Horia Sima

Horia Sima (3 July 1906 – 25 May 1993) was a Romanian fascist politician and writer, best known as the second and last leader of the fascist paramilitary movement known as the Iron Guard (also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael). Sima was also the Vice President of the Council of Ministers and de facto co-leader in Ion Antonescu's National Legionary State. Sima had previously served briefly as State Secretary of Education under Gheorghe Tătărescu in 1940, and as a short-lived Minister of Religion and Arts in the government of Ion Gigurtu.

In January 1941, Sima initiated and led the Legionnaires' Rebellion against Conducător Ion Antonescu and the Romanian Army, for which he was sentenced to death, as well as the Bucharest pogrom, the largest and most violent pogrom against Jews in the history of Muntenia. Following the rebellion, Sima escaped to Germany, and later to Spain, where he lived until his death. In 1946, the Romanian People's Tribunals again sentenced Sima to death in absentia as a war criminal.

In Romania

Sima was born on 3 July 1906 to Silvia and Gheorghe Sima in Mundra, Fogaras County, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (today Mândra, Brașov County, Romania), although some sources incorrectly list his birthplace as the nearby city of Făgăraș and his birth year as 1907. serving as councillor of the National Union of Christian Students of Romania. Beginning in 1932 he began to work as a high school teacher of logic, Latin, and philosophy in Caransebeș, later transferring to a school in Lugoj,

In October 1927, when a student, he joined the newly formed Iron Guard and became responsible for the Banat area. In the early 1930s, Sima participated in the Legion's "Excursions among the People", wherein Iron Guard members would promote their movement in rural areas among peasants, and had become a leading organizer for the Legion in Severin County by the 1930s. Sima was named in initial lists of Iron Guard electoral candidates for the 1933 Romanian general election, but the party was ultimately banned from participating. In 1935, he was promoted to the position of Legionary commander of the Timișoara region, Sima became commander of the Iron Guard in late 1938 after its founder and leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was imprisoned and later murdered. The Iron Guard had initially formed an interim leadership including Sima, Ion Belgae, Iordache Nicoară, Ion Antoniu, and Radu Mironovici in April 1938, but by August, Sima remained the only leader not imprisoned by the Romanian government, eventually allowing him to bypass the hierarchy of leadership previously established and become leader of the Iron Guard.

In early 1939, Sima fled to Nazi Germany through Yugoslavia, At that point, Sima was able to officially return from exile and rise to power as deputy prime minister in the new government, as well as resume his activities as leader of the Iron Guard in Romania. Sima appointed five Legionnaires into ministerial positions within the National Legionary State, and Legionnaires assumed leadership roles as prefects in each of Romania's administrative districts. Sima responded to dissent within the Iron Guard by placing a number of prominent Legionnaires under house arrest, including Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's brothers and father. In the Bucharest pogrom, staged alongside this power struggle, Iron Guardists destroyed synagogues, vandalized and ransacked Jewish homes and stores, and killed and tortured 121 Jews (as well as an additional 30 in smaller towns, specifically in Ploiești and Constanța). In addition to widespread torture and rape of Jews, the Legionary Movement was responsible for the mock shechita of five Jews, including a five-year-old girl, who had their stomachs cut open, entrails removed, and were hung from meat hooks and labelled "Kosher" in a Bucharest slaughterhouse. According to then-American minister to Romania, Franklin Mitt Gunther, "Sixty Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for carcasses. They were all skinned... and the quantity of blood about was evidence that they had been skinned alive".

