Page 461 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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Constanţa without any incident, with the consent of counter admiral Horia Măcelariu,
17
the commander of the Romanian fleet .
One of the most difficult missions was the regrouping inside the country of the large
Romanian units from the front in Moldova. The situation was aggravated by the fact
that the Soviets had not been informed about the move and there had been no prior
agreement. In fact, as recent researches demonstrated, the authorities in Moscow ordered
the large Soviet units not to deviate and to accomplish their missions. In addition, the
Royal Proclamation from the evening of August 23, which instructed the Romanian
troops to cease the fight against the Red Army, increased the confusion. In our opinion,
it would have been preferable if the Operative Directive no. 1 had been issued first and
then the Proclamation. Many unpleasant situations that the Romanian troops had to face
would have been avoided.
On the front in Moldova, the Romanian troops had the huge surprise to see that
the Red Army continued to treat them as enemy. After August 23, for three to four
weeks (until September 20-25), around 145 000-160 000 Romanian troops (officers and
soldiers) were taken prisoners by the Red Army, forces that could have been used against
the common enemy. The delay in the signing of the armistice was premeditated by
the Soviets in order to capture effectives and equipment, considering the Romanian
territory where the Soviet troops had entered as occupied territory. In the postwar period,
this represented a political and historiographic contentious issue between Romania and
USSR.
But, as it happened with the Germans, there were also cases when the state of
belligerence was left behind, some Romanian units taking the initiative to collaborate
with the Soviet part, who accepted their support. Such was the case of the 7 Regiment of
th
st
Artillery, 1 Armored Division, 103 and 104 Mountain Brigades, who collaborated with
the large Soviet units in order to penetrate the Trotuş gorge from Eastern Carpathians.
Despite these difficulties, the Romanian 3 and 4 Army managed to accomplish their
th
rd
mission, regrouping most of their forces, until the end of August 1944, in the counties
indicated by the General Staff. In early September 1944, the large units of the Romanian
army were reorganized and sent to battle against German-Hungarian forces in the north
of Southern Carpathians.
An important component of the operation was the securing of the “line of demarcation”
from the Transylvanian plateau and of the land and river borders of south-western
Romania, with a length of 1400 kilometers. The deployment took place in record time
(48 hours), the eastern part being heavily reinforced, as it blocked the path to Bucharest
and Prahova Valley, where Romania’s most important oil fields were located.
st
The deployed forces comprised one army command (1 Army), three army corps
commands, 11 divisions (most of them training divisions, meant to prepare the soldiers
who later joined the active divisions), 64 battalions, 16 squadrons and 17 batteries.
The troops had a double mission: to stop German reinforcements from arriving in the
perimeter of the operation and to destroy or capture them. Until August 31, they fulfilled

17 Marian Mosneagu, Dictionarul marinarilor romani (Romanian sailors dictionary), Editura Militara,
Bucuresti, 2008, p. 283-290