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Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Peking
Yona Show. Carl Dalla is back with a new subject,
no Spanish Civil War this time. We're not going to
the Orient. We're going to actually a country I lived
in for a little while. How you doing, Carl, doing great, Pete,
glad to be here. I mean, I know that this
is going to be a lot of information, So just
run with it, man, and I'll jump.
Speaker 2: In you got it.
Speaker 3: I have one slight correction is that there is a
Spanish Civil War tie in in this story, but of
course all the way to the very end. Yeah, you
sort of have to. Thomas and I recorded with Adam
from it of the twentieth century. The other day they're
doing the review of the World at War series from BBC,
I think of the seventies, and they didn't. I think
they've glossed over the Spanish Civil War, and we covered it.
I went on and we covered some of it. And
of course Thomas did the tie in with the Romain
with two Romanian gentlemen in the Spanish Civil War. So
absolutely right on. All right, well I'll dive right into
it then. So the subject of this episode is the
Legion of the Archangel Michael aka the Iron Guard organization
out of Romania in the interwar period, and I think Pete.
I'll start with my usual preface that this is not
a FED post, but I will say that there are
many concepts within Caldriano's kind of conceptual framework and organizational
structure that are I think very important. I also think
that the Legion or the Iron Guard, whatever terminology you
want to use, became something different after Caudriano died. It
was different versus the what was taking place, frankly through
the sheer force of his personality. So let's dive into it.
So I have a little agenda here. I'm going to
start out with my sources. I'll provide a history in
brief of Romania, plus the topic of Romania and anti Semitism,
because it's really important to understand what we're talking about here.
We'll talk about the Captain Cornelio Zelea Kadrianu and kind
of an overview of him and some of his life experience.
We'll then talk about the political scene in Romania in
and around this topic. In fact, that's like a consistent
theme throughout everything. One of the key folks in that
is Accuza, who represents kind of a the more like
the establishment conservative angle, although he was an early ally
of Kadrianu.
Speaker 1: Go find some of A. C. Kuza's more famous writings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, that's That's something that we'll hit on here
is when there's a work, we're going to definitely recommend
that you read it. I will also point out though,
to that, to that end, there's a great deal of
material that is not easy to get from Romania, but
a lot of it is still seemingly available in Romanian.
In Romania, whether it's online or not, this is not
this is not something that they're shy about. In fact,
there's a pretty notable remaining legacy in Romania. And then
we'll kind of close out with the timeline of the
Iron Guard slash Legion of Archangel Michael until the very
bitter end.
Speaker 2: So let's get going.
Speaker 3: My sources. One of the primaries is for My Legionaries,
which is a fantastic book by the Captain himself, Cornelia
Zelea Kadrianu. I highly recommend that everyone read it. It's
available online. I would say that the translation is pretty
good in every version I've seen, I haven't read.
Speaker 2: I've only read.
Speaker 3: Two or three versions that are my suspicion is that
they're just repackagings of the same translation. But there are
some others that may be slightly better, And there's some things.
I mention that because there's some artifacts that stand out
to me as being like these very minor inaccuracies, but
would be an easy, an easy mistake to make from
kind of translations of that era.
Speaker 2: One of them being.
Speaker 3: Obviously referring to an automatic pistol and using the term revolver.
That's an incredibly common error in the interwar period for
some reason, in the translations into English. The next is
the organizational documentation that we still have, which is the
Nest Leader's Manual, which refers to a kind of a
leadership position within the Iron Guard or the Legionists, the
archangel Michael, and then also referring to a great article
by Stanley Paine. Of course, the great Stanley Paine, the
expert on the stuff, who you should go to if
there's any material on a topic, and Stanley Paine weighs
in on it, you need to read Professor Payne's works.
So I'm referring to his material on the Iron Guard
in the Romanian political scene. From a history of fascism
nineteen fourteen to nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: Five, not to try to call Professor Paine out or
get him in trouble. But would you say he is
sympathetic or is he just honest?
Speaker 2: He's neutral, He's honest. Okay, I mean.
Speaker 3: You'll see in this article like he does a little
bit of the stuff that tells you he's not being
sympathetic or how would I put it. He's sympathetic to humanity,
and he believes in the truth, and he's just transparent,
utterly transparent, and he speaks from a position of reality
and knowledge and detachment, so he doesn't he's not performative
in his denouncements or anything like that. So very very helpful,
very important. And then finally Julius evil apiece, The Tragedy
of the Romanian Iron Guard KADRIANU highly recommend that you read.
This is available online.
Speaker 1: Also, I've meant to read that on the show and
I just haven't had a chance too.
Speaker 3: And it's a perfect way to describe it because I
see it as a tragedy in many ways. Also, so
we'll get into that again. I just want to advertise
for my legionaries. It details his activism, his philosophy, his motivation,
and his goals. It's interspersed with a lot of Romanian
history statistical support for what he's talking about, and I
believe it is the most inspiring and actionable interwar memoir
that's out there. I don't have the copy with this
lovely cover here with the Kerry Bolton introduction. My suspicion
is that it is based on what I've read online
as seems to corroborate my suspicion that it is a
slightly better translation than the old one, and just it's
a comfy book that you can sit and read in
your chair, so I would I feel comfortable recommending it.
So Kadriani was very famous for this first quote that
we have here, and I just want to read a
couple of these inspirational quotes because it tells you how
serious this guy was and how realistic he was, as
well as his mindset, which I think in many ways,
not always, but in many ways does translate to things
that we should keep in mind in our own lives,
based on where we're at. So the first and fiercest
punishment ought to fall on the trader, second on the enemy.
If I had but one bullet, and I were faced
by both an enemy and a trader, I would let
the trader have it. And this is a position that
he comes to. This is a quote from former legionaries
because of the issues that they have with traders of
all kinds.
Speaker 2: And it's.
Speaker 3: Very it's very important to understand that you have, in
Quadrianu's framing, you have traders, you have adversaries, and you
have enemies, and the adversary is treating you as their enemy,
but you're not really enemies. It's something that will constantly
come up conservatives. Second, we have first seized the front
line of trenches, then the second and the third, and
our adversary, shut up in his retreat, in the safety
which it offers, is now firing at us, not knowing
that we would like nothing better than to come to
his aid against the real enemy. And then, finally, I
see the true destiny of our people as lying not
in time, but in eternity. Political achievements, culture struggles, and
national greatness are means, not ends in themselves. The ultimate
goal is not life but resurrection. He's often referred to
as a as a mystic, and I believe that's from
the perspective of materialists who just don't understand because they're bugmen.
So to understand this story, we need to do a
little bit of Romanian history, and it's as briefly as
possible because it figures it looms large in this.
Speaker 1: Talk.
Speaker 3: So the first thing I want to say is that
the Romanian principalities of Boilahia and Moldavia were founded in
the fourteenth century. There's a lot of debate over whether
an ancient like Dossian or Daco Roman population survived in
the kind of intervening fort, you know, twelve eleven centuries
from when this was Roman territory or not because of
all the migrations that took place, there's a huge amount
of debate there or did some later migrate and then
because this is a dark age period where there's just
very little remaining evidence other than legends, right, and legends
can be created in retrospect. So Romanians often claimed descent
from Romanized then Christianized. I think Dacians is the term
Thracians or the Guieta. Romania was squeezed between the Ottoman, Austria,
Hungarian and Russian empires, and so there's and as this
kind of distinct population with a distinct language.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's.
