Iron Guard - WikiHQ

Populism
Antisemitism

| position = Far-right

| attacks =

| battles = Anti-communist resistance

| allies = 16px OUN (Melnykites)

| size = 272,000 (late 1937 )

| partof =

ABN (from 1943)
WLFD (post-war) Gheorghe Clime Horia Sima

| foundation =

| registered =

| banned =

| predecessor = Corneliu Codreanu Group

| newspaper =

| student_wing = Centru Studențesc Legionar

| youth_wing =

| womens_wing = Corpul Doamnelor Legionare

| wing1_title =

| wing1 = Iron Guard

| wing2_title = Welfare wing

| wing2 = Ajutorul Legionar

| wing3_title = Labour wing

| wing3 =

| colours = Green (customary)

| symbol = 150px|border

| country = Romania

| footnotes =

The Iron Guard () was a far-right, revolutionary, fascist paramilitary organization and political party active in the Kingdom of Romania during the interwar period and the Second World War. Founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as the Legion of the Archangel Michael () or the Legionary Movement (), the movement was strongly anti-democratic, anti-communist, and antisemitic, and its ideology inspired both political violence and forms of Christian terrorism. It differed from other European far-right movements of the period due to its spiritual basis, as the Iron Guard was deeply imbued with Romanian Orthodox Christian mysticism.

In March 1930, Codreanu formed the Iron Guard as a paramilitary branch of the Legion, which in 1935 changed its official name to the "Totul pentru Țară" party—literally, "Everything for the Country". It existed into the early part of the Second World War, during which time it came to power. Members were called Legionnaires or, outside of the movement, "Greenshirts" because of the predominantly green uniforms they wore.

When Marshal Ion Antonescu came to power in September 1940, he brought the Iron Guard into the government, creating the National Legionary State. In January 1941, following the Legionnaires' rebellion, Antonescu used the army to suppress the movement, destroying the organization; its commander, Horia Sima, along with other leaders, escaped to Germany.

Name

The "Legion of the Archangel Michael" () was founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on 24 June 1927 and led by him until his assassination in 1938. Despite various changes of the (intermittently banned) organization's name, members of the movement were widely referred to as "legionnaires" (sometimes "legionaries"; ) and the organization as the "Legion" or the "Legionary Movement".

In March 1930, Codreanu formed the "Iron Guard" () as a paramilitary political branch of the Legion; this name eventually came to refer to the Legion itself. From June 1935 onwards, the organization used the name "Totul pentru Țară", literally meaning "Everything for the Country", in electoral contexts.

History

Founding and rise

In 1927, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu left the number two position (under A.C. Cuza) in the Romanian political party known as the National-Christian Defense League (Liga Apărării Național Creștine, LANC), and founded the Legion of the Archangel Michael along with , Teodosie Popescu, Ion I. Moța, Radu Mironovici, and Ilie Gârneață.

The Legion differed from other fascist movements in that it had its mass base among the peasantry and students, rather than amongst military veterans. However, the legionnaires shared the general fascist "respect for the war veterans". Romania had a very large intelligentsia relative to the general population with 2.0 university students per one thousand of the population compared to 1.7 per one thousand of the population in far wealthier Germany, while Bucharest had more lawyers in the 1930s than did the much larger city of Paris. Even before the worldwide Great Depression, Romanian universities were producing far more graduates than the number of available jobs and the Great Depression in Romania had further drastically limited the opportunities for employment by the intelligentsia, who turned to the Iron Guard out of frustration.

Romania had been a strongly Francophile country since 1859, when the United Principalities came into being, giving Romania effective independence from the Ottoman Empire (an event largely made possible by French diplomacy, which pressured the Ottomans on behalf of the Romanians). From that time onward, most of the Romanian intelligentsia professed themselves believers in French ideas about the universal appeal of democracy, freedom, and human rights, while at the same time holding antisemitic views about Romania's Jewish minority.

In contrast to the traditional idea that Romania would follow the path of its "Latin sister", France, Codreanu promoted a xenophobic, exclusive ultra-nationalism, in which Romania would follow its own path and reject French ideas about universal values and human rights.

