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Iron Guard Garda de fier
President	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1927–1938) Horia Sima (1938–1941)
Founded	24 July 1927
Dissolved	23 January 1941 (suppressed)
Split from	National-Christian Defense League
Headquarters	Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania
Paramilitary wing	Corpul Muncitoresc Legionar
Ideology	Romanian nationalism Legionarism Clerical fascism Antisemitism Agrarianism Magyarophobia Antiziganism Ultranationalism Monarchism
Political position	Far-right
Religion	Romanian Orthodoxy
Colours	Green
Party flag
Politics of Romania Political parties Elections

Part of a series on
Fascism in Romania
Organizations MNFIR (1921) Fascio (1921) LANC (1923) Romanian Action (1924) MNF (1923) Iron Guard (1927) Citizen Bloc (1932) PNSR (1932) Death squads (1933) Crusade of Romanianism (1934) FR (1935) PNC (1935) PPGR (1935) CML (1936) FRN (1938) MTR (1942)
Leaders Antonescu Bacaloglu Bonfert Cantacuzino Carol II Codreanu Crainic Cuza Forțu Goga Lăzurică Manoilescu Sima Stelescu Tătărescu Vaida Vifor
Periodicals Cuvântul Gândirea Sfarmă-Piatră Țara Noastră
Ideology The Orthodox Church and the Iron Guard National Legionary State For My Legionaries
Events Moța–Marin funerals (1937) Jilava Massacre (1940) Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom (1941)
v t e

The Iron Guard (Romanian: Garda de fier pronounced [ˈɡarda de ˈfjer] (listen)) is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. Founded by Corneliu Codreanu, it is also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael (Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail) or the Legionnaire movement (Mișcarea Legionară).^[1] The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, antisemitic, Magyarophobic, antiziganist, anti-communist, anti-capitalist and promoted Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Its members were called "Greenshirts" because of the predominantly green uniforms they wore.^[2]

When Ion Antonescu came to power in September 1940 he brought the Iron Guard into the government. In January 1941, however, Antonescu used the army to suppress a revolt of the Iron Guard. He destroyed the organization but its commander, Horia Sima, and some other leaders escaped to Germany.

Background

Founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on June 24, 1927, as the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" (Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail), and led by him until his assassination in 1938, adherents to the movement continued to be widely referred to as "legionnaires" (sometimes "legionaries"; Romanian: legionarii) and led to the organization of the "Legion" or the "Legionary Movement" ("Mişcarea Legionară"), despite various changes of the (intermittently banned) organization's name. In March 1930 Codreanu formed the "Iron Guard" ("Garda de Fier") as a paramilitary political branch of the Legion; this name eventually came to refer to the Legion itself.^[3] Later, in June 1935, the Legion changed its official name to the "Totul pentru Ţară" party, literally "Everything For the Country" Party, but commonly translated as "Everything for the Fatherland" or occasionally "Everything for the Motherland".^[4]

Description

Ideology

1940 stamp bearing the symbol of the "Iron Guard" over a white cross that stood for one of its humanitarian ventures

Historian Stanley G. Payne writes in his study of Fascism, "The Legion was arguably the most unusual mass movement of interwar Europe."^[5] The Legion contrasted with most other European fascist movements of the period, especially when talking about its understanding of nationalism, which it believed should never be separated from the faith that people were born into. According to Ioanid, the Legion "willingly inserted strong elements of Orthodox Christianity into its political ideology to the point of becoming one of the rare modern European political movements with a religious ideological structure."

The movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was a religious patriot who aimed at a spiritual resurrection for the nation.^[5] According to Codreanu's philosophy, human life was a sinful, violent political war, which would ultimately be transcended by the spiritual nation. In this schema, the Legionnaire might have to perform actions beyond the simple will to fight, suppressing the preserving instinct for the sake of the country.^[5] Like many other fascist movements, the Legion called for a revolutionary "new man". However, this new man was very different in conception. The Legion didn't want a physical superhuman like the Nazis did. Instead, they wanted to recreate and purify the way of thinking in order to bring the whole nation closer to God.

As for economics, there was no straightforward program, but the Legion generally promoted the idea of a communal or national economy, rejecting capitalism as overly materialistic.^[5] The movement considered its main enemies to be the present political leadership and the Jews."