Speaker 3: Extremely important to dig in and focus on what your
heritage is, but this is one of those things we
literally just don't know. But Romanian patriots will certainly make
reference to their ancient claim to the land, which is
fine by me. Under the Ottoman Empire, these principalities became
unified and recognized as Romanian unified principalities, not semi autonomous,
but more like responsible for their own government as the
Ottoman Empire was like deteriorating in eighteen sixty two, and
then formally became the Kingdom of Romania those principalities in
eighteen eighty one. The Old Kingdom, which was within that
small footprint, survived until nineteen fourteen and then expanded in
nineteen beginning in nineteen fourteen through frankly nineteen forty seven
before it became totally reorganized under the Soviets. So in brief,
it's really important to understand the context. Right before the
Inner War period, So the Kingdom of Romania entered the
Second Balkan War, which, if you remember your World War
One history, predated World War One proper. They were fighting
against the Zardam of Bulgaria, and part of it was
to try to claim some territory that they they felt
was was theirs, and a lot of it. There was
a substantial Romanian population in Bulgaria, in these little corners
of Bulgaria. So in nineteen sixteen, as this war is ongoing,
Romania enters on the Entente side. So like France Russia,
Romanian forces did not farewell militarily, but by the end
of the war the Austrian and Russian empires were gone,
so everything's getting carved up. We know that there were
major changes in borders after World War One, just as
these treaties were being laid out. So Transylvania, Bessarabian Bukhovna
voted on union with Romania because they had pluralities, if
not full majorities, of ethnic Romanians within their territory. So
this was formalized, along with some other territorial gains, in
nineteen nineteen by the Tree of Saint Germain and in
nineteen twenty by the Treaty of Trianon, and then as
in neighboring countries, the earliest twentieth century saw leftist terrorism
and uprisings, including in Romania. The Soviet backed Tartarbunery uprising
in the nineteen twenties. So there's this massive pressure of
these changes in the borders and you know, war and
combat and movements of peoples. So a little bit of
context about the Romanian political scene at the time, because
this is really important, but we're not going to beat
it to death. So executive power resided in the king
and he delegated his power to the Council of Ministers,
who he appointed to basically run things for him. The
legislative power was entrusted to both parliament and the king,
so that the king could, depending on his level of
power at a given time, could come in and shut
things down. So there was a bike cameral parliament. There
was a Senate which was elected by electoral bodies, so
basically elites being selected, and then the Assembly of Deputies
was elected by the populace. There was really limited suffrage, however,
before a nineteen twenty three Constitution of the Union which
granted universal male suffrage and most importantly regardless of religion
or origin.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's going to come to bite them in the end.
Speaker 3: It absolutely does. So as all these different peoples are
being settled and they're figuring out who's in their territory.
And again, you can't really go back and be like, wait,
were you here before nineteen fourteen or nineteen eighteen or
nineteen nineteen or nineteen twenty. There's not really a way
to do that. It's literally everyone has it and you're
here and you're a citizen.
Speaker 2: Not the most wonderful idea. What is going on? Okay?
Speaker 3: So, so previously, before the interwar period, I should say,
Romania's parliament was two part consistent of two parties. There
was a conservative and a national Liberal party. So the
National Liberal hintset that they're nationalists, but they're pretty liberal.
And I'll point that out because there was a big,
very strong anti communist movement in Romania, and a lot
of that was because frankly, in Romania, communism was vast
majority Jewish, just like right over the border in the
Russian Empire. So during the Great War, the majority of
Romania conscripts had been landless peasants that were marginalized by
what was called census suffrage. So, like I said, there
was limited suffrage, and it you know, really kind of
what you're standing in the census and what you owned,
et cetera, like could dictate how much skin in the
game that you had. And so there was this huge swell,
and there had been revolts in nineteen oh seven called
the Peasants Revolt, and all these uprisings. The government of
Romania was very unpopular because they were not doing well
as a country.
Speaker 2: They had oil wealth, but it.
Speaker 3: Wasn't going down below the elites. So as this universal
suffrage is granted, tons of political parties pop up and nationalists,
populist political movements exploded in popularity, from the Peasants Party
to the People's Party. And really, this is my summary,
is that the folk, the key folki that determine their
alignments within kind of this landscape were positions on Lamb reform,
whether they were explicitly anti Semitic or not, their position
on anti communism. And then the relationships with non Romanian ethnics,
which we'll get it into here in a second.
Speaker 1: When you say non Romanian ethnics, you're talking about diaspora's
within Romania.
Speaker 3: Whether they're Diaspera or the the settlers like German settlers
or the Hungarians in Transylvania.
Speaker 2: So I'll dive into that in.
Speaker 3: More detail here very shortly. So to understand Romanian anti Semitism,
you have to see two hundred years together. And I
say that because Pete has a wonderful series that he's
doing with doctor Johnson on this.
Speaker 2: And it's the same stuff.
Speaker 3: It's exactly the same, it's exactly the same stories. So
that was not something that the Romanians believed, but it's
it's the same story, and we'll dive right into it.
So it's if you read like conventional histories of it,
like if you go to the Wikipedia talking about this,
it's all libtards and like Yadvashem articles. Okay, So, but
the truth is is that this anti Semitism was not
xenophobia or chauvinism. So this territory, which had been under
the Turks, the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, et cetera,
had long been multi ethnic and there were distinct legal
codes and some autonomous government for.
Speaker 2: These individual groups.
Speaker 3: So the Jews had a very small population, very small
population that was allowed. There were expulsions in Romanian history.
The Jewish communities governed themselves under the Kahal, which we'll
look at here in a second. And some stuff that
Kadrianu talks about regarding the Kahal, which also is a
reference back to two hundred years together. So an example
of this is that German settlers were brought in over
hundreds of years to kind of fortify those border lands
against the Ottomans and slash or develop these lands in
Transylvania regat Budjak and along the Danube River basin. So
there were very important, respected German populations all over the place.
Their position changes little bit given the kind of geostrategic
things going down in the twentieth century, the rise of Germany.
But at the same time, these are people who are
recognized as being like Christians and honest they have their
own interests that aren't necessarily other people's. But like literally
Kudrian who never wants Slanders, Germans or Hungarians. He talks
about some of the political challenges that they're having over
ownership of these territories in domination. But that's different. So
when you read these Wikipedia articles, they say, oh, well
you know a lot of this.
Speaker 2: You know Romanian nationalism, which is just chauvinism.
Speaker 3: From all these people that were coming in and they
were just different and they didn't know how to deal
with it. That's nonsense. Here's the other thing. Fish population
in Romania exploded in the nineteenth century. So after the
eighteen twenty nine Treaty of Adrianople, which was basically wrapped
up the Ottoman Russian Wars, there were all these of course,
there were all these trade and travel rules that were imposed,
which were too you know, it's that whole libertarian concept
that if goods don't cross borders, you know, tanks will.
So that was the theory, which meant that there was
a flood of Jews from the Russian Empire and probably
other parts of the Ottoman Empire into Romania, which was
this crossroads and thus very important for trade. So by then,
by the year nineteen hundred, they go from like an
almost non existent population that are you know, in their
stuttles and you know, having these you know, they're important
with commerce and lending money and stuff, but they're not
that powerful to just utterly dominating the economy, the press,
the schools, and the political parties. And then at the
conclusion of World War One, as all these borders are
being redrawn, the Jewish population basically doubles in Romanian territory,
mostly up in kind of the northeastern part of the
country that which is hard against Ukraine, which is bananas.
Speaker 2: So here's a.
Speaker 3: Table, because we're going to get into a educational militancy,
or at least this massive uprising of nationalistic agitation in
the school system, in the university system, and percentiles would
have been handy here. But the long and the short
of it is, in a lot of the key universities,
the Romanians came back from war and found that they
were totally outnumbered in many of the schools in university,
the School of Pharmacy.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen oh five. This is the ruse of
the Japanese War.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent man, one hundred percent. I'm so they're
totally outnumbered. And then because of that, these schools are
basically being run by non Christians and you're studying law,
and law is like about morality. It's not about, you know,
charts and graphs, and here are these people telling you
that it's about charts and graphs. So you can see
that in the University of Yasi there was a huge
Romanian student body in the School of Law, for example,
but they weren't used to this situation where these huge
populations are They're like totally outnumbered in the school of Medicine.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 3: If you look up at the very top and you
see what the actual attendance in these other schools is,
is that, like in the rural areas, there's almost no Jews.