The leaders of the Iron Guard often wore traditional peasant costumes, with crucifixes and bags of Romanian soil around their necks, to emphasise their commitment to authentic Romanian folk values, in marked contrast to Romania's Francophile elite, who preferred the style of the latest fashions. The fact that many members of Romania's elite were often corrupt and that very little of the vast sums of money generated by Romania's oil found its way into the pockets of ordinary people further enhanced the appeal of the Legion, which denounced the entire elite as irredeemably corrupt.

Under Codreanu's charismatic leadership, the Legion was known for skillful propaganda, including a deft use of spectacle. Utilizing marches, religious processions, patriotic and partisan hymns and anthems, along with volunteer work and charitable campaigns in rural areas, the League presented itself as an alternative to corrupt parties in support of anti-communism. Initially, the Iron Guard hoped to encompass any political faction, regardless of its position on the political spectrum, that wished to combat the rise of communism in the USSR.

The Iron Guard was purposely anti-Semitic, promoting the idea that "Rabbinical aggression against the Christian world"—which manifested through Freemasonry, Freudianism, homosexuality, atheism, Marxism, Bolshevism, and the civil war in Spain"—were undermining society.

The Vaida-Voevod government outlawed the Iron Guard in January 1931. On 10 December 1933, the Romanian Liberal Prime Minister Ion Duca banned the Iron Guard. After a brief period of arrests, beatings, torture and even killings (18 members of the Legionary Movement were killed by the police force), Iron Guard members retaliated on 29 December 1933, by assassinating Duca on the platform of Sinaia railway station.

The Iron Guard participated in the 1934 Montreux Fascist conference as an observer. From the outset, the conference was marred by serious conflicts between the participants. The Iron Guard, for example, stressed the need for race to be an integral component of fascism.

Struggle for power

upright|thumb|[[Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the Iron Guard]]

In the 1937 parliamentary elections, the Legion came in third with 15.5% of the vote, behind the National Liberal and the National Peasant Parties. King Carol II strongly opposed the Legion's political aims and successfully kept them out of government until he himself was forced to abdicate in 1940. During this period, the Legion was generally on the receiving end of persecution. On 10 February 1938, the king dissolved the government and initiated a royal dictatorship.

Codreanu advised the Legion to accept the new regime. However, Interior Minister Armand Călinescu did not trust Codreanu and ordered him arrested on 16 April. Realizing that the government was looking for an excuse to have him executed, Codreanu ordered the Legion's acting commander, Horia Sima, to take no action unless there was evidence that he was in immediate danger. However, Sima, who was known for his violent streak, launched a wave of terrorist activity in the autumn. Codreanu got wind of this and ordered the violence to end.

The order came too late. On the night of 29–30 November 1938, Codreanu and several other legionnaires were strangled to death by their Gendarmerie escort, purportedly during an attempt to escape from prison. It is generally agreed that there was no such escape attempt, and that Codreanu and the others were killed on the king's orders, probably in reaction to the 24 November 1938 murder by legionnaires of a relative (some sources say a "friend") of Călinescu. In the aftermath of Carol's decision to crush the Iron Guard, many members of the Legion fled into exile in Germany, where they received both material and financial support from the NSDAP, especially from the SS and Alfred Rosenberg's Foreign Political Office.

For much of the interwar period, Romania was in the French sphere of influence, and in 1926, Romania signed a treaty of alliance with France. Following the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936, Carol began to move away from the traditional alliance with France, as the fear grew in Romania that the French would do nothing in the event of German aggression in Eastern Europe. However, Carol's regime was still regarded as essentially pro-French. From the German viewpoint, the Iron Guard was regarded as far preferable to King Carol. The royal dictatorship lasted just over one year. On 7 March 1939, a new government was formed with Călinescu as prime minister; on 21 September 1939, he, in turn was assassinated by legionnaires avenging Codreanu. Călinescu favored a foreign policy where Romania would maintain a pro-Allied neutrality in World War II, and as such, the SS had a hand in organizing Călinescu's assassination.

