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Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

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"Codreanu" redirects here. For other persons of the same name, see Codreanu (disambiguation).
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (born Corneliu Zelinski; September 13 1899 – November 30 1938) was the charismatic leader of the Romanian ultra-Nationalist and strongly anti-Semitic movement in the interwar period, the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier) or The Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Legionaries, The Legionary Movement or, although never officially, as The Green Shirts). References to him as just Corneliu Codreanu do exist, and Zelea is never used as the family name it is: all entries for Codreanu cite it as if it were a middle name.

The Legionaries traditionally referred to Codreanu as Căpitanul ("The Captain"), and he held absolute authority over the organization until his death.

Biography

Early life

Corneliu Codreanu was born in Huşi to Ion Zelea Codreanu and Elizabeth (Brunner) Codreanu. Ion would later become a political figure within his son's Movement. A native of Bucovina in Austria-Hungary romanian province ruled by the Austro-Hungarians, Ion had originally been known as Zelinski' because of the strong anti-romanian propaganda, romanians were forced to change thier names to something that sounded more hungarians'; his wife was ethnically German. Thus, Codreanu the elder associated with anti-Semitic figures such as University of Iaşi professor A. C. Cuza.[1]

Too young for conscription in 1916, when Romania entered World War I, Corneliu nonetheless tried his best to enlist. His education at the military school in Bacău (where he was a colleague of Petre Pandrea, the future left-wing activist)[2] ended in the same year as Romania's direct implication in the war. But 1919 was the year when, after moving to Iaşi, Codreanu found Communism as his new enemy, after he had witnessed the impact of Bolshevik agitation in Moldavia, and especially after the October Revolution had made Romania lose her main ally in the war, forcing her to sign the humiliating 1918 Treaty of Bucharest; what added to this was that the newly-founded Comintern had from the start been violently opposed to all the new borders of the Romanian state (see Greater Romania).[3] While the Bolshevik presence had decreased in general (following the repression of Socialist Party riots in Bucharest, December 1918, and a series of humiliating defeats of comunist strikes, by the young Codreanu helped by a plumber Constantin Pancu ),[4] it remained relatively strong in Iaşi and other Moldavian cities and towns; Codreanu followed in his father's footsteps as an Anti-Semite, but connected it with Anti-Communism, in the belief that Jews were, amongst other things, the primordial agents of the Soviet Union.[5]

GCN and strikes in Iaşi

Codreanu studied Law in Iaşi, where he began his political career. Like his father, he became close to A. C. Cuza. Codreanu's fear of Bolshevik insurrection led to his efforts to address industrial workers himself. In late 1919, he joined the short-lived Garda Conştiinţei Naţionale (GCN, "The National Awareness Guard"), a group formed by the electrician Constantin Pancu, who attempted to revive loyalism within the proletariat (while offering an alternative to Communism by promising to advocate increased labor rights).[6] As much as other reactionary groups, it won the tacit support of General Alexandru Averescu and his increasingly popular People's Party (of which Cuza became an affiliate);[7] Averescu's ascension to power in 1920 engendered a new period of social troubles in the larger urban areas (see Labor movement in Romania).[8]

The GCN, in which Codreanu thought he could see the nucleus of nationalist trade unions, became active in crushing strike actions.[9] Students who obeyed Codreanu started demanding a Jewish quota for higher education - this gathered popularity for the GCN, and it led to a drastic increase in the GCN's numbers.[10] In response, Codreanu was expelled from University. Although allowed to return when Cuza and others intervened for him (refusing to respect the decision of the University Senate), he was never presented with a diploma after his graduation.[11]

While studying in Berlin and Jena in 1922, Codreanu took a critical attitude towards the Weimar Republic, and began praising the March on Rome and Italian fascism as major achievements; he decided to cut his stay short, after he learned of the large student protests in December, prompted by the intention of the government to grant the complete emancipation of Jews (see History of the Jews in Romania).[12]

National-Christian Defense League

When protests organized by Codreanu met with the new National Liberal government's lack of interest, he and Cuza founded (March 4, 1923) a Christian nationalist organization called the National-Christian Defense League.[13] They were joined in 1925 by Ion Moţa, translator of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and future ideologue of the Legion.[14]

With the granting of full rights of citizenship to persons of Jewish descent under the Constitution of 1923, the League protested, led a group that petitioned the government in Bucharest (being received with indifference). After this insult Codreanu and some of his friends decided to take matters into their own hands, they decided to asasinate, key bankers and rabby, across Romania seing that the politicians had great debts at banks and being bribed frequently. In October 1923, he was betrayed by one of his associates, arrested and put on trial. He and the other plotters were soon acquitted, as Romanian legislation did not allow for prosecution of conspiracies that had not been assigned a definite date. Before the jury ended deliberation, Moţa punished (shot him) the traitor and was given a prison sentence himself.[15]

