The German military mission in Romania

In the first days of October 1940 Germany sent a military mission to Romania. It was headed by Generalleutnant Erik Hansen, and with it came “training units”: a reinforced motorised division together with anti-aircraft artillery and air force units. Officially the Germans were to help their new ally rebuild the Romanian army. In reality they were to guard the oilfields of Ploiești, the Reich’s most important source of oil, prepare Romania for its role in German plans and build on its territory a springboard in case of war with the Soviet Union.

It is often stated under 7 October that Germany was thereby responding to a Romanian request of 7 September. Both dates need explaining. The request for a mission was older: it was first made as early as July by King Carol II, and General Ion Antonescu renewed it after taking power in September, in several steps, of which 7 September was the first. Adolf Hitler decided to send the mission on 19 September. October was the month of its arrival, but there is no single date that can be regarded as its beginning: according to some studies the first transports set off on 8 October, most authors write of the first soldiers being in Romania on 10–12 October, and on 9 and 10 October the Germans officially informed Moscow of the mission.

Requests from Bucharest

Romania entered the summer of 1940 as a state that had lost all its protectors. The fall of France had nullified the Anglo-French guarantee of 1939, and at the end of June the Soviet Union demanded and received Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Carol II sought salvation in Berlin. On 1 July he renounced the Western guarantee, and on 14 July he received in audience the German military attaché, Colonel Karl Richard Wahle, and the air attaché. He declared that he was “determined to go with Germany” and asked them to pass on to the high command an official request for a military mission, which he had already put to the Führer himself. Hitler held back. He did not trust the king, who until recently had sided with the Allies, and gave him to understand that Romania had brought its troubles on itself.

Further losses – northern Transylvania to Hungary after the Second Vienna Award and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria – cost Carol his throne. On 6 September he abdicated, and power passed to Antonescu, who together with the fascist Iron Guard proclaimed the “National Legionary State” in the middle of the month. From the outset Antonescu bet on Germany. He also knew that in return for the Award the Reich and Italy had guaranteed Romania’s new borders, and he wanted that guarantee to be backed by German soldiers. As early as the afternoon of 7 September, the day after the abdication, he presented at the German legation in Bucharest his programme for reforming the army, in which German instructors were to play a key role.

The details were settled on 15–17 September in talks between Antonescu and General Kurt von Tippelskirch, an officer of the German Army General Staff. A Romanian document drawn up on that basis provided that the mission would cooperate with the Romanian General Staff and have its own specialist officers, and that combat aviation, anti-aircraft artillery and large motorised and mechanised units would come to the training centres as training units.

Overt and secret tasks

For Hitler the Romanian request came at a convenient moment. In the summer of 1940 he had begun to think about war with the Soviet Union, and the Soviet entry into Bessarabia had brought the Red Army to within some two hundred kilometres of Ploiești. The refineries of the Prahova valley supplied the Reich with a large share of its imported oil, which Germany, cut off from overseas supplies by the British blockade, could not replace with anything else. The fear was not only of the Russians but also of the British, who had destroyed the Romanian wells back in 1916 and in the spring of 1940 had attempted sabotage on the Danube, along which the oil travelled to the Reich. On 19 September Hitler decided to send the mission.

The next day the chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, Wilhelm Keitel, signed guidelines setting out its aims. The “ostensible task” of the German troops was to help Romania, “a new friend”, organise and train its armed forces. The real tasks, which were not to become apparent “either to the Romanians or to our own troops”, were three: to protect the oil district from destruction and from seizure by a third power; to prepare the Romanian armed forces to carry out specific tasks according to a plan in line with German interests; and, in the event of a war “forced upon us by Soviet Russia”, to prepare for the deployment of German and Romanian forces from Romanian territory. Keitel believed that in this way Romania would be bound to Germany “for life and death”.

The mission and the training units

The Wehrmacht mission as a whole was headed by Generalleutnant Erik Hansen, until then commander of the 4th Infantry Division in the Polish and French campaigns, who was at the same time military attaché in Bucharest and head of the army mission (Deutsche Heeresmission in Rumänien). The air force mission was led by Generalleutnant Wilhelm Speidel (PL), until 9 October chief of staff of Luftflotte 2, which was fighting over England, and war-economy matters – above all oil – by Colonel Karl Spalcke. Hitler’s order of 10 October fixed the chain of command for the various parts of the mission, and mission headquarters order no. 1 of 18 October gave it its structure: a staff, command units, training groups for the military academies and arms schools, and “training formation” R I.

