My thoughts

I wanted to read this book because of all the nationalistic movements that have appeared throughout Europe in the past few years and especially in Romania, where I live.

People tend to forget the darker parts of our history quite easily. And maybe they shouldn’t, because forgetting paves the way for those things to come back in a different form, with just a few changes to be re-branded as something new.

Roland Clark gives us a lot of details about the Legionary movement in Romania from the early 1920s until the 1940s. This movement was Romania’s interpretation of fascism, sprinkled with elements that were inspired by the German National Socialism, mysticism and Orthodox tradition. That was one thing that made it stand out.

It started with some young students who felt the Jewish people had easier access to study medicine compared to Romanians and that the percentage of Jewish people studying medicine was far greater than the percentage of Jewish people in the Romanian population. They wanted to implement “numerus clausus”¹ which was a way of discrimination against all other ethnicities present in Romania.

Soon enough, one student became the leader of what was set to be the Legionary movement, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu - which was not entirely out of luck. He was the son of a nationalist politician and a very good friend of A.C. Cuza who was a university teacher and part of another nationalistic movement at the time - “Garda Conștiinței Naționale”.

As more protests broke out in the country, in 1922 C.Z. Codreanu went to Germany to meet with the antisemitic movement that started there. Of course, he came back with svastikas for everyone and started using the symbol as part of the Legion visuals.

They started implementing youth camps, adopted uniforms for their unofficial ranks within the movement, a more “official” structure was built with regional offices (“cuiburi”) that were in charge of spreading the movement’s ideology and collecting donations to support it.

They sang songs as they marched through villages, where they stopped to “help” people in need - but only as what today would be a PR stunt. Rarely did they actually help with anything. They showed up, made a lot of fuss giving the impression that action was taking place. All they wanted was to build a good reputation - a party that would restore Romanians’ they’re lost or stolen dignity.

This, combined with the Orthodox traditional elements and propaganda directed at the rural area, made the movement gain a lot of followers. There were a number of newspapers spreading only the Iron Guard/Garda de Fier² message, targeting the rural areas and ensuring that they were the only source of information.

And it worked. With a lot of tension between the King and the Parliament, the Iron Guard managed to be one of the bigger parties (15.8%) and get to be part of the ruling side.

I want to keep this short, but it’s difficult, there is so much that I just don’t want to leave out. I’ll just list some of the horrific actions in which the movement was involved:

• A number of murders happened in broad daylight during the early stages, including Codreanu murdering Constantin Manciu, a police prefect, right outside the courthouse. ³
• In 1933 they assassinated the Prime Minister Ion G. Duca⁴
• In 1939 they assassinated the Prime Minister Armand Călinescu⁵
• In 1940 the Jilava massacre⁶
• The 1941 rebellion and pogrom⁷

There is nothing good that came out of this. This local fascism combined with mysticism and a Romanian-Orthodox message made the movement appealing to nationalists, quickly becoming ultranationalism.

A lot more people should read about this today, to get an idea of the horrors and lack of vision that came with this movement.

Another very good book that covers this period of time is Anii treizeci by Zigu Ornea.