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Wars ever end? - more or less a Romanian AAR

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First Lieutenant
Dec 19, 2002
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***** Check the "competition" also, DonCossack is having a splendid debut *****



He was a little old man. Or rather he gave that impression until you met his eyes. Nothing old in the glittering dark eyes. His gaze could pierce through you and in the same time smile in a not so comforting ‘where do you think you can hide, I’m not through with you yet’. He was one of the General’s “boys”. For those who know a little real history the General’s “boys” are both a living legend, even though many left this traitorous world, and a subject for interminable discussions. The “boys” never wanted publicity and I’d bet all my money if they didn’t invent the aura of myth around them they sure enjoyed seeing it develop in the eyes of the many. I’ve met very few of them, no, I’m pretty sure there was nothing random, I was allowed near them for purposes unknown – damn’ I’m already being engulfed by the myth.
They never call the general by his name, he is always The General and you can almost feel the majuscules when they speak. Respect, yes, but something more, they are, in their old age still very fond of him. And they are proud to be his “boys” long after he was gone.
We sip the hot coffee, a small table with two glasses of wine nearby, the weather is lovely but something ominous seems to float around.
“Yes, there wasn’t much left to chance, my dear.” I stopped with my cup in mid air and for a second I believed he could read my thoughts.
“We were lucky, no doubt, sometimes incredible so, but it had to happen. I suppose you know all began before 1936…” I nodded, this I knew “… when the general decided that something has to be done and quick. The old parties where finished, the corruption rampant, the legion went berserk, we were surrounded, trapped. And the king, well the king could have been a second Cesare Borgia only he missed the place and the era. The king feared the general and the general disliked the king but they had to live together.”
He stops and looks out the window. I keep the silence with him.
“We were part of a grand plan and it didn’t start with the general, in fact I don’t know where and how it all started.”
He didn’t look at me when he spoke, I was completely stunned.
“You better keep this for yourself though I doubt it matters anymore” – he shrugged.
“We knew it was going to be war. Everyone with a little sense of history knew there’s no escape. We were not ready, there was no “good” choice for us and we were alone. When the general planted the seed of hope, that maybe we are not entirely alone, that there are people who want to ride and tame the horses of apocalypse and even limit the disastrous consequences the new war would bring I had to join in. I was thinking of my country, most of us did, in the end I realized it was more and I’m not sure to this day who were the puppeteers and who were the puppets.”
When I left, that day, the beginning of the story he entrusted me with was burning my thoughts. He eventually gave me the liberty to publish everything if I wanted too. He knew well the times we live, when no one cares anymore. But I will have to leave a lot aside, the first time in my life I felt I knew too much. For once, the nosy, restless inquisitor was overwhelmed.

Our character wasn’t in the military, he was one of the young idealists of those times, his young age and desire for social change balanced by a strong personality and sound scientific background in economics. He was a student and then collaborator of the economics genius Madgearu though he left his mentor when he had to chose between him and the general. He is known by his famous outburst “Well, maybe the Germans can hold us by the balls, but I’ll be damned if they squeeze a drop of oil from our oilfields unless it is on our terms.” And the Germans paid, tons of gold, armament, technological know-how, up to the last drop of oil. The oil “weapon”, the public thought, and finally someone who could use it to our advantage. But this was only the tip of the iceberg as I was to find out. After our first talk, my view on many historical events changed dramatically.
 
“Much of everything that happened those years was pure deceit, incredibly successful at times. Take for instance the Government after the elections. When the elections arrived (well, we helped a little, time was running out)our country went right alright…” he chuckled “…and turned “paternalistic”. This was part of the plan so we can sweeten the pill for the most rigid elements in the German camp when the moment for the announcement of our official alliance was to come. So, we were right-wing now and we needed to show some proof. We install Goga as Prime Minister. This was easy, his ideology was right-wing but he had no group of organized followers, he was nationalist and a popular writer, his poems are beautiful, no one could attack him credibly be it from the left or from the right. But the smartest move is to have A. Cuza “the Prince of Terror” as Minister of the Interior…” here the little man took a good laugh “… prince of terror my ass, the real few princes of terror like Horia Sima or even his staunch enemy Armand Calinescu were biting their hands as they were left out of the Cabinet. “His Majesty” also was flabbergasted when he was faced with a government where none of his usual government-breakers was to be found. We quickly changed the … what’s his name… from Minister of Industry, sadly Virgil Madgearu refused the position, he was always a principled man, he could never be part of the new government after his party was defeated in election. He did a great job before the elections though, our industry and research were healthier, and the young “wolves” were ready to take control now.” (He was one of the young –then- wolves, if not the leader of the pack in the economics field) “So we have Bratianu instead…” he paused and I watched him swallow his grief “… I’m proud he considered me as a friend.”
“Some knew, some didn’t, the General was behind all this, this is why we kept Moruzov as head of Intelligence, was better to have him “in” than “out”. We couldn’t find anyone better anyway, sometimes I wonder if we picked him or he chose us, I wonder if he was part of the grand scheme or not, I wonder if anyone will ever know 100th fraction of the secrets this man knew… and carried into the grave.” I turned, we were walking and he stopped, and this time he looked really old. “It is an endless circle, my dear.” I can hope he was only talking about history.
 
