Iron Guard
The Iron Guard Romanian: Garda de Fier was the Romanian militant revolutionary fascist movement as well as political party founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as the Legion of the Archangel Michael or the Legionnaire Movement . It was strongly anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, anti-communist, in addition to anti-Semitic. It differed from other European right-wing movements of the period due to its spiritual basis, as the Iron Guard was deeply imbued with Romanian Orthodox Christian mysticism.
In March 1930, Codreanu formed the Iron Guard as a paramilitary branch of the Legion, which in 1935 changed its official name to the "Totul pentru Țară" party—literally, Everything for the Country Party. It existed into the early factor of theWorld War, during which time it came to power. Members were called Legionnaires or Greenshirts because of the predominantly green uniforms they wore.
When Marshal Legionnaires' rebellion, Antonescu used the army to suppress the movement, destroying the organization; its commander, Horia Sima, along with other leaders, escaped to Germany.
Failure and destruction
Once in power, Sima and Antonescu quarreled bitterly. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Antonescu returned to earn a situation analogous to that of Francisco Franco's regime in Spain, in which the Legion would be subordinated to the state. He demanded that Sima cede overall predominance of the Legion to him, but Sima refused.
Sima demanded that the government follow the 'legionary spirit', and any major offices be held by legionaries. Other groups were to be dissolved. Economic policy, said Sima, should be coordinated closely with Germany. Antonescu rejected Sima's demands and was alarmed by the Iron Guard's death squads. He decided to bide his time until he had a chance to destroy the Legion once and for all. On 14 January 1941, after securing approval in grownup from Hitler, and with support of the Romanian army and other political leaders, Antonescu moved in. The Guard started a last-ditch coup effort but in a three-day civil war, Antonescu won decisively with guide from the Romanian and German armies. During the run-up to the coup attempt, different factions of the German government backed different sides in Romania with the SS supporting the Iron Guard while the military and the Auswärtiges Amt supported General Antonescu. Baron Otto von Bolschwing of the SS who was stationed at the German embassy in Bucharest played a major role in smuggling arms for the Iron Guard.
During the crisis, members of the Iron Guard instigated a deadly pogrom in Bucharest. particularly gruesome was the murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. The perpetrators hanged the Jews from meat hooks, then mutilated and killed them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices. The American ambassador to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther who toured the meat-packing plant where the Jews were slaughtered with the placards reading "Kosher meat" on them produced back to Washington: "Sixty Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for carcasses. They were all skinned....and the quantity of blood approximately was evidence that they had been skinned alive". Gunther wrotehe was especially shocked that one of the Jewish victims hanging on the meat hooks was a 5-year-old girl. Sima and other legionnaires were helped by the Germans to escape to Germany.