Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not an expert of the history of Romania and possibly I misunderstand a lot of details but external pressure doesn't really explain the Iron Guard/Mișcarea Legionară.

The Iron Guard as I understand it was an entirely homegrown and popular fascist movement in Romania which in the early days of WW2 was brought into government but then quashed by the assassination of its leadership and broken up through use of extra-judicial arrests by the Romanian government.

Romania seems to have brutally managed to avoid crossing that "very thick line" but the Iron Guard had a lot of support and could have taken over.

The line is actually razor thin as can be seen repeatedly in countries worldwide (I lived under a military dictatorship in Latin America in the 1970s and almost lost my father to a shakedown by soldiers on a roadside).

Sadly the populace can and will support totalitarianism given the right circumstances.

There was support for the Iron Guard, don't get me wrong. But it's very doubtful they would have taken over the government without strong German pressure.

So even in bad circumstances popular support was not enough for them to become the majority party.

As for the Communists, they literally couldn't become the majority party even with Soviet tanks in Bucharest. They had to rig the elections to win the vote.

With regards to later developments yes, but your thesis that Romania was democratic except for external pressures isn't tenable.

Yes, Romania eventually was put under the heel of both Nazi Germany and the Soviets, both had to use force to impose their control, but it looks to me like it was becoming a totalitarian state before that.

As I read more, King Carol II played off different factions within the country to advance his own dictatorial control of Romania. The 1938 coup seems to have been entirely internal and it may have been planned as early as 1937.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_II_of_Romania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Constitution_of_Romania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renaissance_Front

To quote from your last link:

> Largely reflecting Carol's own political choices, the FRN was the last of several attempts to counter the popularity of the Iron Guard, itself a fascist and antisemitic movement.

The fact that Carol was able to seize power to such a degree was a problem. As was Carol itself. But I don't think it's a coincidence that his dictatorship coincided with the post-Great Depression period and the rise of Fascism and Nazism (i.e. external pressures). Or with the power struggles in the region between pro-French/British factions and pro-German ones.

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