Gheorghe Tătărescu Gheorghe I . Tătărescu ( also known as " Guţă Tătărescu " , with a slightly antiquated pet form of his given name ; 2 November 1886 – 28 March 1957 ) was a Romania n politician who served twice as Prime Minister of Romania ( 1934 – 1937 ; 1939 – 1940 ) , three times as Minister of Foreign Affairs ( " interim " in 1934 and 1938 ; appointed to the office in 1945 - 1947 ) , and once as Minister of War ( 1934 ) . Representing the " young liberals " faction inside the National Liberal Party ( PNL ) , 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 ( PCR ) . He was twice expelled from the PNL , in 1938 and 1944 , creating instead his own group , the National Liberal Party - Tătărescu , and representing it inside the Communist - endorsed Petru Groza cabinet . In 1946 - 1947 , he was also the President of the Romanian Delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris . After that moment , relations between Tătărescu and the PCR began to sour , and he was replaced from the leadership of both his own party and the Foreign Ministry when his name was implicated in the Tămădău Affair . Following the , he was arrested and held as a political prisoner , while being called to testify in the trial of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu . He died soon after his release from prison . Elected an honorary member of the Romanian Academy in 1937 , he was removed from his seat by the Communist authorities in 1948 . One of his brothers , Colonel Ştefan Tătărescu , was at some point the leader of a minor Nazi group , the National Socialist Party . Early life and politics . Born in Târgu Jiu , Tătărescu studied at Carol I High School in Craiova . He later went to France , where he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1912 , with a thesis on the Romanian parliamentary system ( " Le régime électoral et parlementaire en Roumanie " ) . He subsequently worked as a lawyer in Bucharest . He fathered a son , Tudor , and a daughter , Sanda ( married to the lawyer Ulise Negropontes in 1940 ) . After joining the National Liberal Party ( PNL ) , he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in November 1919 , representing Gorj County . Among his first notable actions as a politician was an initiative to interpellate Nicolae L . Lupu , the Minister of Interior Affairs Ministry in the Romanian National Party - Peasants ' Party cabinet , in answer to concerns that the executive was tolerating socialist agitation in the countryside . He stood among the PNL ' s " young liberals " faction ( as they were colloquially known ) , supporting free trade and a more authoritarian rule over the country around King Carol II , and opposing both the older generation of leaders ( who tended to advocate protectionism and a liberal democracy ) and the dissident group of Gheorghe I . Brătianu ( " see National Liberal Party - Brătianu " ) . Undersecretary in the Interior Affairs Ministry under several PNL cabinets ( beginning with that of Ion I . C . Brătianu in 1922 - 1926 ) , he first became noted as a collaborator of Ion G . Duca . In 1924 - 1936 , in contrast to his post - World War II agenda , Tătărescu was a noted anti - communist , and reacted vehemently against the Romanian Communist Party ( PCdR , later PCR ) — recommending and obtaining its outlawing , based on Communist adversity to the concept of Greater Romania , and notably arguing that the Comintern - supported Tatarbunary Uprising was evidence of " imperialist communism " . First cabinet . Context . Tătărescu became leader of the cabinet in January 1934 , as the fascist Iron Guard had assassinated Prime Minister Duca on 30 December 1933 ( the five - day premiership of Constantin Anghelescu ensured transition between the two governments ) . His was the second PNL cabinet formed during Carol ' s reign , and the latter ' s failure to draw support from the mainstream group led to a tight connection being established between Carol and the young liberals , with Tătărescu backing the process leading to the creation of a royal dictatorship . One of Tătărescu ' s first measures was a decisive move to end the conflict between the National Liberal executive and the Mayor of Bucharest , Dem I . Dobrescu ( who was backed by the National Peasants ' Party ) — making use of his prerogative , he removed Dobrescu from office on 18 January . The brief period constituted a reference point in Romanian economy , as the emergence from the Great Depression , although marked by endemic problems , saw prosperity more widespread than ever before . This was , in part , the contribution of new economic relations which Tătărescu defended and encouraged : the state transformed itself into the main agent of economic activities , allowing for prosperous businesses to benefit from its demands , and , in time , leading to the creation of a " camarilla " dominated by the figures of industrialists such as Aristide Blank , Nicolae Malaxa , and Max Auschnitt . In this context , Tătărescu ' s allegedly subservient position in front of Carol was a frequent topic of ridicule at the time . According to a hostile account