Rumania's June-July 1941 Campaign Legitimate, According to a judge's rule

I am surprised this topic did not pop up here until now.

Recently, a Rumanian judge ruled that Rumania's June-July 1941 Campaign for Bessarabia and Bukovina was legitimate, as it was a "pre-emptive war", which was "aiming towards eliminating the continuous and imminent martial law existing on the country's Eastern borders [since the Soviet annexation of those territories in 1940]":
"CAB apreciaza ca razboiul de eliberare a Basarabiei si Bucovinei, din 1941, în conditiile starii de necesitate prelungite, a fost legitim, pâna la înlaturarea iminentei pericolului militar sovietic. Razboiul preventiv purtat de România a avut drept cauza legala justificativa starea de necesitate continua si iminenta de la frontiera de rasarit. Pentru acest motiv el nu a încalcat articolul 3 din Conventia de definire a agresiunii din 1933, întrucât nu s-a bazat pe justificari de natura subiectiva, ci pe una legala, respectiv reglementarea legala a scuzei de înlaturare a starii de necesitate."
[Source: stiri.neogen.ro: http://stiri.neogen.ro/lotul-antonescu-ach...n-1946/217940/2]

This juridical rule could open a wholly new aspect of the anti-Soviet war.
What is your opinion on this?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on February 26, 2007 02:59 pm

The ruling talks about preventive war, not preemptive one.

I find this part confusing:

reglementarea legala a scuzei de inlaturare....? Sounds like they're calling the action an excuse (?).

Here is the text of Convention of July 3rd, 1933 the decision is referring to. Both Romania and USSR were signatories.

http://www.letton.ch/lvx_33da.htm

The key here is "the territory of another State".

AFAIK, USSR never recognised officially the incorporation of Bessarabia and Bukovina into Rumania in 1918. Therefore, from their point of view, Soviet/Russian historians argue that the 1940 act was merely a recovery of their own territories.

Another point. Based on the quoted text, the USSR was the agressor in case of Finland and Hungary as well, as Soviet bombers bombed these states' territories.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on February 27, 2007 02:56 pm

Please point out the internationally recognized treaty in which Norhtern Bukovina and the Herta County were mentioned as part of the USSR/Russia prior to the Paris Peace Conference in 1947.

Victor, don't shoot the messenger (or the pianist, if you will)!
I am not implying here anything. I am not taking sides either.
All I want to understand is the background and legal aspects of this ruling.

So back to my question: if the USSR (and lately Russia) never officially recognised the incorporation of Bessarabia and Bukovina into Rumania (regardless if Bukovina was part of Russia or not), how would this legally affect the said ruling?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on February 28, 2007 11:06 am

If the incorporation was recognised by international law at the time, then from a legal stand-point USSR's non-recognition is irrelevant in changing the incorporation's recognised legality.

take care

http://www.bbc.co.uk/romanian/news/story/2...u_decizie.shtml

http://portal.just.ro/InstantaDosar.aspx?i...DAwMDAwMTAwNDUw

As far as I know, the Soviet Union engaged in small (from several men to platoon size), short incursions into Romanian territory on a frequent basis. Both soldiers as well as civilian-dressed individuals were used in these incursions, with the goal of spreading panic in villages close to the border.
Soviet recon planes were also often seen crossing into Romanian air space.

These events continued well after the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia and N. Bukovina.

Could these small-scale, but frequent raids be considered as a breach of articles 3 and 5 of the 1933 convention?

Thanks.

Such airspace violations happened the other way as well.

Gen. Dénes

You can take a look HERE, a very modest hobby-contribution . In Romanian only.


This post has been edited by Dan Po on March 05, 2007 06:31 am

Hello Dan,

In your history blog, you wrote the following:
"In iulie 1939, V.M. Molotov (...) a refuzat sa primeasca o nota de protest a guvernului roman, privitoare la un avion sovietic ce violase spatiul aerian al Romaniei (...)".

Could you give us more details about this - and any similar air space violation - incident that occurred over the Rumanian-Soviet borderline in 1939-1941? It would be urgent. Thanks.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on March 05, 2007 01:42 pm

Mr Denes,

You can find there my bibliography. In this moment I m very far from my books so I cannot help you. Good luck !

My personal opinion:
I would not qualify the operations of the Romanian Army, starting in the morning of June 22, 1941, as pre-emptive war. According to my understanding, a pre-emptive war is an action against an enemy ready to mount a full scale attack against you. This was not the case in June 1941.

Germany made very clearly to USSR that an invasion over the Prut River is not acceptable, and as we know, in 1940...1941 Stalin was afraid of Germany. The Luftwaffe took over its Romanian airports starting with September 1940.
I am not a professional historian, but I would not be surprised to learn that the provocations and the harassment from the Soviets, in all forms mentioned here, increased gradually from June 26, 1940 to the end of August, 1940, and then, as Romania entered under the German shade, at the beginning of September 1940, these aggressions gradually faded.

A complete different situation was in the Romanian territory conquered by USSR, between Prut and Nister. There the aggression, humiliation and deportation of the ethnic Romanians increased steadily from June 1940 to June 1941.

This last thing leads to the fact that even though not a pre-emptive war, this war started by Romania (as satellite ally) was a justified war. I consider very justified the revenge against the aggression of the Communist Russian leadership, even though not the Russian leaders suffered, but the common folk.

Romania and Finland were much more justified to start their war in June 1941 than Germany.
I am a little bit confused about Hungary: As Molotov called the Hungarian ambassador in Moskow, about 2...3 days after 22 June 1941, to tell him that Russia sees no problem if Hungary will grab from Romania the rest of Transylvania, I guess in those very first days Hungary did not have troops involved in the campaign, and possible Russia hoped that it will remain this way. In this last matter, I am sure just about the discussion between Molotov and the Hungarian ambassador. By the way, the Hungarian ambassador in Moskow informed the Romanian ambassador in Moskow about this discussion.
Also the Romanian ambassador was called by the Russians and asked something like: "What did we do to deserve this?" If they really asked that, they played "stupid", because they couldn't be that stupid.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 10, 2007 04:13 am

The Russian leadership of today, at the highest ranks, expressed publicly their indignation regarding the way Romania is looking to her recent past. They made some aggressive comments against Romania.

Well, you cannot please everybody, and the relations between the West and Russia are not honey sweet as 15 years ago, so who cares? But Russia is recovering. She is far from her weakness occurred in the 1990's, and this country will outlive NATO in the long run.
However, as most Romanians feel that war was justified, we have to dare to express what we feel.

[edited by admin]