300px|thumb|left|[[Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Iron Guard members in 1937]]

In addition to the conflict with the king, an internal power struggle ensued in the wake of Codreanu's death. Waves of repression almost eliminated the Legion's original leadership by 1939, promoting second-rank members to the forefront. According to a secret report filed by the Hungarian political secretary in Bucharest in late 1940, three main factions existed: the group gathered around Sima, a dynamic local leader from the Banat, which was the most pragmatic and least Orthodox in its orientation; the group composed of Codreanu's father, Ion Zelea Codreanu, and his brothers (who despised Sima); and the Moța-Marin group, which wanted to strengthen the movement's religious character.

After a long period of confusion, Sima, representing the Legion's less radical wing, overcame all competition and assumed leadership, being recognised as such on 6 September 1940 by the Legionary Forum, a body created at his initiative. On 28 September, the elder Codreanu stormed the Legion headquarters in Bucharest (the Green House) in an unsuccessful attempt to install himself as leader. Sima was close to SS Volksgruppenführer Andreas Schmidt, a volksdeutsch (ethnic German) from Romania, and through him become close to Schmidt's father-in-law, the powerful Gottlob Berger who headed the SS Main Office in Berlin. The British historian Rebecca Haynes has argued that financial and organizational support from the SS was an essential factor in Sima's rise.

Once in power, from 14 September 1940 until 21 January 1941, the Legion ratcheted up the level of already harsh anti-Semitic legislation and pursued, with impunity, a campaign of pogroms and political assassinations. On 27 November 1940 more than 60 former dignitaries or officials were executed in Jilava prison while awaiting trial. The following day, historian and former prime minister Nicolae Iorga and economic theorist Virgil Madgearu were assassinated; assassination attempts were made on former prime ministers and Carol supporters Constantin Argetoianu, Guță Tătărescu and Ion Gigurtu, but they were freed from the hands of the Legionary police and put under military protection.

Failure and destruction

Once in power, Sima and Antonescu quarreled bitterly. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Antonescu intended to create a situation analogous to that of Francisco Franco's regime in Spain, in which the Legion would be subordinated to the state. He demanded that Sima cede overall leadership of the Legion to him, but Sima refused. During the run-up to the coup attempt, different factions of the German government backed different sides in Romania with the SS supporting the Iron Guard while the military and the Auswärtiges Amt supported General Antonescu. Baron Otto von Bolschwing of the SS who was stationed at the German embassy in Bucharest played a major role in smuggling arms for the Iron Guard. The American ambassador to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther who toured the meat-packing plant where the Jews were slaughtered with the placards reading "Kosher meat" on them reported back to Washington: "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". When it came to killing Jews, the Antonescu regime and the Iron Guard were capable of finding common ground despite the failed coup in January 1941; Antonescu was as virulently anti-Semitic as the Guard. When the pogrom began in Iași on 27 June 1941, the Iron Guards armed with crow-bars and knives played a prominent role in leading the mobs that slaughtered Jews on the streets of Iași in one of the bloodiest pogroms ever in Europe.

Post-war era

Between 1944 and 1947 Romania had a coalition government in which the Communists played a leading, but not yet dominant role. Journalist Edward Behr claimed that in early 1947, a secret agreement was signed by the leaders of the exiled Iron Guard in displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria and the Romanian Communist Party, under which all of the Legionnaires in the DP camps, except for those accused of the murder of Communists, could return home to Romania; in exchange, Legionnaires would work as thugs to terrorize the anti-communist opposition as part of a plan for the ultimate communist takeover of Romania. Behr further claimed that in the months after the "non-aggression pact" between the Communists and the Legion, thousands of Legionnaires returned to Romania, where they played a prominent role working for the Interior Ministry in breaking opposition to the emerging socialist government. and sections of the Legionary Movement received further support from Vatican officials. By the 1950s, groups of exiled Legionnaires had formed a network of political, cultural, and "religious" organizations in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada, the United States, and South America. Through these organizations, they continued to publish Legionary, anti-communist, or ultra-nationalist literature; they also forged connections with other ultra-nationalist or fascist movements and attempted to recruit new members.

