Hitler's forgotten ally: Ion Antonescu, by Dennis Deletant

They are closely related.

Dr. Deletant seems to get all over the place. Is it definitely the same person and not his son or something?
I have been learning Romanian from one of his books.

There is another British academic called Dr or, I think Professor now, Gallagher. I think I read that he teaches somewhere in London, but he started out as an expert on Portugal, because I have one of his books and a few of his articles on the Portuguese dictatorship.

I find that since I studied Portuguese at university I became interested in Romanian as well, I wonder if there is some pattern or reason for this...

That they are both interesting romance languages?

That I always met Romanians in Portugal on the bus?

Saudadesdefrancesinhas,

Professor Gallagher is the author of "Portugal: a Twentieth Century Interpretation". While originally published in 1983, this book is still a good introduction to Portuguese XX century studies.

More recently, he became interested in Balkan and specifically Romanian history, writing large books at an incredibly speedy pace:
"Romania after Ceausescu", Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1995.
"Outcast Europe: the Balkans, 1789 - 1989, from the Ottomans to Milosevic", Routledge, London, 2001.
"The Balkans after the Cold War: from tyranny to tragedy", Routledge, London, 2003.
"The Balkans in the New Millennium: in the shadow of war and peace", Routledge, London, 2005.
"Modern Romania: the end of Communism, the failure of democratic reform and the theft of a nation", NY University Press, New York, 2005. (there is another edition, with a slightly modified title)

Amazingly, between all this Thomas Gallagher also found the time needed to write about recent Scotish history, having produced several books on the subject!...

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on May 07, 2006 10:58 am

Is this the same Tom Gallagher who writes guest articles for "România Liberă"?

I am sure he got appointed to a Balkan Studies teaching post at a university, that might account for all the Balkan books.
But there seems a big gap in his career, from Portuguese stuff in the 1980s to the modern Balkan stuff, perhaps he spent all that time reading about Romanian history and drafting the books?
The 1983 book is the one I have read.

Thinking about these things, I wish the academics who taught me Portuguese History had read Professor Gallagher's books, we got some rather ropey and superficial lectures, based I think on that little David Birmingham book, a Concise History of Portugal.
For Modern Portuguese history, especially the Estado Novo, I think Fernando Rosas is my favourite.

Am I sure? Certainly not, it's pure speculation.

I hope for a more reasonably priced printing too, but I wouldn't bet on it. Just thinking back to when I was using lots of obscure titles in my thesis research, many of them only appeared in 1 hard cover printing, and at a ridiculous price. Thank God for inter-library loan.

Hi Denes,

This book doesn't look much like "Third Axis, Fourth Ally". It seems likely to provoke quite a lot of controversy in Romania. I have found the following about it on the net:



A new book on a little-known chapter of Romanian history by Professor Dennis Deletant, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, has been published. ‘Hitler's Forgotten Ally. Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940–1944’ looks at the role of the totalitarian regime in Romania during the Second World War. Romania was an important ally of Nazi Germany in military terms, in terms of providing natural resources to Germany, and most disturbingly, in its contribution to German policies towards Jews and other minorities.

This part of Romanian history is not widely recognised among historians outside Eastern Europe, because no biography of Antonescu exists in a major European language. Professor Deletant wrote the book to provide detailed information on events during the war, a period about which knowledge has been patchy until now.

Professor Deletant was awarded a nine-month William Rosenzweig Family Fellowship to conduct research in the archives of the Advanced Center for Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The archives contain microfilmed copies of documents generated by the authorities in Romania and Romanian-occupied Transnistria, now part of Ukraine, during the Second World War. Professor Deletant is one of only a handful of historians to have been granted access to these records.

He said: “Before I embarked upon this project I viewed Antonescu and his regime with a measure of cold detachment. Yet the intimacy of contact with the documents left an indelible mark upon me. It was, I hope, not a mark that led me to abandon impartial analysis. Exposure in the Washington archives to the details of the atrocities perpetrated by the Romanian authorities against Jews and Romas (Gypsies) alerted me to the criminality of the Antonescu regime.”

‘Hitler's Forgotten Ally. Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940–1944’ is published by Palgrave MacMillan.



Cheers,

Sid.

Well, based on the short review, it's not the book I was actually looking for. I am more interested in the military history than in the political one, including the Holocaust.

Anyhow, the book is already ordered...

Gen. Dénes

Dr. Deletant published an article in Magazin istoric recently about the same subject. Probably it was an abstract of the book.

The price is most likely to go down in time. In about one year time, one will be able to buy the same book second hand on Amazon for half that price.

By the way, Mr. Deletant's knowledge or Romanian is flawless (no discernable accent) - I heard him many times on BBC world service.

Radu

I think Deletant is quite an unusual name, is it Romanian at all? Perhaps Dr. Deletant has a Romanian parent, his wife is Romanian I think.

Professor Deletant is also the author of "Communist terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965". This book was published in 1999 by St. Martin's Press.

Ruy

I was just informed by Amazon.ca that the book has been shipped.
[Hitler's Forgotten Ally, CDN$ 67.29]

Gen. Dénes

Do you have received the book Denes ?!
How do you find it ?!
Make us please a "short preview" !

Thanks,
Cristian

Very strange, on amazon.com the book is not yet available ....

Availability: This title will be released on August 3, 2006. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.