And that's frankly because of policy that they were excluded
from being able to live in the countryside as much
as possible for the same reasons. You know, there were
such edicts made in the Russian Empire. And then when
you look at the urban schools again like on you'd
think that they wouldn't. It just doesn't translate to these
tiny percentiles but dominating these universities. Let's look at a
more general population breakout from a nineteen thirty survey, and
this is where they find out what the real numbers are.
So in the twenties, Kadrianu had stated that he believed
that the Jewish population was being reported as one half
of what it was because the numbers were based on
pre World War One projections, and they found that they
were right. So in Bukovina it was thirty percent Jewish,
Bessarabia twenty six point eight percent, Moldavia twenty three point
one percent. I mean and it goes all over and
so the again the cities were very very much dominated
by Jews. Again, as these people come back from World
War One and the lines are being redrawn, and so
that's going to leave people miffed. It's not like these
are people that they've been living with for hundreds of years.
It's this massive surge of this population that came from
just across the border. Frankly and so, and also it's blockade.
When you read blockade, there's this mysterious thing where the
Soviets are sending these populations to raid on the borders. Kadriana,
who talks about the same thing taking place, whether it's
raiding or whether it's just repopulating people, just this constant
flow of people from these from these Soviet areas and
spreading a communist message which to their that the Romanian
government was suppressing quite quite thoroughly. So Kaudrianu asserts. And
again the way that for my legionaries is written, he
does a weave, he does a very a Trumpian weave,
and that he will be talking about this is what's
going on right now, and then he'll step back and
he'll write about history and provide a bunch of statistics,
and then he'll provide some philosophical stuff, you know, his
positions on certain things. And so as he's telling this
story about like what they're seeing in these university cities
and what the struggles that are taking place, you know,
he intersperses, Hey, there are these people that are saying, well,
just retreat to the rural areas. You know, this is
a common refrain in the United States, you know, just
give up these things. Give up the universities, give up
the towns, give up the cities. And Kudrianu points out
the and cities are the economic centers of a nation,
and a population reproduces and develops within its means, you know,
based on how the economy is treating them. Towns are
also the cultural centers of the nation, as they contain
the schools, libraries, theaters, lecture halls. So that's where culture
is expressed and how it is spread. And then finally,
the towns are the political centers of a nation. Nations
follow the lead of the towns. Whoever controls the towns
directly or indirectly has the political leadership of the country.
So he says, you can't hand these places over to
your enemies or they will take your country over.
Speaker 2: I think he's right.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe the right place for certain people is
in a small town. But if you give up these
centers of power.
Speaker 2: You're literally just handing them over to your enemy.
Speaker 1: It's it's also kind of hard when you're when your
enemy already has complete control of it. You know, then
I'd really like to give me the explanation how you
get it back.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, no, I agree. Kadrianu's position is that
you fight by all means, legal or otherwise.
Speaker 1: And they're luck in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think it's
pretty it's pretty fair to say that, Like he's he's
correct in the meta, but tactically all considerations are are different.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, he's correct when it comes to I mean, he's
you know, it's like the Libertarians, sure they can diagnose
a problem solve it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, I think what Kadrianu also, his position would be that,
you know, stick to the places where the Romanians are
the majority, and if the Romanians are an extreme minority, like,
don't worry about it. So we'll look at that here
in a second. So the kahl and I just wanted
to point this out because this is something that you know,
you read in two hundred years together a great deal
of talk about the ka hall, which supposedly had basically
gone away at some point in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
But Kaudrianio asserts that this exact same system is taking place.
It exists in Romania, and he says in every city
or market town where a number of Jews settle the kahl,
the Jewish community there its leadership really is immediately formed.
This kahl has its own leaders, separate judicial setup, taxes,
et cetera, and holds the entire Jewish population of that
locality tightly united around itself. It is here in this
tiny kahl, the market town or city, that all plans
are made. How to win over local politicians and authorities,
How to infiltrate certain circles of interest to them, such
as magistrates, officers, high officials. What plans to use to
take over such and such branch of commerce from the
hands of a Romanian. How to destroy a local anti Semite,
How to destroy an incorruptible representative of local authority who
might oppose Jewish interests. What plans to apply when squeezed
beyond endurance, the population would revolt and erupt into anti
Semitic movements. So this is from his section the Plans
of Judaism against the Romanian Nation, which he had written
based on frankly court records. We'll get into it here
in a second, but he was a lawyer, so he
goes into.
Speaker 2: Great detail here. We'll be here all day. If I
read all his thoughts, you really should just read for
my legionaries.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to provide a provisional ethnic map before
we dive into the characters to kind of wrap up
this history and context section here. I found this online.
It's a fantastic map from that nineteen thirty census that
was taken that was done that identifies like ethnicity by province,
and it really shows how Romania acquired a lot of
these territories that it found itself with after World War
One or partly into World War one, and some of
them are kind of in question. You'll notice this big
green spot in the middle. This is basically Transylvania, and
there was a huge Hungarian settlement and you'll see the
Hungarians are all up here in the direction of Hungary.
From the Austria, Hungarian Empire and the Hungary were settled
in Transylvania again as a as a blockade against the
Ottomans in a lot of ways, or I should say
they were reinforced because Hungarians had been there for a
very long time. But they're also huge Romanian populations to
the west surrounding them, so it's a sticky it's a
sticky situation. You'll also notice up here in the borderland
with Ukraine.
Speaker 2: You know, there's.
Speaker 3: A substantial Ukrainian population.
Speaker 1: There are Germans, that's where I crossed over when I
was there.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, gotcha. And there's some Poles up here.
Speaker 3: You know, there's even some Czecho Croat Slovaks and Serbs
and Croats and Gypsies and Tatars over here, and you know,
Russians and Bulgarians. So it's a big mess. So even
if you have a substantial Romanian population, you know, you're
dealing with a lot of kind of struggle for the
you know, the population and political power. So twenty eight
point one percent as of nineteen twenty, twenty eight point
one percent of the population was non Romanian. Of those,
so seven point nine percent of the population total total
were Hungarian Magyars one point four million, and then next
is Germans with almost half the population of the Magyars
at four point one percent. Jews were a full four
percent of the population minimum in nineteen twenty, growing to
over two million by nineteen thirty, and then it filters
down smaller, smaller portions after that. So very important context
because now it's time for us to talk about Cornelio
Zelea Quadrianu and the Iron Garden, the political movement in machinations.
So he was born in Hussi, Western Moldavia, Romania, to
nationalist politician Jon Zeleya Kadrianu. The interesting thing is Zeleya
had been Zelenski. His father was a romanianized Slav some
would say Ukrainian or his family was from that background
with some mixing. His mother was from those subtler German populations,
so kind of a hybridized Romanian, but a true believer. Nonetheless,
he spent five years at the Diall Military High School,
which is within the Dialu Monastery, which is a very
interesting place. It's the resting place of the head of
Michael the Brave, who is a sixteenth century Romanian hero.
So his teen years were religion, nationalism, and martyrdom like
those were the things being pumped into them. The tail
end of that period is when World War One is happening.