Style

Its members wore dark green uniforms (meant as a symbol of renewal, and the origin of the occasional reference to them as the "Greenshirts" – "Cămășile verzi"), and greeted each other using the Roman salute. The main symbol used by the Iron Guard was a triple cross (a variant of the triple parted and fretted one), standing for prison bars (as a badge of martyrdom), and sometimes referred to as the "Archangel Michael Cross" ("Crucea Arhanghelului Mihail").

The mysticism of the Legion led to a cult of martyrdom and self-sacrifice. They had an action squad that was called Echipa morții, or "Death Squad". Iron Guard leader Zelea Codreanu claimed the name was chosen because members were ready to accept death while campaigning for the organization. The members of the first "Death Squad" were: Ion Dumitrescu-Borșa (who was a Christian Orthodox priest), Sterie Ciumetti, Petre Țocu, Tache Savin, Traian Clime, Iosif Bozântan, Nicolae Constantinescu.^[6] A chapter of the Legion was called a cuib, or "nest," and was arranged around the virtues of discipline, work, silence, education, mutual aid, and honor.

The Iron Guard and gender

According to a 1933 police report, 8% of the Iron Guard's members were women while a police report from 1938 stated that 11% of the Guards were women.^[7] Part of the reason for the overwhelming male membership of the Iron Guard was that a disproportionate number of the Iron Guards were university students and very few women went to university in Romania during the inter-war period.^[8] In the Romanian language there are plurals attached to most nouns that have either a masculine or feminine form.^[9] Thus words in English like Romanian, youth or member that are gender-neutral are used in Romanian to refer either to Romanian men or Romanian women, young men or young women, and male members or female members.^[9] The Iron Guards almost always used the masculine plurals in their writings and speeches, which may perhaps suggest that they had a male audience in mind, although in most languages the masculine plural is also used for mixed-gender groups (with the expectation of male/masculine dominance within any mixed-gender group, a mark of gender bias then, but not specific to the Iron Guard in this instance).^[9]

The Iron Guard explained that the problem of poverty in Romania was due to the Jews' ongoing colonization of Romania, and thereby prevented Christian Romanians from getting ahead economically.^[8] The solution to this perceived problem was to drive the Jews out of Romania, which the Iron Guard claimed would finally allow Eastern Orthodox Romanians to rise up to the middle class.

As to why Romania had been allegedly "colonized" by the Jews, the Iron Guard's answer was that most Romanian men were simply not manly enough to protect their interests.^[10] In strikingly sexualized language, the Iron Guards argued that most Romanian men had been "emasculated" and were suffering from "sterility", which one Iron Guard Alexandru Cantacuzino called the "plague of the present" in a 1937 essay.^[10] Again, the term Cantacuzino used was the masculine sterilitate rather than the feminine stearpǎ.^{[11][disputed – discuss]} The Iron Guards constantly spoke in viscerally sexualized rhetoric of the need to create a "new man" who would be "virile" and "strong", and end the "emasculation" of Romanian men.^[11] Beyond that, the Legion's obsession with violence and self-sacrifice were both subjects that were traditionally considered to be male subjects in Romania.

Codreanu paid little attention to women's concerns. In his 123-page long book The Booklet of the Nest Chief, Codreanu wrote only two paragraphs dealing with the role of women in his party, and he recommended that a woman Legionnaire be a good wife and mother, attend church, and learn how to master cooking and sewing.^[12]

History

Founding and rise

In 1927, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu left the number two position (under A.C. Cuza) in the Romanian political party known as the National-Christian Defense League (NCDL). It was then that he founded the Legion of the Archangel Michael.^[13] Its name appears to have been inspired by the Black Hundreds, an anti-semitic group in the Russian Empire (particularly the regions bordering Romania) who often used the name of the archangel.^[14]

The Legion also differed from other fascist movements in that it had its mass base among the peasantry and students, rather than among military veterans. However, the legionnaires shared the general fascist "respect for the war veterans" . Romania had a very large intelligentsia relative to the general population with 2.0 university students per one thousand of the population compared to 1.7 per one thousand of the population in far wealthier Germany, while Bucharest had more lawyers in the 1930s than did the much larger city of Paris.^[15]

Even before the Great Depression, Romanian universities were producing far more graduates than the number of available jobs and the Great Depression had further drastically limited the opportunities for employment by the intelligentsia, who turned to the Iron Guard out of frustration.^[15] Many Orthodox Romanians, having obtained a university degree, which they expected to be their ticket to the middle class, were enraged to find that the jobs they were hoping for did not exist, and came to embrace the Legion's message that it was the Jews who were blocking them from finding the middle-class employment they wanted.

