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Traditionally, Romania had strong ties to France but tried (under its ruler King Carol II), to remain neutral in the 1930s. With the fall of France in June 1940, Nazi Germany supported the revisionist demands for Romanian territory of the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Bulgaria. During the summer and autumn of 1940, Romania lost about 30 percent of its territory and population. The Soviet Union demanded and received Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania on June 28, 1940. On August 30, 1940, under German and Italian arbitration, Romania was forced to cede northern Transylvania to Hungary in the so-called Second Vienna Award. In September, Romania ceded southern Dobruja to Bulgaria.

Even before Romania fell into the orbit of Nazi Germany, Romanian authorities pursued a policy of harsh, persecutory antisemitism--particularly against Jews living in eastern borderlands, who were falsely associated with Soviet communism, and those living in Transylvania, who were identified with past Hungarian rule. Right-wing social revolutionary movements, like the fascist Iron Guard, found significant popular support and some official sympathy for their demand that the Jews of Romania be removed from alleged places of power and then expelled from Romania. However, their call for a social revolution against the political and economic establishment and their use of violent protest led to extreme hostility from the Romanian authorities. By 1938-1939, the Romanian police and the Iron Guard were locked in a state of virtual terrorist civil war. THE "NATIONAL LEGIONARY STATE," 1940-1941 In September 1940, King Carol II was forced to abdicate after the loss of northern Transylvania to Hungary. A coalition government of radical right-wing military officers, under General Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard, came to power and requested the dispatch of a German military mission to Romania. On November 20, 1940, Romania formally joined the Axis aliance