Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom - The Quelling of The Rebellion

The Quelling of The Rebellion

During the days of the rebellion, Antonescu avoided direct confrontation with the Legionnaires, but brought military units, including 100 tanks, into Bucharest from other cities. As the chaos spread, worrying even Hitler, who was interested in Romania as an ally, the horrific picture of the Pogrom became clear. As stories spread, the military's fury against the Legionnaires grew (the Legionnaires had assaulted captured soldiers, stripped them of their uniforms, and even burned several of them). When Antonescu thought the moment was most appropriate, he gave the order to crush the rebellion. The military, led by General Ilie Şteflea, quelled the rebellion in a matter of hours with little difficulty. The Legionnaires could not defend against the military's superior firepower. As soldiers stormed their strongholds, the Legionnaires fled. During the skirmishes, 30 soldiers were killed and a hundred were injured. The number of legionnaires killed during the rebellion was approximately 200, although in later years Horia Sima would claim there had been 800 legionnaire casualties. After the rebellion was suppressed, Antonescu addressed the public on the radio, telling them "the truth", but never mentioning the pogrom. He asked the German garrison, which had sat idly by throughout the rebellion, to show their support. The German troops were sent marching through the streets of Bucharest, ending in front of the Prime Minister's building, where they cheered Antonescu.

After the Legionnaires' fall, the trend reversed, and the opportunists who had joined them fled. The press stopped supporting the Legionnaires, but remained anti-Semitic and nationalistic. Some of the Legionnaires' leaders, including Horia Sima, fled to Germany. Around 9,000 members of the Legionnaires' movement were sentenced to prison. The Legionnaires who led the anti-semitic trend in Romania had fallen and never regained power. However, the movement continued even without them, although it was set back for a while, as the atrocities of the Bucharest Pogrom gradually became known to the Romanian public. A few months later, those atrocities paled in severity compared to those of the Iaşi pogrom. One leader of the pogrom, Valerian Trifa, became a cleric and emigrated to the United States but was stripped of his United States citizenship in 1982 and left the United States rather than be deported.