Beyond that, Romania had traditionally been dominated by a Francophile elite, who preferred to speak French over Romanian in private and who claimed that their policies were leading Romania to the West with the National Liberal Party, in particular, maintaining that their economic policies were going to industrialize Romania.^[15] The Great Depression seemed to show the literal bankruptcy of these policies and many of the younger Romanian intelligentsia, especially university students, were attracted by the Iron Guard's glorification of "Romanian genius" and its leaders who boasted that they were proud to speak Romanian.^[15] The Romanian-born Israeli historian Jean Ancel wrote from the mid-19th century onward, that Romanian intelligentsia had a "schizophrenic attitude towards the West and its values".^[16]

Romania had been a strongly Francophile country starting in 1859 when the United Principalities came into being, giving Romania effective independence from the Ottoman Empire (an event largely made possible by French diplomacy which pressured the Ottomans on behalf of the Romanians), and from that time onwards, most of the Romanian intelligentsia professed themselves believers in French ideas about the universal appeal of democracy, freedom and human rights, while at the same time holding anti-Semitic views about Romania's Jewish minority.^[16] Despite their anti-Semitism, most of the Romanian intelligentsia believed that France was not only Romania's "Latin sister", but also a "big Latin sister" that would guide its "little Latin sister" Romania along the correct path. Ancel wrote that Codreanu was the first significant Romanian to reject not only the prevailing Francophilia of the intelligentsia, but also the entire framework of universal democratic values, which Codreanu claimed were "Jewish inventions" designed to destroy Romania.^[17]

In contrast to the traditional idea that Romania would follow the path of its "Latin sister" France, Codreanu promoted a xenophobic, exclusive ultra-nationalism, where Romania would follow its own path and rejected the French ideas about universal values and human rights.^[15] In a marked departure from the traditional ideas held by the elite about making Romania into the modernized and Westernized "France of Eastern Europe", the Legion demanded a return to the traditional Eastern Orthodox values of the past and glorified Romania's peasant culture and folk customs as the living embodiment of "Romanian genius."^[15]

The leaders of the Iron Guard often wore traditional peasant costumes with crucifixes and bags of Romanian soil around their necks to emphasise their commitment to authentic Romanian folk values, in marked contrast to Romania's Francophile elite who preferred to dress in the style of the latest fashions of Paris.^[18] The fact that many members of Romania's elite were often corrupt and that very little of the vast sums of money generated by Romania's oil found its way into the pockets of ordinary people, further enhanced the appeal of the Legion who denounced the entire elite as irredeemably corrupt.

With Codreanu as a charismatic leader, the Legion was known for skilful propaganda, including a very capable use of spectacle. Utilizing marches, religious processions, patriotic and partisan hymns and anthems, along with volunteer work and charitable campaigns in rural areas, in support of Anti-communism, the League presented itself as an alternative to corrupt parties. Initially, the Iron Guard hoped to encompass any political faction, regardless of its position on the political spectrum, that wished to combat the rise of communism in the USSR.

Unlike other fascist movements of the time, the Iron Guard was purposely anti-Semitic, promoting the idea that "Rabbinical aggression against the Christian world" in "unexpected 'protean forms': Freemasonry, Freudianism, homosexuality, atheism, Marxism, Bolshevism, and the civil war in Spain", were undermining society.^[19]

On December 10, 1933, the Romanian Liberal Prime Minister Ion Duca banned the Iron Guard. After a brief period of arrests, beatings, torture and even killings (twelve members of the Legionary Movement were murdered by the police force), Iron Guard members retaliated on December 29, 1933, by assassinating Duca on the platform of the Sinaia railway station.