of the socialist Petre Pandrea : " Tătărescu was ceremonious in order to cover his menial nature . When he was leaving audiences [ with the King ] , he pressed forward on the small of his back and returned " facing backwards " from the desk to the door , not daring to show his back . [ . . . ] Watching over the scene [ . . . ] , Carol II exclaimed to his intimate assistants : < br > — I don ' t have a big enough tooshie for all the politicians to kiss ! " Among other services rendered , he intervened in the conflict between Carol and his brother , Prince Nicholas , asking the latter to renounce either his marriage to Ioana Dumitrescu - Doletti — considered a misalliance by Carol , it had not been recognized by Romanian authorities — or his princely prerogatives . Nicholas chose the latter alternative in 1937 . Inside his party , Tătărescu lost ground to Dinu Brătianu , elected by the traditional Liberal elite as a compromise in order to ensure unity ; upon his election in 1934 , the latter stated : " This time as well , I would have gladly conceded , if I were to believe that anyone else in the party could gather voter unanimity . " The issue remained debated for the following two years . The party congress of July 1936 eventually elected Tătărescu to the second position in the party , that of general secretary . European politics . In his foreign policy , Prime Minister Tătărescu balanced two different priorities , attempting to strengthen the traditional military alliance with Poland which was aimed at the Soviet Union , and reacting against the growing regional influence of Nazi Germany by maintaining the relevancy of the Little Entente and establishing further contacts with the Soviets . In August 1936 , he removed Nicolae Titulescu from the office of Foreign Minister , replacing him with Victor Antonescu . This caused an uproar , with most of Romania ' s diplomatic corps voicing their dissatisfaction . Over the following months , virtually all of Titulescu ' s supporters were themselves recalled ( including , among others , Constantin Vişoianu , the ambassador to Poland , Constantin Antoniade , Romania ' s representative to the League of Nations , Dimitrie Ghyka , the ambassador to Belgium , and Caius Brediceanu , the ambassador to Austria ) while Titulescu ' s adversaries , such as Antoine Bibesco , were returned to office . Bibesco subsequently campaigned in France and the United Kingdom , in an attempt to reassure Romania ' s main allies that the move did not signify a change in Romania ' s priorities . Tătărescu was later blamed by his own party for having renounced the diplomatic course on which Romania had engaged . In early 1937 , Tătărescu rejected the proposal of Józef Beck , Poland ' s Minister of Foreign Affairs , to withdraw Romania ' s support for Czechoslovakia and attempt a reconciliation with Hungary ( the following year , Romania withdrew its support for the former , indicating , just before the Munich Agreement , that it was not in a position to guarantee Czechoslovakia ' s frontiers ) . This was accompanied by Czechoslovak initiatives to establish close contacts between the Little Entente and the Soviets : a scandal erupted in the same year , when the country ' s ambassador to Romania , Jan Šeba , published a volume calling for Soviet - Entente military cooperation ( despite the Soviet - Romanian conflict over Bessarabia ) and expressing the hope that the Soviet state would extend its borders into Western Byelorussia and Ukraine . Kamil Krofta , Czechoslovakia ' s Foreign Minister , received criticism for having prefaced the book , and , after Tătărescu paid a visit to Czechoslovak Prime Minister Milan Hodža , Šeba was recalled to Prague . Facing the Iron Guard . In combating the Iron Guard , Tătărescu chose to relax virtually all pressures on the latter ( while mimicking some of its messages ) , and instead concentrated again on curbing the activities of the Romanian Communist Party ( PCR ) and outlawing its " Popular Front " - type organizations ( " see Amicii URSS " ) . In April 1936 , he and the Minister of the Interior Ion Inculeţ allowed the a youth congress to gather in Târgu Mureş , aware of the fact that it was masking a fascist gathering ; delegates to the congress , traveling in a special train commissioned by the government , vandalized Ion Duca ' s memorial plate in Sinaia train station , and , upon their arrival in Târgu Mureş , made public their violent anti - Semitic agenda . It was probably there that death squad s were designated and assigned missions , leading to the murder of Mihai Stelescu , a former associate , in June of the next year . In February 1937 , an intense publicity campaign by the Guard , begun with the ostentatious funerals of Ion Moţa and Vasile Marin ( killed in the Spanish Civil War ) and culminating in the physical assaulting of Traian Bratu , rector of the University of Iaşi , by Guardist students , provoked the premier ' s order to close down universities throughout the country . Later in that year , the collaboration between monarch and premier , coupled with the fact that Tătărescu had