Carol Diaconu (17 June 1893 – 10 January 1947) was a Romanian fascist who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. A former member of the Iron Guard, he later joined the Nazi Party and served as the gauleiter of Moneasa. After the war, he was tried and executed for crimes against humanity.
Biography[]
Carol Diaconu was born on 17 June 1893 in Bucharest, Romania. Diaconu served with the Romanian Army in World War I as a Captain after he left the Army Staff College in 1916, the year that Romania entered the war. After the war's end, he was angry at the government for leading Romania into a war while it was unprepared, and he was a staunch proponent of Romanian nationalism. Diaconu rose through the ranks of the Romanian military in the Interwar Years, and he was a Lieutenant-Colonel by 1940. He joined the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary group to install a fascist government in Romania, and he barely survived the quelling of the Legionnaires' Rebellion by the dictator Ion Antonescu. When Nazi Germany convinced Romania to join the Axis Powers and sent troops there, Diaconu was appointed as the gauleiter of the town of Moneasa, and he had the Jews, communists, handicapped, Romani, and mentally-ill massacred as part of the Holocaust. When the war ended in 1945, he was arrested by the Soviet Union and was handed over to Communist Romania for trial. Charged with crimes against humanity, he was executed by firing squad.