Struggle for power

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the Iron Guard

In the 1937 parliamentary elections the Legion came in third, behind the Liberal and the Peasant Parties, with 15.5 percent of the vote. King Carol II was strongly opposed to the Legion's political aims and successfully kept them out of government until he himself was forced to abdicate in 1940. During this period, the Legion was generally on the receiving end of persecution. On February 10, 1938, the King dissolved the government, taking on the role of a royal dictator.

Codreanu was arrested and imprisoned in April 1938, and ultimately strangled to death along with several other legionnaires by their Gendarmerie escort on the night of November 29–30, 1938, purportedly during an attempt to escape from prison. It is generally agreed that there was no such escape attempt, and that Codreanu and the others were killed on the King's orders, probably in reaction to the November 24, 1938, murder by legionnaires of a relative (some sources say a "friend") of Armand Călinescu, then Minister of the Interior in the King's cabinet. In the aftermath of Carol's decision to crush the Iron Guard, many members of the Legion fled into exile in Germany, where they received both material and financial support from the NSDAP, especially from the SS and Alfred Rosenberg's Foreign Political Office.^[20]

For much of the interwar period, Romania was in the French sphere of influence, and in 1926, Romania signed a treaty of alliance with France. Following the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936, Carol started to move away from the traditional alliance with France as the fear grew within Romania that the French would do nothing in the event of German aggression in Eastern Europe, but Carol's regime was still regarded as essentially pro-French. From the German viewpoint, the Iron Guard was regarded as far preferable to King Carol. The royal dictatorship lasted just over one year. On March 7, 1939, a new government was formed with Călinescu as prime minister; on September 21, 1939, he, in turn was assassinated by legionnaires avenging Codreanu. Călinescu favored a foreign policy where Romania would maintain a pro-Allied neutrality in World War II, and as such, the SS had a hand in organizing Călinescu's assassination.^[20] Further rounds of mutual carnage ensued.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Iron Guard members in 1937

In addition to the conflict with the king, an internal battle for power ensued in the wake of Codreanu's death. Waves of repression almost completely eliminated the Legion's original leadership by 1939, promoting second-rank members to the forefront. According to a secret report filed by the Hungarian political secretary in Bucharest in late 1940, three main factions existed: the group gathered around Horia Sima, a dynamic local leader from the Banat, which was the most pragmatic and least Orthodox in its orientation; the group composed of Codreanu's father, Ion Zelea Codreanu, and his brothers (who despised Sima); and the Moţa-Marin group, which wanted to strengthen the movement's religious character.

After a long period of confusion, Sima, representing the Legion's less radical wing, overcame all competition and assumed leadership, being recognised as such on 6 September 1940 by the Legionary Forum, a body created at his initiative. On 28 September the elder Codreanu stormed the Legion headquarters in Bucharest (the Green House) in an unsuccessful attempt to install himself as leader.^[21] Sima was close to SS Volksgruppenführer Andreas Schmidt, a volksdeutsch (ethnic German) from Romania, and through him become close to Schmidt's father-in-law, the powerful Gottlob Berger who headed the SS Main Office in Berlin.^[22] The British historian Rebecca Haynes has argued that financial and organizational support from the SS was an important factor in Sima's rise.^[22]

Sima's ascendancy

In the first months of World War II, Romania was officially neutral. However the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, stipulated, among other things, Soviet "interest" in Bessarabia. When Nazi Germany and, later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Romania granted refuge to members of Poland's fleeing government and military. Even after the assassination of Călinescu, King Carol tried to maintain neutrality, but France's surrender and Britain's retreat from Europe rendered them unable to fulfil their assurances to Romania. A lean toward the Axis powers was probably inevitable.

This political alignment was obviously favourable to the surviving legionnaires. Ion Gigurtu's government, formed July 4, 1940, was the first to include a Legion member, but by the time the movement achieved any formal power, most of its leadership was already dead: Horia Sima, a strong anti-Semite who had become the nominal leader of the movement after Codreanu's murder, was one of the few prominent legionnaires to survive the carnage of the preceding years.

