Since some of you think that Germany was the least worst option, let's delve into some details of the German-Romanian relations before things start to heat up! This part of the text is being excerpted (with small aditional explanations) from this source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_II_of_Romania . There are many more informations to be gained, for those interested. What choices Romania had is a matter of historical debate. To be sure, there was no clearcut easy available solution to Romania's security dilemmas.
ROMANIAN-GERMAN RELATIONS DURING THE 1930s
Carol did not seek to replace the foreign policy he had inherited in 1930 at first as he regarded the continuation of the cordon sanitaire as the best guarantee of Romania's independence and territorial integrity, and as such, his foreign policy was essentially pro-French. At the time that Romania signed the alliance with France, the Rhineland region of Germany was being demilitarised and the thinking in Bucharest had always been that if Germany should commit any act of aggression anywhere in Eastern Europe, the French would begin an offensive into the Reich. Starting in 1930 when the French began to build the Maginot Line along their border with Germany, some doubts started to be expressed in Bucharest about whatever the French might actually come to Romania's aid in the event of German aggression.
In 1933, Carol had Nicolae Titulescu – an outspoken champion of collective security under the banner of League of Nations – appointed foreign minister with instructions to use principles of collective security as the building blocks for creating some sort of security structure intended to keep both Germany and the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe.
Displeased by the Romanian staunch support of the Anglo-French Versailles collective security system, Germany started to meddle as soon as 1934 in the internal politics of Romania, as part of a wider campaign to use the German ethnic communities worldwide for political purposes.
The process of Gleichschaltung (coordination) in National Socialist Germany did not extend only to the Reich, but was rather thought of by the National Socialist leadership as a worldwide process in which the NSDAP would take control over all of the ethnic German communities around the entire world. The Foreign Policy Department of the NSDAP headed by Alfred Rosenberg starting in 1934 had attempted to take over the Volksdeutsch (ethnic German) community in Romania, a policy that greatly offended Carol who regarded this as outrageous German interference in Romania's internal affairs. As Romania had half-million Volksdeutsch citizens in the 1930s, the Nazi campaign to take over the German community in Romania was a real concern for Carol, who feared that the German minority might become a fifth column.
The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about Carol's foreign policy views that: "He admired and feared Germany, but feared and disliked the Soviet Union". The fact that the first leader to visit Nazi Germany (albeit not in an official capacity) was the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös – who during his visit to Berlin in October 1933 signed an economic treaty that placed Hungary within the German economic sphere of influence – was a source of much alarm to Carol. For the entire interwar period, Budapest refused to recognize the frontiers imposed by the Treaty of Trianon and laid claim to Transylvania region of Romania. Carol like the rest of the Romanian elite was worried by the prospect of an alliance of the revisionist states that rejected the legitimacy of the international order created by the Allies in 1918-20 as indicating that Germany would support Hungary's claims to Transylvania. Hungary had territorial disputes with Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, all of which happened to be allies of France. Accordingly, Franco-Hungarian relations were extremely bad during the interwar period, and so it seemed natural that Hungary would ally itself with France's archenemy Germany.
Reflecting his initially pro-French orientation, in June 1934 when the French foreign minister Louis Barthou visited Bucharest to meet with the foreign ministers of the Little Entente of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Carol organized lavish celebrations to welcome Barthou that were made to symbolized the enduring Franco-Romanian friendship between the two "Latin sisters". The German minister to Romania, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg complained with a disgust in a report to Berlin that everyone in the Romanian elite was an incurable Francophile who told him that Romania would never betray its "Latin sister" France.
At the same time, Carol also considered the possibility that if Romanian-German relations were improved, then perhaps Berlin could be persuaded not to support Budapest in its campaign to regain Transylvania. Further pressing Carol towards Germany was the desperate state of the Romanian economy.
Even before the Great Depression, Romania had been an extremely poor country and the Depression had hit Romania hard with Romanians been unable to export much owing to the global trade war set off by the American Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which in turn led to a decline in the value of the Lei (Romanian currency) as Romanian's reserves of foreign exchange were being used up. In June 1934, the Romanian finance minister Victor Slăvescu visited Paris to ask the French to inject millions of francs into Romanian treasury and to lower their tariffs on Romanian goods. When the French refused both requests, an annoyed Carol wrote in his diary that the "Latin sister" France was behaving in a less than sisterly way towards Romania. In April 1936 when Wilhelm Fabricius was appointed German minister in Bucharest, the Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath in his instructions to the new minister described Romania as an unfriendly, pro-French state, but suggested that the prospect of more trade with the Reich might bring the Romanians out of the French orbit. Neurath further instructed Fabricius that while Romania was a not a major power in a military sense, it was a state of crucial importance to Germany because of its oil.
The doubts about the French willingness to undertake an offensive against Germany were further reinforced by the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 which had the effect of allowing the Germans to start building the Siegfried line along the border with France, something that considerably lessened the prospect of a French offensive into western Germany if the Reich should invade any of the states of the cordon sanitaire. A British Foreign Office memo from March 1936 stated that only nations in the world that would apply sanctions on Germany for remilitarizing the Rhineland if the League of Nations should vote for such a step were Britain, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Romania. In the aftermath of the remilitarization of the Rhineland and once it was clear that no sanctions were going to be applied against Germany, Carol started to voice his fears that the days of French influence in Eastern Europe were numbered and Romania might have to seek some understanding with Germany to preserve its independence. With continuing the alliance with France, after March 1936 Carol also began a policy of attempting to improve relations with Germany.