Manciu's killing

In November, while in Văcăreşti prison in Bucharest, Codreanu had planned for the creation of a youth organization within the League. It gathered on May 6, 1924, in the countryside around Iaşi, starting work on the building of a student center. This meeting was violently broken up by the authorities on orders from police prefect Constantin Manciu.[16] Codreanu and several others were beaten and tormented for several days (until Cuza's intervention on their behalf proved effective).[17]

During a trial in which Codreanu was defending a friend of his, Manciu stormed in followed by policemen, and tried to arest Codreanu by force, and without a warrant. Codreanu defended himself using a revolver and killed Manciu and wounded some of the police men following him. Codreanu turned himself in immediately after having fired his gun, and awaited trial in custody.[18] In the meantime, the issue was brought up in the Parliament of Romania by the Peasant Party's Paul Bujor, who first made a proposal to review legislation dealing with political violence and sedition; it won the approval of the governing National Liberal Party, which, on December 19, passed the Mârzescu Law[19] (named after its proponent, the Minister of Justice Gheorghe Gh. Mârzescu) — it most notable, if indirect, effect was the banning of the Communist Party.

Although he was purposely tried as far away from Iaşi as Turnu Severin, the goverment failed to convict Codreanu because the entire country knew him and of his struggle and knowing the abuses made by the police and the goverment.[20] On the day he was acquitted, members of the jury, who deliberated for five minutes in all, showed up wearing badges with League symbols and swastikas (the symbol in use by Cuza's League).[21] After a triumphal return and the ostentatious wedding to Elena Ilinoiu,[22] Codreanu clashed with Cuza for a second time and decided to defuse tensions by taking a leave to France. Before leaving, he was the victim of an assassination attempt — Moţa, just returned from prison, was given another short sentence after he led the reprisals.

Creation of the Legion

He returned from Grenoble to take part in the 1926, and ran as a candidate for the town of Focşani. He lost, and, although it had a considerable success, the League disbanded in the same year.[23] Codreanu gathered former members of the League who had spent time in prison, and put into practice his dream of forming the Legion (November 1927, just a few days after the fall of a new Averescu cabinet, which had continued to support Cuza).[24] He carefully designed it as a selective and autarkic group, and soon expanded into a replicating network of political cells called "nests" (cuiburi).[25]

Codreanu felt he had to amend the purpose of the movement after more than two years of stagnation: he and the leadership of the movement started touring rural regions, addressing the churchgoing illiterate population with the rhetoric of sermons, dressing up in long white mantles.

Deputy

The Legion did not cease to benefit from the Great Depression.[26] In 1931, profiting from the disagreement between King Carol II and the National Peasants' Party (which brought a cabinet formed around Nicolae Iorga)[27] Codreanu was elected to Chamber of Deputies on the lists of the Corneliu Zelea Codreanu Grouping (a provisional name for the Guard, because the Guard had been abolished for being a threat to the politicians of romania, the Guards deputies tried to pass a law in which politicians who were corrupt, would be tried for betrail, the penalty being death), together with other prominent members of his original movement (including Ion Zelea, his father, and Mihai Stelescu, a young activist who ultimately came to betray the Legion); it is likely that the new Vaida-Voevod cabinet gave tacit support to the Group in subsequent partial elections.[28]

He quickly became noted for exposing corruption of ministers and other politicians on a case-by-case basis (although several of his political adversaries at the time described him as bland and incompetent).[29]

Clash with Ion Duca

The authorities became truly concerned with the revolutionary potential of the Legion, and minor clashes in 1932 between the two introduced what became, from 1933, almost a decade of major political violence. The situation degenerated after Codreanu expressed his full support for Adolf Hitler and Nazism (even to the detriment of [[Italian fascism]. A new National Liberal cabinet, formed by Ion G. Duca (Duca had given his word to the French goverment in exchange for suport to become prime-minister, that he would destroy the Legion because it endangered the Romanian - French alliance of the first world war, wanting an alliance with Germany and Italy), moved against such initiatives, stating that the Legion was acting as a puppet of the German Nazi Party, and ordering that a huge number of Legionaries be arrested (many died in beatings and raides) just prior to the new elections in 1933 (which the Liberals won).[30] The Legion being placed in the position of striking back or dying, it chose to fight. The main effect of this was the killing of Duca by the Iron Guard's Nicadori on December 30.[31] Another one was the very first crackdown on non-affiliated sympathisers of the Iron Guard, after the group around Nae Ionescu decided to voice protests against the repression.[32]

Codreanu had to go into hiding at an unknown location, waiting for things to calm down and delegating leadership to General Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul, who later assumed partial guilt for Duca's killing;[33] Stelescu, who soon became Codreanu's adversary as head of the Crusade of Romanianism, after trying to asasinate Codreanu to gain control of the Legion. He was tried and banned from the Legion, but not stopping, he continued to atack Codreanu via his newspaper "Cruciada Romanismului", his former friends to which he swore never to betray, decided to stop him, they killed him by shooting (250 bullents). Codreanu's resurgence brought arrest and prosecution under the martial law imposed in the country; he was acquitted yet again.

