Horia Sima (3 July 1907 – 25 May 1993) was the second and last leader of the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary of Romania, succeeding Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on his imprisonment.
Biography[]
Horia Sima was born on 3 July 1907 in Fagaras, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary. In 1927, he joined the Iron Guard and became its commander after Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was imprisoned. In late November 1938, many Iron Guard members (including Codreanu) were assassinated, so Sima fled to Nazi Germany before planning out Prime Minister Armand Calinescu's assassination. In 1940, he became Minister of Religion and Arts under Ion Gigurtu, but King Carol II of Romania's September 1940 abdication and the rise of dictator Ion Antonescu was trouble for Sima. Although he became Vice-Premier and led pogroms, assassinations, and thefts against Jews and rival politicians, Sima became an enemy of Nazi Germany, which chose Antonescu's fascist government over the Iron Guard to rule Romania. Sima was kept in a special area of the Buchenwald concentration camp by the Germans while his group was destroyed, and he headed to Vienna in 1944 to form a pro-Nazi government-in-exile after Romania joined the Allied Powers in World War II. He went into exile in Spain after the war and died there in 1993 at the age of 86.