Page 192 - The Chief Culprit

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The Carving Up of Romania,

and its Consequences

Had we not succeeded in halting Russian troops during their entrance into Romania and
forcing them to be content with obtaining only Bessarabia, they would have taken the
Romanian oil fields, and no later than that same spring they would have crushed us, for we
would have lost all sources of fuel.
—A H, M , ­

talin strove to persuade Hitler that he wanted peace. At the same time, Stalin very
persistently crawled toward the vital life-sustaining resources of Germany. For Stalin,
Sit was not enough that the Red Army and fleet had under their control all the routes
through which Germany got her iron ore, timber, and nickel. Stalin decided to move his divi-
sions right up to the regions from which Germany received its petroleum supplies.
In August 1939, Stalin (with Molotov’s hand) signed a pact, according to which Hitler
got a war on two fronts, and according to which the British fleet blocked Germany and did
not allow petroleum shipments to come in by sea. Germany had only one possible source of
oil significant enough to be noted—Ploieşti in Romania. e loss of this source of oil would
have put a complete stop to German production, army, aviation, and navy. On June 9, 1940,
the People’s Commissar for Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko, signed
a directive about the creation of the southern front. General G. K. Zhukov was nominated
to command that front. e front consisted of the 5th, 9th, and 12th armies. Overall, the
southern front consisted of thirteen corps: ten rifle corps and three mounted corps. Together
there were forty divisions: thirty-two rifle divisions, two motorized rifle divisions, and six
mounted divisions. ere were fourteen separate brigades: eleven tank brigades and three
paratroop brigades. Reinforcements consisted of sixteen heavy artillery regiments and four ar-
tillery battalions of high power. e Southern front’s aviation consisted of twenty-one fighter
and twenty-four bomber regiments. e total number of troops was 460,000 soldiers and
officers, using twelve thousand guns, three thousand tanks, and two thousand planes.
Having concentrated such might on the Romanian border, Stalin ordered Zhukov to
use threats or battle to obtain Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania, and to

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