In power

On September 4, 1940, the Legion formed a tense alliance with General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu. Using popular outrage at Romania being forced to return a large block of land as a result of the Second Vienna Award, the alliance forced the abdication of Carol II in favour of his son Michael, and leaned even more strongly toward the Axis. (Romania would formally join the Axis in June 1941.) Romania was proclaimed a "National Legionary State", with the Legion as the country's only legal party. As part of the deal, Antonescu was named the Legion's honorary leader, while Sima became deputy premier.

Once in power, from September 14, 1940 until January 21, 1941, the Legion ratcheted up the level of already harsh anti-Semitic legislation and pursued, with impunity, a campaign of pogroms and of political assassinations. On the 27th November 1940 more than 60 former dignitaries or officials were executed in Jilava prison while awaiting trial; historian and former prime minister Nicolae Iorga and economic theorist Virgil Madgearu, also a former government minister, were assassinated the following day. Assassination attempts on the lives of former Prime Ministers and Carol supporters Constantin Argetoianu, Guță Tătărescu and Ion Gigurtu were also carried out, but failed, as these politicians were freed from the hands of the Legionary police and put under military protection.

Armaments

As a paramilitary force, the Iron Guard had no shortage of firearms while it was in power. At the start of 1941, in Bucharest alone, the Legionnaires had 5,000 guns (rifles, revolvers and machine guns) as well as numerous hand grenades.^[23] The Legion also possessed a small, mostly symbolic armored force of four vehicles: two police armored cars and two Renault UE Chenillettes from the Malaxa factory.^[24] The Malaxa factory had been licence-producing these French armored vehicles since mid-1939,^[25] and aside from the two such machines, the factory also supplied the Legion with machine guns and rifles.^[26] For transport, the Legion possessed almost 200 trucks in Bucharest alone.^[27]

Failure and destruction

Once in power Sima and Antonescu quarreled bitterly. Sima demanded that the government follow the 'legionary spirit', and all major offices be held by legionaries. Other groups were to be dissolved. Economic policy, said Sima, should be coordinated closely with Germany. Antonescu rejected the demands and was alarmed by the Iron Guard's death squads. On 14 January 1941, after securing approval in person from Hitler, and with support of the Romanian army and other political leaders, Antonescu moved in. The Guard started a last-ditch coup attempt but in a three-day civil war, Antonescu won decisively with support from the Romanian and German armies.^[28] During the run-up to the coup attempt, different factions of the German government backed different sides in Romania with the SS supporting the Iron Guard while the military and the Auswärtiges Amt supported General Antonescu. Baron Otto von Bolschwing of the SS who was stationed at the German embassy in Bucharest played a major role in smuggling arms for the Iron Guard.^[29]

During the crisis members of the Iron Guard instigated a deadly pogrom in Bucharest. Particularly gruesome was the murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. The perpetrators hung the Jews from meat hooks, then mutilated and killed them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices.^[30][31] The American ambassador to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther who toured the meat-packing plant where the Jews were slaughtered with the placards reading "Kosher meat" on them reported back to Washington: "Sixty Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for carcasses. They were all skinned....and the quantity of blood about was evidence that they had been skinned alive".^[29] Gunther wrote he was especially shocked that one of the Jewish victims hanging on the meat hooks was a 5-year-old girl.^[29] Sima and other legionnaires were helped by the Germans to escape to Germany.

During the rebellion and pogrom, the Iron Guard killed 125 Jews and 30 soldiers died in the confrontation with the rebels. Following it, the Iron Guard movement was banned and 9,000 of its members were imprisoned. On 22 June 1941, the Iron Guards imprisoned in Iași since January by the Antonescu regime were released from prison and organized and armed by the police as part of the preparations for the Iași pogrom.^[32] When it came to killing Jews, the Antonescu regime and the Iron Guard were capable of finding common ground despite the failed coup in January 1941. When the pogrom began in Iași on 27 June 1941, the Iron Guards armed with crow-bars and knives played a prominent role in leading the mobs that slaughtered Jews on the streets of Iași in one of the bloodiest pogroms ever in Europe.^[33]

In the period between 1944–47 Romania had a coalition government in which the Communists played a leading, but not yet dominant role. Journalist Edward Behr claimed that in early 1947, a secret agreement was signed by the leaders of the exiled Iron Guard in displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria and the Romanian Communist Party, under which the all of the Iron Guards in the DP camps except for those accused of the murder of Communists could return home to Romania in exchange for which the former Iron Guards would work as thugs to terrorize the anti-communist opposition as part of the plans for the ultimate Communist take-over of Romania.^[34] Behr further claimed that in the months after the "non-aggression pact" between the Communists and the Legion, thousands of Iron Guards returned to Romania where they played a prominent role working for the Interior Ministry in breaking opposition to the emerging Communist dictatorship.^[34]

Legacy

The name "Garda de Fier" is also used by a small, Romanian nationalist group, active in the post-communist era.

