Marshal Ion Antonescu

[Florin]

Dragos,

I decided to delete the post where I mentioned some half funny, half serious things from my childhood: 10...12 years old. Under "The thread of stupid questions" it would be OK to show it, but I cannot let it under a topic about Marshal Ion Antonescu.

PS: The way you behave sometimes, Alexandru, as young man soon to take a graduate degree, made me remembering my days as 10...12 years old.

[dragos]

Let's get back to the topic

[dragos]

Unfortunatelly I don't have the source any more, but I have read that in the summer 1942 there were plans that Antonescu would be appointed commander of the group of German-Romanian forces concentrated in the Don area (where Army Group B was acting), the new army group having to be named Army Group Antonescu. Does anyone has more info on this?

[Alexandru H.]

QUOTE

Dragos,   I decided to delete the post where I mentioned some half funny, half serious things from my childhood: 10...12 years old. Under \"The thread of stupid questions\" it would be OK to show it, but I cannot let it under a topic about Marshal Ion Antonescu.   PS: The way you behave sometimes , Alexandru, as young man soon to take a graduate degree, made me remembering my days as 10...12 years old.

I am not a slave of prejudice. I love people for what they are and deeply hate them for the way they develop. I shall always keep a cheerful face, even in the face of disasters, I won't run from my troubles and I shall always ignore advice from people older than me. I love my age because it's the age of discovery, of radicalism, of revolutionary thought, of hormons, of insanity, of energy. This is my last smile, before entering that cruel age, in which you follow somebody else's dreams, in which you become content with the world. In which you are nothing more than a rotting corpse. Don't steal this away from me, by pretending that it's not proper. I wouldn't give a damn about anyone's standards.

Don't try to reason with me, Florin. It's useless. I have given up these lies a long time ago because I discovered that they were meaningless to my own existence. My 25,000 days on this world will be over soon and I have no intention of trying to behave after a screwed and moronic standard. As far as I am concerned, everyone else is a big ZERO, who don't have neither valuable opinions nor true existences. They are only puny shadows, evaporating little by little as time goes by. All their political conflicts, life-changing experiences, ideas or creations are nothing but repeating patterns on my retina.

Ok, to get back to the topic. Ion Antonescu, who doesn't even deserve the "Marshal" title, was one of the many disasters that struck our country in the previous century. In my opinion, he deserves a rightful place among his hated enemies, the communists. I don't want to live in a city that houses one of his statues and I don't want to take longer routes to my destination just to avoid looking at his face. I'm sorry that Indrid never had the guts to write everything his grandfather told him about the war. And I'm also sorry certain passages were cut off (because of their cruelty). I agree, they were cruel, but then, so is the war that is depicted in the veteran stories. If we choose to omit, well, I don't see why veterans would even talk to us about their experiences. Read the famous Eugen Ionesco letter from 1946 concerning the fate of his famous generation (Cioran, Eliade, Noica, Sebastian, Vulcanescu) and try to envision Romania of 1950, inhabited by people like them as leaders, and not as fugitives and lost cases. What the nationalism did in the 30s and 40s is this...what I see around me (or, in your case, Florin, what you once saw).

For the poverty, for the human tragedy, for the ecological trash can, for everything bad in this country, I blame Codreanu and his generation, Antonescu and his generation, Dej and his generation, Ceausescu and his generation and the post-1990 generation, for all the great mistakes that costed us, and our children, so dearly. This is not about compromise, this is not about reform, this is not about NATO or UE, this is about their legacy. This is what my small battle is all about: their demise from every historical record, their passing in a world of forgetfulness, from which they may never return. Amen.

[dragos]

QUOTE

Ok, to get back to the topic. Ion Antonescu, who doesn't even deserve the \"Marshal\" title, was one of the many disasters that struck our country in the previous century. In my opinion, he deserves a rightful place among his hated enemies, the communists. I don't want to live in a city that houses one of his statues and I don't want to take longer routes to my destination just to avoid looking at his face...

I beg to reconsider your attitude. Especially when your consideration is not even a personal experience. Your philosophic dissertation has nothing to do with the reality of that era.

[Alexandru H.]

