Radio România Internațional

Tag: WW II

  • The Romanian Military Navy in the Second World War

    The Romanian Military Navy in the Second World War

    “The Dolphin” was the biggest of the three submarines, also being the only one that sank a Russian cargo vessel.Sailors on “The Shark” joined the Romanian Navy’s efforts during the war and although they did not engage in direct confrontations with the enemy, they took part in espionage and deterrence missions in the Black Sea, targeting the Soviets. Built in the Galati Shipyard between 1938 and 1941, “The Shark” was almost 70 meters long, 6.5 meters wide, it had two 800 HP Diesel and two 600 HP electrical engines. The submarine had an 88 mm ship cannon, a 20mm anti-aircraft cannon, six torpedoes and was served by a crew made of 45 sailors.



    Alexandru Greceanu was an officer in the Romania Royal Navy and a member of the crew on “The Shark”. In an interview to Radio Romania’s Oral History Center in 1995, Alexandru Greceanu spoke of the missions he took part in, with the submarine. Given the characteristics of the Black Sea, which is a closed-in sea, submarines were strictly used for protection, also blocking war ships in the seaports.



    Alexandru Greceanu: ”The first mission of ‘The Shark’ submarine was a mix of warfare and training actions. It was supposed to submerge on a patrolling mission off the Anatolian Coast, in order to identify the Black Sea commercial routes, linking Russian to Turkish ports, respectively. As part of the mission, over April 21st and 22nd, 1944, at a time when the United Nations put military, psychological and political pressure on Turkey in order to secure its support in the conflict, we had to make sure Turkey did not become an ally of the United Nations. To that effect, we received a radiogram in which we were asked to take a tour of all Turkish ports, without entering them, in order to detect what the best-stocked port was, in terms of loading and unloading facilities for ships. We were assigned to place ourselves in front of that port, and if Turkey entered the war as a United Nations ally, we were supposed to intervene and block, through torpedoing, the ships in that port. It took us three days to identify it, it was the port of Sungula, through which Turkey carried out 80 to 90% of its coal traffic and export, it was the main port in a coal-mining region. We discovered 5-6 ships, we placed ourselves in front of the port, right at the entrance, sailing through a mine barrage, and we stayed there for 24 hours. After 24 hours, we received the news that Turkey refused to become a United Nations’ ally, because the UN did not provide the security of its coasts. Taking all that into account, we received a telegraphic order which changed our mission and we sailed in front of the Batumi port, to block it.”



    Besides patrolling missions, “The Shark” was designed for attack missions ready to fight back when attacked. In spite of the relatively small strategic importance of the Black Sea, the region was the theatre of a genuine psychological war.



    Alexandru Greceanu: “The second part of its first mission, off the coasts of the Caucasus, wasn’t a simple surveillance mission. The mission was actually designed to harass the Soviet submarine hunters as they had their fleet blocked in the Caucasian ports and were carrying out surveillance missions with planes and destroyers hunting for submarines in the region. And we had to change position from one port to another so that they may lose track. Moreover, the season was also unfavourable as it was almost June with long days and short nights and we had only up to five hours to resurface and fill air tanks at night. We relied on a couple of hours to do all the operations related to the environment.”



    Missions of the sailors on “The Shark” submarine grew in complexity as the enemy became stronger. Alexandru Greceanu brings us further details on the submarine’s second mission off the Soviet coasts: “The second mission took place a month later, on June 15th and came to a close on July 29th. Its main aim was to block supply convoys off the coasts of Sevastopol, which in the meantime had fallen, and we had to prevent arms and supplies from reaching Crimea. It was a difficult mission because Soviet planes and destroyers were patrolling a mile – a mile and a half from the coasts, to foil our attacks. I don’t remember if there were three days in a row, during which we were not spotted. Therefore, we had to take the submarine close to the crush depth. Planes strafed us and we got depth charges thrown at us most of the time and that eventually damaged the sweet water tanks forcing us to rationalize water for the past two weeks.”



