Nicolae Rădescu

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Nicolae Rădescu

Nicolae Rădescu (born March 30, 1874 in Călimăneşti , Romania , † May 16, 1953 in New York City , United States ) was Lieutenant General of the Armata Română and from December 7, 1944 to March 1, 1945 Prime Minister of the last civil government of the kingdom Romania before the transformation of the state into the People's Republic of Romania .

Life

During the First World War , Rădescu was awarded the military order of Michael the Brave . From April 1926 to July 1928 he served as a Romanian military attaché in London . After his return to Romania he worked as a royal orderly officer. In 1930 he was discharged from military service for reasons of age.

Before the Second World War, Rădescu supported the fascist party Cruciada Românismului ( German  Crusade of Romanism or Romanianism ), a splinter group of the Iron Guard under Mihai Stelescu .

In 1941, in a letter to the then envoy of the German Reich , Manfred von Killinger , criticized Rădescu , whose "constant interference in Romanian affairs", in response to disparaging remarks by Killinger in relation to Romania. On the orders of the "leader" Ion Antonescu , Rădescu was interned for two years in the Târgu Jiu prison camp.

On August 23, 1944, the day of the royal coup and the accompanying change of sides under Michael I , Rădescu was released from custody. In October 1944 he was appointed chief of staff , and on December 6, 1944, he replaced Constantin Sănătescu as prime minister. He also held the office of Minister of the Interior.

In his position, Rădescu represented a strongly anti - communist policy, which was based on the policy of the Greek government under Georgios Papandreou . Rădescu may have shot at a demonstration of left forces in Bucharest in February 1945. His version of the circumstances, however, was that Soviet units fired at the demonstrators to provoke riots that would lead to his release. The Soviet occupying power used this to further reshape the political balance of power in their favor.

Under pressure from the then deputy Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs , Andrei Wyschinski , Rădescu was dismissed from office by King Michael I on March 1, 1945 and replaced by his deputy Petru Groza . Vyshinsky had threatened otherwise to question Romania's state sovereignty. As a result, the country was transformed under the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party for the People's Republic of Romania.

Rădescu, who feared for life and limb after his release, was able to find shelter in the British embassy building for the next nine weeks until the British and Soviet governments had reached an agreement on the security of Rădescu. The Romanian Ministry of the Interior placed him under house arrest from November 11th . He stayed there until the spring of 1946, when he was given a car with a driver and personal protection. After an event in the Bucharest Athenaeum on March 15, 1946 Rădescu was attacked by a gang of thugs with clubs, where he and his bodyguard were injured. After this incident, Rădescu decided to leave the country. His escape was organized by his secretary, Barbu Nicolescu . On June 15, 1946, an airplane with Rădescu, his secretary and four other people on board took off from an airfield in the Bucharest district of Cotroceni and landed on it in Cyprus .

Rădescu moved to New York, where he co-founded the anti-communist Romanian National Committee under the patronage of Michael I. In February 1950 he advocated public financial accountability of the committee and resigned as chairman after disagreements with other members over this. His successor was the former Romanian Foreign Minister Constantin Vișoianu . Rădescu died in New York in 1953.

On an initiative of the Romanian Prime Minister Mugur Isărescu , the remains of Rădescu were returned to Romania in 2000, where he was buried in the Romanian Orthodox Rite in the Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest on November 23, in accordance with his testamentary wishes .

See also

literature

  • Dinu C. Giurescu: Romania's Communist takeover: the Rădescu government, Volume 388 of the series "East European monographs" . East European Monographs, 1994, ISBN 0-88033-285-9 , pp. 202, in English .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Dennis Deletant : Communist terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965 . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-386-0 , pp. 351, here pp. 60–68 (English, books.google.de [accessed on April 4, 2011]).
  2. ↑ Ion Alexandrescu, Ion Bulei, Ion Mamina, Ioan Scurtu: Partidele politice din România, 1862-1994: Enciclopedie . Editura Mediaprint, Bucharest 1995, ISBN 973-96934-0-7 (Romanian).
  3. ↑ Hannelore Müller: The early Mircea Eliade: his Romanian background and the beginnings of his universalistic religious philosophy. Appendix with source texts. Volume 3 of Marburg's contributions to the history of religion . LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7525-3 , p. 329, here pp. 79/80, ( books.google.de [accessed on April 5, 2011]).
  4. ^ A b Elisabeth Barker: Truce in the Balkans . P. Marshall, 1948, p. 256, here pp. 103, 135-136 (English).
  5. ^ A b c Horst G. Klein, Katja Göring: Romanian country studies . Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 978-3-8233-4149-9 , p. 179, here 80 ff .
  6. ↑ spiegel.de , Der Spiegel , Siegfried Kogelfranz: As far as the armies come. How Eastern Europe Became Communist After Yalta (III) , September 10, 1984, accessed April 4, 2011.
  7. ↑ memoria.ro , Aspera Foundation, Dorin Matei: Generalul Rădescu sa întors acasa , in Romanian, accessed on April 4, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Rădescu, Nicolae
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lieutenant General of Armata Română and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Romania
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Călimăneşti
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1953
Place of death New York City , United States