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

Yes, I received the book a couple of weeks ago from Amazon.ca.
I just flicked through it, didn't read several pages at once.

My first impression is that this book is centered around the Jewish issue in Rumania, as well as Antonescu's political action and his relationship with Hitler.

Undoubtedly, it's a well researched book, but not exactly what I've been expecting. Therefore, I don't recommend it to those who are looking for a military history book.

Gen. Dénes

BTW, there isn't a single photo in it (except for the cover shot), and only a single map of wartime Rumania is included.

This post has been edited by Dénes on July 01, 2006 02:44 pm

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Per request of Gen. Denes, here is (verbatim) the review which appears in this week's The Times Literary Literary Supplement
Jan. 26, 2007. p.32.

www.the-tls.co.uk

Hitler’s Forgotten Ally
Ion Antonescu and his regime, Romania
1940-1944

322pp. Palgrave Macmillan L55
978 1 403 99341 0

Hitler’s Forgotten Ally is a well-researched and judicious biography of the Romanian wartime leader Ion Antonescu. This is no small feat. Antonescu’s legacy is doubly clouded: first, by the limited historiography produced during the Communist period, which relied to a large degree on the proceedings of Antonescu’s rigged trial in 1945; and second, by the open nostalgia which has surrounded him ever since, and not only among Romania’s most extreme nationalists.

Dennis Deletant reveals Antonescu in all his complexity: aRomanian soldier committed to the ideals of military culture; a patriot galvanized by the Soviet seizure of Romanian territory in 1940; a natural anti-Semite who translated his antipathies into policies of mass killing; and a fascist whose enthusiasm for Nazi war aims was also tempered by his own sense of loyalty to the Romanian nation. During his rule, between 250,000 and 290,000 Jews, along with up to 20,000 Gypsises were killed, while perhaps another 375,000 were saved from deportation to Polish death camps. Deletant’s critical reading of the existing historical literature and his familiarity with the ongoing political debates about Antonescu’s memory have allowed him to write a book which proceeds both honestly and morally.

Much of Deletant’s book is based on new material collected from the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum has maintained an extensive programme of microfilming documents related to the Holocaust from Central and Eastern European national and regional archives- a monumental effort which has preserved the past from the ravages of mould, damp, and the excising impulses of local archivists. To these have been added documents from the Romanian and British archives, all of which help round out a picture of Antonescu and the politics of his time. In clear prose and with ample quotations from the original sources, Deletant paints a rich portrait of this often forgotten dictator who is still, more than half a century after this (sic) death, the object of political controversy.

Charles King