Pictured: Possibly the most unflattering photograph available of General Alexander Averescu.
Quoting from Alan Cassels’s Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy, pages 339–341:
General Alexander Averescu […] had been educated in Italy and was reputed to be both an Italophile and pro‐Fascist. Yet one of his government’s first acts was to override Italian objections and sign a friendship pact with France. On the other hand, Mussolini would take this rebuff from an ideological sympathizer without becoming incensed; in fact, it stimulated [Rome] to reach some accord with Bucharest lest Rumania slip completely into the French orbit.
Averescu was willing to balance his Francophile gesture by an agreement with [Fascist] Italy, so he set no preconditions regarding Bessarabia. Negotiations were conducted on the [Fascist] side by Dino Grandi, and on the Rumanian by Averescu himself and the Rumanian minister in Rome, Alexander Lahovary.2 Three months after the accord between France and Rumania, an Italo‐Rumanian friendship pact was concluded on September 16, 1926.
[…]
Superficially then, the Italo‐Rumanian pact was no more substantial than most of the other arbitration agreements that followed Locarno. For that matter, it said no more than the inconsequential Italo‐Czech treaty of 1924. Yet it was vastly more important, partly because the Rumanian and [Fascist] governments intended that it should be so, partly because events quickly brought out its true portent. For Fascist Italy the pact with Rumania was linked in a preparatory way with the first Treaty of Tirana with Albania just over two months later.
Aloisi left Bucharest for Albania to preside over the negotiations leading up to the Tirana pact, while Durazzo, who had held the Albanian post, took Aloisi’s place in Bucharest in time for the Italo‐Rumanian pact. Moreover, while France and Czechoslovakia rushed to Yugoslavia’s side in denouncing the Treaty of Tirana, Bucharest honored the spirit of the recent friendship pact and hailed the treaty.5
But one good turn deserves another, and Averescu now felt free to raise the Bessarabian question again. He called for one more mediatory overture to Moscow, certain to be rejected, and then [Fascist] ratification of the protocal of 1920.6
All along, Mussolini had anticipated that the Italo‐Rumanian pact would sooner or later, in however roundabout a way, compel him to a firm decision on Bessarabia, and he had made it well in advance. Even before the signing of the pact he had confidentially informed the Italian ambassador in Moscow: “I have come to the decision to ratify the Bessarabian treaty as soon as Rumania provides suitable compensation.”7
Also early in September Mussolini had sketched in a memorandum what he considered an adequate quid pro quo; substantially the same requirements were presented to Averescu early in 1927.8 The Duce’s demands were in three parts. First was the usual request for commercial privileges in Rumania, “to assist Italy overcome difficulties with Russia of an economic nature as a result of ratification.”
It had been nearly three years since Fascist Italy had accorded the Soviet [Union] de jure recognition in the expectation of vast amounts of mutual trade which had long ago proved illusory, but it was still a useful bargaining ploy.8a Then came a minor point, but one of concern to a hypernationalist like Mussolini—the teaching of Italian in Rumania’s secondary schools.
The sting lay in the third, and political, category: “The honest counterweight to balance the risks and dangers of a rupture of diplomatic relations between Italy and Russia must be offered us by Rumania in the field of Danubian politics. Under the aegis and eventually with the participation of Italy, Rumania must strive to reach an accord with Hungary on the one hand and Bulgaria on the other. Only by realizing under [Fascist] inspiration and guidance an Italo‐Magyar‐Rumanian‐Bulgarian quadruple alliance [quadruplice] could [Rome] face with equanimity the inevitable crisis with Russia.”
While Bucharest declined in January 1927 to join this Danubian bloc, it was probably no mere coincidence that later the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Romania would officially ally, thanks to the Third Reich and Imperial Japan, shortly after September 1940.