Uh oh...this seems pretty good...better step up my own efforts! :D
 
The next time we met he introduced me to a friend of his. I was requested to “forget” the guest’s name for … a while, they both laughed and I understood they simply wanted to be allowed to exit the “stage” without being bothered in their last years by people, well, like me. I confess I felt ashamed of my job, wasn’t the first time though, and yet proud they treated me as one who can be trusted. The guest was German, this I can reveal, and he was a known figure for those more acquainted with the kind of history one learns when digging into more depth. Taller than our host, the man’s voice had a certain hypnotic quality, at times it seemed like he was speaking very loud in my head and yet he never actually raised the tone of his voice. His Romanian was quite good, barely noticeable foreign accent and some hesitations before certain words. I’d say they were about the same age and there was between them the kind of familiarity one can observe only between people who know each other for a very long time. The guest looked briefly into my eyes when we shook hands. I suppose I passed the test. Smiling when I think of that moment, like I could outguess this kind of men.
They chatted for a while, about old times, of course, and somehow they lured me into their conversation like I was a part of all that happened then. The guest explained how Romania’s smooth political swift of the ‘30s puzzled some of the German “old guard” but also loyal party members who were expecting the change but couldn’t understand who is enacting it since their proteges where always stopped short just before acquiring any significant political power. “The trick was – how to make a defeat look like a victory and vice-versa. Once the people got used with the “normality” of strange behaviors they tend to ignore details that might ruin their mental tranquility. But our fanatics were a bit more shrewd than yours or maybe it is easier to control a smaller country.”
Control he said. But it was more in the way he said it. No hesitation, no fear he might be wrong, these were not theories, these people really did it, scientifically, if I might say so. It is the first time I felt unsettled in their company.
“When Germany invited Romania to an alliance on June 23, 1937 I think the Fuehrer himself wasn’t sure the next day why he did it. Which means we did a great job behind the scene.” And he burst into laughter. I laughed too but I could only think about the “we”. Who are these men and why they picked me for their confessions.
“I’m sure neither the French, nor the British, not even the very active Russians anticipated Romania would be the first country invited to ally with Germany. No common borders, not much of an historical sympathy between them, Italy and Hungary fascist governments much closer ideologically, ach, the oil, yes, yes…” here he exchanged a quick look with our host.
“There is always a first time for everyone, my dear…” our host added. Damn’… was he talking about Romania and its alliance of the past or about present day and myself.
 
"They didn't pay us such huge prices for the oil because they needed it so desperately, they paid for what it was to come. No one could tell how bloody the next war will be. They paid a more than fair price for our oil but who can estimate the spilled blood cost." I had nothing to answer him. I just felt a physical pain in my stomach like I was the young recruit embracing his family before taking the road to ... where? And I wasn't even born then. "They could have made a better use of the gold, eventually we would have given them all the oil they needed, willingly or not. It was a token, for us here, and for some other like us elsewhere, that we will try to help each other in desperate times. I still smile when I know Hitler didn't realize how the gold, the war effort, and all those resources were diverted, right under his nose, toward destinations sometimes very different than those he intended."
"We were no supermen..." just when I was beginning to wonder. Are my thoughts so easy to read? "... we suffered major failures too." By now I was beginning to grasp the meaning of "we". "Spain was one, though at least under one important aspect, lives spared, it wasn't a complete failure. I will openly admit, we had little to none influence inside the Soviet Russia's leadership or military, no faction was suited for our purpose and we weren't able to build our own faction. It was in Spain that one major battle had to be fought. We embraced the side opposing those opposing us." He remained thoughtful for a few moments. "It is not quite accurate, many were men of our kind, there were quite a few on the other side too, nothing was so clear cut as I'd have liked and wished to be. It was a bloody mess even before getting literally bloody." We drank our wine, a white, coarse at first then strangely softening taste that liquor had, even more gentle after you were left only with its remembrance. "Spain revealed what it would become of everything if we carry the fight so deep inside ourselves."
"On 6 September 1936, Republican Spain terminated the brief nationalist independence" he grimaced. Later I realized this was also his birthday. "One random factor, Franco being killed in a plane crash, and the deliberate surrender of some of the military leaders we had influence upon ended quickly the conflict. We lost, but in time we had to admit unless similar accidents happened with the other side there was no way to win without massive casualties. We lost and learned. Many of our people died unknown to anyone, but many innocents survived, though." He rather abruptly ended my visit afterwards and this wasn't at all his style.
 
