Penescu's time at the ministry saw the first groups of exiled Iron Guard members being parachuted in from Nazi Germany, with several hundred landings by the following February. Domestically, the security situation was uncertain, with agents working for the ministry informing on those being watched when they joined political parties, as well as on the disorder caused by the Soviet occupiers. The first stirrings of the Romanian anti-communist resistance movement began to appear. In December 1944, Penescu was elected secretary general of the PNȚ, replacing Ghiță Popp. In August 1946, he was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt at the Pitești tribunal that left two dead and sixteen injured, and Soviet pressures for the PNȚ and other historic parties to be dissolved were growing.