One hundred and sixty-nine (Hungary and Bulgaria in World War II).
Horthy established close relations with Hitler when he first came to power. Although there was some diplomatic speculation, Horthy believed that this change in Germany was different from previous governments in the Weimar Republic, and that Hitler would establish a strong government, not to mention that the two countries had something in common. In World War I, the allies were slaughtered after the defeat, both wanted to free themselves from the shackles of the Versailles system, and close economic relations were also an important reason for the two countries to move closer to each other, and after the annexation of Austria, Germany and Hungary became neighbors and became closer.
In 1938, Germany dismembered Czechoslovakia in Munich, and Hungary supported and participated in it, and later divided the southern part of Slovakia. It was only after that the flag was raised again on public buildings in Hungary, not at half-mast. Germany was even more distinctly partial to Hungary in dealing with the 1939 territorial dispute between Hungary and Romania, forcing Romania to transfer Northern Transylvania to Hungary.
Although Hungary joined the Axis powers in early 1939, Hungary was relatively neutral at the beginning of World War II. After the Germans defeated France, Horthy thought Hungary should enter the war in order to take advantage of the war before the end of the war. There is a very ironic joke that Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, after Pearl Harbor.
Two days later, Hungary also declared war on the United States according to the Three-Power Convention, and the Americans were very unfamiliar with Hungary at that time, when the Hungarian chargé d'affaires in the United States went to the US State Department to submit the declaration of war, and the secretary on duty was a novice. So the following interesting conversation took place.
Q: So you must have a strong navy?
Q: So what is General Horthy's position?
Q: And who is your king?
Q: Are the United States and Britain your enemies?
A: No, our only enemy is Romania.
Q: Romania, is it our ally?
Q: Romania, your enemy, but you allied with Romania and declared war on the United States.
I really can't understand this, and yes, you Americans certainly don't understand our complex and nuanced European politics. From this, we can see how unmeasured Horthy's idea of seeing the wind makes the rudder in the fire is self-sufficient. In the same way as Mussolini, who exchanged stinky feet with him, he ended up hurting him and burdening his country himself. This marshal was very dense, and the ruler of Romania at this time was the military-fascist dictator Marshal Antonescu.
Born on June 14, 1882, he spent his early years studying military affairs in France in the city of Piteşti in southern Romania and served in the Romanian army as a mid-level officer in World War I. After the war, he followed the Romanian army to suppress the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Because Antonescu was extremely hostile to the Soviet revolution, the royal family valued him.
In 1919 he became military attaché to France and military attaché to Britain. In 1937 he was unexpectedly promoted to Chief of the General Staff.
In 1938, he was promoted to Minister of Defense. Around this time, he joined the fascist organization in Romania, the Iron Guard, and completely threw himself into the arms of fascism. After the outbreak of World War II, he gradually followed Germany and Italy as his right-hand man.
On 4 September 1940, Antonescu seized power with the support of Nazi Germany and the Iron Guard and became Prime Minister. Soon he forced King Carol II to abdicate the throne. Antonescu called himself "leader of the country" after Hitler and Mussolini. Romania, while envious of Hitler's achievements, has been a loser in constant territorial disputes.
In 1940, Stalin seized the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (today's Moldova, formerly a Soviet republic) in order to expand the so-called Eastern Front. Antonescu was so angry that in October of that year he allowed German troops to enter Romania.
In November 1940, Antonescu formally joined the Axis powers on behalf of Romania. In 1941, with the support of Hitler, Antonescu purged the dissidents of the Iron Guard and took military and political power. He declared Romania a "legionary state" in accordance with the German and Italian dictatorships, abolished the constitution and banned political parties, and established a fascist dictatorship in the country.
On December 4, 1940, Antonescu signed the Rhodes Economic Cooperation Agreement with Nazi Germany in Berlin. According to this agreement, the Romanian side had to restructure its lines of communication in the direction in which the main economic products were sold to Germany, and hired German experts to manage the various sectors of the country's economy. And in order to meet the needs of the German war economy, the Romanian side wanted to reduce the price of its currency against the Deutsche Mark, and even such a harsh treaty Antonescu could agree. After that, the Romanian economy became completely subordinate to the economy of Nazi Germany.
From then on, Romania's army and economy were controlled by Germany. In 1940, after learning of Nazi Germany and preparing to start a war against the Soviet Union, Antonescu went to Germany three times from November of the same year to May 1941 to ask Hitler to send Romanian troops to the war. He not only promised that his army would cooperate with Germany against the Soviet army, but also promised to bear all the costs of the German army to fight in the Soviet Union through the Romanian ice. There is no way who makes the Soviet Union too popular, there is no neighboring country that does not bully, and naturally there is no neighboring country that does not hate.
On the eve of the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, Antonescu would coordinate with the German army, and also carried out a general mobilization of the war in Romania, although it is not easy for a small country between the two powers to maintain neutrality, is it better to choose a side? Antonescu did this in rebellion against the Soviet occupation of Romanian territory, but went too far.
On May 17, 1946, he was sentenced to death by the People's Court of Bucharest, under Soviet control.