Posted on 07/01/2011 6:28:53 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Russia on Thursday expressed outrage at Romanian President Traian Basescu’s recent remarks in support of a 1941 wartime attack on Soviet troops — an assault that was coordinated with the Nazis.
Basescu said in an interview last week that Romania’s war against the Soviet Union was justified because it wanted to regain a territory — Moldova — taken by the Soviets in 1940. He said: “I probably would have done the same.”
The order to attack Soviet troops was given by the pro-fascist dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu and led to the slaughter of thousands.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it is “outraged” at Basescu’s comments.
“Such shameless bravado, justifying the fascist aggression and desecrating the memory of millions of Nazi victims, is unacceptable and should get an appropriate appraisal from civilized Europe,” the statement said.
Basescu was talking in an interview with B1 television on the 70th anniversary of Antonescu’s order that the Romanian army cross the River Prut into Moldova.
“We had an ally and we had to retake a territory,” he said, referring to the German army. “If I had the conditions of that time, I probably would have done it.” ....
Critics accused Basescu of trying to soften the image of Antonescu as a war criminal in statements made last week, but in Wednesday’s interview Basescu firmly accused Antonescu of having a hand in the Holocaust.
He added that if Antonescu had stopped at the Dniester — the river that was Moldova’s border with the Soviet Union before the war — “it would have been perfect.” Instead, Romania joined the Germans in attacking the Soviet Union beyond Moldova.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The Finns did exactly the same thing, for the same reasons.
They seem to be the only Nazi ally that hasn’t been splattered with mud for doing so.
IIRC, then Finns were attacked first, repulsed the Soviets, initiated a counterattack, and then were basically fought to a draw, requiring something like a million Soviet troops (and a timely Nazi invasion to draw off those troops, of course).
Considering how effective Romania’s army has been since 1870, I wouldn’t have said anything. Operation Uranus was aimed at the Romanians for a reason.
The Romanians were also attacked first, just 20 years earlier.
Wasn’t just Moldasva. The Reds also seized Bessarabia.And neither area was allotted to them by the Secret Protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
They also, perhaps unintentionally, finalized Hitler’s intent to launch an invasion of the U.S.S.R; because the seizure of Romanian territory put the Red Army and Air Force uncomfortably close to the Ploesti oil fields, Hitler’s principal source of fuel for his Armed Forces.
The Romanians fought quite well on the southern front in 1941.
Finland surrendered after the Winter War in Spring, 1940, over a year before BARBAROSSA.
The Soviets would have overrun Romania when they were finished with the Nazis anyway. For most eastern Europeans, the Nazis were preferrable to the Soviets. Period.
Basescu would do well to recall what happened to Saakashvili of Georgia in ‘08.
Methinks Russia is saying,”Give us a reason...”
Only too bad that the Nazis and the Reds couldn’t have just killed each other off.
You know what they say about innocent bystanders.
Growing up, my father and next door neighbor were both World War II vets. Some incident provoked animosity towards the Soviets and I remember my next door neighbor, a New York City civil servant, saying over the fence to my father, “We should have let them kick the shit out each other and then cleaned up the mess.” My father, a union member and Democrat, concurred.
I know several guys whose parents lived in Eastern Europe before and during the war expressing a distinct preference for the Nazis. Estonians, Ukrainians, Poles, Finns. They may not have been Nazis, but the Germans were less of a threat to them than Russians. In parts of Russia that were overrun by the Nazis, the economy actually improved, without the heavy handed commissars screwing things up.
I suspect that's only because the Soviets had more time (in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, etc.) to carry out their policies in detail.
Had Hitler won and then put Lebensraum into full force, those poor people would have found the Nazis no better than the Soviets.
better still a cage match between joe and adolph. that way maybe the approx 40 million they killed between them would have lived.
It’s hard to say what would have happened. Clearly, Hitler articulated the doctrine of depopulating Slavic areas and moving in Germans, but finding Germans willing to uproot themselves from Berlin or Vienna to farm in Estonia might have been problematic. The Finns and Romanians were probably not in jeopardy from the Nazis.
Speer says that Hitler invaded Russia before England was pacified because he saw that Russia was arming faster than Germany and every day of delay worked in Stalin’s favor. Had Hitler posed a liberator, he could have recruited half of the male population of the Ukraine and Baltic countries. As it was, there were German divisions recruited from most of the Eastern European countries.
What's with AP's weird locution? That's a strange way to say the Soviet Union was invaded -- Ooops, that is unless you are trying to dodge the fact that the Soviet Union was not initially invaded at all! - the initial drive all across the invasion front was into territories seized by the Soviet Union in 1939-40, no doubt AP wants to sidestep that little detail.
There were already Germans living as far east as the Volga River. They'd been settled there since medieval times. Just another minority withing the Russian/Soviet empire.
Plus Hitler had a fantasy whereby the agrarian lifestyle was morally superior. He probably felt during the "Mein Kampf" phase of his career that he could re-settle the unemployed as colonist-farmers thereby killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
... and arm them with what? Sorry, just playing "Devil's Advocate". The German economic output was maxed out and their access to raw materials was being seriously hamstrung.
They did create a number of divisions in the East, including a "Russian Army" under A.A. Vlasov. One wonders how much more could have been done even with an "attitude change" on racial matters. One never knows.
It probably would have taken Hitler's assassination to have removed the racial component from the Eastern Front fighting. It all depends on who or which group would have come out on top.
I knew a guy whose father was a German speaker from Yugoslavia. When the Germans invaded he was drafted into the Wehrmacht.
Had neighbors growing up who could trace their roots from Lower Saxony to Hungary. The story was that some Hungarian king or other highered a German mercenary band to fight for him. They got land, etc.
In an era prior to nationalism it wasn’t uncommon for a foreigner to get elected to a throne. Can’t trust the natives? Bring in your own security detail.
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