That formation was the 13th Motorised Infantry Division of Generalmajor Friedrich-Wilhelm von Rothkirch und Panthen, renamed the 13th Panzer Division in October. Its transports travelled through Hungary, which had agreed to the passage of German troops. The Luftwaffe sent anti-aircraft batteries and, in time, fighters as well, which were deployed around Ploiești and the Black Sea port of Constanța. The German assessments of the Romanian army over the following months, however, were merciless: it lacked modern artillery and armour, and nothing at all could be written about regular non-commissioned officers because, as was observed, “there are no active NCOs whatsoever”. It was recommended that Romanian divisions should not be used for independent tasks.

Moscow and Rome

News of German soldiers in Romania had to be passed on to Moscow, for which Romania bordered on the recently acquired Bessarabia. On 9 October Joachim von Ribbentrop instructed the embassy in Moscow to inform Vyacheslav Molotov in passing, as it were, during a conversation on another subject, that the Romanian government, invoking the Axis guarantee, had some time ago requested a military mission “with certain training units”, and that the Reich had agreed because it was concerned to keep the Balkans quiet and to protect its oil and grain interests against Britain. The next day the chargé d’affaires in Moscow, Werner von Tippelskirch (not the same person as the general mentioned above), noted that Molotov had listened “with interest” but immediately asked about the strength of the troops: if they were only training units, it could not be large. The German avoided answering. On 13 October Ribbentrop repeated these assurances in a long letter to Stalin, in which he invited Molotov to Berlin and wrote that the guarantee to Romania served solely to protect the region from wartime disruption and sabotage. In Moscow these explanations were received with mistrust. In mid-November Molotov raised the question of German troops in Romania in Berlin and was told by Hitler that they would leave the country as soon as peace came.

Benito Mussolini felt even more slighted. Romania belonged to a region that the Italians regarded as a common Axis sphere of interest, and Italy was a co-guarantor of Romania’s borders. Yet when Hitler and Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass on 4 October, the Führer held forth on Britain, Spain and France but said nothing about sending troops to Romania. The Duce learned of it from reports when the soldiers were already on their way. On 12 October Galeazzo Ciano recorded his outburst in his diary: “Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli. This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin: he will find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the balance will be restored.” Plans for an attack on Greece had been lying in Rome since August, but it was the German entry into Romania that settled Mussolini’s decision to carry them out – and at once.

Place in the war

The “training units” soon ceased to be modest. At the end of 1940 the 13th Panzer Division was joined by Hans-Valentin Hube’s 16th Panzer Division, and on 23 November in Berlin Antonescu signed Romania’s accession to the Tripartite Pact. When in January 1941 the Iron Guard, led by Horia Sima, rose in revolt against Antonescu – accompanied by a bloody pogrom of Jews in Bucharest – Hitler backed the general, who crushed the rebellion with the army. In the winter of 1940–1941 Romania became the base for the German intervention in the Balkans that Hitler began to plan after the Italian attack on Greece: the Twelfth Army was assembled in Romania, crossed the Danube into Bulgaria on 2 March 1941 and in April took part in the Balkan campaign. According to some studies the number of German soldiers in Romania then reached half a million. Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Romania in February 1941.

The mission’s true purpose was revealed in June 1941. Hansen’s staff became the staff of LIV Army Corps, and the Eleventh Army advanced from Moldavia into the Soviet Union together with the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies (Operation Barbarossa). The mission, headed during the war also by General Arthur Hauffe and again by Hansen, remained in Bucharest until August 1944. Throughout that time oil from Ploiești flowed to the Reich, even though the refineries were bombed by the Americans: in August 1943 (Operation Tidal Wave) and continuously from the spring of 1944. When Romania changed sides to the Allies after the coup of 23 August 1944, the Germans tried to hold Bucharest by force but lost both the capital and the oilfields, and Hansen fell into Soviet captivity, from which he returned in 1955.