successfully attracted nationalist votes from the Iron Guard , led to the signing of an electoral agreement between the latter , the National Peasants ' Party ( the main democratic opposition group ) , and the National Liberal Party - Brătianu — the pact was meant to prevent all attempt by Carol to manipulate the votes in elections . ( A secondary and unexpected development was that the illegal PCR , which had decided to back the National Peasants ' Party prior to the elections , eventually supported the electoral pact . ) Tătărescu ' s own alliance policy rose the anger of his opponents inside the PNL , as he signed collaboration agreements with the fascist Romanian Front and German Party . The 1937 elections led to an unprecedented situation : although the PNL and Tătărescu had gained the largest percentage of the vote ( almost 36 % ) , they fell short of being awarded majority bonus ( granted at 40 % of the vote ) . As the far right had gathered momentum ( the Guard , running under the name of " Everything for the Fatherland Party " , had obtained 15 . 6 of the vote ) , Carol was faced with the threat of an Iron Guard government , which would have been one deeply opposed to all of his political principles : he called on a third party , Octavian Goga ' s National Christian Party ( coming from the anti - Semitic far right but deeply opposed to the Guard ) to form a new cabinet in December of that year . Consequently , Tătărescu renounced his offices inside the party , and , while keeping his office of general secretary , he was surpassed by the readmitted Gheorghe I . Brătianu — who was elected to the new office of PNL vice president on 10 January 1938 . After the failure of Goga ' s policies to curb the rise of their competitors , the king , backed by Tătărescu , resorted to dissolving all political parties on 30 May 1938 , creating instead the National Renaissance Front . Second cabinet . In this context , Tătărescu chose to back the regime , as the PNL , like the National Peasants ' Party , remained active in nominal clandestinity ( as the law banning it had never been enforced any further ) . Having personally signed the document banning opposition parties , he was expelled from the PNL in April 1938 , and contested the legitimacy of the action for the following years . Allegedly , his ousting was recommended by Iuliu Maniu , leader of the National Peasants ' Party ' s and , for the following years , the closest of Dinu Brătianu ' s political allies . Soon after his second arrival to power , Tătărescu became noted for the enthusiastic support he gave to the modernist sculptor Constantin Brâncuși , and directed state funds to finance the building of Brâncuși ' s " The Endless Column " complex in Târgu Jiu ( completed in October 1938 ) . Alongside Alexandru Vaida - Voevod and Constantin Argetoianu ( whom he succeeded as Premier ) , Tătărescu became a dominant figure in the group of maverick pro - Carol politicians . After a bloody crackdown on the Iron Guard , the Front attempted to reunite political forces in a national government that was to back Carol ' s foreign policies in view of increasing threats on Romania ' s borders after the outbreak of World War II . In 1945 , Tătărescu stressed his belief that authoritarianism benefited Romania , and supported the view that Carol had meant to keep Romania out of the war . Tătărescu ' s second cabinet was meant to reflect the latter policies , but it did not draw any support from traditional parties , and , in April 1940 , Carol , assisted by Ernest Urdăreanu and Mihail Ghelmegeanu , began talks with the ( by then much weaker ) Iron Guard . Tătărescu remained in office throughout the rest of the Phony War , until the fall of France , and his cabinet signed an economic agreement with Nazi Germany ( through which virtually all Romanian exports were directed towards the latter country ) and saw the crumbling of Romania ' s alliance with the United Kingdom and France . The cabinet was brought down by the cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union ( effects of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact ) , as well as by Carol ' s attempt to appease German hostility by dissolving it , replacing Tătărescu with Ion Gigurtu , and recreating the Front as the totalitarian " Party of the Nation " . World War . 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 militia s . 