The Americans are Coming!!!

In the wake of WWII, Romanians hoped the Soviets would finally leave Romania and that the Americans would come to put things back on track. This was their only hope for a better future and a firm belief of the anti-communist resistance.

Steliu Lambru, 07.12.2015, 15:34

In the wake of WWII, Romanians hoped the Soviets would finally leave Romania and that the Americans would come to put things back on track. This was their only hope for a better future and a firm belief of the anti-communist resistance.

Before Romania joined the coalition led by Germany, Romanian-American relations had been very good. However, Romanias decision to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941 was contrary to the spirit that had previously defined bilateral ties. Also, the American air forces bombing Romania in 1944 had to do with a certain logic of war making, a logic that would nevertheless be hard to explain at times of peace. In spite of being enemies during the war, the Romanians went easy on the American pilots whom they had captured. According to eyewitnesses, some Romanian officers recovered the bodies of the American pilots killed in battle and organized proper burials. On August 23, 1944 Romania switched sides and joined the Allied Powers, a move that was in fact a return to normalcy.

However, what followed after the war was nothing like the Romanian society expected it to be. The Soviet troops presence in the country and the communist partys seizing political power led Romanians into firmly believing the American troops deployment in Constanta or in the Balkans was their last hope.

“The Americans are coming! had become a slogan, as, in the late 1940s, most Romanians believed it was a matter of months until the Americans would show up.

Nicolae Dascalu was a member of the National Peasant Party and, while a student, an active member of an anti-communist organization between 1947-1949.

In an interview with Radio Romanias Oral History Centre back in 2000, Nicolae Dascalu said the firm belief that the American troops were about to come gave many young people the courage to defend democracy and liberty: “Everybody hoped that the Americans would come and we all counted on their help. Of course, at first there was the enthusiasm that accompanies youth and the courage of fighting a battle with the confidence that democratic values would prevail in the end. No one was expecting such a long and terrible period of time, terrible, restrictive and totally against any human aspiration.

In 2000 Elena Florea Ioan, the sister of Toma Arnautoiu, head of one of the best organized anti-communist armed groups, confirmed that her brother went to the mountains to join the resistance in the hope that the Americans were going to come soon.

Elena Florea Ioan: “I realized that my brother left home to join the resistance in the mountains and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I urged my mother not to let him go, but she also believed that he had to, so I could not make him change his mind. My mother was being constantly worried, knowing that my brother had to hide all the time and did not have any peace. So, she hoped that he could find some peace by going to the mountains. Both of them firmly believed that the Americans would come in a month and get rid of Russians. So, my brother and others in the resistance truly believed that they would be on the run for a very short time. They had no idea how wrong they were. The anti-communist resistance in Nucsoara was the only one in Europe that stood firm 9 years. In other places, anti-communist militants did not resist, some were captured, died or surrendered. It was only here that they resisted 9 years.

Some people were so disappointed that the Americans failed to show up that they even left the resistance.

Such was the case of colonel Gheorghe Arsenescu, as Elena Florea Ioan tells us: “Colonel Arsenescu left the resistance to protect his life. I dont mean to criticize him but his gesture was not a patriotic one. He was among those who thought it would not take long until the Americans would come. But once in the mountains, having to deal with the lack of food and the hardships of a life into the wild, he started to argue with the others. He said he could not bear it any more. But there were other resistance members who said they would eat tree roots and leaves if they had to, only to stay united. And they did eat leaves when they ran out of food. But Colonel Arsenescu just could not adjust to the hardships of such a life. So he put my brother Toma in charge of the organization because he could no longer bear the hunger and the cold. He realized there were slim chances for the Americans to come and he left.

The Americans, however, even if they did not come to free Romania, tried to organize some actions meant to keep the hope alive. Such actions were the parachuting in the country of Romanians from the exile, like the group headed by captain Sabin Mare in 1953. Unfortunately, the evolution towards cohabitation of the relations between the two political and military blocs, the communist and the democratic one, led to the abandoning of any plan by the latter to save the countries occupied by the Soviets. The Americans finally came to Romania and to Central and Eastern Europe, but that happened only after 1989.