Electoral history

At the 1927 and the 1931 elections the movement stood for the Chamber of Deputies as Legion of the Archangel Michael. In the 1932 it stood as the Codreanu Group, winning five of the 387 seats. It did not compete in the 1928 election and was banned in 1933. At the 1937 election it stood as Everything for the Country Party, winning 66 of the 387 seats. At the 1939 election, all opposition parties were banned.

{| class=wikitable style="text-align: right;" width=80%

! Election !! Votes !! Percentage !! Assembly !! Senate !! Position !! Aftermath

|- style="text-align:center;"

!1927

| 10,761

| 0.4%

|- style="text-align:center;"

!rowspan=2|1928

|rowspan=2; colspan=2; style="text-align: center;"|did not compete

|rowspan=2|

|rowspan=2| –

|- style="text-align:center;"

!rowspan=2|1931

|rowspan=2| 30,783

|rowspan=2| 1.1%

|rowspan=2|

|- style="text-align:center;"

! 1932

| 70,674

| 2.4%

| style="text-align: center;"|

|- style="text-align:center;"

! 1933

| colspan=2; style="text-align: center;"|party banned

| –

|- style="text-align:center;"

! 1937

| 478,378

| 15.8%

| style="text-align: center;"| (as TpȚ)

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan=6; style="text-align: center;"|parliament suspended

|- style="text-align:center;"

! 1939

| colspan=2; style="text-align: center;"|party banned

| –

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan=6; style="text-align: center;"|parliament suspended

Description

Ideology

thumb|1940 stamp bearing the symbol of the Iron Guard over a white cross that stood for one of its humanitarian ventures.

Historian Stanley G. Payne writes in his study of fascism, "The Legion was arguably the most unusual mass movement of interwar Europe." It was distinguished among other contemporaneous European fascist movements with respect to its understanding of nationalism, which was indelibly tied to religion. According to Ioanid Radu, the Legion "willingly inserted strong elements of Orthodox Christianity into its political ideology to the point of becoming one of the rare modern European political movements with a religious ideological structure."

The movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was a religious nationalist who aimed at a spiritual resurrection for the nation, writing the movement was a "spiritual school...[which] strikes to transform and revolutionise the Romanian soul." Drawing on Italian Fascism, National Socialism, and the corporatist, left-leaning thought of Georges Valois, Marin claimed that the Legion belonged not to the conservative right but to the revolutionary left, emphasizing its rejection of social conservatism and its belief in the "organized masses" as agents of national renewal. He reinforced this argument by condemning classical liberalism for privileging individual and class interests, repressing workers, and reducing the state to a bourgeois instrument, as evidenced by the violent suppression of the 1929 miners' strike and the 1933 railway workers' revolt. In place of the "imported", universalist liberal state, Marin demanded a modern, collectivist, "totalitarian" national state capable of enforcing the collective interest and reorganizing society into a unified corporatist order. This vision entailed dismantling Romania's historic, plural, and flexible social ties in order to impose a militarized national community purified of perceived political and "racial" undesirables, a project the Legion justified as a modern response to economic complexity and the subordination of individuals to the collective in contemporary industrial society.

Strongly influenced by Oswald Spengler, Marin further argued that genuine political modernity required a "cultural state" rooted in national particularism, in contrast to what he saw as the impersonal, civilizational—and therefore decaying—character of liberalism and Soviet communism. He regarded Romania's "minor" peasant culture as evidence of historical marginality and envisioned the population—villagers included—as raw material to be transformed into a modern, culturally revitalized nation by a disciplined Legionary elite.

Seeing fascist corporatism and Leninist collectivism as rival modernizing projects, Marin believed that fascism offered the superior model because it harmonized national interests rather than subordinating them to class conflict. Even Soviet industrial "civilization", he contended, had degenerated into a sterile, deracinated modernity once its revolutionary impulse had been "hijacked", though he observed in the 1930s a mutual convergence between fascism becoming more socialist and Stalinism becoming more national. Taken together, these claims framed the Iron Guard as a radical, modernizing movement that sought not to preserve Romanian tradition, but to reconstruct the nation—biologically, culturally, and politically—through a "totalitarian" revolutionary project.