He tries to join his father, who goes off to
war in nineteen eighteen, and tags along as a volunteer
and basically has to participate in like one operation or
like a with kind of a holding and withdrawal type
of situation. And so when that crisis ends, he's sent
off for formal military training. He spends over a year
there and then the war ends, so he leaves from
the military academy frankly because he was on track to
be an officer because again because of his background at
the military high school, as was the style.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 3: So he sent to Yasi University in nineteen nineteen and
immediately becomes active in nationalist politics. Yasi University had been
the hub of Romanian nationalist politics at the time. When
Kadrianu gets there, he's incredibly disappointed in how leftist it
had become, except for a core of hardcore right wing
nationalist professors. So while he's in Yasi, he participated in
street protests and anti communist action and so on with
a organization called the Guard of the National Conscience, which
was a quote national Christian socialist street organization led by
a famous union leader, Constantine Punku, who was a very
tough guy. He had been one like strongman competitions and
circus boxing matches where they would take on all comers
and stuff, pretty wild stories.
Speaker 2: So there's great stories about the fights that.
Speaker 3: They get into around that, and then he goes on
to found the Christian Students Association in nineteen twenty two
to combat what he described as non Christian academic trends.
Speaker 2: In doing that.
Speaker 3: Through due process agitating within the structure of the universities. Well,
because of all this, he ends up being expelled by
the University Senate. His Quadrianu's position is that this is
because they're corrupt, and frankly that seems to be the case.
But he gets massive support, and while all this is
going on, there's massive support from Romanians all over the
country as well as in the city coming out to
support them with these struggles against the university. So the
faculty of law, because he was going to law school,
refused to recognize the expulsion dictated by the University Senate.
He continues his studies and he's issued a degree by
the law school, although the university would not give him
a formal diploma. So who is one of the fellows
backing him in.
Speaker 2: The law school?
Speaker 3: A Zikuza who is described as the father of expressly
anti Semitic Romanian nationalism because of his own writings, as
you mentioned, Pete, very interesting stuff, very firebrand type material.
He was a longtime professor at the University of Yasi.
He launched the National Christian Union in nineteen twenty two,
which morphed into the National Christian Defense League in nineteen
twenty three, which Kadrianu joined.
Speaker 2: He was a big.
Speaker 3: Wheel in nationalist politics because of his writing and so on.
He called for, and this is really key, a gradual
withdrawal of rights for Jews followed by an expulsion. He
was doing the lawfully legal political angle. He was an
old friend of Corneliu Kadrianu's father Yon. There were old
friends and political allies. Like I pointed out, Yon was
a politician from back in the day. So very interestingly,
there is an incident that takes place in nineteen twenty
three or in nineteen twenty four. We'll look at it
here in detail, where Kadrianu defends himself against an abusive
police chief basically named Monsu, and the press says mister
Kusa aimed in Kadrianu fired, so he's being accused of
supporting these street militants that are attached to his political movement. Ultimately,
he and Kadrianu formally split in nineteen twenty seven, although
it's done amicably and respectfully, and Kadrianu talks about the
issues with Kuza's approach to things and why he doesn't
want to follow them, but he's very respectful about him
and talks about how important he was as a figure
in identifying and communicating the issues actually faced by the country.
Later on, Kuza was appointed a Minister of State in
nineteen thirty seven in his short lived Goga government the
nineteen thirties. The governments are changing constantly because of King
Carol the Second. We'll look at that more later, and
then he ends up in King Carol the Second's Crown
Council nineteen thirty nine nineteen forty. He was a big
fan of the the Windmill of Friendship and used it
in his movement documentation in logos Beginning in nineteen twenty one,
and is very interesting. So Kadrianu says of Kuza in
for my legionaries and recommending his work, he says, all
these are impeccably treated by Professor ac Kuza in his
writings the Peoplehood, Nationality and art articles, parliamentary discourses and
courses in political economy. The ideas that I give below
belong essentially to Professor Kuza's thought. So he's constantly referring
to him as a thought leader that influenced him. So
in nineteen twenty three, Kadrianu and some of the other
militant youth of the National Christian Defense League were placed
in Vaccaresti prison, which is a hell hole from the descriptions.
It's just think of the worst prison conditions you've heard
of in film or books, and that's Vucaresti prison and
how these guys were treated. They were placed there in
nineteen twenty three for conspiracy, but were acquitted because they
did not meet the terms of an actual conspiracy according
to Romanian law. And again here's a couple of lawyers
that you're putting in prison for conspiracy. They had volunteers
to represent them, did a lot of their own speaking
themselves and basically designed. Kadrianu designed his own defense in
many ways and was acquitted. They had more than ten
thousand Romanians outside of the trial and just like a
packed courtroom. And the position that Kadrianu constantly finds himself
in is that he appeals to people's patriotism and says,
everything that we're fighting for is out of faith and
love for our country and the Romanian people. We assume
the obligation to fight to the end, and just doesn't
doesn't want to pretend that he's not, you know, fighting
the power, and is completely honest about it, but will
also not state that he committed any kind of crime.
So huge, huge theme in his work. While in Vacaresti prison,
Kadrianu conceived of what becomes the Legion of the Archangel Michael,
named after an icon of the Archangel Michael that was
in the Vacaresti prison chapel that they would sit at
and you know, while praying and meditating upon the the icon.
So very interestingly, some people are determined to not have
participated in a conspiracy, some somewhat surprisingly, including yon Mota,
who becomes very famous later and they're freed from the
before the trial and then during jury deliberation, yon Mota
goes into the courtroom and assassinates a trader, Vernicescu, who
had been one of their comrades, who ratted them out
to the government and claimed that they were engaged in
a conspiracy. Yon Mota is given a jury trial and
found not guilty or acquitted of charges by a jury
basically because the jury thought he was cool and they
were like, cool, you should do that to people who
do that, which is wild. In nineteen twenty four, while
defending so basically there was a constantine Manchu was a
police prefect, so very powerful in the police in Yasi,
and had been like the key guy who was cracking
down on the nationalist agitators. And they'd been like holding
students and torturing them and just beating them, and anytime
that they tried to get together, they would attack them.
Kadrianu claims that at one point Manshu after beating them
up at a rally, and they basically chained up the
prisoners and paraded them through a Jewish quarter in Yasi where,
you know, to show them that he was doing what
they wanted in his in Kadrianu's terms, where they were
then heaped with abuse and assaulted and stuff like that,
and then would just let them go after a couple
of days. Anyway, KADRIANU was defended another National Christian Defense
League member in court again because he's a lawyer at
this point, and Manchu and a bunch of guys come
and start attacking him while he's smoking a cigarette during
a break.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: In the trial, Kadrian who pulls his piece and blasts
and turns himself in immediately just sets his weapon down,
lets himself get arrested. But then he's acquitted and the
position is that it was an action, it was an
act of self defense, and so they could not They
did the whole like what's the term, shopping around for
a jurisdiction where he could be tried where they would
think they would find a favorable jury. And the jury
there is like, nah, he's great. You think he's wonderful.
Some of the jurors in the in that first conspiracy
trial like came in after when they're reading the finding
and they have armbands with swastikas on them and they're
like not guilty. Wild So if you can't tell, like
there's massive upswelling of nationalism in Romania at this time,
which becomes which is a huge challenge for the government frankly,
and the government interprets it as an attack on them,
despite all these entreaties of the nationalists to work with
the government. So anyway, after he's acquitted and some stuff happens,
he's been engaged to Elena, who's there in this. This
is a photo from right after their wedding, and it
is their wedding is the major social event in all
of Romania for that year, with eighty to one hundred
thousand people who came out in attendance, and this the
story of them, like in like walking from town to
town to come to this. For this wedding is just
wild with people coming out dressed in like folk costumes
as you can see he's wearing here, and you know,
ornate carriages and people are donating all kinds of stuff
and it's like this huge, massive party, almost like a
royal wedding. And it's filmed by a film crew and
then shown in movie houses in Bucharest, and then the
Ministry of Internal Affairs shuts it down and confiscates the
film and destroys it because again because of obviously what's
what's happening here. So after his wedding and all this
ten and the fact that he's like got away with
yeating a cop, you know, he and his wife think
we should probably avail ourselves of some of our opportunities
to like go over, you know, go out of the
country for a little while and continue my legal studies.
