Ion Antonescu
Antonescu, Ion
Born June 2 (14), 1882, in Pitesti; died June 1, 1946. Fascist military dictator of Rumania from 1940 to 1944; general.
Antonescu participated in the suppression of a peasant uprising in 1907 and in the military intervention against the Hungarian Soviet republic in 1919. In 1933 he became chief of the Rumanian general staff and in 1938 minister of defense. He became dictator of Rumania in September 1940. Antonescu and his government plunged Rumania into the war unleashed by Hitler against the USSR. After the popular uprising of Aug. 23, 1944, he was arrested. The people’s tribunal of Bucharest sentenced him to death as a war criminal, and he was executed in 1946.