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 Ştirbey ( 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 Ştirbey ) , 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 . Alliance with the Communists . Tătărescu returned to the PNL later in 1944 — after the Soviet Red Army had entered Romania and the country had become an Allied state , political parties were again allowed to register . Nevertheless , Tătărescu was again opposed to the party leaders Dinu and Gheorghe I . Brătianu , and split to form his own group in June – July 1945 . Dinu Brătianu convened the PNL leadership and formally excluded Tătărescu and his partisans , citing their support for dictatorial regimes . As the PCR , which was growing more influent ( with the backing of Soviet occupation ) while generally lacking popular appeal , sought to form alliances with various forces in order to increase its backing , Tătărescu declared his group to be left - wing and Social liberal , while attempting to preserve a middle course in the new political setting , by pleading for close relations to be maintained with both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies . N . D . Cocea , a prominent socialist who had joined the PNL , represented the faction in talks for an alliance with the Communists . The agreement , favored by Ana Pauker , was vehemently opposed by another member of the Communist leadership , Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu , who argued in favor of " making a distinction inside the bourgeoisie " , and collaborating with the main PNL , while calling Tătărescu ' s faction " a gang of con artists , blackmail ers , and well - known bribers " . Tătărescu became Foreign Minister and vice president of the government in the cabinet of Petru Groza when the latter came into office after Soviet pressures in 1945 ; his faction had been awarded leadership of four other ministries — Finance , with three successive office - holders ( of whom the last was Alexandru Alexandrini ) , Public Works , with Gheorghe Vântu , Industry ( with Petre N . Bejan ) , and Religious Affairs , with Radu Roşculeţ . He indirectly helped the PCR carry out an electoral fraud during the general election in 1946 by failing to reply to American proposals for organizing fair elections . At the Paris Conference , where he was accompanied by the PCR leaders Gheorghe Gheorghiu - Dej and Pătrăşcanu , he acknowledged the dissolution of " Greater Romania " under the provisions of the new Treaty ( 1947 ) . 1947 and after . Tensions between his group with the PCR occurred when the former founded itself as a party under the name of " National - Liberal Party " ( commonly known as the National Liberal Party - Tătărescu ) , and , in June – July 1945 , proclaimed its goal to be the preservation of property and a middle class under a new regime . Of himself and his principles , Tătărescu stated : " I am not a communist . Taking in view my attitudes towards mankind , society , property , I am not a communist . Thus , the new orientation in external politics which I demand for my country cannot be accused of being determined by affinities or sympathies of doctrine . " Speaking in retrospect , Gheorghiu - Dej indicated the actual relation between his party and Tătărescu ' s : " we have had to tolerate by our side a capitalist - gentry political group , Tătărescu ' s group " . Tătărescu himself continued to show his support for several PCR policies : in the summer of 1947 , he condemned the United States for having protested against the repression of forces in the opposition . Nevertheless , at around the same time , he issued his own critique of the Groza government , becoming the target of violent attacks initiated by Miron Constantinescu in the PCR press . Consequently , he was singled out for negligence in office when , during the kangaroo trial of Iuliu Maniu ( " see Tămădău Affair " ) , it was alleged that several employees of his ministry had conspired against the government . " Scînteia " , the official voice of the PCR , wrote of all National Liberal Party - Tătărescu offices in the government : " The rot is all - encompassing ! It has to be removed ! " . Tătărescu resigned his office on 6 November 1947 , and was replaced by the Communist Ana Pauker . For the following two months , he was sidelined in his own party by PCR pressures , and removed from its leadership in January 1948 ( being replaced with Petre N . Bejan — the party was subsequently known as " National Liberal Party - Petre N . Bejan " ) . One of his last actions as cabinet member had been to sign the document officially rejecting the Marshall Plan . After the proclamation of the " " on 30 December 1947 , the existence of all parties other than the PCR had become purely formal , and , after the elections of 28 March the single - party state was confirmed by legislation . He was arrested on 5 May 1950 , and held in the notorious Sighet prison ( alongside three of his brothers — Ştefan Tătărescu included — and his former collaborator Bejan ) . His son Tudor , who was living in Paris , suffered from schizophrenia after 1950 , and had to be committed to an institution ( where he died in 1955 ) . Sandra Tătărescu Negropontes was also imprisoned in 1950 , and released three years later , upon the death of Joseph Stalin . One of Gheorghe Tătărescu ' s last appearances in public was his stand as one of the prosecution ' s witnesses in the 1954 trial of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu , when he claimed that the defendant had been infiltrated into the PCR during the time when he had been premier ( Pătrăşcanu was posthumously cleared of all charges ) . Released in 1955 , Tătărescu died in Bucharest , less than two years later . According to Sanda Tătărescu Negropontes , this came as a result of tuberculosis contracted while in detention .