"Let me be very clear about one point. I am nationalist and I was nationalist then. No foreign influence needed to teach me what I lived and learned in my parents house. The legion in its early stage attracted many because they already had certain values deeply rooted inside them. When the legion began to distort the meanings it was clear its end was near. When they assassinated Duca in 1933, though I certainly disagreed vehemently with his open doors policy I've plainly seen that path was leading to a dead end. Soon after, when the king's complicity in the assassination - to get rid of a prime minister he disliked and put an undeletable stain on the legion - was discretely revealed I was convinced that kind of amoral machinations will lead us to ruin. About that time I was contacted by the general." Neither he nor many of the general's men were ever part of the legion, now I was beginning to understand why.
"We didn't like the communists but in the same time we feared them mostly as the mighty Russia's overlords not as an internal threat. The general fought as chief of operations for one of our 2 armies in that hellish and epical 1917 summer only to see the front dissolve as the revolution was spreading through the allied Russian divisions, he master planned another decisive summer's counter-offensive of 1919 when Bela Kuhn's "red" troops capitulated. We all bitterly remember how we kissed good bye our national treasures sent to Moscow for safe-keeping when bolsheviks triumphed, we witnessed the swiftly repressed communist uprising in southern Basarabia, but we had no experience of a major internal struggle between left and right shifting toward extremes with revolutions and coups like Germany or Italy or Hungary had after the first war ended. While the bulk of our population was rural Germany was a leader of industrialized world, Karl Marx lived in Germany not in Romania after all. Add to this a minuscule communist party in a country where atheism was rejected while our model of Christianity was rather tolerant despite the legion's efforts, up to a point understandable, to make religion a more active force in the shaping of the society. That's why our situation was rather peculiar, we experimented in small amounts about all the ideologies and yet the majority was kind of immune to each and every one. I'm simplifying and idealizing, of course, nevertheless our German friends found our brand of nationalism interesting."
"Roughly put, because of succession of events and counter-reactions to them, "our" side ..." I sensed the quotation marks around our "... was better represented in countries leaning toward a right-wing ideology, especially where a certain time elapsed and the ugly side of fanatics of order began to overshadow the fanatics of chaos. End of a full circle, somehow." I tensed, he was on the road to reveal something important, but he apparently changed the topic...
"Yet, our main purpose was to avoid a confrontation between Germany and Russia, for reasons I will explain later. The question was - how could we possibly do this ?"
 