    When the war ended, both “The Shark” and two other Romanian submarines were captured by the Red Army and used for spare parts for Soviet subs.

  • Sovietization and the Purging of the Romanian Army

    Sovietization and the Purging of the Romanian Army

    Sovietization started in Romania with the installation of the government led by Petru Groza, and the first targeted institution was the army. Under the pretext of turning the army back from Fascist leanings, the Allied Commission, under Soviet control, purged the army of tens of thousands of military personnel believed to have German sympathies. The term purge was also meant to induce guilt in the people who were kicked out.



    Mircea Carp was one of the people removed from the Romanian Royal Army. He had fought in the USSR, getting wounded and earning a decoration. He was interviewed in 1997 by the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation.



    Carp remembers the situation he was in, when he was laid off: “In 1946, before August 9, I was in the Romanian army as a sub-lieutenant. I had fought on both the eastern and the western fronts, I had been wounded and been decorated. I was doing my job at the cavalry instruction center in Sibiu. The morale among military people at the time was very low, particularly among officers and NCOs, because a year before the law-makers had passed a law for laying off a large number of active duty military people, but no one knew when this was going to happen. However, we all knew that this was going to happen on political grounds, meaning that officers and NCOs who were getting fired were going to be those who were not sympathizers of the pro-communist regime, of the Petru Groza government.



    Similarly with the great Stalinist purges of the 1930s, some of the best Romanian officers were forced out. Fascism was replaced by communism within the ranks.



    Mircea Carp again: “On August 9, 1946, they issued lists of the over 9,000 active officers who were to be dismissed. I remember that the law was issued when units of the center for cavalry training and an artillery regiment from Sibiu were up in the mountains, putting out forest wildfires. When we came back from that operation, the ordinance came one morning. I was reading the newspaper, it was called ‘Army Voice, and it listed all the names, mine included. The first purge, in fact, of a fairly large number of Romanian officers, mostly generals and colonels, had come in 1945, in August. An order issued by the Allied Commission, in fact the Soviet Control Commission, led by General Susaikov, ordered the Ministry of Defense to remove from the army about 200 Romanian generals and colonels. The official reason was that they had German sympathies. Of course, it was not that those generals and colonels had German sympathies, but that they had done their duty well on the eastern front. They were kept in the army until the war ended, because their qualities were needed on the eastern front.



    Romanian history was entering a new stage. It was also a new stage in the life of Mircea Carp and of the tens of thousands of officers and NCOs forced to live on the margins of society: “The law removed from active duty about 9,000 officers. Shortly after, more purges followed, removing a further 5,500 NCOs, on political grounds. If the purge in 1945 involved the officers that the Soviets believed had a clear anti-Soviet attitude, the 1946 purges involved the officers who did not show that they were inclined to accept the new regime. In other words, if youre not with us, you are against us. We were kept for a year under what they called an ‘availability framework, meaning that we were available to the government to be used in any capacity, whenever they needed us, for a year. During that year we got paid the regular army wages, as if we were active duty officers, and we enjoyed the same privileges as the active duty officers. However, we were not allowed to set foot into any army unit. I remember that I was in Sibiu on August 9th, I went to the barracks at 8 in the morning, and they told me I was not allowed in. The following day I was supposed to go and meet the base commander along with a number of other officers in the same situation, and we were told that we were no longer allowed to enter the base, and we were kicked out of the army. Of course, it was a very difficult departure, because the officers who had not been fired felt embarrassed that they were not fired, while their comrades, sharing their beliefs, were kicked out of the armed forces. Of course, that did not last long, in the end they were relegated to the army reserve, too.



    The Sovietization of the armed forces by purging some of its best officers and NCOs was typical of what the Soviets believed was the building of a better society. The resulting army was one whose purpose was repression of dissenters.

  • The Americans are Coming!!!