Well, I don't agree with the fact that this is only a personal opinion. It cannot be changed by reason or proofs, so it's more like a personal belief. Who says that Antonescu deserves my sympathy? I am not interested in what he has to say in the same way he was not interested in his own people, choosing to keep an unprofitable german alliance to the bitter end. Antonescu needed a real woman, but got a war. Unfortunately....

This forum tries to reconciliate opposites: it deals with WW2 technically (one of the greatest and most interesting events of our history) and ethically (from whatever point you are looking at, war is just a pretty word for the sin called murder). I am trying to do the same: taking into account reason and dismissing it when I'm referring to Antonescu; loving the german army as much as I hate it for its human indiference and intolerance.

It may be a personal crusade, but I don't like Antonescu. May I be burned in Hell for this!

[dragos]

Alexandru, your approach is commendable, but your phrase: "I am not interested in what he has to say in the same way he was not interested in his own people, choosing to keep an unprofitable german alliance to the bitter end." shows lack of reading history and understanding the historical context.

[Alexandru H.]

QUOTE

Alexandru, your approach is commendable, but your phrase: \"I am not interested in what he has to say in the same way he was not interested in his own people, choosing to keep an unprofitable german alliance to the bitter end.\" shows lack of reading history and understanding the historical context.

There are many books that tell the same story. I happen to think that all deal with the same non-sense, but I have also decided to accept only one version: the one in which Antonescu is :mad: . I accept the need for the german alliance (I'm a german anyway); I'm just questioning his ethical stand after 1943, when it was certain that Germany was losing the war. He kept playing that old "military honour" record over and over again. Don't get me wrong, Maniu and the other politicians, who left him in 1940 only to condemn him in 1944, are as guilty as he is, but they are politicians and stupidity is a main asset. He wasn't like them, he was a great person, with a big role in the IstWW. What happened? He lost something on his way to the big encampament in the sky; maybe he lost part of his human emotions, maybe he lost something we romanians call "bun simt". He embarked on mad crusades with a country used to win territories as easily as they are lost.

I don't hate Antonescu as a person. In fact, I feel bad for him. Maybe he would have kept a "martyr" image in our history if he wouldn't have trashed his beliefs in an idiotic alliance which ultimately brought us this... Is really Churchill guilty for Yalta? Why didn't the ottomans annex us in all those centuries? Because then, unlike the 1940-1944 period, we had managed to keep a low profile, uninteresting for any first or second rate power. What Carol II brought from his European trip was Arrogance. And we paid for it...And we'll pay until the last of our days

[dragos]

Alexandru, I will debate no more with you on this. Instead, I recommend to see the movie "Nixon" by Oliver Stone (in case you didn't see it yet). It will answer many question regarding war and politics.

[Alexandru H.]

That means I won? (Florin will surely have something to say about this )

[rcristi]

QUOTE

He kept playing that old \"military honour\" record over and over again.

Yeah, "honor", a thing quite unknown to us romanians...

[Alexandru H.]

QUOTE

Yeah, \"honor\", a thing quite unknown to us romanians...

And I'm damn proud of my ancestors who proved that "honour" is not the survivalist's best asset...

[Indrid]

yeah, sure....continuing this line of thought let`s all applude the bugs and the germs because they will outlive men... :roll:

[Alexandru H.]

QUOTE

Instead, I recommend to see the movie \"Nixon\" by Oliver Stone (in case you didn't see it yet). It will answer many question regarding war and politics.

Seen it...Not impressed one bit about it. I prefer reading serious books about war and politics than learning from mediocre Hollywood flicks. We are forced to this because our faculty demands it, you know...

In fact, I don't even have questions about these two subjects. I just want to put into practice what I have learned so far from my hate towards these things...

Indrid, like always, fails to understand what I am aiming for and makes bad jokes. If I would be a nasty person, I would have replied, in the spirit of his "excellent observation", that the term "honour" is taken from the discipline of ethics, appropriate only for the human kind, not for any insect that may outlive us.

[mg 42]

QUOTE

QUOTE He was ultimately a dictator acting in support of the fascists regimes of Europe ? He was a dictator acting in the interest of Romania.

that's the excuse of all dictators : acting in the name of the country. funny how no dictator is honest enough to admit he is a power hungry, greedy egomaniac.