At Last, Chaos

In their sod huts a century from now, ancient Rumanian peasants will speak tragically of the things their fathers told them of the frightful year 1940. First there had been the war between the peoples of the West, each striving to pull Rumania into the struggle on its side. Then the Teutons and the Slavs had all but stripped Rumania down to its small ancient provinces, despoiling it of its gains from the older war. The King fled for his life and the Teuton people came to occupy what was left of the country. Then the earth itself writhed and trembled. And in the terrible last week of the eleventh month of that terrible year, Rumanian turned on Rumanian and the land sank into civil war, anarchy and chaos.

Into the bleak courtyard of the gloomy Jihlava fortress prison last week broke armed legionnaires of the green-shirted, Fascist, anti-Semitic Iron Guard. From the prison cells they dragged 64 Carolists, lined them up in front of a long trench from whose top they had just ripped a concrete slab. In the frosty dawn they opened fire, watched the bodies crumple to earth.

Theirs was a mission of revenge. From the trench they had removed the bodies of Iron Guard Founder Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and 13 other Guardists, executed on the same spot just three days less than two years before. His body eaten by acid, Codreanu was identified by the three crosses he had worn around his neck, a wedding ring and a small ikon.

As the names of the victims leaked out, the impact of the purge rocked Bucharest to its rotting foundations. Murdered along with the police who had carried out the Iron Guard execution two years before were onetime Iron-Guard-purging Premier General George Argeseanu; General Gabriel Marinescu, onetime Bucharest police chief and watchdog over King Carol's redheaded paramour Magda Lupescu; Victor Ismandi, Minister of Justice when Codreanu was sentenced to prison.

Sour-faced Premier General Ion ('"Red Dog") Antonescu and Vice Premier and Iron Guard Leader Horia Sima spoke of "severe measures" to punish the extremist Green Shirts, but their words were scarcely in print when blood lust rushed through the whole disaster-sickened country. Onetime Premier Professor Nicolas lorga, tutor of King Carol and eminent historian, "the teacher of the nation," was found dead on the outskirts of the oil fields near his country home at Valeni-de-Munte. George Bratianu, scion of the dynasty which secured Rumania its independence, kept it going through World War I, was reported assassinated. Even Red Dog Antonescu was warned to stay quiet or he would be killed. But he was bold enough to put under protective arrest onetime Premiers George Tatarescu, Constantin Argetoianu and Ion Gigurtu, who acquiesced to the cession of northern Transylvania last summer (TIME, Sept. 9).

Though both Rumanian and German troops promptly occupied key buildings in Bucharest, murder followed murder as the hours sped by. Twenty Carolists were killed in the Ploesti oil fields. There the riots quickly turned from politics to racial hysteria, and 2,000 Jews were said to have perished. More were killed in Galati, where Iron Guardists stormed and slaughtered through the Jewish quarter.

The authority of Antonescu broke down completely. The avenging assassins of Jihlava, instead of suffering "severe measures," walked boldly into the ancient Greek Orthodox Church of Ilie Gorgani in Bucharest, through the floodlit, green-draped entrance, past the urns of burning incense on the stone stairway. Before the altar, where 26 uniformed Iron Guard youths stood at attention, they knelt, joined the solemn prayers of the priests over the candlelit caskets of Codreanu and his "martyred" followers.

Outside the capital, civil war came next. At Craiova and Turnu-Severin, Army and Iron Guard battalions battled in the streets in open warfare. At Brasov the Iron Guard captured the telephone exchange and post office, was routed in bloody counter-attacks by the Army. From Bulgaria came word of artillery fire in the Rumanian Danube port of Giurgiu.

Through communications which were completely closed down, then reopened, reports flew out of Rumania like volleys of bloody popcorn. Queen Mother Helen was reported to have fled the country, King Mihai I was variously reported with his mother, at the outskirts of Bucharest, conferring with German Army leaders in his palace. Vice Premier Sima was reported on a trouble-shooting junket all over the country.

Then stories buzzed out of Bucharest that revolution had leaped over Rumania's new eastern frontier, was drenching the former Rumanian province of Bessarabia in blood. But Moscow snapped communication across the frontier, plunged Bessarabia into silence.

As more German troops rolled into Rumania this week, there were rumors that the Chief of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, himself, was on the way. But Premier Antonescu had already made a last, desperate effort to unite his country behind a common cause. In the snow-swept town of Alba Iulia, in what was left of Rumanian Transylvania, he brought stirring news to 100,000 cheering Guardists, soldiers and civilians. "I went to Berlin and Rome for Transylvanians," said Premier Antonescu, then quoted the Fuehrer's answer: "On your shoulders rests the duty to repair and correct any injustice Rumania suffered."

By adopting the program of Peasant Party Leader Juliu Maniu, Antonescu had stolen the thunder from his most popular opponent, had picked up the most popular issue in the country. If that failed to stop the Guard, Germany was ready to take over through a new and weaker puppet. Through the streets of Bucharest rode King Mihai I, a lone Rumanian significantly bringing up the rear of a Nazi motorized division.

This was the inevitable end of a country rotten with intrigue and corruption, honeycombed with foreign agents, torn by clashing internal factions, with all its fell forces suddenly let loose. Premier Antonescu must have remembered his words of a fortnight ago, as he optimistically left to sign with the Axis in Berlin: "I leave with complete confidence in the Rumanian people, I shall return with complete confidence in the German people."

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