    The Americans are Coming!!!

    In the wake of WWII, Romanians hoped the Soviets would finally leave Romania and that the Americans would come to put things back on track. This was their only hope for a better future and a firm belief of the anti-communist resistance.



    Before Romania joined the coalition led by Germany, Romanian-American relations had been very good. However, Romanias decision to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941 was contrary to the spirit that had previously defined bilateral ties. Also, the American air forces bombing Romania in 1944 had to do with a certain logic of war making, a logic that would nevertheless be hard to explain at times of peace. In spite of being enemies during the war, the Romanians went easy on the American pilots whom they had captured. According to eyewitnesses, some Romanian officers recovered the bodies of the American pilots killed in battle and organized proper burials. On August 23, 1944 Romania switched sides and joined the Allied Powers, a move that was in fact a return to normalcy.



    However, what followed after the war was nothing like the Romanian society expected it to be. The Soviet troops presence in the country and the communist partys seizing political power led Romanians into firmly believing the American troops deployment in Constanta or in the Balkans was their last hope.



    “The Americans are coming! had become a slogan, as, in the late 1940s, most Romanians believed it was a matter of months until the Americans would show up.



    Nicolae Dascalu was a member of the National Peasant Party and, while a student, an active member of an anti-communist organization between 1947-1949.



    In an interview with Radio Romanias Oral History Centre back in 2000, Nicolae Dascalu said the firm belief that the American troops were about to come gave many young people the courage to defend democracy and liberty: “Everybody hoped that the Americans would come and we all counted on their help. Of course, at first there was the enthusiasm that accompanies youth and the courage of fighting a battle with the confidence that democratic values would prevail in the end. No one was expecting such a long and terrible period of time, terrible, restrictive and totally against any human aspiration.



    In 2000 Elena Florea Ioan, the sister of Toma Arnautoiu, head of one of the best organized anti-communist armed groups, confirmed that her brother went to the mountains to join the resistance in the hope that the Americans were going to come soon.



    Elena Florea Ioan: “I realized that my brother left home to join the resistance in the mountains and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I urged my mother not to let him go, but she also believed that he had to, so I could not make him change his mind. My mother was being constantly worried, knowing that my brother had to hide all the time and did not have any peace. So, she hoped that he could find some peace by going to the mountains. Both of them firmly believed that the Americans would come in a month and get rid of Russians. So, my brother and others in the resistance truly believed that they would be on the run for a very short time. They had no idea how wrong they were. The anti-communist resistance in Nucsoara was the only one in Europe that stood firm 9 years. In other places, anti-communist militants did not resist, some were captured, died or surrendered. It was only here that they resisted 9 years.



    Some people were so disappointed that the Americans failed to show up that they even left the resistance.



    Such was the case of colonel Gheorghe Arsenescu, as Elena Florea Ioan tells us: “Colonel Arsenescu left the resistance to protect his life. I dont mean to criticize him but his gesture was not a patriotic one. He was among those who thought it would not take long until the Americans would come. But once in the mountains, having to deal with the lack of food and the hardships of a life into the wild, he started to argue with the others. He said he could not bear it any more. But there were other resistance members who said they would eat tree roots and leaves if they had to, only to stay united. And they did eat leaves when they ran out of food. But Colonel Arsenescu just could not adjust to the hardships of such a life. So he put my brother Toma in charge of the organization because he could no longer bear the hunger and the cold. He realized there were slim chances for the Americans to come and he left.



    The Americans, however, even if they did not come to free Romania, tried to organize some actions meant to keep the hope alive. Such actions were the parachuting in the country of Romanians from the exile, like the group headed by captain Sabin Mare in 1953. Unfortunately, the evolution towards cohabitation of the relations between the two political and military blocs, the communist and the democratic one, led to the abandoning of any plan by the latter to save the countries occupied by the Soviets. The Americans finally came to Romania and to Central and Eastern Europe, but that happened only after 1989.