Aug. 23 would always be an important date in Rumania, no matter how the Communists tried to rewrite history. That day, three years ago, Hitler had 100,000 troops in Rumania and the country was in the grip of his closest foreign friend, Ion Antonescu.
On the Moldavian border, 180 miles northeast of Bucharest, Rumanian troops were exchanging shots with Russians. But suddenly the Rumanians turned their guns on the Germans, and Hitler's largely Rumanian-manned southern flank gave way to a Red Army romp. Behind the historic switch was an historic conversation—of the sort novelists spend agonized years trying to reconstruct....
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