"Probably the General knew this all along and accepted it as he accepted his fate when he first embraced the military career and took the oath "for King and Country" : - it was the army's role to sacrifice itself when the time will come, hopefully no one else's. He was very efficient in his profession and he abhorred useless losses, especially those caused by poor preparations. But he wouldn't even flinch if he'd had to chose, a soldier's fate is to die if needed. No relativity about that. He wanted a strong, well equipped, fully trained army, good territorial defense and ... no back stabbing.
This was the kind of loyalty he demanded from others too. This is why those who could stand the heat ended by being fully devoted to him. And this was rather strange because, military matters aside, he didn’t impose any strict subordination inside the framework he was trying to establish. I remember I could work several days in a row with very little sleep just to finish some project simply because I couldn’t stand the thought of failing him.”
He was in a very good mood that day and he took me to visit his garden spending a lot of time to show me and explain the secrets of gardening. Later in the evening he insisted we dine together.
“I personally supervised the projects, regarding industrial and military technology, we were sending to Nationalist China, Manchu-ko and Japan, or to Finnland.” Noticing my surprise he chuckled – “we were trying to implement a sort of balance of power in the Far East, though the long term purpose was a controlled explosion. Anyway, it generally worked, surely there is more than I know first hand, part of this job was “Ica”’s ( the Foreign Affairs Minister’s nickname; sometimes mistakenly thought about as a General’s relative but it was just a name coincidence) territory. There was a certain compartmentalization and the “hounds” discretely took care there is not much trespassing.” The “hounds”, as I learned sometime before, were young military intelligence people in charge to “shield” the most sensitive departments from nose-poking, the nickname was rather affectionate as I found out.
“The Far East policy was drafted after Kuomintang rejected an alliance with the Maoists, end of April 1936…” ( his memory was accurate as usual – I checked, he was referring at the Sian incident – Apr. 22, ’36) “… the nationalists performed really well and in about a month time the last communist stronghold fell. Then it was Sinkiang’s turn (Aug. 4, 1936). We estimated correctly the Japanese government will consider the Nationalists decision regarding Sian incident as favorable to their short term interests. We took great care to give Japan all new military technology we developed to help boost their confidence in their strength. Japan was a very special case because almost any variant she could choose for its imperial ambitions she was almost certainly doomed to fail in the long run. Eventually they would have to take some action but the later the better. When in Dec. 1937 Japan re-elected the same Cabinet we could congratulate ourselves, this time our strategy was successful.”
 
Great job! :)

It's been a long time since an AAR has had me on the edge of my seat like this. I look forward to reading more very soon (hint, hint). Your writing style is quite supurb - very suspenseful, in fact. Excellent work!
 
"You have a certain kind of patience that inspires confidence and incites to confessions, quite surprising for a young man..." he once told me "...I was expecting a lot of questions from you but you just listen and discretely let the other know you are, I wonder if you are aware of this quality." I smiled. Yes I was, it paid its rewards in other circumstance too.
Later that day, when I was alone, I realized the smile betrayed me and if he ever had any doubt that smile removed it. I began to laugh and I promised myself I will clear my mind of any preconceptions and let myself free to discover whatever is to discover. Maybe this is exactly what he wanted me to do in the first place.

"Don't you think we were perfect gentlemen all the time, our plans and the way we could carry them out were ruthless at times. One could explain certain actions by the much loved by the French, and not only, "raison d'etat", but it was rarely so." He paused for a long time, and I could see he was struggling for a clarifying comment. "There've been many years since, I had time to think a lot, yet many times when I was close to a revelation it evaded my rationality prison, leaving my ego sulking. I was fascinated by the constant temptation many bright or just ambitious men had succumbed to - to project their vision into the future, to shape the future in a way the future will have to wear their unmistakable mark. Very soon, I think, people discovered it is an impossible endeavor for one single individual so they gathered together, grudgingly yet fairly disciplined, and their projects seemed to work. Problem is they don't, never were, never will. At least this is what observation told me until now. They could happen alright but after a few generations what you get is hardly what the initiators expected. So we tried a different approach. If nothing works let's make sure something we really don't want to happen won't happen, at least for the length of time humans can grasp somehow into the future. In a way it is even more ambitious than the other approach. Where the first was motivated by human judgment and corrected by ... hmmm... time... the second wants to disturb ...time... itself. We believed we could shape the future forbidding certain obvious events to happen or allowing least probable outcomes, we were trying to randomize the future, because, believe it or not, I think human attempts to limit the unpredictable is more destructive than pure random. Or, the simple existence of humankind started to perturb this seemingly random flow of time. The more people reflect about their own condition the more they are prone to change the course of actions and then they wonder when ... time... slaps them back harder than they could imagine."

He was pretty absorbed with his dissertation before he noticed my stare, he smiled. "It is still a gamble what we tried to do. Not only we weren't expecting to live to see the long term results but I'm pretty sure no one living then could evaluate them either, even if he knows the entire story." Somehow I sensed he wasn't telling the truth.

"No, the general wasn't thinking like that. He expected us to think like that, or rather he was confident we can broaden a vision or build one for ourselves. He just made sure we don't get lost in the higher spheres of pure intellectual speculation..." he chuckled... "... there was a war going on and this time for real."
 