So Kadrianu and Jon Mota go to Grenoble, France with
Elena coming along, and basically live in abject poverty but
get to know like the locals and really really liking
like what they call the genuine French culture. You have
to keep in mind that Romania had been for like
at least one hundred years total Francophiles, that especially in
the elite circles, much like the Russians, right like, France
was like the center of the liberal modern world in
Europe for those kinds of people, and so.
Speaker 1: Many of the Mulsheviks hid there, and.
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, and so Kadrianu's observations about France are very interesting,
but in general he's like, we found the right people,
and we found good churches and and and so on.
So after he completes his studies in Grenoble, but you know,
there's all kinds of things taking place politically in Romania
that draw him back, including a great deal of oppression
of the League of Christian National Defense. Kadrianu returns and
is moved to say, I don't want to participate in
party politics because we're not in a position where we
can be successful doing this, just because of the state
of the nation and ourselves, which is really interesting. So
he founds the Legion of the Archangel Michael out of
with the root and the core leadership of it being
the Brotherhood of the Cross, which was a youth subset
of the League of Christian National Defense that they've been
working together for years and trusted each other so very interestingly,
one of their members said, there are defeats and deaths
which can awaken a nation to life, just as there
are triumphs of the kind which can put a nation
to sleep.
Speaker 2: And so that was kind of.
Speaker 3: An expression of their motivation for creating this separate group,
because they just felt like the issue that they had
was any successes that they had would mute the energy
of what they were doing and then it would just
things would dissipate, and they didn't want to have a
political platform or like a quote unquote program to use
the term the KADRIANU uses Cadrian who says this country
is dying of lack of men, not of lack of programs.
And so his statement, his quote is as a consequence
of seeing this state of affairs, the political state of affairs,
the cornerstone on which the Legion stands is man, not
the political program. Man's reform, not that of the political programs.
The Legion of the Archangel Michael will be, in other words,
more a school in an army than a political party.
He says in another quote, our intimate feelings from which
the Legion was born were these. It did not interest
us whether we would triumph or be conquered, or whether
we would die. Our purpose was different, to advance united
moving forward in united front, with the help of God
and the Romanian people's justice. No matter what destiny awaited us,
that of being vanquished or that of death, it would
be a blessed one and it would bear fruit for
our people. So again they realize that this political agitation
every victory two steps back. So they step away and
they try to kind of peacefully do their own thing.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 3: We shall create an atmosphere, a moral medium in which
the heroic man can be born and can grow. And
it's based on four leading principles faith in God, faith
in their mission, love for each other. And then interestingly,
song as the chief manifestation of our state of mind.
And this just resonates with me. They treat prayer as
a decisive element for victory. One of their members, Mahil
Polid daid, Gosh, these names are killing me, said. Fascism
venerates the state, German national socialism, the race and the nation.
Our movement strives to fulfill the destiny of the Romanian
people through salvation. So they want to be heroes, and
the hero comes from is a product of the legionary education.
The hero will be able to know how to elaborate
programs instead of focusing on to pre defining a program.
They'll know how to organize the state. They will know
how to convince the other Romanians, and if not, he
will know how to win. For that is why he
is a hero. And Kadrianu said why they held up
song as the chief manifestation of their state of mind.
He says, to be able to sing, one has to
be in a certain state of spirit and inner harmony.
A person bent on robot robbing someone cannot sing, Nor
can one who is about to commit some other wrong,
nor he whose soul is consumed by envy and hate
of his comrade, nor he whose soul is devoid of faith.
That is why you, Legionaries of today and tomorrow. Anytime
you feel the need to orient yourselves in the Legionary spirit,
you must return to these four lines of our beginning,
which constitute the basis of our movement, and the song
will be a guide to you. If you are not
going to be able to sing, you must know that
a sickness gnaws at the depth of your spiritual being,
or that life has filled your innocent soul with sins.
And if you cannot rid yourself of these sins, you
ought to step aside, leaving your place to those who
can sing. Very interesting, all right, I'm going to cover
the doctrine and then the six fundamental laws, and then
we're going to dive right into some more.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The Legion was an organization founded on order and discipline,
guided by pure nationalism, stemming from the boundless love of
a nation and country. The Legion wants to awaken all
the creative energies of the nation to battle. The Legion
defends the altars of the Church that our enemies want
to tear down. The Legion kneels before the crosses of
the brave and the martyrs of the nation. The Legion
stands as an unwavering shield around the throne from which
commanders and kings have sacrificed themselves for the defense and
exultation of the fatherland. They wanted a legitimate ruler and
wanted to support a king. The Legion wants to build
a strong country, a new Romania, from strong souls and
strong arms. And then they had six fundamental laws. The
law of discipline, to be disciplined legionary, for only then
will you win. The law of labor work, work every day,
and work with love. The law of silence, speak little,
but speak what is necessary. The law of education you
must become another a hero. The law of mutual aid.
Help your brother in distress. And the law of honor.
Walk only on the paths indicated by honor. So as
an expression of this, let's step back and look at
some other things that Kadrianu had been up to for
some time. Along with this core group, they conceived of
work basically work camps or labor camps that were a
volunteer thing for these students and this student movement that
was growing. So in nineteen twenty four, back when they
were in Yasi, there were no longer able to meet
in university buildings or their dormitories. They were being shut
out by the Reds and the Conservatives. So the Nationalist
students determined to build their own headquarters in Yasi. They
developed a brickyard on donated land in Ungeny along the
Proof River, and to supplement donations that they received from
the public, a group of students, while these people are
working in the brickyard, also worked a two acre garden
plot that they were given for food. So in this way,
the student of all social classes, even if their upper class,
even if they're upper middle class, they learned the value
of manual labor. It also gives them great capabilities as well.
The peasants and workers around them saw the students laboring,
saw these future elites and saw them as being on
their level. They not only respected them, but new that
they were genuinely, you know, on the same level in
terms of what they you know, getting in the dirt
getting messy. So the picture at right is the Christian
Cultural Home of Yasi that was completed in nineteen twenty five,
built from the bricks that the students made themselves in
a brickyard that they developed themselves with their own hands,
and then they built the Christian Cultural Home with those bricks. Subsequently,
the Legion followed this method built their own barracks facility.
Speaker 1: You see, we can't do that here. We just got
to We got.
Speaker 2: To elect the right people exactly exactly the right because
you know, this is the.
Speaker 3: Fundamental, a fundamental step back that we have to create
entirely parallel institutions. That was Kadrianu's position that the voting
nonsense couldn't there was a time when that could do something,
but that wasn't. It wasn't time for that yet. So
if they were denied access to the things that everyone
else got, they would build their own.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't vote anything into existence unless you're
unless the only people who are voting are your people.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Even if you have slight you can only have slight differences.
You can't have people who are completely at odds one
with another worldviews at odds and expect to vote your
way out of anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So a very interesting thing exactly to that point
is that KADRIANU. I mean, this man was a genius
and he understood people, and he clearly deeply felt what
basically the life that he was living.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: Even before it was like the Legion, this was something
that he did, going back to those student days. He
always credited people for their financial contributions in their publications,
and he would publish letters from these contributors and well wishers,
and it wasn't just to give them credit, but it
was also so that readers could see that here are
other people that feel the same way I feel. He
also punished the misdeeds of people in his organizations, even
if there were misdeeds against enemies. He tells a story
about some legionaries who went into a Jewish owned restaurant
who ate food and then refused to pay and walked out,
and he made them work to pay off their basically
punish them for their debt. He's like, look, what you're
doing is you're worse than the person that you're ripping
off because you're debasing yourself through sin. So you can say, oh, well,
this guy's a sinner, you know, but so are you.
