Post-WW2 Fate of Field Grade Officers, Was it the same as the Generals?

One common feature in the biographies of the Romanian generals on this site is their fate after the war. Most of them ended up in prison under the communist regime, and either served lengthy sentences or died there (sometimes with a trial, sometimes without). The other sources I am acquainted with agree with this.

My question is, what happened to the field grade officers (majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels). Did they face trials as "war criminals", "enemies of the state" and so on? Harassment? Denials of their pensions, etc.? It seems (to an outsider) that they would have faced the same suspicions as the more senior officers, as a potential source of resistance to the new order. I understand that it may be difficult to generalize (no pun intended)... some may have had a worse time than others.

Apologies in advance if this topic was already discussed. I tried the search engine and did not turn anything up.

Thanks in advance for any insights.

It would take a whole book or even several of them in order to document properly the repressive measures taken by communists against such "problematic" people - officers of the Royal Romanian Army and veterans of the Eastern Front - and not only from the rank of major upwards, but captains (I have examples in my own family) and sometimes even lower ranks too.

Amongst common punitive measures taken against former veteran officers (and not only career officers but conscripted reservists also!) of the Eastern Front were, randomly, one or all of the following: imprisonment on various legal grounds often supplemented by torture and "reeducation", denial of their right to practice their civilian life professions (not only denial of public service jobs) for them and their close relatives, confiscation of their homes, lands, cars and generally their entire property (sometimes they were later allowed to live on rent in a part of their own house), denial of the right to education for them and their close relatives etc.

These policies were sistematically enforced well into the 1960s; subsequently having been, or being closely related to, such a veteran, was a black mark in one's personal file at the Securitate, with a large amount of various side-effects.

And note that I wasn't talking the veterans accused of war crimes, which were not few!

This post has been edited by valachus on March 01, 2005 04:30 pm

Jeff,

The stalinist/communist regime in Romania aimed not only the military elite but all elites even from the "working class".

About your question, I will answer with a personal example:

My grand-uncle (related to my grandmother) was infantry Major Moisescu, recipient of Mihai Viteazu (Michael the Brave) Order, the highest Romanian decoration of war, for his bravery on the WESTERN FRONT. After the war he was a political prisoner for years.

My grandfather's brother, Of.ech. Chifulescu Virgil Florea was a highly decorated bomber pilot on the EASTERN FRONT. after the war he was arested for "omission of denunciation" Apparently he knew something about the heads of National Peasants Party who were preparing to run away from Romania by plane and did not tell to the authorities. (again)
Anyway, he was detained several years without a process then he finaly got officialy sued and remained imprisoned for several more years.


In Romania it was published a dictionary of the victims of communism. Only the letter C volume (tom) has 292 pages of names. I found there Chifulescu (even if the first name is wrong in the book Stelian instead of Virgil Florea).
It is available online too, but it is only in romanian so far.

It can be accessed to this link:
http://www.procesulcomunismului.com/martur...default.asp.htm


At the same link you will find other books written by Mr. Cicerone Ioanitiu, the author of the dictionary. Among them there is a book in French for foreigners who do not know Romanian (and do speack French )

The direct link to this e-book in French is:

http://www.procesulcomunismului.com/martur...default.asp.htm


Cheers,

Barbosu

PS. I will return on this topic and hope many of us will do to honour our braves victimes of the communism.

Valachus and Barbosu,

Thanks to you both for your answers, and examples from your own family histories. I'm sad to say that I am not surprised. Anyone with links to the "old order" and evidence of leadership potential would be suspect. The value of punishing whole families is less clear, but I know it happened.

Do you think the small size of your communist party made things worse? (Small in 1945 that is). It's not like they could point to many years of representing at least portions of the working class (compared to the German communist party, for example). It was obviously imposed at gunpoint.

Jeff

The small size of the PCR? Hmmm that's a theory that's relatively popular nowadays (especially with the "communists were mostly non-Romanian and especially Jews" corolary), but I don't subscribe to it.