The Legion and Tătărescu

Some time after the start of Gheorghe Tătărescu's premiership and Ion Inculeţ's leadership of the Internal Affairs Ministry, repression of the Legion ceased, a measure which reflected Carol's hope to ensure a new period of stability.[34] In 1936, during a youth congress in Târgu Mureş, Codreanu agreed to the formation of a permanent Death Squad, because the members were willing to die for the Legion...many of them actualy being killed (in one case, a Death Squad was pulled over be police, the police men tried to shot the Squads car tires, but the members kneeled between the tires and guns exposing their chests and yelling "FIRE!!!"

The year was also marked by the deaths and ostentatious funerals of Moţa (by then, the movement's vice president) and Vasile Marin, who had volunteered on Francisco Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War and had been killed in the Majadahonda battle.[35] Following the great manifestation at the funeral the goverment noticing how militaristic the Legion was and the great order in which it acted (far greater that even the army) started to panic and declared the Legion as a "anarchist" movement and that it would take any precaution to stop this "anarchic" movement(probably fearing for their lives, as in the Guards doctrines, if it comes to power it will start a great trial in which all men that betrayed Romania and was corupt will be punished...probably by death).


"Everything for the Fatherland"

After the consequent ban on paramilitary groups, the Legion changed their name to escape dispandemnt, running in elections as Totul Pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland"). The elections of 1937, when it signed an electoral pact with the National Peasants' Party with the goal of preventing the government from making use of electoral fraud, at 33.58% of the vote,[36] consecrated it as the third political option in the country (altough some of the generals at the time during the "National-Legionaire" goverment said at their trials that the Legion was stripped of 800.000 wotes, making it the first party in the country), but it was excluded from political coalitions by King Carol, who preferred newly-formed subservient movements and the revived National-Christian Defense League.[37] Cuza formed his anti-Semitic government together with poet Octavian Goga and his National Agrarian Party. Codreanu and the two leaders did not get along, and the Legion started competing with the authorities by adopting Corporatism. The government alliance, unified as the National Christian Party, gave itself a blue-shirted paramilitary corps that borrowed heavily from the Legion - the Lăncieri ("Lance-bearers")[38] - and initiated an official campaign of persecution of Jews, attempting to win back the interest the public had in the Iron Guard.[39]

The Cuza goverment failed and new elections were scheduled for 1938, but the Guard was persecuted for it's popularity and new arrests started (and new killings), Codreanu was approached by Goga and agreed to have his party withdraw from the elections of 1938,[40] believing that, in any event, the regime had no viable solution and would wear itself out (and also fearing for the lives of his men).

Clash with the King

During 1938 Codreanu was aproached by Carol and was ofered the function of prime-minister in exchange for the leadership of the Legion which would be placed under Carol, Codreanu refused because, The Guard would not follow Carol(in the Legion the way of advancement was that of election, the legionaires choose their leader). Carol was furios, he then started a new party under him. The system relied on a new Constitution, the financial backing received from large business, and the winning over of several more or less traditional politicians, such as Nicolae Iorga and the Internal Affairs Minister Armand Călinescu. The ban on the Guard was again tightly enforced, with Călinescu ordering all public places known to have harboured Legion meetings to be closed down (including several restaurants in Bucharest).[41]

When Carol felt secure, he ordered a brutal suppression of the Iron Guard and had Codreanu arrested on the charge that he had slandered Iorga, based on a letter Codreanu sent to the latter on March 26, 1938 (in which he had attacked Iorga for collaborating with Carol, calling him "morally dishonest").[42] With the Captain tried for high treason and sentenced to ten years of hard labour,[43] Călinescu arrested the entire functioning body of the Legion. Those members that escaped or were omitted in the first place started a violent campaign throughout Romania, meant to inform Carol if Codreanu would be killed(Maniu warned the legionaires that Carol wanted to kill Codreanu) there would be serios reprisals; confident that Hitler was not determined on supporting the Legion, and irritated by the incidents, Carol ordered the decapitation of the movement.[44]

Death and aftermath

On November 30, it was announced that Codreanu, the Nicadori and the Decemviri had been shot after "trying" to flee custody the previous night. The details were revealed much later: They were transfered to another prison and just outside Bucharest in the "Tancabesti" forest they were executed(strangled and then shot in the back to simulate an escape atempt) by the Gendarmerie, acording to the plan made by Armand Calinescu.