Exile

Unlike most Legionnaires, who were imprisoned by Antonescu following the suppression of the coup attempt, Sima escaped imprisonment. Being secretly housed first at the Sicherheitsdienst headquarters in Bucharest, Sima was evacuated on 23 January and hidden in the home of the Gestapo representative to Romania, but soon moved to his sister's residence in Bucharest. Soon after he was again moved by the Sicherheitsdienst to Brașov, and finally to Sibiu, disguised as an SS officer. where they were placed in a villa in Berlin, with a large group of Legionnaires living in nearby Berkenbrück. Though at first enjoying freedom of movement in Berlin, Sima and his companions were moved to Berkenbrück on 19 April 1941 and placed under strict surveillance. to ensure his permanent exile. but was soon extradited back to Germany on the orders of Galeazzo Ciano. In his political journal, on 26 December 1942, Ciano wrote that, "Since [Sima] got out of Germany with a false passport, Himmler demands his extradition. For my part, I advised the Duce to grant his extradition forthwith, especially since his presence here would create friction with Antonescu. And then, all things considered, there will be one less crook." After travelling to Italy, having disobeyed a contract signed with Germany meant to limit the political activities of the exiled Legionnaires, would later describe Sima as a "terrorist", noting that he "[took] advantage of and abused... his connections", and that Sima possessed "non-discipline... [and] a dangerous dilettantism, not to mention infantilism." Legionnaires increasingly began to blame Sima's leadership of the Iron Guard for the death of Codreanu, citing his previous actions as commander in 1938 as "terroristic" and "tumultuous". This controversy was to enforce the split which is still present in the political legacy of the Iron Guard. By 1943, the Iron Guard — now in exile in Rostock, Germany — had split into at least three distinct groups with separate leadership, not including the Legionnaires who considered Sima their legitimate leader. Sima was transferred to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg in April 1943,

When Romania changed sides in World War II, joining the Allies in August 1944, Sima was released and instructed to create a pro-Nazi puppet government-in-exile in Vienna, and would broadcast instructions to fascist battalions via German radio. As the Soviet offensive proved unstoppable, he fled to Altaussee under the alias Josef Weber. Living in Paris, in Italy, and finally in Spain, he was sentenced to death in Romania in 1946.

During his exile, the question of leadership within the Iron Guard was still a salient issue, and the now-disjointed organization was fraught with infighting and factionalism. In January 1954, Sima was formally and publicly "disowned" by the Legionary Movement through a 13-page document published in Vatra magazine after controversy arose over the alleged existence of an illegitimate child: forwarded a letter to Legionary leaders alleging that Sima had illegitimately fathered the child of a fellow Legionnaire identified only as "B" while in France, a claim supposedly backed by the mother of the child and a number of other Legionnaires. The publication of these accusations in Vatra, alongside other political tensions, caused the resignation of a number of members of the Guard, as well as the foundation of a new faction named "Moța-Marin" under the leadership of Ovidiu Găină. where he had previously been sentenced to death following two separate trials. In addition to this split and the formation of the "Moța-Marin" group, there also existed controversies surrounding Sima's politics and policies: one splinter group denounced Sima's leadership as "reactionary" and "doomed to failure," and a further number of distinct groups with conflicting ideologies, tactics, and leadership formed.

Until the 1990s, Sima attempted to form connections with mainstream ideologies of anti-Communism, insisting on the Guard's allegiance to the Free World. This adoption of a new image was, in part, successful — beginning in 1949, the United States helped to fund NATO missions to parachute Iron Guard members into Romania in an attempt to undermine the socialist government. In Spain, Sima forged close connections with several Francoist and Falangist politicians, including Luis Carrero Blanco and Blas Piñar. He also continued to lead (or be affiliated with) Legionary front organizations in Canada, the United States, Germany, Austria, and France. He was buried near his wife Elvira Sima in Torredembarra, near Barcelona, Spain.

Selected writings

Destinée du nationalisme (Paris: P.E.G., 1951)
Europe at the crossroads: war or capitulation? (Munich: Verlag "Vestitorii", 1955)
Dos movimientos nacionales: José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (Madrid: Europa, 1960)
The Rumanian situation after 19 years of Communist slavery and policies of the western powers, 1944-1963; a declaration by the Rumanian Legionary Movement (Rio de Janeiro: Graf. Ed. NAP S/A, 1963)
Articole politice, 1950-1963 (Madrid: Colecția "Omul Nou", 1967)
Qué es el comunismo? (Madrid: Fuerza Nueva Editorial, 1970)
Qué es el nacionalismo? (Madrid: Fuerza Nueva Editorial, 1971)
Histoire du Mouvement Légionnaire (Rio de Janeiro, 1972) (translated as The History of the Legionary Movement [England: Legionary Press, 1995])
El hombre cristiano y la acción política (Madrid: Fuerza Nueva Editorial, 1974) (with Blas Piñar)
Sfârșitul unei domnii sângeroase (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1977)
Técnica de lucha contra el comunismo (Madrid: Fuerza Nueva Editorial, 1980)
Era libertății: Statul Național-Legionar vol. 1 (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1982); vol. 2 (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1986)
Prizonieri ai puterilor axei (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1990)
Guvernul național român dela Viena (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1993)

In Romania

Exile

Selected writings

References

Further reading

External links