Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

From Free net encyclopedia

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (born Corneliu Zelinski Codreanu, September 13 1899, Iaşi or Huşi - November 30 1938, around Tâncăbeşti, near Bucharest) was the charismatic leader of the Romanian ultra-Nationalist movement in the period between the two World Wars, The Iron Guard (Garda de Fier) or The Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Legionaries, The Legionary Movement or, although never officially, as The Green Shirts). References to him as just Corneliu Codreanu do exist, and Zelea is never used as the family name it is: all entries for Codreanu cite it as if it were a middle name.

The Legionaries traditionally referred to Codreanu as Căpitanul ("The Captain"), and he held absolute authority over the organization until his death.

Nowadays Codreanu is remembered as a spiritual leader more than a political one. Noua Dreaptă, which claims to be successor of the pre-war Iron Guard, depicts him as a Romanian Orthodox saint.

1 Biography
2 References
3 External links

[edit]

Biography

[edit]

Early life

Born to Ion Zelea Codreanu (a future political figure within his son's Movement; born in Austrian Bukovina under the name Zelinski) and his German wife, Elisabeth (Eliza) Brunner. The speculation that Ion Zelea Codreanu was originally a Rusyn is in contrast with the Romanian chauvinism he embraced for the rest of his life. Thus, Codreanu the elder associated with Anti-Semite figures such as University of Iaşi professor A. C. Cuza.

Too young for conscription in 1916, when Romania entered World War I, Corneliu nonetheless tried his best to enlist. However, his education ended in the same year as Romania's direct implication in the war. But 1919 was the year Codreanu found Communism as his new enemy, after he had witnessed the impact of Bolshevik agitation in Moldavia, and especially after the October Revolution had made Romania lose her main ally in the war, and had forced her to sign the humiliating 1918 Treaty of Bucharest; what added to this was that the newly-founded Comintern had from the start been violently opposed to all the new borders of the Romanian state (see Greater Romania). While Bolshevik presence decreased in general, it remained quite strong in Iaşi and other Moldavian cities and towns; Codreanu followed in his father's footsteps as an Anti-Semite, but connected it with Anti-Communism, in the belief that Jews were, amongst other things, the primordial agents of the Soviet Union.

[edit]

Affiliation with A. C. Cuza

Codreanu studied Law in Iaşi, where he began his political career. Like his father, he became close to A. C. Cuza. Codreanu's fear of Bolshevik insurrection led to his efforts to address industrial workers himself. Together with Constantin Pancu, an electrician, he established the short-lived Garda Conştiinţei Naţionale ("The National Awareness Guard"), who attempted to revive loyalism within the proletariat, while offering an alternative to Communism by promising to advocate increased labor rights. The GCN, in which Codreanu thought he could see the nucleus of nationalist trade unions, became active in crushing strike actions. Their activities were modelled on those of Benito Mussolini's fasci di combattimento, and did not fail in attracting attention from the authorities, especially after students who obeyed Codreanu started demanding a Jewish quota for higher education - this gathered popularity for the GCN, and it led to successful attacks on all opponents. In response, Codreanu was expelled from University. Although allowed to return when Cuza intervened for him, he was never given presented with a diploma after his graduation.

While studying in Berlin and Jena in 1922, Codreanu took a critical attitude towards the Weimar Republic and praised the March on Rome as an achievement; he decided to cut his stay short, after he learned of the large student protests in December, prompted by the intention of the government to grant the complete emancipation of Jews.

When protests organized by Codreanu met with the Liberal government's indifference, he and Cuza founded (March 4 1923) a Christian nationalist organization called the National-Christian Defense League. They were joined in 1925 by Ion Moţa, translator of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and future ideologue of the Legion.

With the granting of full rights of citizenship to persons of Jewish descent under the Constitution of 1923, the League raided the Iaşi Ghetto, led a group that petitioned the government in Bucharest and was received with indifference, and ultimately decided to assassinate Ion I. C. Brătianu and other members of government. In October 1923, he was betrayed by one of his associates, arrested and put on trial. He and the other plotters were soon acquitted, as Romanian legislation did not allow for prosecution of conspiracies that had not been assigned a definite date. Before the jury ended deliberation, Moţa killed the traitor and was given a prison sentence himself.

Codreanu clashed with Cuza on the issue of the League's structure: he had demanded that it develop a paramilitary character, with Cuza showing himself hostile. In November while in Văcăreşti prison in Bucharest, Codreanu had planned for the creation of a youth organization within the League, which he aimed to name The Legion of the Archangel Michael in honour of an icon that adorned the walls. This marks the beginning of the more obvious mystical tone in Codreanu's vision, coupled with the idea of reformation through the betting of human characters (and thus quite elitist). Back in Iaşi, he created his own system of allegiance within the League, starting with Frăţia de Cruce (named after a variant of blood brotherhood which requires sermon with a cross). It gathered on May 6 1924 in the countryside around Iaşi, starting work on the building of a student center. This meeting was violently broken by the authorities on orders from Police prefect Constantin Manciu, Codreanu and several others being beaten and tormented for several days (until Cuza's intervention in their favour proved effective).

After an interval when he retreated from any political activity, Codreanu took revenge on Manciu, assassinating him and some other policemen on October 24. Although he was purposely tried as far away from Iaşi as Turnu Severin, the authorities managed to find no neutral jury. On the day he was acquitted, members of the jury showed up wearing badges with League symbols and swastikas. After a triumphal return and the ostentatious wedding to Elena Ilinoiu, Codreanu clashed with Cuza for a second time and decided to defuse tensions by taking a leave to France. Before leaving, he was the victim of an assassination attempt - Moţa, just returned from prison, was given another short sentence after he led the reprisals.