The reason for the unbelievably brutal crackdown (to my knowledge, Romania's communists were the harshest in E Europe, short of the Soviet stalinists, of course) of any "potential" regime opponent is the markedly rural and largely ineducated Romanian society, which allowed for unheard-of abuses and brutalities.

I would add to that the lack of large universitary centres in Romania, the efficient quashing of the existing free press, the purges in the Justice system, and a great mix of "stick and carrot" and "divide and conquer" policies by communist leaders: they combined cracking down on their urban opponents with favors towards the rural population (jailing political opponents in the cities while distributing their nationalized lands to the peasants in the late 1940s and 1950s), and viceversa (taking the previously distributed land from the peasants while building subsidized housing in the cities, during the 1960s).

Frankly I consider 1950-1970s PCR to be one of the best managed communist parties in the world, ever: they often took machiavellic, faultless political moves - by cause of both local circumstances, and the stalinist experience for political opression that its leaders had acquired while in Moscow or directly from stalinist soviet advisors.

And the PCR didn't change, later, the way other communist parties changed in E Europe, because THE PRESENCE OF SOVIET TROOPS AND ADVISORS THERE forced the others to change in sync with the USSR up to the 1980s Glasnost and Perestroika ! Fantastic paradox IMHO!

Regards,

valachus

Now, now... I did not make the "non-Romanian and especially Jews" argument, but I have heard it. I just don't know enough of the facts to comment one way or another.

I've always found it odd that the harshest communist regimes seem to be in less-industrialized countries (Romania, Soviet Union (to some extent), China, North Korea today). Marx was always talking about the urban proletariat rising up, but that's not how it worked out historically.

Didn't this last include forcing peasants off of their land and into apartment blocks in town? This hardly seems likely to win support from the peasants or the townspeople.

I see your point, and to some extent, I agree. Certainly Romanian communism followed a strange nationalist path. But I would give more credit to some of the attempts in other East European countries to get away from socialism or give it more of "human face". Czechoslovakia 68 happened in spite of Soviet troops, not because of them. But about the late 80s - Perestroika period, I agree completely. If I was an E. Europe communist boss at that time, I would have been worried too. The Fat Lady was about to sing!

I think it's because it's easier to inculcate a more definitive "class hatred" and de-humanize the political (potential) opponents (the kulaks, the romanian "chiaburi", the intellectuals) if your opression agents and the masses have a very rudimentary educational and cultural background - as was the case in Russia, in Romania, in China or Cambodgia. Hate ideology works best with the knuckle-draggers and especially with the have-nots (And the tortionaries were generally ex-have-nots knuckle-draggers).

And, while Marx was very useful for communist regimes in that it provided a useful theory and fine promise for the end results of communism (the workers' paradise on earth heh), communists soon found out that the use of force is a way to shorten the time to that (as it turned out, in fact, it was the only way to enforce their ideas).

No, on one hand moving from the countryside to towns was a quantum leap for the lucky ones, in quality of life (running water, electricity.... mmmm luxury stuff there), and it was done only as the needs of the socialist industry asked for it (communists didn't want unemployed people just idling around in towns).
On the other hand, what you're thinking about was a measure of utter dementia decreed by Ceausescu in the late 80s, when he and his party were losing it (confounding the means with the goals) and decided to turn villages into urban environment... by demolishing the villagers' houses and moving them into crap, crammed blocks of flats of net inferior quality to those in towns!

True However a) the czechoslovaks had a long tradition of dissent towards their sovereigns, b ) the presence of the Soviets in Czechoslovakia - and in Hungary too, in 1956 - was a marker, a very public and obvious indication of the forced installment of communism there, and also a cathalyst for the anti-communist feelings, and c) the Warsaw Pact crackdown on the Prague Spring was the best argument against reforms in the Romanian Communist Party - "see what reforms can bring you, aside from anarchy, drugged degenerates and prostitution, we wouldn't want them soviets again in Romania, wouldn't we, Romanian workers?!"

