Russia at war 1941-1945

week the Russians overran the whole of eastern Rumania, and on the 30th Malinovsky's troops triumphantly entered Bucharest and the oil capital of Ploesti. Little more than a week later Tolbukhin was overrunning Bulgaria.

Meantime the political unrest that had been growing in Rumania for months past came to a head. Antonescu, whose last hope rested in the German and Rumanian forces holding

the Jassy-Dniester Line, had had an inconclusive last meeting with Hitler on August 5, and although he urged Hitler to send several panzer formations to Rumania, the Führer still did not think the situation in Rumania desperate, and still imagined that Antonescu had the Rumanian Army behind him. The total lack of enthusiasm for fighting the

Russians shown on August 20 by the Rumanian troops came as a shock to Hitler, and this was to be followed by an even greater shock three days later when King Michael

appointed General Sanatescu head of the Government and had both Ion Antonescu and

Michael Antonescu interned at the Palace.

On August 25, the Soviet Foreign Office published a statement recalling its earlier

statement of April 2 that the Soviet Union did not intend to change "the social order in Rumania" and saying that the Rumanian Army could keep its arms if it were ready to fight the Germans and Hungarians. The Rumanian troops must help to liquidate the

Germans; this was the only way in which military operations in Rumania could rapidly end and the essential conditions be created for an armistice between Rumania and the Allies.

Two days later it published another Note saying that the Armistice terms which had been rejected by Antonescu, had now been accepted by King Michael and General Sanatescu.

It further said that Bucharest was now being firmly defended by the Sanatescu

Government against the Germans, and that the German Military Mission, with General

Hansen at its head, had been interned. The King's Declaration announcing a change of government and a change of policy had caused great rejoicing in Bucharest. The

Germans, however, were wreaking vengeance on the city by bombing and shelling it. In the Carpathians and in Transylvania Rumanian troops were now known to be fighting the Germans. In Transylvania the Germans were planning to set up a puppet government

under Horea Sima.

The Note then said that Mr S. Vinogradov, the Soviet Ambassador in Ankara [Later for many years Ambassador in Paris], had been informed by the Rumanian Minister there

that the new Rumanian Coalition Government was composed of the four principal parties led by Maniu, Bratianu, Petrescu and Patrasceanu, the last-named a Communist.

The Rumanian communication to Vinogradov also said that the government was willing

to accept the armistice terms, which provided, among other things, for a complete breach with Germany, for the Rumanian army now fighting against Germany, for the restoration of the Soviet-Rumanian border of 1940, and for compensation to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government, on its side, subscribed to the cancellation of Hitler's "Vienna Award"

handing over to Hungary a large part of Transylvania.

For a week after the change of government in Rumania, the Rumanian troops held

Bucharest as best they could, though it does not seem that there were any large German forces around after the Jassy-Kishenev debacle. But there was much nuisance shelling and nuisance bombing of the Rumanian capital, and the people feared a German counter-offensive and an attempt to recapture Bucharest. It was therefore with some relief that most of Bucharest welcomed the Red Army on August 30. The Soviet press reported that the Red Army aroused feelings of "wonder and surprise" in Bucharest: the Rumanians were amazed at the quantity of heavy Russian equipment and could hardly believe at first that most of it was Soviet-made. "The courtesy is overwhelming," one Soviet reporter wrote. "No sooner does one of our comrades produce a cigarette than dozens of hands holding burning lighters are stretched out to light it for him". The communists were displaying posters everywhere welcoming "Maresalul Stalin, genialul comandat al armatei rosii". "And everybody is down on Antonescu", the Soviet press also reported.

The Dictator was still locked up in the Royal Palace.

In all these Soviet reports there was a note of condescension, sometimes a note of

contempt for all this "hearty cringing"; they made a distinction, however, between the

"sincere joy of the ordinary Rumanian people" and the half-hearted relief felt by the

"bourgeois loafers" in whom Bucharest abounded (and who would no doubt have preferred to see American and British troops).

For the first time the Russian troops were seeing a "real" Western capital, with shops, theatres, cafés and all the paraphernalia of the bourgeois way of life. This in itself, as we shall see, was going to raise something of a psychological and almost ideological

problem inside Russia.