78 years ago, the leader of the pro-fascist regime Antonescu was executed in Romania. On June 1, 1946, in Romania, the execution of Adolf Hitler’s allies, convicted during the Bucharest trials, took place. The deposed dictator Ion Antonescu was not shot dead on the first attempt. Lying on the ground, he demanded a second volley. The rise in popularity of General Ion Antonescu was facilitated by the ceding of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union under the threat of military force. The territorial losses of 1940 seriously undermined the authority of King Carol II of Romania. Public dissatisfaction forced the monarch to entrust Antonescu with the formation of a new government. The general was respected as an incorruptible military man who vehemently protested against the army’s evacuation from Bessarabia. Antonescu suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and demanded that Carol II hand over control of the state to him. With the support of Nazi Germany, the general, at the proposal of the main political parties, forced the king to abdicate. His successor was his 19-year-old son, Mihai I, who became supreme commander and took on all other monarchical functions, including the right to appoint the prime minister. However, real power was in the hands of Antonescu, who declared himself Conducătorul Statului (Leader of the State). He included members of the Legionnaire Movement—an ultranationalist, anti-communist, and anti-Semitic party known as the Iron Guard—into his government. Antonescu worked to strengthen the alliance with Germany. Adolf Hitler was also interested in cooperating with Romania, especially in the economic sector. Thus, Hitler sent troops to Ploiești to secure the oil fields. On November 20, 1940, Antonescu arrived in Berlin, and three days later, a document was signed, marking Romania’s accession to the Tripartite Pact—an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan defining spheres of influence. The visit to the capital of the Third Reich reinforced Antonescu’s belief that Romania’s territories, seized by the USSR, would soon be returned. Additionally, he hoped to regain northern Transylvania, which Romania had ceded to Hungary. By the early 1940s, Antonescu held full power in Romania. His government enacted anti-Semitic laws. There were mass shootings of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. In September of that year, the deportation of Jews to Transnistria began. In Odessa alone, approximately 22,000 of its residents, mostly Jews, were shot, hanged, or burned alive. Romania participated in World War II from June 22, 1941, to May 12, 1945. After the capture of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Romanian troops continued military actions on Soviet territory: they occupied Odessa, stormed Crimea, and fought at Stalingrad. The changing tide of the war and the Red Army's counteroffensive led to the coup in Romania on August 23, 1944, organized by Mihai I. As a result, Antonescu was overthrown, and the country switched to the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. This set the stage for the establishment of a communist regime in Romania, supported by the USSR. In the same month, Antonescu and his closest associates were arrested and taken to Moscow. It was only during the Nuremberg Trials that the Soviet prosecution revealed that interrogations of Romanian prisoners had been conducted in Moscow: “Antonescu’s interrogation was carried out in accordance with Soviet law, and the protocol of his testimony, which is of exceptional importance for clarifying the relationship between Germany and its satellites, has been submitted to the tribunal.” On May 17, 1946, the sentences were read to the defendants. Seven were sentenced to death with confiscation of property in favor of the state. Later, the death sentences of three were commuted to life imprisonment. The execution of Ion and Mihai Antonescu, Vasiliu, and Alexianu took place on June 1, 1946, at 6:00 p.m. in the Jilava military prison “in the presence of persons prescribed by law,” according to the Council of Ministers’ chancellery. The execution was filmed. In his final moments, Antonescu demanded that the sentence be carried out by soldiers, not gendarmes. Considering the high status of the condemned, the new Romanian authorities allowed him to command his own execution. Antonescu gave the signal to fire by raising his hat. The Soviet Union reported that the former Romanian leader was shot “for crimes against peace and for aggression against the peoples of the USSR.”