Page 342:
What, in effect, Rumania was offered was the final assurance and legal sanction in Bessarabia, but at the hazard of reawakening another irredentist bogey in Transylvania, for such was the inference of an association with Hungary. In trying to sell this enterprise Mussolini made special allocations of money to win the favor of the Rumanian press.9 But in reality he staked everything on Averescu. “Averescu is a sincere friend of Italy,” he wrote confidently to King Victor Emmanuel.10
Page 346:
Mussolini was busily engaged in cultivating the friendship of the Magyar’s archenemy, Rumania. In these circumstances, [Rome], to be sure of Hungary’s allegiance, had to buy it with a formal agreement. Indeed, in early 1927, while Mussolini’s hopes of including Hungary and Rumania in a radical Danubian alignment were still alive, arrangements were made for Bethlen to visit Italy again; an Italo‐Hungary treaty was clearly in the offing.17
In the spring Mussolini continued to try to balance between Rumania and Hungary. [The Fascist] ratification of the Bessarabian protocol, which was supposed to win Rumania’s adherence to Mussolini’s grand design, now had to be used to mollify the Rumanian reaction to the impending accord with Hungary. So in March ratification was given and may have muted, if it did not silence entirely, Rumanian criticism of what followed on April 5. This was the signing in Rome by Mussolini and Bethlen of a pact of amity, conciliation, and arbitration, valid for 10 years instead of the customary five. It was accompanied by another accord of no little consequence to [Fascism] for the channeling of Hungarian trade through Fiume.18
Rome’s attempts to cool its relations with Moscow were proven half‐hearted with Bessarabia. Pages 350–2:
There remained one criterion of Russo‐Italian relations, which overrode ideology, Matteotti, and Locarno, and which in the last resort determined whether the détente that had begun with recognition continued or lapsed. This was Italian ratification of the Bessarabian protocol. So long as Mussolini withheld it, and thereby also withheld Rumania’s full legal title to the region, the Soviets would endure much at Italian hands and preserve at least the semblance of friendship between Moscow and Rome.
But Mussolini was less concerned with nonratification as a means of maintaining a tie with [Moscow] than he was with ratification as a bribe to entice Rumania to join his grand design in the Danube valley. On September 16, 1926 the conclusion of the Italo‐Rumanian friendship pact implied that a shift in Italy’s stand on Bessarabia was imminent. […] To delay ratification, he wrote to King Victor Emmanuel, “permits Italy still to play the Russian card.”32
But the Soviets refused to be mollified. On November 20 Manzoni reported: “The Italo‐Rumanian pact, the Bessarabian situation (fatto Bessarabico) have, then, occasioned the manifestations of Soviet political frigidity toward Italy, and at the same time they have brought to the surface the already existent but hitherto latent feeling of coldness.”33
The Soviets were correct in distrusting Mussolini. Since September 1926 he was resolved on ratification of the Bessarabian protocol; his talk of a Russo‐Italian political accord was so much camouflage. This emerged clearly on March 7, 1927, when [Rome] at long last ratified the Bessarabian protocol—and this despite Rumania’s refusal to join Mussolini’s league of Balkan states. Mussolini’s prime concern was still to reconcile Bucharest to [Fascist] Italy’s growing rapprochement with revisionist Hungary.34 Mussolini quite consciously, then, provoked a breach with the Soviets. Obviously he now considered the utility of the Russo‐Italian rapprochement to be at an end. It was time to return to a consistent anti‐Bolshevik ideology.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
[Footnote]
In case anybody needed more evidence of what a swell anticommunist Averescu was… Nicholas M. Nagy Talavera’s The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania:
What lay behind this imposing façade was exposed in the bloody peasant revolt of March 1907. Touched off by abuses by a Jewish tenant in Moldavia, disorders spread with lightning speed all over the country and widened into a great Jacquerie. The government panicked. There was talk of foreign intervention, but the minister of war, General Alexandru Averescu, did not lose his head. He called on the military to quell the rebellion and did not hesitate to use artillery, to burn and destroy villages, and to kill an estimated 10,000 peasants.
Stanley G. Payne’s A History of Fascism, 1914–1945:
The People’s Party was an attempt to create a more populist kind of ultranationalist organization, and when Averescu was named prime minister in 1920, it won new elections. Averescu formed a coalition government with the old élites and crushed an attempted general strike by the Socialists. His only positive achievement was to carry out a partial land reform the following year, but redistributing more land in tiny parcels to an impoverished peasantry was not enough to overcome the lack of education, roads, credit, or new techniques.
From Grant T. Harward’s Romania’s Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust:
An inquiry revealed civilian and military leaders had been bribed to secure lucrative contracts for Škoda. Liberals turned the affair into a witch hunt, during which General Dumitru Popescu, secretary to the minister of defense, committed suicide.132 A growing number of officers pointed the finger of blame at the monarch. Marshal Averescu railed against the king’s camarilla “in which the [insert antisemitic slur here] woman plays the principal role” and argued that Carol II should be deposed in favor of his son.133
Events that happened today (September 16):
1878: Karl Albiker, Axis sculptor, was born.
1891: Karl Dönitz, Axis admiral who briefly served as the Greater German Reich’s head of state, existed. Likewise did the Reich spy and ‘honourary Aryan’ Stephanie von Hohenlohe.
1910: Erich Kempka, SS member and chauffer, polluted life with his presence. Karl Kling, Axis mechanic, was born on the same day.
1940: Fascist troops conquered Sidi Barrani.
1943: The German Tenth Army reported that it could no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno.
1945: The Axis occupation of Hong Kong was over.
2012: Friedrich Zimmermann, Axis lieutenant, expired.