On 23 August 1944, King Mihai of Romania conspired with senior generals and the opposition political parties in the country to remove Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu from power. Upon the arrest of Antonescu and the success of the coup, King Mihai left the Axis, which Romania had joined in 1941, and joined the Allies.
By 1943, at which point Italy had surrendered and the Germans were being pushed back across the Eastern Front, it was increasingly clear that an Allied victory was not only possible, but likely; this was even more true come 1944. Although the Nazis fought until the end, most other members of the Axis lacked their ideological commitment and began looking for ways to reduce their exposure if the Allies did win. This issue was all the more pressing in countries like Romania, which would be facing a Soviet invasion if they did not manage to work out a deal with the Allies.
After the tremendous success of Operation Bagration in Summer 1944, the Soviet line was pushed to the edges of Romania and, with the initiation of operations around Chișinău and Iași in August 1944, large portions of Romania were threatened with imminent Soviet occupation. It was clearly to all levels of Romanian leadership, including Antonescu, that, unless a peace was concluded with the Allies, Romania would be invaded and occupied by the Soviets.
Antonescu recognized the threat posed by the USSR and was conducting negotiations with the Allies to surrender, but did not act quickly or decisively enough for other Romanian powerbrokers. Hopes that Antonescu would have Romania join the Allies were stymied by his refusal to surrender without first informing Hitler, he felt that anything else would be a betrayal; and a belief that he could secure better terms from the Allies by delaying surrender until Romania won a major victory over the Soviets. King Mihai and many senior generals were unwilling to wait and worried that Antonescu was opening them up to German occupation. The opposition parties had the extra motivation of benefitting politically from the end of Antonescu’s dictatorship. When Antonescu refused to surrender on the request of King Mihai, he was arrested to remove an obstacle to Romania’s joining the Allies.
gRomania’s defection to the Allies deprived the Germans of their major source of oil, which was essential to both war industry and maintaining their high mechanized army. The Ploieșt oil fields were the largest in Europe and main source of oil for Germany. The loss of these fields crippled the German armaments industry, resulting in shortages through the remainder of the war, and reduced German capacity to use their mechanized units.
The defection of Romania to the Allies created an opening in German lines that forced Germany to retreat from Greece and Yugoslavia. Together with Hungary and Nazi forces in occupied Poland, Romania had formed the new dimension of the Eastern Front in 1944, shielding German positions in Greece and Yugoslavia from direct attack. With the loss of Romania, these positions became untenable and Germany was forced to abandon Greece and Yugoslavia, having its force retreat to more defensible positions in Hungary and Croatia.
The defection of Romania to the Allies represents part of a broader collapse of the European Axis, whereupon it becomes increasingly clear that Germany is going to lose the war and that its co-belligerents should seek a way out. In September 1944, a Communist coup succeeded in Bulgaria largely because of the failure of that country’s leadership to join the Allies. Hungary tried to make similar moves as Romania, prompting a German occupation of the country. Allied clemency toward Romania and Italy was instrumental in provoking a larger breakdown of the European Axis, as other governments now felt certain that they would get a better outcome by surrendering to the Allies than from continuing to fight with the Axis.
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