There are also other contemporary far-right organizations in Romania, such as Pentru Patrie (For the Motherland) and Noua Dreaptă (The New Right). Considering itself the heir of the Iron Guard's political philosophy, Noua Dreaptă embraces legionnairism and has a personality cult for Corneliu Codreanu but they also use the celtic cross, which is not associated with legionnairism.

Legionary architecture

Through their summer work camps, the Legionnaires performed volunteer work involving the construction and reparation of roads, bridges, churches and schools in rural areas.^[35][36] One notable construction of the Iron Guard is the "Green House" (Romanian: Casa Verde). Built in the Romanian architectural style, this building on the outskirts of 1930s Bucharest served as the Legion's headquarters and home to Codreanu.^[37][38]

Public commemoration

The "Monument of the anti-Communist fighters" in Deva, commemorating a member of the Iron Guard (Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu)

A bust of Mircea Eliade

The Iron Guard is currently commemorated in Romania and elsewhere through permanent public displays (monuments and street names) as well as public distinctions (such as posthumous honorary citizenship) dedicated to some of its members. A few such examples are listed below:

• 
  Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Iron Guard, has a roadside cross a few miles from Bucharest, near Buftea. It was built on the spot where he was executed in 1938. The site serves as a current destination for neo-Legionaries, who regularly gather there to commemorate Codreanu. Occasionally, members of right-wing extremist parties from outside Romania (such as Germany, Sweden and Italy) also attend these ceremonies. In 2012, the Elie Wiesel Institute notified the Romanian general prosecutor about the monument, claiming that two symbols displayed at the site - the logo of the Iron Guard and a photograph of Codreanu - were illegal. The prosecutor decided that the memorial did not violate the law, because Codreanu had not been convicted for crimes against peace or crimes against humanity, and because the symbols displayed are not propaganda. Finally, the prosecutor referred to a legal exception which stated that the public use of such symbols is allowed if it serves an educational, academic or artistic purpose. However, the prosecutor also established that the flagpole and fence did not have a construction permit, so they were removed. But the cross itself was left in its place.^[39][40][41]


• 
  Radu Gyr was a commander and ideologue of the Iron Guard who was convicted of war crimes. The Wiesel Institute requested the renaming of Radu Gyr Street in Cluj-Napoca. As of December 2017, the street had not been renamed.^[42]


• 
  Valeriu Gafencu was a Legionary who was active during the Legionary Rebellion. He is now an honorary citizen of the town of Târgu Ocna.^[43]


• 
  Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu was one of the main leaders of the Romanian anti-communist resistance movement, but prior to that he was a member of the Iron Guard. He now has a monument in his memory in Deva, plus a foundation that bears his name. The neo-Legionary "Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu" Foundation is active in promoting the memory of the Iron Guard, such as when it organized a symposium dedicated to Gogu Puiu, a prominent Iron Guard leader, in January 2016. A motion-picture about Ogoranu's life, Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man, was produced in 2010.^[44]


• 
  Ion Moța and Vasile Marin were two Legionaries who were killed during the Spanish Civil War on 13 January 1937 while fighting on Franco's side. At Majadahonda, the site of their deaths, a monument was built in their honor.^[45][46][47]


• 
  Mihail Manoilescu was an economist and politician, Governor of the National Bank of Romania between June and November 1931. In 1937, he joined the Iron Guard when he ran as a senator on the list of the Totul pentru Ţară, an organization established by the Iron Guard. He succeeded in becoming senator following the election. His views corresponded to a large extent with the ideology of the Iron Guard. In 1948, he was detained at the Sighet Prison where he died in 1950. He never faced trial, and thus he was never convicted.^[48] On 14 April 2016, the National Bank of Romania issued a set of commemorative coins in the honor of three former bank governors. Manoilescu, who led the bank for several months in 1931, was among them. Manoilescu's inclusion drew strong protests from the Wiesel Institute, on the grounds of Manoilescu's advocacy of Fascist ideology and antisemitism before World War II. In spite of the criticism, the Bank did not withdraw the coin.^[49][50]


