Ion Zelea Codreanu was corn and grew up in Rumanian Moldavia, a passionate, tormented patriot, who won a reputation as the greatest Jew-baiter in the most anti-Semitic town of the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. After World
War I his son Corneliu turned the father's theorizing into practice, founded the wild-eyed, green-shirted Iron Guard—mystic, antiSemitic, pro-Nazi but also ferociously patriotic. When Corneliu was slain by King Carol's orders in 1938, canonized by his followers, old Ion Codreanu, then 66, felt duty bound to step from the background into active leadership of the most jingoistic faction of the Iron Guard.
Since Carol's fall and Premier General Ion Antonescu's ascent to power, the Codreanist Guards have watched the results of German occupation with growing anger. Horia Sima, leader of the moderate Guardists, was looked on as a traitor for accepting the Vice Premiership. Antonescu himself only joined the Guard after his coup, was hooted down as the German cat's-paw who had given Transylvania to the Hungarians. For the extremist Guards did not fancy the Nazis at close quarters. Among other things for which the Germans were blamed was a 300-400% rise in food prices.
This situation played right into British and Russian hands. Moscow was out to plague German interest in the Balkans. Britain was out to disrupt Germany's Rumanian oil supply and to hamper spring planting.
Last week the Guard, possibly urged on by British or Russian agents provocateurs, broke loose. Still sobbing for breath after last year's man-&-heaven-made catastrophes, but with an infinite capacity for ever-new violence, Rumania plunged into another bloody exploit. The final push came from the gun of a mysterious Greek assassin named Dimitrius Sarando—whom Berlin described as carrying a Turkish passport, U. S. money, U. S. and British letters, and operating under British Secret Service orders. He killed a German General Staff officer, Major Döring.
Pitchforks v. Tanks. At once Premier Antonescu demanded the resignation of Interior Minister General George Petrovicescu for failing to keep order, kicked all Iron Guardists out of the police force. Rebel Guardists barricaded themselves in the Bucharest Prefecture and began firing on the soldiers sent to drive them out. More Guardists in the streets went after Army tanks, jammed the treads with pitchforks and horse blankets. Soon troops opened artillery fire against the rebels, now barricaded in apartment houses, behind overturned busses and taxis.
Fighting mad, Antonescu took to the radio, slapped down an ultimatum to the rebels: "We must re-establish order and tranquillity in 24 hours, because I have not been and I do not want to be tomorrow the instrument of tyranny, or the bridge leading to anarchy." Troops marched into Bucharest's Greek colony, arrested ten of its leaders as hostages for Major Döring's assassin.