.
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.
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".
In particular, Carol supported the work of the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti of the Social Service of the Royal Foundation, who in the early 1930s started to bring social scientists from various disciplines like sociology, anthropology, ethnography, geography, musicology, medicine and biology to work together in a "science of the nation".
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.
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.
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.
Even before the worldwide Great Depression, Romania had been a poor country and the Great Depression hit Romania hard with Romanians been unable to export much owing 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.
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.
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.
Virgil Tilea had as a university student in the 1930s supported the Iron Guard.
On 30 December 1933, the Iron Guard assassinated the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion G.
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.
The fact that the first leader to visit Nazi Germany (albeit not in an official capacity) was the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös-who during his visit to Berlin in October 1933 signed an economic treaty that placed Hungary within the German economic sphere of influence-was a source of much alarm to Carol.
After assassinating Prime Minister Duca in 1933, the Iron Guard had been banned from participating in elections, and to get around the ban Codreanu founded the All for Fatherland! party as a front for the Legion.
In 1934, when Codreanu was brought to trial for ordering Duca's assassination, he used as his defense that the entire Francophile elite were completely corrupt and not properly Romanian, and as such Duca as just another corrupt National Liberal politician deserved to die.
In the spring of 1934 after Codreanu was acquitted, Carol together with the Bucharest police prefect Gavrilă Marinescu and Madame Lupescu were involved in a half-hearted plot to kill Codreanu by poisoning his coffee, an effort that was abandoned before being attempted.
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".
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.
Accordingly, Franco-Hungarian relations were extremely bad during the interwar period, and so it seemed natural that Hungary would ally itself with France's archenemy Germany. In 1934, Titulescu played a leading role in creating the Balkan Entente which brought together Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey in an alliance intended to counter Bulgarian revanchism.
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".
In June 1934, the Romanian finance minister Victor Slăvescu visited Paris to ask the French to inject millions of francs into Romanian treasury and to lower their tariffs on Romanian goods.
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.
Until 1935, Carol was a leading contributor to the "Friends of the Legion", the group who collected contributions to the Legion.
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.
After Codreanu's conviction on 19 April 1938, he was convicted again in a second trial on 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. 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 April 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.
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.
With continuing the alliance with France, after March 1936 Carol also began a policy of attempting to improve relations with Germany. 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.
In August 1936, Carol had Titulescu fired as foreign minister and in November 1936, Carol sent the renegade National Liberal politician Gheorghe I.
The new technology of making synthetic oil from lignite 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.
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.
In the summer of 1937, Carol told French diplomats if the Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, he would not allow the Red Army transit rights across Romania, but was willing to ignore the Soviets if they crossed Romanian airspace on their way to Czechoslovakia.
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 Reichs enormous demand for oil to power its increasingly large war machine was not fulfilled by the 1937 treaty.
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 not yet dead. ==The 1937 election and the Goga government== 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.
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.
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.
The All for Fatherland! party won 16% of the vote in the 1937 election, marking the highpoint of the Iron Guard's electoral success. On 28 December 1937, Carol swore in the radical anti-Semitic poet Octavian Goga of the National Christian Party-which only won 9% of the vote-as Prime Minister.
Carol quickly learned of the Goga-Codreanu pact, and used it as the justification for the self-coup he had been planning since late 1937.
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 16 October 1938.
Furthermore, many Romanian-Americans were Jews who had neither forgiven nor forgotten that it was Carol who had appointed the anti-Semitic fanatic Goga as Prime Minister in 1937.
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.
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.
Carol agreed to Goga's request to dissolve parliament for new elections on 18 January 1938.
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.
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.
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.
On 10 February 1938, Carol suspended the Constitution and seized emergency powers.
On 11 February 1938, Carol drafted a new constitution.
Under these conditions, an implausible 99.87 percent were reported as having approved the new charter. 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.
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. 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.
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 on 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. 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 16 October 1938.
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.
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.
On 24 November 1938, Carol visited Germany to meet with Hitler in order to improve German-Romanian relations.
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".
Carol believed that as long as Codreanu lived, there was a possible alternative leadership in Romania for Hitler to back, and that if this possibility was eliminated then Hitler would have no choice other than to deal with him. 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.
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".
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 Codreanu's murder "a victory for the Jews".
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. In December 1938, the National Renaissance Front was formed as the country's only legal party.
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.
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. In December 1938, the National Renaissance Front was formed as the country's only legal party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The new technology of making synthetic oil from lignite 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 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.
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".
For his part, Carol was obsessed with fears in the first half of 1939 that Hungary with German support would soon attack his kingdom.
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.
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.
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".
Weygand reported to Paris that Carol wanted Anglo-French support, but would not fight for the Allies if war came. On 11 May 1939, an Anglo-Romanian agreement was signed under which Britain committed itself to grant Romania a credit of £5 million pound sterling and promised to buy 200, 000 tons of Romanian wheat at above-market prices.