You like what you're doing here is a sin. Once
the punishment is fulfilled, once you've made good on your error,
you're free of its burden as if nothing has happened.
It's forgiveness of sin through punishment, productive punishment. It isn't
like whipping or anything. It's him doing labor. And then
the other thing too that I kind of jumped around,
and we'll look at some examples of this, the very
bottom button bullet point is that something that again, learning
to build these structures, et cetera. They took on local
improvement project, so there were work centers all over the
country that we'll see in detail here. And it really
exploded as the legion built up, and they would do irrigation,
resident in rural areas. They would repair bridges, upgrade roads,
build fencing for peasants for their animals, tend to the
homes of the elderly and widows, tend to cemeteries and
abandoned graves, just to show respect to people and to
take care of their people. In nineteen twenty nine November,
they toured Romania. They said, we've had a couple of
years of building this organization. It's time to go to
the masses and not only spread the legion, but Quadrianu
would go out and be introduced by the local head
of the legion to the people. The people would be
wanting to go see the famed Kuadrianu that they've heard
about for so long, and Kadrianu, even though he was
like the leader unquestioningly of the whole legion, he would
defer to the local legion leaders who would present him
to the people. It's really fascinating stories around that. And
then the other thing too. They have all these lawyers,
so they're volunteering to defend persecuted Romanians in court proceedings,
whether they're part of their crew or whether they're just
poor people who are in a tight spot.
Speaker 2: So this is how they.
Speaker 3: Spread not only their program, even though there was no program, right,
it wasn't a political program, it was a cultural program.
Speaker 2: These are cool pictures.
Speaker 3: I was really happy to find high quality versions, a
high quality version of this map. So the Iron Guard
completed construction of its greenhouse headquarters on the left, again
with bricks from that brickyard. The building is still there
in Bucharest. In nineteen thirty four, this became the headquarters
for the whole country for the organization. The map at
the top right shows over three hundred settlements can be
counted on this map. The fruit of the work of
the legionary camps. So they built cathedrals, churches, They restored monasteries, hermitages,
built dormitories, built shelters for the poor, built rest houses
for the needy, improved mountain roads, built dams and bridges
or fixed them. They built hospitals or restored hospitals for
the poor, developed canteens for orphans, and many other kind
of public works. The coolest one is the cathedral of
the archangels Michael and Gabriel that still stands, as you
can see from this photo in Arastie. I don't know
how to pronounce Romanian words. The corners. This was like
one of their final big works. The cornerstone was laid
in nineteen thirty six and completed in nineteen forty. So
here's this organization where the whole thing is just work.
There's no there's not an awful lot of politics that
are involved in this. You know, we'll talk about you know,
the national level politics and wrangling taking place shortly, but
the average person isn't engaged, you know, average legionaire is
not engaging in politics. They're working to build things to
improve the lives of people around them. That's really their
their commitment. So this church, the found under of this
was Yon Mota, who was Yon Mota's father. He the senior,
the elder, was a prominent figure in Romania during the
interwar period. He founded the newspaper Libertatier and he was
again the father of Ywell. Mota was one of the
founding members of the Legionary movement. So the very first
holy Mass that was celebrated at this church was the
funeral of Yon Mota on November twenty third, nineteen forty,
so that the elder Motas passed away before the first
holy Mass could take place in the in the cathedral here.
He died of natural causes, so I was almost shocked.
But they had very hardcore dignitaries come out from all
over the kind of the Axis world this.
Speaker 2: To this holy mass and funeral.
Speaker 3: So as I'm about to get into a timeline of
the legion slash Iron Guard in the nineteen thirties, and
we have to talk about King Carol the Second, so
King Carol reigned from June nineteen thirty to September nineteen forty.
His succession rights were removed by his father, King Ferdinand
I in nineteen twenty five due to his trifling behavior.
It's very dishonorable behavior. He was a total womanizer and
just a scumbag hated by the Romanian people. So he
was exiled to France his father passed away, and then
because of the kind of stacking political crises, he was
returned to Romania in nineteen thirty and reinstated via a
coup over his son Michael the First, who was under
a regency. So basically just like in in Spain and
the nineteenth century where they essentially have a corrupt libtard
regency that caused the Carlist succession crisis, this was essentially
what happened in Romania in this time. So in nineteen
forty he was forced to abdicate by Prime Minister General
Jan Antonescu, who was one of Germany's greatest allies. Stanley
Payne again describes King Carol the Second as the most cynical,
corrupt and power hungry monarch who ever disgraced a throne anywhere.
In twentieth century Europe. So that sets the stage for
what we're going to cover now. So the nineteen thirties acceleration.
So in the year nineteen thirty seven, someone dubs the
Legion of the Archangel Michael the Iron Guard as an
alternative name for them. There's various there's various stories. Some
of them are that it's like the militant groups of
them would be the Iron Guard, but it became just
kind of a shorthand for the overall organization. As King
Carol the Second is enthroned, Kaudrianu makes a direct patriotic
appeal to him, saying, we're not opposed to you, We're
trying to improve Romania. Why don't we find ways to
work together, kind of like, please stop oppressing us.
Speaker 2: Also, right.
Speaker 3: So, right out of the gate, King Carol the Second
consolidting power, sidelines democratic institutions as much as he can.
So you know, if we remember in the way that
their legislature and the kingship governed, he has his Council
of Regents right below him. There's a lot of push
pull and under Carol he's just like grabbing as much
power as he can and taking as much away from
the democratic institutions as possible, and it plays out in
a really interesting way, which we'll get into you here
in a second. In nineteen thirty Kadrianu was put on
trial for conspiracy to commit murder because a kid who
Kadrianu will not allow into the Legion because he seems
off murders a political someone in politics, and Kadrianu has
nothing to do do with it. But because this kid
had Legion materials with him, there's a claim that Kadrianu
was involved in this.
Speaker 2: He wasn't. He was.
Speaker 3: He's acquitted again after spending like two months in what
these hell prisons in Romania. In nineteen thirty one, Carol
the Second appoints one of ac Kuza's associates, Nikolai Jorga,
as the premier, the prime minister. He's creating a coalition
government that is kind of that gives some power to
the National Liberals and then some power to the right wingers.
He wants to strike this balance, and part of that
is in terms not only for domestic policy, but also
what's going on in Europe. As things are starting to
catch fire in the rest of Europe. They outlaw the
Legion in January nineteen thirty one, because it's seen as
a direct challenge to the government, the leadership is rounded
up and arrested for conspiracy to overthrow the government, even
though there's absolutely no conspiracy whatsoever. They're acquitted, well, they're
retried because again the point of arresting them and putting
them on trial is to get rid of them. They're
acquitted in March. So again several months in these hell
prisons and Kadrianu decides that it's time to take advantage
of an open slot in parliament and runs.
Speaker 2: For parliament and is elected later that year.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen thirty two, the Yoga government again.
Speaker 2: Dissolves the Guard.
Speaker 3: So before they had been decreed outlawed and there was
a roundup of the leadership, but it wasn't like really
proactively going out and shutting them down. In nineteen thirty two,
they go out and like padlock their print shops and
headquarters all around the country, and there's pretty brutal repression
of them.
Speaker 1: The UH.
Speaker 3: Despite this, members of the Guard run in a newly
conceived political party that is basically the Guards Party, and
they went five seats in parliament under a National Peasants
government which is kind of a agrarian right wing coalition,
so they continue to grow. They continue to organize even
though they're technically outlawed and being oppressed. There's one of
the work camps, a legionary dam project at Vasani is
attacked by the police and they're like cracking heads. And
as word gets out about this, like the Romanians fall
in to support the legion and the hatred of the government.