This post has been edited by valachus on March 06, 2005 11:51 am

An uncle of mine(I already wrote about him)-Nistorescu MIrcea ,who was an army observer at the French campain,was expelled from the army.
He began studiing law,but after the 4-th year,his exams were anulated and he had to start the university from the begining...

I agree. Also, it is easier to whip up hatred for someone the masses can see every day. The industrialist, you take his factory and his mansion and he is gone. He did not live near the proletarian worker anyway. But the kulak, the poor peasant can see his nice farm every day.

Yes, this is what I was talking about... not making peasants into industrial workers. They remain peasants, just living in crappy apartment blocks with animals in the yard. It sounds horrible...give me my own cottage any day!

I had not thought of that, but it does make sense. And the early 70s is when Romanian communism took a turn towards the bizarre.

Here is the story of my grandfather, Aurel Badescu, and his family. Their father, who was a tax collector in the village, died in 1916 on the front. They were 12 children, of who 2 died early. Because of the family's situation, five of the boys followed the military career (which offered good scholarships for those who studied well), one became a priest, another a schoolteacher and the rest were girls.

My grandfather finished the Manastirea Dealu Military Highschool in Targoviste (probably the most famous military highschool of the era) in 1930, with honors. He then went to Artillery Officer School in Timisoara and was the first in the class of 1932. Because of this he was selected and sent between 1933-35 to the Ecole Superieure d'Artillerie at Fontainbleau, which he again finished among the first.

During the war he served in the 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment in Bessarabia and at Odessa and, after graduating from the Military Academy in 1942, he was assigned to the General Staff. During 1945 he also served in the staff of the 2nd Corps on the front in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

After the war he was reassigned to a desk job in the Ministry of the Defense between 1946-47. In September 1947 he was retired. He had already in the meantime went to the Academy of Economical Science and had an economist license, so he got a job at an agricultural farm.

In April 1948 he was recalled to active duty and assigned to the Army's Training Center and then at the Planification Section of MoD. In 1949 he became a professor at the Military Academy and he remained there until 1956. Between 1956-58 he was a professor at the military section of the Gas and Petroleum Institute. He retired from the army with the rank of colonel.

Between 1958-63 he worked as an engineer in a medical instruments factory and then worked for the Electrical Engineering Design and Research Institute. He had in the meantime graduated from the Electrical Engineering Faculty and was a dipl. engineer.

He retired in the 70s and passed away in 1983.

His brothers had somewhat similar fates. For example, the youngest, Victor Badescu, was a naval officer (also graduated from the military school among the first). During the war he served as an observer in the Seaplane Flotilla. After the war he was thrown out of the army. He was even arrested and imprisoned for a short while, but he wasn't put on trial and was released. His naval officer diploma helped him become a topographer in the civilian life. He passed away in 1993, IIRC.

The schoolteacher, Alexandru Badescu, had more problems. He served during the war as CO of a police company. After the war he was arrested for being a PNT (National Peasents' Party) member and spent some time in jail. He then had problems all his life, being under surveillance or harassed with his pension etc.

You should also go through the detailed pilot biographies here: http://www.worldwar2.ro/arr/pilots.htm

My grandfather had a little agricultural field as property, like other 6 million Romanians in that period. Because he refused to give it to the new "Agricultural Cooperation Production Unit" (a strange name for people from other continents, but how painful for so many Romanians), he was fired from the Army in 1947.

He was close to be arrested few times and very clearly threatened with arrest. Fortunately, he was not a "big catch": neither a high rank in the Army, neither a member of one of the political parties. So after he wrote a declaration in 1949 that the gives away his land to the "Agricultural Cooperation Production Unit", his harassment was not as bad as before.
My mother was labeled as "daughter of land owner" by the new Communist regime, and she had her own share of harassment and bitterness.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 08, 2005 02:40 am