• 
  Mircea Eliade was a world-renowned historian of religions, probably the most well-known person to have been a member of the Iron Guard. Similarly to Manoilescu, his membership was the result of him joining the Totul pentru Ţară.^[51] Eliade is currently honored by various means, ranging from stamps to busts.

Electoral results

Chamber of Deputies

Election	Votes			Seats		Rank	Government	Leader of the national list
	#	%	±pp	#	+/−
1927	10,761	0.4%	0.4	0 / 387		8th	in opposition	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
1931	30,783	1.1%	1.1	0 / 387		12th	in opposition	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
1932	70,674	2.4%	2.4	5 / 387		9th	in opposition	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
1937	478,378	15.8%	15.8	66 / 387	66	3rd	in opposition	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

See also

• Iron Guard death squads


• National Legionary State


• Valerian Trifa

References

Bibliography

• Chioveanu, Mihai. Faces of Fascism, by (University of Bucharest, 2005, Chapter 5: The Case of Romanian Fascism,
  ISBN 973-737-110-0).


• Coogan, Kevin. Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (Autonomedia, 1999,
  ISBN 1-57027-039-2).


• Ioanid, Radu. "The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard," Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions, Volume 5, Number 3 (Winter 2004), pp. 419–453.


• Ioanid, Radu. The Sword of the Archangel, (Columbia University Press, 1990,
  ISBN 0-88033-189-5).


• Iordachi, Constantin. "Charisma, Religion, and Ideology: Romania's Interwar Legion of the Archangel Michael", in John R. Lampe, Mark Mazower (eds.), Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-century Southeastern Europe, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2004


• 
  Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas M. The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Rumania by (Hoover Institution Press, 1970).


• 
  Payne, Stanley G. Fascism: Comparison and Definition, pp. 115–118 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1980,
  ISBN 0-299-08060-9).


• Ronnett, Alexander E. The Legionary Movement Loyola University Press, 1974; second edition published as Romanian Nationalism: The Legionary Movement by Romanian-American National Congress, 1995,
  ISBN 0-8294-0232-2).


• 
  Sima, Horia The History of the Legionary Movement, (Legionary Press, 1995,
  ISBN 1-899627-01-4).


• Thompson, Keith M. Codreanu and the Iron Guard (2010)


• Volovici, Leon. Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, by, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991.


• 
  Weber, Eugen. "Romania" in The European Right: A Historical Profile edited by Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (University of California Press, 1965)


• 
  Weber, Eugen. "The Men of the Archangel" in International Fascism: New Thoughts and Approaches edited by George L. Mosse (SAGE Publications, 1979,
  ISBN 0-8039-9842-2 and
  ISBN 0-8039-9843-0 [Pbk]).

Primary sources

• 
  Fascism (Oxford Readers) edited by Roger Griffin, Part III, A., xi. "Romania", pp. 219–222 (Oxford University Press, 1995,
  ISBN 0-19-289249-5).


• 
  The Suicide of Europe: Memoirs of Prince Michael Sturdza by Mihail R. Sturdza (American Opinion Books, 1968,
  ISBN 0-88279-214-8).

In German

• Heinen, Armin. Die Legion "Erzengel Michael" in Rumänien, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1986,
  ISBN 978-3-486-53101-5) – one of the major historical contributions to the study of the Romanian Iron Guard.


• Totok, William. "Rechtsradikalismus und Revisionismus in Rumänien" (I–VII), in: Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte Literatur und Politik, 13–16 (2001–2004).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Iron Guard.

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  Facing the Past. Information on the Holocaust in Romania, including the role of the Iron Guard, from a report commissioned and accepted by the Romanian government.


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  Clogg, Richard (October 8, 2005). "An untold footnote to World War II". Kathimerini.. An aborted 1945 mission of the Aromanian Iron Guardists in Greece.