When Yugoslavia reacted negatively to the Anglo-Turkish Declaration of 12 May 1939 promising to "ensure the establishment of security in the Balkans" and threatened to pull out of the Balkan Pact, Gafencu had a summit with the Yugoslav Foreign Minister Aleksandar Cincar-Marković at 21 May 1939 at the Iron Gates to ask the Yugoslavs to stay in the Balkan Pact.
To resist Bulgarian claims on the Dubrujda, Carol also wanted better relations with Bulgaria's archenemy, Greece. In July 1939, the king had a major clash with Fritz Fabritius, the leader of Nazified German National Party which was the largest of the volksdeutsch parties and which joined the National Renaissance Front in January 1939.
The show of Romanian resolve supported by Turkey had the effect of causing the Hungarians to back off on their demands against Romania. The news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in August 1939, was received with horror by Carol.
In August 1939, Carol sought to play off both sides against each other.
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.
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.
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. ==World War II== 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.
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.
The Romanian Bridgehead remained a key escape route for thousands of Poles in the desperate days of September 1939.
It was only after 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 strongest pro-Allied voice amongst Carol's camarilla.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 mistrusted Carol-felt that Romania deserved to be punished for waiting so long to align with the Axis.
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.
Carol II (3 October 18934 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his forced abdication on 6 September 1940.
The year 1940 marked the fragmentation of Greater Romania by the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to USSR, Northern Transylvania to Hungary and Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria.
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.
French military planners envisioned the role of Romania and Yugoslavia in such a war as invading Hungary to relieve the pressure on Czechoslovakia. 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.
The new technology of making synthetic oil from lignite 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.
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.
It was only in late May 1940 when France was clearly losing the war that Carol swung decisively over to the Axis side.
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.
On 26 May 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.
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.
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.
The National Renaissance Front was reorganized as the Party of the Nation, which was described as "a single and totalitarian party under the supreme leadership of His Majesty, King Carol II." On 21 June 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany.
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 was rejected.
Carol's personality cult had by 1940 reached such extreme heights that the withdrawal without any resistance from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina revealed that Carol was a mere man after all, and so badly dented his prestige more than would have been the case if Carol had maintained a more modest image. On 28 June 1940, Sima entered the cabinet as Under-secretary of State at the Ministry of Education .
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.
On 4 July 1940, Carol sworn in a new government headed by Ion Gigurtu with Sima Minister of Arts and Culture.
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.
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 have gone to war with each other in the summer of 1940.
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.
On 11 July 1940, Carol had Antonescu freed, but kept under house arrest at the Bisțria monastery. 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.
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.
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.
At the same time, Hitler offered Carol a "guarantee" of the rest of Romania against further territorial losses, which Carol promptly accepted. ==Road to abdication== 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.
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.
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.
Additionally, the very ambitious General Antonescu who long coveted the Premiership now suddenly started to downplay his long-standing antipathy to Carol, and he suggested that he was prepared to forgive past slights and disputes. On 5 September 1940, Antonescu became Prime Minister, and Carol transferred most of his dictatorial powers to him.
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.
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 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". ==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.
As such, the majority of Romanian-Americans in the 1940s were either people who immigrated prior to 1924 or their children; in either case, Carol did not mean much to them.
He was never to see his son, King Michael, after his 1940 departure from Romania.
His remains are currently interred at the Bran Castle's Chapel. Carol Lambrino was forbidden (since 1940) from entering Romanian territory, but a Romanian court declared him a legitimate son in 2003.
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.
It was not until the summer of 1942 that Germany's first synthetic oil plants finally start operating.
The closest Carol ever got to having his Free Romania movement recognized came in 1942 when President Manuel Ávila Camacho allowed Carol to stand beside him while reviewing his troops.
From the British viewpoint, associating themselves with Carol's campaign to once again depose his own son would only complicate their dealings with King Michael. Carol and Magda Lupescu were married in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 3 June 1947, Magda calling herself Princess Elena von Hohenzollern.
In 1947 after the Communist take-over of Romania, a Romanian National Committee was set up to oppose the Communist regime.
Carol II (3 October 18934 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his forced abdication on 6 September 1940.
Michael could see no point in meeting his father who had humiliated his mother so many times via his open affairs and did not attend his funeral. ==Remains returned to Romania== Carol died in Estoril, on the Portuguese Riviera in 1953.
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.
His remains are currently interred at the Bran Castle's Chapel. Carol Lambrino was forbidden (since 1940) from entering Romanian territory, but a Romanian court declared him a legitimate son in 2003.
King Michael was represented by his daughter, Princess Margarita, and her husband, Prince Radu of Romania. In January 2018, it was announced that the remains of King Carol II will be moved to the new Archdiocesan and Royal Cathedral, along with those of Princess Helen.
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