RUMANIA: Exit Little Hitler

Exit “Little Hitler”

Dumped one night last week into a big hole inside bleak Jilava Fortress, near Bucharest, were the bullet-ridden bodies of 14 leaders of the Iron Guard, Rumania’s suppressed, German-financed party. No one else was present when soldiers shoveled the last spadeful of cold dirt over the corpses of the young fanatics who had banded together in a Jew-baiting, terrorist group to oust the Government and set up a Nazi State in Rumania.

All but one of the 14 were serving time for murder. He, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, führer of the green-shirted zealots who carried little bags of Rumanian soil tied around their necks, was under a ten-year sentence at hard labor for conspiring against his country with a “foreign Government”—i.e., Germany—and inciting to revolt. Fiery, handsome “Little Hitler”Codreanu might just as well have been in jail for murder, for he had a notorious reputation as a political assassin.

He started in as a youth when, on the steps of the local court, he killed the prefect of Jassy. His biggest job came in 1933 when he plotted, but did not take part in, the assassination of Premier Ion Duca. Three of those who pulled their triggers at Premier Duca were among the dead 14 last week. Tried several times, incarcerated fewer times, Leader Codreanu’s defense was invariably superpatriotism. Until recently Rumanian law prescribed no death penalty. Well might a Fascist leader, at a time when Fascism was fast engulfing Eastern Europe, look upon a jail sentence as a laughing matter. Fifteen years ago another much less publicized leader, Adolf Hitler, had spent his time in a Munich jail profitably writing a bestseller.

Among the illiterate peasantry the Iron Guard made many friends. Wherever it became strong it built schools, churches and bridges, naming them after a certified Rumanian patriot or a Roman Emperor. Nor were the higher places neglected. Rumanian bureaucracy was dotted with Iron Guard members and probably still is.

Around King Carol himself there was once an Iron Guard clique. At one time, when there was a split in the group, Leader Codreanu was financed by the King’s red-haired mistress, Mme Magda Lupescu, herself part Jewish, and on one occasion he escaped arrest by hiding in her house. When the “Little Fiihrer”was put on trial last summer many were the notables who risked royal displeasure by testifying to the Leader’s undoubted patriotism.

But by that time the dictatorial bug had bitten King Carol. The Iron Guard leadership was dangerous and must at least be imprisoned. The official version of the killing was that the 14 were shot down while trying to escape from their guards as they were being transferred to another prison. But none but the most unsophisticated doubted that the Government of the Dictator-King had ordered the killing. A few hours later the Government ordered the ruthless suppression of all terrorism.

On the wider international horizon the slaying was taken as a direct Rumanian slap at Germany. The King had just returned from a State visit to Germany where he had been cordially received by Führer Hitler. Earlier he had gone to England, ostensibly to get financial backing against a German economic and political drive against Rumania. For the King on his return to acquiesce in if not to order the killing of the No. 1 Rumanian Nazi and 13 of his lieutenants seemed a strong hint to Germany that Rumania was still an independent State, that Führer Hitler may have rough sledding before he can win Rumania’s “cooperation.” When, later in the week, three more Iron Guard leaders were shot and killed while “attempting to escape from police” the implication was unmistakable that, whatever else comes and goes, His Majesty King Carol expects to be his country’s only dictator.