page_title: Gheorghe Tătărescu
section_title: World War
hierarchical_section_title: Gheorghe Tătărescu / World War
caption_attribution_description: Vienna Diktat - Northern Transylvania (yellow) given to Hungary
context_page_description: Gheorghe I. Tătărescu was a Romanian politician who served twice as Prime Minister of Romania, three times as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and once as Minister of War. Representing the "young liberals" faction inside the National Liberal Party, Tătărescu began his political career as a collaborator of Ion G. Duca, becoming noted for his anti-Communism and, in time, for his conflicts with the PNL's leader Dinu Brătianu and the Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu. During his first time in office, he moved closer to King Carol II, leading an ambivalent policy toward the fascist Iron Guard and ultimately becoming instrumental in establishing the authoritarian and corporatist regime around the National Renaissance Front. In 1940, he accepted the cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, and consequently had to resign.
  After the start of World War II, Gheorghe Tătărescu initiated a move to rally political forces in opposition to Ion Antonescu's dictatorship, and sought an alliance with the Romanian Communist Party.
context_section_description: After the Second Vienna Award (when Northern Transylvania was lost to Hungary), confirming Carol's failure to preserve both the country's neutrality and its territorial integrity, Romania was taken over by an Iron Guard dictatorial government (the National Legionary State). Speaking five years later, Dinu Brătianu placed the blame for the serious developments on Tătărescu's own actions, addressing him directly:
  "I remind you: [...] you have contributed directly, in 1940, in steering the country towards a foreign policy that, as one could tell even then, was to prove ill-fated and which led us to the loathsome Vienna settlement, one which you have supported inside the Crown Council [...]."
  On 26 November 1940, the Iron Guard began a bloody retaliation against various political figures who had served under Carol (following a late investigation into the 1938 killing of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the movement's founder and early leader, by Carol's authorities). Tătărescu and Constantin Argetoianu were among the second wave of captured politicians (on 27 November), and were destined for arbitrary execution; they were, however, saved by the intervention of regular police forces, most of whom had grown hostile to the Guardist militias.
  Retired from political life during the war, he was initially sympathetic to Ion Antonescu's pro-German dictatorship (see Romania during World War II)—Dinu Brătianu, who remained in opposition to the Antonescu regime, made mention an official visit to Bessarabia, recovered after the start of Operation Barbarossa, when Tătărescu had accompanied Antonescu, "thus making common cause with his warmongering action". At the time, his daughter Sandra Tătărescu Negropontes worked as an ambulance driver for the Romanian Red Cross.
  In the end, Tătărescu became involved in negotiations aimed at withdrawing Romania from the conflict, and, while beginning talks with the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), tried to build foreign connections to support Romania's cause following the inevitable defeat; he thus corresponded with Edvard Beneš, leader of the Czechoslovak government in exile in England. Beneš, who had already been discussing matters involving Romania with Richard Franasovici and Grigore Gafencu, and had agreed to support the Romanian cause, informed the Allied governments of Tătărescu's designs.
  Tătărescu later contrasted his diplomatic approach with the strategy of Barbu Știrbey (who had only attempted an agreement with the Western Allies in Cairo, instead of opening relations with the Soviets). Initially meeting with the refusal of Iuliu Maniu and Dinu Brătianu (who decided to invest their trust in Știrbey), he was relatively successful after the Cairo initiative proved fruitless: the two traditional parties accepted collaboration with the bloc formed by the PCR, the Romanian Social Democratic Party, the Ploughmen's Front, and the Socialist Peasants' Party, leading to the formation of the short-lived and unstable National Democratic Bloc (BND) in June 1944. It overthrew Antonescu in August, by means of the successful King Michael Coup.
caption: Greater Romania with Northern Transylvania highlighted in yellow
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