ABSTRACT

Romanian foreign policy in the first phase of the war (September 1, 1939 to May 10, 1940) was guided by the government’s determination to resist claims of the country’s revisionist neighbors – the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Bulgaria – and preserve its territorial integrity while avoiding being drawn into the war. King Carol II, wielding final authority in foreign policy, continued a strategy of balancing between Western powers, France and Britain, Romania’s traditional allies, on the one hand, and Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, on the other. After French and British effectively betrayed Czechoslovakia in Munich in late September 1938 by agreeing to transfer a part of that country’s national territory to Hitler’s Germany, the futility of relying on their support in case Romania would come under attack from without had become painfully clear. The King and his entourage reasoned that it was high time for a rapprochement with Germany, in the hope of earning Hitler’s benevolence and thus discourage Romania’s neighbors from attacking it.