On November 25, 1940, during the National Legionary State, an investigation was carried out on the prison premises. The discovery of the remains caused the Legionaries to engage in a reprisal against the new regime's political prisoners, who were detained on the same spot. On the next night, sixty-four inmates were shot after being charged with the murder of Codreanu (considered betrayel by the Legionaires), Codreanu was posthumously exonerated of all charges by a Legionary tribunal.[45]

Legacy

National Legionary State

[[Image:Timbru_Codreanu.jpg|thumb|150px|1940 stamp showing Codreanu. The caption reads: Captain make (Romania) a country like the holy sun on the sky The Iron Guard underwent a very difficult period, including a great deal of infighting and purges, before joining Antonescu's government in 1940 under the leadership of Horia Sima. Both Armand Călinescu and Nicolae Iorga were to be killed by Legionary squads. The movement was toppled from power by its partner Antonescu only after 4 months. Antonescu not willing to share power.


In cultural reference

In the Legion there where most of Romania's poets, writters and scientists such as Tudor Arghezi, Mircea Eliade, Nae Ionescu, Radu Gyr, George Manu, Lucian Blaga, Eugen Lovinescu and many others.

Gigi Becali, the owner of the Steaua Bucureşti football club and president of the right-wing New Generation Party, said that he admires Codreanu and has otherwise made numerous attempts to capitalize on Legionary symbols and rhetoric.

Notes

  1. ^ Ornea, p.286
  2. ^ Veiga, p.51, 68
  3. ^ Veiga, p.41, 47
  4. ^ Veiga, p.47
  5. ^ Veiga, p.48-49, 54
  6. ^ Veiga, p.49-50
  7. ^ Veiga, p.46-47
  8. ^ Veiga, p.49-50
  9. ^ Veiga, p.48-49
  10. ^ Veiga, p.52
  11. ^ Ornea, p.288; Veiga, p.52, 55
  12. ^ Ornea, p.287
  13. ^ Ornea, p.287; Veiga, p.74
  14. ^ Veiga, p.75
  15. ^ Ornea, p.287; Veiga, p.77
  16. ^ Veiga, p.78
  17. ^ Ornea, p.288; Scurtu, p.41
  18. ^ Scurtu, p.41
  19. ^ Scurtu, p.41
  20. ^ Ornea, p.288; Scurtu, p.42
  21. ^ Scurtu, p.42; Veiga, p.80
  22. ^ Ornea, p.289; Veiga, p.80
  23. ^ Ornea, p.289-290
  24. ^ Veiga, p.92-93
  25. ^ Ornea, p.290; Veiga, p.107-110
  26. ^ Veiga, p.140-147
  27. ^ Ornea, p.295
  28. ^ Ornea, p.296
  29. ^ Ornea, p.296
  30. ^ Veiga, p.196-197
  31. ^ Ornea, p.298; Veiga, p.197-198
  32. ^ Ornea, p.244, 298; Veiga, p.201
  33. ^ Veiga, p.197, 200
  34. ^ Ornea, p.302-305
  35. ^ Ornea, p.309-311
  36. ^ Ornea, p.312
  37. ^ Ornea, p.312-313; Veiga, p.234-236
  38. ^ Veiga, p.224
  39. ^ Veiga, p.245-247
  40. ^ Veiga, p.246-247
  41. ^ Ornea, p.314
  42. ^ Codreanu, in Ornea, p.315; Iorga replied by filing a complaint with the Military Tribunal (as the law required in cases of insult to a minister in office), and by writing Codreanu a letter which which advised him to "descend in [his] conscience to find remorse" for "the amount of blood spilled over him" (Iorga, in Ornea, p.316)
  43. ^ Ornea, p.317; Veiga, p.250, 255-256
  44. ^ Ornea, p.314, 320; Veiga, p.256-257
  45. ^ Ornea, p.333-334

References

  • Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard, 1936
  • Mircea Iorgulescu, "L'Affaire, după Matei (II)", in 22, Nr.636, May-June 2002
  • Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Rumania, 1970, ISBN 0-8179-1851-5, ISBN 973-9432-11-5
  • Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească, Ed. Fundaţiei Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1995
  • Grigore Traian Pop, "Cînd disidenţa se pedepseşte cu moartea. Un asasinat ritual: Mihail Stelescu", in Dosarele Istoriei, 6/IV (1999)
  • Ioan Scurtu, "De la bomba din Senat la atentatul din Gara Sinaia", in Dosarele Istoriei, 6/IV (1999)
  • Francisco Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 1919-1941: Mistica ultranaţionalismului, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1993

External links

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