Speaker 2: Grows like crazy.
Speaker 3: The Prime minister, a new Prime minister is put in
place from the National Liberal Party again because there's this
constant shuffle in the nineteen thirties under King Carol the
second this PM yon Duka is assassinated by some legionaries
because of what they're up to. Nineteen thirty four to
nineteen thirty seven, Kadrianu's political party, which is called Everything
for the Country, continues to grow until it's the third
largest political party in all of Romania. It's about it's
like fifteen point six to sixteen percent of the electorate
falls into this bucket, with another like sixty to seventy
percent of the country being super sympathetic to their positions
but wanting to do things through strictly through the electoral process.
So King Carol the second approach appoints another prime minister,
George Tatar Rescue, and what he's doing is he's playing
the National Liberal and National Peasant parties against the Legion,
so that the top two political parties are being played
against the Legion and in support of his own again
authoritarian rules. So these elections are almost just like placeholders
for people to talk about what their positions are, to
pitch their programs, but they don't have very much actual
governing power.
Speaker 2: It's largely theatrical.
Speaker 3: Kadrianu's book for My legionaries must read downloaded or buy
it is published in nineteen thirty six, and then in
nineteen thirty six the Legion sends eight volunteers, including Jonmota,
who's one of the founders and one of their thought
leaders of Vasili Marin, to Spain. They present a the
Toledo sword to the general who led the defense of
the Alcazar and immediately go into fighting, and in January
nineteen thirty seven, Mota and Marine are killed on the
Madrid Front.
Speaker 1: Let me share something, Okay, go for it. Thomas posted
this up this morning. This is a picture of the
Romanian Iron Guard, and I think underrated. It'll say that
Mota is the second from the left, and yes, this
is Madine right here.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is a serious bunch of looking, a bunch of.
Speaker 2: Guys, very serious.
Speaker 3: All of their pictures, all of their pictures are very serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a big deal.
Speaker 3: And I would say not only was it a big
deal for their martyrdom in the Spanish Civil War, not
only was it a big deal in Romania, but it
became huge in the kind of international, kind of fascist
alliance that was that was building. Not only was this
a direct tie from Romania to really before that, before
World War Two and the formalization of like the Axis
powers being defined, but they were engaging with one another
at this point. So Mota had been in Vakaresti prison
with Kadrianu in nineteen twenty three. There were some one
of his oldest friends. He was like the second in command.
He was the deputy captain of the Iron Guard. And
then again his own father was a famed nationalist Orthodox priest,
and he was married to Kadrian His sister Irredenta so
Vasili Marine is interesting. I have a quote from him
to close this out.
Speaker 2: But he was.
Speaker 3: A member of the National Peasants Party until nineteen thirty two,
and then when he was in law school he oriented
towards Kadrianu lawyer politician and then I wrote thinking Man's
because he was a very sophisticated analytical guy. His writings
are really interesting. There aren't tons of them that I
was able to find translated online, but it's he's very interesting.
So the after the their martyredom, you know, Thomas has
talked about this a lot. They basically their coffins toured
Romania and would have you know, unlike George Floyd, cool
people went out to see them and it was a huge,
huge deals.
Speaker 1: It actually goes beyond that. Their bodies were put on
a train and sent home and every country that they
went through, partisans would come out and they would throw
up romans at the train women, would you, Neil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were.
Speaker 3: They were definitely seen as martyrs for the defensive Christendom
in Europe and the a core of hardcore members of
the Legion were was dubbed the Motel Marine Corps and
the name or their their motto was ready to Die.
So what I want to point out is that.
Speaker 2: When you read, when you read.
Speaker 3: Libtard and enemy framing on the Iron Guard. They talk
about how it's morbid and almost like suicidal. It's like, no,
it's it's practical. They point out, they point out that
you're fighting for a world that you may not see,
and there's a strong likelihood that you will have to sacrifice,
not only sacrifice along the way, but also sacrifice your
life so that your children and your children's children will
have a better life. And that's like fundamental to really
Christian thought. You know, it's not like you know, bedazzled jeans,
guitar playing, you know, Christian youth pastor thought. But it's
like real Christian thought.
Speaker 2: Ah So.
Speaker 3: An acceptance in an understanding of sacrifice totally makes sense.
You see the same thing with the with the UH,
the nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. They're not morbid,
They're they're joyful, They're they're ready to do what needs
to be done. So it's just one of these insane things.
There's also these allegations of certain rituals that I just
I just don't trust as being real because of who
reports on them, you know, I mean maybe some of them.
They're supposedly like there's like blood brother rituals, which might
be real, but then there's certain anger of them that
just sound totally fantastic. I don't know, maybe something's happened
later after KADRIANU died, but skeptical.
Speaker 2: So so.
Speaker 3: Things really shift at this point because the Guard becomes
absolutely massive. It becomes a juggernaut that can't be controlled
by King Carol the Second, who himself is out of control.
So in nineteen thirty seven, the universities are closed down
by this premiere Tata rescue because they're totally out of control.
Because the nationalists are so ascendant at this point, so
they just say, oh, well, we're going to shut this
down because then then they can't organize. There's a another
election in December nineteen thirty seven. King Carol blocks while
the coalitions are being built, he blocks the Guard, who's
in third place for total seats, from participating in the government,
and he appoints Octavian Goga from the fourth place National
Christian Party, which is Kusa's party, as Prime minister. Again,
here's your right wing red meat, but we're not going
to let you guys in because again he saw them
as a threat, and a lot of it. Frankly, was
because of the I could say cult of personality about Kadrianu,
but really his sheer force of personality is a better
way to put it. So the intent was to shift
things right, to coapt to the Iron Guard's popularity. So
in nineteen thirty eight, King Carol the Second imposes a
new constitution on Romania which proclaims Romania a one party
state which outlaws all these other parties. Kodrianu and the
Legion leadership are arrested and tried on very shaky grounds. First,
Kadrianu was arrested and tried for libel because of comments
he made about I think goga, I don't have it
handy that doesn't really go anywhere, and then he and
his whole crew his leadership are tried for sedition. General
jan Antonescu, who's the Defense Minister at this point and
his name comes up again, soon resigns in protest on
March thirtieth because he sees King Carol the Second as
totally out of control. Kadrianu was sentenced to ten years
of hardly were in the salt mines. He urges the
Legion to refrain from violence, and then in November of
nineteen thirty eight, Kadrianu and thirteen other legionaries who are
in prison are murdered extra extra judicially. The legion chimps
out and just like goes off and starts assassinating people
like crazy. Kadrianu becomes a martyr. Now here's the thing.
You'll notice that Kadrianu all along the line urges like
or refrain from violence kind of unless he's participating in it,
and he'll only participate in it if it's going to
actually accomplish something, and is done in this with this
vision for like the future, because he's seen that his
own participation in violence in the past didn't necessarily move
the needle. He sees the Legion as as what it is,
which is, you know, they kind of captured the heart
of the country at this point, and so he's trying
to guide them in this way. With him gone and
with Mota gone, like you have these guys who are
in charge who are like totally going nuts.
Speaker 2: So there was a.
Speaker 3: Reporter named r. G. Waldeck, a female reporter who was
present in Romania nineteen forty to nineteen forty one, and
she said that the violent killing of Kadrianu only served
to cement his populaire and arouse interest in his cause.
So she wrote them to Romanian people. The captain remained
a saint and a martyr and the apostle of a
better Romania. So this did not have the cooling effect
that King Carol the second thought it would have. Basically,
by nineteen forty, King Carrol is forced to abdicate by
the fine fellow that we see here Antonescu. The government
is totally illegitimate at this point, and so in June
nineteen forty the legion enters the Romanian government, and three
legionaries are in the cabinet of Yon Giglortu. By July
again the shuffling of all these different political parties in
the cabinet is at its end. World War two is on.