Economics

The Iron Guard's economic outlook blended nationalist and spiritual themes with selective, loosely defined "socialist" elements, though these claims were often exaggerated or unreliable. Some members, such as organizer Andrei Ionescu, later asserted under Securitate interrogation that the movement embraced aspects of Marxism and promoted economic ideas aligned with social justice and anti-corruption. However, these statements were shaped by the political pressures of the communist era and conflict with the Legion's strong anti-communist stance. In practice, the Iron Guard's economics were less a coherent program and more an ideological tool, framed around moral renewal, discipline, and opposition to perceived corrupt elites, rather than a structured socialist or communist model.

Style

Members wore dark green uniforms, which symbolized renewal and led to them being occasionally referred to as "Greenshirts" (). Like fascist counterparts in Italy, Spain, and Germany, legionnaires greeted each other using the Roman salute.

The main symbol of the Iron Guard was a triple cross (a variant of the triple parted and fretted one), standing for prison bars (as a badge of martyrdom), (Unicode: U+2A69 ⩩ ) and sometimes referred to as the "Archangel Michael Cross" ().

The Legion developed a cult of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, best exemplified by the action group, Echipa morții, or "Death Squad". Codreanu claimed the name was chosen because members were ready to accept death while campaigning for the organization. A chapter of the Legion was called a cuib, or "nest", and was arranged around the virtues of discipline, work, silence, education, mutual aid, and honor.

Flag gallery

File:Flag of Iron Guard Romania.svg

File:Flag of the Iron Guard (Legion of the Archangel Michael or Legionary Movement).svg

File:Flag of the Iron Guard (white disk version).svg

File:Flag of the Legionary Movement (White Cross Variant).png

File:Flag of the Legionary Movement or Legion of the Archangel Michael (Iron Guard).svg

File:Iron Guard flag (defaced tricolor version).svg

File:Iron Guard flag (yellow on green version).svg

File:Legionary Movement flag.svg

</gallery>

Hymns

{|width="100%"

|width="33%" valign="top"|

Imnul tinereții legionare ()
Echipa morții ()
Șoim Român ()
Imnul eroilor Moța-Marin ()
Imnul biruinții ()
Imnul muncitorilor ()
Imnul Legiunii Arhanghelul Mihail ()
Cântec de luptă ()
Cântecul legionarilor căzuți ()
Imnul echipei -Miti Dumitrescu- ()
Cântecul Nicadorilor ()
Înainte ()
Peste mormântul tău sfânt ()

|width="33%" valign="top"|

Veniți cu noi ()
Doina închisorilor ()
Hora legionarilor ()
În crezul tău ()
De prin străinele meleaguri ()
Părintească dimândare ()
Urlă dușmanii ()
Ștefan Vodă (Marșul legionarilor Vrânceni) ()
Cu fruntea sus ()
Marșul legionarilor Tecuceni ()
Doina Nicadorilor ()
Dealul negru ()
Ardealul tânăr legionar ()

|width="33%" valign="top"|

Răzbunare ()
Imnul românilor secuizați ()
Marșul legionarilor olteni ()
Imnul eroilor legionari dela Majadahonda ()
Cântec de leagăn ()
Înainte (după cântecul unui ofițer mort în 1917) ()
Imnul lagărelor ()
Chemarea jertfei ()
Marșul biruinții ()
Doina comandantului ()
Pornesc din neam ()

Octavian Racu argues that Imnul legionarilor căzuți (also known as "Cântecul legionarilor căzuți"), written by Simion Lefter and lamenting the death of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was actually adapted from Cossack folklore based on the verses of Ukrainian poet Mihailo Petrenko (1817–1862), with music composed by Vladislav Zaremba (1833–1902), of Polish origin.

Consultative body

The was a consultative body of the Legionary Movement, created during the first national assembly of legionary nest leaders, which took place in Iași, at the home of General Ion Tarnoschi, between 3–4 January 1929. The Senate was established at the initiative of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu following his break with his former mentor, Professor A. C. Cuza. The Legionary Senate was conceived as both a counterweight and a type of supreme authority within the Legionary Movement, intended to give it an academic and moral aura.

The organizational instructions of the "Everything for the Fatherland" Party specified: