Iron Guard massacres former Romanian government
Two months after General Ion Antonescu seized power in Romania and forced King Carol II to abdicate Antonescus Iron Guard arrests and executes more than 60 aides of the exiled king including Nicolae Iorga a former minister and acclaimed historian.The extreme right-wing movement known as the Iron Guard was founded by Corneliu Codreanu in the 1920s imitating Germanys Nazi Party in both ideology and methods.In 1938 King Carol II managed to establish a stronger dictatorship in Romania and took steps to suppress the activities of the Iron Guard as well as its left-wing antithesis the Romanian Communist Party.However the control fell into violent turmoil after the Munich Pact of 1939 was signed seen as an abandonment of Romania by its Western allies from World War I followed by a Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact in 1939 which ceded portions of Romania to the USSR.General Ion Antonescu emerged from the chaos victorious and established a dictatorship with Nazi leader Adolf Hitlers approval killing exiling or imprisoning most of his former political opposition.
Nevertheless Romanian resistance to the Iron Guard and Nazi occupation persisted during the war and in August 1944 a massive revolt toppled Antonescus government in the Romanian capital of Bucharest allowing the Soviet liberators to capture the city without firing a shot.In 1945 Romanian communists came to power with the backing of the Soviet Union.