The Soviet Union occupies Bessarabia and Northern Mukhovna, which are
those recent acquisitions up in the.
Speaker 2: North and northeast.
Speaker 3: It's Ukrainian territory that's still I believe, is still you know,
majority Hungarian. But in Ukraine today the Ukraine, I should say,
and the National Legionary state is proclaimed September nineteen forty,
like I said, King Carol, the second was forced to
abdicate and the Legion or the Iron Guard was the
only recognized political movement left in Romania. But immediately there
are struggles because the Legion wants to completely just go
nuts and take over, whereas Antonescu is trying to keep
them calm down and exercise power instead of getting revenge.
Quite yet, right, he doesn't think it's time for revenge. Antonescu,
being the best ally.
Speaker 2: Basically of.
Speaker 3: The Germans, allows German troops to enter Romania October nineteen forty.
Again it's important for them to do so because they'll
be able to defend Romania against the Soviet Union. At
this point, in November, Romania joins the Axis. The Legion,
like I said, began to go nuts, and at this
point there's a there's a bunch of imprisoned members of
previous governments who are in that Veresti prison where Kadrianu
had been in before, and Legion officials going and just
execute all of them, and then they start killing their
enemies on the street for revenge. And Antonescu is trying
to get them to see into the future and beyond
lashing out at this point and is not very successful
at it under Antonescu is part of policy of the
Romanian government, as was desired by something like seventy percent
of those in power in the old legislature. They begin
official expropriations of Jewish property, under which excesses take place.
They're barred from owning rural property, forests and river transport company's. Interestingly,
and during these expropriations there's all kinds of issues. And
in fact, this is where that whole correlation between you know,
the Yadvisham stories as to what Germany was involved in
or like official you know, Holocaust stuff, like a huge
amount of it was Romanians doing this stuff, and the
Romanian state as well as just partisans. Frankly, so, the
Legion is so out of control at this by January
nineteen forty one that Antonescu attempts to suppress their growing authority.
He's been replacing people in cabinets with army loyalists. There's
a legion rebellion. Not everybody participates in it, but the
upper upper tiers of the legion and go off. There's
a there's a description of a of a pogrim in
Bucharest that is purportedly carried out by the Legion at
this time, and again it's described as the Legion doing it,
but per my reading, it's it's a relatively small portion
of the Legion, but it gets the Legion crushed. Like
nine thousand legionnaires are arrested and I believe executed over
the next couple months. The vast majority been the knee,
you know, and excuse me, hundreds were killed, thousands were arrested,
Like nine thousand ended up spending a lot of time
in prison and surviving leadership fled Romania. So again, when
you read the official story, the end of the National
Legionary State in nineteen forty one is really just consolidation
and drew, excuse me, under Antonescu, the vast majority of
the Legion bends the knee and doesn't fight it out
with the government, and then kind of the rest is
history becomes it becomes Romania World War two.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, classic story.
Speaker 1: I don't think Thomas and I have talked about this
on the show, but we've definitely talked about it privately.
I'm not going to get deep into it because he's
the one better one to talk about it. But he
said that this even caused rifts between Hitler and the
SS and members of the SS because Hitler was one
hundred Yeah, Hitler was one hundred percent behind Antonescu, and
there were people in the SS who were one hundred
percent behind the Guard were actually working to subvert and
toon escue by helping the Guard. And yeah, that's uh,
Thomas needs to do an episode about that.
Speaker 3: It's it's very interesting, and he knows that he knows
the the goings on in on the German side far
better than I could hope to express. But long story short,
my assertion is that without Kadrianu, the Legion, the Iron
Guard wasn't a thing anymore, or it wasn't a it
wasn't a power, it couldn't be a power. Kadrianu was
the animating spirit that gave it that elevated state.
Speaker 2: Well, but I'll.
Speaker 3: Also point out that, yes, just the level of oppression
that they were under, like of course, of course they
would react that way. Of course because King Carol the
Second was not a legitimate reader, a leader, and that
their government had not been legitimate if it had ever
been legitimate, for a very long time, and the people
of Romania didn't see them as legitimate, which is why
they supported and Tenescu, and you know, so a very
strange balancing act. Everyone always saw the Legion in Quadrianu
in particular as a threat to the government, even when
they were supporting the people in what everyone said that
they wanted, whether or not they were ready for it.
So it's just one of these these tragedies. And I
feel comfortable wrapping up my presentation here with Vacilian Marines
quote here describing the Legion, and I see it kind
of as their their legacy and really what we should
think about. It's really quite motivating because it's not, like
I said before, it's not the way that they're described
in the like Wikipedia three paragraph summary. So Marine states
quote soaked in dynamism. Our movement is revolutionary. The Legion
promotes the creative spirit in all the fields of public
life and sincerely rejects conservatism. The Legion organizes the conquest
of the future with the help of all the productive
categories of the nation, and does not represent a reaction
toward the past.
Speaker 1: Elphine Well, I think it's safe to say that Kadrianu
was not only a leader, but he was a spiritual leader.
And once he once he was gone, there was no
one there to preach that message, to preach it from
that side, where now you just had a you know,
it was about violence and it was about force, and
the spiritual was gone.
Speaker 3: I what I would say is that given the size
of the legion by the time he was dead, though,
that it would have been much worse. It could have
easily been much worse in terms of just like misguided
jimp outs. But the core, the core group that participated
in that, you know, was fairly easily crushed because it
wasn't huge. It'd be really interesting to have more information
on that. But I agree with you, like he would,
he was this, This was a spiritual movement. It wasn't
just a political operation. It wasn't They weren't doing a politics,
they weren't doing an economics. They were just they were
living and they were living their platform, they were living
their program and just had a fundamentally different view than
the way we think about political parties and political movements.
And I think that's really important, you know, stripping away
the some of the activities and some of the allegations
about them.
Speaker 2: If you look at what they.
Speaker 3: Actually did, it was very very positive and productive and
there there was a there was a stamp published in
Romania for the fiftieth anniversary of the deaths of Mota
and Marine under communism, which is wild. The Romanian people,
you know, say what you will about what Romania is
right now. I'm certainly no expert on it. I've never
been there. I don't speak Romanian, but like there you
go on Romanian websites and like or look at videos
online from the kind of the the Legionary State period.
There's a bunch of German filmed color.
Speaker 2: Videos of.
Speaker 3: Antonescu and some you know, some legionnaires speaking, and it's
really interesting that just the massive number of people that
turn out for these things and the comments are filled
with comments in Romanian that are like in support of this,
like overwhelmingly like almost no opposition to it. So it's
really interesting. Even the even the academic papers that you'll see,
you know, that are in Romanian, are you know, you're
running through your translator and you're like, oh, this is
relatively neutral talking about you know, really spending a lot
of time talking about the problems with like King Carroll
and the government and all that, and you know, people
people genuinely supported these guys because they because they supported
the people and they were doing something totally different.
Speaker 1: All right, right, promote, promote away, Go ahead, Carl.
Speaker 3: Uh, Thanks Pete. Another classic Carl Doll appearance on The
un To Show. You can find more of my stuff,
including my effort posts on substack Carldall dot substack dot com.
That's k A R L d a h L dot
substack dot com. I have two novels on Amazon. That's
the best way to support me. It's the only way
to give me monies is to buy book. My most
recent is Faction with the Crusaders, which is a nationalist
sympathetic tale from the period of the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe how you started that. It was like, oh,
just throw me right into the middle of something. Thank
you got your attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah awesome.
Speaker 1: Finally getting around to read it, I apologize.
Speaker 2: You know I read a lot, so I know you
read a lot.
Speaker 1: Believe me, I I do, all right, man, Until the
next time, muscle mess.
Speaker 2: Thanks being