O scurtă istorie ilustrată a românilor by Neagu Djuvara

Speaking in retrospect, he argued against claims made by Nanu, according to which Ion Antonescu had thus indicated his willingness to step down and hand leadership of Romania to King Mihai I. In this capacity, he was instructed to communicate to the Romanian Ambassador in Stockholm, Frederic Nanu, that he was to ask the Soviet representative Alexandra Kollontai whether earlier terms advanced by Joseph Stalin in regard to peace with Romania were still valid (Nanu was also told not to inform the Western Allies of these talks). Subsequently, Djuvara decided to apply for office in the diplomatic corps, won the competition, and was sent by Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu as a diplomatic courier to Sweden, on the very day Ion Antonescu was toppled by a coup d'état and Romania pulled out of the Axis Powers to join the Allies (August 23, 1944).

He stated that he gave up his interest in the far right after a 1943 dialog with fellow diplomat Victor Rădulescu-Pogoneanu, who convinced Djuvara to become 'a supporter of parliamentary democracy'. He joined the Romanian Armed Forces and was stationed in Ploieşti under the Iron Guard's National Legionary government.įollowing the establishment of Ion Antonescu's dictatorship and the start of Operation Barbarossa ( see Romania during World War II), as an Officer Cadet, he fought on the Eastern Front, saw action in Bassarabia and Transnistria, before being wounded in the arm during the Battle of Odessa (1941). Djuvara later stated that, at the time, his political sympathies veered towards the far right: he became a supporter of the Romanian fascist movement, the Iron Guard, and took part in the February 1934 riot against the French Radical-Socialist government of Édouard Daladier.ĭuring World War II, he returned to Romania, where he married and fathered a child. He attended lycée in Nice, France, and graduated in Letters (1937) and Law (1940) from the University of Paris (his Law thesis dealt with the antisemitic legislation passed by the governments of King Carol II in Romania).

Djuvara was born during World War I as an infant, he was taken by his family into refuge in Iaşi after the occupation of southern Romania by the Central Powers, and then, through Imperial Russia, into Belgium (where Trandafir Djuvara was Minister Plenipotentiary). Djuvara's uncles Trandafir and Alexandru Djuvara were notable public figures. His father, Marcel, a graduate of the Technical University of Berlin and a Captain in the Romanian Royal Army's Engineer Corps, died of Spanish flu in 1918 his mother, Tinca, was the last descendant of the Gradişteanu family of boyar origins (according to Djuvara, she was related to all boyar families in Wallachia). A native of Bucharest, he is descended from an aristocratic Aromanian family.

O scurtă istorie ilustrată a românilor by Neagu Djuvara