Rumania's June-July 1941 Campaign Legitimate, According to a judge's rule

.... Responsibilities must be sought from those who for decades were not concerned with the essential problem of the country, the defense. They preferred to argue for government and elsewhere to dispel the funds for purchase of arms. And then to come as analysts do to cast all blame on Antonescu's back that he did not stop on the Dnestr river, seems to me the height of hypocrisy.
Article translated (with some errors probably) from Cristian Negrea's blog, called "Could we stop at the Dnestr?"

I see that Mr. Negrea often uses the "Hungarian threat", or "rivalry" in justifying certain historical or current political events.

Apparently, he is either not knowledgeable enough of certain historical details, or deliberately uses half thruths for his own agenda.

For example, in his detailed reasonings shown above he comfortably skips the basic fact that while Rumania was the first ally of Germany to go to war with the USSR from the very first day, without any casus belli, the Hungarians joined the war the last, and only after her territory was attacked repeatedly. Also, weak Hungarian troops (one mobile Corps) stopped in their advance in the Autumn of 1941, and did not go any deeper for well over a year.

I will not pick up again the topic of the 1918/1919 war between Rumania and Hungary, as enough has been written in other topics of this forum, and I would only repeat myself.

Enough having been said, what I've read of Mr. Negrea's reasonings I wasn't impressed. By the contrary...

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on October 16, 2011 07:27 am

Thanks Andreas!

I think the cassus belli was the occupation of Basarabia and nothern Bukovina one year earlier.

Casus belli is an actual incident that provokes war. The recovery of the lost territories was the political and (temporary) military goal for Rumania, but not a casus belli. In this particular case, there was no casus belli for Rumania starting offensive actions against the USSR.

The bombing of Kassa and the strafing of a civilian train near Raho by (presumably) Soviet warplanes on 26 June were the actual casus belli of Hungary going to war against the USSR. Indeed, following these incidents Hungary first noted a state of war between the two countries and only then the Hungarian troops crossed the borders.

Or, if Hungary went to war against Rumania in August 1940, to recover her lost territories, the 1918/1919 local war was not a casus belli. It was the political and military goal of the would-be action.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on October 16, 2011 02:20 pm

Most casus belli at that time were staged and not very credible. See for example the casus belli that triggered the Winter War. IMO the goal of reclaiming Bessarabia and N Bukovina was more reasonable for going to war rather a poorly staged casus belli.

There is currently a very interesting poll on Historia.ro, under the section "Tell us your opinion", entitled "Should have Romania had the same reaction as Finland to the 1940 Soviet ultimatum?".
Up to now, total votes - 1,658.
1. Yes, it would have been the best option - 54%;
2. No, Romania is not Finland. It was good that it retreated - 13%;
3. Yes, we would have forced the Germans to protect us - 25%;
4. I don't know - 8%.

I voted for no. 3...

~S~

Even if it is a little off-topic I express my personal opinion on this by saying that major differences between the two countries (Romania and Finland) in terms of military training of the army, the morale, the support of the country's leadership in the eyes of the population and last but not least geography and weather conditions are and should be considered in any comparative analysis!

There were many provocations and border incidents between July 1940 and June 1941, for example Soviets occupied some islands in Danube Delta by surprise. Many aviation raids against our teritory, some kind of nerve war, some time attrition war. I suppose that exery provocation of this kind could serve as casus belli.

Yeah, and then some!
The very idea of those provocation was to force some kind of response from Romania, at least until october 1940 (when the German Military Mission begun to arrive in Ro.), so that our country would be overwhelmed by the Red Army...
Of course, if you remember, we were also accused of provocations and such in the days before 26.06.1940; you know the result!

And what could Germany have done, with the vast majority of its forces thousands of kilometres away from the Romanian border?

That can't be a serious poll. Look at number 2. I think everyone agrees that Romania is not Finland, but who could think at what has has happened as a "good" thing?

As polls go, of course it's not serious! The term "good" is used as an antonymic of "bad", not necessarily as desirable... IMO...
I wonder what would be the results of such a poll in Finland now, given the fact that their resistance has prevented the Popular Republic of Finland to exist after 1940! Yes, Romania isn't wasn't, never will be Finland, but they also had a big cost to pay!

It is more about politics, but I think it is a interesting view

http://cristiannegrea.blogspot.com/2011/10...-antonescu.html