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“Invading Hungary was easy. Yes, they had the bulk of their troops guarding the Romanian border. We were the historical enemy so they should have been motivated enough, we had no territorial claims or a significant minority that we could pretend was mistreated so the aggression was totally unjustifiable. We didn’t even bother to forge a passable pretext. Of course the papers mumbled something about unprovoked border skirmishes and dark plots threatening our sovereignty and the need for military intervention to squash those malevolent intentions in their early stage. Sort of a “preemptive strike” …” he chuckled (I wonder why). “Very few bought the bullshit but we didn’t expect such high rate of dissent actually. We thought that since we were talking about Hungarians, the people, except for the Hungarian minority and a few stubborn antiwar activists, would at most be neutral. We were wrong but after the initial surprise the conclusion was quite optimistic – we didn’t want a population of zombies after all. A society based on a strong moral sense is usually considered an utopia by the machiavellian political philosophy but our concepts weren’t based on that kind of cynicism. The post war stories about the resentment among the extreme right wing because an ideologically close country had been attacked are idiocies.”

“Even if the organization we developed in Hungary would have been weaker the shock resented when Germany honored the alliance and declared them war was devastating. Hungary was a fascist country and always inclined strategically and culturally toward the German speaking world. When, on August 1, 1937 our troops crossed the border following 2 strategic directions they met a demoralized Hungarian army. Its aviation withdrew to safer areas. We detained a vast superiority in manpower, our troops were better equipped and organized, with improved mobility. Add air superiority, the surprise when they faced the entire Romanian cavalry which only few days before was positioned in the east and was shifted secretly to the Hungarian front and the lack of proper fortifications in an open field region and you can draw the conclusions.”

“The general, well he was promoted marshal for sometime, couldn’t miss the “re-run” of his younger days triumph. He lead the operations with his known efficiency. The panicked Hungarian retreat kept our casualties extremely low, and theirs, though far more significant, consisted mainly in small units cut from their HQs and forced to surrender. Most of our divisions there immediately began to follow the enemy toward Budapest while a 3 cavalry division corps executed a fast and precise encircling maneuver. On August 8 the entire defensive force around the capitol, practically the entire Hungarian army, surrendered. There was only a delicate moment on August the 5th when the Hungarian airforce managed to chase away our airforce over Budapest, with minimal effect though for the ground operations. Why the Hungarian airforce wasn’t more present all through the campaign is one of the secrets I promised to keep to someone I knew.”
 
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"I followed in the footsteps of our advancing armies leading teams of specialists to verify the condition industrial capacities were left. We were met with hostility but we could find a common language once they understood our demands were rational and when they witnessed the equal treatment between Hungarians and Romanians we postulated immediately after the annexation wasn't just propaganda. Allowing very limited to none displacement of population between the former separated territories and allowing a rather large local autonomy in almost every aspect of life also helped. We did, however, encourage certain uprisings specially those initiated by the right-wing, we needed to get rid of a few possible dangerous leaders and have a legal pretext to disband the fascist organization without much opposition from Germany's party apparatus. There were quite many people we could rely upon, all we needed was time and to minimize threats to their lives once they began to express themselves publicly." I frowned a bit, maybe because I was too accustomed to hear similar declarations of good intents, over and over again, during my adult life, never seen them substantiated, witnessing instead dubious justifications for harsh measures always enforced in the name of a "greater good".
"There was no love between the victor and the defeated and the fact they lost and were occupied was accepted with a certain fatality, or at least we hoped this would be the dominant attitude. It helps to know your enemy's plans in case the situation was reversed, and we knew them quite in detail, our solutions were better, both in terms of efficiency and supportability. Free, they were not, if you don't count they were told less lies" he chuckled. When he chuckles I mentally underline his previous comment, I somehow think the chuckle-related ones are in a category apart.
"Don't play God. Whatever the magnitude of your ambition keep in mind this awesome milepost, will help put everything in a clarifying perspective - once the general told some of us - and while you're at it don't gloat you remembered me saying it and go on with your usual business without pausing to grasp its purposely humbling meaning. I remember. Rare were the moments when he reminded us so sternly we were on a mission, a peculiar and self-assumed one maybe, but nevertheless binding exactly because, at any given moment, we were free to choose. I guess he was angry." He didn't reveal the exact circumstance the general spoke those words. "We didn't consider ourselves the "chosen ones" only because the operation went smoothly. Humans are humans and easily tempted once the fruit of power is in their reach. Probably the toughest job was to keep our industrialists, Germany's too, at bay, they do tend to act like vultures once they smell a juicy prey. Fact is, for several reasons, some moral, some practical the annexation was announced extremely quickly, on August 8th, in the evening. We could have prolonged for a while the special measures a state of war implies..." he shrugged "... we allowed us the secret privilege of surprising even ourselves."
 
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