ROMANIAN-GERMAN RELATIONS DURING THE 1930s
Carol did not seek to replace the foreign policy he had inherited in 1930 at first as he regarded the continuation of the cordon sanitaire as the best guarantee of Romania's independence and territorial integrity, and as such, his foreign policy was essentially pro-French. At the time that Romania signed the alliance with France, the Rhineland region of Germany was being demilitarised and the thinking in Bucharest had always been that if Germany should commit any act of aggression anywhere in Eastern Europe, the French would begin an offensive into the Reich. Starting in 1930 when the French began to build the Maginot Line along their border with Germany, some doubts started to be expressed in Bucharest about whatever the French might actually come to Romania's aid in the event of German aggression.
In 1933, Carol had Nicolae Titulescu – an outspoken champion of collective security under the banner of League of Nations – appointed foreign minister with instructions to use principles of collective security as the building blocks for creating some sort of security structure intended to keep both Germany and the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe.
Displeased by the Romanian staunch support of the Anglo-French Versailles collective security system, Germany started to meddle as soon as 1934 in the internal politics of Romania, as part of a wider campaign to use the German ethnic communities worldwide for political purposes.
The process of Gleichschaltung (coordination) in National Socialist Germany did not extend only to the Reich, but was rather thought of by the National Socialist leadership as a worldwide process in which the NSDAP would take control over all of the ethnic German communities around the entire world. The Foreign Policy Department of the NSDAP headed by Alfred Rosenberg starting in 1934 had attempted to take over the Volksdeutsch (ethnic German) community in Romania, a policy that greatly offended Carol who regarded this as outrageous German interference in Romania's internal affairs. As Romania had half-million Volksdeutsch citizens in the 1930s, the Nazi campaign to take over the German community in Romania was a real concern for Carol, who feared that the German minority might become a fifth column.
The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about Carol's foreign policy views that: "He admired and feared Germany, but feared and disliked the Soviet Union". The fact that the first leader to visit Nazi Germany (albeit not in an official capacity) was the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös – who during his visit to Berlin in October 1933 signed an economic treaty that placed Hungary within the German economic sphere of influence – was a source of much alarm to Carol. For the entire interwar period, Budapest refused to recognize the frontiers imposed by the Treaty of Trianon and laid claim to Transylvania region of Romania. Carol like the rest of the Romanian elite was worried by the prospect of an alliance of the revisionist states that rejected the legitimacy of the international order created by the Allies in 1918-20 as indicating that Germany would support Hungary's claims to Transylvania. Hungary had territorial disputes with Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, all of which happened to be allies of France. Accordingly, Franco-Hungarian relations were extremely bad during the interwar period, and so it seemed natural that Hungary would ally itself with France's archenemy Germany.
Reflecting his initially pro-French orientation, in June 1934 when the French foreign minister Louis Barthou visited Bucharest to meet with the foreign ministers of the Little Entente of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Carol organized lavish celebrations to welcome Barthou that were made to symbolized the enduring Franco-Romanian friendship between the two "Latin sisters". The German minister to Romania, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg complained with a disgust in a report to Berlin that everyone in the Romanian elite was an incurable Francophile who told him that Romania would never betray its "Latin sister" France.
At the same time, Carol also considered the possibility that if Romanian-German relations were improved, then perhaps Berlin could be persuaded not to support Budapest in its campaign to regain Transylvania. Further pressing Carol towards Germany was the desperate state of the Romanian economy.
Even before the Great Depression, Romania had been an extremely poor country and the Depression had hit Romania hard with Romanians been unable to export much owing to the global trade war set off by the American Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which in turn led to a decline in the value of the Lei (Romanian currency) as Romanian's reserves of foreign exchange were being used up. In June 1934, the Romanian finance minister Victor Slăvescu visited Paris to ask the French to inject millions of francs into Romanian treasury and to lower their tariffs on Romanian goods. When the French refused both requests, an annoyed Carol wrote in his diary that the "Latin sister" France was behaving in a less than sisterly way towards Romania. In April 1936 when Wilhelm Fabricius was appointed German minister in Bucharest, the Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath in his instructions to the new minister described Romania as an unfriendly, pro-French state, but suggested that the prospect of more trade with the Reich might bring the Romanians out of the French orbit. Neurath further instructed Fabricius that while Romania was a not a major power in a military sense, it was a state of crucial importance to Germany because of its oil.
The doubts about the French willingness to undertake an offensive against Germany were further reinforced by the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 which had the effect of allowing the Germans to start building the Siegfried line along the border with France, something that considerably lessened the prospect of a French offensive into western Germany if the Reich should invade any of the states of the cordon sanitaire. A British Foreign Office memo from March 1936 stated that only nations in the world that would apply sanctions on Germany for remilitarizing the Rhineland if the League of Nations should vote for such a step were Britain, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Romania. In the aftermath of the remilitarization of the Rhineland and once it was clear that no sanctions were going to be applied against Germany, Carol started to voice his fears that the days of French influence in Eastern Europe were numbered and Romania might have to seek some understanding with Germany to preserve its independence. With continuing the alliance with France, after March 1936 Carol also began a policy of attempting to improve relations with Germany.
. Some did happen, and I will try to mention what was true, and what not.
