Michael became King for the first time on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand following King Carol's renunciation of the throne (December 1925). However he was shortly thereafter deposed by his father after only three years on the throne. He resumed the crown on King Carol's abdication a decade later, reigning over a country governed in practice by the pro-German regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu.
The King dismissed Prime Minister Antonescu as Soviet forces entered Romania in August 1944 following the country's ill-fated intervention on Germany's side in World War II. In March, Michael subsequently was forced to appoint a pro-Soviet government dominated by the Communist Party of Romania. On July 6, 1945 he was decorated with the Soviet Order of Victory.
The Communists ultimately decreed his deposition and exile from the country in 1947; he was not allowed to return until 1997.
KING MICHAEL OF ROMANIA was the only constitutional monarch to lead his people in person during the Second World War.
Michael's childhood was as grim as a grotesque fairy tale.
IVOR PORTER was sent to Romania in 1943 as one of a three-man mission led by Colonel Gardyne de Chastelain to urge the Resistance to rise against the Germans whatever the consequences.
Romania occupies, roughly, ancient Dacia, which was a Roman province in the 2d and 3d cent.
Michael the Brave of Walachia defied both the Ottoman sultan and the Holy Roman emperor and at the time of his death (1601) controlled Moldavia, Walachia, and Transylvania.
Shortly thereafter, Romania annexed Bessarabia from Russia, Bukovina from Austria, and Transylvania and the Banat from Hungary.
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