[edit]

"Captain"

He returned from Grenoble to take part in the 1926, and ran as a candidate for the town of Focşani. He lost, and, although it had a considerable success, the League disbanded in the same year. Codreanu gathered former members of the League who had spent time in prison, and put into practice his dream of forming the Legion (November 1927). He carefully designed it as a selective and autarkic group, paying allegiance to him and no other.

Codreanu felt he had to amend the purpose of the movement after more than two years of stagnation: he and the leadership of the movement started touring rural regions, addressing the churchgoing illiterate population with the rhetoric of sermons, dressing up in long white mantles and instigating Christian prejudice against the Jewish beliefs. The National Peasants' Party government clamped down on the Legion in 1930, after the latter had tried to provoke a wave of pogroms in Maramureş and Bessarabia, and had attempted assassinations of government officials and journalists (Codreanu was briefly arrested, tried and acquitted).

However, the Legion did not cease to benefit from the Great Depression. In 1931, Codreanu was elected to Parliament on the lists of the Corneliu Zelea Codreanu Group (a provisoral official name for the Guard), and quickly became noted for exposing corruption of ministers and other politicians on a case-by-case basis. The authorities became truly concerned with the revolutionary potential of the Legion, and minor clashes in 1932 between the two introduced what became, from 1933, almost a decade of major political violence.

The situation degenerated after Codreanu expressed his full support for Adolf Hitler and Nazism. The new Liberal government of Ion G. Duca moved against such initiatives, stating that the Legion was acting as a puppet of the NSDAP, and ordering that a huge number of Legionaries be arrested just prior to the new elections in 1933 (which the Liberals won). The main effect of this was the killing of Duca by the Iron Guard Nicadori on December 30. Codreanu had to go into hiding at an unknown location, waiting for things to calm down. His resurgence brought arrest and prosecution under the martial law imposed in the country; he was acquitted yet again.

In 1936, Codreanu agreed to the formation of a permanent Death Squad, that immediately showed its goals with the killing of Mihai Stelescu by the Decemviri. The year was also marked by the deaths and ostentatious funerals of Moţa and Vasile Marin, the two Legionary victims of the Spanish Civil War's Majadahonda battle.

After the ban on paramilitary groups, the Legion turned into a political party, running in elections as Totul Pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland"). It became by far the most popular Fascist group in the country, but were excluded from political coalitions by nominally Fascist King Carol II, who preferred newly-formed subservient movements and the revived National-Christian Defense League. After the new elections in 1937, Cuza formed his Anti-Semitic government together with poet Octavian Goga and his National Agrarian Party. Codreanu and the two leaders did not get along, and the Legion started competing with the authorities by adopting Corporatism. The government alliance, unified as the National Christian Party, gave itself a paramilitary corps that borrowed heavily from the Legion - the Lăncieri ("Lance-bearers") - and initiated an official campaign of persecution of Jews, trying desperately to win back the interest the public had in the Iron Guard. After much violence, Codreanu agreed to have his Party withdraw from the elections of 1938, believing that, in any event, the regime had no viable solution and would wear itself out.

[edit]

Clash with the King

In fact, he was proved wrong by the King, who introduced his own dictatorship after his attempts to form a national government. The system relied instead on a new Constitution, the financial backing received from large business, and the winning over of several more or less traditional politicians, such as Nicolae Iorga and the Internal Affairs minister Armand Călinescu. When Carol felt secure, he ordered a brutal suppression of the Iron Guard and had Codreanu arrested on the charge that he had slandered Iorga. With the Captain in jail, Călinescu arrested the entire functioning body of the Legion. Those members that escaped or were omitted in the first place started a violent campaign throughout Romania, meant to coincide with Carol's visit to the Berghof, as a way to prevent the tentative approach between Romania and Nazi Germany. Confident that Hitler was not determined on supporting the Legion, and irritated by the incidents, Carol ordered the decapitation of the movement.

On November 30, it was announced that Codreanu, the Nicadori and the Decemviri had been shot after trying to flee custody the previous night. The details were revealed much later: it is most likely that the fourteen persons had been executed (strangled and shot), and it was shown that their bodies had been buried in the courtyard of the Jilava prison.

On November 25 1940, during the National Legionary State, an investigation was carried out on the prison premises. The discovery of the remains caused the Legionaries to engage in reprisal of the new regime's political prisoners, which were detained on the same spot. On the next night, sixty-four inmates were shot, while on the 27th and the 28th there were new arrests and swift executions, with prominent victims such as Iorga and Virgil Madgearu. The widespread disorder brought the first clash between Ion Antonescu and the Legion; during the events, Codreanu was posthumously exonerated of all charges by a Legionary tribunal.

[edit]

Legacy

Image:Timbru Codreanu.jpg

The Iron Guard underwent a very difficult period, including a great deal of infighting and purges, before joining Antonescu's government in 1940 under the leadership of Horia Sima. Both Călinescu and Iorga were to be killed by Legionary squads, together with thousands of others at different intervals. The movement was toppled from power by its partener Antonescu, only a year later.

The events of this term in office resulted in the conflicted tendencies within the Legion and its contemporary successors: the obvious, gratuitous and unlimited violence of the Legion under Sima managed to surpass most atrocities demanded by Codreanu, which led to many today claiming to obey Codreanu, but not Sima. At the same time, the Sima faction claims to have followed Codreanu's guidance and inspiration.

Gigi Becali, the owner of FC Steaua Bucharest football club and president of the right-wing New Generation Party, said that he admires Codreanu and has otherwise made numerous attempts to capitalize on Legionary symbols and rhetoric.

[edit]